Mage Leveling Guide

The Mage is often seen as the soloing superstar of World of Warcraft due their many crowd control abilities and strong cooldowns. Their kiting ability is unparalleled, and at higher levels they can AoE down large packs of weaker mobs without breaking a sweat. Their teleportation spells allow them to travel freely between continents and their Blink spell makes crossing smaller distances a breeze. All of this holds true in Mists of Pandaria.

This guide will help you plan out your build, equipment, professions, rotation, and where to go as a Mage to get from 1 to 90 as efficiently as possible. You’ll be running circles around enemies and deflecting requests for ports before you know it.

Strengths

• Teleport and Portal spells give you free reign over the world (of Warcraft) and allow you to set your Hearthstone in your current questing zone for convenience.
• Blink makes you faster on foot and helps you evade enemies.
• You’ll have all the tools you need for crowd control, kiting, and escape. You can even turn invisible to sneak past particularly troublesome mobs.
• A Mage never needs to buy food or water from a vendor, since they can conjure both themselves.
• You have 3 options for dealing damage, depending on your preferred spell flavor and playstyle.

Weaknesses

• Once your cooldowns are used up, you’re pretty “squishy,” with low armor and no healing abilities.
• As a pure DPS class, you won’t have the ease of finding dungeon groups that you would if you could tank or heal.
• The old days of AoE grinding in Classic zones are mostly gone – you won’t even have Blizzard until level 52.

Talent Builds

Mages are pure ranged damage dealers with three talent trees that offer different approaches to that role. Frost is widely considered to be the strongest specialization for leveling and solo farming due to its exceptional control and utility. The Fire build is popular as well for its strong damage output. Some players choose to level as Arcane for its simplicity, but it’s considered to be the weakest of the three for leveling.

Talents

Because of the changes to talent trees in this expansion, all of your class’s specializations share the same set of talent options. Our recommendations are the same regardless of spec.

• Level 15: Ice Floes
  With this ability you’ll be able to reposition yourself without having to stop your rotation. Presence of Mind has a longer cooldown and Blazing Speed isn’t as useful.
• Level 30: Flameglow
  A passive, constant damage absorption is nice to have while leveling, and you won’t have to remember to use it. If you’d rather have more control over your defense, you can pick Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier.
• Level 45: Ice Ward
  Keeping this buff on yourself will help you escape from any enemies who get too close. Ring of Frost can be used instead if you prefer to be more proactive, but it has a cast time and a longer cooldown, which make it harder to use in a pinch. Frostjaw isn’t as useful since you can’t hit the target without breaking its effect.
• Level 60: Cold Snap
  This spell will heal you as well as resetting some of your cooldowns, both of which are really useful for solo questing and farming. Greater Invisibility can be just as useful if you prefer to have a true panic button. Cauterize isn’t as good outside group content since you will still wind up at 10% health without healing.
• Level 75: Frost Bomb
  When you’re leveling, enemies will not always live long enough for Living Bomb or Nether Tempest to reach their full duration. This option has a faster detonation and it also helps you maintain control of the mobs.

Glyphs

Glyphs have been trimmed down a bit for Mists of Pandaria and have a more subtle impact than they did in Cataclysm, with Prime Glyphs completely gone away. The glyphs below are our recommendations for leveling, but your mileage may vary based on your own preferences and playstyle (and what cosmetic effects you may want). There’s a bit of variety between the specs for the level 75 Major Glyph, but they can all use the same Minor Glyphs.

Major

• Level 25: Glyph of Blink
  This glyph makes your very useful movement spell even more useful by increasing its distance. Getting around quickly is vital to efficient leveling.
• Level 50: Glyph of Evocation
  Your Evocation spell will now give you health as well as mana, which is incredibly useful when solo questing and farming.
• Level 75:
  • Arcane: Glyph of Slow
    With this glyph, you get a little extra crowd control from your normal rotation.
  • Fire: Glyph of Armors
    This is a decent buff to your Molten Armor so you take less physical damage when mobs catch up to you.
  • Frost: Glyph of Water Elemental
    This makes your sidekick a little more useful and a little more sturdy.

Minor

• Level 25: Glyph of Momentum
  You can now strafe with confidence that you’re going to head in the direction you want to go.
• Level 50: Glyph of Rapid Teleportation
  You’ll get the zoomies after you teleport, which is fun, and will speed up your pit stops so you can get back to leveling more quickly.
• Level 75: Glyph of Loose Mana
  This is primarily useful for Arcane Mages after they get Alter Time, which will allow you to get more mana out of mana gems if you use this. Otherwise you can choose one of the many cosmetic options because there aren’t any other useful Minor Glyphs.

Stat Priority

Always try to stack your main stat above all. For all three specializations, that will be Intellect.

Equipment

Mages are fairly limited in terms of what gear they can use. You’ll be able to equip Wands, Daggers, Staves, and One-Handed Swords. Mages can’t Dual Wield and they can’t equip Shields. A Staff will usually provide you with the easiest stats while leveling, but you can also use a One-Handed weapon with a Held in Off-hand item. Note that Wands now use your Main Hand slot since the Ranged equipment slot has been removed from the game with this expansion. Weapon upgrades will often be the biggest damage increase while leveling. If you’re using an Heirloom weapon, it will upgrade automatically each time you level.

As far as armor, Mages can only wear Cloth, and will benefit from their Cloth Specialization passive ability while wearing it.

Heirlooms

Heirlooms can considerably speed up the leveling process by granting you increased experience gains and making your character a lot stronger. They’re also a lot more convenient than having to replace your gear every few levels. To get heirloom equipment for your Mage, you’ll have to buy it on another character who has enough of an appropriate currency.

Any heirloom gear is better than nothing. If you happen to have some lying around after leveling another character, feel free to use them rather than buying new ones (as long as the stats are good for you). But these are the best pieces if you’re looking to purchase some Heirlooms specifically for leveling your Mage, regardless of specialization:

• Head: Tattered Dreadmist Mask
• Shoulder: Tattered Dreadmist Mantle
• Back: Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak
• Chest: Tattered Dreadmist Robe
• Legs: Tattered Dreadmist Leggings
• Finger: Dread Pirate Ring
• Trinket: Discerning Eye of the Beast x2
• Weapons: Dignified Headmaster’s Charge

Professions

While it can be more efficient in the long run to level professions at the same time that you level your character, it will significantly slow down the leveling process. With that said, the three gathering professions – Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning – each offer useful passive bonuses that can help you in your journey, even if you don’t bother to level them.

Crafting professions require a bit more work (or a lot of gold to buy the materials on the Auction House), but they can provide powerful items to make leveling smoother. Tailoring and Engineering both offer some very useful gear and utility for Mages. You can also get a head start on whichever professions you wish to focus on in the endgame, or choose professions that will be useful to your other characters in the meantime. Many players who pick up Tailoring opt to take Enchanting as their other profession due to their synergy (you can enchant the gear you make, and disenchant extra items that you don’t need).

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that gathering with Archaeology, Herbalism, and Mining gives character experience as well as profession experience. (Skinning does not.) The amount of experience you gain doesn’t really make up for the extra time you need to spend leveling them, but at least it’s something.

Rotation

Now that you’re all set up, here’s what buttons you should push and in what order!

For the first few levels, you’re stuck using Frostfire Bolt and Fire Blast. By level 12 you should be able to shift to a specific rotation for your build.

Arcane

• Maintain your armor buff:
  • Molten Armor (level 34+).
  • Frost Armor (level 54+).
  • Mage Armor (level 80+).
• Use Arcane Missiles if you have 4 stacks of Arcane Charge (level 24+).
• Use Arcane Barrage when you have 4 stacks of Arcane Charge but Arcane Missiles is not available (level 12+).
• Use Arcane Explosion if you’re fighting more than 2 enemies (level 18+).
• Use Arcane Blast otherwise.

Fire

• Maintain your Molten Armor buff (level 34+).
• Use Combustion on cooldown if you have Ignite on the target and if the target won’t die within a few seconds (level 77+).
• Use Pyroblast if you have both Pyroblast! and Heating Up.
• Use Inferno Blast if you have Heating Up but no Pyroblast! (level 24+).
• Use Scorch if you need to move (level 48+).
• Use Fireball otherwise.

Frost

• Maintain your armor buff:
  • Molten Armor (level 34+).
  • Frost Armor (level 54+).
• Use Frozen Orb on cooldown (level 62+).
• Use Frostfire Bolt if you have a Brain Freeze proc (level 77+).
• Use Blizzard if you’re fighting more than 3 enemies (level 52+).
• Use Ice Lance if you have Fingers of Frost (level 24+).
• Use Frostbolt otherwise.

Where To Level

Getting Started

Like all classes except for Death Knights, Mages begin in the starting zone for their character’s race. Completing your starting zone should get you through the first dozen or so levels. After that, you can head to your faction’s capital city to train professions, use the Auction House, and decide where to go next. A good place to start is the Hero’s Call Board in the center of The Trade District in Stormwind City or the Warchief’s Command Board in front of Grommash Hold at The Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar. This board will always have a couple of quests directing you to a zone in your level range.

Portals & Teleports

As a Mage, you’ll gain the ability to teleport to a number of key locations as you level. Unlike in the old pre-Cataclysm days, you can learn all of your Teleport and Portal spells from any Portal Trainer. So be sure to visit them every so often to pick up new locations.

Teleport spells will only transport your own character while Portal spells will allow you to transport other players. You’ll typically learn Teleport spells a bit earlier than Portal spells. Remember to take advantage of these spells to reach nearby zones. As soon as you are able to start teleporting to your faction’s capital city, you can start setting your Hearthstone to your current questing zone for convenience.

Alliance Portal & Teleport Locations by Level

Horde Portal & Teleport Locations by Level

Leveling Beyond Your Starting Zone

Level 20 is when you’ll be able to get your first mount. After that, you should train new riding skills as soon as they become available to help you get around more quickly. Don’t forget to also train your professions, upgrade your gear, and pick up glyphs when you have new slots available. At level 30, you can learn Dual Specialization from your class trainer, which will allow you to have an alternate build that you can swap to when you feel the need.

For the first 58 levels, you’ll be questing or dungeon grinding in Classic zones and instances on the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. When you get into the higher levels, you should head to the next expansion’s zones as soon as you’re able to: Outland at level 58, Northrend at 68, Cataclysm at 78, and Pandaria at 85. There’s a big jump in loot and experience for each expansion that makes it well worth abandoning whatever you were doing before and moving on.

If you’re not worried about taking the fastest, most direct path to level 90, feel free to break up your leveling process by trying out different activities. There are plenty of things to do in World of Warcraft that grant experience besides questing and killing mobs. You can get a little bit of experience from gathering with Archaeology, Herbalism, or Mining. You can run dungeons with other players, or compete against them in PvP battlegrounds. The new pet battle system also gives experience.