Leveling a Mage – Speccing, Gearing, and Playing

Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 1:04 am

While there tends to be an assumption that priest is the hardest class to level, mage is in a difficulty class of its own. That’s why it is vital to make sure you are specced and geared as well as possible during your journey to level 80, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride even if everything is perfect.

Let’s talk gear first. Spellpower or Spell Damage of the appropriate element, enough Hit to be capped (four percent against equal-level targets), and Int. Don’t bother with spirit, and don’t dump other stats for stamina, unless you want to PvP a lot while leveling. Evocation and Replenishment are both max-mana based, so Int is your goto stat for regen; Spirit is worthless even with the appropriate talents.

While nothing is as important as being hit capped (an unlucky miss can get you killed), determining the priority of Int or Spellpower is trickier. Generally speaking, if you aren’t killing the mob before it reaches you for the second time post-Nova, you need more damage. If you are, great, stack more Int so your Evocations are bigger and you can go longer without drinking.

Once your gear is in order, you need to think about specs. Frost is amazingly good for stomping mobs singly or in groups…once you have the right talents. Until level thirty, though, it is the gimpest of the specs, so we’ll go arcane at first. Get the five-point talents from the first two rows, then grab Arcane Attunement and Arcane Focus. At this point you can do whatever you like, it doesn’t really matter. At either 29 or 30, head to a trainer and respec to Frost.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=#oZZAc0hobu is what you should aim for in your new Frost spec, although if you are killing quickly enough you’ll want to get Icy Floes instead of Frostbite. Not that it matters, since you’ll get whichever one you DON’T start with using your next three points. Then, get Frost Channeling and Winter’s Chill, followed by Ice Barrier and Shattered Barrier, and finally Cold as Ice. Pretty much fill out the tree at this point, grabbing everything below and including Empowered Frostbolt and Fingers of Frost. With the Eternal Water glyph, you can turn your elemental permanent, at which point you’ll be nearly unstoppable.

With spec and gear out of the way, all that’s left to discuss is playing style. AoE requires more skill than I can teach easily, so we’ll stick to single-target pulls, which are preferable now that AoE has been nerfed anyways. Basically, you want to nuke the enemy until they are close to hitting you, then Nova them. After you get some distance, continue nuking until they die. For the first ten or fifteen levels, just use your wand or whatever you just got a rank in as your nuke. And always finish off near-dead enemies with your wand to conserve mana!

The only difference between Frost pulls and Arcane, other than the nuke of preference, is that Arcane can’t nova every fight and will have to tank every other pull. This isn’t a big deal, though, because Arcane is unaffected by pushback. The last thing I want to mention is damage shields such as Ice Barrier and Mana Shield; they are a waste of mana unless you aggro multiple mobs or are fighting a ranged mob.

I hope this is enough to get you started on Mage. I think its obvious I’ve left a lot unsaid, but by the time you need to outgrow this guide, you’ll be much much more comfortable with advanced strategies. Make sure to check out my other WoW guides if you liked this one!

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