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Welcome to our Mage class leveling guide for WotLK Classic! Mages are the masters of Frost, Fire, and Arcane spell schools. As a Mage, you can use the Frost school to chill enemies until they can’t move anymore, the Fire school to barbecue all who oppose you, and Arcane to blast all those in your way. All three schools of magic provide different utility to the mage’s toolkit, allowing them to burst enemies down or kite them from one end of the map to the other end.

Mages excel at any fight length — Arcane magic dominates short fights, the flames of the Fire school excel in longer conflicts, and Frost dominates fights that move at a glacial pace. This allows each spec to be useful in some regard! Leveling for mages is one of the best places to show the potential you have as a mage especially in the AoE (area of effect) area, allowing you two different styles of leveling.

If you’ve never played a mage before, then I suggest strapping yourself in, as we have a lot to cover! To navigate to a specific section, use the Contents button at the top of this guide.

Throughout the guide, you’ll see buttons — click them to see details on the topic in question!

Should I Play Mage?

Pros

  • Doesn’t require gear while leveling.
  • Reliable and consistent leveling experience.
  • Great damage over an extended period of time.
  • One of the best movement abilities in Blink
  • Very quick leveling speed (after level 20).
  • Free Food and Water to reduce downtime!
  • Can travel between cities starting at level 40

Cons

  • Rotation can feel repetitive
  • Constantly asked for food and water (can be a pro as well!)
  • Very squishy class

General Leveling Tips & Gameplay Advice

Getting to level 80 is usually quite a challenge, but mages have several tricks up their sleeve to race to the top. With our ability to kill up to 10 mobs at once we have a massive advantage over many other casters and even some melee; Mages also have a couple of ways to escape from sticky situations!

  • You’ll probably do this naturally, but try to kill enemies anywhere and everywhere you go. If you have full health and mana try pushing your class a bit further and only stop when you’re fully out of mana with no methods to regenerate it except through water.
  • Make sure to visit the class Trainer regularly to improve your spells to then make leveling easier.
  • Unlike other classes, you will almost always want to fight 3 or more mobs (past level 20) at once in order to speed up your leveling experience.
  • Try to fight enemies that are the same level as you as they grant the most XP.
  • Remember to use your Hearthstone to get around quickly, if you’re under level 10 you can also use the graveyards as well to save time running back and forth.
  • While grouping will definitely increase how fast you level and is recommended for solo target leveling, AoE grinding is faster without being in a group with others.
  • Mages have several Buffs, one of which is Arcane Intellect which should always be on as it provides more mana, crit, and mana regen. Other useful buffs include Frost Armor, Ice Armor (a better version of Frost Armor), Mage Armor, and Molten Armor. Each one provides a unique buff specific to either level or leveling strategy. The last 2 buffs would be Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic with these two having very niche uses.
  • Once you have Mana gems, make sure you never start combat without having one already made!
  • If you are ever worried about dying, you can always Frost Nova mobs and run away. Alternatively, if you’re at level 70 you can use Invisibility to drop combat and escape.

The rotation for Mage is as follows; note that it depends both on what level you are as well as your leveling strategy:

Each spec has a different way of leveling after level 60:

Talent Path & Training Abilities

Talents

Depending on what school you’d like to focus on, your talent path will vary dramatically:

  • Leveling as Frost revolves around using Blizzard for AoE, water elemental, and frostbolt to kill mobs. It is generally the best spec to choose for leveling as it has the most survivability out of the 3 specs.
  • Leveling as Fire revolves around Living Bomb for AoE, Fireball and Pyroblasts for Single target, while also getting Pyroblasts with Hotstreak. Fire, while weaker early on without the survivability of frost or aoe potential, catches up once you acquire living bomb and are able to place it on 10 mobs at a time and burst them down.
  • Leveling as Arcane (level 64) revolves around Arcane Blast and Arcane Missile. This spec has the most burst potential of the 3 and can be useful for killing solo mobs the quickest.
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Frost Leveling
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Frost Progression
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Fire Leveling
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Fire Progression
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Arcane Leveling (after level 64)
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Arcane Progression

Abilities to Train

As mages have an abundance of abilities, most of them are worth picking up, and very few aren’t needed (Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic). Therefore, you should train all the spells you can when you visit the trainer.

Gearing

Knowing what stats to prioritize, and what sort of gear you should be looking for, can go a long way toward making your time leveling easier.

  • Try to use a one-hander and an off-hand item for a better combination of stats. While Staves can look cooler, the one-hander and off-hand combo tend to do better overall in terms of the combination of stats it can give you.
  • Mages can do well without major upgrades (you can get to level 80 in Westfall blues and greens) but anything with Spell power, Intellect, Spirit, and Stamina on it will help a lot when it comes to killing mobs faster!
  • Always have a decent wand with you, as you may need a couple of wand hits to finish off an enemy at lower levels.

The following list is a general guideline for what stats you should prioritize getting from gear, gems, and enchants (and even potions!).

  1. Spell Power – This stat can increase your damage by nearly double for some spells, and affects everything besides wands and weapons.
  2. Intellect – Increases our mana pool, our mana regen, and gives us passive crit. This is a very nice stat to have, as mages can quickly run out of mana while leveling.
  3. Spirit – Helps with Mana regen as well as converting into Crit with Molten Armor on.
  4. Stamina – Helps us survive longer and allows us to pull more mobs before dying, need I say more on this amazing stat?

Class Quests & Rewards

When completing class quests, it’s important to pick the best rewards!

Professions

The professions you want to choose are going to depend on your goals whilst leveling. Do you want to be as fast as possible, do you care about endgame, earning gold, etc. Whatever your goals are, you should level First Aid as a Mage, but your other choices are up to you:

  • Speed leveling: Only get First Aid. All other professions will cut into your time, even something as simple as skinning adds up to several hours until you reach level 80
  • Fast leveling + Gold generation: Here you can take Skinning. It will add some time, but also a nice flow of gold.
  • Max two professions: If you want to max two professions at once then Skinning paired with either Herbalism or Mining is a good start.
  • Endgame: Start with Engineering and Mining, then drop mining to grab Tailoring. These professions can take a while to max out and get the items you need out of them, but doing this ends up with you having the two best-in-slot professions for a mage.

Useful Macros

Iceblock + Cancel Macro

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

Force Pet Attack

/cast Frostbolt
/use Waterbolt

Aggro Wipe or Mob Resetter

#showtooltip Invisibility
/cancelaura Invisibility
/cast Invisibility

 

About the Author

Amery

Hey guys! My name is Amery and here is a little something about me: I've been playing WoW for about 15 years now. With that experience, I wanted to share all the things I have learned over the years.
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Meta
Meta
8 months ago

In the frost tree, you pick up Fingers of Frost before Shatter which doesn’t make any sense. Shatter should be taken ASAP not withheld till 54.

Noah M
Noah M
8 months ago

The arcane talent points in this build are 100% wasted, spend your points in the frost tree those arcane talents are horrible.

your mom
your mom
Reply to  Noah M
8 months ago

get bent lol

Py Black
Py Black
Reply to  Noah M
5 months ago

Thats horrible advice, and will make you run out of mana before you finish a pull.

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