Playstyle

Leveling as a mage, your playstyle will revolve around either frostbolting singular mobs at a time, with complete safety throughout the leveling experience, or riskily gathering large groups of mobs to kill all at once.

AOE (Blizzard)

This spec revolves around gathering up large groups of mobs and using Improved Blizzard to AOE them down while slowly kiting them.  The most efficient and fastest leveling spec for mage, this playstyle takes a medium-high level of skill to play efficiently and will require a fair amount of practice to unlock its full potential.  Once you are able to AOE grind successfully, this spec becomes arguably one of the fastest in the game to level with.

Single Target Frostbolt

Single target frost revolves around using Frostbolt combined with Frostbite procs and Frost Nova to batch-shatter combo mobs for the 50% bonus critical strike chance.  When played skillfully, this spec has incredible survivability and very good mana efficiency.

Rotation

1-10 (Fireball / Frostbolt)

Use whichever rank of Fireball or Frostbolt you have most recently trained. If you don’t have much money, don’t train Conjure food/water until level 10.

10-19 (Single Target Frost part 1)

Frostbolt -> Frost Nova (when mob is within 10 yards) -> Frostbolt -> Fireblast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

Frostbolt. If the mob reaches you Frost Nova, run away (depending on the mob’s remaining hp) and Frostbolt.  Finish with wand when you run out of mana.

20-24 (Single Target Frost part 2)

Icy Veins -> Frostbolt -> Frost Nova (when mob is within 10 yards) -> Frostbolt -> Fireblast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

• Use Icy Veins on cooldown for more damage.
• Use Evocation on cooldown to reduce your downtime.

25-49 (Single Target Frost part 3)

Icy Veins -> Frostbolt -> Frost Nova (when mob is within 10 yards) -> Frostbolt -> Fireblast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

Frost Nova/Frostbite Proc: Frostbolt -> Queue (Batch) Fire Blast

• Use Cold Snap at level 30+ on cooldown after using Icy Veins for more damage.

At 25, you start getting extra crit on mobs if they’re rooted with either Frost Nova or a Frostbite proc from your frost spells. In the game, there is a mechanic called “Batching”, where you have a 10ms window where you can queue spells for the same bonuses.

Because of this mechanic, you are able to gain the 10-50% crit chance bonus (depending on shatter rank) from potentially two spells at once. By casting Frostbolt then spamming Fire Blast to queue the spell before the current Frostbolt has finished casting, both spells should be able to gain the extra 10-50% chance to crit, massively increasing your potential damage.

50-65 (Single Target Frost part 4)

Summon Water Elemental -> Icy Veins -> Cold Snap -> Frostbolt -> Freeze (when mob is within 20 yards) -> Frost Nova (when mob is within 10 yards) -> Frostbolt -> Fireblast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

Freeze/Frost Nova/Frostbite Proc: Frostbolt -> Queue (Batch) Fire Blast

• Use Summon Water Elemental on cooldown for more damage. Be sure to use (and bind) its pet ability (Freeze) on cooldown to gain more Shatter damage.

66-70 (Single Target Frost part 5)

Summon Water Elemental -> Icy Veins -> Cold Snap -> Frostbolt -> Freeze (when mob is within 20 yards) -> Frost Nova (when mob is within 10 yards) -> Frostbolt -> Fireblast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

Freeze/Frost Nova/Frostbite Proc: Frostbolt -> Queue (Batch) Ice Lance -> Ice Lance until Frostbite/Frost Nova breaks

• At level 66, you get Ice Lance – this ability does triple damage on frozen targets. This effectively replaces Fire Blast during the Frostbite stage.
• At level 68, you get Conjure Mana Emerald – Be sure to use this on cooldown as it restores more mana than it costs to conjure, and has 3 charges.

10-22 Fireball Pre-AoE (OPTIONAL)

Fireball -> Frost Nova -> Fireball -> Fire Blast (if it kills mob) -> Wand (No mana)

This build is marginally faster than the standard talent build if you’re planning on doing AoE from level 22 onwards. However, it does require you to spend a gold at 22 to respec your talents, which is rough in an already expensive level range for training on a mage. Recommended for experienced players.

22-29 (Blizzard AOE Part 1)

Mana Shield -> Group up mobs (Proximity pull, Counterspell, Fire Blast rank 1, Wand) -> Frost Nova -> Icy Veins -> Blizzard -> Frost Nova -> Blizzard/Arcane Explosion

• Use Icy Veins after the first Frost Nova to deal more damage.

Many will choose to respec around this level as you begin to put skill points into Improved Blizzard. Learning to group up the mobs properly using Wand, Counterspell, Fireblast and Proximity pulling is a tough skill to learn if its your first time, but incredibly worth it.  Once grouped you will Frost Nova, all of the mobs around you, run away about 25-30 yards and begin to Blizzard.  Once the stack of mobs gets close, Frost Nova again and continue to Blizzard or finish with Arcane Explosion if its faster. Rinse and repeat until dead.

If a mob happens to resist your first Frost Nova, with some practice, you can either tank the mob and start kiting the pack around with Cone of Cold (at level 26+) when the nova breaks on the rest of the mobs, or you can VERY quickly Polymorph it and adjust your position to try to continue the blizzard method.

You can find an in-depth Frost Mage AoE guide by Tommysalami here.

30-39 (Blizzard AoE Part 2)

Mana Shield -> Group up mobs  -> Ice Block -> Frost Nova -> Cold Snap (if mob resists 1st Frost Nova) -> Frost Nova (if mob resisted 1st Frost Nova) -> Icy Veins -> Blizzard -> Cold Snap (Optional) -> Frost Nova -> Blizzard/Arcane Explosion

At 30, your toolkit extends to having both Ice Block, freezing you and making you immune for 10 seconds, where mobs gather around you in the block, including spellcasters (making your ability to group up the mobs a lot easier and safer) and Cold Snap, which resets all your cooldowns on your frost spells, mainly allowing you to Frost Nova twice to catch any mobs who resisted, as well as additionally refreshing the cooldown on Ice Block and Icy Veins.

40-52 (Blizzard AoE Part 3) OPTIONAL

From 40-52, you can solo the Zombie Graves in Zul’Farrak. This is quite difficult and requires some preperation, but can save a few hours if you know what you’re doing. You can see Arlaeus’s guide for it here.

40-49 (Blizzard AoE Part 3)

Ice Barrier -> Group up mobs -> Frost Nova -> Blizzard -> Frost Nova -> Flamestrike+Cone of Cold Shatter Batch

From 40 onward, you unlock Ice Barrier, which gives you a lot more absorption than Mana Shield, and doesn’t drain your mana for it. If you’re finishing pulls with a lot of mana but find yourself dying a lot, you can add any rank of mana shield you like on top of Ice Barrier before the pull to increase your survivability.

Additionally, there is a mechanic called “Batching”, where you have a 10ms window where you can queue spells for the same bonuses.

Because of this mechanic, you are able to gain the 10-50% crit chance bonus (depending on Shatter rank) from potentially two spells at once. After casting the second Frost Nova in the pull, casting Flamestrike then spamming Cone of Cold to queue the spell before the Flamestrike has finished casting, both spells should be able to gain the extra 10-50% chance to crit, massively increasing your potential damage, and reducing the need to have to run away to Blizzard. This makes your pulls a bit faster overall.

50-70 (Blizzard AoE Part 4)

Ice Barrier -> Group up mobs -> Frost Nova -> Freeze (if mob resists 1st Frost Nova) ->  Blizzard -> Frost Nova -> Flamestrike+Cone of Cold Shatter Batch

At 50, you get your water elemental – Bind it’s ability “Freeze”, as it allows you to do a ranged Frost Nova spell, greatly reducing the chance you have to reset a pull. You can also use this pet to damage mobs down if you keybind the pet’s attack ability.

Notes

• Don’t get frustrated whilst learning how to AoE on a mage. This process can be very frustrating due to making you think about your characters limits per mob. It requires patience, and it pays off massively.
• Enable “Floating Combat Text” under Interface -> Combat. This will show you when a mobs are attacking the most during an Ice Block. Cancelling the Ice Block just after you see the most attacks should allow you to come out of the block with more health.
• Make a macro with “/cancelaura Ice Block /cast Ice Block “, as this will allow you to cancel the Ice Block when you see the most attacks. (Obviously put the /cast Ice Block on a seperate line)
• Do the same with Blink. Make a macro with “/cancelaura Ice Block
  /cast Blink “, as this will allow you to blink straight out of an Ice Block and avoid a LOT of damage if you’re at extremely low hp.
• The range of Blizzard is slightly larger than shown. You can be a little bit greedier than the green circle suggests (you’ll learn the real range through experience)
• If your mage is an alt, buying them some semi-decent pieces of gear can help a LOT. Gear scales massively well on mages at lower levels, and good gear can be used to cheese pulls in the form of being more aggressive with Blizzards, or being able to reapply Mana Shield twice.

Itemization (Single Target)

Spell Hit > Spell Power -> Intellect -> Spell Crit

Itemization (AOE)

Intellect > Stamina -> Spell Hit

Spec

Single Target

Link

AOE

Link