Mage Leveling Guide

Mages are a pure DPS class with three different trees devoted to dealing damage. The Frost Mage has always been one of the most effective solo builds in World of Warcraft with its emphasis on control and survivability. In Cataclysm, Fire is also a competitive option for those who want to blow up enemies with heavy AoE damage.

In this guide, we’ll go over helpful tips, where to spend your talent points, what to look for when gearing, effective use of your abilities, and other general advice to make the leveling process as smooth and easy as possible!

Pros

• Blink, Slow Fall, and Teleport spells make getting around a breeze
• Solid crowd control with Frost Nova, several slows, and Polymorph
• High damage output makes for fast farming and questing
• Strong AoE at higher levels through Blizzard or Flamestrike
• Low skill floor; you could theoretically just Frostbolt or Fireball your way to 85

Cons

• Blizzard isn’t available until level 52 in Cataclysm, and Fire AoE isn’t viable until higher levels either
• “Glass cannons” with low armor and no healing
• High skill ceiling; optimal play requires effective kiting and crowd control

General Leveling Tips

Frost Mages are known for their ability to control the battlefield with slows and snares. They also have a pet to take some of the heat off them and Ice Barrier to help with defense. Frost will be the safer option for most players and still offers solid AoE damage.

Fire Mages are also a strong leveling option, particularly as you get into the higher levels and unlock more of their AoE abilities. Fire will have higher damage output in groups if you plan to run a lot of dungeons. It’s also one of the strongest PvE builds at endgame, and leveling with it can help you learn the ins and outs as you go so you don’t have to learn a whole new specialization at level 85.

Stat Priority

• Intellect
• Critical Strike
• Haste
• Mastery

Rotation

Lower Levels

Frost

At low levels, you’ll rely primarily on Frostbolt, weaving in some other abilities as you learn them.

• Maintain Frost Armor
• Be sure your Summon Water Elemental is active and attacking
• Cone of Cold on cooldown if you have more than one enemy
• Ice Lance whenever you get 2 charges of Fingers of Frost
• Frostbolt spam otherwise

Fire

At low levels, you’ll lean more on your single-target spells.

• Maintain Frost Armor until you learn Molten Armor
• Cast Pyroblast whenever you get a Hot Streak
• Fireball spam otherwise

Higher Levels

Frost

AoE becomes viable for Frost when you learn Blizzard at level 52. Your goal from here is to round up as many enemies as you think you can handle and then AoE them down while keeping them at a distance.

• Round up some enemies and use Frost Nova to root them in place
• Move away a bit and start casting Blizzard to whittle them down
• Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, or Blink when you need to get some distance again

Fire

Fire Mage AoE becomes viable around level 51 when you get the Improved Flamestrike talents. This rotation is the same general idea as the Frost Mage.

• Round up some enemies and use Blast Wave to slow them down while you kite
• Use Dragon’s Breath on cooldown
• Spam Flamestrike to deal damage
• Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, or Blink when you need to get some distance again

Talents

Frost

There’s some flexibility here: you may opt to buff up your Ice Barrier with Shattered Barrier or Reactive Barrier, perhaps by dropping Improved Cone of Cold.

Fire

This is also our endgame PvE talent build for Fire Mages, so you’ll be able to learn the build as you level and jump straight into group content at level 85! You may choose to take Cauterize at an earlier level, but it can be a mixed bag, especially in solo content where you don’t have many options to heal yourself. (Despite saving your life, you will need to be able to heal after this activates or the DoT will kill you anyway.)

Glyphs

Prime

Frost

• Glyph of Frostbolt
  A straightforward buff to one of your core damage spells
• Glyph of Cone of Cold
  Another straightforward buff to another core spell

Fire

• Glyph of Fireball
  A straightforward buff to one of your core damage spells
• Glyph of Pyroblast
  Another straightforward buff to another core spell

Major

Frost

• Glyph of Evocation
  This glyph gives you a way to heal yourself in combat
• Glyph of Frost Nova
  Causes your targets to stay rooted for longer

Fire

• Glyph of Evocation
  This glyph gives you a way to heal yourself in combat
• Glyph of Dragon’s Breath
  Allows you to disorient your targets more often

Minor

• Glyph of Conjuring
  Helpful for conjuring food between pulls as well as conjuring mana gems mid-combat
• Glyph of Slow Fall
  This will save you having to carry around a bunch of Light Feathers (or forgetting them and plummeting to your death)

Equipment

Mages are able to use one-handed Swords, Daggers, Staves, and Wands. You should always try to use whichever weapon gives you the best stats, combining a one-handed sword or dagger with an off-hand item or using a staff in both hands.

Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. Weapons are your primary source of Spell Power, and will be a big boost every time you upgrade.

Mages are only able to use cloth armor. This means you will never be particularly great at taking physical damage, but you have a few spells you can use to mitigate or avoid physical damage entirely! Play smart and your armor will rarely be a hindrance.

Professions

Your professions won’t really affect the leveling process much, but if you want some useful passive bonuses, you can go with gathering professions like Herbalism or Skinning. These will be easy to keep up with while leveling and also offer the best gold-making potential.

If you want to get ahead of your crafting earlier, I recommend grabbing Enchanting & Tailoring. These two work well together and are some of your best choices for endgame. Leveling Enchanting also allows you to constantly disenchant things as you level, getting you stocked up on materials for leveling.

Useful Macros

There aren’t many super important macros for leveling, but there are some that are nice to have.

Here’s a macro that will cast Blizzard in the location of your mouse cursor, saving you a click:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Blizzard

You can also do the same thing with Flamestrike:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Flamestrike