WoW WotLK Classic Mage Leveling Guide

Introduction

Leveling a mage is quite easy. As a ranged caster, you’re not supposed to take any damage in most situations, and you have several ways to keep mobs away from you. Additionally, there are no mandatory mage quests in the game anymore. Unlike, for example, warlocks who must obtain their pets through quests, mages have it easy and can just train most spells from any mage class trainer. Finally, a mage relies heavily on spells for damage, not as much on gear.

Gear will always make a difference, that is true, but leveling in green and blue quest reward items should be fine. If you got heirloom items and enchants, or gold to buy bind-on-equip blues and epics from the auction house, all the better. But you don’t need to have best-in-slot gear while leveling. Going out of your way to get a few more points of intellect or stamina will only slow you down.

If you have a higher level character on the same realm you’re playing on, do supply your new mage with powerful gear. If not, just use whatever you can get.

Mage leveling gear

As a mage, you can only wear cloth. The base stats you want to focus on for leveling are intellect, stamina and spirit, in that order. However, if you feel your gameplay is one long near-death experience, get some more stamina on your gear in place of intellect. Agility and strength are completely useless to a mage and you should never have gear with those.

Dodge, defense and armor are tank stats, and not something you want to focus on. Avoid those.

Attack power and expertise should also be completely avoided.

Resilience can be good if you’re going to level up in battlegrounds, but you’re usually better off with offensive stats since battleground leveling is slow and you’ll likely level in other ways, too.

While leveling, it’s a good idea to have around 5% hit rating or more on your gear as fire, and 2% or more as frost, if you take the Precision talent. First and foremost, we need to make sure we actually hit with the spells we cast.

After that, you can focus on spell power (and crit rating if you’re a fire mage). Haste rating isn’t important until end-game.

MP5, or “regenerates X mana per 5 seconds” is something you may come across, but avoid it. It’s useless while leveling.

Spell penetration isn’t needed while leveling either.

So, your gear should consist mostly of the following:

• Intellect
• Stamina
• Spirit
• Hit rating
• Spell power
• Crit rating

Mage heirlooms

Here are the heirloom items you should get as a mage, if you got access to them:

• Chest: Tattered Dreadmist Robe
• Ring: Dread Pirate Ring
• Shoulder: Tattered Dreadmist Mantle (preferred) OR Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle (2nd best)
• Trinket 1: Discerning Eye of the Beast
• Trinket 2: Inherited Insignia of the Horde / Inherited Insignia of the Alliance OR Swift Hand of Justice
• Staff: Dignified Headmaster’s Charge (preferred) OR Grand Staff of Jordan (2nd choice)

Leveling talent builds/specs

Apart from gear, talents will make a huge difference in your leveling speed. You can either go heavy arcane or fire or frost. Arcane is a poor choice because you only really have Arcane Missiles as an offensive spell before level 64. Arcane Missiles costs too much mana, and has other drawbacks. So avoid the arcane tree until you’re a higher level.

Out of frost and fire, I personally prefer fire. Frost is more about survivability and control, with ice barrier and the water elemental pet being a great help for soloing tough fights. Also, the slow from Frostbolts make it easier to kite mobs. Frost can deal good burst damage nowadays, by first freezing the target with a Frost Nova (or pet frost nova) and then casting a Frostbolt immediately followed by an Ice Lance, a so called “shatter combo”. With the +50% crit chance against frozen targets granted by the Shatter talent in the frost tree, you can often crit both attacks, virtually insta-killing a mob that is your own level.

Fire, on the other hand, sacrifices survivability for even more crit chance and damage. If you want to see huge crits and insane damage, this tree is for you. You won’t have as much control as you would with frost; you don’t have Ice Barrier nor the Water Elemental pet, and not as many ways to slow mobs down. Therefore, multiple mobs or elites can be harder to solo. That said, fire probably has fewer buttons to press than frost as you don’t have a pet to control. Once you get Dragon’s Breath and Blast Wave (through talents) you gain more control as well. Not to mention the potential of AoE grinding once you spec into Living Bomb.

Addons for mages

Addons are a big part of WoW. Here are some ideas for helpful addons.

Some kind of proc or buff alert addon is very useful for mages. As a mage you have several proc based attacks, meaning that some sort of event (a so called proc) e.g. 2 crits in a row, allows you to cast some spells with additional power or something similar.

Here are some procs you can have, depending on talent spec, as a mage:

• Hot Streak 
• Firestarter
• Fingers of Frost
• Missile Barrage
• Brain Freeze
• Arcane Concentration

There are others too, and when they proc you have a short time to use the proc based attack. There will be a buff among your other buffs indicating when something procs, but it’s easy to miss. So you might want some kind of proc/buff alert addon that plays a sound and/or flashes an icon.

There are several mage addons that can do that. I’ve used an addon called Event Alert 2. Just find one you’re comfortable with, because you don’t want to miss those valuable procs.

Questie is an addon that, you guessed it, helps with questing, and thereby also helps with leveling. It can show available quests on the world map and mini map, as well as locations of quest objectives and turn-in points. You can also find quests by continent and zone, and see their level requirements so you don’t try to go and accept quests that are too low or high level for your character. Questie also has a built-in database of items, NPCs, quests etc. so you can search for whatever it is that you need to know. If you combine Questie with TomTom (another addon), you can get an arrow in-game that shows you the direction to travel in order to complete the objectives you’re trying to do. Questie has a lot more features, too, that can make it very helpful. There is a version for WoW Classic (1-60) and another one for WotLK (1-80).

Fire mage leveling talent spec/build

Here is a fire leveling spec you can use.

Mage Fire leveling talent build (spec) for WoW WotLK Classic.

Here’s the order in which to place points while leveling:

• Level 10 – Improved Fireball 1
• Level 11 – Improved Fireball 2
• Level 12 – Improved Fireball 3
• Level 13 – Improved Fireball 4
• Level 14 – Improved Fireball 5
• Level 15 – Improved Fire Blast 1
• Level 16 – Improved Fire Blast 2
• Level 17 – Ignite 1
• Level 18 – Ignite 2
• Level 19 – Ignite 3
• Level 20 – Pyroblast
• Level 21 – Flame Throwing 1
• Level 22 – Flame Throwing 2
• Level 23 – Ignite 4
• Level 24 – Ignite 5
• Level 25 – Burning Soul 1
• Level 26 – Burning Soul 2
• Level 27 – World In Flames 1
• Level 28 – World In Flames 2
• Level 29 – World In Flames 3
• Level 30 – Blast Wave
• Level 31 – Critical Mass 1
• Level 32 – Critical Mass 2
• Level 33 – Critical Mass 3
• Level 34 – Incineration 1
• Level 35 – Fire Power 1
• Level 36 – Fire Power 2
• Level 37 – Fire Power 3
• Level 38 – Fire Power 4
• Level 39 – Fire Power 5
• Level 40 – Combustion
• Level 41 – Pyromaniac 1
• Level 42 – Pyromaniac 2
• Level 43 – Pyromaniac 3
• Level 44 – Incineration 2
• Level 45 – Incineration 3
• Level 46 – Empowered Fire 1
• Level 47 – Empowered Fire 2
• Level 48 – Empowered Fire 3
• Level 49 – Blazing Speed 1
• Level 50 – Dragon’s Breath
• Level 51 – Hot Streak 1
• Level 52 – Hot Streak 2
• Level 53 – Hot Streak 3
• Level 54 – Blazing Speed 2
• Level 55 – Burnout 1
• Level 56 – Burnout 2
• Level 57 – Burnout 3
• Level 58 – Burnout 4
• Level 59 – Burnout 5
• Level 60 – Living Bomb
• Level 61 – Arcane Stability 1
• Level 62 – Arcane Stability 2
• Level 63 – Arcane Stability 3
• Level 64 – Arcane Stability 4
• Level 65 – Arcane Stability 5
• Level 66 -Arcane Concentration 1
• Level 67 -Arcane Concentration 2
• Level 68 -Arcane Concentration 3
• Level 69 -Arcane Concentration 4
• Level 70 -Arcane Concentration 5
• Level 71 – Student of the Mind 1
• Level 72 – Student of the Mind 2
• Level 73 – Student of the Mind 3
• Level 74 – Magic Attunement 1
• Level 75 – Magic Attunement 2
• Level 76 – Arcane Meditation 1
• Level 77 – Arcane Meditation 2
• Level 78 – Arcane Meditation 3
• Level 79 – Arcane Shielding 1
• Level 80 – Arcane Shielding 2

How to play a fire mage level 1-80

Solo leveling as a fire mage is quite straightforward.

Starting at level 1 you only have Fireball as your offensive spell. You also have Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor that you should keep up at all times.

Just spam Fireball at one mob at a time until they die.

At level 4 you get Frostbolt but ignore it unless you come across a fire immune mob.

Arcane Missiles is available at level 8, but ignore it.

Polymorph, also known as ‘sheep’, is available at level 8 as well.

If you need to pull 2 or more mobs at a time, start by casting Fireball on the squishiest mob. While casting fireball, target the add (nearby mob) and cast sheep immediately when the Fireball goes off. While casting sheep, target the original mob again and cast Fireball immediately when the sheep lands, then kill it. Then deal with the sheep.

You should get used to sheeping something if you’re fighting more than 1 mob (or player), assuming they’re sheepable (humanoids, beasts). You’ll be using this a lot when you make a bad pull or fighting a quest mob with adds etc.

On level 10 you get Frost Nova which changes things a bit. Use it as an “oh dear” button if things go wrong by nova’ing the mobs and running away. Now you should also be able to take on 3 mobs simultaneously if you’re full on life and mana.

If there’s a pack of 3, cast Fireball on the squishiest, mob A. Mobs A, B and C will run toward you. Immediately cast polymorph on mob B. Cast Fireball on mob A again. When mob A and C are in nova range, cast Frost Nova. Get range and kill mob A. Then kill mob C. If sheep breaks while fighting C, recast it on B. Then kill B. Easy.

At level 20 you get Pyroblast. Use it instead of Fireball when pulling mobs, but then, after casting it once, switch to Fireball. Typically, a fight vs 1 mob may look like:

Pyroblast → Fireball → Fireball → Frost Nova → get range → Fireball or Fire Blast or Wand → Dead

The above is pretty much the rotation you use throughout leveling, throwing in a sheep when needed, as well as Blast Wave, Combusion, Dragon’s Breath and Living Bomb (mentioned below).

At level 26 you’ll have 2 points in Burning Soul, making it easier to tank mobs while casting so you may not need to nova them every time.

Blast Wave, that you spec into at level 30, has had its mana cost greatly reduced and is now worth using to knock mobs back and have some time to get range to cast a spell like Fireball. Also works as an additional escape spell and finisher.

Combustion, at level 40, should be used for harder fights or simply killling mobs faster.

Dragon’s Breath, that you spec into at level 50 was added to the game more as a fire PvP spell, the way I see it. With its low mana cost, though, you can use it instead of Frost Nova when playing solo. While the target(s) are disoriented, cast a nuke like Fireball. If needed, you can then cast a Frost Nova and another Fireball. Also works as an additional escape spell and finisher.

Living Bomb is your final fire spell, available through a talent at level 60. This spell is GREAT for AoE (area of effect) farming, but you need to have decent gear for it as well. Versus single mobs, the use is limited because it does cost a fair bit of mana and you’ll likely kill the mob before the 12 second DoT (damage over time) runs out.

IF you got good gear for your level, you can do the following for faster leveling (also works for AoE farming at level 80):

Find an area with lots of mobs and start dotting them up with Living Bomb one by one. They’ll all come running towards you and when they close in on you, Frost Nova them and move away and watch them blow up from each others’ Living Bomb detonations. If they need additional damage to die, make use of Dragon’s Breath, possibly Flamestrike, and Blast Wave. They should all be dead now. This way you can, depending on gear, take out up to 10 mobs or more in a very short time.

If you come across a fire immune mob, grind it down with Frostbolts or Arcane Missiles.

Frost mage leveling spec/build

Here’s a good frost leveling spec.

Here’s the order in which to place points:

• Level 10 – Improved Frostbolt 1
• Level 11 – Improved Frostbolt 2
• Level 12 – Improved Frostbolt 3
• Level 13 – Improved Frostbolt 4
• Level 14 – Improved Frostbolt 5
• Level 15 – Permafrost 1
• Level 16 – Permafrost 2
• Level 17 – Permafrost 3
• Level 18 – Ice Shards 1
• Level 19 – Ice Shards 2
• Level 20 – Icy Veins
• Level 21 – Ice Shards 3
• Level 22 – Frostbite 1
• Level 23 – Frostbite 2
• Level 24 – Frostbite 3
• Level 25 – Arctic Reach 1
• Level 26 – Arctic Reach 2
• Level 27 – Shatter 1
• Level 28 – Shatter 2
• Level 29 – Shatter 3
• Level 30 – Cold Snap
• Level 31 – Precision 1
• Level 32 – Precision 2
• Level 33 – Precision 3
• Level 34 – Ice Floes 1
• Level 35 – Cold as Ice 1
• Level 36 – Cold as Ice 2
• Level 37 – Winter’s Chill 1
• Level 38 – Winter’s Chill 2
• Level 39 – Winter’s Chill 3
• Level 40 – Ice Barrier
• Level 41 – Ice Floes 2
• Level 42 – Ice Floes 3
• Level 43 – Piercing Ice 1
• Level 44 – Piercing Ice 2
• Level 45 – Empowered Frostbolt 1
• Level 46 – Empowered Frostbolt 2
• Level 47 – Fingers of Frost 1
• Level 48 – Fingers of Frost 2
• Level 49 – Piercing Ice 3
• Level 50 – Summon Water Elemental
• Level 51 – Brain Freeze 1
• Level 52 – Brain Freeze 2
• Level 53 – Brain Freeze 3
• Level 54 – Frost Channeling 1
• Level 55 – Chilled to the Bone 1
• Level 56 – Chilled to the Bone 2
• Level 57 – Chilled to the Bone 3
• Level 58 – Chilled to the Bone 4
• Level 59 – Chilled to the Bone 5
• Level 60 – Deep Freeze
• Level 61 – Frost Channeling 2
• Level 62 – Frost Channeling 3
• Level 63 – Arcane Stability 1
• Level 64 – Arcane Stability 2
• Level 65 – Arcane Stability 3
• Level 66 – Arcane Stability 4
• Level 67 – Arcane Stability 5
• Level 68 – Arcane Concentration 1
• Level 69 – Arcane Concentration 2
• Level 70 – Arcane Concentration 3
• Level 71 – Arcane Concentration 4
• Level 72 – Arcane Concentration 5
• Level 73 – Student of the Mind 1
• Level 74 – Student of the Mind 2
• Level 75 – Student of the Mind 3
• Level 76 – Spell Impact 1
• Level 77 – Spell Impact 2
• Level 78 – Torment the Weak 1
• Level 79 – Torment the Weak 2
• Level 80 – Torment the Weak 3

How to play a frost mage level 1-80

Starting at level 1 you only have Fireball as your offensive spell. You also have Arcane intellect and Frost Armor that you should keep up at all times.

Just spam Fireball at 1 mob at a time until they die.

At level 4 you get Frostbolt so start using that as your main nuke.

Arcane Missiles is available at level 8, but ignore it.

Polymorph, also known as ‘sheep’, is available at level 8 as well. If you need to pull two or more mobs at a time, start by casting Frostbolt on the squishiest mob. While casting Frostbolt, target the add (nearby mob) and cast sheep immediately when the Frostbolt goes off. While casting sheep, target the original mob again and cast Frostbolt immediately when the sheep lands, then kill it. Then deal with the sheep.

You should get used to sheeping something if you’re fighting more than 1 mob (or player), assuming they’re sheepable (humanoids, beasts). You’ll be using this a lot when you make a bad pull or fighting a quest mob with adds etc.

On level 10 you get Frost Nova which changes things a bit. Use it as an “oh dear” button if things go wrong by nova’ing the mobs and running away. Now you should also be able to take on 3 mobs simultaneously if you’re full on life and mana.

If there’s a pack of 3, cast Frostbolt on the squishiest, mob A. Mobs A, B and C will run toward you. Immediately cast Polymorph on mob B. Cast Frostbolt on mob A again. When mob A and C are in nova range, cast Frost Nova. Get range and kill mob A. Then kill mob C. If sheep breaks while fighting C, recast it on B. Then kill B. Easy.

At level 20 you get Icy Veins. Use it for tough fights where you need extra damage or in situations where you would otherwise suffer spell pushback from damage, like when fighting ranged mobs.

The frost mage rotation now looks like:

Frostbolt → Frostbolt → Frostbolt → Frost Nova → get range → Frostbolt or Fire Blast or Wand -> Dead

The above is what you do over and over again on your way to level 80. Throw in a sheep when needed, as well as using Icy Veins and your Water Elemental for tougher fights or quicker kills.

At level 29 you’ll have 3 points in Shatter, making it very attractive to cast vs frozen (nova’d) targets. Until you get Ice Lance, you can do a “mini shatter” by casting Frostbolt immediately followed by Fire Blast. If you’re lucky, they both crit.

Level 34 gives you Mage Armor, which is useful even as a Frost Mage.

Ice Barrier, that you spec into at level 40, should be used sparingly. Remember, you want to save mana. No point in having the barrier up when you’re not attacked or kiting melee. If you’re taking hits, though, definitely use Ice Barrier to reduce damage and avoid spell pushback.

At level 50, you can get Summon Water Elemental granted by a talent.

You can use the water elemental pet to do “shatter combos”. A shatter combo is performed by casting a Frostbolt immediately followed by an Ice Lance (or Fire Blast or Cone of Cold if you don’t have Ice Lance) on a frozen (nova’d) target. You can use the Water Elemental’s Freeze ability to cast a ranged frost nova, then start casting Frostbolt followed by an instant cast spell. Alternatively, you start casting the Frostbolt and then, just before it goes off, you do the pet Freeze on the enemy followed by the instant cast spell, for example Ice Lance.

Deep Freeze is really quite overkill for solo leveling. If Fingers of Frost procs, you can cast Deep Freeze on any mob. It will deal lots of damage on targets immune to stuns so it can help against some elites. However, stunning regular mobs for five seconds is a bit over the top. Deep Freeze can be good against annoying mobs and casters, too.

Fast leveling tips

As a mage, the rate at which you kill mobs will be largely determined by how much mana you have. When you’re out of mana you must restore it before you can go on.

Here are some tips to help you save mana:

1. Always keep Arcane Intellect up on yourself
2. Mage Armor, available at level 34, should be used for leveling thanks to its mana regeneration effect
3. As a mage, you can conjure food and water but I suggest you buy them instead. You can buy higher level food and beverages than you can conjure, i.e. they will restore health and mana quicker. New consumables will be available from vendors at every level x5, i.e. 15, 25, 35 and so on, which is 7 levels earlier than you learn the corresponding conjuring spell. You are extremely mana dependent, so especially make sure you buy the highest level water you can use from vendors to minimize downtime.
4. You have a few ways to mitigate damage by spending mana, for example Frost Ward, Fire Ward, Mana Shield, Dampen Magic, Ice Barrier. Don’t use them too often unless you risk dying. You want to preserve your mana, and once you run out of mana you’ll have to drink or use Evocation. While drinking you can also eat, and Evocation will restore health when glyphed.
5. Evocation restores 60% of your mana bar, so use it when you’re at 40%. Don’t wait until you’re at 0% as you want the cooldown to start as soon as possible.
6. At level 68, when you get Conjure Mana Gem rank 5, you can create a gem with 3 charges. The total mana returned by the 3 charges is much greater than the cost of conjuring the gem, so you can use it every 2 minutes if you need mana. Just be careful so you don’t have it on cooldown when you need it for a long fight.
7. Choose talents like Arcane Concentration, Student of the Mind, Arcane Meditation, Master of Elements, Pyromaniac, Frost Channeling.
8. Choose glyphs like Evocation, Mana Gem, Mage Armor, Arcane Intellect to minimize downtime.
9. Try to save mana. Avoid Fire Blast as a finishing move when Dragon’s Breath or Blast Wave use much less mana. Even Ice Lance or wanding can do the job sometimes. Avoid using Living Bomb on a target that will die in a few seconds.
10. Log out in an inn or major city to accumulate rested XP until the next time you play.
11. However, sometimes you might log out in the wilderness in which case it takes 20 seconds to log out. You can eat and drink during that time as long as you started it before pressing log out.
12. Let mobs die from DoTs (damage over time effects). As a mage you do have some DoTs, most notably Living Bomb, the Pyroblast DoT and Ignite. If a mob is low on health and afflicted by any of those DoTs in a way that it will die from it, let it. Don’t waste mana.
13. If you’re going to travel somewhere, don’t always restore your mana before going. You’ll regenerate while traveling.
14. Cast Dampen Magic on yourself when fighting casters
15. Remember to use Frost Ward and Fire Ward; they make fighting certain casters so easy.
16. Remember to learn all portal and teleport spells. There are portal trainers (near the mage trainers) in all major cities, as well as Shattrath and Dalaran and Stonard in Swamp of Sorrows for Horde or Theramore in Dustwallow Marsh for Alliance.
17. Use Counterspell on mobs that heal or cast spells. They’ll come running towards you, though, so be prepared.

Mage survival tips

Mages have a number of “oh dear”-buttons. As a cloth wearer, you’re very squishy so you need to keep mobs off you. If you got too many enemies on you (from a bad pull or adds) the best thing to do is usually to run away and reset the fight. Casting a Frost Nova and running away often works. If you got mobs on you while running away, quickly turn around and cast Dragon’s Breath or Cone of Cold then keep fleeing.

Blink, of course, should be used to get away.

Ice Block by itself won’t do much in solo play since the mobs will still be hitting you when you come out of the Ice Block, but it’s still worth using if you need to wait for Blink or Ice Barrier to come off cooldown or regenerate some mana. If you got DoTs on you, Ice Block will remove them. So a common tactic when low on health is to Ice Block, (if DoTed), then Blink away.

Invisibility, trainable at level 68, will cause you to clear all threat and reset all mobs that were attacking you. If you’re DoTed, you’ll be taken out of Invisibility on the next damage from the DoT, but the mobs will still be reset just from entering invisibility for a fraction of a second. Just watch out so you don’t come out of Invisibility next to a pack of other mobs.

Other spells that will help prevent corpse runs are Frost Armor, Blast Wave, Ice Barrier, Mirror Image and Mana Shield. There is no reason for a mage to die with full mana. Keep refreshing mana shield if you’re low on health until Blink is off cooldown or until you can use another defensive ability.

Sometimes you need to keep fighting the fight as you can’t run away. Those are the times that put your mage skills to the test. Here’s what to do: Sheep something that already has full health. Frost Nova melee mobs and move away. Pop Mana Shield and then Evocation (that should be glyphed) or even a bandage. If you got ranged mobs attacking you, the Mana Shield will keep their attacks from interfering with Evocation. Now you’re better equipped to deal with the situation.

Frost mages, with their 2x Water Elemental and 2x Ice Blocks, 2x Ice Barriers, 2x Frost Nova, 2x Cone of Cold, thanks to Cold Snap, have even more survivability and you should make use of all your abilities before dying. Nothing is impossible for a frost mage so hang in there.

Also remember to use Mana Gems and mana potions when in trouble.

Mage quests

• The only class quest you really need to do is “Attunement to Dalaran” (Alliance / Horde) at level 71+ which teaches you Teleport: Dalaran.
• There is also the level 60+ quest “Fragmented Magic” (begins with the quest “Warlord Krellian“) that teaches Polymorph: Pig. It’s easy, if you want this version of Polymorph.

Mage AoE leveling

Area-of-Effect (AoE) leveling is not really something I recommend for most mages. It’s hard to pull enough mobs to make it worthwhile mana-wise, as the big AoE spells (Flamestrike, Blizzard) cost a lot of mana. And it’s also easy to make a mistake and die. Overall, solo questing will be faster and more rewarding for most players, in my opinion. If you got good gear, though, you can do the following.

Find an area with lots of mobs and start dotting them up with Living Bomb one by one. They’ll all come running towards you and when they close in on you, Frost Nova them and move away and watch them blow up from each others’ Living Bomb explosions. If they need more damage to die, use Dragon’s Breath, possibly Flamestrike, and Blast Wave. They should all be dead now. This way you can, depending on gear, take out up to 10 mobs or more in a very short time.

Professions for a mage

A mage can choose any professions. Traditionally, tailoring has been referred to as a profession for cloth wearers, i.e. mages, priests, warlocks, while professions such as blacksmithing or leatherworking were of little value to mages. But the lines have been blurred. Any profession can now benefit any class. Crafted gear exclusive to a certain profession is uncommon in WotLK, so that is no longer a great concern. More reading: Best professions in WotLK.

For example, even if you don’t choose tailoring, you’ll be able to wear any tailor-made gear for level 80, since it’s all BoE (Bind on Equip).

That said, tailoring does have a slight edge in that you can make the leg enchants very cheaply, which suit cloth users, and the Frostweave Nets. Alchemy looks pretty powerful for mages, with the +47 spell power from the Flask of the North, and other benefits. But, to be honest, there are no “bad” professions for a mage. The worst ones would probably be blacksmithing & leatherworking, in my opinion.

Mage gold making

Making gold is largely the same for mages as for any other class. All classes can use the auction house, take up any profession, do daily quests, and so on.

However, mages can AoE farm mobs quite fast, making their earnings per hour better than average. Some farming spots are especially suited to this.

How to play a mage in dungeons

Mages are damage dealers, and are also expected to do crowd control (mainly sheep), buffs and provide water so healers and casters can restore mana.

Even before the battle starts, buff all mana users with Arcane Intellect or, better, Arcane Brilliance and make a table if you have it. If not, conjure some extra water and pass it to mana users if they want it.

Attack the same target that everyone else including the tank is attacking or you risk getting aggro on yourself.

Here are some basic rotations to start with.

• For arcane spec, you can cast Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles when Missile Barrage procs. If missile barrage doesn’t proc and you have a few Arcane Blast debuffs and need to save mana, consider reseting the debuffs with Arcane Barrage. When you need extra damage, like on a boss, use Presence of Mind to make an Arcane Blast instant cast. Then use Arcane Power after that. On mobs with a lot of health, it’s worth taking the extra time to cast Slow for the added damage from Torment the Weak.
• For fire, you can cast Living Bomb and Fireballs. Add Pyroblast when Hot Streak procs. Use Fire Blast as a finisher when there’s not enough time to cast a Fireball. Combustion should be used on bosses. In AoE situations, you can possibly get up close and cast Dragon’s Breath followed by a Flame Strike, then start casting Blizzard at the mobs.
• For frost, Frostbolt will be your main damage spell. You can use Fire Blast or Cone of Cold as a finisher. Use your Water Elemental to help you deal damage, just make sure it’s available for bosses.

When there are 3 or more mobs, consider using Blizzard on them. However, if you’re fighting a group of tough mobs and you want to kill one of the mobs as fast as possible, use single-target spells that cause a lot of damage instead, such as Frostbolt.

If asked to sheep, you’ll probably be assigned a target. Make sure you renew the sheep, if necessary, before it runs out. One easy way to do this is to use the following macro:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift]
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph

The above will cast sheep on the target your targeting, and set it as your focus target. It will show up on your focus target frame. Pressing sheep again will cast it on your focus target, regardless what your current target it, so you don’t even have to switch targets. To clear the focus target, press shift + sheep button. You need to clear it before you can set it on a new mob.

Another thing you want to master is protecting your healer. If a mob is on your healer, freeze it with a Frost Nova or otherwise slow it. It will allow the healer to move away while the tank retakes aggro. At the same time, try not to freeze the mobs in a bad place. It will make things harder for the tank and for the group.

On boss fights, use all your abilities with long cooldowns, usually at the start of the fight, and all your trinkets etc.

Arcane is a fun and easy spec to use in dungeons. Remember to cast Focus Magic, if you have it, on someone with a high crit rating.