Arcane Tree Tier 1: Arcane Subtlety In my opinion, the most useful out of the 3 tier 1 Arcane talents. Lowering your enemy's resistance to all your spells is good in any situation, and is considered very useful in end-game because the monsters will be level 70+
Arcane Focus Lowering an opponent's resistance to only your Arcane spells is a bit narrow in practice. However, it does help your counterspell land at a crucial moment in battle. Moreover, with the addition of Arcane Blast, mages now have an additional Arcane damage spell that will benefit from the lowered Arcane resistance. The spell's casting time decreases with each subsequent cast but the mana cost increases. I have read that after the second or third casting, it is no longer mana efficient.
Improved Arcane Missiles Improved Arcane Missiles has its moments but they are few and far in between. Arcane Missiles sees very little use, even from mages spec'd deep into the Arcane tree. For Arcane/X or X/Arcane builds, Fire or Frost spells are better in most cases due to the synergy with the other talents in those respective trees which can be had very early in the tree (e.g. Ignite or Frost Bite). In comparison, the only talent that synergizes with Arcane Missiles exclusively is Empowered Arcane Missiles which is located in the 7th tier of Arcane talents requiring 30 points invested in Arcane. Moreover, while the talent increases the bonus from spell damage gear substantially, it further increases the main reason why Arcane Missiles isn't used more often in the first place... mana efficiency. The talent increases the mana cost of an already mana inefficient spell.
Many mages will use Arcane Missiles when they proc Clearcasting, thus negating the spell's mana inefficiency. Mages who go deep into the Arcane tree can further take advantage of the free cast by getting the Empowered Arcane Missiles and Arcane Potency talents (discussed further down). Thus boosting the spell damage received by Arcane Missiles by 45% and its spell critical chance by 30%, making it an extremely powerful and free spell.
If you took 2/2 Arcane Subtlety, you only need 3 more points to open the second tier of Arcane talents. This is another reason why you may not want to choose Improved Arcane Missiles; because it needs the full 5 points to be fully uninterruptable. Anything less is really a waste.
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2/2 Arcane Subtlety
3/5 Arcane Focus Tier 2: Wand Specialization Most mages view this as one of the worst talents in the Arcane tree. A mage should not have to resort to his/her wand to deal damage. Wands can be used in the event that the mage is out of mana, but these cases should be very few (if any). In order to conserve mana, one can also use his/her wand to finish off a monster that has only a sliver of health left instead of casting a spell which would be overkill. Regardless, Wand Specialization is not a good investment of talent points due to low usage of wands by mages in actual play.
Magic Absorption Resistances come into play mainly in end-game encounters where certain schools of damage are prevalent. Certain raid encounters often require players to swap out their usual equipment for items that have high +resistance to a certain school of damage. Various potions, abilities, and spells are also used to further increase resistances.
Magic Absorption increases a mage's resistance to all schools of damage by 10. This is not a substantial amount of resistance but it helps. The refund of mana on resisted spells is a nice bonus. By all means, not a bad talent, but dwarfed by the next talent to be discussed in the second tier of the Arcane tree...
Arcane Concentration Clearly the best out of the three tier 2 Arcane talents. At full points, a mage has a 10% chance to get a free spell cast. This is useful in any situation, but especially shines in long encounters; allowing mages to stretch their mana pool even further. The addition of the Arcane Potency talent (discussed further down) which has a prerequisite of 5/5 Arcane Concentration, gives even more reason to put full points into an already very good talent.
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5/5 Arcane Concentration Tier 3: Magic Attunement Some mages never use Amplify/Dampen Magic while others swear by them. These two spells are one of the more overlooked mage spells as they are only beneficial in certain situations.
For example, buffing each party member with Amplify Magic will boost the healing they receive. However, it will also increase the magic damage taken. For encounters that have no magic damage whatsoever, Amplify Magic is clearly a good choice. In practice, you will often find it is required to toggle the buff off for some encounters and then recast once that particular fight is over. Most people find this too much of a hassle for a relatively small benefit so this spell is often not used.
Dampen Magic, of course, has the opposite effect. It decreases the amount of magic damage received but also decreases healing received. In certain cases where you do not expect to get healed, say a pickup group for a battleground for example, then you may want to cast it on yourself to lower the amount of magical damage you will receive.
Due to the low usage of the Amplify/Dampen Magic spells, this talent is often left out of most builds. In order to open the third tier of Arcane talents, it is not uncommon for mages to spend points in tier 1/2 instead of this tier as the talents are not particularly attractive. The exception usually being the talent to be discussed next...
Arcane Impact This improved version of what was formerly Improved Arcane Explosion applies the added 6% crit chance to the Arcane Blast spell in addition to Arcane Explosion.
PvE mages will often forego this talent because it is unlikely that Arcane Explosion or Arcane Blast will see much use in typical PvE instances and raids. They often choose earlier talents such as Magic Absorption instead for its added resistances and mana refund. Both of which are of greater benefit to the typical PvE mage.
Mages who enjoy PvP will often pickup this talent because both Arcane Explosion and Arcane Blast sees considerably more use in PvP than in PvE.
Arcane Fortitude A typical mage will have between 400 and 500 intellect at level 70, which translates to roughly 200 to 250 extra armor points. In most cases, you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference 200 or so armor points will make in any encounter for a mage.
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3/3 Arcane Impact
+2 Arcane Focus (Tier 1)
or...
5/5 Magic Absorption (Tier 2) Tier 4: Improved Mana Shield Not a bad talent per se but one that is often dwarfed by it's counterparts in the 4th tier of the Arcane tree. Moreover, mages who have reached Ice Barrier in the Frost tree will rarely (if ever) use Mana Shield.
Improved Counterspell Often considered a must-have for PvP mages. The ability to silence the opponent in addition to interrupting the original spell could make the difference between win or lose. It is often used to stop a healing spell at a crucial moment in battle. It's also a useful tool for pulling caster mobs in PvE encounters.
Arcane Meditation Considered one of the staple talents for the PvE mage, Arcane Meditation helps keep mages "in the fight" longer. This helps to reduce the number of times a mage needs to sit and drink to replenish mana and thus helps a party keep progressing through an instance. It is of special importance in long raid boss encounters as one of the many tools to help prevent a mage from going out of mana before the boss has been defeated.
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3/3 Arcane Meditation
2/2 Improved Counterspell Tier 5: Improved Blink A recent addition to the 5th tier of Arcane talents, but a rather lack-luster one. Blink is an essential part of a mage's ******* of spells but its mana cost has never been an issue. I'm not sure what the developers were thinking when adding this talent into the Arcane tree. A simple talent that shortened the cooldown on Blink would be much more worthy of the 2 talent points and being so deep into the tree. In its current state, I don't see why any mage would choose this talent over others available.
Presence of Mind Presence of Mind is a signature talent for the PvP mage, allowing him/her to output a huge amount of burst damage in a matter of seconds. This talent is usually paired with a mage's most damaging spell; in most cases Pyroblast or Fireball, but is not limited to this use. It is sometimes used strategically with Polymorph for instant CC in tight situations. I've also seen mages pair it with Flamestrike for instant high AoE damage.
Arcane Mind Intellect is a key attribute for mages, increasing his/her mana pool and spell critical rating. With the introduction of the Mind Mastery talent (discussed further down), deep Arcane mages have further incentive to get as much Intellect as possible. While not stellar, this is a solid talent and a good choice considering that there really aren't any particularly attractive alternatives at this tier.
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1/1 Presence of Mind
4/5 Arcane Mind Tier 6: Prismatic Cloak Taking less damage is a good thing. For the PvE mage though, this may not be an attractive talent because of the PvE mage's traditional role of backline nuker. When things are going well, Mages won't be taking any damage in PvE encounters. This talent may be more attractive to the PvP mage than his/her PvE counterpart. Reducing damage taken by a static 4% is beneficial in PvP, however, the other talents available at this tier outshine Prismatic Cloak.
Arcane Instability Nothing but good things to say about Arcane Instability; boosting
both your spell damage and spell critical chance. The required Spell Crticial Rating to achieve +1% spell critical chance increases as you level up, making this talent very good as you always get the static +3% boost at all levels.
Arcane Potency This is an interesting talent; dramatically boosting spell critical chance but
only when the spell is being clearcasted. Mages should be mindful of the clearcasting clause, but even with such a requirement, the 30% boost to spell critical chance is very nice. With the prevalence of Arcane Concentration, this is a popular talent to pick up at this tier.
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3/3 Arcane Instability
2/3 Arcane Potency Tier 7: Empowered Arcane Missiles I held high hopes for Arcane Missiles becoming a viable alternative to Fireball and Frostbolt when I first saw this new talent. The bonus spell damage is very good, but unfortunately it also further exposes one of Arcane Missiles greatest weaknesses; mana efficiency. This talent makes Arcane Missiles more attractive than it used to be. I do not have first-hand experience with this talent so I could be wrong, but I believe that with current level 70 Mage stats, it is still not as efficient as its Fire and Frost counterparts. While this talent currently does not make Arcane Missiles better than Fireball/Frostbolt in general, as mentioned earlier, it does make for a very powerful Clearcasted Arcane Missiles when the opportunity presents itself.
Arcane Power The defining talent of "3 minute mages", Arcane Power dramatically increases a mage's damage output for 15 seconds every 3 minutes. This talent is one of the main reasons (if not
the reason) for going deep into the Arcane tree. It is especially attractive for PvP where burst damage is very important. The refresh of all cooldowns in Arena PvP guarantees that this talent will be available at least once every battle. However, its power is a bit diminished in Arena PvP because of dedicated healers and highly coordinated teams. Whereas in Battleground PvP it is often the case that your opponents will not have a dedicated healer, so you will have enough time to finish them off after your initial burst of damage. In either case, this is still a very powerful talent indeed.
Spell Power Another very good Arcane talent, even better than its brethren in the Frost tree -- Ice Shards -- because it boosts the spell critical damage of all your spells; not just Frost. When paired with...
Krane wrote:
5/5 ice shards adds 100% of your crit bonus, 2/2 spell power adds another 50% of your crit bonus. This means crits do 225% of normal damage with ice shards + spell power, and 245% (after 4 seconds) with ignite + spell power.
It's deep location in the Arcane tree makes it inaccessible to most but with the popularity of deep Arcane builds growing in both PvE and PvP, it isn't much of an issue. If you plan on continuing down the Arcane tree (many people stop at 31 points and just pickup Arcane Power) you should definitely put 2 points in this talent.
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1/1 Arcane Power
2/2 Spell Power
+1 Arcane Potency (Tier 6)
+1 Arcane Mind (Tier 5) Tier 8: Mind Mastery The only talent available at this tier in the Arcane tree, and it is a good one. The talent offers nice synergy with Arcane Mind from the 5th tier and will continue to scale as a mage's Intellect increases. While you could opt to put 5 points into previous tiers in order to get Slow, there really aren't many other talents that provide such a direct benefit to Mages.
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5/5 Mind Mastery Tier 9: Slow And here we are at last, the final talent in the Arcane tree. Personally I feel that the 41 point Arcane talent is a bit weak compared to the ones from Fire and Frost. There is often confusion and concern as to what monsters and bosses can be slowed. And it's application in PvP, while good, is not very impressive for a 41 point talent in my opinion. Thus it is not unusual to see many deep Arcane builds going the full 40 points but saving that last point to pickup a 21 point talent from Fire (Blastwave) or Frost (Ice Block) at level 70 instead.
Edited, Mar 24th 2007 1:15pm by echou Edited, Mar 24th 2007 1:16pm by echou Edited, Mar 24th 2007 2:47pm by echou Edited, Mar 26th 2007 12:33pm by echou Edited, Mar 26th 2007 12:35pm by echou Edited, Mar 27th 2007 5:56pm by echou