1.0 - The Mage
2.0 - Mage Abilities
3.0 - Leveling
4.0 - PvP
5.0 - Raiding
This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.
1.0 - The Mage
Mages are the arbiters of the Arcane, Fire, and Frost. They are wielders of mystical energies beyond all natural comprehension, and sheep-happy PvP maniacs if my battlegrounds experiences count for anything, but above all, mages are clean and simple fun.
Rolling a mage and bringing it to maximum level is tough work, but the end result is a character of extreme versatility so far as damage dealing goes and one that I found to be more fun than practically any other character I’ve created.
Mages are by no means overpowered though, rather I would say that if anything they’re much underpowered, however whether or not this is the case, they still present a potent enemy in all styles of gameplay.
We are based around the philosophy of burst-damage, annihilation of opposition before they can react, or at least reach you, and beyond that initial burst you’ll find our DPS and utility decrease dramatically on all fronts.
In PvP the fight is decided almost entirely upon whether you either A: Kill the opponent in the first 5-8 seconds, or B: Bring him down low enough that your teammates can finish him as you run out of mana, either one is a decidedly risky venture because you never really know quite how durable your enemy is
before it’s too late.
The un-expected resist to one of your main damage spells can leave you completely defeated or even worse is having frost nova broken, blink bugging out and teleporting you forward about a quarter of an inch, and all manner of other troubles you’ll face with one simple mistake.
Mages are cloth wearers, much like Warlocks and Priests, however unlike both these classes we do not possess the adequate survivability to make up for our lack of armor, no healing and no massive health pools. Instead we rely entirely on ‘not getting hit.’
This crosses over into PvE woes as well, with the increasing frequency of AoE boss fights dictating that we either risk dying a minute into the fight or gimp our damage/mana pool for the extra life required. Neither choice is a good one, and to make yourself useful you’ll need to possess enough skill to make your positive qualities shine above all the disadvantages present, not an easy task at all.
Tradeskills
So far as tradeskills go, it’s a fairly obvious choice as to what you’ll be picking up if you want to maximize your gear levels the instant you hit 70, and that would be tailoring. Tailoring gives us not only consistent and useful upgrades from 1-60, but increasingly rewarding and instance level gear upgrades once you venture into Outland.
Multiple sets of cloth armor are greater than even Karazhan gear and quite more accessible even for a brand new 70, all it takes is a high if not maxed out tailoring skill by the time you reach maximum level. Since tailoring doesn’t possess any specific synergies tradeskill wise, you can always grab mining or some other gathering profession to aid funding your primary crafting abilities.
Check out our Tailoring Guide for information on leveling the skill
2.0 - Mage Abilities
Mage ability trees are divided into three primary elements, Arcane, Fire, and Frost, each possessing far more than simple visual difference. Starting with Arcane, you’ll find it to be the primary ‘utility’ tree for mage PvE or PvP, having quite a few mana regeneration and conservation talents combined with improvement of our more useful spells such as blink or counterspell.
Arcane is also seen by some as a raiding tree, largely due to the high mana constraints placed on raiding mages from 5-10 minute long fights as opposed to PvP where high burst is favored over consistency.
Fire is that burst tree, boasting massive amounts of damage including more than a few incapacitation abilities/augmentation. This comes from talents such as impact (chance to stun on fireball impact,) and Dragon’s Breath, a frontal cone disorientation spell.
Frost represents a combination of Fire and Arcane, less burst damage than fire but generally more than arcane, especially with shatter and a couple more increased critical damage talents. Additionally it has some of the mana regeneration of arcane, not completely as effective but still enough to make it worthwhile.
Generally PvP or PvE builds will pick up frost or fire as a primary tree and build up Arcane as a supporting cast style of talent picking, however some mages have been known to favor arcane as a primary or even all points into the single tree.
Arcane
As said above, Arcane is largely a utility tree, however when maxed out the arcane abilities also extend to massive burst damage what with Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, and a variety of other mixed damage increasers/mana regeneration abilities.
Arcane also happens to be my personal favorite spell tree, but I’ll have to warn you that aside from specific raiding or PvP situations, it doesn’t provide nearly as much splashy effects and noticeable increasers aside from when your cooldowns are ready.
All in all arcane can be seen as the tree that emphasizes your already present abilities such as Arcane Blast and other spells as opposed to granting you a whole new slew of special effects like dragons breath or water elemental.
Fire
Fire is the burst damage tree, massive damages, pyroblasts, etc. If you’re looking for anything from a
good leveling build to raiding or PvP, fire is one of the easier choices. Most styles of play can be compensated for by picking up the generally viable talents in this tree, it’s all a matter of how you use them.
By properly gearing yourself you can fit literally almost any situation as fire, it presents the range and damage efficiency required for raiding, the burst potential desperately needed in PvP, and with some good spell rotation becomes an extremely efficient grinding machine.
Many raiding and gladiator mages choose a mixture of primary fire and secondary arcane, it definitely works, and with a few perks such as blazing speed it becomes all that much more useful.
Frost
Frost presents an interesting alternative to Fire and Arcane, boasting a combination of both damage potential and mana efficiency with the added bonus of massively increased survivability via Ice Barrier, Ice Block, and improved root abilities via frost nova.
Probably the best starting PvP build for an experimenting Mage due to how much more forgiving it can be. By possessing more than a few tools to increase your life-span you’ll find yourself in the possession of far more opportunities to at the very least live through a given fight if not defeat the opponent outright.
Frost is also an equally effective leveling build comparative to fire, instead of killing monsters before they react, you kill them via a small amount of kiting if necessary augmented by the frost spells snare effect.
This section is only an overview of paladin leveling, check out our Mage Leveling Guide for more information.
3.0 - Leveling
As I mentioned near the start of the guide, mages are great fun at level 70, it’s getting there that’s really quite painful. Levels 1-60 were nothing short of the worst grinding I’ve ever done, somewhat like you’d expect pulling your brain out and dropping it in a blender would feel like, but maybe a little worse.
That’s not to say it’s slow, rather that I personally find it the most detestable leveling experience in the entirety of world of warcraft, but terrible or not it can still be fast. You have a lot of things going for you, portals to major cities, food and water summoning, and you can continue killing for an indefinite period of time due to the major lack of gear dependency.
I found myself many times completing quests with every last piece of gear broken without having a noticeable slowdown in killing speed, it’s just that easy for mages as unlike every other class they come completely self-supporting.
Fire Mage Leveling
10/48/3 Fire Mage Leveling Build
Going fire as your primary talent line-up while leveling is probably the best idea for those new to the mage class, it’s simple, easily learned and configured for any setup, and eliminates quite a bit of the problems you can run into when trying the alternative leveling strategies inherent in the other talent builds.
Impact and flame throwing are some early on great talents that give you a very high chance of stunning the target before they reach your soft and squishy mage-self, this indirectly enhances survivability and reduces the chance of requiring food per pull.
All the basics of blasting away and dropping multiple mobs a pull before they even reach you are enhanced at each talent. Improved scorch gives you a great low-cost high-damage returns spell for finishing off low health mobs as well.
Well rounded and easily utilized, the 10/48/3 is an easily customized and usable talent setup.
Frost Mage Leveling
10/0/51 Frost Leveling Build
Leveling as frost will be likely similar speeds to fire if not slightly faster depending on your degree of skill concerning frosts primary calling card, snares and roots. Frost mages are all about mobility, survivability, and in many cases AoE grinding as opposed to fires strictly one at a time kill scheme.
Frost deals maximum damage when the target is frozen, big secret right there, so obviously the more the target is frozen, the more critical you throw out, the higher damage dealt overall, etc. This would be why you grab all the talents related to freezing opponents as well as shatter and a few others to make you a monster of massive critical strikes, rivaling fire burst damage when you hit lucky streaks.
Due to your increased survivability via ice barrier and so on, you can easily handle multiple pulls of two-three mobs and through proper usage of abilities take them all down quite a bit faster than a fire build as well. Again, this is all about how well you control your mage, many players I’ve seen run fire from 1-50 before changing to frost for the remainder of the leveling.
Finally AoE grinding is best done as a mixture of frost and arcane, blizzard is the ultimate AoE spell simply due to its slowing effect allowing you to kite mobs almost indefinitely with proper planning and execution.
Arcane Mage Leveling
51/0/10 Arcane Leveling Build
Arcane is a spec simply not designed for leveling, at least not as a primary tree of development while leveling. Most all of arcanes benefits are revealed and utilized to their maximum potential much later on, somewhere around the time you pick up arcane blast and really start to gain some massive damage via arcane power/presence of mind.
Due to this you’ll find yourself the classic example of inefficient burst damage and forced to drink every other kill, leading you to a very long and exasperating trip to level 50 or so before things finally begin to pick up.
I seriously won’t recommend arcane for anything other than supporting talents such as Arcane Concentration and Arcane Focus perhaps.
4.0 - PvP
2/48/11 Fire Arena Build
17/0/44 Frost Arena Build
48/13/0 Arcane/Fire Arena Build
5.0 - Raiding
Just a listing of gear for newer level 70's mages looking to begin karazhan and other such content, not all encompassing, just my personal choices and what I picked up along the way if possible. Many pieces are crafted, tailoring is your friend.
Helm:
Spellstrike Hood - Crafted
Battlecast Hood - Crafted
Evoker's Helmet of Second Sight - Crafted
Neck:
Manasurge Pendant - 25 Heroic Badges
Charlotte's Ivy - World Drop BoE
Brooch of Heightened Potential -Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Back:
Shawl of Shifting Probabilities - 25 Heroic Badges
Baba's Cloak of Arcanistry - Drop(Mechanar)
Sethekk Oracle Cloak - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Shoulders:
Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders - Crafted
Mantle of Three Terrors - Drop(Black Morass)
Spaulders of the Torn-heart - Quest Reward
Chest:
Spellfire Robe - Crafted
Incanter's Robe - Drop(Botanica)
Robe of the Crimson Order - BoE World Drop
Wrist:
Bands of Rarefied Magic - Drop(Heroic Shattered Halls)
Bands of Nethekurse - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Shattrath Wraps - Quest Reward
Hands:
Spellfire Gloves - Crafted
Incanter's Gloves - Drop(Steamvault)
Gloves of the High Magus - Quest Reward
Belt:
Spellfire Belt - Crafted
Girdle of Ruination - Crafted
Mage-Fury Girdle - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Sash of Serpentra - Drop(Steamvault)
Legs:
Spellstrike Pants - Crafted
Battlecast Pants - Crafted
Mana-Etched Pantaloons - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Incanter's Trousers - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Boots:
Frozen Shadoweave Boots - Crafted
Boots of Blasphemy - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Silent Slippers of Meditation - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Rings:
Ring of Cryptic Dreams - 25 Heroic Badges
Cobalt Band of Tyrigosa - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs)
Seer's Signet - Scryers Exalted
Ashyen's Gift - Cenarion Expedition Exalted
Band of the Guardian - Quest Reward
Seal of the Exorcist - 50 Spirit Shards
Trinkets:
Shiffar's Nexus-Horn - Drop(Arcatraz)
Arcanist's Stone - Drop(Heroic Old Hillsbrad)
Oculus of the Hidden Eye - Drop(Auchenai Crypts)
Weapons:
Eternium Runed Blade - Crafted
Blade of the Archmage - Reputation Reward(Honor Hold Exalted)
Mana Wrath - Drop(Mechanar)
Greatsword of Horrid Dreams - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Off-hand:
Lamp of Peaceful Radiance - Drop(Arcatraz)
Manual of the Nethermancer - Drop(Mechanar)
Hortus' Seal of Brilliance - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Two-Handed:
Terokk's Shadowstaff - Drop(Heroic Sethekk Halls)
Bloodfire Greatstaff - Drop(Black Morass)
Warpstaff of Arcanum - Drop(Botanica)
Ameer's Impulse Taser - Quest Reward
Ranged Weapon:
The Black Stalk - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Nexus Torch - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Nethekurse's Rod of Torment - Quest Reward
Wand of the Netherwing - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth) |
