Mages are masters of all things magic, excelling at dealing damage from range and have tools for both single target and AoE. With their excellent cc capabilities, they are welcome in any dungeon or raid group and will be your healer’s best friend, being able to conjure food and water. While frost mages can be popular for their AoE Blizzard grinding spec, in this guide we focus on exploring a highly efficient and safe single target version of the frost tree.

If you are interested in a different Mage Leveling build, check out the following guides:

Alliance

The choice here is between Human and Gnome.

Humans get bonuses in spirit and reputation gains with Human Spirit and Diplomacy, while Gnomes get increases in Intellect and Engineering, with Expansive Mind and Engineering Specialization. With the added bonus of Escape Artist, giving you an out from some sticky situations.

Horde

In horde you will choose from Troll or Undead.

Trolls will be a better choice for endgame with their Berserking active, and minor buffs from Beast Slaying and Regeneration. Undead, while not as good in endgame, have their Cannibalize ability to regenerate up to 35% of their health every 2 minutes while facing Humanoids or Undead and Will of the Forsaken to cleanse yourself of Charm, Fear or Sleep. 

Talents for single target frost mage leveling take advantage of immense crowd control and increased critical chance and critical damage on frozen targets, as well as high survivability with your barriers and Ice Block.

Talent link

Notable Talents

Cold Snap – will give you the ability to reset cooldown of your Frost Nova, and later Ice Block and Ice Barrier.

Shatter – is your main increase in damage, so keep your enemies frozen when they manage to get close, and start shattering.

Ice Block – you will use this to buy some precious time for your other cooldowns to come back up, giving you time to escape or distance to finish off your enemies.

Ice Barrier – will give you an additional shield that will not use up your mana for absorbing damage, and a way to soak up some ranged damage.

Your main damaging spells are Frostbolt, Fire Blast and Cone of Cold. In the beginning you will also be using Fireball but it will drop off in efficiency fairly quickly when you get increased cast speed and reduced mana cost for your Frostbolt.

For AoE, You have Blizzard, Flamestrike and Arcane Explosion. You should only use these in dungeons and considering what is most mana efficient, when you get Frost Channeling 3/3, it will be pretty much just spamming Blizzard.

Your buffs will be Arcane Intellect that you should keep up at all times, and for your armor spell, choose between Frost Armor and Mage Armor. Although Mage Armor will be more useful if you have a decent amount of spirit and don’t rely on body pulling as you shouldnt.

For your cc you will be using Frostbolt’s built in slow, Frost Nova to snare multiple enemies and Polymorph when facing multiple beasts or humanoid enemies.

As for defense, you get access to Mana Shield and Ice Barrier that can stack. Frost Ward and Fire Ward when facing casters with appropriate spells, as well as Dampen Magic, reducing magic damage you take.

You can use Evocation to restore a portion of your mana, and learn Blink at level 20 to start traveling faster.

With a plethora of utility spells, you can Teleport around any visited capital cities of your faction, conjure food and water whenever you wish and create mana gems to use as mana potions on separate cooldown.

Mage has an almost non existent rotation, keep firing of Frostbolt and hope for some freezes, if enemies manage to get closer, Fire Blasts while you start walking away and Frost Nova to keep them in place, then continue to Frostbolt or Wand if the enemy is low enough and you want to start regaining some mana.

Only quest worth your time while leveling is Mage’s Wand quest, doable at level 30-40. It will ultimately lead to Icefury Wand, one of the best you can get for Frostbolt spec. You will be required to do a decently long quest both in the open world as well as delving into Scarlet Monastery. Only requirement in this quest chain will be 1 Jade, so make sure to save one if you find it on your leveling journey.

Intellect > Spirit > Stamina > Agility > Strength

For mages, stats are pretty self explanatory. Intellect will increase your mana pool, enabling you to cast more spells before you run out of fuel. Spirit helps out with mana regeneration especially when you get to Mage Armor. And Stamina will increase your hit points, enabling you to take more damage and hopefully survive dangerous situations where your shields run out.

Mages aren’t interested in melee weapons for their dps, they will be looked at only as a stat stick, so pick a staff or one-hander + offhand, whichever brings you more stats of Intellect, Spirit and Stamina.

As for Wands, they can come into play early on in your leveling process.

After this, you can start to look at them as a stat stick as well.

Engineering / Mining

As with almost any other class in hardcore, engineering comes in as one of the best choices due to its utility and access to Grenades and Dummies. If you decide to pick up skinning and farm up some Light Leather and Medium Leather before dropping it and switching to Engineering, you can get a number of goggles along the skill up path of engineering, and if you manage to find any leather in chests or as drops, along with crystals from mining, you can take that even further,

Alchemy / Herbalism

Alchemy is an excellent profession for mages, considering how many health and mana potions you will get on your skill up path to maxing out alchemy. You can be sure to always have some potions to fall on if the situation gets rough. It will allow you to stop much less to eat and drink and even buff your stats of choice with different elixirs.

Tailoring / Enchanting

As your only armor profession, you can use Tailoring to craft many armor pieces that you might be lacking during your leveling process. Enchanting will hit a wall at one point considering you can not upgrade your enchanting rod but fret not, it is mainly used to craft early wands and disenchant items for mats you might need for Tailoring. This combination is not recommended for new players because it will cost you a lot of gold you would get from vendoring unneeded items that you need to disenchant..

Honorable mentions

Cooking / Fishing / First Aid

Cooking can give you many stat buffing food that increase your stamina and spirit while leveling. Paired with Fishing, if you want to spend your time on it, you can use the caught fish to level up cooking all the way to max skill level. You can use Bandages from First Aid to let your mana regen while you restore your health.

Mage can tackle almost any situation through pure preparation, as long as you have enough food and water in your bags, along with your barriers, mana gems and a few potions, there is no situation you can’t slip out of. If enemies have no ranged attackers, you can freeze them and bandage up or ice block to gather them up, time your exit with a Frost Nova and refresh your barrier to make it out to safety. With amazing survivability tools and a well timed Blink to make distance, even a new player can seem like a master with a little planning.

Mage is an excellent addition to almost any other class, it can help with kiting, dealing damage, or just supplying with food and water while buffing and cc-ing problematic enemies.

Mage is a welcome addition to any dungeon and a best friend of healer. Communicate with your team on what target will be polymorphed and be careful with Blizzard to not over agro and make your tank chase after enemies trying to peel them off your face.

Keep your current rank of conjured food and water somewhere on your bars and always make sure to have extra.

Keep up your Intellect and Armor buffs. As well as your shield, it has 1 minute duration and 30s cooldown, so if you are about to tackle a difficult enemy, cast it and wait for the cooldown to drop before engaging.

Take note of your surroundings if you are fighting inside a cave, watch out for respawns if you are heading in after another player and be ready to escape if the need arises.

Counterspell Macro – stops your casts and instantly interrupt.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Ice Block Macro – one button cast and cancel, don’t spam this one unless you want to exit instantly.

#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

Buff Macro – one button for both buffs, change frost armor for ice or mage armor.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=2 Arcane Intellect, Frost Armor

This spec of mage is very simple to get into, and has a number of tools to deal with danger. As a result it can lull you into a false sense of security that can take your life at any point. Don’t play when you start feeling bored and stay focused while tackling dangerous challenges. For people who are new to mage, the aspect that you will never want for food and water, and ability to teleport around the world at will might come as a refreshing experience. All in all, mage is a fun class and is sure to bring joy to both new and returning players.