BHG Articles

The Mage is famous for its burst DPS in WOW and many different groups often want to have a Mage amongst their ranks. They have a good damage output, the ability to give health & mana regenerating foods and also have an intelligence buff.

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.

Mages, like all other WoW classes have three skill trees. For Mages, the skill trees are Arcane, Fire, and Frost. Frost is the skill that has most control out of the three. Arcane and Fire both lack a lot in terms of control but can be devastating for opponents.

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.

A tactic that I have used often (one that works very well for me) when leveling my Mage’s is to go out to an area where there a plenty of mobs, get them around you and the go for them with Frost Nova. This will root them still in one place. You should then follow this up with Blizzard (make sure you’re out of melee range) to do massive damage.

Some players may argue that you should always go for mobs that are your level, I don’t see it like that however, lets play out two different 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?

Leveling a Mage in World of Warcraft can seem like an arduous task, especially given that Mages don’t have the abilities to heal themselves, don’t have pets, and have low hit points. It’s not as tough as it seems however. If you take the time to practice the art of control, you’ll see that you can do massive damage in short time periods.