Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Arcane Mages in The War Within 11.1

All sections for Arcane Mage PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Arcane Mages in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Arcane Mage PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Spellslinger
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Sunfury and Spellslinger. Since Sunfury is quite lackluster and provides no significant benefits, we will focus our attention solely on the Spellslinger tree.

Hero Talents: Spellslinger

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This will be your default Spellslinger build for a majority of matchups. Most of the talents here are passive enhancements to your throughput after using certain spells and buffs that are core to your rotation.

Here are some talents that require a bit more explanation in terms of how they work in order for you to optimize your gameplay.

Splintering Sorcery is your hallmark talent as this tree, which takes into effect after using Clearcasting followed by Nether Precision. You apply two Arcane Splinters for some minor immediate and periodic damage to the target after using either Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage. Not to mention, this is also applied from Arcane Orb due to Splintering Orbs.
Augury Abounds and Signature Spell provide you with increased Arcane Splinter uptime from your primary offensive cooldowns.
Controlled Instincts provides you a minor boost to your cleave damage after hitting targets with Arcane Orb that are affected by an Arcane Splinter. This will naturally occur as you play and should not be focused heavily on.
Splinterstorm passively shatters all active Arcane Splinters on your opponents if at least 8 are active, and will channel a barrage directly to your opponent. The more Arcane Splinters consumed, the more damage this deals.

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Mage Class Talents

In the Mage Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Dragon’s Breath acts as an additional Crowd Control initiator, which can be followed up with Ring of Frost or Polymorph. This will be primarily effective on healers.
Diffusion Barrier helps us reduce the cooldown of all our barrier effects once one breaks. As Arcane, this applies for Prismatic Barrier and Mass Barrier.
Time Anomaly allows you to randomly proc Arcane Surge, Clearcasting, or Time Warp. All of these spells will enhance your overall performance as an Arcane Mage, while also helping you apply some unpredictable burst.

Our updated talent tree gives us access to a lot of basic tools. Most of your toolkit contains a lot of “no-brainers”, where we pick up Ice Block, Spellsteal, Remove Curse, Mirror Image, and Alter Time.

Additionally, there is another talent selection between Ice Floes or Shimmer in the second tier that can be flexible depending on the matchup faced or preferred playstyle.

Shimmer is your most recommended option, as this changes your Blink ability to be instant, and can be used while casting. This does not remove Stun effects like the original Blink, but can allow you to avoid getting stopped on important casts.
Ice Floes allows you to freely cast while moving, but reverts your Blink ability back to its original counterpart. Blink now becomes a spell that removes any Stun effects and requires a global to use. Make sure to choose this against compositions that prioritize stuns on you, especially into Subtlety Rogues.

Then there will then be a few flexible talents that can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

In the first tier you have two flexible talents; Remove Curse and Arcane Warding. Both points in Arcane Warding can be moved into Incantation of Swiftness if you select our new PvP talent, Overpowered Barrier. If you plan on playing double DPS 2v2, you can swap either flexible talent mentioned above in exchange for Cryo-Freeze to boost your survivability.

Remove Curse against Shamans to remove Hex or Warlocks to get rid of Curses that are buffed by Amplify Curse.
Arcane Warding reduces the amount of Magic damage that is dealt to you. This will be typically chosen in most circumstances.
Incantation of Swiftness gives you a movement speed boost whenever your character is affected by Invisibility or Greater Invisibility. When paired with Overpowered Barrier, you are consistently receiving Invisibility after using Blink if your Prismatic Barrier is fully absorbed before 5 seconds of its initial application.
Cryo-Freeze periodically heals you while in Ice Block.

Arcane Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Touch of the Magi accumulates a portion of the damage you deal to the target and releases its damage once it expires. This synergizes well with Arcane Echo and Magi’s Spark to provide us with more throughput on targets affected by this ability.
Arcane Debilitation and Time Loop to constantly increase our damage on our core damaging spells. This applies to the target we hit from each tick of Arcane Missiles. This becomes easier to generate during our Touch of the Magi windows thanks to Magi’s Spark duplicating your Arcane Missiles. If optimized properly, we can deliver some massive burst damage with our Arcane Barrage thanks to Arcane Harmony and Arcane Bombardment.
Aether Attunement is effective after consuming 3 Clearcasting procs, which will buff your next Arcane Missiles by giving you more direct and cleave damage. This can be super impactful during your Touch of the Magi windows for a ridiculous amount of burst to your primary target. Using this can make your rotation feel more clunky in terms of generating Arcane Charges, but we are compensated by including talents like Aethervision and Orb Barrage that make our Charge generation better.

There is one flexible change you can make depending on the matchup at hand, which involves removing the talent point in Aether Attunement and placing it in High Voltage. You should only make this change if you are struggling with your Arcane Charge generation.

Arcane Mage PvP Talents

As for your best Arcane Mage PvP talents, Overpowered Barrier, Chrono Shift, and Master Shepherd will be your default loadout in most games.

Overpowered Barrier is a new talent added in 11.1, which slightly changes how you should use Prismatic Barrier. Prismatic Barrier becomes double its original absorb, however the tradeoff is its 5 second duration. This means you’ll want to use Prismatic Barrier during massive on-demand burst in order to receive its additional effect; temporary damage immunity and Invisibility.
Chrono Shift slows the target we use Arcane Barrage on and increases our movement speed by a solid amount for 5 seconds.
Master Shepherd is great for a bracket like Solo Shuffle, as this removes the healing effect from Polymorph, and provides us with a boost of Versatility when enemies are affected by it.

For your flexible talents, these can be swapped with Master Shepherd based on the composition you are playing or facing.

Ice Wall is unique as this allows you to remove line of sight from any location. This can be utilized offensively and defensively, allowing you to peel for yourself or allies, or to prevent enemy healers from connecting to their ally in order to score kills.
Master of Escape can be selected if you want more uptime on Greater Invisibility to make use of its damage reduction effect. This talent should be considered more as preference if you don’t prefer using Master Shepherd or Ice Wall in a particular matchup.