WoW Classic AoE Grinding Frost Mage Leveling Talent Build from 1 to 60

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Unlike the single-target talents, AoE grinding requires very precise talents and there is little space for leeway. Improved Blizzard receives the full three points because, at that point, you are able to keep enemies inside its damage zone for the whole channel duration, and typically also have time to use two full Blizzards before they reach you.

What you need to take into account, is that because Improved Blizzard's slow is more powerful than Cone of Cold's with three points, you must wait for Blizzard's slow to fade before using Cone of Cold, if you want to slow the enemies with it. This should not be a major problem, as you can simply run around for a little bit while enemies are slowed to a crawl.

Also, Arcane Concentration is not rushed for because Clearcasting's proc chance does not increase with the amount of targets hit in WoW Classic.

Your first talent unlocks at Level 10.

Elemental Precision allows you hit enemies much more reliably, which is of paramount importance for this build, as you will need to avoid having even a single resist in a pack of 8+ enemies. Frost Warding increases your Armor which helps reduce the damage you take when getting mobs in the perfect Frost Nova position. Improved Frost Nova is helpful to make Frost Nova usable more often, increasing the margin for error / resists to happen. Finally, Permafrost increases the duration and movement speed reduction of your chill effects, which if of critical importance in order to make Improved Blizzard last enough for a second one to hit before the effect wears off.

Improved Blizzard is the essential talent for this build, as it will allow your Blizzard to kill enemies at the same time it stops you from being killed due to its powerful slowing effect. Cold Snap gives you a second shot at fixing a pull that is going wrong by allowing you to instantly reset important cooldowns such as Frost Nova. Piercing Ice is a good damage increase, Frost Channeling is a great Mana efficiency increase and Arctic Reach allows you to hit enemies with your frost spells from further away, reducing your melee damage taken in the process.

Ice Block allows you to gather huge amounts of enemies easily by pulling and blocking while enemies gather around you. It can also save your life when things go wrong. Maximizing Piercing Ice increases your damage further, as does Improved Cone of Cold and Ice Shards.

Ice Barrier comes just in time to allow you to run around gathering mobs on your fresh mount without being in danger of being dazed and dismounted. It can also save your life when running away in emergencies. Arcane Focus reduces the chance your Arcane Explosion will be resisted, which is helpful for the final cleanup on each pull. Since you should be fighting enemies around your level 2 points are enough, for the most part. Arcane Subtlety is here to help with any enemies that have frost or arcane resistances. Finally, Arcane Concentration will save you a lot of Mana occasionally.

Finish up Arcane Concentration to get its maximum proc chance and grab Arcane Resilience to further decrease your melee damage taken. Maximizing Arcane Explosion increases its damage and ability to clean up your pulls. One point in Wand Specialization will further increase your mob finishing damage, but what we are really looking towards is Arcane Meditation which will increase your Mana regeneration during your clears. Finally, finish up Ice Shards for its slight damage boost and put your final point into Wand Specialization.

1. Cast Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor if you miss their buffs.
2. Cast Arcane Intellect and Ice Armor if you miss their buffs.
3. Cast Mana Shield before pulling, to prevent being dazed.
4. Cast Ice Barrier and mount up before pulling, this will ensure you do not get dazed and dismounted. Use your mount to aggro packs of melee enemies, while staying away from their attack range as much as possible.
5. Body pull packs of melee enemies, while taking care not to overextend (pull only 2-3 enemies simultaneously before you have Improved Blizzard).
6. Cast Arcane Explosion to DPS the enemies down.
7. Cast Frost Nova to root enemies in place and walk or Blink to gain distance from them.
8. Cast Frost Nova to root enemies in place (use Cold Snap if some resist the Frost Nova) and walk or Blink to gain distance from them.
9. Cast Blizzard to DPS the enemies down, taking care not to start casts before the previous one is finished, and ensuring enemies will not reach you during the full cast Make sure to check Jokerd's speed run to 60 for great examples of where and how to play.
10. Cast Cone of Cold when enemies are close enough to all be hit by it, and kite away until Frost Nova is ready again, at which point you should repeat the rotation from Frost Nova's point onward.
11. Arcane Explosion and / or Wand down the last remaining bits of health on any remaining enemy.
12. Cast Fireball as your main attack.
13. Cast Frostbolt as your main single-target attack, whenever required.

The notable absence of Flamestrike as the spell to use after enemies are rooted by Frost Nova, is simply due to its redundancy with Arcane Explosion and significant spell training costs. Feel free to buy its ranks if you wish, in which case you should use it as a, roughly, double-power Arcane Explosion opener on rooted enemies that you do not plan to Blizzard, due to space concerns for kiting.

Since you can make your own food and water with Conjure Food and Conjure Water, you will be able to more than make up the gold spent on these skills, by saving on vendor food and water. It is also possible to gain some gold on the side by selling your conjured supplies to other players.

If you want to see this rotation in action in some of the best AoE Grinding spots for leveling in WoW Classic, check out this awesome video, by k4li in 2006. For the real thing in the real game, make sure to check out Jokerd's amazing run to 60! This is one of his first AoE grinding pulls in the run, and it only gets better as you advance through his videos.

While leveling, there are some class specific quests to complete, mostly for new gear, but also for the best water rank.

Leveling Information

Mage Quests

Check out how to gain access to powerful upgrades for your Mage by completing their class-specific questline!

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• At Level 1, as soon as you have the copper, buy Arcane Intellect. It provides a significant boost to Intellect, that lasts for 30 minutes.
• At Level 4, buy Conjure Water and Frostbolt. Conjure Water allows you to create free water, to use while leveling up. Frostbolt deals strong single-target damage and slows the target by 40%.
• At Level 6, buy Conjure Food. Conjure Food allows you to create free food, to use while leveling up.
• At Level 8, buy Polymorph and Rank 2 Frostbolt. Polymorph allows you to take one enemy out of combat for 20 seconds, which is handy when dealing with multiple enemies. Keep in mind only one enemy can be polymorphed at a time.
• At Level 10, buy Rank 2 Frost Armor, Rank 2 Conjure Water and Frost Nova. Frost Nova freezes nearby enemies for 8 seconds, allowing you to regain distance on them.
• At Level 12, buy Rank 2 Conjure Food and Slow Fall. Slow Fall slows your falling speed, which is handy to avoid fall damage, enabling shortcuts that would lead to death, otherwise.
• At Level 14, buy Arcane Explosion, Rank 2 Arcane Intellect and Rank 3 Frostbolt. Arcane Explosion will allow you to begin AoE grinding, but beware that your control tools are still very weak at this point, so do not feel forced to do it, especially if it is not working out well for you yet.
• At Level 18, buy Remove Lesser Curse. Remove Lesser Curse is a niche, yet sometimes invaluable spell that will allow you to remove curse effects.
• At Level 20, buy Blink, Rank 3 Conjure Water, Evocation, Mana Shield, Blizzard, Rank 4 Frostbolt and Rank 3 Frost Armor. At this level, you can also start to buy the teleport spells for each major city, such as Teleport: Stormwind (Alliance) or Teleport: Orgrimmar (Horde), at their respective portal trainers. Blink allows you to teleport forward every 15 seconds, which can be useful in a variety of situations. It also clears stun and root effects. Evocation rapidly regenerates your Mana over 8 seconds, with an 8-minute cooldown. Mana Shield creates a shield that blocks damage and prevents dazing, at the cost of 2 Mana per damage blocked. Blizzard will be your main AoE grinding spell from here on out, due to its strong area damage, and its powerful slow with Improved Blizzard. Now THAT was a ton of new spells!
• At Level 22, buy Rank 2 Arcane Explosion and Rank 3 Conjure Food
• At Level 24, buy Counterspell. Counterspell instantly interrupts and prevents spells of the interrupted school from being cast for 10 seconds, with a 30-second cooldown. Very useful to disable caster enemies or in the occasional PvP situation.
• At Level 26, buy Cone of Cold and Rank 5 Frostbolt. Cone of Cold deals significant damage to enemies directly in front of you, and slows them for 50% during 8 seconds. Rotating this, Blizzard and Frost Nova allows you to kite groups of melee enemies, while you have Mana, without taking damage.
• At Level 28, buy Rank 3 Arcane Intellect, Conjure Mana Agate, Rank 2 Mana Shield and Rank 2 Blizzard. Conjure Mana Agate is the first of four spells that create Mana Gems that you can use during combat to instantly replenish part of your Mana pool. These items share a 2-minute cooldown, and are consumed on use.
• At Level 30, buy Ice Armor, Rank 3 Arcane Explosion, Rank 4 Conjure Water and Teleport: Darnassus (Alliance) or Teleport: Thunder Bluff (Horde) at each respective city's portal trainers. Ice Armor is basically the same as Frost Armor with a little bit of Frost Resistance baked in. Keep buying its ranks to increase your Armor as levels go by.
• At Level 32, buy Rank 4 Conjure Food and Rank 6 Frostbolt.
• At Level 34, buy Rank 2 Cone of Cold.
• At Level 36, buy Rank 3 Mana Shield and Rank 3 Blizzard.
• At Level 38, buy Rank 4 Arcane Explosion, Conjure Mana Jade and Rank 7 Frostbolt.
• At Level 40, buy Rank 2 Ice Armor and Rank 5 Conjure Water. At this level, you can also start to buy the portal spells for each major city, such as Portal: Stormwind (Alliance) or Portal: Orgrimmar (Horde), at their respective portal trainers.
• At Level 42, buy Rank 4 Arcane Intellect, Rank 5 Conjure Food and Rank 3 Cone of Cold.
• At Level 44, buy Rank 4 Mana Shield, Rank 4 Blizzard and Rank 8 Frostbolt.
• At Level 46, buy Rank 5 Arcane Explosion and Rank 2 Ice Barrier.
• At Level 48, buy Conjure Mana Citrine.
• At Level 50, buy Rank 3 Ice Armor, Rank 6 Conjure Water, Rank 4 Cone of Cold, Rank 9 Frostbolt and Portal: Darnassus (Alliance) or Portal: Thunder Bluff (Horde) at each respective city's portal trainers.
• At Level 52, buy Rank 6 Conjure Food, Rank 5 Mana Shield, Rank 5 Blizzard and Rank 3 Ice Barrier.
• At Level 54, buy Rank 6 Arcane Explosion.
• At Level 56, buy Rank 5 Arcane Intellect and Rank 10 Frostbolt.
• At Level 58, buy Conjure Mana Ruby, Rank 5 Cone of Cold and Rank 4 Ice Barrier.
• At Level 60, buy Rank 4 Ice Armor, Rank 6 Mana Shield and Rank 6 Blizzard

Most, if not all places in WoW Classic could be used to AoE Grind, as long as you keep your pulls to melee enemies without dangerous abilities. Still, some tend to be better than others, assuming equal levels of competition and ganking involved.

Adjust your level slider above in order to see the grinding spots that are adequate to a Mage of your level.

• First grinding spot is at Level 14.
• At this point, even if you are already pulling two enemies at once with Arcane Explosion, it is best to quest normally, as it will be faster and safer than AoE Grinding with your small toolkit.
• Level 22 Gnolls around the 62, 60 map coordinates in the Wetlands. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 22 Humans around 33, 42 in Hillsbrad Foothills. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 24 Skeletons and Spiders around 24, 41 in Duskwood. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 26 Humans around 27, 56 in Hillsbrad Foothills. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 28 Worgen around the 70, 71 map coordinates in Duskwood. Alliance favored spot.
• Level 33 Silithid around 68, 83 in Thousand Needles. Typically Horde favored spot.
• Level 34 Humans around 57, 37 in Arathi Highlands. Horde-only spot as enemies are Alliance-friendly.
• Level 34 Orcs around 59, 54 in Arathi Highlands. Alliance-only spot as enemies are Horde-friendly.
• Level 36 Murlocs around the 56, 15 map coordinates in Dustwallow Marsh.
• Level 38 Raptors spread out across Stranglethorn Vale. Try between 31, 23 and 37,19, or between 23,48 and 33,37.
• Level 40 Birds around 16, 60 in Badlands.
• Level 41 Humans around 59, 24 in Tanaris.
• Level 42 Murlocs around 85, 80 in Swamp of Sorrows.
• Level 44 Trolls inside Zul'Farrak. This video, by Ebbnflow, showcases how to execute this farm.
• Level 45 Humans around the 72, 46 map coordinates in Tanaris.
• Level 47 Snakes and Turtles inside Maraudon. Requires Scepter of Celebras. This video, by Exehn, showcases how to do it perfectly.
• Level 51 Undead around 37, 56 and 49, 77 in Western Plaguelands.
• Level 53 Undead around the 47, 53 map coordinates in Western Plaguelands.
• Level 56 Humans in Hearthglen, around 46, 15 in Western Plaguelands. Check out our Gold Making page for details and a video example.

Endgame Information

Mage Guides

Finished Leveling? Check out the rest of our Mage Guide to learn how to maximize your gameplay!

Mage Endgame Guides

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This guide has been written by Wrdlbrmpft aka Arcanaenus, playing Mage since 2008. He is usually found in the Mage Discord, where you may also ask him questions his guides do not answer.

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