General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices forArcane Mages in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents andglyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Arcane Mage guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents arenow viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs betweenencounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does andhow they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents have been designed with mobility in mind. You have the choicebetween:
Presence of Mind, which grants you an instant-cast for the spell of your choice every 90 seconds;
Blazing Speed, which suppresses slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.5 seconds (on a 25-second cooldown);
Ice Floes, which allows you to cast a spell while moving (the spell has 3 charges, with a recharge time of 20 seconds).
Ice Floes is the only choice here. You will have to teach yourself touse it every single time you need to move, even when you have to move very little.If you need to move far from your current location, you can use your chargesof Ice Floes to set up your new 
Rune of Power (your Tier 6 talent of choice)at that location and cast spells while you move there.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents have been designed with survivability in mind.
Temporal Shield which offers 15% damage taken reduction for 4 seconds, on a 25-second cooldown.Every time you take damage while this damage reduction is active, it is healed back overthe course of 6 seconds.
Flameglow grants you a passive shield that always absorbs a bit ofthe damage you receive.
Ice Barrier absorbs a quantity of damage (the absorption effect scales with Spell Power) andprevents spellcasting from being delayed, while active.
Temporal Shield should be the default choice here, because it is off the globalcooldown, meaning that using it is not a DPS loss. Use it before taking large hits.
Ice Barrier is useful when you need the extra life it provides to survivean attack that would otherwise kill you.
Flameglow is not as powerful as Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier, but it provides itsshield passively, which may be more suited to the occasional player.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents have been designed with crowd control in mind. Whichevertalent you will choose will depend on the encounter, but we think that thesetalents are mostly for PvP and will be most often be irrelevant in PvE. You havethe choice between:
Ring of Frost, which summons a 10-yard ring that lasts for 10 seconds andthat freezes, for 10 seconds, enemies entering it (up to a maximum of 10 enemies);
Ice Ward, which causes all enemies within 10 yards of a friendly targetto become frozen for 5 seconds when the target is struck;
Frostjaw, which silences and freezes the target in place for 8 seconds.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents have been designed with survival in mind. You have thechoice between:
Greater Invisibility, which improves 
Invisibility,giving it an instant effect and making you take 90% less damage whileInvisibility is active (and for 3 seconds after coming out of Invisibility);
Cauterize, which causes an attack that would otherwise kill you toinstead bring you to 50% of your maximum health, after which you will burn for40% of your maximum health over 6 seconds;
Cold Snap, which finishes the cooldown of your 
Ice Block,
Frost Nova, and 
Cone of Cold while also restoring 30% of yourmaximum health.
Greater Invisibility and Cauterize are your two options, here.Whichever you will choose mostly comes down to personal preferences.
Greater Invisibility is a great damage mitigation tool, which you can also useto remove DoTs and effects, such as 
Mark of Arrogance, from theSha of Pride.
Cauterize can be used to maximise your DPS by standing still insteadof moving away to avoid a damaging boss ability. You can also simply considerit as an extra life for whenever you mess up. Remember to follow it up with Ice Block, if you feel that your healers will not manage to heal the DoTthat Cauterize leaves on you (it hits pretty hard).
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents provide you with abilities that will become an integral partof your rotation.
Nether Tempest deals damage over time to a target. Each time it ticks,Nether Tempest also deals half the damage to a random target within 10 yards.
Living Bomb deals damage over time to a target. When it expires or thetarget dies, Living Bomb also deals damage to up to 3 other targets within 10 yards.Living Bomb cannot be applied on more than 3 enemies.
Frost Bomb deals delayed damage to a target, also dealing half of that damageto all other targets within 10 yards. In addition, affected targets are slowed by 70% for 2seconds.
All Tier 5 talents are viable. Use the following cheatsheet to decide which talent to choose:
In Siege of Orgrimmar, here is what Blatty advises:
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents are mana management talents.
Invocation removes the cooldown of 
Evocation. Aftercompleting an Evocation, you gain Invoker's Energy, which lasts 1 minuteand increase your spell damage by 15%. While Invoker's Energy is active, youpassively regenerate 50% less mana.- Rune of Power summons a rune which causes you, when standing in it, toregenerate 75% more mana and to deal 15% increased spell damage. You alsoregenerate 1% health every second if you have
Glyph of Evocation. This spellreplaces Evocation and the rune that it summons disappears after 1minute.
Incanter's Ward passively increases damage done by 6%. When used, it places an absorption shield on you for 8 seconds. Whenthe shield disappears, you gain up to 15% increased spell damage for 25 secondsand you restore up to 18% mana. The strength of the effect depends on the amountof damage that was absorbed. The effect is maximised when the shield disappearsbecause it has been entirely consumed. If the shield disappears because the 8 secondshave run out, then you will only get a fraction of the effect.
Rune of Power is the only viable Tier 6 talent for Arcane Mages. Patch 5.4increased the size of the rune, which makes it much easier to use in encounterswith movement.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
None of your major glyphs will be mandatory. Some will increase your DPS invery specific situations, others will improve your survivability or makesome spells more useful.
DPS-increasing glyphs are listed below.
Glyph of Cone of Cold, which doubles the damage of Cone of Cold, should be usedagainst Immerseus (in which case, you need toremove Glyph of Rapid Displacement) and againstGarrosh Hellscream (in which case, youneed to remove Glyph of Arcane Explosion).
The other potentially useful major glyphs are listed below.
- Glyph of Mana Gem will grant you more Mana Gems, which means more mana and more DPS, in long fights (over 9 minutes).
- Glyph of Blink increases the distance you travel with
Blink by 8 yards.
- Glyph of Counterspell grants the ability to cast
Counterspellwhile channeling or casting another spell, at the expense of increasing its cooldownby 4 seconds. This glyph will be beneficial every time you will be on interruptduty.
- Glyph of Evocation adds a self-healing component to Evocationand Rune of Power. This will be a default major glyph when none of theothers can provide anything useful for the encounter(s) you are progressingon.
- Glyph of Ice Block causes Frost Nova to be automatically cast,at no mana cost, when Ice Block terminates, after which time youare granted a 3-second immunity against all spells.
- Glyph of Remove Curse is a nice glyph to have in a fight where youmust use
Remove Curse. That said, the temporary damage boost it providesdoes not compensate for the global cooldown it costs to cast Remove Curse.
- Glyph of Slow causes
Arcane Blast to apply 
Slow on yourtarget, but only if no other target is currently afflicted by your Slow.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
Among the minor glyphs, 
Glyph of Loose Mana, which restores your ManaGem mana over time, is a must have because it works well with 
Alter Time.The glyph regenerates your mana through a buff, the duration of which is resetby Alter Time, resulting in more mana being returned.
Glyph of Momentum is another useful minor glyph. It allows you to blinkin the direction where you are going. It can be very useful if you are movingsideways and want to keep facing the boss.
10. Changelog↑top
- 17 Jul. 2014: Living Bomb is now listed as the bomb of choice for Garrosh. Nether Tempestcan yield the highest DPS when applied on the adds, but for progression on Garrosh, you need damageon the boss, so Living Bomb is advised.
- 04 Feb. 2014: Updated Tier 1, Tier 4, Tier 5, and glyph advice on Blatty's advice.
- 10 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- Updated Tier 1 section to reflect the fact that Ice Floes now has a 3-charge system on a 20-second recharge time.
- Updated Tier 2 section to reflect the 15% damage reduction component that was added to Temporal Shield.
- Updated Tier 6 section to reflect the increased radius of Rune of Power, which makes it easier for Arcane Mages to play during movement-heavy encounters.
- Glyph of Blink now increases the distance travelled by Blink by 8 yards (up from 5).
- Glyph of Remove Curse is now a damage-increasing glyph, in situations where you can decurse.
- Added Glyph of Rapid Displacement.
- 15 Jun. 2013: Living Bomb is now the advised Tier 5 talent for Megaera.
- 05 Jun. 2013: After 2 weeks of Patch 5.3 raiding, explanations for Tier 5 talents have been fixed.
- 25 May 2013: Removed Glyph of Arcane Power, as using it is no longer the trend. Living Bomb is nowthe best single-target Tier 5 talent, but more testing is needed for other situations.
- 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: need to wait for a few days before updating Tier 5 talent recommendations.Updated explanations for Incanter's Ward.
- 20 May 2013: Updated Tier 1 talent explanations following further testing from Blatty ( Ice Floes is viable).
- 17 Apr. 2013: Update after Blatty's review of the guide.
- Improved advice for choosing your Tier 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 talents.
- Improved advice for choosing your Major Glyphs.
- 01 Apr. 2013: Improved conditions for choosing Blazing Speed, Ice Barrier,and Invocation.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Rewrote explanations for Tier 1 talents, as
Scorch has been replaced with Blazing Speed.
- Ice Floes' cooldown has been reduced to 45 seconds.
- Rewrote explanations for Tier 2 talents, as Flameglow has replaced Blazing Speed.
- Modified description of Invocation to reflect the changes from 5.2.
- Rune of Power now increases mana regeneration by 75% (was 100%).
- Glyph of Evocation restores less health than previously.
- Glyph of Fire Blast was removed from the game.
Mirror Images now deal 50% more damage with Frostbolt, rendering the glyph useless.
