World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Message Board  

Indeed it is...

With patch 3.1 looming over the horizon, mages can benefit hugely from the 50% mana regen from Mage Armor while being arcane.

At the moment Arcane mage's are the best mage to take into a raid, although survivability is low it still does the damage needed in places like Naxx and Ulduar when opened on patch day.

So why is an Arcane mage better than Frost,Fire,Frostbolt,Arcane Fire and Arcane Frost builds, well the simple reason of the huge damage in a short time.

www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/mage/talents.html?tal=23402513010033015032310250532103000000000000000000000000002030030000000000000000000000

This is my build.

As you can see its quite versatile, and can be changed to suit your needs, some people may reduce arcane stability for another point in arcane attunement to get another 3 yards distance for their arcane spells.

Others may take slow or icy veins to help things.

But I find this way quite good.

This build also gives you a 6% hit chance, it does not show at all on the magic status book ((character page)) but it is there. And helps towards the 17% hit chance cap that will be needed when we can venture into even tougher dungeons and castles!

And Mana every few seconds is quite handy to have, so always have Mage Armor on, it helps.

Also if your adventuring on your own, you can open with a Frostbolt to slow your target and then your arcane spells can have a 12% bonus to damage due to the talent Torment of the Weak.

Its quite simple really, its a case of casting 3 arcane blast's in a row to get the 3rd arcane blast buff. If you miss once do another to get the 3. Then you cast Arcane Barrage.

If your Quick Spell ((macro using arcane power and Arcane Barrage)) is available you can use it after the 3 arcane blast's and do big damage anywhere from 10k+ or more with a crit. And then do another 3 AB's to get the 3rd buff, and another arcane barrage.

But if you have Arcane Power still active, and you have the buff for fast casting Arcane Missiles with the 3rd buff you could use Arcane Missiles instead of Arcane Barrage, the most I have done doing this is around 20 thousand damage.

Now during your casts you may get the arcane missiles buff appearing, it could be tempting to use it straight away dont, wait till after the 3rd buff to do this.

Also, its handy to have these 2 major glyphs, Glyph of Arcane Power ((increases AP time)) and Glyph of Arcane Blast ((increases damage done by AB by 5% with each stack thats more and more damage)).

So there you go, as said haste rating is key for this build but not a necessity, it can easily work with more critical rating than haste.

While i was able to play all i did was have my undead mage collecting herbs and conjuring stuff for people to earn money!