Which mage spec is best for pve

Frost is right behind Arcane, with Fire a bit under their bluer brothers, but still able to dish out nice damage. If you are not concerned with full optimization, any of the three specs are a great choice. It really does come down to preference across the three specs in terms of gameplay that you want to seek out. A challenging but rewarding spec with Arcane, one of the very few specs left in the game where mana management is even a concept. Level 45 : Living Bomb — Unlike other rows, this one is pretty lacking.

Out of the three choices, Living Bomb is the best one. Level Meteor — This is the best talent in the tree and should always be picked up. The damage it does is amazing if no teammates are nearby your priority target to soak it.

With the fast-paced arena meta, you need to able to cast your spells as quickly as possible, and having a lot of haste to do so is a requirement. Afterward, you want to prioritize Versatility for the additional damage and reduce damage taken. With the double PvP trinket bonus, Versatility is the best secondary stat after Haste. Mastery and Critical Strike are lower in priority, but if you have higher item-level gear with these stats, feel free to use them instead.

As for the legendary item, you want to go for Triune Ward because it increases your survivability and eases the burden on the healer. It is the absolute best legendary effect you can get as a Mage regardless of specialization. It grants you the ability to have additional blinks via the Soulshape ability and Shifting Power reduces your cooldowns by 10 seconds on a minute cooldown. The biggest benefit of Night Fae is that Shifting Power is on the Nature school, allowing you to use it to force the enemy to use their interrupt before you unleash your main school Fire burst.

Due to its high cooldown, you should avoid using it offensively, unless you get a guaranteed kill. While the first two are required to improve your damage, the third one is taken for survivability by allowing you to steal all buffs from opponents. Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area such as an inn or a capital city. Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent build listed below works great for general purposes. The builds suggested above do not account for specific fights in the current raid tier.

If you wish to have a boss-by-boss breakdown of talent choices, you should check out our dedicated page below. There are multiple talents that require a change to your rotation in order to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

Searing Touch is the best option if the boss loses Health at a steady rate throughout the fight. It is also the best talent for AoE situations. Shimmer should be your go-to talent in most situations, as it gives you more mobility and the ability to Blink without triggering a Global Cooldown.

Not only does this result in a noticeable damage gain, but should also allow for better survivability on high movement fights. It is also worth noting that Shimmer has 2 charges, as opposed to Blink's single charge. Blazing Soul gives you extra survivability when you blink. It can be useful in some situations, but is not an advised pick over Shimmer.

Rune of Power is the best DPS talent. However, due to its restrictive nature, it may be not be practical to use on all encounters. Incanter's Flow is a bit weaker numerically, but is usable on all types of fight encounters. Focus Magic is never the best option for your personal DPS, but can in certain situations cause slightly more raid DPS when playing with very geared other classes that benefit from critical strike a lot, especially if your character is very undergeared compared to the person you put Focus Magic on.

Flame On should be your go-to choice on raid bosses, as it allows for the most Hot Streak s throughout a fight, for both single target and AoE.

It not much worse than Flame On , but it does make the rotation considerably slower paced. From the Ashes is the best option when there is a constant stream of additional targets that you can spread Mastery: Ignite to. Frenetic Speed is the only talent with a benefit in raids. Conflagration is the best choice for single target.

Living Bomb never does more DPS outside of extremely high target counts than Flame Patch , however, Flame Patch requires you to use Flamestrike to get any use out of it, which is not always what you want to be doing. Namely, in a lot of scenarios with multiple targets, you want to focus down a specific priority target instead of getting all targets down equally.

Living Bomb can be picked for such situations, where you can still focus your rotation on single-target priority damage, but getting some free AoE damage via Living Bomb.

Pyroclasm is the best option for single-target if you are using Sun King's Blessing. Otherwise, it is only best on AoE. Meteor is the best option for single-target for non- Night Fae Fire Mages if you are not using Sun King's Blessing , assuming it is possible to always hit the target with Meteor. Since Battle for Azeroth, there is be the option to enable "War Mode". Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:. With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level.

However, doing so will enable PvP combat, and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists. This guide has been written by Dutchmagoz.

Dutchmagoz is a Mythic raider in one of the top raiding guilds, Angered , owner of the Mage theorycrafting website Altered Time , and the owner of the Mage Discord server, Altered Time. Sign In Remember me Not recommended on shared computers. Sign in anonymously. Sign in with Facebook. Diablo III. Diablo II. TBC Classic. Path of Exile. New World. More Games Diablo IV. WoW Classic. Overwatch 2. Borderlands 3. DPS Rankings. Healer Rankings. Tank Rankings. Best Covenants.

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