General Info

Spell casts are queued for about half a second. If you are waiting for your cast to finish before pressing the button for another cast, you are losing a LOT of dps.

Arcane Mage

Updated by Tal for 4.2.

Talents

Arcane 33/5/3

The most optional points are the ones in Improved Blink and Improved Polymorph.

Prime Glyphs should be those three, but Major and Minor are almost entirely personal preference.

Gear

Wowhead Gear List

Gem for Int.  If you must match colors, Int/Hit in blue slots, Int/Mast in yellow slots.

Hit is very important to cap, so be sure to reforge for 17% hit for raid bosses. Keep some gear around that you can swap in to reduce hit without reducing item level.  This will help you increase your damage on trash and 5man bosses.

After hit, Mastery and Haste are very closely tied for your best stat.  Crit is your lowest.  Spirit is useless; don't just reforge it away, don't have it on your gear at all.

Instructions

Arcane is a mana management spec.  You have the flexibility to burn at the appropriate moments and conserve or regenerate mana at other times.

You'll start most fights with the burn phase rotation:

1. Arcane Blast x4
2. Mana Gem, Arcane Power, Mirror Image, Trinkets, Potion (optional) (see macro below)
3. Arcane Blast to 35% mana
4. Evocate

You can burn again when Evocate is nearly ready again OR the boss is about to die.  Ideally you should end every boss fight with 0-5% of your mana remaining.  If you still have mana, you screwed up.

When you're not burning, you want to keep your mana near 100% with a low-mana rotation:

1. Stack Arcane Blast to some number (generally 4)
2. If you have 98% mana, Arcane Blast again
3. Otherwise, if Arcane Missiles has procced, use it
4. If not, use Arcane Barrage

The number of AB stacks in Step One is what will change the amount of mana you're using.  You'll want to experiment to find out how high you can stack it while maintaining your mana at a constant level.

Macros

Here's the macro you want for starting your burn phase:

You can replace your Arcane Blast with this macro for maximum PoM usage:

Fire Mage

- Moved to a separate page (Adana)