World of Warcraft: Forever Frost Mage Leveling Guide

Frost Mage is the iconic spellcaster built around cold and ice, and in World of Warcraft: Forever it makes for a smooth, comfortable leveling experience. By slowing and freezing everything you fight, you take enemies down from afar before they even get a chance to reach you.

Frost Mages need a little bit of luck to burst down enemies compared to other specializations, and like every Mage you'll be stopping to drink more often than most. What you get in return is safety and consistency: chilled enemies rarely reach you, and the tools to save a bad pull are always close at hand.

Forever also expands Frost beyond its Classic counterpart. With Ice Lance and talents like Fingers of Frost, Frost Mages have new ways to deal damage - even while moving. This guide will explain everything you need to know about leveling as a Frost Mage, including talents, rotation, gear, professions, and tips & tricks.

The above build is for leveling and dungeons. It focuses on getting your Frostbolt and Ice Lance combos online as soon as possible. You will find the biggest DPS increases first when you unlock Ice Lance initially, and then afterwards with Shatter and Fingers of Frost.

Missile Barrage is picked up early because the free spell procs will let you get massive value out of your mana pool throughout your leveling journey.

You Can Respec At Level 22+

Frost doesn't come online until you get Ice Lance at level 20+, and the early talents aren't fully effective until you at least get Shatter at level 27+. However, you still want to take Missile Barrage for its value for leveling, which delays when you get Ice Lance.

Instead, you can take Missile Barrage and Wand Specialization and go fully Arcane spec until higher levels and then respec.

This also works because the early game is where wands have their most value, before they start to fall off in power compared to your spells.

Beyond these talents, everything is taken to support your frost spells, survivability, and utility throughout your leveling journey.

At level 20 you'll unlock Ice Lance. Combined with freezes from Frostbite or Frost Nova, you'll use it to get extra damage while also being able to freely move and get more space from mobs.

At level 30 you'll get Fingers of Frost. This allows you to get stacks you can use for Ice Lance damage, and your other Frost spells through Shatter.

Beyond level 30, tools like Cold Snap can be used to reset your Frost Nova, and Ice Barrier can help by providing you pushback prevention when taking damage.

Frost Mages are all about keeping targets at bay. Constantly casting Frostbolt while at a distance, and then using Frost Nova when they get too close to give yourself space. Mana will be a pretty big problem early game, and there will be times where Shoot from a wand will be more effecient than constantly casting spells.

With the Missile Barrage talent, free casts of Arcane Missiles will reduce the need to drink in between fights significantly.

As you level up, you'll get access to Mage's powerful area-of-effect (AoE) spells. Even while leveling solo, you'll be able to pull and clear larger groups of enemies in between resting.

In emergencies, your defensives such as Ice Barrier to survive, or tools like Frost Nova and Blink can generate space or let you escape entirely.

As a high damage dealer, you'll be pulling aggro from tanks in group settings, especially if you start AoEing packs. Keep your defensives in mind for situations like this.

Your single-target rotation is what you'll be pressing for the vast majority of your leveling journey. You'll be reassessing the situation after every spell cast based on your talent procs. Before you've picked up Frostbite and Ice Lance at Level 20, it's much simpler: spam Frostbolt from max range, and try to finish targets off with your wand.

Once you have your core talents, this is how a fight plays out:

1. Open the fight at max range and constantly cast Frostbolt, so the enemy takes as long as possible to reach you.
2. If Fingers of Frost procs from a finished Frostbolt cast, immediately cancel the cast you've started and cast Ice Lance instead. Fingers of Frost is consumed by any spell cast, so don't let another spell use it up.
   • If at 1 Fingers of Frost stack remaining, and the target won't die to the next Ice Lance, charge up a Frostbolt and batch it with Ice Lance. Fingers of Frost will apply to both spells when batched.
3. If Frostbite procs from a Frostbolt hit, queue Ice Lance to batch with your Frostbolt.
4. Continue to cast Ice Lance while your target remains frozen, until the freeze breaks or expires. Move back while doing so to get more space, if possible. Then go back to Frostbolt.
5. If you manage to get a proc of Missile Barrage, you can either use it right away, or wait until you're onto the next mob depending on whether you will get hit and interrupted.
6. When the target has 5 stacks of Winter's Chill, use Cone of Cold to consume the stacks for a big hit. You can also use it alongside a stack of Fingers of Frost to get Shatter's crit bonus. Cone of Cold can be batched with a Frost Bolt.

That's the rotation in a nutshell, but as a Mage you'll have a lot of decisions to make on the fly based on how the fight changes. Here's some additional things to keep in mind:

• Freeze breaks from damage. Any damage can break a freeze - including your own Ice Lance - so be ready to switch between Frostbolt and Ice Lance depending on whether the target is still frozen. In a group, allies' attacks may break it before you can cast.
• Ice Lance snapshots. Ice Lance snapshots your target's Freeze status and will do its full bonus damage, as long as it's cast before the freeze is broken. This includes batching it with another spell in melee range.
• Kite when enemies get close. Use Frost Nova and back up some distance while casting Ice Lance to keep doing damage. If Frost Nova isn't available, re-apply chill with Frostbolt and use your wand while you keep gaining distance. If an enemy catches you in melee and gets frozen from Ice Armor, start running out of range while casting Ice Lance.
• Finish efficiently. Avoid overkill - don't spend mana on a high-rank Frostbolt when an enemy is nearly dead. Use Fire Blast if the enemy is low health and not frozen, or your wand.
• Watch your mana. Casting stops your mana regeneration until 5 seconds have passed with no mana spent. Finishing low-health enemies with your wand lets that timer start sooner.

Mages have some of the best AoE farming in the game. When solo, you will have to be mindful of your own survivability. With oneadditional party member to help, though, you'll be able to safely pull even larger groups. You'll be using a mixture of different spells to take them all down. How you approach a group depends on how many targets there are: at around 3+ targets you'll be fishing for Shatter bonuses and dealing with targets based on priority, and at 5+ you'll be going full Area of Effect spam.

• 3+ Targets Priority
  1. Cone of Cold the group to get Fingers of Frost and Frostbite procs.
  2. Use Ice Lance on any un-frozen targets to burn Fingers of Frost stacks.
  3. Use Ice Lance on frozen targets until they aren't frozen any more.
  4. Use Frost Nova to create more frozen targets to Ice Lance.
• 5+ Targets Priority
  1. Use Cone of Cold on cooldown, and to use Fingers of Frost procs.
  2. Use Blizzard in between casts to fish for procs.
  3. Use Arcane Explosion if you have aggro and can't safely channel Blizzard.

None of the Mage's AoE damage has fall-off after a certain target count, but AoE is expensive. Expect to have to stop and drink if using AoE regularly.

As a bonus, it's worth noting that Cone of Cold will keep up to 4 targets chilled with 90% uptime (Or 100% with Permafrost) This means you can safely kite, or have allies safely kite, 4 enemies easily.

In addition to all the damage and crowd control above, Mages in Forever have additional utility and quality-of-life benefits that help the leveling experience along.

• Conjure Food & Conjure Water: Provides a steady (and cost-free) supply of refreshment while adventuring. Some players will tip some coin for mage food and water, too.
• Teleportation & Portals: Allows you and party members to travel to major cities in an instant. With transportation being limited in Forever, this will be always useful.
• Blink: This short-cooldown, short-distance teleport gets you out of most dangerous situations. It can remove rooting crowd control, give you extra space, or save you from fall damage if timed correctly. When used on cooldown while running, Blink amounts to a roughly 20% increase in travel speed.
• Evocation: Restores most of your Mana pool over an 8-second channel.
• Mana Gems: Provides an emergency source of Mana to the Mage.
• Slow Fall: Allows for safe jumping off any mountain, ledge, or cliff, if you have a Light Feather reagent handy.

• Frost Armor / Ice Armor and Mage Armor: These are mutually exclusive, and you want one of them up at all times. While leveling, use Frost Armor - the slow significantly reduces damage from auto-attacks, and taking hits can proc Frostbite. Mage Armor regenerates mana and is better when you don't expect to be hit in melee.
• Dampen Magic decreases magic damage received and magic healing received by you or an ally. When playing solo, you can keep this on yourself to give a boost to your magic resistance for little downside.

• Ice Barrier, Mana Shield, and Ice Block: Your personal defenses. Barriers and shields protect your casts from being interrupted.
• Polymorph: If you accidentally pull too many enemies, this takes one of them out of the fight for as long as it lasts. Damage removes it, and you can only have one target polymorphed at a time. In dungeons, the tank or party leader will mark targets with a crescent moon icon if they want them polymorphed.
• Counterspell: Interrupts enemy spells.

You'll be replacing gear constantly while leveling, so you rarely get to be picky. Focus on as much spell damage as you can, and whatever will fuel your pool of mana.

1. Hit Chance
   • As with any iteration of Classic WoW, capping your Hit Chance is a high priority. Every missed spell is a big loss of DPS, on top of a missed opportunity for any of your procs, and can slow down your momentum. There will be a cap where you can stop investing in this.
2. Spell Damage / Frost Damage
   • Scales up the damage on all of your spells, and is readily available in Forever through items and weapons. Not only that, but Spell Damage also increases Wand Damage. Frost damage stacks additively with Spell Damage, but only affects Frost spells.
3. Critical Chance
   • Frost Mage is a crit-based spec. Ice Shards increases the crit damage of Frost by 100%, making crit chance far more valuable. Ice Lance procs aren't guaranteed crit, they are bonus damage that can crit. Blizzard can also crit. We like crit.
4. Spirit
   • No mana means we stop doing damage, which is sad. Spirit will help by increasing mana recovered every 5 seconds, increasing passive regeneration and Evocation regeneration. Frost Mages have limited tools for resource management, so Spirit will be a good stat to increase where you can.
5. Intellect
   • Intellect increases your maximum Mana, giving you more time before needing to recharge in some way, shape, or form. It also grants you more Spell Critical Chance.
6. Stamina
   • Dead DPS Do No Damage. Stamina will do nothing to increase your DPS, but will help with your survivability by increasing your max health. Note: Undead DPS is slightly increased by Stamina, as Touch of the Grave scales off of Max HP.

Leveling is a non-linear experience, particularly in the early levels. Zones can have quests that are 10+ levels apart, so you'll typically do a few quests in a given zone and then travel to a new area for more level-appropriate quests. Don't be afraid to travel - different zones provide new quests, dungeons, and other opportunities.

Gather up a zone's dungeon quests and run each dungeon at least once. In Forever, dungeon experience is stacked into its quests instead of killing the enemies inside, so one run gives a huge EXP boost. Check the Dungeon Hub for whether there are quests for your faction in each dungeon, and where to pick them up.

Be Efficient With Your Time

You will be replacing items frequently, so skipping a powerful dungeon drop is totally fine. Traveling around Azeroth takes a lot of time, and the fastest way to level is to constantly be killing and questing instead of running around. Dungeons are worth it for the quest experience alone, though, so try to plan around at least one trip to each.

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Loch Modan/Darkshore
  • The Barrens
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Darkshore
  • Silverpine Forest
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm
  • + Ruins of Lordaeron
  • Note: Ruins of Lordaeron is a longer for Alliance.

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Redridge Mountains
  • The Barrens/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Redridge Mountains/Duskwood
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • The Stockade
  • Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
• Available Dungeons:
  • The Stockade
  • Shadowfang Keep
  • + Blackfathom Deeps

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Wetlands
• Available Dungeons:
  • + Excavation Site: Wetlands and Blackfathom Deeps

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Wetlands/Thousand Needles
• Available Dungeons:
  • Gnomeregan
  • Razorfen Kraul
  • + Excavation Site: Wetlands and City of Dalaran

Listed below are a few important items we recommend picking up during your journey, as they offer not just a small upgrade compared to many of the other items that are available, but stand out as guaranteed rewards or particularly powerful options for you to grab.

• Weapons
  • At Level 19, the Coldspire Staff is a huge power spike and item worth chasing from Rath'mael in Ruins of Lordaeron
  • Horde players get access to the Staff of Orgrimmar very early on, through the Hidden Enemies questline in Ragefire Chasm.
  • Horde can get the Crescent Staff from completing Leaders of the Fang in Wailing Caverns.
  • Alliance players can get the Golemheart Stave as a potential drop from Plunder in Hall of Thanes.
  • Alliance players can get the Emberstone Staff as a potential drop from Captain Greenskin in The Deadmines.
  • At Level 24, Rod of the Sleepwalker is a powerful staff that drops from Twilight Lord Kelris in Blackfathom Deeps.
  • Alliance players can get the Fallen Dragon's Scepter through an elite quest chain in Wetlands, Stopping the Cycle.
• Wands
  • As early as Level 5, players can get their Lesser Magic Wand from Enchanting 10 or the Auction House. Note, this will require running to a city, so keep that in mind.
  • At level 13, the Greater Magic Wand becomes available from Enchanting 70 or the auction house. Pick one up ASAP if you find yourself in the city.
  • Gravestone Scepter is available as a quest reward for either faction from completing Blackfathom Villainy in Blackfathom Deeps.
  • Alliance players have a bit more choice, as they can get Deepblaze as a quest reward from Old Ironforge Incursion in Hall of Thanes
  • Alliance can also get Cookie's Stirring Rod from Cookie himself in The Deadmines for a bit of a boost.
  • Level 30 unlocks the Mage's Wand class quest-line after completing which gives an Icefury Wand. The pre-requesites involve completing Scarlet Monastery and fighting level 38 mobs in Arathi Highlands. Follow along the chain as soon as it's feasible.
• Helmet
  • Helmets are very rare, and the first one that you can get is at Level 20, Silky Circlet. Unfortunately it is only available as Bind-on-Pickup via Tailoring, but it will last you all the way into your mid 30s.
• Shoulders
  • Similar to helmets, shoulders don't get strong until later in the game. The first one we recommend getting are Double-Stitched Woolen Shoulders at Level 17, which can be crafted by Tailoring.
  • Reinforced Woolen Shoulders are available at level 19, if you didn't get any yet.

With the WoW Forever Beta only reaching Level 30, we unfortunately are unable to provide more specific advice on which zones or gear to tackle beyond Level 30. Make sure to check back once WoW Forever has launched, as we will be updating this section of our Subtlety Rogue leveling guide soon after!

Focus on quests. Questing is the primary way to earn experience in Forever. Prioritize nearby quests, take note of when they cluster together, and don't be afraid to do green quests - they offer good experience and you'll finish them quicker.

Pull carefully. Early on, your mana costs are high and you'll be drinking water often between fights. Try to engage things one at a time, and be careful in caves where you'll have little opportunity to take a break.

Keep your buffs up. That means Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor. Frost Armor can proc Frostbite, which you can then use to immediately gain distance.

Get a wand as soon as possible. Wands let you fight without using mana, and unlike spells they can't be interrupted. Early on, before talents, they can even be stronger than your spells. Lesser Magic Wand is accessible at level 5 and Greater Magic Wand at level 13. Enchanters use both to grind their skill, so they're cheap on the Auction House and well worth a trip to your local capital.

Visit your trainer. Your power comes from spells and spell ranks, and you unlock new spells every two levels. Stop by your class trainer regularly.

Remember the 5-second rule. Whenever you cast a spell, your mana stops regenerating. After 5 seconds with no mana spent, it will start up again, even in combat. Use your wand to finish low-health enemies.

Group up when you can. With one additional party member, you can safely pull larger packs and take them down with your AoE spells. You'll both benefit and clear mobs faster.

Do your dungeon quests. Collect all the quests for a dungeon - some come from longer quest chains - then run it once for a huge experience boost.

Craft when you log in. Mages use a lot of food and water while leveling. When you first log in for the day, spend your mana crafting food, water, and a Mana Gem if you have one. Keep some regular cooked food on hand too - Forever has well-fed buffs, and some food even grants an experience buff. Look out for the new campfires that players can place, which provide various buffs as well.

Plan your travel. Mages can teleport to capital cities starting at level 20. Use this to cut down on travel time, and don't set your Hearthstone to a capital city you can already teleport to. Use it to return back to your quest area and save running times.

Maintain professions. Forever has significantly improved professions, and staying on top of them helps you plug gaps in your gearing as you level. See the Professions section below.

Level	Milestone Unlock
13	Greater Magic Wand
14	Arcane Explosion
20	Blink Evocation 11-point Talent ( Ice Lance) Teleports: Teleport: Stormwind Teleport: Ironforge Teleport: Undercity Teleport: Orgrimmar
26	Cone of Cold
28	Mana Gems
30	21-point Talent ( Fingers of Frost) Mage's Wand Class Quest: Icefury Wand Teleports: Teleport: Darnassus Teleport: Thunder Bluff
40	31-point Talent ( Ice Barrier) Teleport: Teleport: Dalaran Portals: Portal: Stormwind Portal: Ironforge Portal: Undercity Portal: Orgrimmar
50	Portals: Portal: Darnassus Portal: Thunder Bluff

• Recommended: Tailoring + Enchanting
  • Tailoring now lets you craft your own Bind-on-Pickup Rare gear, which is some of the best leveling gear available for how easy it is to access. Starting as low as level 10, the Novice Arcanist's Sash is an example of what you can make. Other patterns can be found by turning in Waylaid Supply Crates, or from dungeons and the Auction House, for things like Shining Circlet.
  • Enchanting lets you craft consumables like Minor Wizard Oil - Wizard Oils are one of your biggest DPS increases - as well as various Bind-on-Pickup wands, staves, and off-hands. It pairs well with Tailoring: while training it, you can disenchant the Uncommon items you make, sometimes even for a profit.
• Alternative: Alchemy or Engineering + Respective Gatherer
  • Alchemy and Engineering offer benefits such as damage-boosting consumables and mana potions, but without a Herbalism or Mining alt, they will be difficult or expensive to level.

More WoW Forever Mage Guides

Arcane Mage Ranged DPS Guide Fire Mage Ranged DPS Leveling Fire Mage Ranged DPS Guide Arcane Mage Ranged DPS Leveling Frost Mage Ranged DPS Guide

More WoW Forever Guides from Other Classes

Assassination Rogue Melee DPS Leveling Shadow Priest Ranged DPS Guide Destruction Warlock Ranged DPS Leveling Protection Paladin Tank Guide Restoration Druid Healer Guide Protection Warrior Tank Leveling