Mage Shadowlands Leveling Guide From 1 to 60

Table of Contents

• +1. Leveling in Shadowlands
  • 1.1. Best Leveling Spec for Mage in Shadowlands
  • 1.2. Ability Unlocks for Mage Leveling in Shadowlands
  • 1.3. Best Heirloom Items for Mage Leveling in Shadowlands
• 2. Changelog

Welcome to our Mage leveling guide. Here you will find all you need to know to level up your Mage efficiently. Leveling received a lot of changes in Shadowlands, which we have documented in our Shadowlands Leveling Changes page. In addition, we now have a revamped Leveling guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Mages are more than capable of solo levelling in Shadowlands. Mages have multiple specs that can kill stuff quickly and get around quickly at the same time. Additionally, Mages have a lot of control which allows them to avoid most damage.

We recommend Frost for most of your Mage Leveling needs. This is because almost all spells of Frost will slow or root your targets, allowing you to kite very easily. It also has a lot of burst damage for low health enemies which allow you to quickly kill most quest mobs.

Both Fire and Arcane are decent leveling specs as well. Especially Arcane when using Heirlooms can very quickly kill individual targets.

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 2.

• At Level 2, you unlock Fire Blast. This ability is useful for early leveling, as it does a decent chunk of damage, and can be cast while moving due to being instant.
• At Level 3, you unlock Frost Nova. This can be used to kite mobs that get too close.
• At Level 4, you unlock Blink. This further helps with kiting, but it also be used to just get around quicker.
• At Level 5, you unlock Conjure Refreshment. You use this to generate food you can use to generate mana out of combat if you run out of mana.
• At Level 6, you unlock Arcane Explosion. Especially early on, this is very useful to kill multiple mobs at once. At higher levels, it is still useful to quickly finish off low health targets.
• At Level 7, you unlock Counterspell. This can be used to interrupt enemy spellcasts.
• At Level 8, you unlock Arcane Intellect. You should cast this once every hour to boost your damage.
• At Level 9, you unlock Slow Fall. This can be used to reduce the falling damage you take.
• At Level 10, you unlock Polymorph, which transforms your target into a sheep. The target cannot do anything while a sheep, but it does heal up quickly while a sheep. Any damage will cancel the effect. This can be used to crowd-control one of the enemies if there is a group of enemies, allowing you to deal with them one at a time.
• At Level 10, you can learn Teleport spells from portal trainers in major cities. The Teleport spell can be used to transfer yourself to a city of your choosing. This is very useful to quickly get around the world.
• At Level 21, you unlock Remove Curse. This can be used if you ever get debuffed with a curse.
• At Level 22, you unlock Ice Block. This is one of the best defensive tools in the game. You can use it to completely stop taking damage, and remove all debuffs from you.
• At Level 24, you you can learn different type of Portal spells from portal trainers in major cities. These are effectively the same as Teleport spells, but your party members can take the Portal as well.
• At Level 34, you unlock Invisibility. This can be used to skip past agressive enemies, or to drop combat if you are in trouble.
• At Level 39, you unlock Spellsteal. This can be used if you are facing enemies with certain beneficial buffs you want to steal.
• At Level 44, you unlock Mirror Image. This creates 3 copies of you, doing damage and reducing the damage you take by 20% while at least one of them is alive. This should be used when pulling a dangerous target, to reduce the damage you take from it.
• At Level 49, you unlock Time Warp. This greatly increases your Haste for yourself and any party members. You can only benefit from this once every 10 minutes. This is a very big damage cooldown, and should be used to kill very strong enemies, or in dungeons.

When purchasing Heirloom Items for Leveling in general, we recommend picking the Heirloom items that have the highest amount of Haste possible. Haste speeds up the spec in almost every way, allowing you to quickly breeze through your rotation, and move on to the next mob more quickly.

Haste is also useful for being a little bit quicker to tag mobs around you. A split second can make the difference between you getting a tag, or losing it to another player.

• 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
• 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
• 12 Oct. 2020: Revamped page for Shadowlands, with subpages for each spec.
• 05 Jul. 2019: This page has been reviewed for the release of Patch 8.2 and no changes are necessary.
• 10 Dec. 2018: This page has been reviewed for Patch 8.1 and no changes are necessary.
• 23 Aug. 2018: Added Meteor and Living Bomb usage to Fire rotation.
• 12 Aug. 2018: Consistency updates to give all leveling guides a similar feel.
• 11 Aug. 2018: Added Leveling advice from Level 1 to 120 for Frost, Fire, and Arcane.
• 02 Mar. 2018: Updated Blazing Barrier tooltip.
• 28 Nov. 2017: Updated to reflect current usage.