Mage Leveling Specs

When leveling a mage, you have a variety of options as far as specs are concerned.  You may have followed my guide on my personal mage leveling build but are wanting a change now that you’ve hit level 80, or Fire builds might not be your thing and you may want to go with a Frost spec or Arcane spec for leveling your mage.  Either way, I’ve got you covered.  I’ll list a few of my favorite builds and a short description on this page so that you can have a better understanding of what your options are for mage leveling specs.

My Classic Fire Leveling Build

This is the one linked to in the first paragraph of this page. Here’s what the spec looks like on Wowhead’s talent calculator. As mentioned in the corresponding post, the talents selected here are chosen for optimized killing speed with a mild dash of survivability. The general idea is, the faster we kill, the faster we level. Gear and glyph accordingly.

Safe Leveling, Frost Style

This one isn’t quite as speedy or satisfying for the “big numbers” crowd, but in my opinion this presents the safest option with the most room for error and handling adds. Here it is on the talent calculator. With this build you’ll be keeping mobs rooted, snared, or stunned more often than not, which gives you better options for escape or handling an extra mob or two without crumpling like a piece of cheap tissue. Gear more for spell damage than crit, and make sure to pick up Glyph of Frost Nova and Glyph of Water Elemental to complement this spec.

The Crafty Arcane Spec

This talent spec will give you the biggest bag of tricks to pull from, and is also one of the best specs as far as group-friendliness is concerned. You still get a decent amount of damage, but you also get a whole lot more utility and mana regen capability. Check it out at Wowhead. This spec is very decent for 1 on 1 PVP as well, since Slow gives you complete control over a single target. Glyph of Arcane Barrage and Arcane Missiles both have solid benefits in this spec.