What level does arcane fall off for leveling?

Classes Mage
1

I’ve been leveling a mage recently, up to about lvl 30 now. I plan to play fire, but for the moment i’ve been playing as arcane because of its op damage for leveling. At what level roughly would it be fine to switch over to fire without a huge dps loss?

2

On instances i still go fire because that’s what’s expected, but at 91 I’m still really enjoying Arcane for pve. Anytime you have single targets, Arcane shines. If you have groups of critters then fire/frost seem to rule, at least in my experience.

3

I still use arcane for world quests at 120. It features acceptable AOE, good single-target, and good self-healing (for a mage).

Elite world mobs melt when you blow all cooldowns. I’ve seen initial burn phase dps close to 200k for the duration of the burn. Can pretty much ignore most elite quest mob mechanics that way.

That said, questing dps for world content and what works in raids/dungeons are not the same. Arcane has a number of disadvantages which render it less than ideal for much endgame content:

  • Average sustained single-target dps
  • low mobile single-target dps
  • non-existent cleave
  • must talent and azerite for AOE or single-target. Can’t do both at the same time.
  • even when talented and azerited for AOE, dps with AOE is below average.
  • downtime drinking may be awkward in fast-paced timed content like Mythic+ or Visions.
1 Like
4

I appreciate the responses, but I guess I didn’t phrase my question appropriately. I’m only playing arcane right now because its way faster for leveling at low levels. I plan to mostly play fire at endgame. My question is: what level does fire catch up in terms of damage scaling so I can switch to fire and not feel like I’m slowing myself down? Lvl 70? Lvl 80? Lvl 90? And im mostly concerned about dungeons cuz thats how I do most of my leveling. Hopefully that clarifies it a bit

5

it’ll probably be all the way to 120 lol, especially if you’re spamming dungeons

2 Likes
6

I leveled both, and fire didn’t feel as good as arcane until 110. Others may have a different opinion on this.

1 Like
7

Gotcha, thanks everybody

8

Arcane will outscale until 110, but fire picks up around 60. Fire wont out-dps arcane but it’ll out-dps pretty much every class still if, and it’ll out-burst arcane st with combustion.

9

Somewhere from 110-120.