Mage kills from range and does not depend on gear to level well. That makes it a good first character on x1.
Leveling spec: Frost
Frost is the standard leveling tree. You kill things before they reach you and you rarely die.
- Core talents: Improved Frostbolt for cast time, Ice Shards for crit damage, Frostbite and Improved Frost Nova for control, and Shatter later.
- Standard pull: Frostbolt until the mob is close, Frost Nova to root it, step back, finish it. Use your wand to save mana on low-health targets.
- Always carry water and conjure your own. Drinking between pulls is normal and faster than fighting at low mana.
AoE grinding
Once you have a few Frost talents you can pull many mobs at once and kill them together. Done well, it is fast experience and a steady supply of cloth and vendor trash. Done wrong, it gets you killed.
- Good spots: the cave packs in places like Zul’Farrak and the lower wings of Maraudon, where mobs are dense and hit softish.
- The loop: gather a pack, Frost Nova, Blizzard or Cone of Cold and Arcane Explosion, blink out when the root breaks, repeat.
- This takes practice and it will kill you a few times while you learn the pull size. Start small.
Raiding at 60
- For Molten Core, many bosses and trash are fire immune, so you bring a Frost or Arcane build there. Do not show up to MC as pure Fire and expect to top the meters.
- For later content where targets are not fire immune, Fire with Improved Scorch and Ignite stacking is the big damage build, run with your raid’s other mages.
- Keep both a Frost and a damage set if you can. Most mages run Frost or Arcane for Molten Core and respec to Fire for the raids after it.
If you are new to the class, level Frost, learn to AoE, and worry about raid specs when you are close to 60.