Mage Leveling 1.12 (Classic)

[Seksi 208]

14 minutes ago, Guest Borick said:

Awesome!
Thank you for mentioning Guidelime and sorry for being dump and not realizing there is an extra guide on addons already. ?

No worries, I am on your Discord channel as well and really liking your addon from the start, great growth so far, think its the best (free too!) leveling addon out there ? 

[Guest Oheligflopp]

Great guide! Although I'm wondering why no points in improved frostbolt. Seems like a huge boost to single-target damage which is inevitable in some cases? :) 

[Seksi 208]

The single target spec has points into Improved Frostbolt ? they might just not come all at once because there are more impactful talents along the way (keep in mind 0,1 is a very low amount of time and you also spend your Mana faster that way) but eventually you will get 5/5 Improved Frostbolt.

For the AoE Grinding build you won't be using it much so its not really needed!

[Koviko 19]

The Jokerd "fire-until-22" build is missing two points. Perhaps they were put into Frost Warding to strengthen Frost Armor? It would explain his survivability while doing Flamestrike + Arcane Explosion, and why there were missing points when he showed his talents on stream. He could have also put 2 points into Elemental Precision.

Sidenote: it'd be nice if I could do spell links for Classic here. ?

Edited September 16, 2019 by Koviko

[Guest Foxy]

I think there is a typo on the single target frost mage instructions, when the slider bar is at 10-19. It reads:

" Ice Shards is also picked for its Ice Shards synergy. "

Maybe should read - Ice Shards is also picked for its Shatter synergy.

 

Thanks for the great guides! Love them! So handy.

[Seksi 208]

11 hours ago, Guest Foxy said:

I think there is a typo on the single target frost mage instructions, when the slider bar is at 10-19. It reads:

" Ice Shards is also picked for its Ice Shards synergy. "

Maybe should read - Ice Shards is also picked for its Shatter synergy.

 

Thanks for the great guides! Love them! So handy.

You are absolutely right sir, will fix that ASAP, thanks! ? 

[Helavor 0]

In the AoE farming section where you are supposed to kill the Snakes and Turtles inside of Maraudon, the method the video guide uses to teleport you to the front of the instance doesn't work. Nothing I tried allowed me to get to the front without walking there or hearthing and walking back to the instance to use the scepter. I figured it out. You log out and have a party member reset instances while you are logged out.

Edited October 6, 2019 by Helavor

[Seksi 208]

Yup, exactly! ? 

[Guest Bajue]

Was wondering in the aoe mage leveling why not have frostbite for blizzard aoeing? 

[Seksi 208]

Because you need all mobs to stay packed together tightly as they are AoE'd so that you can control them all instead of having random mobs being frozen with Frostbite, which will cause them to no longer be in your second Blizzard / Frost Nova's area of effect, thus living longer and probably ruining your pull.

AoE Leveling as a Mage is 100% about control, Frostbite makes things unpredictable and thus is one of the worst possible talents to take for it.

[Guest Hekxd]

I'm pretty new to really trying to make sure i'm doing everything in the most optimal way, so forgive me if I'm missing some basic understanding....but for frost mages you recommend Frostbolt instead of fireball, even after already opening with frostbolt, saying it does the most damage for frost spec.....but it seems to me, that at lvl 30, even with all the talents recommended..... fireball still does SIGNIFICANTLY more damage with only a very slightly longer cast time??? So I'm really not understanding the reason to continue to use frostbolt even after the mob is already slowed. What am I missing here?

[Seksi 208]

4 hours ago, Guest Hekxd said:

I'm pretty new to really trying to make sure i'm doing everything in the most optimal way, so forgive me if I'm missing some basic understanding....but for frost mages you recommend Frostbolt instead of fireball, even after already opening with frostbolt, saying it does the most damage for frost spec.....but it seems to me, that at lvl 30, even with all the talents recommended..... fireball still does SIGNIFICANTLY more damage with only a very slightly longer cast time??? So I'm really not understanding the reason to continue to use frostbolt even after the mob is already slowed. What am I missing here?

Great question, and honestly the answer might surprise you: simplicity, synergy and gold.

Simplicity - by focusing on Frostbolt only you convert your two button rotation into a single button one, which is easier to perform for new players.

Synergy - using Frostbolt with a Frost talent spec allows you to gain the benefit of Frost Channeling, Improved Frostbolt, Frostbite and other talents that make it punch above its baseline damage.

Gold - by skipping Fireball ranks until you have your normal mount, at least, you ensure that you can get it faster, even if you suck at gold making and did not save enough money for it until hitting level 40.

Now, this being said, Fireball does do more damage at a baseline level and will surpass Frostbolt, even with Frost talents, for the 2-3 levels after you buy a new Fireball rank. So if you are a more experienced player without gold issues, just buy all Fireball ranks as well and use them for damage for the 2-3 levels after getting each new Fireball rank.

There is not a single way to play, we just opted to write the simplest way possible, as more experienced players will easily be able to deviate from the guide to optimize little things such as these! ? 

[Guest iampoul]

Why no points in shatter ?

[Seksi 208]

The single target build does have it, so assuming this is about the AoE one.

While leveling, you should be focusing on safe AoE grinding with Improved Blizzard, as most of the enemies will handily destroy you / outlast your Mana pool if you go crazy with Flamestrike + Cone of Cold style grinding, which is more adequate for level 60 dungeon AoE Grinding.

Blizzard cannot critical strike in WoW Classic, thus Shatter is mostly useless. Following the same logic, so is Ice Shards, which we do take in the build, but mostly because there are not many better places to put points into, not because critting is something we will be doing much at all while leveling. Feel free to put points into Shatter instead of Ice Shards if you prefer, its mostly interchangeable.

[austindk 0]

Strongly advise waiting until at least 26 to get cone of cold before following the aoe grinding guide. I've found aoe grinding 22-25 to be extremely inefficient for a variety of reasons, not least of all being that resisted novas can completely screw you over. Even at 25, pulling 22ish level gnolls in Wetlands, I have to reset if one or two mobs breaks loose, or if I pick something else up on the side. The other glaring issue here is the sheer number of people online at any given time, making competition tough to tag 1-2 mobs, let alone 3-5 to make the aoe pull worth your time. 

I would also advise exploring grind areas not covered in this guide. There is a lot of competition in the areas listed. 

Edited November 14, 2019 by austindk

[Seksi 208]

There is a lot of competition because servers are very populated and AoE grinding is very popular / guides like ours advise these spots to grind on. Ultimately its a "winner takes all" situation and even a single person competing for mobs can easily ruin your day ?. There are other decent areas for 1-2 aoe pulls but those are decidedly not sustainable to grind on efficiently for a long period by themselves due to the amount of mobs / respawn times / enemy abilities. Will try to research and expand on more areas over time!

Things get easier with Cone of Cold, certainly, but once you have 3/3 Improved Blizzard you are absolutely ready to go and there are some great spots (when uncontested, of course) which is why we tell people that they can start at that level. Its also what Jokerd did on his way to first level 60 in the world, and yea he did mess up a lot of pulls and died a lot but it was still absolutely worth it.

If enemies break loose you should either Cold Snap (when available) and root everything again or just reset your pull at that level, the risk of dying or running out of Mana (and thus dying) is not worth the small time loss of resetting and trying again. Never bite more than you can chew ? 

[Mierelle 0]

This guide recommends STV raptors at 38, but the Lash (knockdown/stun) spam makes this an unlikely spot in my experience.

[Seksi 208]

On 3/7/2020 at 12:24 PM, Mierelle said:

This guide recommends STV raptors at 38, but the Lash (knockdown/stun) spam makes this an unlikely spot in my experience.

Certainly not the easiest mobs to AoE farm, do it as a last resort if you are doing quests in the area anyway ?

[Guest Twitch_Fox]

The AoE guide for ZF shows him using cone of cold and circling the mobs which is rather slow and painful way of doing it and is very, very prone to dying if you misjudge the CoC range or if you circle too tightly.

This way of jumping between these two ledges was infinitely easier and resulted in far, far less deaths for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBx8xOh_Qro

[Seksi 208]

4 hours ago, Guest Twitch_Fox said:

The AoE guide for ZF shows him using cone of cold and circling the mobs which is rather slow and painful way of doing it and is very, very prone to dying if you misjudge the CoC range or if you circle too tightly.

This way of jumping between these two ledges was infinitely easier and resulted in far, far less deaths for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBx8xOh_Qro

That was one of the earliest ZF farms in Classic, the ledge you speak about has been found to be a superior / more reliable method since, will be updating the guide with all the new strategies and tricks soon ? 

[Guest Fix the slider at 29]

When you slide from 29 to 30, it goes from having 20 talent points at 29 to having 30 talent points at 30.

[IamAthos 0]

Hey there Seksi, thanks for the awesome guide.  I guess I'm a bit late to this one, but unfortunately the Twitch links no longer seem to work:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/493962232?t=1h55m22s

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/493962057?t=12h18m25s

The other link is to YouTube which still works fine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeBA0D1LJY

Do you know of the other videos anywhere else that's still available by any chance?  I ask because I only really *got* this when I watched the YouTube video, so would be good to see others as well if poss.

Cheers

[Seksi 208]

5 hours ago, IamAthos said:

Hey there Seksi, thanks for the awesome guide.  I guess I'm a bit late to this one, but unfortunately the Twitch links no longer seem to work:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/493962232?t=1h55m22s

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/493962057?t=12h18m25s

The other link is to YouTube which still works fine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeBA0D1LJY

Do you know of the other videos anywhere else that's still available by any chance?  I ask because I only really *got* this when I watched the YouTube video, so would be good to see others as well if poss.

Cheers

At this point Jokerd / Twitch deleted the vods unfortunately, will try to find replacements, but it might be hard 🙂

[Guest TasteeFreeze]

I found that killing the Dragonmaw area (45,45) from the "War Banners" quest in Wetlands is an awesome AoE Grinding spot.  At level 29, I was getting about 86-104 xp per kill, but this should be better for a lower level mage. The mobs are grouped up in numerous tight groups and there are only a few casters that can't reach you at Blizzard range.