Welcome to the Method Mage Leveling Guide for World of Warcraft Forever! I’m Celz, a ranged multi-classer for top 20 retail hardcore raiding guild Honolulu. I’ve played WoW casually since I was 5 years old back in 2009, playing various ranged DPS as group composition requires. I also stream Retail progress/keys and Forever Levelling/Dungeons.
- Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/celzuk
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Guide Contents:
- Strengths & Weaknesses
- Recommended Leveling Talents
- Best Races for Mage
- Playstyle and Core Abilities
- Key Spells & Levelling Milestones
- Best / Suggested Professions
- Other Mage Leveling Info
Strengths & Weaknesses of Mage in WoW Forever
Strengths
- Great utility & CC (Polymorph, Blizzard, Arcane Intellect)
- Excellent & varied damage profile
- Strong mobility for a caster
Weaknesses
- Very squishy
- High mana-dependence
- Blizzard slow nerfed in Forever
Best Specialization for Leveling A Mage
Mage is looking to be a powerful class in WoW Forever, sticking with the Classic theme of high damage, great mobility, and even better utility. All three specs seem viable at this stage, although for leveling, Frost will likely be the preferred option.
Frost has incredible survivability and decent damage in both AoE and ST, with the ability to easily kite mobs, freeze them from afar and solo tough quest mobs. It may not do the same damage as Arcane when playing solo, but the bonus survivability from your freezes/chills makes the journey significantly easier for a solo player.
Recommended Leveling Talents for Mage
The following is my recommended Talent Build for leveling in WoW Forever.
Note: Use the drop down below the Talent Calculator to view the order I suggest taking the talents in.
Strictly speaking, taking an extra 3 points of Improved Frostbolt would be better than the 3 points in Elemental Precision up until Level 20, but the difference swings back in favour of Elemental Precision after that so you'd have to respec. If this is something you care to do then feel free, but you won't be losing out on much at all if you don't - the DPS loss from a missed spell is massive.
Level 60: This section will be updated to show the suggested Talents to level 60 in due course!
Best Races for Mage in WoW Forever
Alliance
On the Alliance side, Mages are recommended to play Gnomes. The new Eureka! ability lets your next 3 spells do 10% more damage and cost 50% less mana, which is massive for us, especially on things like Ice Lance, Blizzard, or Arcane Explosion. Expansive Mind gives us 5% more mana globally, and Escape Artist gives us yet another tool to get out of a pickle. Engineering Specialization also makes Engineering devices more reliable, but exactly what this means is unknown as of yet.
Horde
For Horde, we recommend Orc, Troll, or Undead. The brand new Orc Mage gives us Blood Fury for 10% Spell Power, our strongest stat, and our other Racials give us extra durability and tools to remove or reduce debuffs both passively with Hardiness for stuns and actively with Shatter Curse for Curses, Banes, and reduced magic damage taken.
Troll is also a good pick with Berserking, giving us 10% cast speed. Trolls also have extra health regen passively, part of health regen continuing in combat, and a button to press to get even more health quickly with Regeneration and Rapid Regeneration respectively. Unfortunately, these do not affect mana, so are far less helpful than they could otherwise be. Beast Slaying may also be helpful for some endgame content later.
Finally, Undead have a new passive - Touch Of The Grave. This is very strong for all casters, including mages, as each time you cast a spell there is a 10% chance you will drain up to 5% of your maximum health from your enemy.
Will Of The Forsaken is also incredibly strong, removing all Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects on use. Cannibalize is also great to regen health and mana inbetween fights, but it's on a 2 minute cooldown and we already have our conjured Mage food, so we get less value out of it than other classes.
Mage Playstyle and Core Abilities For Leveling
Essentially we'll be aiming to Chill and freeze enemies at range, taking them down before they can get more than a hit or two in. Our Frostbolt applies a slow from level 4, and once we get Frostbite, it has a chance to freeze our enemies. We use these freezes for bonus damage from Ice Lance once we have it unlocked, and if enemies get too close we can simply use Frost Nova and back away.
Our Blizzard and Cone Of Cold also give us incredible AoE coverage, with Cone Of Cold even having a chance to freeze enemies as well with Frostbite. With our point in Fingers Of Frost, our Chill also have a 15% chance to make our next spell act like the enemy is frozen, giving us even more powerful Ice Lance casts.
On top of this, we also have incredible utility, especially in Dungeons. Polymorph is a great tool for escaping or splitting up fights. Arcane Intellect gives us and our allies a flat intellect buff.
Our Frost Armor/Ice Armor lets us be a bit tankier and gives us additional slows to get out of melee range, and our Conjure Water/Conjure Food are incredibly useful utility spells giving us and our allies free infinite drinks and food between fights, something we badly need as a class that burns through mana as fast as we do.
Key Spells & Leveling Milestones for Mage
Our most important Level during leveling is easily 20, unlocking our primary AoE ability in Blizzard, ST burst in Ice Lance, mobility in Blink, and travelling utility with our teleports. Aside from this we have a good spread of important spells across the leveling process.
You should upgrade spells mentioned below whenever you get the opportunity to as higher ranks are almost always a better choice - the levels listed are for the first rank.
| Spell | Level | Effect |
| Arcane Intellect | 1 | A flat intellect buff starting from level 1. You should have this up permanently. |
| Frost Armor | 1 | A nice armor bonus and an additional tool to outrange enemies. You should also have this up permanently. |
| Conjure Water | 4 | Infinite free mana out of combat. Insanely useful. |
| Frostbolt | 4 | Our bread and butter spell that will be used all the way to level 60. |
| Conjure Food | 6 |
Infinite free food out of combat, not quite as good as Conjure Water but still great. |
| Polymorph | 8 | Arguably the best CC in the game. 20-50 seconds of hard CC depending on level, although targets will regen health fast and damage will break them out. |
| Frost Nova | 10 | Great AoE freeze ability, letting you create distance from your target if they get too close. |
| Arcane Explosion | 14 | Our first AoE spell, dealing great damage, but at a high mana cost. |
| Flamestrike | 16 | Our second AoE spell! A good AoE dot, great for clearing packs earlier on. |
| Ice Lance | 20 | Our biggest spell unlock for ST by far. Newly added in Forever, this lets us do great damage when we get a freeze. |
| Blizzard | 20 | Great AoE spell that suffered a nerf in Forever but is still very strong provided enemies stay within its range. |
| Blink | 20 | Incredible mobility, especially paired with something like Frost Nova to keep enemies at range. |
| Teleports | 20 | Teleports to Stormwind and Ironforge if Alliance, Orgrimmar and Undercity if Horde. Amazing utility to travel the world significantly faster than any other class. |
| Counterspell | 24 | Our kick! We can finally interrupt. |
| Cone Of Cold | 26 | High damage AoE frontal that slows. Very powerful, often overlooked. |
| Ice Armor | 30 | Simply a slightly stronger version of Frost Armor. |
| Additional Teleport | 30 | Darnassus teleport for Alliance, Thunder Bluff for Horde. Similarly helpful to the level 20 ones. |
Best / Suggested Professions for Mage
Profession 1: Tailoring
We recommend Tailoring as your first profession. With the new BoP profession items in Forever, the ability to make your own cloth gear is even more valuable than ever. Starting from level 10 you can make your own blue leveling gear, the majority of which comes with Spell Power on it, arguably the best stat in the game for us.
For example, Filigreed Silky Leggings are an incredibly strong piece that directly buffs your frost spells, and these come as part of an entire Silky set that do the same, several of which are BiS during the beta. Also, you'll likely have an abundance of cloth to go into your Tailoring and First Aid, so there's no need to take a gathering profession alongside it or spend a fortune in the Auction House.
Profession 2: Enchanting
As a second profession, Enchanting is a great option. You can make BoP weapons for yourself, most importantly wands, which are a huge damage spike with the new emphasis on Spell Power on caster weapons to make upgrades feel more impactful.
Enchants are also a very nice bump in damage or survivability when applied to your gear, and consumables like Minor Wizard Oil are very powerful. It also synergises incredibly well with Tailoring as you can train it easily without losing much, in some cases even profiting, by disenchanting the cloth items you can craft.
Secondary Professions
Don't neglect your secondary professions either! With the profession changes in Forever, Cooking is providing some of the best food in the game, even giving XP buffs! First Aid is great to get you out of a pinch, especially as a class with Polymorph giving you a chance to get a full-length bandage off if needed against a single enemy, or Frost Nova against multiple. Fishing can make decent money selling what you catch, or can be used to train your Cooking up even further.
Other Mage Specific Leveling Info
You should try to get a wand as early as possible, as they are incredibly useful in keeping damage up at range without mana, and in a lot of cases in earlier levels can even out-DPS regular spellcasting. Try to keep as many buffs as possible up (Arcane Intellect, Ice Armor, etc), and use your Comprehend Scroll ability on any scrolls you get for temporary buffs that can make leveling easier. Train as often as possible, and good luck!
We hope our Mage Leveling guide for WoW Forever was useful to help you know where to spend your talent points and how to get the most out of the class whilst leveling. This guide will be updated to cover 1-60 when the full game releases and as more information becomes available, so keep checking back in!
