Frost AoE Mage Leveling Guide From 1 to 70 for TBC Classic

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

From Level 10 on you get one talent point per level, which you can spend on your talent tree. The talent menu can be accessed via the keybind N in game from level 10 on.

• Levels 10 to 14 — 5 points in Improved Fireball
• Levels 15 to 17 — 3 points in Elemental Precision
• Levels 18 to 21 — 4 points in Ignite

At Level 22, you will get access to the required Frost AoE talents. Until then, it is recommended to play a single-target build. Improved Fireball will make your Fireball cast faster. Elemental Precision is an important talent to make you miss higher level enemies less. Ignite makes your critical strikes with Fire spells leave a damage over time on the target. At Level 22, you will need to visit the Mage trainer and unlearn your talents to respec to Frost AoE talents.

It needs to be added, that you can also AoE level before Level 22, but it is hard to pull off on a new character and therefore unreliable. As this guide aims for consistency, it will recommend AoE leveling from 22 on.

• Up to Level 22 — 3 points in Elemental Precision. 2 points in Frost Warding, 3 points in Permafrost, 2 points in Improved Frost Nova, 3 points in Improved Blizzard
• Level 23 — 1 point in Icy Veins
• Level 24 — 1 point in Piercing Ice
• Levels 25 to 26 — 2 points in Arctic Reach
• Levels 27 to 29 — 3 points in Frost Channeling

At Level 22, you need to visit the Mage trainer and unlearn your talents and spend your talent points in the Frost tree. Elemental Precision gives you a lower chance that mobs of a higher level than yours resist your spells. This is very important to hit all enemies with Blizzard as not all mobs in a pull have the same level. You will take a few hits on each pull before you have Ice Barrier. The talent Frost Warding gives you more armor and reduces the incoming damage from melee hits while pulling. Permafrost slows your enemies 10% more and 3 seconds longer. With Improved Blizzard, Blizzard will keep enemies slowed down by 75% for 4.5 seconds. Improved Frost Nova gives you extra security, as it reduces your Frost Nova cooldown by 4 seconds.

Icy Veins protects your spells from pushback and increases your casting speed by 20% for 20 seconds. Piercing Ice increases all Frost damage you deal by 2% per talent point. Arctic Reach gives a 20% range and radius increase for Blizzard, which both makes your pulls a lot safer. With Frost Channeling, your spells cost 15% less mana. Especially at lower gear levels, this mana cost decrease is very noticeable and this talent helps a lot.

• Level 30 — 1 point in Cold Snap
• Levels 31 to 32 — 2 points in Piercing Ice
• Levels 33 to 35 — 3 points in Improved Cone of Cold
• Levels 36 to 39 — 4 points in Shatter

With Cold Snap you can reset the cooldown of all your Frost abilities. Having a second Ice Block, Frost Nova, Icy Veins or Cone of Cold can be lifesaving in hairy situations. Improved Cone of Cold increases the damage of Cone of Cold by 35% and makes it a better kiting and finisher spell. Shatter enhances these capabilities of Cone of Cold even further, as it gives you a 50% increased critical strike chance on frozen targets. If you prefer, you may also use Flamestrike and Cone of Cold together to "Shatter Combo" enemies frozen with Frost Nova. Shatter combo means that you cast a spell with a cast time, followed by an instant spell on the same frozen target, so both spells benefit from Shatter.

• Level 40 — 1 point in Ice Barrier
• Levels 41 to 45 — 5 points in Arctic Winds
• Level 46 — 1 points in Shatter
• Levels 47 to 49 — 3 points in Ice Shards

Ice Barrier is your second shield spell. If you have shields up while getting hit by an enemy, you will not get dazed and you will not suffer from spell pushback. In any dangerous situation, this very useful spell can save your life! The five points in Arctic Winds will increase your damage and reduce the chance you get hit by physical attacks, which are both very good effects. Ice Shards increases your critical strike damage bonus and makes Shatter better.

• Level 50 — 1 point in Summon Water Elemental
• Levels 51 to 52 — 2 points in Ice Shards
• Levels 53 to 54 — 2 points in Arcane Subtlety
• Levels 55 to 57 — 3 points in Arcane Focus
• Levels 58 to 59 — 2 points in Arcane Concentration

The Summon Water Elemental ability will summon a Water Elemental that fights for you for 45 seconds and has an immensely-useful ability called Freeze, which is basically a ranged Frost Nova that you can place anywhere around you. On top of that, this pet also deals decent damage and can be used twice in a row with Cold Snap. Aside from giving you another Frost Nova, the Water Elemental can also Waterbolt enemies that resisted your Frost Nova to keep them away from you. Of course it can also be used to finish off low health enemies. The Water Elemental is controlled with key bindings you can change to your liking.

Arcane Subtlety and Arcane Focus are mostly filler talents to reach Arcane Concentration. If you want to finish off mobs with Arcane Explosion, this spell has now a higher hit chance versus higher level enemies. Arcane Concentration gives you a 2% chance per spent talent point (10% total after 5 talent points) to enter a clearcasting state when hitting an enemy, reducing the mana cost of your next spell by 100%. Lasts 10 seconds.

• Levels 60 to 62 — 3 points in Arcane Concentration
• Level 63 — 1 point in Arcane Fortitude
• Levels 64 to 68 — 5 points in Magic Absorption
• Levels 69 to 70 — 2 points in Arcane Meditation

Arcane Fortitude increases your armor by 100% of your intellect. In case you get hit by single mobs, this further reduces your damage taken. The Magic Absorption talent increases your magic resistance and restores 5% of your total mana when you fully resist a spell. You will often use Ice Armor, so Arcane Meditation will give you some of the mana regeneration Mage Armor would.

1. Cast Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor if you are missing their buffs.
2. Cast Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor if you are missing their buffs. Use Mana Shield to avoid death. If you have enough mana, use it also for pulling.
3. Cast Arcane Intellect and Ice Armor if you are missing their buffs. Use Mana Shield to avoid death. If you have enough mana, use it for pulling.
4. Cast Arcane Intellect and Ice Armor if you are missing their buffs. Only use Mage Armor if you reliably survive pulling with it. Use Mana Shield to avoid death. If you have enough mana, use it for pulling.
5. Cast Arcane Intellect and Ice Armor if you are missing their buffs. Only use Mage Armor if you reliably survive pulling with it. Use Ice Barrier to avoid death and for pulling.
6. Cast Fireball as your main attack.
7. Cast Frostbolt as your main attack.
8. Cast Fireball as your main attack.
9. Cast Frostbolt as your main attack.
10. Cast Fireball as your main attack.
11. Body pull packs of melee enemies, while taking care not to overextend as it is dangerous and in TBC you have an AoE cap. Start with 2-3 mobs and slowly work out how many more you can pull. Fire Blast can be used to add more enemies to your pulls.
12. Body pull packs of melee enemies, while taking care not to overextend as it is dangerous and in TBC you have an AoE cap. Start with 2-3 mobs and slowly work out how many more you can pull. Fire Blast and Counterspell can be used to add more enemies to your pulls.
13. Freeze enemies with Frost Nova and walk or Blink to gain distance from them.
14. Freeze enemies with Frost Nova. If any resist, use Cold Snap to Frost Nova them again. Walk or Blink to gain distance from them.
15. Freeze enemies with Frost Nova. If any resist, use Cold Snap to Frost Nova them again or use your Water Elemental's Freeze. Water Elemental can also attack and tank one enemy, if only one resisted. Walk or Blink to gain distance from them.
16. Cast Blizzard to DPS and slow them down. If you gained enough distance, and take a few steps between the first and second Blizzard, you can do exactly two Blizzards before Frost Nova is ready again to freeze them. Gain distance again and Blizzard them. Repeat this step until enemies are either dead or low health.
17. Arcane Explosion and / or Wand low health enemies down.
18. Arcane Explosion, Cone of Cold and / or Wand low health enemies down. Frost Nova and Shatter can make this very easy.
19. Arcane Explosion, Cone of Cold and / or Wand low health enemies down. Frost Nova and Shatter can make this very easy. Send your Water Elemental after low HP enemies.
20. Cast Frostbolt as your main single-target attack, if required.
21. Cast Icy Veins to increase your cast speed and protect yourself against spell pushback whenever needed.

If enemies come close to you, use Frost Nova to keep distance between you and them.

Make your own food and water with Conjure Food and Conjure Water. These spells definitely need to be learned, as water and food from vendors will cost you far more gold than these spells do. Sometimes other players even want to buy conjured water and you can gain a little extra gold. Conjured items disappear after 15 minutes of being logged out.

The AoE grinding video by k4li from 2006 gives you an example of how to do AoE pulls and an overview of the best AoE grinding spots in Azeroth. Below we also have a list of AoE grinding spots in WoW TBC for you, which adjusts to your level by using the slider.

• At Level 1, buy Arcane Intellect as soon as you can afford it. It provides a significant boost to your Intellect which lasts for 30 minutes.
• At Level 4, buy Conjure Water and Frostbolt. Conjure Water creates free water you can use while leveling and to sell to others. Frostbolt deals single-target damage and slows the target by 40%.
• At Level 6, buy Conjure Food, Fireball and Fire Blast. Fire Blast can be used early on as a damage spell in your rotation, however, it costs a lot of mana. Later on, it is used for AoE pulling.
• At Level 8, buy Polymorph and Frostbolt. Polymorph Rank 1 allows you to take one humanoid or beast enemy out of combat for 20 seconds, which is very useful for looting quest items guarded by a single enemy or when dealing with several enemies. Only one enemy at a time can be Polymorphed and, in TBC, crowd control effects can break at any time with an increasingly-higher chance to break toward the end of the effect.
• At Level 10, learn Conjure Water, Frost Armor, and Frost Nova. Frost Nova freezes nearby enemies for 8 seconds, allowing you to regain distance on them and to gain a damage bonus through Shatter when re-engaging. In these low levels, the damage component of Frost Nova can also be used to finish one enemy off and freeze another enemy to engage them with Frostbolt if you are fighting multiple enemies.
• At Level 12, buy Conjure Food, Fireball and Slow Fall. Slow Fall slows your falling speed at the cost of a Light Feather. This comes in handy to avoid fall damage and enable shortcuts that would otherwise lead to death.
• At Level 14, buy Arcane Explosion , Arcane Intellect and Frostbolt. Arcane Explosion is used to finish off enemies. It is an instant-cast ability.
• At Level 18, buy Fireball and Remove Lesser Curse. Remove Lesser Curse is a bit niche for leveling as you will rarely get cursed. However, IF you or a friend get cursed, you do not want to miss this ability.
• At Level 20, buy Blink, Polymorph, Frost Armor, Conjure Water, Frostbolt, Evocation, Mana Shield, Blizzard and Frostbolt.
• In Stormwind, Ironforge, Exodar (Alliance) and Orgrimmar, Undercity, Silvermoon (Horde) you can now buy the teleport spells for each city.
  • Alliance: Teleport: Stormwind, Teleport: Ironforge, Teleport: Exodar
  • Horde: Teleport: Orgrimmar, Teleport: Undercity, Teleport: Silvermoon
• Each Teleport spell requires you to use one Rune of Teleportation, which can be bought at any reagent vendor. You can find reagent vendors by clicking the magnifier button on the mini map. They will be automatically displayed there on the mini map if you are close to a Reagent Vendor. Teleport spells can save a lot of travel time and make learning new spells very convenient, as they teleport you to Mage trainers. Evocation restores 60% of your total Mana within 8 seconds on a 8-minute cooldown. Use this ability as often as you can to rapidly restore mana when needed. Blink is a utility spell that allows you to travel 20 yards instantly. It removes rooting effects and most stuns from you. Use it together with Frost Nova to get away from enemies. You can Blink instead of walking as a tactical spell in dungeons to reposition. When falling from somewhere high, Blinking before you hit the ground can safe your life by avoiding fall damage. Mana Shield will avoid cast time pushback and will absorb damage in dangerous situations. However, it costs Mana, so only when really needed. Blizzard is your main AoE damage spell while AoE leveling, it slows enemies by 75% for 4.5 seconds and does damage.
• At Level 22, buy Arcane Explosion and Conjure Food
• At Level 24, buy Counterspell. Counterspell instantly interrupts enemy casts and prevents spells of the interrupted school from being cast for 10 seconds. This ability has a 30-second cooldown and can also be used to range pull enemies.
• At Level 26, buy Frostbolt and Cone of Cold. Cone of Cold slows enemies in front of you with a frontal cone. In conjunction with the Shatter talent and a Frost Nova, it can deal severe damage to groups of enemies or finish them off. It can also be used defensively to flee from a dangerous situation, since it is instant-cast and slows enemies for 11 seconds. If you use it as a defensive ability, always use rank 1 to save mana.
• At Level 28, buy Blizzard, Arcane Intellect, Mana Shield, and Conjure Mana Agate. The Mana Agate is the first out of five Mage Mana Gems. It is used in combat to instantly restore mana and gets consumed when used. The Conjuring cost is higher than the mana given back for all but the highest rank of the Mage Mana Gems. They have a 2-minute cooldown, which they do not share with Mana Potions. Conjured items disappear after 15 minutes of being logged out.
• At Level 30, buy Ice Armor, Ice Block, Arcane Explosion, Conjure Water, and Teleport: Darnassus (Alliance) or Teleport: Thunder Bluff (Horde) at the respective city's portal trainers. Ice Armor is a better version of Frost Armor. Ice Block can be used to pull enemies, to buy time if you get into hairy situations. It can be used to remove debuffs on you or avoid any kind of damage, except for some boss abilities at Level 70.
• At Level 30 in The Burning Crusade you can also buy your mount. Pulling mounted makes pulling easier and safer.
• At Level 32, buy Conjure Food and Frostbolt.
• At Level 34, buy Mage Armor and Cone of Cold. Mage Armor makes 30% of your Mana regeneration continue while casting, which is good. However, only use Mage Armor when you are safe at doing your AoE pulls without dying, as mobs do not get slowed by Mage Armor like Ice Armor used to and you will have less armor.
• At Level 35 Portal: Theramore and Teleport: Theramore is available to learn for Alliance players in Theramore while Horde players can learn Portal: Stonard/ Teleport: Stonard in Stonard. The Stonard portal is useful later on to get to Karazhan fast.
• At Level 36, buy Blizzard and Mana Shield.
• At Level 38, buy Arcane Explosion, Conjure Mana Jade and Frostbolt.
• At Level 40, buy Conjure Water, Ice Armor and Polymorph. At Level 40, you can also start to buy the portal spells for each major city, except for Darnassus and Thunder Bluff. These become trainable at Level 50. Portals use Rune of Portals from reagent vendors and can be used by anyone in your group.
• At Level 42, buy Arcane Intellect, Conjure Food, and Cone of Cold.
• At Level 44, buy Blizzard, Frostbolt and Mana Shield.
• At Level 46, buy Mage Armor, Arcane Explosion and Ice Barrier.
• At Level 48, buy Conjure Mana Citrine.
• At Level 50, buy Conjure Water, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold and Ice Armor. Mage Trainers in Darnassus (Alliance) and Thunder Bluff (Horde) now also offer the portal spells to these cities.
• At Level 52, buy Conjure Food, Mana Shield, Blizzard and Ice Barrier.
• At Level 54, buy Arcane Explosion
• At Level 56, buy Arcane Intellect, Arcane Brilliance, and Frostbolt. Arcane Brilliance buffs your whole group with Arcane Intellect and requires one Arcane Powder from reagent vendors per cast.
• At Level 58, buy Conjure Mana Ruby, Cone of Cold, Mage Armor and Ice Barrier.
• At Level 60, buy Conjure Food, Conjure Water, Ice Armor, Frostbolt, Blizzard, Polymorph and Mana Shield. Teleport: Shattrath can be learned in the middle of Shattrath (Alliance and Horde). In Outland you can buy better Filtered Draenic Water at Level 60 and Purified Draenic Water at Level 65, which are both better than the conjured Level 60 water. The Level 65 food Clefthoof Ribs is also better than the conjured Level 60 food.
• At Level 62, buy Arcane Explosion.
• At Level 63, buy Frostbolt.
• At Level 64, buy Ice Barrier.
• At Level 65, buy Conjure Water, Cone of Cold and Portal: Shattrath in the middle of Shattrath (Alliance and Horde).
• At Level 66, buy Ice Lance. It does 3 times normal damage to frozen targets and can be used to finish off single frozen mobs. However, it is also very good for pulling additional enemies from afar.
• At Level 68, buy Blizzard Invisibility, Mana Shield, and Conjure Mana Emerald. Invisibility is a new spell that takes 5 seconds to make you invisible. During that time, you fade, reducing your threat against all targets by 20% per second. After 5 seconds become invisible for 20 seconds and drop combat. This spell can also be used to sneak by enemies and reach quest spots earlier, or to flee and avoid death. The new Mana Emerald contains 3 charges and restores more mana than it takes to conjure. You can use it like the old gems, but also use it in between to regenerate Mana.
• At Level 69, buy Frostbolt, Mage Armor, Ice Armor.
• At Level 70, buy Ice Barrier, Arcane Intellect, and Arcane Explosion, and Spellsteal. Arcane Brilliance, Conjure Food, and Conjure Water are learned from the books Tome of Arcane Brilliance 2, Tome of Conjure Food VIII and Tome of Conjure Water IX, which are all Level 70 dungeon drops. Learning Rank 9 of Conjure Water and Rank 8 of Conjure Food is most important. These two spells unlock Ritual of Refreshment at your Mage trainer. Ritual of Refreshment uses two Arcane Powders per cast and summons a table which gives everyone who uses it up to 80 Conjured Mana Biscuits. Spellsteal steals one beneficial magic effect from your target, which you can benefit from for two minutes. This ability is required to defeat High King Maulgar in the Gruul's Lair raid.

Most, if not all places in Azeroth and Outland could be used for AoE Grinding, as long as you keep your pulls to melee enemies without dangerous abilities. Still, some tend to be better than others, assuming equal levels of competition and PvP activities involved. Addons that show map coordinates, such as MapCoordsTBC by JimBim89 will help you find the recommended grinding spots.

Adjust your level slider above in order to see the grinding spots recommended for your level.

• First grinding spot is at Level 14.
• At this point, even if you are already pulling two enemies at once with Arcane Explosion, it is best to quest normally, as it will be faster and safer than AoE Grinding with your small toolkit.
• Level 22 Gnolls around 62, 60 in Wetlands. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 22 Humans around 33, 42 in Hillsbrad Foothills. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 24 Skeletons and Spiders around 24, 41 in Duskwood. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 26 Humans around 27, 56 in Hillsbrad Foothills. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 28 Worgen around 70, 71 in Duskwood. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 33 Silithid around 68, 83 in Thousand Needles. Typically Horde favored spot.
• Level 31-32 Humans around 57, 37 in Arathi Highlands. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 34 Orcs around 59, 54 in Arathi Highlands. Alliance-only spot as enemies are Horde-friendly.
• Level 38 Raptors spread out across Stranglethorn Vale. Try between 31, 23 and 37,19, or between 23,48 and 33,37.
• Level 40 Birds around 16, 60 in Badlands.
• Level 41 Humans around 59, 24 in Tanaris.
• Level 42 Murlocs around 85, 80 in Swamp of Sorrows.
• Levels 42 to 52 Trolls inside Zul'Farrak . This video, by Arlaeus, showcases how to execute this farm. It needs to be said that this farm will take longer in TBCC, due to the AoE cap, which was not in place in classic. Nevertheless, it is still a very good farm without any competition.
• Level 45 Humans around 72, 46 in Tanaris.
• Level 47 Snakes and Turtles inside Maraudon. Requires Scepter of Celebras. This video, by Exehn, showcases how to do it perfectly.
• Level 51 Undead around 37, 56 and 49, 77 in Western Plaguelands.
• Level 53 Undead around 47, 53 in Western Plaguelands.
• Level 56 Humans in Hearthglen, around 46, 15 in Western Plaguelands. ODB has made a nice video of the pull.
• Levels 58 to 61 Birds around 59, 73 in Hellfire Peninsula
• Levels 60 to 64 Orcs around 43, 69 and Birds around 27, 50 in Hellfire Peninsula
• Levels 61 to 65 Orcs around 50, 57 in Hellfire Peninsula
• Levels 61 to 65 Birds around 47, 15 and 58, 25, and more Humanoids around 34, 54 in Terokkar Forest
• Levels 61 to 65 Bloodscale Naga around 27, 47 and 63,40 in Zangarmarsh
• Levels 64 to 67 Humanoids around 32, 45 and 69, 80, and Beasts all over Nagrand.
• Levels 67 to 70 Ethereals around 31, 76 in Netherstorm.
• Levels 68 to 70 Demon Hunters around 69, 51 in Shadowmoon Valley.
• Levels 68 to 70 Ashtongue Draenei around 59, 37 in Shadowmoon Valley.
• Fakeqt has made a nice video showing most of the Outland Aoe Farms .
• Another excellent, if not the best, Outland AoE grinding strategy is the the Slave Pens Farm by Masonx, which takes place entirely in Slave Pens.

AoE Grinding Mages that level purely by pulling groups of mobs and killing them solo will mostly have to do with green gear and weapons that drop. Early on, you should be looking to get of the Eagle items, which have Intellect and Stamina, which are the stats you should focus on the most! When you are visiting your Mage trainer, it never hurts to check the Auction House for good and cheap of the Eagle items, if they are big upgrades for you.

Look for high Intellect / Stamina gear when doing dungeons, as well, where you can use your AoE skills to help your group kill enemies fast. In most cases though, your leveling will be faster if you skip dungeon groups and just continue grinding mobs. Stats like critical strike rating or spell damage are not very beneficial, as Blizzard cannot crit and scales poorly with spell damage. You need the Stamina for surviving the pulls and the Intellect gives you enough mana for casting enough Blizzards to kill your foes.

Later on, when you have enough survivability through your abilities, adding a few items with Intellect and Spirit is possible. This can be especially helpful if you are doing dungeon solo farms that do not rely a lot on survivability, but rather on regenerating more mana, such as the Zul'Farrak and Slave Pens pulls.

When doing quests you should basically only do quests that are related to killing AoE farmable mobs or give really good gear rewards. Never bother with quests whose objectives do not involved AoE farming or quests whose quest items have a very low drop rate. Travelling long ways to do one quest is also almost always inferior to grinding.

As you will kill enemies, you will loot a lot of items of any quality. To prevent you from running to the next vendor and thereby reducing your experience per hour from AoE grinding, it is recommended to keep your bags big and tidy. That means you should always try to have big sized bags with lots of space in them. The gold or cloth you will need for that will come with time from your AoE grinding. For selling these more easily, you can make a Level 1 alt and run it to the nearest major city to access the Auction House. For Alliance players, Humans are closest to a major city, for Horde players, Trolls and Orcs are really close to a major city as well. Run your Human alt to Stormwind and your Orc/Troll to Orgrimmar. Now you have a mule you can send all your goods you get from AoE farming to. Mails to alts on the same account are instant in TBC and will stay for 30 days before being returned. While drinking and eating between AoE pulls, you can sort the items in your inventory you want to vendor when you Hearthstone to a nearby inn.

Another trick that can be used is choosing Skinning and Mining or Enchanting as professions. At very low levels, you can disenchant all the green items you will get, usually for good profits. In many of the AoE grinding locations, there are constant ore respawns, which you can mine. Smelt these ores into bars, as these usually have a higher market value than ores and send them to your Level 1 alt to sell on the AH. Many of your AoE grinding mobs also are skinnable, which makes Skinning a good passive income.

Two professions that actually increases your leveling speed are First Aid and Engineering. With Iron Grenades you can increase your damage output significantly at lower levels. At any level, the stun from grenades can be very useful. However, leveling this profession costs you gold instead of making you gold, so this is rather for wealthy players than for beginners. With First Aid, you sometimes can survive failed pulls by healing yourself rapidly with Bandages.

Once you have made it to Level 70, most of the Outland AoE locations can still be used for gold making, as some of them drop items of interest, such as reputation items, uncommon, rare and even epic items, cloth, potions and many more. With the release of Burning Crusade, all these items will be in high demand and the AoE Farming meta will develop, at which point you will find more information here on Icy Veins.

After you reached level 70, there is still a lot to learn. Our Frost Mage PvE Guide covers the most relevant and up-to-date information about your Frost Mage spells, talents, rotation, gear, and many more.