Arcane is a popular raiding spec for mages in World of Warcraft. While mages who are newly level 80 may find the Frostfire Bolt spec easier to play, the Arcane spec allows greater burst and DPS control, at a cost of much more difficult cooldown management and mana management. This article describes the talent points, spell rotation, and some nuances of the Aracne spec as of the 3.3 patch.
Step 1First off, you'll want to create a spec and pick your glyphs that are appropriate for an Arcane mage. There isn't a lot of flexibility here, each talent and glyph plays a specific role and you'll want almost all of them. A link to the Arcane talent spec is included at the end of this article.

At level 80 you will get three major glyphs. An Arcane raiding mage will choose these three:
* Glyph of Molten Armor
* Glyph of Arcane Blast
* Glyph of Arcane Missiles

Step 2Choose your Arcane Talents (52 points)
* Arcane Subtlety (2/2) - The arcane spec enjoys a -40% threat modifier which gives you a lot of leeway for bursting down targets without pulling aggro.
* Arcane Focus (3/3) - One of the fundamentals of the Arcane spec is that it gets a lot of +hit from talents (6%), thus freeing your gear up to focus on spell haste.
* Arcane Concentration (5/5) - With mana management always on the mind of the Arcane Mage, getting the occasional free spell (as well as synergy with Arcane Potency)
* Spell Impact (3/3) - This gives you 6% more crit to your workhorse spell, Arcane Blast
* Focus Magic (1/1) - Gives you a frequent crit boost
* Arcane Meditation (3/3) - Increases your mana regeneration
* Torment of the Weak (3/3) - All tanks have the ability to apply a slowing debuff to bosses (Warrior:Thunderclap, Death Knight:Frost Fever, Druid:Infected Wounds, Paladin:Judgements of the Just) and all skilled raid tanks will make use of these powers to reduce the damage that they take. You will benefit with a 12% damage boost without having to apply Slow.
Presence of Mind (1/1): Instant casts (see below) as well as a prerequisite for other talents
Arcane Mind (5/5): Increasing your intellect gives you more mana to work with, more mana returned from Evocation, and synergizes with Mind Mastery
Arcane Instability (3/3): Overall damage increase
Arcane Potency (2/2): Overall damage increase
Arcane Power (1/1): An important damage boosting cooldown
Arcane Flows (2/2): Reduces various cooldowns
Mind Mastery (5/5): DPS increase
Missile Barrage (5/5): When procced, you get a high dps, mana free spell!
Netherwind Presence (3/3): After spellpower, haste is the best stat to focus on
Spell Power (2/2): DPS increase

Optional: You will spend an additional 5 points in the Arcane tree in whatever talents suit you. You will almost certainly want Arcane Barrage and Slow, although they are not strictly mandatory. Magic Attunement is also a good choice. If you will be raiding ToC, you will want 2 points in Incanter's Absorption for a large DPS increase; for other raids it is less important.

Step 3Choose your Fire Talents (3 points)
* Incineration (3/3) - 6% increased critical chance for your Arcane Blast spell

Step 4Choose your Frost Talents (11 points)
* Frostbite (2/2) - This is a weak talent for this spec (since you rarely cast Frost spells), but you need to spend the points to unlock the higher ranked talents
* Ice Floes (3/3) - Allows you to cast Icy Veins more often
* Ice Shards (2/3) - This talent gives your AoE rotation a DPS increase
* Precision (3/3) - Increasing your chance to hit through talents gives you more leeway on your gear choices.
* Icy Veins (1/1) - 20% spell haste for a big damage increase!

Step 5Choose your gear:
A raiding Arcane Mage will need spell damage, haste, and spell hit on their gear. If you are raiding with a boomkin or shadow priest, you will need 210 spell hit to never miss, otherwise you will need 289 spell hit. Spell hit is your most important stat, followed closely by spell damage. Early raiding mages will want to use the trinket from heroic Violet Hold and the crafted cloth hat to get a big jump on their spell hit needs. Alliance mages who have the Heroic Presence buff will need less spell hit. When in doubt, use the Rawr modeling progream, or use the wow-heroes link at the bottom of this article for the Hit Calculator.

Once you've gotten close enough to the hit cap, your next most important stat is spellpower, then haste. Crit, spirit, and intellect are less important stats.

Step 6Gem your gear! There are many ways to obtain epic gems:
* If you have the mining profession, you can mine them from ore nodes
* If you have the alchemy profession, you can transmute one epic gem per day
* You can run battlegrounds and purchase any color gem for 10,000 honor points
* You can run dungeons and purchase gems for 10 (orange, green, purple) or 20 (red, yellow, blue) badges
* You can run dungeons and collect Stone Keeper's Shards, and purchase Wintergrasp Marks of honor with the shards, and purchase gems with the honor. The conversion rate is 150 Stone Keeper's Shards per epic gem.

* Red sockets should get Runed Cardinal Rubies.
* Blue sockets should get Runed Cardinal Rubies if the socket bonus is weak (crit or unneeded hit), or Purified Dreadstones / Glowing Dreadstones if the socket bonus is good (spellpower or haste)
* Yellow sockets should get Runed Cardinal Rubies if the socket bonus is weak, or Reckless Ametrines if the socket bonus is good.

Step 7Unlike other specs, the basic rotation is very simple but there are many variations you might need to employ. Here's the basic rotation, this is what you will be doing most of the time.

Basic Rotation:
1. Use Arcane Power / Icy Veins, if up
2. Cast Arcane Blast until you have a 4 stack of the Arcane Blast debuff AND the Missile Barrage buff
3. Cast Arcane Missiles
4. Repeat

If you are starting to run short of mana, you can save a lot of mana (lowering your DPS, of course), but casting Arcane Missiles as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even if you don't have 4 stacks of the Arcane Blast debuff.

Step 8In the best cases, you won't need to use Evocation at all because you'll have enough mana, but most of the time you'll find that you need to use it frequently. Your goal is to click Evocation right before your Icy Veins buff expires, this gives you 20% faster Evocation.

Step 9Your -40% threat modifier means that you can usually pop your cooldowns each time they are up. Depending on the timing, you'll also want to use them when Bloodlust/Heroism is used. At very high levels of haste, using all cooldowns along with Bloodlust/Heroism results in Arcane Blast cast times under 1.0 second, and this should be avoided as it is wasted haste. This doesn't mean that there is a "haste cap". If your haste brings the Arcane Blast cast time under 1.0 second when stacking trinkets, Icy Veins, and Bloodlust/Heroism, you will want stagger your cooldowns by using your Icy Veins before or after the bloodlust phase.

Step 10If you pull aggro, watch out! Most bosses will be able to one-shot you, and nobody is going to be happy. You have done something wrong if you pulled aggro, do not blame the tank. Always watch your threat level. Cast Mirror Images BEFORE you pull aggro during high DPS phases (Bloodlust/Heroism, Arcane Power, raid buffs like "Empowered Light" or any of the buffs during the Thorim fight, etc.) If you your threat climbs above 90% and continues to climb, casting Invisibility will return it to 0%, at the cost of several seconds of wasted DPS. Ice Block will prevent you from getting killed, but if you use it after pulling aggro there is a good chance that the boss will now target another DPSer, rather than returning to the tank. Be careful and you can do a lot of DPS without embarassing yourself.