Welcome to Skill Capped’s Arcane Mage PvP Guide for Dragonflight 10.2.6
To make it easier to navigate, we’ve divided the guide into the corresponding sections, covering everything from race and talents to gear and macros. These will give you a good idea about what to expect from Arcane Mage in PvP in Dragonflight, its strengths and weaknesses, and how to get your character ready to conquer the arena.
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Table of Contents
In this section, we will cover the biggest changes to the design of Arcane Mage in Dragonflight and some of their playstyle implications. Obviously, the main driving force for all adjustments this expansion comes from talents, and we will dive deeper into them a bit later. For now, let’s focus on the bigger picture.
What’s New for Arcane Mage in Dragonflight?
Arcane Mages got access to a number of new abilities that round out their toolkit in an interesting way. Dragon’s Breath was previously only available to Fire Mages, whereas Ice Nova was a Frost-exclusive ability. Mass Polymorph is a brand new ability that cases an AoE uncapped Polymorph on all targets around you.
As for defensives, there is a lot to be excited about. Arcane Mages gained 4 defensive abilities. Greater Invisibility is not directly new, but you can now have it alongside regular Invisibility. It allows you to save the cooldown for its Wall component every game, rather than to get openers.
Energized Barriers makes it so every time you refresh your barrier, you remove snares. This is perfect for when you blink away from a melee and need to gain distance with your spring and snare.
Displacement resets you to your previous Blink or Shimmer position, making you very hard for melees to connect to.
Finally, we have Freezing Cold. Not only does it transform your Cone of Cold into a 5-second root, it also makes Ice Nova and Frost Nova snare your target by 80% afterwards, decaying after three seconds.
Arcane also got a bunch of offensive tools on top of it. Ring of Fire is great because it is on Fire school, giving Arcane access to a high priority spell when kicked. And it also deals a lot of damage.
Arcane Surge is in instead of Arcane Power. This spell deals a hefty amount of damage based on how much Mana you have. It increases your damage by 35% and Mana regen by 425%, allowing you to smash out those costly Arcane Blast.
Radiant Spark is our good friend from Shadowlands. It is the perfect cooldown to pair with Touch of the Magi and Presence of Mind.
Arcane Harmony and Arcane Bombardment legendaries are making their return from Shadowlands as well. They allow us to get the biggest execute Barrage we have ever seen.
And lastly, Fire Blast is another spell on the Fire school. This ability doesn’t hit particularly hard, but can be useful when locked out or when removing Spell Reflection or killing Grounding Totem.
Arcane Mage Playstyle in Dragonflight
In Shadowlands, as Arcane, you were very focused on being a CC bot and spamming Missile after Missile. However now things are much more fun as you deal very strong consistent and burst damage through nearly all of your spells. Since Arcane Mages are such a damage threat now, you will likely be focused in arena, resulting in the majority of your games being decided by how well you kite and position yourself.
As far as CC goes, it has been made a lot easier now that you have access to Dragon’s Breath. It should be a high priority for you to slow the healer into Dragon’s Breath > Polymorph when you see fit, while rotating Poly DRs on DPS during your sustain.
All in all, Arcane has shifted a little bit away from the idle support class of old. It can now pack a punch of its own, allowing you to set up not just for your team, but for yourself as well.