Hello and welcome to my beginner's guide on how to play the simple, yet very effective spec in Wrath of the Lich King, arcane mage.

First and foremost, this guide is mostly meant for the beginning of Wrath as fire very quickly out passes arcane as we progress through the expansion and the duration of boss encounters increases.

Thus, as a result of this, I will only be focusing on content up until tier 7 so this guide will mainly be applicable for either the beginning of Wrath Classic or a fresh server.

With that being said, we'll start out by looking at the differences for arcane mages going from TBC into Wrath. The main difference between TBC and Wrath is the introduction of Arcane Missile procs to consume your Arcane Blast stacks. So instead of having to press only one button, you now have to press two.

Arcane Missiles function as a way to reset your AB stacks in order to conserve your mana pool longer. There is also no longer a cast time increase associated with each AB stack but instead, you get a percentage arcane damage increase for each current stack and these stacks will now be consumed from casting any other arcane ability.

Another change is the interaction between Presence of Mind and Arcane Power. In Wrath, you're no longer able to use Presence of Mind during your Arcane Power window like you were in TBC. During TBC, your goal with PoM was to squeeze in another AB during your AB window.

Now in Wrath, the way you use PoM is a bit different and we'll talk about that later. Regarding the talents, we also have a few noteworthy changes, the main one being the nerf to Mind Mastery; this will now only increase your spell power by 15% of your total intellect. In Wrath as a mage, like any other casters, your main focus will now be maximizing your total spell power and you'll generally stop worrying about intellect altogether.

The last change is the introduction of new raid buffs in Wrath where arcane gets its own. This buff increases the damage done by the entire raid by 3% but isn't unique to arcane, though as retribution paladins get a similar one.

Now let's talk about talents. And this will be a basic talent build for the beginning of Wrath. You have a few options to swirl around depending on what you need for a particular boss such as increased range from Magic Attunement, mana regeneration from Arcane Meditation or a bit more throughput from Student of the Mind that combines well with Molten Armor.

The most noteworthy thing about arcane is that we unfortunately won't be using Arcane Barrage in a PVE scenario as we only want to consume our AB stacks with arcane missiles. The reason we only take three out of five in Arcane Stability is because we're assuming that you have a holy paladin available with Improved Concentration Aura in your raid group.

This build includes Icanter’s Absorption, a very strong talent depending on the fight. Whenever you absorb damage with one of your shields, you convert 15% of the absorbed amount into spell power. If you're on an encounter where you know you're going to take fire or frost damage or any other damage if your mana pool allows it with mana shield, then you should be taking this talent.

Noteworthy info here is that the spell power gain from this talent is accumulative but each absorb has a separate 10 second timer that refreshes on any absorb from one of your shields. This means that it recalculates the total spell power gains every time you refresh the buff.

Another strong talent that combines very well with this build is Frost Warding. This talent gives you a 30% chance to negate the water damage and restore mana equal to the damage caused. The good thing about this is that it double dips within Incanter’s Absorption meaning that if you get lucky, you can get quite a large spell power increase.

As this build is primarily used for fights with a lot of magic damage, you can consider taking Magic Absorption as well for more resistance and sustain. If you don't need it, you can always go back to one of the three choices listed before in the previous build.

This last build is primarily used for very short fights where you're sacrificing sustainability and crit chance for Cold Snap to get an extra use of Icy Veins. This build might see some play during Wrath of the Lich King Classic during tier 7, as some bosses are very likely to die in under a minute but I would not recommend this build if you're playing on a server with buffed content.

For glyphs, I recommend playing with Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles and Molten Armor. And your minor glyphs will be Slow Fall and Arcane Intellect. If you want to play with Frost or Fire Ward, keep in mind that it does not reflect on volleys. If you play with Incanter’s Absorption, then this glyph will prevent the effect of the talent should you reflect the spell.

Moving on, let's now talk about how you can prepare your character in the best way. I will start by talking about stat priority which is very simple and easy to understand.

First, your most important stat is hit and once you have the hit cap, you can start moving on to spell power. The next step is haste. Haste becomes very good for arcane mages, especially in short fights where mana isn't really an issue. Later on in the video, I will come back to haste and briefly expand on this further.

Next up, you want crit which is just an average stat for arcane that doesn't scale very well for the spec but it is good nonetheless. After that, you want intellect or spirit. Intellect is a bit better than spirit because of the value you get from talents and the simple fact that it increases your total mana pool.

You generally want to avoid any item with spirit as you'll be missing out on either crit or haste but this isn't always an option in tier 7, so don't worry too much about it.

Now let's talk about gems. And because we know which stats are best from the stat priority, this will be very easy. Your best gem will be the Runed Scarlet Ruby and you'll place it wherever you have a red gem slot or wherever you have a bad socket bonus.

For yellow, you want Reckless or Veiled Monarch Topaz or Rigid Autumn’s Glow if you need hit. For blue gem slots, you want two Purified Twilight Opals to activate the meta gem which will be the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.

For consumables, you want the obvious Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Firecracker Salmon food or Snapper Extreme if you need the hit. For potions, you either want Potion of Speed or Wild Magic depending on the situation and I'll talk about that later on.

Regarding the best race, if you're playing hard, I recommend going Troll because their racial combines very well with your burst window. If you're playing Alliance, I recommend going Draenei but if you already have a Draenei buff in your group and you want to do any sort of PVP, I recommend going Human for the extra PVP trinket.

Moving on to professions, your first one should always be engineering as it is your most valuable profession. The glove enchant provides you with a haste buff that is very useful during your burst window. Bombs and Sapper Charges also become very easy to use in Wrath compared to TBC.

If you want to help out melee groups and are in a try-hard guild, you can also craft the chicken and swap groups. With engineering, you also get access to use Nitro Boosts which are very good in a raid setting to either save you or get you quickly from A to B when blink isn't available.

Another good thing about engineering is that the self-inflicted damage from Sapper Charge will proc your Incanter’s Absorption.

Next up, I recommend going tailoring for the same reason. The value of the cloak enchant in combination with your burst window will give you the highest value. If you want passive spell power, you can go jewelcrafting for the JC gems but I don't recommend this as it isn't as strong as the other professions.

Now, let's get into the action and check out how arcane mages play in combat. Arcane is a very front loaded spec by which I mean that the majority of your damage occurs in the first 30 seconds of the encounter.

This means that you can expect to fall off gradually as the fight progresses but should Blizzard decide not to buff tier 7 in Wrath Classic then arcane mages will be very competitive as most bosses will die after one or two minutes.

Your rotation as an arcane mage will be very simple and will only change depending on the fight duration. You want to cast Arcane Blasts four times to build up stacks and then cast Arcane Missiles with the proc from your talents. The proc has a 40% chance to occur on each Arcane Blasts and when the scenario occurs when you don't have a proc after four ABs, you just have to keep casting and wait until you get one.

If you need to conserve mana, you will just change your rotation to reactively using the AM proc whenever available but preferably using it on three stacks instead of four. Furthermore as a side note, if you're still having issues conserving your mana with these two rotations, you can always spec into Arcane Barrage.

As an arcane mage, you have a lot of cooldowns available to you and you generally want to combine all of them during your burst window. Your opener will be three ABs after which you'll use Presence of Mind for your fourth AB. You're then going to use all of your cooldowns and cast Arcane Missiles and then just repeat your four AB rotation.

The reason we use Presence of Mind as a builder is because of your pre-pot window plus trinket or cloak procs that can occur during your first couple of casts. You want to maximize the damage that you do during a trinket proc window.

I recommend using macros such as the one on screen right now to make it easier for yourself and to avoid any sort of downtime in between GCDs caused by having to press multiple buttons.

A thing you can do with Presence of Mind for your second use is to use it in combination with Arcane Missiles as you have 4 stacks of AB because of the talent Arcane Potency to get 30% extra crit on your Missiles.

Keep in mind that the general goal of an arcane mage should be to end the fight with zero mana, so do whatever takes you there by the end of the encounter. This means that you are able to deviate from the static 4 AB to AM rotation, depending on the fight then or if the boss is about to die and you don't want to spend time restacking AB for no reason.

Now let's backtrack a bit and talk about haste as the amount of this stat is going to affect your cooldown usage during your burst window.

We'll start by putting up some haste caps during your burst window here so that you can change your opener depending on your specific situation. Note that these haste values are only the point at which you start to lose value from extra haste, meaning that if you're only slightly over the cap, it might still be worth it for you to stick to your current cooldown usage during your burst window. Think about what makes most sense for you and apply it in combat.

Let's use an example. We'll use the first one and assume you're playing with 350 haste rating. This means that you'll only be losing 34 rating should you choose to include your gloves in your first window. If this was up to me, I would still be using it even though I'm slightly overcapped.

As you get more haste, let's say 450 haste in this example, I would probably consider either using gloves on your first global if you're using double trinket proc or simply using it after your Berserking expires. The reason I'm mentioning double trinket proc, for example Sundial and Dying Curse, is that you want to reach four AB stacks as soon as possible since the can potentially proc off your first cast.

Now let's try to expand a bit on your cooldown management. It is very important that you know roughly how long it's going to take for a certain boss to die such that you are able to properly use your cooldowns.

I recommend using a WeakAura or an addon that tells you how long it's going to take before your target dies. Again, we'll use an example and let's start out with a very basic kill time. We'll use Patchwerk as an example and you know before even pulling the boss that it roughly takes your guild just over 3 minutes to kill him.

The most optimal use of your CDs in this scenario would be to use all CDs on pull, AP after 90 seconds when it's off CD and then combine the third use with the rest of your cooldowns at around the three minute mark. Again, this is a very simple concept that you will think about when you're killing a boss if you're playing arcane mage.

For any sort of AOE scenario, you want to cast your Flamestrike rank 9, followed by Flamestrike rank 8 and then follow it off with Blizzard. You're mainly going to be rotating between this cycle and only use Arcane Explosion or Cone of Cold if you are in melee range and need to move.

Keep in mind that should there be a priority target, it's way better for you as an arcane mage just to single target as other classes have more efficient AOE.

As we wrap up this guide, I'll briefly talk about the gear you should aim to get as an arcane mage.

For helm, before you start raiding, you can pick up the helm from Culling of Stratholme and if you want to do Wintergrasp, you can pick up either the hit or haste version. If you already have sufficient haste and hit, you can craft the engineering goggles.

As you start raiding, you can pick up Gothik's Cowl from Naxx 25 but your best in slot will be the tier helm.

For necks, you can pick up the neck from Ahn’kahet or badge neck if you need hits or JC neck if you don't.  Your best in slot will be from the Malygos 25 man quest.

For your pre-BIS shoulders, you can either use the shoulders from Sunwell Plateau if you have access to them or buy the BOE shoulders from halls of stones. Your best in slot shoulders will be the tier shoulders.

For cloaks, I recommend crafting Deathchill Cloak but you can use the badge cloak if you need the extra sustain. And your best in slot will be the Pennant Cloak from OS 2 drake 25 man.

Your pre-BIS chest will be the badge tier chest for the two set bonus. Note that if you already have access to the TBC mage trinket, you can use this and instead craft the Spellweave Robe for more haste. Your best in slot chest will be the one from OS one drake 25 man.

For your bracers, you can use the ones from Oculus and as you start raiding, you have access to these bracers from Naxx 25 man. Your best in slot bracers will be the ones from OS 2 drake 25 man.

Your pre-BIS gloves will be the same concept as your chest depending on your situation. Your best in gloves will be the upgraded tier piece from OS 25 man.

For belt, I recommend buying the badge belt for your pre-BIS and as you start raiding, you can pick up the belt from Thaddius 25 man if you need the hit. Your best in slot belt will be the one from Malygos 25 man.

For legs, you can pick up the ones from Sunwell Plateau if you have access or the legs from Halls of Lightning. The crafted legs from tailoring are also very good if you want the extra haste. Your best in slot will be the tier legs.

For boots, I recommend picking up the ones from Wyrmrest Accord. And as you start raiding, you can pick up these from Naxx 25 man but your best in slot will be the boots from Malygos 25 man.

For rings, I recommend picking up the ones from Culling of Stratholme and Utgarde Keep. Your best in slot will be the badge ring or this one from Naxx 10 man if you need the hit and then the one from KT 25 man.

For trinkets, you have a few options before you start raiding. You can use the TBC class trinket if you want to use the Spellweave set.

Forge Ember + badge trinkets if you want to use two proc trinkets and the Violet Hold trinket if you need the hit rating.

As you start raiding, you can pick up Embrace of the Spider if you're not a Troll and you don't have access to Berserking but your best in slot will be Dying Curse and Illustration of the Dragon Soul.

For wands, I recommend picking up the one from Utgarde Keep. In raids, you can pick up the one from Anub’Rekhan 25 man if you need the hit or KT 10 man if you don't.

For weapons, you can pick up the one from Kirin Tor rep or blacksmithing before you start raiding. Off hand from either Drak’Tharon Keep or the one from badges. As you start raiding, you can pick up Life and Death from Naxx 25 man but your best in slot will be The Turning Tide.

Your offhand can either be the one from Patchwerk 25 or Maexxna 25 depending on if you need hit or not.

That's it for this guide. Hope you found it useful and thank you for watching.