This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of leveling the Mage class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on the WoW Mage, including PvP tips, raid tips, more builds, leveling and gold gathering help, plus a ton of mage info, check out the Killer Guides' Mage Guide.

For general Mage info and background see our Mage Class Guide. Also check out our pages on specific mage builds: Fire, Frost, and Arcane

The WoW Mage

• 1.0 - Introduction
• 2.0 - Talents
  • Frost build
  • Fire build
  • Arcane/Fire build
• 3.0 - Stats & Progression
• 4.0 - 1-80 Mage Leveling Guide

Mages are a tricky class in which to gauge performance, particularly in leveling speed.  Put a mage with the best gear possible in the hands of an amateur and you have one of the worst levelers in the game.  On the flip-side, with an experienced player behind the class it becomes one of those oft-mentioned speed demons.

A large amount of the blame for this can be placed on the relatively complicated talent trees. Unlike many other classes where the choice for each tier is quite obvious in general, mages have quite a few talents that *sound* good and *look* good but are most definitely not good.

So, that’s why this guide is here to help. In addition to overcoming the hump of what talent build and general progression to follow, I’ll also be covering what statistics you want to aim for to truly maximize efficient damage output.

Note: The 3.2 Patch did not significantly affect the builds below.

Current Patch notes are here.

3.1 Patch comments

Mages pretty much didn't get anything out of the 3.1 patch. Various tweaks to some talents is about it. Spirit now has some minor additional use due to how it works with Molten Armor, but don't go out of your way to get it.

2.0 – Talents - Fire and Frost

Chill out, Dude. 5/0/66 Frost Mage Build for Leveling: From Zygor's Guide

1. Frost Tree
2. 3 pts in Frostbite
3. 5 pts in Improved Frostbolt
4. 3 pts in Ice Floes
5. 3 pts in Ice Shards
6. 2 pts in Frost Warding
7. 3 pts in Precision
8. 3 pts in Permafrost
9. 3 pts in Piercing Ice
10. Icy Veins
11. 3 pts Improved Blizzard
12. 2 pts in Arctic Reach
13. 3 pts in Frost Channeling
14. 3 pts in Shatter
15. Cold Snap
16. 3 pts in Improved Cone of Cold
17. 2 pts for Cold as Ice
18. 3 pts in Winter's Chill
19. Ice Barrier
20. 2 pts in Shattered Barrier
21. 5 pts in Arctic Winds
22. 2 pts in Empowered Frostbolt
23. Summon Water Elemental
24. 3 pts in Enduring Winter
25. 5 pts in Chilled to the Bone
26. Deep Freeze
27. Arcane Tree
28. 2 pts in Arcane Subtlety
29. 3 pts in Arcane Focus
30. Glyphs: Major: Frost Nova, Ice Barrier, Ice Armor; Minor: Arcane Intellect, Frost Armor, Frost Ward

Burn Baby, Burn! 8/63/0 Fire Mage Build

1. Fire Tree
2. 5 pts in Improved Fireball - Faster Fireball lobbing
3. 5 pts in Ignite - Crits cause target to continue to burn
4. 2 pts in Flame Throwing - More range
5. 3 pts in Impact - Adds a chance to stun
6. Pyroblast - Damaging attack plus burn
7. 2 pts in Burning Soul - More efficient casting
8. 3 pts in Improved Scorch - Improved crit chance for you and the team
9. 2 pts in Molten Shields - Greatly improves fire & frost ward and molten armor
10. 3 pts in Master of Elements - Crits use less mana
11. 3 pts in Playing with Fire - More damage
12. 3 pts in Critical Mass - More crits
13. Blast Wave - "Get Away from Me!"
14. 2 pts in Blazing Speed - Chance for a "Get out of Hold, Free" effect
15. 5 pts in Fire Power - More damage
16. 3 pts in Pyromaniac - More crits
17. Combustion - More crits
18. 2 pts in Molten Fury - More damage
19. 2 pts in Fiery Payback - Increases low health survivability
20. 3 pts in Empowered Fire - More damage
21. Dragon's Breath - Your bad breath causes damage, disorients, and ends attack
22. 2 pts in Firestarter - Flamestrike is instant after Blast Wave or Dragon's Breath
23. 3 pts in Hot Streak - Chance for next Pyroblast to be instant
24. 5 pts in Burnout - More crit damage for a little more mana cost
25. Living Bomb - Nice DoT plus explosion
26. Arcane Tree
27. 2 pts in Arcane Subtlety - Spells are harder to dispell
28. 3 pts in Arcane Focus - Increased changce to hit.
29. 3 pts in Arcane Fortitude - +150% armor
30. Glyphs: Major: Fireball, Improved Scorch, Molten Armor; Minor: Arcane Intellect, Fire Ward, Blast Wave,

For the purposes of this guide we’ll be following what I personally believe to be the most efficient leveling/grinding build. Whether it actually is or not likely depends on your personal play style, but in general this should work well with an efficiency minded fire mage.

Many of the talents are something of a passive increase as opposed to an actual noticeable triggering effect or an ability on its own – Improved Fireball, Ignite, Flame Throwing, Incinerate, etc.  This is likely due to the fact that as mages we rely more on our casting abilities, as opposed to other classes that make more use of some form of damage outside this spectrum, such as melee or wands.

Flame Throwing is one of my favorite Fire Mage talents to pick up due to its overall massive increase of utility throughout leveling.  By picking up Flame Throwing you can practically guarantee your ability to drop your target, even bosses, before they enter melee range, and should they somehow do so we have the next talent in line.

Burning Soul is a massive help for any Fire Mage, reducing the interruption to your spell-casting when you are hit. This can be crucial in close fights or when you get surprised by an opponent.

Improved Scorch combined with Ignite results in an immensely efficient, easy-to-use attack, that can even be spammed from start to finish to drop monsters in a swift and simple manner.  Another thing, this is really your *only* efficient damage spell when it comes down to it, and it can let you extend the last stretches of your mana pool to drop a tough enemy or two.

The next biggies are Master of the Elements and Critical Mass. These two are another combination that improves your damage output, burst and consistency, as well as your mana efficiency in a lovely joint boost.  The simple formula is: more criticals equals more damage. Yet it also results in a 30% refund from the Master of the Elements talent, a win-win situation.

More talents that result in something of a mana refund are Arcane Concentration and Elemental Precision (although this is more optional,) located in the Arcane and Frost trees, respectively.  These two, when combined with your already present fire talents as mentioned above, allow you to run a lean, mean, mana-efficient machine; it’s a fairly nice result.

And finally we hit Fire Power, Blast Wave, Molten Fury, Combustion, and Pyromaniac.  These can pretty much be summed up as: lots more damage, slightly more mana efficiency, and lots more fun! 

51/20/0 Arcane/Fire leveling build (Fire talents are in red)

1. Arcane Tree
2. 5 pts in Arcane Stability
3. 5 in Arcane Concentration
4. Fire Tree
5. 5 pts in Improved Fireball
6. 5 pts in Ignite
7. Arcane Tree
8. 1 (of 2) pts in Magic Attunement
9. 3 pts in Spell Impact
10. Focus Magic
11. 2 pts in Improved Counterspell
12. 3 pts in Arcane Meditation
13. 3 pts in Torment the Weak
14. Presence of Mind
15. 5 pts in Arcane Mind
16. 3 pts in Arcane Instability
17. 2 pts in Arcane Potency
18. Arcane Power
19. 2 pts in Arcane Flows
20. 5 pts in Mind Mastery
21. Slow
22. 5 pts in Missile Barrage
23. 2 pts in Spell Power
24. Arcane Barrage
25. Fire Tree
26. 2 pts in Flame Throwing
27. 2 (of 3) pts in Impact
28. Pyroblast
29. 2 pts in Burning Soul
30. 3 pts in Master of Elements
31. Glyphs: Major: Mage Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Barrier; Minor: Arcane Intellect, Frost Armor, Fire Ward
    

The general routine is this: Keep the opposition at maximum range wherever possible and blast away. Use Frost Nova when the mob gets too close, get some range and blast away. You will probably want to have a wand handy for those times when you are low on mana, and use the wand when the mob is running away from you or your partner is tanking it.

3.0 – Gear & Progression

The most important statistics for any mage are intellect and stamina. These two stats improve two things that no mage is ever satisfied with: health and mana.  Thankfully, it isn’t too hard to find numerous cloth pieces that contain at least one, and often both, of these stats in ample levels.

Strength? For what? To hold up a heavy staff? Skip it. Same for Agility. Agility does add to dodge and armor, but not enough to be worth looking for.

Spirit now has some use in that it increases the crit chance of your Molten Armor by a significant amount, but the other stats have more general utility.

Secondly, we come to the more complicated stats: Spell Power, Spell Critical, Spell Hit, and Spell Penetration.  Of all these Spell Power is the most common, as well as generally the best to stack once you’ve hit 40+. Prior to this, Stamina and Intellect are both more prevalent and more useful.

Past 40 you can start searching for increased Spell Power gear as well as picking up a few spell crit items if possible. It’s just that all of these are extremely rare and difficult to find unless you deliberately prepare them ahead of time (as in before leveling your mage,) and keep them in the bank or something.

For leveling purposes look for stats more or less in this order:

• Intelligence - For your mana pool and spell crit chance
• Stamina - Until you can survive fights
• Spell Power
• Spell Crit
• Spell hit - Has much more value in PvP and Raids
• Spell penetration
• Spell Haste - More useful in raiding than leveling
• Resilience- Only useful for PvP
• Resistance - Only useful for raids

60+ is when you start rolling in the Spell Power, Crit, it, etc.  All of these are present in some form or another on almost every piece of mage gear throughout Outland and Northrend, in addition to lavish amounts of Stamina and Intellect.

Basically, prior to 60 you’ll hit many dry spots in terms of gear, but after that level you’ll be hard pressed to avoid it.

4.0 Mage 1-80 leveling Guide

Once you have the right build for your Mage consider a full blown 1-80 Mage Leveling Guide for the most effective (fastest) leveling. Why? With thousands of quests and a million mobs to grind the trip to 80 can take a while. A long while. An in-game leveling guide, like Zygor's Guide, automates the whole 1-80 path for your mage, or start from any level and use Zygor's to blast to the finish.

Pick your starting point and the guide will show you where to go and what to do. It automatically updates and advances as you complete tasks and quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically (always showing you where to go next,) and includes all the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less stop mid-play to browse Thottbot. Grab your copy here and get leveled fast, or read the review first.