Mage Leveling Guide

The Mage is considered an important tool in groups for crowd control and AoE. It comes self-prepared; it can summon its own water and food and pass it out to others. Its AoE damage can be sufficient enough to level off of or you can use other these for single target damage. There is really no “best” leveling build for a mage, it depends on how you like to play so I will cover all of the trees.

Arcane

The master blaster of instant Area of Effect spells focusing on increasing your arcane explosion, wand damage, and damage output will allow you to excel as an Arcane Mage.
I would recommend pulling as many as 8 melee (non-caster) mobs to your mage, about 2 levels lower and using your frost nova and arcane explosion to AoE them all to the ground. You will burn out your mana fast but you can drink water you summon and you will get 8 kills at the same time, depending on how many your mage can handle at a time.

10-14: Improved Arcane Missiles 5/5
15-16: Wand Specialization 2/2
17-19: Arcane Concentration 3/5
20-22: Arcane Impact 3/3
23: Arcane Fortitude 1/1
24: Arcane Concentration 4/5
25-27: Arcane Meditation 3/3
28: Arcane Concentration 5/5
29: Improved Mana Shield 1/2
30: Your choice here, depending on what path you choose and what skills you are having the most fun with. Continue to increase the damage output or damage avoiding abilities like blink. Slow is a definite must for some seriously good PvP action with your mage later on.

Fire

This talent tree focuses not so much on AoE as the Arcane Tree but on a lot of single target burst and damage per hit. This is considered to be the ultimate tree for mage PvP when using cooldown abilities with instant cast fire spells because it can cause a lot of damage in a very short period of time. It has some use for leveling but you will mostly be focusing on pulling one mob at a time, blasting it away, and pulling again until you run out of mana.

10-14: Impact 5/5
15-16: Flame Throwing 2/2
17-19: Improved Fire Blast 3/3
20: Pyroblast 1/1
21-22: Incinerate 2/2
23-24: Ignite 2/5
25-27: Master of Elements 3/3
28-29: Improved Scorch 2/3
30: Blast Wave 1/1

From here you will know which talents you are using the most to level and be able to place talents in the right areas. Combustion is a very important talent to get in this tree.

Frost

The frost mage is considered the hardest type of mage to kill. It has abilities like ice block which will make you immune for 10 seconds to all damage. Mix that with its frost spells having a slowing effect on you and it will be hard to catch a mage like this. This is a very good PvE and soloing tree to place emphasis in and you will definitely be rewarded for doing so.

10-12: Elemental Precision 3/3
13-14: Frost Warding 2/2
15-16: Improved Frost Nova 2/2
17-19: Ice Shards 3/5
20: Cold Snap 1/1
21-23: Piercing Ice 3/3
24: Ice Shards 4/5
25-26: Arctic Reach 2/2
27: Ice Shards 5/5
28-29: Shatter 2/5
30: Ice Block

At this point you will know which Ice Talents your mage is using to level and which you can benefit from. After getting ice block you are almost impossible to kill. Use it after a blink to help wait out the cooldown of it, or use it when you get aggro and your group needs time to kill the mobs hitting you. Ice Barrier and Summon Water Elemental are key talents in this tree. The Water Elemental has the ability to frost nova making it that much more easier for a mage to escape in mid combat.

Summary

Mages are a fun class to play as long as you aren’t playing on a server full of rogues. They are most welcome in groups and put out a very good amount of range DPS, crowd control, and have the ability to survive from AoE, unlike some other classes. You will never have to worry about taking a blimp again because they can port to all the major cities. If you want to really master your mage you should take a look at this guide.