The Mage is the king of burst DPS in World of Warcraft and are desired by most groups due to their damage output, intelligence buff, and the ability to provide health and mana regenerating food and drink.
The Mage is very powerful but it definitely lacks hit points compared to other classes. Paladins, Warriors and Death Knights have a lot more hit points than Mages, Priests, Druids, and Shaman can heal themselves when wounded, Rogues can disappear and both Warlocks and Hunters have pets. Mages don’t have these luxuries, what they do have however is control. If you have a Mage you need to master the use of the strengths the Mages have.
All WoW classes have 3 skill trees, Mages are no different. For the Mage these are: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. Arcane and Fire can do a lot of damage to opponents but lack control. Frost is the ability that gives most control.
While frost may not give you the massive hit that Arcane and Fire can, you will have a lot more control of the situation. Some talents allow your chill effects to actually freeze the target for a short time, you can also increase the time the chill lasts for and stun your target. Frost can be very effective to use when levelling solo.
One tactic that work extremely well when leveling Mage’s is to go to an area where there are a lot of mobs (best if they’re green to you). Gather them in and once you’re surrounded let them have your Frost Nova. This will keep them in one place which will allow you to do massive damage when you follow up with your Blizzard. This tactic is a personal favorite of mine and it works really well.
Many people argue that you should focus on mobs that are your own level, but I see it differently, let’s look at 2 scenarios.
In the first scenario we will head out to a zone that has mobs which are my level. Since they hit way too hard and I have tissue paper for armor I am not going to be able to area of effect hunt and will be forced to kill one at a time. Since they are my level they have more hit points and it takes longer to nuke them down, and after each kill I need to sit down and gulp some refreshments before I can engage the next one. For each of these kills we will say that I gain 200 experience points. For the sake of argument let’s say I can kill one mob every 3 minutes, so that would be 20 per hour. Total experience per hour would be 4,000.
In scenario 2 we will head out into a zone where there are a heap of mobs that are all green to me. I start rounding them up 5 at a time and going at them by freezing them and then using Blizzard. I’ll earn about 500 experience points for each group of mobs that I kill. I kill these off at about the same time it took me to kill 1 in scenario 1. I can therefore make 10000 experience points per hour compared to 4000 in scenario 1. I’ll also get to loot a heap more mobs meaning I’ll be able to make a lot more cash.
At first glance leveling a mage may seem like a tough process. Especially give that they lack a lot of the abilities that other classes have. But if you take the time to master the art of control you have a massive advantage in that you can wipe out many creatures in short time periods.
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