Arcane Mage Guide | <Progress> Avoid

1. Hit until hit cap
2. Spellpower
3. Int
4. Haste
5. Crit

While leveling just prio highest spell damage gear

Various consumables, which will help you on your leveling journey.

Cooking for well fed buffs, even the level 1 recipes gives you the new 5% xp buff. Such as Brilliant Smallfish.

Obviously Healing Potion and Mana Potion on you throughout the game will get you out of some sticky situations.

Some of the lower level elixirs are Elixir of Wisdom, Elixir of Minor Spirit, Minor Arcane Elixir & Minor Mageblood Elixir. These are crafted by Alchemy, you can also pick them up on the auction house cheap usually. All these elixirs are great for leveling as a mage, if you decide to go Herbalism Alchemy is a classic choice, so you can craft your own consumables throughout the game.

The lowest level weapon oil you can obtain is Minor Wizard Oil, which is from Enchanting.

Generally on your first character consumables will be a luxury, but getting the well fed buff for 5% extra mob HP should be doable via Cooking and quests.

We still have a lot to discover when it comes to BIS professions in PvE.

Tailoring Very likely have some pre-bis BoP crafts

Engineering Historically always come out ahead in both PvP and PvE.

Those 2 professions is our assumption to be best for Mage at max level.

You can always level with gathering professions (Herbalism, Mining, Skinning) and re-roll later if you wish. Historically on fresh classic servers Skinning is used to vendor leather, for extra early gold. Herbalism & Mining to make gold at max level or supply your own materials to level your other profession.

First Aid Is also nice to pick up, especially when playing solo. In WoW forever it also allows you to craft healing potions, which makes it even more attractive.

Cooking Is more relevant than ever, since the Well Fed buff now gives you 5% experience from mobs.

Fishing Is worth picking up if you have some extra time, it allows you to easily obtain fish for Cooking and have plenty of 5% well fed xp buffs available.

Alliance

Alliance got 3 mage races (High Order Skyborne, Human, Gnome). We currently recommend Gnome for most players.

Skyborne

Wind Blessed - 2% passive haste is massive.

Read Leyline - Was nerfed after beta went down. No longer scales with Innervate. Should still scale with water and Evocation. Quite good leveling racial still, potentially good in high pace dungeons/raids too.

Walk on Air - Can situationally be very useful, also lets you control your character midair.

Elemental Insight - Not unlikely some raids will contain elementals giving you a passive 5% damage increase.

Human

If you value PvP highly Human is a fine option. The 2 other races are stronger in PvE.

Ruthless - Passive 1% crit

The Human Spirit - With no improved Divine Spirit in this version, it's very minor for mage, but still "nice to have"

Will to Survive - Very strong PvP racial, and potentially also useful in some PvE encounters

Perception - Increases your stealth detection drastically, good talent vs Rogue & Druid

Gnome

Gnome which was previously the "go-to" alliance Mage race, has gotten some competition. Gnome is still good in both PvE and PvP.

Escape Artist - Escape artist got a solid buff. It is now instant and gives you 3 seconds immunity to movement impairing effects (Roots, slows)

Expansive Mind - 5% more mana, specifically nice if you are planning to play Arcane

Eureka! - A new on use for gnomes. 10% damage increase and 10% mana cost reduction. Can be used with cooldowns such as Combustion or Arcane Power in PvE, or big Shatter setups in PvP.

Engineering Specialization - Less backfires on engineering devices. Can't really say how relevant this will be yet.

All 3 are currently simming very close to each other in PVE ,so pick what you think you will enjoy playing the most.

Horde

For horde we recommend Orc

Blood Fury - Primary reason to play orc. Increases your spellpower by 10%, which will keep scaling as the game goes on. Can be used with big cooldowns such as Combustion and Arcane Power

Hardiness - Shorter stun duration, mostly useful in PvP facing Rogue or Paladin

Shatter Curse - Defensive cooldown which could come in handy in PvE, but more often in PvP facing Warlock or Priest.

1. If you are playing on launch, unequip your staff. You won't be able to tag mobs with Fireball and staff has a very long swing timer.

2. Buy Refreshing Spring Water (lvl 1+) & Ice Cold Milk (lvl 5+) from vendor early on while leveling. It's much more efficient than crafting your own. Until you get higher level the only time worth crafting water is if you are on a boat or zeppelin.

3. Get your Lesser Magic Wand ASAP! Wanding also allows us to enter

4. In WoW Forever we still have the "5-second rule", meaning our passive regenaration doesn't start until 5 seconds after a finished cast. This makes wanding to finish off mobs even stronger, since you will start your regeneration from spirit faster. Especially strong with Read Leyline.

4. Only buy spell you will use, you need all the silver you can save for water & potential Lesser Magic Essence

5. Keep up your well fed buff when possible +5% experience from mobs

6. Know when your key spells gets a new rank, and train when convinient with leveling route

Fireball (Lvl 6 and every 6th level after that)

Frostbolt (Lvl 4, 8 and every 6th level after that)

Arcane Missiles (Lvl 8 and every 8th level after that)

Arcane Blast (Lvl 30-40-50)

Arcane Wrath (Lvl 36, 48, 60)

7. With a lot of players on launch you will often encounter a lot of people waiting for the same mob, we recommend making a macro similar to this:

/cast [target=NAME] Fire blast

Change NAME to the mob you are waiting for, and bind have this macro bound to some keybind including scroll wheel on your mouse. This will greatly improve your chances of getting the tag.

8. Spammable wand macro: /castsequence reset=target !shoot, !shoot

9. If you are playing High Order Skyborne get an addon, which shows you leylines around the map!

24/10/26 - Version 1.0