1-50 Mage Leveling is godawful and poorly designed

Classes Mage
1

As a mage, fire and frost are terrible for leveling until about level 40. Fire and frost are extremely proc based, and they basically don’t get enough of their procs to do reasonable damage until that level. Their filler spells, fireball and frostbolt, probably do about 5% of a mobs health until they get more procs.

Blizzard needs to make serious adjustments to what levels procs like Fingers of Frost, and Brain Freeze become available. Like, we should have all of those abilities by LVL 20 in my opinion, and jesus christ, why isn’t fire blast castable while casting as a firemage until -level 32-???

Arcane spec is alright, and doesn’t need nearly as much adjustment. They get their most damaging abilities, arcane missiles and arcane blast at around before level 20. Even so, they aren’t excellent, just not as awful as fire and frost.

To make an apt comparison to another class, Warlocks get Malefic Rapture at like level 10. Now imagine if they had to wait until level 37 to get that ability, and level 32 to get, idk, agony or something, so all of their damage just came from corruption and shadowbolt. That’s how Frost and Firemage feels until lvl 37-40 in its current state.

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2

I agree and have given up on my mage so many times as a result. He just hit 50, though. Is it any better? Worth the last push the 60? My worry is at 60 it’ll be the same…

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3

They’re so squishy too. There is no self healing in sight, and barrier/ice block can only cover for so much

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4

Yep. I would say mage is the class I’ve always wanted to love but have never been able to main…

5

Once you are lvl 50 frost and arcane are both fine. I’d say fire falls behind the two specs because it just doesn’t have any slows at all.

6

At 50, you basically have your whole toolkit. it definitely gets better, but it’s still one of the harder classes i’ve leveled. I’d suggest going necrolord since fleshcraft helps a ton while leveling, then switching to whatever covenant you want to be at 60. i’ve found grinding out dungeons as arcane to be quite fun, while frost offers more survivability for world content.

7

I dunno I ripped through it as frost. Elemental Force helped for sure but most of the time it was Nova lance dead.

8

Going from 50 to 60 isn’t the worst (though it’s still pretty bad compared to most other classes) once you cap it’s miserable. Killing enemies out in the world without gear is a tedious and obnoxious chore.

It’s not bad once you get to 200-ish ilvl, but it’s a pain until then.

9

This forum has so many Mage players that hate Mage its unreal. There is nothing wrong with leveling a Mage. I wonder, how often do you wake up and say “hmm what about Mage can I post today that screams omg they suck, radically change or delete them.”

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10

I’m close to finishing this mage from 1-60 so this is fresh. I’m also nearing the end of my all class to 60 journey. Here are my thoughts.

1-10: Just get through it, it’s easy.
10-30: Arcane. Don’t dump charges with Barrage. Simply keep 4 charges and blast mobs away. Use Clearcasting procs. As long as you engage from near-max range, no mob should make it to you.
30-60: Enable War Mode and go Frost. Talent Frostbite and Deep Shatter. Whenever Frostbite procs, finish your next Frostbolt with an Ice Lance. Up until 50’s, this should kill mobs immediately. It’s so easy. Talent Concentrated Coolness at 40 and you obliterate any >1 mob pull even harder than you would otherwise.

The trick to leveling a mage is to prioritize control over damage. Don’t facetank while casting. Ice Nova and walk away. Get a slow onto the mob and blink away. Etc. Pulling big packs of mobs is easy as well with Frozen Orb and Blizzard. Round them up, Blizzard, FN, blink away, Frozen Orb, hit an FoF procs, and in the meantime, dance around the mobs casting Arcane Explosion. The only damage you’ll take is when initially rounding mobs up, but then you nuke them down faster than almost any other spec.

Arcane is viable after 30, but it was my experience that Frost blew it out of the water. Single target, Arcane wins, but against more than 1 non-elite mob, Frost wins. Even ST, getting a proc or two in the first 1-2 Frostbolt casts deletes a mob quicker than Arcane.

Your statement is 100% valid for Fire. Fire is abysmal leveling, even after getting all of your procs, FB charges, and passives. It’s fun, but the survivability and general multi-target rotation are worse, relatively.

After having leveled almost all classes to 60, and at least all over 55, it’s been my experience that mage requires more finesses to level, but when done so carefully, it slaps hard. The absolute worst class to level was Rogue, particularly 1-35, 35-50 is pretty lame. 50-60 is totally fine as Sub. Overall, non-tank and non-pet specs all feel about the same to level in regards to difficulty.

11

The ironic part of your post is that this is literally what you do every single time someone points out that mage is the worst leveling class in the game.

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12

Idk good question maybe so many people dislike the leveling because the leveling is bad :thinking:

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13

I’ve not leveled a mage since the revamp from 120 to 60. I got 3, this one and other two at 51.

You can’t facetank the mobs until you have your barrier, and even then you should try not to. You need to apply control before dmg. As fire you can cast frostbolt to slow the target first or using firestarter Pyro > FB > Pyro > Nova > frostbolt > fireball if the target is not already dead.

The best for AoE leveling is frost, using freeze, frost nova, blizzard and frozen orb you should have no problem.

While leveling a mage you do the same thing you do when 1v1 a melee player in pvp lol (but easier), apply control and kite to do dmg.

Tailoring and Alchemy can help you with the lack of healing.

14

Yeah your absoloutely right about this haha.

15

I’m not sure what you guys are doing… I’m leveling a new fire mage and its not that bad. Barrier and the heal heirloom means I never worry about health. It does suck not having insta pyroblasts but its not the end of the world…

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16

Fire felt pretty bad for me too, definitely enjoyed frost a lot more. I switched fire for dungeons when the queues popped though. I leveled my warrior before my mage, and the mage was such a breath of fresh air for me. The people saying it’s about control and finesse are right. You have many tools as a mage leveling. Try leveling a warrior and see if it changes your perspective :stuck_out_tongue:

17

If you can level with war mode on frost just pumps and keeps enemies rooted all the time it’s pretty easy.