WoW Classic Era 1-60 Mage Leveling Guide (vanilla)

Introduction

In this guide I will introduce you to the mage class alongside tips to optimize and help with the leveling process. If you follow these tips, you will ding 60 before you know it. Let’s dive right into it.

Mages in WoW Classic are one of the most desired classes to have in any dungeon group. The more mages; the better. This is especially true during the leveling period due to mages ability to cause AoE damage (Area of Effect) and control large groups of enemies.

Now, what is very special to the mage class is their capability to AoE grind in the open world, too. There is no other class in the game that does a similar job. Using their advantage, mages can achieve the fastest leveling speed of all classes, while making good gold in the process. If questing isn’t the right thing for you and you prefer doing dungeons and fighting large groups of mobs, mage is definitely the best pick for you, although the mage is also a capable class to solo level through questing.

Gameplay: How to play a Mage

Dungeons

Doing dungeons is very efficient if you team up with 1-2 more mages or warlocks in order to blast through them back to back. If you find yourself in a spot where AoE grinding becomes boring to you, absolutely run dungeons.

Additional tips

• Intellect is in fact your main stat, but the critical strike chance you are getting per point is too low in order to give an effective damage increase in the leveling period. Look at it as an increase to your mana pool only.
• Spell damage + X items is what you are after. Pick any spell damage-increasing item over anything without it, no matter if it’s an epic or rare you are replacing.
• Do not train spells that you aren’t using. It saves gold for your mount, as higher spell ranks tend to be very expensive.
• If you want to be a tailor, try to max out your skill as quickly as possible. There are many very overpowered Items you can craft for your level.
• Make sure to have a mana crystal ready in your bags to use in case you make a mistake and will need the extra mana for one of your pulls.
• Always kill mobs while going from point A to point B.
• Do not try to AoE grind mobs that are above your level. They will likely resist your Frost Nova, which can result in death.

Talent trees and builds/specs

For the fastest and easiest leveling experience you will want to start as a fire mage until level 21 and then respec into frost. The reason behind this is that fire offers a lot more raw single-target damage in the early levels but AoE grinding unlocks at level 21, once you can talent 2 points into Improved Blizzard.

Of course, if you don’t want to AoE grind mobs for experience, you can continue leveling as fire all the way to level 60.

Fire leveling spec/build

It is suggested that you start with fire talents until level 21, when you can switch to frost, especially if you want to AoE grind.

Low level mage talent build for WoW Classic.

AoE frost leveling spec/build

The following talent build is good for AoE grinding mobs, if that’s what you want to do.

Mage AoE frost talent build for WoW Classic.

Professions

Professions play a big part in WoW Classic. They provide a source of income, really good gear, tools to cutting edge damage and tank play, major quality of life improvements while leveling and are fun to do.

First Aid – First aid is very useful for non-healing classes. However, as a mage you rarely find yourself in a situation where a bandage would be helpful due to the fact that you have so much control in your toolkit. Get first aid regardless, but know that you don’t need to go out of your way to stay on top of it.

Cooking – Cooking is an easy gold saver while leveling and provides a steady income at level 60. Do get this profession as early as possible and try to stay on top of your profession skill, just like you do with first aid. Treat it as a portable food vendor, just without being a gold sink.

Fishing – Unlike first aid and cooking, fishing is not mandatory but nice to have. Usually while leveling you want to avoid spending time stationary, not getting any XP, but at times you simply can not avoid it. For example, kill time while waiting for a boat by fishing up some material to cook afterwards.

Herbalism & Mining – Herbalism and mining allow you to level up a crafting profession while leveling. If you choose to pick alchemy as your primary profession, absolutely train herbalism, otherwise pick mining for an increased gold income, due to ore typically selling better than herbs and you will have the option to save up your ore to level up engineering.

Alchemy – Alchemy is handy for leveling as it provides you health potions, that you will find yourself using quite often, and elixirs for an overall easier time during the leveling period.

Engineering – Engineering is the King of WoW Classic Era professions since the tools it provides are endless. Big AoE grenades? No problem, you need a range stun? We got that covered. Trinkets? Yes, sir. Engineering adds a lot of utility to your character for various PvE and PvP situations.

Enchanting – Enchanting saves you gold, as materials for high-end enchants tend to be expensive. Very handy profession to have.

Tailoring – Probably the most useful profession for mages, especially if combined with enchanting since you can disenchant your crafted green/uncommon quality items for enchanting materials. Also, you can craft strong spellcaster gear, which is limited to tailors only such as Robe of the Archmage.

Addons

Addons are a big part of World of Warcraft. To enjoy smoother gameplay, check out these suggestions.

Joana’s leveling guide addon – Joana’s guides show you step-by-step how to level a mage or any other class in WoW Classic, to max level in a very streamlined way. It’s created by a true professional gamer and world record holder for speed leveling in WoW. An addon is included so you can view everything inside WoW. You also get web based leveling guides online, with maps and step-by-step instructions.

Leatrix Maps – Countless improvements to your in-game minimap. The basic map is impractical for leveling. Leatrix Maps removes the fog of war, adds coordinates to your map to make finding certain spots much easier, downsizes the full screen version and fades out during movement for easier navigation.

Vendor Price addon– In case you find yourself with no empty bag space and you wonder what items you should throw away – the cheapest one of course. Vendor Price adds an item value to the tooltip.

Weakauras2 – Potentially a very useful addon. With Weakauras it is possible to create custom display icons, bars and timers. You can import ready to use packages as well.

Questie – Questie allows you to see available quests in the zone you are in, and on the mini map, as well as the appropriate character level for those quests, and other useful information such as quest objectives and the amount of XP gained for each quest. It can also show you on the map where you need to go in order to complete the quests in your quest log. Questie has numerous configuration options to customize it to your liking. Furthermore, it’s free and frequently updated. There is currently a version for WoW Classic Era (level 1-60) as well as WotLK (level 1-80). Questie can be combined with TomTom to show a navigation arrow that points you where to do various quest objectives. Those are just some of the features, so definitely check it out.

ElvUI – ElvUI is a customizable and skinnable interface. It adds crucial information and possibilities to tailor an interface more suitable to your liking.

Macros

Once you are happy with the way your interface looks, you will want to open up the macros tab by typing “/macro” into your chat window. Copy & paste all of the following macros and drag them to your bars.

Remove Curse mouseover macro

#showtooltip Remove lesser Curse

/cast [target=mouseover] Remove Lesser Curse

Very useful in dungeons or raids. You do not need to target anybody by clicking on them, just mouseover and press your macro while still being able to target the boss you are looking to damage.

Ice Block macro

#showtooltip Ice Block

/stopcasting

/cancelaura Ice Block

/cast Ice Block

This macro enables you to cancel any cast and immediately apply Ice Block to yourself, as well as cancelling Ice Block by pressing the macro again.

Conjure Castsequence macro

#showtooltip

/castsequence reset=4 Conjure Water, Conjure Food

Cleans up your keybinds and merges both Conjure Water and Conjure Food into one button.

Magebuff Castsequence  macro

#showtooltip

/castsequence reset=2 Arcane Intellect, Frost Armor

Cleans up your keybinds and merges Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor into one button.

1-Shot macro

#showtooltip Arcane Power

/use 13

/use 10

/cast Arcane Power

/cast Presence of Mind

/cast Pyroblast

The above macro will first use item slot 13, which is your “uppermost” trinket, and then use your gloves (item slot 10) if you have an on-use ability on them, then proceed to use the listed spells.

Just in case someone annoys you, hit this macro in order to delete anyone off the map (once you are higher level and learned the used spells of course)