Table of Contents
0. FAQ
1. Introduction
2. Gear Choices
3. Choosing your spec
4. Frost
4.1. Frost Glyphs
4.2. Frost Talent spec
4.3. Frost Playstyle
5. Fire
5.1. Fire Glyphs
5.2. Fire Talent spec
5.3. Fire Playstyle
6. Arcane
6.1. Arcane Glyphs
6.2. Arcane Talent spec
6.3. Arcane Playstyle
7. Races and Professions
8. Useful Macros
9. Useful Links
10. General Tips and Tricks
This is the first draft of this leveling guide! Please tell me if you have any concerns, questions or suggestions for improvements.
IF YOU LIKE THIS GUIDE, VOTE FOR A STICKY!
0. FAQ
Where should I level next?
Refer to this handy map that demonstrates the level range for each in-game zone:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/757449-Azeroth-level-flow-map
Your spec is wrong, you should do this instead!
This guide is a guide – by no means should you follow this strictly and to the letter. If you feel more comfortable playing a different style, go ahead and do that! Similarly, use whatever rotations you feel comfortable with. The most important thing about this game is to simply have fun, after all.
Can I solo (insert elite here)?
Mages are pretty terrible at soloing tough opponents. The general rule of thumb is "If it's slowable/kitable, its killable." If it's not, you're going to have to burst it down as quickly as possible before you expire, which is a tad difficult to do if the mob in question has a lot of health. This becomes much easier once you get Mirror Images, which essentially gives you 30 seconds of free casting or until your images die.
I'm planning on going through Dungeons - what should I level as?
From 1-80, dungeons are generally complete facerolls, generally consisting of aoe trash pulls and a minimal amount of CC. The simple answer is that your spec doesn't really matter. If you must find yourself at the top of the DPS charts, however:
Arcane's lack of AoE generally hurts its performance in dungeons, but lots of downtime in pulls means that you can generally spam AB for the duration of each trash pull. DPS changes significantly depending on how long you can maintain your 4-stack for before the last mob dies. This is made harder since you don't have early access to mage armor, but hey, you're a mage! make your own food.
Frost - especially if you're frontloading damage using Fingers of Frost Procs - will be competitive and very threat-heavy, but it once again is weak in AOE. This should be resolved with the 70% blizzard buff coming in patch 4.0.1
Fire is super right now, especially with talents in impact and improved fireblast. While mobs probably won't last long enough for Living Bomb to reach its full duration, having dots ticking on each mob means that as of now this is the best spec for aoe dungeon grinding.
My mage is sitting at 80, I want to get him to 85
80-85 is a completely different ballgame from 1-80. Leveling will become significantly harder as mob HP pools start to get inflated - what once took a single pyroblast+scorch to kill will now require a pyroblast and three fireballs, while in the meantime the mob is in your face and bashing in your skull since you lack a effective snare. For this reason I recommend going frost or arcane if you're out questing 80-85.
1. Introduction
So you’ve decided to level a mage – a master of the arcane, capable of flinging scorching-hot balls of fire and encasing enemies in frozen tombs of ice. No clue what spec to use, what gear to get? Look no further than this guide, which will strive to provide the answers you need! This guide is specifically focused towards PVE leveling and questing, and will not touch upon leveling through BGs and PVP.
Mages have been the traditional ‘Glass Cannons’ of WoW. We are fragile little things capable of bursting out some heavy damage, and we can’t take as much punishment when angry mobs are trying to bash in our delicate faces. Our DPS rotations are relatively straightforward and generally consist of spamming a few spells over and over again until the unfortunate bugger finally keels over. On the flip side, our spells hit hard and fast – if you like seeing big numbers flash on your screen, this is the class for you!
By no means do I consider myself a "expert" on leveling mages - I have, however, been playing this mage for a while. I wrote this with the intention of providing a few general guidelines to follow. Your mileage will vary. Feel free to critique this guide and point out inconsistencies or things that are just plain wrong, and I will do my best to fix them.
2. Gear Choices
Intellect is king, by a wide margin. Intellect increases you spellpower and gives you a deeper mana pool so your spells hit harder and you can spam them more often. This should be your first priority on any and all gear.
Crit increases the chance by which your spells critically hit their opponents, which means they hit your opponents twice as hard as they would normally have. Crit is, in my opinion, one of the strongest leveling stats because it increases both your DPS and DPM (damage per mana), unlike haste.
Hit increases the chance by which you actually hit your opponent in the face as opposed to flinging it wildly past his head. Hit is a pretty important stat until you hit the 100% cap – after which extra hit does nothing. The amount of hit is difficult to determine as you level through, simply because the combat ratings will change (10 hit at level 10 gives you a different % of hit than 10 hit at level 20, for example) and you will be fighting opponents of varying levels. It will be relatively difficult to cap on haste as you level, however, so don’t be afraid to grab it.
Haste increases the speed at which you cast spells (even though the technical definition is slightly different), meaning you can cast more in the same amount of time. In my opinion haste, while good, just isn’t as good as crit – in the end you’ll still need 3 frostbolts to kill that mob.
Stamina gives you a greater health pool and resilience reduces the damage you take. While this sounds great, their of relatively little use – you shouldn’t be letting enemies get in range of you in the first place, while your other beneficial stats allow you to kill them faster. Stamina and resilience are okay, but you shouldn’t be considering them when choosing new gear.
Spirit is virtually useless for mages. The only time in which it benefits us is through mana and health regen when we’re out of combat, in which case you should probably be eating and drinking your own food anyway. Avoid gear with spirit on it UNLESS the gear in question has more beneficial stats (int, hit, crit, haste) than your current piece has. When looking at spirit gear, judge it as if the spirit isn’t there when assessing whether it’s an upgrade or not.
All other stats are garbage. Avoid them at all costs.
In conclusion
Intellect > Crit/Hit > Haste >> everything else
Cloth BoA heirloom gear is excellent – the shoulders and chest should be priority because of their 10% XP bonus (which stacks!), while the staff is a superb weapon that you won’t replace until you hit level 80. The cloak and helm are also excellent if you can afford them, while the intellect trinkets that return mana on kills are fantastic as well – unlike warlocks, we don’t have an easy mana regen mechanism like life-tap. Having dual trinkets means you won’t need to sit down and drink as much.
3. Choosing your Spec
What should I level as? With the coming of Cataclysm and major changes to the difficulty of leveling and talent trees, the answer today is simply to level as whatever you enjoy – while each spec is similar they all have their own playstyles.
If, however, you are one of those players who absolutely cannot decide for themselves and must have someone to tell you what to spec, I will say frost - it has far greater survivability than any of the other specs, (especially in the early game) and the default snare of frostbolt combined with your water elemental freeze makes leveling your glass cannon through Azeroth a much safer proposition. In addition, you have a much greater chance at getting crits than other specs because of your Shatter (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=12982) and Fingers of Frost (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=83074) talents. Another benefit with frost is that it’s easy to recover from inadvertently pulling multiple mobs because of the sheer number of AoE freezes that you possess.
Arcane becomes good once you hit level 53ish and you get the talent Nether Vortex (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=86209), which applies slow directly on your arcane blasts, and in my opinion becomes just as good as frost once you get mage armor.
If you have the gear you can easily go fire because pyroblasts hit hard and do a crap-ton of damage. You lack a good snare, however, meaning that mobs will reach you in half the time as they would have if you were frost and try to eat you. This is especially tough with Cata mobs, which have highly inflated health pools.
Special Note: If you are geared enough such that you can kill mobs before they ever reach you, survivability becomes mostly moot – feel free to level as whatever you can in such a case.
Up to level 10 leveling is rather easy – open with a frostbolt (if you have it already), then start spamming fireballs. Whenever Arcane Missiles become available use them. Fireblast an opponent if you need it in a pinch or to finish them off. Frost nova if they get too close, and run away!
4. Frost
4.1 Frost Glyphs
Prime: Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Armor of your Choice (Mage or Molten), FB/FFB (For brain freeze)
Frostbolt and your armor glyph should be priorities. Choose between icelance and fireball/frostfirebolt glyphs depending on how often you use your brain freezes
Major: Evocation is the only must in this category. The increased damage capacity of Ice barrier is very useful, as is the tougher Frost Nova. Blink is also a decent choice if you want a bit more mobility.
Minor : Slowfall is wonderful. Everything else is up to you, though conjuring and armors are likely the most convenient to have around.
4.2 Frost Talent Spec
At level 70, your talents should look roughly like this – frost has some more situational talents than the other specs http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZZffbosIsd0o:
Tier 1: (level 17)
2/2 Shatter, 3/3 Piercing Ice – Early Frost just isn’t that great: too often you’ll be surprised when it triggers, and it’s not a fantastic dps upgrade. You’ll get it much later, however.
Tier 2: (level 27)
2/2 Improved Cone of Cold, 3/3 Ice Floes – CoC freezes, and CD reduction is always good. Piercing Chill is too situational. Permafrost might be revisited later, but skip it for now unless you have trouble killing the mob before it reaches you.
Tier 3: (level 37)
1/1 Icy Veins, 3/3 Fingers of Frost, 1/3 Improved Freeze – You will love FoF and improved freeze.
Tier 4: (level 47)
3/3 Improved Freeze, 1/1 Cold Snap, 2/3 Brain Freeze – You can get Cold Snap first, but Improved Freeze is so good I’d rather rush that first. We’ll revisit Enduring Winter in a bit.
Tier 5: (level 57)
1/1 Ice Barrier, 3/3 Brain Freeze, 2/2 Shattered Barrier – Reactive Barrier obeys Ice Barrier’s CD, which you should have up already.
Tier 6: (level 67)
Something that benefits a spell you won’t even get until level 81... Go back and get points into things you’ve missed – enduring winter for mana efficiency, Permafrost for extra snares, Early Frost to squeeze out a bit more damage.
Tier 7: (level 69)
1/1 Deep Freeze – hits insanely hard against stun-immune mobs and freezes players and other mobs alike for 5 seconds! Then spam Ice Lance and laugh manically as they’re helpless. What’s not to like?
Post-70:
3/3 Netherwind Presence is recommended – everything else is optional, but you can try going for ignite to make your FFB Brain Freeze procs hit extra-hard.
4.3 Frost Playstyle
Frostbolts are your bread and butter, and your Water Elemental is your best friend. Until you get Ice Lance at level 28, you’ll be opening with Frostbolts with the occasional arcane missiles when they proc. Use frost nova and your pet’s freeze liberally to prevent mobs from getting close and do extra damage from shatter. Once you get to Brain Freeze in the talent tree use the procs whenever they occur - at first with fireball, then Frostfire Bolt when you receive the spell. Your priority "rotation" should be:
FoF Ice lance Proc > Brain Freeze Proc > Frostbolt
Getting Fingers of Frost and Improved Freeze (tier 3 talents) will make leveling a breeze – with these talents, opening with a Frostbolt, using the pet’s freeze and double-icelancing will likely just kill the mob. Use Ice Lance whenever fingers of frost are up, and make liberal use of both Deep Freeze and Icy Veins.
Note on AOE Grinding: I have no idea whether this is still viable or not. In the past, this involved getting 2 points into ice shards, running around aggroing mobs with ice barrier and rounding them up cowboy-style, then using frost nova or shattered barrier to hold them in place, then casting Blizzard and laughing as they try to crawl towards you and inevitably fail – it would be nice if someone can confirm whether this is still viable.
5. Fire
5.1 Fire Glyphs
Prime: Fireball, Pyroblast and Molten. Your first glyph will either be Fireball or Pyroblast, both of which give 5% crit on that spell – which one you choose depends on whether you open with pyroblast or not, most likely.
Major: I swear by the Evocation heal. Everything else is situational – Blastwave (1 second extra on the slow) if you like the slow, Dragon’s Breath (3 second CD reduction) if mobs tend to reach of you often. Frost Nova (More damage before break) and Blink (5 extra yards) are also solid.
Minor: Same as Frost and up to you
5.2 Fire Talents
Your tree should may like this at level 70: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZdfGrkoRRoco
Tier 1: (level 17)
2/2 Improved Fire Blast, 2/2 Master of Elements, 1/3 Burning Soul – Nothing too exiting here: Fireblast will be very good with the extra 8% crit. Get one point in Burning Soul because you can’t put it anywhere else.
Tier 2: (level 27)
3/3 Ignite, 2/3 Fire Power – Ignite is what makes fire hit so hard – a flat 40% damage bonus to crits. Get 2 points in Fire Power for now; we’ll be revisiting this tier later to pick up the other yummy talents.
Tier 3-4: (level 37-47)
These talents are one big mess – everything here looks very good. I suggest getting Blastwave and Hot Streak First, but suffice to say you’ll want just about everything here except Molten Shields. Cauterize is amazing in preventing an early demise when you make a mistake (provided you Ice Block it), Impact will stun mobs, Blazing speed will help you run away fast. Combustion isn’t too useful because you lack reliable dots at this time, but it’s still nice to have for dungeon bosses. Moving Scorch is ridiculously fun. Take your pick at what tickles your fancy here.
Tier 5: (level 57)
1/1 Dragon’s Breath, 2/2 Improved Flamestrike - then go back and get some more tier 2-4 talents. Skip Molten Fury – if a mob is below 35% health, it will probably die when you cast your next spell anyway.
Tier 6: (level 67)
3/3 Critical Mass, go back and grab some more tier 2-4 talents.
Tier 7: (level 69)
1/1 Living Bomb – not the most useful spell in terms of leveling, but it deals a pretty decent amount of damage – also makes your combustion a whole lot better on tough mobs.
Post-70:
3/3 Piercing Ice, 3/3 Netherwind Presence – You love crit, you like haste. Then get arcane concentration or shatter depending on if you’re going oom often, or go back into the fire tree and pick up something else that’s useful.
5.3 Fire Playstyle
Open fights with Pyroblast – it has a long cast, hits hard and leaves a dot ticking on the target. Once you get critical mass (Tier 6 talent) it will also grant you a delicious 5% extra crit on the target. Spamming fireballs thereafter should be your priority. Use blastwave/frost nova/dragon’s breath when they get too close. If they’re low, finish with scorch or fireblast.
Blastwave/Improved Flamestrike interaction is amazing in dungeons and will impress your fellow LFDers with your humongous DPS – try, however to let the tank get aggro first.
6. Arcane
6.1 Arcane Glyphs
Prime: Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, Mage Armor. I consider Mage Armor and Arcane Blast a must at 70. Pick between the other two depending on which one you tend to use more.
Major: Did I mention Evocation yet? Arcane doesn’t have many major glyphs that are too hot. Feel free to pick whichever one seems useful
Minor: Same as the other two specs. Slow fall, while Conjuring and Armors reduce annoyances and downtime.
6.2 Arcane Talents
At level 70, this should be your talent tree: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ohIMrRhkMRMo
Tier 1: (level 17)
3/3 Netherwind Presence, 2/3 Arcane Concentration – Imp CS is rather useless while leveling
Tier 2: (level 27)
2/2 Arcane Missiles, 2/2 Blink, 3/3 Arcane Concentration – After buffing Arcane Missiles damage by 66% and gaining a huge mobility boost, go back and grab the final point in Arcane Concentration
Tier 3: (level 37)
2/2 Missile Barrage, 1/1 Presence of Mind, 2/2 Arcane Flows – go for whichever talent you feel like first. I personally feel that Missile Barrage is fantastic and that you should get it as soon as possible, though a 2-minute is sweet too.
Tier 4: (level 47)
1/1 Arcane Tactics, 2/2 Incanter’s Absorption, 2/3 Torment the Weak – pick the flat 3% damage buff first. Now you have a few choices. I tend to go for the mini-blastwave for survivability, then pick up TtW in preparation for nether vortex.
Tier 5: (level 57)
1/1 Slow, 2/2 Arcane Potency, 2/2 Nether Vortex – This level makes arcane significantly better. Go for Nether vortex first if mobs are consistently reaching you, and behold as your arcane powers slow them to a crawl.
Tier 6: (level 67)
2/2 Improved Mana Gem, 3/3 Torment the Weak, rest is up to you – Finish the point in TtW and get a big boost out of your mana gems. The remaining two points don’t have a good home to be in – you can use them in Imp Arcane Explosion for some AOE capacity. (though it’s still terribly weak and will likely result in early death) My choice would be 2 points in Prismatic Cloak for the fast invisibility. Focus magic is useless for soloing, but pretty decent in dungeons.
Tier 7: (level 69)
1/1 Arcane Power – Love it, and use it as often as you can.
Post-70:
3/3 Piercing Ice, 2/2 Master of Elements – get the crit bonus and mana refund talents first. Everything else is quite meh. Burning soul is decent when tough cata mobs consistently get to you, and so is Improved Cone of Cold.
6.3 Arcane Playstyle
Before level 20 you’ll be stuck with arcane barrage and arcane missiles, one of which is proc-based and one of which has a 4 second cooldown. Open with frostbolt and use fireball as your main nuke, while using AM and ABarr as often as possible.
Once you get it, open fights with arcane blast, stack it up and finish the mob off arcane missiles or arcane barrage. If you want you can continue to stack by peppering other mobs to kill them very quickly, but this method is extremely mana-hungry – luckily, you have 2 minute evocates! Arcane starts to shine when you get Nether vortex and Mage Armor. A passive slow will do wonders in killing things before they get to you, while Mage Armor allows you to keep going and going and going like a Duracell Bunny.
Arcane AoE outside of dungeons is bad for your Mage’s health, and will likely result in a pack of mobs at 50% hp standing over a warm corpse.
7. Races and Professions
The general guideline is play what you enjoy – after all, you’re going to be looking at the back of your character for a long time. On Alliance Humans and Gnomes tend to be good for PVP, while Gnomes make very good Arcane Mages due to their increased mana pools. Dwarves have no good racials and Night Elves have a few questionable ones. Worgen and Draenei are both fine, and together with Arcane Gnomes will be the min/maxer’s choice.
For Horde min/maxer’s, Orcs, Goblins and Trolls are all good, with Trolls tending to be the end-game raider’s choice due to their on-use haste ability. Blood elves have a nifty silence and 6% mana return cooldown. Undead lack strong PVE racials.
Blizzard has essentially equalized all crafting professions, meaning that the bonuses on these professions will be the same in end-game raiding. The traditionalist “Magey” choice is to go tailoring/enchanting because you can disenchant or wear your tailored items – other combinations will work too, and your choice in professions will likely reflect what you’re leveling your mage for.
8. Useful Macros
Iceblock, tap it a second time to cancel it:
/cast iceblock
/cancelaura iceblock
Combining PoM with AB:
#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/cast Presence of Mind
/Cast Arcane Blast
Counterspelling mid-cast:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast counterspell
Living bomb (Will cast living bomb on the target your mouse is hovering over, otherwise it will cast it on your current target):
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,nodead,exists] Living bomb; Living bomb
9. Useful Links:
Elitistjerks: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/
The end-game theory-crafting resource for aspiring raiders. This is a treasure-trove of information, but the community is highly intolerant of newbies – Make sure to read this before you start raiding, and try not ask questions – chances are it’s been asked before and is located somewhere already .
Mage forum stickies!
Read them! Information in these threads is up-to-date and highly comprehensive.
10. General Tips and Tricks
Kiting, escaping and running away:
During your leveling experience, you will likely spend at least some period of time trying run away from a mob - mages simply aren't designed to go toe-to-toe with an opponent. Luckily, you have plenty of escape mechanisms that allow you to put some distance between you and that angry boar.
We love Blink, despite the fact that it's been bugged since release - make sure that you aim it over flat ground only, or there's a distinct chance that you'll blink about a yard or two It automatically gets you out of snares and stuns, so make sure to utilize it to its fullest potential. However, watch you're going - there's nothing worse than blinking right into a hornet's nest and aggroing another three mobs of the same type that you're trying to escape from.
Frost Nova will be your bread and butter skill to use when a mob gets too close. It lasts a good while, so don't immediately blast the trapped creature - reposition yourself a bit further away first, then proceed to finish it off. Frost has around 3-4 nova-type spells, allowing for some insane control. Fire can use Blastwave to slow opponents and Dragon's Breath to disorient them for a few seconds.
Ice block won't help you much if you're at 10% hp and you have 5 gnolls beating up on you - it does, however, help you when you're at a higher hp to 'wait out' the cooldown on your blink to get out of there faster. It also allows you to clear debuffs, prevent a cauterize death and help you not die when you fall down a cliff and don't have glyph of slow fall.
Invisibility is an excellent way to drop aggro and get out of combat - or even to avoid a mob. If you've found that you've bitten off more than you could chew, invis, reset and try again.
Teleports:
While not as advantageous to the mage as they used to be due to the revamped level flow system, having a teleport back to your main capital city is still awesome - you can safely set your hearthstone to your questing zone, allowing you hop back for some training the moment you ding, then hearth back and continue on.
Learn to Polymorph. Polymorph makes any second mob you've accidentally pulled a completely manageable situation. It is also good practice, since you'll be using it a lot in pvp and in end-game situations. (maybe less now with the 15% LFD buff) It's probably the best CC spell in the game, being spammable and affecting over 70% of in-game mobs.
Nice guide. Voted for sticky.
/sticky
Leveling up my Mage, this has been quite useful. Excellent post. Voted sticky
Sticks?
definitely sticky, great guide, thanks.
great guide, turn my way to lv. 85 much much easer! =D
Nice Guide
Great guide...this should be a sticky
Indeed!
Why did someone report this mage guide post?
See this is what I mean by PVP ruins the game!
PVP'ers who have lost against someone or someone similar can easily come on here and search the player (or similar player in same faction) they lost against and flag that persons post.
There is no constructive reason to report this post. The only thing wrong I can find with this guide from the viewpoint of a new person is too many acronyms/abbreviations for new people to understand but that is no reason to report it at all.
Listen, you sanctimonious mouther, the same icon appears when something has been reported for trolling and when it's been voted for sticky. This has nothing to do with PvP, I don't even know how the hell you came to that conclusion.
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