Class Guide Mage

The Definitive Mage Class Guide, from 1-70 and beyond:

Index:
1.0 - Introduction
2.0 - Elemental Impunity
3.0 - The 1-60 Grind, Leveling
4.0 - 60-70, Outland
5.0 - 70 and Beyond
6.0 - Talent Builds
7.0 - Gear Guide

1.0 - Introduction, Glass Cannon Extraordinaire

Mages, the official glass cannon of the world of warcraft universe, also easily the best burst damage class in the game when relatively well geared. The mage is quite the interesting class, possessing a number of defensive/evasion abilities, utility spells such as conjure food & water, and mainly an arsenal of direct damage spells like fireball, frostbolt, arcane missles, and so on.

You'll probably like to know that prior to level 70/raiding mages can easily function quite adequately using gear ten to twenty levels old, perhaps even none if needed. Leveling a mage is either extremely fun or a living hell, it depends on how you like to play really, mages work like glass cannons, as I said earlier, thus you'll be dropped everywhere from 3-8 mobs before drinking/eating and doing it over again.

As a mage you don't work like other classes when questing, grinding, etc. Your main focus is maximum damage output per spell, mana efficiency is increased through more damage per spell rather than saving actual mana per spell or stacking mana regen/int gear. This means a lot of downtime but extremely fast kill times, overall it all adds up and you get the benefit of free food/water, portals to every city, and a couple nice buffs.

2.0 - Elemental Impunity

As you most likely will realize rather quickly, if you hadn't picked it up from other games/information sources already, mages specialize in utilizing a variety of elements, school of magic being a term used in other games, to deal damage, protect themselves, teleport, etc. As is often the case we use three different spell types, arcane, fire, and ice.

Each elemental type, rather magic type in the case of arcane, has a variety of advantages such as frosts snaring/slowing effect, fires DoT's and high burst damage, arcanes controlled burst and utility. Given our need to specialize within one tree of magic talents you'll want to aquaint yourself with the various advantages and disadvantages before choosing, personally I favor arcane for endgame, fire for leveling, and frost for certain PvP and raid encounters.

Basically you'll want to master each elements general usage spells such as arcane missles for arcane, frostbolt is ice, fireball is fire, pretty simple, find which one suits you best and you've found your style and what would most likely best suit you whether leveling, raiding, or pvping.

3.0 - 1-60 Grind, Leveling

Grinding as a mage may come as something of a dramatic change should you have leveled up another class before this, mages as I've mentioned above focus upon damage per spell more so than mana regen, as such you'll want an extremely large mana pool backed up by an even larger amount of +damage gear suited to your particular chosen element.

+damage gear only becomes really prominent 40+ with the advent of the dreamweave armor as well as a variety of greens that aid in this venture, by this point you should have enough stamina and int to afford losing some for more +damage. Pre-40 you'll want to suit up in full "of the eagle" gear, post 40 you'll want a mixture of +fire/frost/arcane damage gear, perhaps on half your armor slots, and the rest still "of the eagle" for the stam/int.

Personally I always used a heavy fire build, building up to around 46-48 points in fire before picking up 5 points in frost for the mana saving talent, it's at the top of the tree, and the rest in arcane, it's worked well for me every time so it might work for you as well. One thing to always avoid doing is dividing your talents between three trees early on, you shouldn't need more than 5-6 points in other trees until level 40-50 or so, before that maximise one element only.

At first the mage feels extremely weak, it really picks up however once you hit 40+, the usage of portals for maximising quest speeds, improved survivability, and your 41 point talents all combine to make it all a bit more fun.

4.0 - 60-70, Outland

Like alot of other classes, pretty much everyone really except for say... hunters, mages are allowed to branch out and experiment quite a bit more once you reach outlands, suddenly all your powers can be focused on dropping quest mobs/bosses and variety/utility finally catches up to pure damage a bit, It's quite nice.

Generally this is where I would re-spec from fire/arcane/frost to an arcane heavy build, arcane comes in handy for dropping bosses and the like, popping arcane power and PoM(Presence of Mind) allows you to do wonderful amounts of damage quite easily, basically on demand. Also this would be the time to try out various frost/arcane builds, or even an elementalist dual fire/frost if you want, almost anything can function somewhat well at this point.

Another thing you gain past 60 is a few lovely spells such as Arcane Blast, Molten Armor, Spell Steal, Ice Lance, Invisibility, all of them extremely useful depending on the circumstances. Arcane blast will mainly be of use during raid situations, spell steal in certain mob encounters and PvP, ice lance for any frost mage at almost any time, and invisibility for survivability.

Enjoy all the new treats you receive, experiment, you might find that another style suits you due to various changes post-60.

5.0 - 70 and Beyond

Mages, like all classes, gain a great deal of ability to expand and utilize a far wider variety of talent builds, spells, gear, etc. once they've entered outlands. This would be largely due to the new focus on quests requiring a set amount of mobs, a single boss mob, or even just on finding various items and so on, thus more mana intensive spells and strategies suddenly become viable as well as cool-downs like PoM(Presence of Mind) and a few other normally inefficient abilties/talents.

Previously in Azeroth grinding was practically required to level past 30-40 or so, this is fixed in outlands leaving a large reservoire of quests behind to complete even once you've reached 70, without the grinding requirement a bunch of new playstyles become avaliable. Another thing is the sudden appearance of large amounts of +damage gear, a very nice thing about this +damage gear is the addition of stam and int combined with +damage, spell crit, as well as a number of other extremely useful attributes such as +spell hit.

Similar to the gearing style change at 40+, converting to +damage/of the eagle gear, you'll now be wanting to stack up some +spell hit, +spell crit, as well as a nice amount of stamina and int to back it up. +damage, +hit, and +crit, all improve your mana efficiency by making each spell more powerful, thus one fireball now equals 1 1/2 previous fireballs and so on. PvP is especially good for getting the gear you'd want, the arena set and the normal honor points set both fit the bill.

6.0 - Talent Builds

7.0 - Gear Guide

Helm:

Spellstrike Hood - Crafted
Battlecast Hood - Crafted
Evoker's Helmet of Second Sight - Crafted

Neck:

Manasurge Pendant - 25 Heroic Badges
Charlotte's Ivy - World Drop BoE
Brooch of Heightened Potential -Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)

Back:

Shawl of Shifting Probabilities - 25 Heroic Badges
Baba's Cloak of Arcanistry - Drop(Mechanar)
Sethekk Oracle Cloak - Drop(Sethekk Halls)

Shoulders:

Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders - Crafted
Mantle of Three Terrors - Drop(Black Morass)
Spaulders of the Torn-heart - Quest Reward

Chest:

Spellfire Robe - Crafted
Incanter's Robe - Drop(Botanica)
Robe of the Crimson Order - BoE World Drop

Wrist:

Bands of Rarefied Magic - Drop(Heroic Shattered Halls)
Bands of Nethekurse - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Shattrath Wraps - Quest Reward

Hands:

Spellfire Gloves - Crafted
Incanter's Gloves - Drop(Steamvault)
Gloves of the High Magus - Quest Reward

Belt:

Spellfire Belt - Crafted
Girdle of Ruination - Crafted
Mage-Fury Girdle - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Sash of Serpentra - Drop(Steamvault)

Legs:

Spellstrike Pants - Crafted
Battlecast Pants - Crafted
Mana-Etched Pantaloons - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Incanter's Trousers - Drop(Sethekk Halls)

Boots:

Frozen Shadoweave Boots - Crafted
Boots of Blasphemy - Drop(Heroic Slave Pens)
Silent Slippers of Meditation - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)

Rings:

Ring of Cryptic Dreams - 25 Heroic Badges
Cobalt Band of Tyrigosa - Drop(Heroic Mana Tombs)
Seer's Signet - Scryers Exalted
Ashyen's Gift - Cenarion Expedition Exalted
Band of the Guardian - Quest Reward
Seal of the Exorcist - 50 Spirit Shards

Trinkets:

Shiffar's Nexus-Horn - Drop(Arcatraz)
Arcanist's Stone - Drop(Heroic Old Hillsbrad)
Oculus of the Hidden Eye - Drop(Auchenai Crypts)

Weapons:

Eternium Runed Blade - Crafted
Blade of the Archmage - Reputation Reward(Honor Hold Exalted)
Mana Wrath - Drop(Mechanar)
Greatsword of Horrid Dreams - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)

Off-hand:

Lamp of Peaceful Radiance - Drop(Arcatraz)
Manual of the Nethermancer - Drop(Mechanar)
Hortus' Seal of Brilliance - Drop(Shattered Halls)

Two-Handed:

Terokk's Shadowstaff - Drop(Heroic Sethekk Halls)
Bloodfire Greatstaff - Drop(Black Morass)
Warpstaff of Arcanum - Drop(Botanica)
Ameer's Impulse Taser - Quest Reward

Ranged Weapon:

The Black Stalk - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Nexus Torch - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Nethekurse's Rod of Torment - Quest Reward
Wand of the Netherwing - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)