Season of Discovery Frost Mage DPS Leveling
Welcome to our leveling guide for Frost Mage. Here, you will learn how to efficiently level your Mage in Classic - Season of Discovery.
Introduction
This guide will aim to provide you with a clear skill and gear path to level 60 as a Frost Mage in WoW Classic Season of Discovery Phase 4. We will focus on talents, skills to buy and spell rotation, as well as leveling gear and the class specific quests you will find along the way.
Frost Mage Talents for Leveling in WoW Classic
Frost is the recommended leveling build due to its consistency and flexibility when dealing with World PvP, as well as the strong defensive power of Frost's chill and freeze effects, which will render most enemies unable to attack you back.
You can play it with a focus on single targeting enemies one by one, which is maybe one of the easiest specializations to play in WoW Classic SoD, and extremely safe. The main downside is that it can be slow to level with, relative to the alternative.
You can also throw caution to the wind and specialize in pulling and killing 5+ enemies at once. In order to do this you will require a specialized talent tree focused on Improved Blizzard and a lot of skill to consistently pull it off. It will also be required that you farm relatively uncontested spots, as otherwise you will not have enough enemies to pull in order to make the AoE Grinding worth it.
In the short trek to level 60 we recommend the following talents for Frost Mages.
You can also learn about more specialized ST / AoE builds for Frost Mage in WoW Classic and where to AoE grind / what spells to buy on our level-by-level WoW Classic leveling guides listed below.
Leveling Runes for Frost Mage in WoW Classic
The best runes for leveling a Frost Mage, considering the earliest level at which you can obtain them efficiently are:
- Gloves — Living Bomb
- Pants — Living Flame
- Chest — Burnout (early) or Fingers of Frost (with Improved Blizzard)
- Waist — Frostfire Bolt
- Feet — Brain Freeze
- Head — Deep Freeze
- Wrist — Balefire Bolt
- Back — Frozen Orb
- Ring — Frost Specialization
- Ring — Arcane Specialization
Living Flame deals massive area damage on a short cooldown and is obtainable early in your journey for all races. Burnout is also both easy and early to acquire and gives a large passive damage benefit until you can start using Fingers of Frost with Improved Blizzard.
Improved Blizzard will all but ensure you obtain both Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs after using Blizzard on multiple enemies. With both procs available, you can get an instant Balefire Bolt critical strike and a follow up cast still benefiting from the Fingers of Frost effect, dealing large single target damage perfect against high health targets, enemy casters mixed in the pull, or to finish stragglers after a successful AoE pull.
You will now also be able to use the new Frozen Orb Rune to deal damage and generate Fingers of Frost on demand, without the setup needed by Improved Blizzard!
Make sure to check our Mage Rune Guide, which has all Runes you can obtain and their locations.
Cozy Sleeping Bag
The Cozy Sleeping Bag is a new item in Season of Discovery that you can use to gain extra experience and rested experience, for yourself and any nearby party members, even if they do not have it themselves! It has a lengthy unlock process that will take you all around the world.
- Horde starts at a charred body near 46,74 in the Barrens, and then goes to the charred body at 37,50 in Westfall, while Alliance does the same in opposite order.
- Afterwards, head to 40,52 in Stonetalon Mountains and look for a box next to a tent with a red cross on it. Click the nearby item to turn in the quest and proceed to a pile of dirt nearby at 40,50 for the next part of the quest.
- Head to 49,13 in Loch Modan to turn in the next step at the top of the dam, to a eagle statue. Finish by going up the Thoradin Wall at 87,49 in Hillsbrad Foothills using a nearby cart to climb up the wall. Inside you will find the final turn in spot (bag and note) to receive Cozy Sleeping Bag. Make sure to use it on cooldown to speed up your leveling!
Frost Mage Macros and Addons
By setting yourself up with an upgraded user interface and macros from the get go, you will make your leveling process much easier. Check out our Mage Macros and Addons guide in the link below for the full list.
Frost Mage Professions
Learning professions early on is very useful, as you can naturally level them as you go, avoiding extra work at max level. This is especially true for gathering professions, but crafting professions compensate your efforts by giving you extra tools to level with.
We recommend that you learn First Aid as soon as possible for easy self-healing. Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining are great primary professions for a leveling Mage, allowing you to make extra gold, or accumulate materials that you can use to level crafting professions later.
Gear Options for Frost Mage
While Mages are quite gear independent while leveling, you should still aim to gather items with as much Intellect as possible, making your Mana pool last longer before you have to drink or wait for regeneration.
Spirit is also a useful stat for leveling, as it increases your Health and Mana regeneration rates, but keep in mind you can only regenerate Health outside combat unless you are a Troll, and Mana will not regenerate if you cast a spell in the past 5 seconds, making this stat mostly useful while traveling.
Spell Damage will be very useful at maximum level, but its impact on the spells you will be using while leveling is low, and it has no effect whatsoever on wand damage, which you will be using often to finish enemies off, so do not go out of your way to get it on your gear.
Stamina allows you to live for longer and can be useful in PvP situations, but for the most part, you should aim to kill enemies from a distance, taking little damage in return.
Continuing the Grind with your Level 60 Frost Mage
Once you grind your way to 60, browse through our Mage PvE Guide or our Arcane Mage Healer PvE Guide in order to learn all the tricks and tips relative to the current maximum level Mage gameplay.
Enjoy Azeroth!
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
- 02 Apr. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 4.
- 09 Feb. 2024: Added Cozy Sleeping Bag discovery method.
- 08 Feb. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 2.
- 19 Dec. 2023: Clarified that Living Flame post-hotfix can now consume Arcane Blast stacks.
- 15 Dec. 2023: Revamped rune section now that all runes are known.
- 09 Dec. 2023: Added text to explain talent picking order and new talent recommendation making use of Elemental Precision.
More Classic Mage Guides
More Season of Discovery Class Guides
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Reputation Guides
This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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