- Author: Amery
- Date: July 19, 2022
- Updated: July 25, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are 2 more things you can use in order to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact they can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Arcane Mage you can be!
Addons
General
Mages don’t really have any useful class-specific addons, so we recommend the basics:
- DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
- Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends!
WeakAuras
WeakAuras is a versatile addon with almost limitless possibilities. It allows you to install mini-addons created by other players, which are confusingly also called “WeakAuras”, in order to perform specific tasks, such as tracking the cooldown of a spell, having a visual or audio notification when something procs, giving you a warning when a boss uses an ability, etc. You can find WeakAuras that suit your needs on wago.io. It’s strongly recommended that you use WeakAuras; they’re a huge quality of life boost.
As an Arcane Mage, it is highly recommended that you use a WeakAura to track your Missile Barrage procs, as you want to use them immediately. It’ll also be very beneficial to have another WA that tracks your Mana Sapphire‘s cooldown, as Arcane is a very mana-intensive spec and thus you’ll want to make sure you’re using it the moment it’s available. Finally, it can help to have a WA tracking your Lightweave Embroidery proc, allowing you to use your cooldowns when it procs for maximum DPS. Another use for this addon is to track Trinket cooldowns to better time other cooldowns.
Macros
Essential
These macros will help you significantly, potentially increasing your DPS by a modest amount.
Cooldown Macro (AKA Swifty Macro)
As previously stated, it will generally be very beneficial to use all of your cooldowns at the same time, rather than using them separately. Macros make this possible to do very conveniently. As an Arcane Mage, it’ll be ideal to “pop” this macro when your Lightweave Embroidery procs.
#showtooltip
/cast Arcane Power
/use [combat] 13
/use [combat] 14
/use [combat] Potion of Wild Magic
/use [combat] 10
/cast BerserkingIce Block + Cancel Macro
This macro instantly uses Ice Block. If you tap it a 2nd time, it will cancel your Ice Block. Make sure you don’t button mash it if you want to stay Ice Blocked!
#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice BlockHelpful
These macros will generally not be make-or-break in terms of your performance, as they don’t directly improve your ability to deal damage. However, they can help you in smaller but very real ways, offering significant quality of life improvements, so we recommend having them.
Focus Magic Macro
This macro allows you to always cast Focus Magic on a player of your choice, without having to target them every time.
Just make sure to replace NAME with their name!
#showtooltip
/cast [target=NAME] Focus MagicThis macro will make it so your Arcane Missiles get the full tick off and don’t get interrupted.
/cast [nochanneling] Arcane MissilesÂ
About the Author
In the cooldown macro do you have to put the tinket names in? or do you literally type it out like you have in this post? Also whats combat 10? I know 13 and 14 are your trinket slots right?
not sure if you need to type in trinket names but I think combat 10 is glove slot for the engineering haste
I think you need to write in trinket name
You do not need to type the trinket names in the macro. /use 13 and /use 14 will use your current trinkets, so you don’t have to update your macro every time you get new trinkets!
You don’t have to put the trinket names in, /use [combat] 13 and /use [combat] 14 will use your trinkets, whichever 2 trinkets you happen to have equipped. You can change 13/14 to the name of the trinket if you prefer that!
10 is the gloves slot, so it will use your engineering glove enchant (whichever enchant you’re using). The [combat] part is a macro conditional, which means the macro will only use this command if you’re in combat, which will help prevent misclicks 😀