Introduction
My name is Tamir, also known as tam1h.
I've been pushing high mythic+ keys since Legion as a mage and raiding since Warlords of Draenor. I have been raiding in the top 30 scene throughout most of Shadowlands and Dragonflight.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tam1h
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TamirWow
What has changed
Going into The War Within, Arcane and Mage in general are getting significant changes, notably with some talents shifting around, some talents being removed and new ones being added.
I'm going to note the most important changes that affect mage:
- One of the main features going into The War Within is that we are getting a new talent tree called Hero talents.
- Arcane’s choice of the 2 new talent trees to play with both have some gameplay defining talents of their own.
- Spellslinger Sunfury (which we’ll talk about more in the talent and gameplay sections).
- Mass barrier is now a 3 minutes CD.
- Time Warp is being removed (no double lust anymore).
- Time Anomaly has been changed to proc more often (can give arcane surge, and Icy Veins and Combustion for the other specs).
- Inspired Intellect - on the same row as Time Anomaly, arcane intellect grants you an additional 3% intellect (however its additive intellect so its much weaker)
- Mastery for Arcane Mage is being improved
- Arcane Barrage has better scaling with Arcane Charges (90% more damage on 4 charges)
- Arcane familiar is baked into Arcane Intellect
- Supernova is on the same choice as Dragon’s Breath
- Ice Nova and Ring of Frost share the same choice node
- Barrier Diffusion - whenever one of your barriers is removed, reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds (works very well with mass barrier)
- Radiant spark is being removed and replaced with Magi’s Spark
- Nether Tempest has been removed
- Siphon storm and evocation are baked into the Evocation talent
- Mana gem has been removed
- Arcane missiles can now only be cast with a clearcasting proc