WoW Classic Mage Leveling Guide 1-60

This guide will aim to provide you with a clear skill and gear path to max level as a Mage in WoW Classic. We will focus on talents, skills to buy and spell rotation, as well as leveling gear and the class specific quests you will find along the way.

Mages have three talent trees: Arcane, Fire and Frost

Frost is the recommended leveling build due to its consistency and flexibility when dealing with World PvP, as well as the strong defensive power of Frost's chill and freeze effects, which will render most enemies unable to attack you back.

You can play it with a focus on single targeting enemies one by one, which is maybe one of the easiest specializations to play in WoW Classic, and extremely safe. The main downside is that it can be slow to level with, relative to the alternative.

You can also throw caution to the wind and specialize in pulling and killing 5+ enemies at once. In order to do this you will require a specialized talent tree focused on Improved Blizzard and a lot of skill to consistently pull it off. It will also be required that you farm relatively uncontested spots, as otherwise you will not have enough enemies to pull in order to make the AoE Grinding worth it.

Another advantage of leveling as Frost, is that it gets you acquainted with the spells and talents you will be using during the first raids of WoW Classic: Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, where most bosses are Fire immune.

If you prefer to go off the beaten road, Arcane has a flexible, strong all-rounder tree which starts off slow but quickly grows in power once you approach level 40 and beyond. Once you hit 60, the Arcane spec we recommend for leveling doubles as the best single target damage spec for Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair, saving you a respec!

Finally, Fire is a very powerful single target leveling spec, having some of the best damage increasing talents in the game on its tree. Once you hit 60, you will be optimized for level 60 dungeons, the 20 man raids and also for the raids of Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas.

The ultimate way to speed level in WoW Classic is through Mage AoE Grinding. Because you need Blizzard and Improved Blizzard in order to do it consistently, begin with this Fire-focused build and quest / single target until you can respec at level 22 to our suggested AoE grinding talents. At this point, you should be able to immediately begin grinding like a pro at one of our recommended AoE grinding spots.

The icing on the cake is that, by the time you are near 60, this method of leveling will have made you quite rich!

Check out the condensed recap of Jokerd's run in this video by Stretta!

Leveling with a premade group in dungeons is extremely fast in WoW Classic, and you can maximize your experience per hour by pulling as much as possible, using Improved Blizzard based kiting strategies such as the ones we list in the AoE Grinding section below.

It should be noted that most dungeons in WoW Classic can be done with more than 5 people. While this will ruin your experience gain, it is an option if you are struggling to get through.

While leveling this way will not be for everyone, as it requires a group of people of specific classes doing specific pulls for maximum efficiency, feel free to give it a try with your friends, in which case we recommend following Hakurai's video guide. While this video was made for a melee cleave group, its quest / dungeon path can easily be adopted by a spell cleave group as well.

While working towards 60 with a Mage, you will want to take some time to also level your professions, and to consider which gear / stats to pursue, or how to complete your class quests. In the following sections we will be discussing each of these at length.

By setting yourself up with an upgraded user interface and macros from the get go, you will make your leveling process much easier. Check out our Mage Macros and Addons guide in the link below for the full list.

Learning professions early on is very useful, as you can naturally level them as you go, avoiding extra work at max level. This is especially true for gathering professions, but crafting professions compensate your efforts by giving you extra tools to level with.

We recommend that you learn First Aid as soon as possible for easy self-healing. Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining are great primary professions for a leveling Mage, allowing you to make extra gold, or accumulate materials that you can use to level crafting professions later. There is also a case to be made for leveling Engineering early on, since its crafts can make your leveling much easier, such as Iron Grenade.

While Mages are quite gear independent while leveling, you should still aim to gather items with as much Intellect as possible, making your Mana pool last longer before you have to drink or wait for regeneration.

Spirit is also a useful stat for leveling, as it increases your Health and Mana regeneration rates, but keep in mind you can only regenerate Health outside combat unless you are a Troll, and Mana will not regenerate if you cast a spell in the past 5 seconds, making this stat mostly useful while traveling.

Spell Damage will be very useful at maximum level, but its impact on the spells you will be using while leveling is low, and it has no effect whatsoever on wand damage, which you will be using often to finish enemies off, so do not go out of your way to get it on your gear.

Stamina allows you to live for longer and can be useful in PvP situations, but for the most part, you should aim to kill enemies from a distance, taking little damage in return.

Every class in WoW Classic has important class-specific quests that allow them to gear up and learn new active abilities, which are often critical to the class. As a Mage, you will learn Polymorph: Pig and get some nice Wands for leveling. We will detail every single step of the way for you in our full guide for quests below.

Once you (single or area of effect) grind your way to 60, browse through our Mage PvE Guide in order to learn all the tricks and tips relative to maximum level Mage gameplay.

In case you are a PvPer, our PvP Mage Guide has the information to give you an edge, and the epic mount grind will be trivial once you learn the strategies in the Goldmaking Guide for Mages.

Enjoy Azeroth!