TAPF Articles

Mages are sought after members of most groups in WoW. Their intelligence buff coupled with their ability to provide foods that regenerate health and mana are some of their most sought after characteristics. The Mage is also famous for its burst DPS.

The Mage is very powerful but it definitely lacks hit points compared to other classes. Paladins, Warriors and Death Knights have a lot more hit points than Mages, Priests, Druids, and Shaman can heal themselves when wounded, Rogues can disappear and both Warlocks and Hunters have pets. Mages don’t have these luxuries, what they do have however is control. If you have a Mage you need to master the use of the strengths the Mages have.

Like all classes in World of Warcraft the Mage has three skill trees. These are Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The first two can inflict massive amounts of damage but lack control. In the Fire and Arcane trees there is little in the form of crowd control. Of course all Mage characters have the infamous “sheep” ability but only Frost gives even more control.

When specialized in frost you may not have the big punch of the other trees but you have much more control over the situation. Certain talents give your Chill effects a chance to freeze the target for a short period of time, increase your Chill effect time, lower the movement rate of the target, and stun your target. This tree is excellent for solo Mage Leveling.

One of the tactics that you might use to level is to pick an area with a large number of mobs in a general area. To be safer you should pick an area where the mobs are green to you. Start gathering them up and when you have a number around you pop your Frost Nova and root them in place. Jump back out of melee range and cut loose with Blizzard. This is a tactic that I have used on a number of Mage characters that I have built over the years and it really works.

I know there are those who are going to say that you should be doing mobs your own level but I beg to differ. Let’s play out two separate scenarios.

In the first scenario we will head out to a zone that has mobs which are my level. Since they hit way too hard and I have tissue paper for armor I am not going to be able to area of effect hunt and will be forced to kill one at a time. Since they are my level they have more hit points and it takes longer to nuke them down, and after each kill I need to sit down and gulp some refreshments before I can engage the next one. For each of these kills we will say that I gain 200 experience points. For the sake of argument let’s say I can kill one mob every 3 minutes, so that would be 20 per hour. Total experience per hour would be 4,000.

Scenario two is going to be a bit different. I go to a zone with lots of mobs that are green to me. I grab 5 at a time, round them up, freeze them to the ground and use Blizzard. Each mob I kill only gives 100 experience points. In this zone I can do 1 pull every 3 minutes just like I did above, but for the same amount of mana I have killed 5 mobs compared to the one above. Sure they only give 100 experience points but 5 x 100 = 500 versus 200 as above. Now let’s assume I do as many pulls as I did above in an hour’s time. Instead of 4,000 experience points I have earned 10,000. Add to these numbers the fact that I have killed 100 mobs and looted each. Which method earns more cash?

At first glance leveling a mage may seem like a tough process. Especially give that they lack a lot of the abilities that other classes have. But if you take the time to master the art of control you have a massive advantage in that you can wipe out many creatures in short time periods.