New Raider's Guide

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Three rules apply in every mode:

1. Stay alive. A dead mage does zero damage. Any damage you lose moving out of fire is tiny next to dying.
2. Keep casting. Arcane is a turret spec. Every second you are not casting or moving on purpose is lost damage.
3. Spend Clearcasting on Arcane Missiles. Missiles need the proc, Missiles build Arcane Salvo, and Salvo is what makes Arcane Barrage hit. If you sit on the proc, the whole loop stalls.

What to check in your logs

Open your character on Warcraft Logs after a raid night and look at these five things, in this order. They tell you more than the big DPS number does.

Fix these in order. Deaths first, then active time, then cooldown count, then Clearcasting use, then Barrage timing. Parse percentile climbs on its own once those are right.

Arcane 101: the five ideas behind every button

Arcane is a resource loop with two counters. You build Arcane Charges and Arcane Salvo with cheap spells, spend both at once with Arcane Barrage, and press cooldowns to speed the whole loop up. Learn these five ideas and every priority list below will make sense.

1. Arcane Charges are your first counter. You hold up to 4. Arcane Blast, Arcane Orb, Arcane Pulse and Prismatic Bolt add charges. Arcane Barrage spends them all. The guides cast Barrage at 4 charges, never earlier.
2. Arcane Salvo is your second counter. It is a buff on you that climbs to 25. Every wave of Arcane Missiles adds a stack, Arcane Orb adds one, Prismatic Bolt adds four. Barrage eats the stacks and hits harder for each one. In the Sunfury build you cast Barrage at 25 stacks.
3. Clearcasting unlocks Arcane Missiles. It is a mostly random proc after Arcane spells. Arcane Surge, Touch of the Magi and Prismatic Bolt guarantee one. You cannot cast Missiles without it, so when it lights up and your Salvo is low, Missiles comes first.
4. Prismatic Bolt is your biggest hit. It is the new Apex spell. Method calls it "by far your highest damaging ability". It generates 4 charges and 4 Salvo in one cast and lights up on your Arcane Blast button. Press it whenever it shows and you are not about to waste stacks.
5. Two cooldowns, one rule. Arcane Surge (1.5 minutes) and Touch of the Magi (45 seconds). Press both together when both are up. That is the Big Burn. Press Touch alone in between. That is the Miniburn. Never delay Touch, or the two drift apart.

Easy Mode: six buttons, one order Mode 1

This is the whole rotation. Read the list top to bottom every time a cast finishes and press the first thing that is true. It uses the Sunfury single-target build from the setup section. If you took Spellslinger instead, Barrage is cast at 20 Salvo rather than 25 and Arcane Orb goes on cooldown.

1. Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi if they are off cooldown. Press Surge first, then Touch straight after. When only Touch is up, press Touch on its own. Never wait.
2. Arcane Missiles if Clearcasting is up and your Arcane Salvo is below 12 stacks. Each wave adds a stack.
3. Arcane Barrage if you have 25 Salvo stacks, or any time the Arcane Soul buff is up right after Surge ends.
4. Prismatic Bolt when your Arcane Blast button has changed into it. It is your hardest hit.
5. Arcane Orb if you have fewer than 3 Arcane Charges. It is instant, so you can press it while moving.
6. Arcane Blast. When nothing above is true, cast this. It is your filler and it fishes for Clearcasting.

That is it. Ignore the 8-stack Prismatic Bolt rule, the Clearcasting Barrages and Arcane Pulse for now. They are a bonus, not the foundation.

The opener

When the raid leader's pull timer hits 2 seconds, start casting Arcane Blast. Then Arcane Surge, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, Touch of the Magi, and fall into the list above. Method's opener puts the potion before Surge and the trinket after it.

When you have to move

Press Arcane Orb if it is up, or Arcane Barrage if you are at 25 Salvo. Both are instant. Otherwise Shimmer towards your spot and keep casting. Do not try to finish an Arcane Blast while standing in something that will kill you.

Buffs and the Water Elemental

Cast Arcane Intellect on the raid before the pull. Arcane has no pet to manage. Your one pre-pull job is the buff and a Prismatic Barrier.

Intermediate Mode: three timing rules and a second target Mode 2

Same skeleton as Easy Mode, with the Arcane Soul window, the Clearcasting Barrage and the Prismatic Bolt counter slotted in. Each one is worth a few percent of your damage, and together they are the gap between a passable mage and a solid one.

1. Arcane Surge on cooldown, with Touch of the Magi straight after it.
2. Touch of the Magi on its own when Surge is not ready. Do not hold it for Surge. The 45-second and 90-second timers meet again on their own every second Touch.
3. Arcane Missiles if Clearcasting is up and Salvo is below 12.
4. Arcane Barrage whenever Arcane Soul is up. Stop channeling Missiles just before Surge ends so you do not waste the free Barrages.
5. Prismatic Bolt if its Cumulative Power counter shows 8 stacks and Arcane Soul is not up.
6. Arcane Barrage at 25 Salvo, or at 12 or more Salvo when Clearcasting is up. Barrage with Clearcasting gives charges back through High Voltage.
7. Prismatic Bolt whenever it shows.
8. Arcane Orb if you are below 3 charges.
9. Arcane Blast.

The opener

Pre-cast Arcane Blast at 2 seconds. Potion as the timer ends, then Arcane Surge, on-use trinket, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, Touch of the Magi. From there, use the list. The Barrage just before Touch is on purpose: it resets your charges so the Touch window starts clean.

Overpowered Missiles

Sometimes Clearcasting comes with a second buff called Overpowered Missiles. That Missiles cast hits much harder and fills your Salvo to 25 in one go. Finish the channel, then Barrage straight away. Maxroll's wording is "finish casting it and then spam Barrages".

Arcane Pulse: your second target

Swap to the Sunfury cleave build in the setup section for any fight with two targets that live more than 10 seconds, such as a boss plus a big add. Maxroll says to use that build "if you're fighting 2 or more enemies". The rule of thumb:

• Arcane Pulse replaces Arcane Blast as your filler against grouped enemies. It hits everything within 8 yards of your target and gives 1 charge per enemy hit. It has a 15-second cooldown.
• Prismatic Bolt already splashes nearby enemies, so keep pressing it.
• Against 2 or more enemies, Maxroll lets you Barrage earlier: at 12 to 18 Salvo if Clearcasting or Arcane Orb is ready.
• Arcane Orb goes on cooldown. It flies through everything in a line.

Planning movement

Before the pull, ask the raid leader or read the boss guide for the two or three moments when everyone has to move. Walk into those moments with Arcane Orb ready and Salvo near 25 so you can Orb, Barrage, and keep damage going while you run. Shimmer is off the global cooldown, so you can Shimmer in the middle of a cast without losing it.

Full Send Mode: the complete priority Mode 3

This is the Sunfury single-target list as Method writes it, plus the habits that separate a 70th-percentile parse from a 95th. Nothing here is new. It is the Intermediate list with tighter timing.

Single target

1. Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi on cooldown, always together when both are ready, Touch alone otherwise. Method: "the Miniburn should never be delayed because it desyncs cooldowns".
2. Arcane Missiles if you have less than 12 Arcane Salvo.
3. Arcane Barrage if Arcane Soul is up.
4. Prismatic Bolt if you have 8 stacks of Cumulative Power and Arcane Soul is not up.
5. Arcane Barrage at 25 stacks of Arcane Salvo, or if you have Clearcasting and 12 or more stacks.
6. Prismatic Bolt.
7. Arcane Orb.
8. Arcane Blast.

Salvo discipline

Salvo caps at 25. A Missiles wave or a Prismatic Bolt that lands at 25 adds nothing. So the rule is: if a Prismatic Bolt or Missiles cast would push you past 25, Barrage first. The one exception is the 12-stack Clearcasting Barrage, which is there to recover charges, not to spend Salvo. Never let Salvo sit at 25 for more than one global.

Arcane Soul discipline

Arcane Soul is a 4-second buff that starts the moment Arcane Surge ends. While it lasts Barrage is free, does not eat your Salvo, and every Barrage guarantees a Clearcasting proc. Watch the Surge timer. Cast your last Missiles so the channel ends with Surge, then press Barrage until the buff is gone. A Missiles channel that runs into Arcane Soul is the most common mistake on a Sunfury log.

Lining up the burst window

On-use trinket, Light's Potential and racial all go into the first Arcane Surge, and into every Surge after that. Surge and Touch realign every 90 seconds, so a 6-minute fight gives you four Big Burns. Ask the raid leader when Bloodlust is coming and, if it is within 20 seconds of a Surge, hold Surge for it. Never hold Touch.

AoE (3 or more targets)

1. Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi if the pack lives 15 seconds or more.
2. Arcane Missiles if you have less than 12 Arcane Salvo.
3. Arcane Barrage if Arcane Soul is up.
4. Prismatic Bolt if you have 8 stacks of Cumulative Power and Arcane Soul is not up.
5. Arcane Barrage at 25 Salvo, or at 12 or more Salvo if you have Clearcasting, Arcane Orb or Arcane Pulse ready.
6. Prismatic Bolt.
7. Arcane Orb on cooldown. It hits everything in its path.
8. Arcane Pulse, then Arcane Blast as your fillers.

Two targets is the cleave-build game from Intermediate: Arcane Pulse as the filler, Barrage at 12 to 18 Salvo with Clearcasting or Orb ready, and Prismatic Bolt whenever it shows. Neither Method nor Maxroll gives a target count where the AoE list starts, so treat 3 stacked targets as the line.

Fight-specific habits

Before a progression night, open the boss guide and write down three things: when adds spawn (plan the cleave build or Arcane Pulse), when the raid has to move (hold Arcane Orb and a high Salvo), and when Bloodlust is called (hold or drift Surge). Those three notes are worth more than any sim.

Talents, consumables and setup

Import one of these talent strings and the guide above matches your bars. Open the talent window, click Import, paste, and save as a loadout. Both are from Method's talents page, updated 16 Oct 2026 for patch 12.1.5.

Method also lists two Spellslinger builds (pure single target, and Mythic+ / raid cleave). The Spellslinger list in this guide is the same shape, with Arcane Barrage at 20 Salvo and Arcane Orb on cooldown. Stick with one hero talent for a few weeks before you compare.

Stat priority

Intellect, then Haste, then Versatility, then Critical Strike, then Mastery, as Method writes it. Maxroll shows its priority only as an image and tells you to sim; Wowhead's older 12.0 page put Mastery ahead of Haste. Sources disagree on Mastery, so once you are comfortable, run a Raidbots Top Gear sim with your own gear. Until then, take the higher item level piece.

Consumables checklist

Bring these to every raid. Half of them are provided by the raid, but a new raider should carry their own.

• Flask: Flask of the Magisters
• Food: Harandar Celebration, or eat the raid feast
• Combat potion: Light's Potential, one per pull
• Health potion: Concentrated Silvermoon Health Potion
• Weapon oil: Thalassian Phoenix Oil
• Augment rune: Void-Touched Augment Rune
• Gems: one Indecipherable Eversong Diamond, then Haste or Critical Strike gems in the rest
• Enchants: Mark of the Worldsoul (chest), Arcanoweave Spellthread (legs), Eyes of the Eagle (rings), Rite of the Hash'ey (weapon), Lynx's Dexterity (boots), Amirdrassil's Grace (shoulders), Rune of Avoidance (helm)

Addons that matter

BigWigs for boss timers, Method Raid Tools for raid notes, and BetterCooldownManager, which adds an Arcane Charges bar and a mana bar to the built-in Cooldown Manager. Method also lists Shimmertracker (a countdown when you have no Shimmer charge) and Missing Class Buff (warns you when Arcane Intellect or your flask is missing). WeakAuras no longer works in Midnight, so do not go looking for one.

Macros

Put these on your bars. The first interrupts whatever you have set as focus, or your target if you have no focus. The second decurses whoever your mouse is over. The third is a two-press Ice Block: once to block, again to drop it. Do not double-tap it by accident.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Counterspell

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead][] Remove Curse

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Ice Block
/cancelaura Ice Block

Your utility kit

Damage is only half the job. Raid leaders remember the mage who interrupts, uses defensives, and decurses, not the one who parses 5% higher. Cooldowns below are the base values. Talents shorten some of them, so trust your tooltip over this table.

Mass Barrier, Blast Wave, Slow and Shifting Power were removed in Midnight. If an older guide tells you to press them, ignore it.

Two habits to build now:

1. Set a focus target. Before the pull, target the add you are assigned to interrupt and press your focus keybind. The Counterspell macro then works without ever leaving the boss.
2. Barrier before every big hit. Prismatic Barrier is on a 30-second cooldown and costs almost nothing. Press it as the boss timer for raid damage counts down, every time, until it is automatic.

Reading your logs and what to practice next

After each raid night, open your character on Warcraft Logs and spend five minutes on one boss. Pick the longest single-target fight. Check the five items from the logs section, then do the one drill below that matches your mode.

Three things to compare against a top log of the same boss (Warcraft Logs, Rankings tab, filter to Arcane):

1. Count their Arcane Barrages and yours. If theirs is 50% higher on a fight of the same length, you are sitting on Salvo or missing Arcane Soul windows.
2. Count their Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi casts and yours. The gap is almost always one missed cast at the start or end.
3. Look at their Deaths and yours. If they have zero and you do not, that is the whole gap.

The Venomous Abyss is the current Midnight Season 2 raid, with eight bosses from Nek'zali the Soulcoiler through Ula'tek. Read the Icy Veins page for each boss before the night you first see it, and write down the three notes from Full Send Mode: when adds come, when you move, when Lust is called.