ARCANE MAGE ADVANCED TIPS

ARCANE ORB

In this video, we're going to be covering one of the more tricky abilities in our kit with Arcane Orb. Now, when we do VOD reviews, the spell that's most often used incorrectly is Arcane Orb, resulting in lower-rated mages dealing far less damage than they really should be.

Now, this is because Arcane Orb is the number one way that we can build Arcane Charges, which allows us to quickly chunk out high-value Arcane Barrages and Blast without having to waste time on low-damage spells to generate Arcane Charges.

Yes, Arcane Orb is so powerful, in fact, that it's often a great idea to use one before you're shifting power just to get its cooldown back and restore one use of it, as its CD is just so low that you should be using one stack as frequently as possible.

Now, when using Arcane Orb, the best way to go about it is to try and land it on as many targets as possible, including pets, as this is going to give you more Arcane Charges in return.

And if you don't happen to get full charges, you can easily finish these off with a quick Arcane Explosion to stack them up, as it's often a pretty big waste to use both orbs at the same time, as we're going to want one in the bank to get your charges back after using a Barrage.

Although, if you're facing a double melee team and you're trying to burst, using both on one go can allow you to get a ton of damage out with high-stacked Arcane Barrages, as it'll fill up that resource bar instantly. But we're going to go over this a little bit more in our next video, all about Arcane Barrage.

ARCANE BARRAGE

Welcome back! Here we're going to go over everything there is to know about Arcane Barrage.

Now, Arcane Barrage is honestly one of the most, if not the most important spells in our kit, as it has crazy damage potential due to all of its modifiers, allowing skilled mages to far outperform lesser ones.

But before we dive into the more advanced stuff with this, let's cover the basics here with the Arcane Tempo buff. Arcane Tempo has been in the game for a while now, and it allows us to stack up a strong haste buff by using Arcane Barrage.

And since this ability is such a free way of maintaining a very strong stat, we want to be monitoring it and trying to maintain it as often as possible throughout our games by simply weaving in Arcane Barrages at least once every 12 seconds, regardless of how many Arcane charges you have.

In fact, this buff is so powerful, it's often going to be a good idea to just spam, five Arcane Barrages in the opener to get that 10% haste instantly, as it's going to allow us to just have an easier time casting throughout the entire match.

By maintaining Arcane Tempo, we're going to also be enabling Chrono Shift to take effect, another very strong talent in our kit. Chrono Shift is the bread and butter of Arcane Maid survival, allowing us to sprint around and apply a snare on our target.

The sprint is incredibly powerful, as it's the main way we're going to survive as Arcane, as it allows us to out-reign. It's also going to allow us to change Melees and Line of Sight casters, so much so that we don't even need Shimmer a lot of the time.

And if all that wasn't enough here, thanks to the changes to Clear Casting in War Within being based around simply using Arcane spells, rather than how much our spells cost, Arcane Barrage has become a very easy way to generate Missile Procs without having to cast. So, moving on, how else can we use Arcane Barrage?

Well, the main use is to in fact consume our Nether Precisions to enable our Splinters from our deck. Well, the main use is to in fact consume our Nether Precisions to enable our Splinters from our deck.

Arcane Harmony and Arcane Debilitation provide massive DPS gains. Now a great trick, as shown by Gelu, is to cast Arcane Missiles right before activating these procs.

This lets you stack Arcane Harmony and apply the Arcane Debilitation debuff simultaneously, giving you even more damage modifiers to work with.

The modifiers really don't just stop there, though, as through the talent Arcane Bombardment, Arcane Barrage turns into a soft execute on targets below 35%, making it very important to have Arcane Charges and Arcane Orbs ready for when your target drops low.

And if all of that wasn't enough, Arcane Barrage also performs even better when it cleaves multiple enemies, thanks to the Resonance talent buffing its damage, Arcane Cleave making it deal fantastic spread pressure.

All the while, the Orb Barrage talent is constantly firing out free Arcane Orbs, depending on how many targets we hit, leading to situations like this one, where you don't even need to cast much to do massive damage with back-to-back barrages.

ARCANE BLAST

Here we're going to be going over Arcane Blast, which, much like Arcane Orb, has much more power than you may realize. Now, in PvE, Arcane Blast is one of the highest-simming abilities in the Mage's damage breakdown, and for good reason, too.

It hits like an absolute truck. However, in PvP, a lot of Arcane Mages are barely pressing this button outside of the instant cast from Presence of Mind, causing them to deal far less damage than they should.

So when should we be using Arcane Blast, you might be wondering. Well, the first step is to have four Arcane Charges.

Time and time again, we see low-rated Arcane Mages cast this spell as a generator, when it really should only be used with four charges. Casting it on low charges isn't only pathetic damage, but a huge waste of time, as the more charges you have, the more damage it deals while also being a faster cast.

Next, you also really want to be casting it when you can get windows to free cast without being kicked.

This is because there's so many instant abilities in the Arcane Mage cast, and it's a kit that hard casting Arcane Blast when the enemy team has a bombardment of stops for you is going to leave you at the bottom of the damage meters.

Only hard cast this ability when you're not being focused or have distance from the enemy team.

You can see Gelu do this here, where even though he has Presence of Minds available, he hard casts Blast as the enemy team don't have kicks available, and even when he gets locked, he has the backup of Ring of Fire ready so he doesn't miss out on uptime.

And finally, it's actually a pretty good idea here to hammer them out in your team, and you can use this ability to get a lot of damage.

You can also use it to get a lot of damage from your Touch of the Magi window, as they just deal so much more damage than spamming Barrage, but as we said, just make sure you don't get kicked while doing so.

ARCANE SURGE AND EVOCATION

In this video, we're going to be covering our biggest cooldowns of Arcane Surge and Evocation.

Now, as Arcane, a lot of our damage is based around our cooldowns, as the modifiers on these spells is just that big, and since they have matching CD times, we want to always be using them together to get the biggest burst and two clear casting procs every time.

Sadly, though, everyone else in the game knows this too, and as one of the only classes that can actually get kicked on their offensive cooldowns, Arcane Mages can have it rough trying to get these cast off.

And to make matters even worse, we actually can't even fake our Evocation as it's a channeled cast, which rewards you with more intellect for channeling it as long as possible.

Now, because of all of this, it's going to be a very good idea to begin the game with Evocation before engaging in the fight, as although this will give us less time with our intellect buff, at least it's not getting interrupted, giving us the maximum benefits on our burst.

Now, as for the mid-game Evocation, it's actually going to be a pretty good idea to dive behind a pillar to cast this, as it's going to allow us to line of sight any incoming interrupts, and remember, you can move while you're casting this ability.

Now, when it comes to Arcane Surge, however, it's actually even more important than Evocation, as it buffs every single thing that we do by 25%.

Needless to say, we want to be using this before we burst, although it can often be difficult to cast, as everyone's going to be trying to line of sight or kick it over and over again.

So, we're going to be using this before we burst, although it can often be difficult to cast, as everyone's going to be trying to line of sight or kick it over and over again.

Now, for this reason, it's actually a really good idea to try and cast it on a pet or a totem out of line of sight, just to get the spell power buff up, as the damage from this ability is far less effective than the actual stat increase.

It can also be a pretty good idea to fake cast a sheep to try and get pre-cog, and then use it on Arcane Surge, as the cast time of sheep is much shorter, which makes it easier to fake with.

Now that we've mastered our major cooldowns, join us in our next video to find out how to combine them with our minor cooldowns to score kills. We'll see you there.

TOUCH OF THE MAGI AND PRESENCE OF MIND

Now that we've covered our modifiers, let's go over our other two burst abilities of Touch of the Magi and Presence of Mind, which we're also going to be combining together to create Devastating Burst.

Coming in with a 45-second cooldown, which is, of course, reduced by shifting power by 12 seconds, Touch of the Magi allows us to burst twice a minute by storing all of our damage used into it and then exploding for 25% of its total at the end.

And thanks to the talent Magi Spark, our first Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage will deal additional damage into the debuff, while also exploding once all three of these spells have been used.

By using Arcane Barrage as his last spell, Gelu abuses this here to get a massive one-shot as both spells detonate at the same time as his Barrage hits. Now, it's also worth noting that Touch of the Magi will generate four Arcane charges in his off-global cooldown.

This means that by using Arcane Barrage before Touch of the Magi when you have four charges, you can bank the Barrage damage into the Touch of the Magi as it'll hit after due to it being a projectile, which makes it a larger touch overall.

Finally, it's also very important to be aware of the Arcane Echo talent when using Touch of the Magi, as this will cause all damage we deal to generate splash damage to the targets around them.

Because of this, you need to be really aware of your target's location, as if you pop it and they're standing still, your go is as good as over. So when should we use Touch of the Magi, you might be wondering?

Well, the answer is that we always want to be using it when we have at least one clear casting proc, as this is going to give us Nether Precision while also adding to our Magi's Spark damage.

We should also be using it together with our Presence of Mind, as they share the same cooldown and it's going to eliminate the amount of casting we need to use to generate damage.

But don't go around thinking this is the only way to use Presence of Mind, as we can also change the way we use it, as we can also change the way we use it, by hardcasting an Arcane Blast first, and then instantly chaining a Palm Blast afterwards, which can cause some pretty cheeky one-shots like this.

Other than these few rules, there's not much requirements to using Touch, as most of our crowd control are going to be breaking when using this ability, so we'll often be using it and trying to kill with raw damage alone with our modifiers of Surge and Evocation.

Although you can set up a Polymorph first, if the enemy team is far apart from each other, but overextending for this is honestly not worth it if it means you can't get to your target. Remember, you need to be dealing as much damage into the Touch as possible for that explosion damage.

KLEPTOMANIA

In the War Within, Kleptomania is officially back on the menu. Coming in with a very short cooldown of 20 seconds, Kleptomania can completely clean a target of their buffs by rapidly purging over and over again.

And while this used to be incredibly strong back in the day against Restoration Druids for obvious reasons, ever since their Dispel Protection became a silence, it was no longer viable. Until now, that is.

You see, Restoration Druids' Dispel Protection is now a pretty pathetic heal over time, meaning that we can fully purge their teammates without being punished, causing them to lose out on precious healing and mana as they reapply all their hots.

Kleptomania isn't just great against Druids, though, as it can also be very strong into any class with time-sensitive buffs.

A great example of this is facing other mages, as you can grab their Ultra Time before they manage to get any value, or getting those annoying Shrouds, allowing you to crowd control them as soon as possible.

And the best thing is, Kleptomania is a channel, so it'll go through walls once the cast has begun, which allows us to barely be stopped on this powerful ability.

SURVIVING AS AN ARCANE MAGE

Living as an Arcane Mage can be tricky, but with the right strategies, you can maximize your survival while dealing consistent damage. So let's go over how to effectively use your toolkit to stay alive as long as possible.

Arcane Mages have always been known for their incredible mobility, and this season is absolutely no different.

One of the main reasons they're so slippery, though, is the PvP talent called Chrono Shift, which allows you to maintain a permanent sprint all while dealing damage, which makes it extremely difficult for melee to stay on top of you.

Another key talent is Slipstream, which lets you either gain distance against melee enemies or weave around pillars while channeling Arcane Missiles versus casters, meaning you can continue your full rotation without being touched.

These two abilities are your first line of defense and should be abused at every single opportunity. Arcane Mage Arcane Mage is a very defensive specialization, so you should definitely play accordingly.

Avoid as much damage as possible while maintaining pressure and maximize the amount of Touch of the Magi windows you can get per match.

It's also going to be important to really understand mobility trading as a Mage, which is a concept that revolves around only giving the enemy one of your mobility tools per one of their gap closers. This applies to Blast Wave, Shimmer, Blink, or Displacement, so you definitely want to avoid overusing it.

If you're overlapping these, you're really going to have some trouble staying afloat. So moving on from being a greased up, slippery weasel is our new improved Prismatic Shield when speccing into overpowered barriers, which makes you even harder to pin down.

This barrier is particularly strong because when it breaks and you use Blink, you become immune and invisible to all damage. Always make sure you have a Blink charge ready to this effect.

But don't worry if you mess up the timing on this. You can use Alter Time to quickly reset and get a Blink charge back, which can save you in a pinch, but obviously only do that as a last resort.

And speaking of Alter Time, this ability is crucial when Prismatic Barrier pops. Use it and Blink afterward to reposition and kite more effectively.

This is going to let us bait mobility from melees and allow us to kite easier. It can also be used offensively to push in for crowd control.

But since Arcane is more about survival and one-shotting, it's not going to be a problem for you. So if you're looking for a good way to get a good shot, this isn't really going to be necessary in the majority of your games.

Next up, we have Mirror Images, which are honestly pretty hit and miss, as they only reduce damage on one hit per image, which makes them pretty inconsistent for surviving.

However, since we're playing Spellslinger, we do get access to the Phantasmal Image talent, meaning that we only get five images at a time, but an increased 25% damage reduction per each one. And when combined with the Reduplication talent, this does drop the cooldown on it, which is pretty significant.

Realistically, it's very difficult to time Mirror Images to get the most bang for your buck against most classes, but if you see an obvious hard-hitting ability like Chaos Bolt coming your way, do make sure to pop this to mitigate it as much as possible.

Moving on, we then have our second biggest defensive of Greater Invisibility, which is a great tool for trading against big enemy cooldowns and holding onto Ice Block.

The best part of Greater Invis isn't just its 60% damage reduction, but it's also a great tool for trading against big enemy cooldowns and holding onto Ice Block.

The best part of Greater Invis isn't just its 60% damage reduction, but the fact that it isn't purgeable, meaning that if the enemy team has a purge, you should use this alongside Prismatic Barrier to avoid being killed through sheer RNG alone.

The most important aspect of using this tool is just don't press it too low, as even though 60% damage reduction does sound like a lot, if you're below 30%, you're probably not going to survive anyway. Finally, we then have Ice Block as our last line of defense, and should be used at low HP if possible.

Try to greed it out, since you only have one charge of this, and using it too early is going to leave you extremely vulnerable. Although if you are facing a Priest, blocking high isn't too bad to prevent dying though to Mass Dispel.

And finally, if you're truly out of options, we have Displacement's healing effect. Now, this doesn't heal that much, but if you're really in trouble, blinking and porting back for that heal can definitely be the difference between life and death.

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