So I’m about to start my first classic 60 and I thought about a mage (as you see from the character I’m posting in… I’ve done it before) I made my first mage in TBC and I have very fond memories of ice lance shatter combos.
-From what I’ve read, mages are great at farming with aoe (love that)
-Portals are a godsend in older versions of wow.
-Food and drink? Yes please!
-Decent in PvP (I seem to remember aimed shot wrecking my mage, does that happen in classic?)
-exciting to aoe grind… takes skilland risk but largely rewarding imo.
-awesome with engineering … grenades for aoe farm, Sheep into gnome death ray! Lol
I look at all this and think “sounds great on paper”, but does classic wow really need more mages?
How is leveling to 60 on a classic mage?
Anyone with mage raid experience? Is boredom going to make me just turn it into a farming alt?
Mages, warriors and rogues… That’s all you pretty much see in Classic. Mages have it easier with farming and making gold, that’s for sure. If that’s what you want to make, go ahead. Just remember that you’re fighting with hundreds of other mages for that same loot.
You know, it’s odd, but I don’t actually see that many mages in 5 mans. It’s possible that they are only interested in 5 manning in mage AOE groups, but I don’t find them all that common on my server. Or least no more common than any other class.
Mages are a great class to play and have some nice utility. My only tip is this: Don’t go AOE crazy in instances unless dealing with loads of trash mobs. Or if your tank is cool with it. Cause AOEing heavily tends to scatter mobs between tank and mage and that’s problematic. As a general rule, focus single target when dealing with a two or three elite pull. Your tank will thank you.
This class does boat loads of damage but I very much miss the retail version of mage specifically frost mage. Your rotation in raids is as follow: frost bolt, frost bolt, frost bolt, etc.
However I like mage because of dungeons because your aoe burst is quite high. I’ve been running a frost/fire build which consists of using frost nova into a shatter combo (shatter gives chance for your next spell to crit and with improved fire strike it’s almost a guarantee to crit). So frost nova>flamestrike>instant cone of cold. I’ve been able to hit 10k before just from doing that one thing and it’s super fun when you see all the damage on your screen. You will however miss ice lance, spell steal, frozen orb, and all those other goodies you’re use to and there is no haste so frost bolt takes a year to cast. There is trade offs for sure but power leveling is a breeze and pretty fun kiting with cone of cold, blizzard, and nova. Sorry if this post was all over the place.
Leveling to 60 is fine. A lot of perks like you mentioned, teleporting cant be overestimated
I think you should rather ask the question of what you plan to play that mage for at 60. Mage PvE raiding is just about the most dull experience there is in WoW - not to mention there is way too much competition for raid spots and loot - however Mage PvP is one of the most fun experiences.
As mentioned, boring in pve and lots of competition. Fun to level and run dungeons with.
Pvp is amazing but it’s a hard to master class to really excel at pvp. Glass cannon for sure.
Being said I’d never want to play anything else. Love playing a mage
Lock rotation in raids: shadow bolt, shadow bolt, shadow bolt
Take your pick it’s a lively experience lmao.
They both have their perks locks speed up dungeons considerably by allowing 1 wipe with soulstone and also offering summoning which is incredibly powerful and mages offer the food and water which allows for better party morale knowing they aren’t wasting gold in supplies. When geared their damage is pretty similar with mages taking the cake if it’s a very large pool and locks equal if it’s around 5 targets or so. Locks and mages both are good at Pvp and offer different things. Warlock is very sturdy and can kill you without really even putting much effort into it just with dotting which feels incredibly stupid powerful vs anyone with a 2.5k-3k health pool. Mages offer very high crit damage and many instant cast abilities to demolish many classes and the cc to dish out their slow but super deadly frost bolts critting for 2k+ when in combo with your fire blast. All choices really
I personally have not experienced it yet, but anecdotal evidence provided by multiple YouTube videos from streamers suggests that mages are topping the raid DPS charts with a one-button Frostbolt spam:
Main difference between leveling a mage in Retail and Classic is the time spent eating/drinking.
In Retail you can pretty much kill non-stop. If you do have to stop to drink, you’re only doing so for a few seconds. Downtime is brief.
In Classic, you will find yourself stopping to eat or drink a LOT. Sometimes you may need to eat and drink for 20+ seconds after each single mob kill. Expect to spend at least 2/3 of your actual game-time in quest zones watching your toon consume food and drink rather than engaged in actual combat.
Dungeons and raids in Classic would be the same way. Sit and drink at every break in the action, then catch up with your group. Even 5-seconds of drinking helps a lot.
In Retail, only Arcane mages mages experience this need to frequently eat and drink. In Classic, every mage spec feels the need.
On the upside, this extra downtime can be quite a good thing if you’re prone to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Since you aren’t mashing keys non-stop, you can play for quite an extended period of time without tiring out your fingers.
Regarding raiding:
I have not raided in Classic, but I did raid in Vanilla. Mages were excellent dps there possessing good single-target and AOE. Raid rotation was pretty much just one-button for MC and BWL though, but got slightly more complex once you could switch to fire.
From what I have read about Classic raiding, mages are one of the FOTF classes (“Fruit Of The Forever”). They’re extremely good in raids. Everyone knew that going in and also knew there would be no attempt at further class-balance. As such, there TONS of raiding mages.
