Mage Hero Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Arcane Mage, check out our Talents page:

Sunfury is effectively tied with Spellslinger on single-target, making it a great choice for raiding. You can largely pick whichever one you prefer, as both do very similar DPS on raid bosses.

Spellslinger is effectively tied with Sunfury on single-target, making it a great choice for raiding. You can largely pick whichever one you prefer, as both do very similar DPS on raid bosses.

Sunfury does less AoE damage than Spellslinger, while doing similar boss damage, making it slightly worse for overall DPS in Mythic+ content. However, it is relatively close, especially if you want to focus on boss damage, so you do not give up too much DPS by going Sunfury in Mythic+.

Spellslinger provides better AoE damage while doing the same boss damage as Sunfury, making it generally the better Mythic+ spec.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Arcane Mage

Sunfury Hero Talent Build Spellslinger Hero Talent Build

Sunfury currently has one setup for all situations, as it simply provides the best DPS in both AoE and single-target situations.

Spellslinger currently has one setup for all situations, as it simply provides the best DPS in both AoE and single-target situations.

Sunfury has meaningful impact on the rotation for Arcane. One of the reasons why it impacts the rotation is the same reason it is such a strong Hero Talent Tree. It gives Arcane multiple additional ways to quickly get 4 Arcane Charges back. The way this plays out in the full rotation is quite complex, but at a high level, it allows you to dump Arcane Charges more often with Arcane Barrage and then immediately get the charges back again.

The main rotational change comes from Burden of Power and Glorious Incandescence. Burden of Power is a simple damage increase to Arcane Blast, but Glorious Glorious Incandescence, which procs immediately after consuming Burden of Power, makes your next Arcane Barrage immediately give you back 4 Arcane Charges. This allows you to quickly dump Arcane Charges via Arcane Barrage and immediately get them back again. There are various small optimizations around this, but generally you simply use Arcane Barrage whenever you have Glorious Incandescence.

The other rotational change is around Memory of Al'ar. This causes a bunch of passive benefits to Arcane Surge, however, it also gives you the Arcane Soul buff when Arcane Surge expires. This buff gives you effectively infinite 4 Arcane Charges for the duration. While the buff is up, you simply want to spam Arcane Barrage until you have 3 Clearcasting stacks, at which point you want to consume a stack of Clearcasting to avoid overcapping on it, and then go back to using Arcane Barrage. If Arcane Soul is about to time out, you can ignore the rule on 3 Clearcasting stacks and throw out an additional Arcane Barrage even if it would overcap Clearcasting.

Spellslinger has various small rotational changes:

No single talent in the Spellslinger has meaningful impact on the rotation, however, combining all of them together Spellslinger gets a lot of Arcane Orb damage. Due to the extra damage provided by various Hero Talents, it is worth picking up Orb Barrage from the Arcane tree, which, combined with Spellfrost Teachings provide a lot of additional Arcane Orbs. Combined with the extra damage of Arcane Orb, casting Arcane Orb also becomes beneficial on single-target, allowing you to dump Arcane Charges and get them back with either a manually cast Arcane Orb, or an automatically fired one from Orb Barrage or Spellfrost teachings.

All these interactions together end up in a fast paced rotation that can dump Arcane Charges via Arcane Barrage much more aggressively than Sunfury can, especially on AoE. This is also the reason why Spellslinger does so much AoE damage.