Mage in WoW Forever

The WoW Forever Mage trees at launch (Blizzard's Nov 2 notes): Missile Barrage, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wrath in Arcane, Accelerant, Heating Up and Blast Wave in Fire, Ice Lance, Fingers of Frost and Ice Barrier in Frost. Values shown at max rank.

Mage talent calculator Race picker

Starter builds

Leveling

Frost leveling

Shatter, Ice Lance and Fingers of Frost for safe AoE and kiting; Arcane for Clearcasting and regen.

Split 20 / 0 / 31 · level-by-level order →

Endgame

Fire raid

Ignite, Heating Up Pyroblasts and Combustion; Arcane for Clearcasting and Arcane Meditation.

Split 20 / 31 / 0 · level-by-level order →

Best race for each Mage spec

Top-scoring race from our racial scores: Horde first, Alliance below. Open the race picker for the full ranking and why.

Spec	Leveling	Dungeons & raids	PvP
DPS (any spec)	Troll High Order Skyborne	Orc Human	Orc Human

Mage talents changed for launch

Talent	Tree	Now
Arcane Resilience	Arcane	Gain Armor equal to up to 75% of your Intellect. Now 3 ranks (25% per rank).
Missile Barrage	Arcane	Arcane Blast (up to 40%) and Arcane Wrath, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt (up to 20%) can make your next Arcane Missiles free, with a 50% shorter channel and a missile every 0.5 sec. Now used up as soon as Arcane Missiles starts, and Clearcasting isn't spent on Arcane Missiles while it is active. Frost Blast is removed.
Arcane Blast	Arcane	1.5 sec cast: 34–38 Arcane damage. Each cast gives you 12% of your Intellect as spell damage and raises Arcane Blast's mana cost by 100%, stacking 4 times for 18 sec. 15% of base mana, 30 yd.
Ignite	Fire	Fire spell critical strikes burn the target for up to an extra 40% of the damage over 4 sec. Now works with all Flamestrike damage.
Frostbite	Frost	Your Chill effects have up to a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 sec. Since the Oct 28 hotfix the root shares one diminishing-returns group with Entrapment, Counterattack, Improved Wing Clip and Improved Hamstring.
Ice Lance	Frost	Instant: 28–32 Frost damage, 300% more against Frozen targets. 45 mana, 30 yd, 8 sec cooldown, now on every rank.
Arctic Reach	Frost	Frostbolt, Frost Blast, Ice Lance and Blizzard get up to 20% more range, and Frost Nova and Cone of Cold up to 20% more radius. Now includes Ice Lance.
Winter's Chill	Frost	Same, but each stack now makes your next Cone of Cold deal 20% more instead of 5%.
Ice Barrier	Frost	Same shield, but Frost damage is now +15% for 1 min and another +5% while the shield holds.