To help mage at Levels 1-25 in WoW Classic SOD Phase 1, I have compiled a detailed AOE guide. Beginners will greatly benefit from this guide.
Whether you’re an experienced Mage or just getting started, the Season of Discovery Mage is a version of the class we’ve never seen before, and it’s extremely powerful. Make sure that you have enough SOD Gold.
Runes For Beginners
The runes that we’re starting off with are really nothing special because you’re unable to get anything crazy like Arcane Surge or Living Bomb for a little while. But that doesn’t mean that you’re suffering until you get WoW SOD Gold.
Let me explain how some of these, like Ice Lance at Level 3. Once you get other runes like Living Flame and Burnout, they can start having a huge impact on your leveling.
Living Flame probably seems like not a great spell. And it’s kind of weird whenever you first get it. But whenever you use it properly, it can be a complete game-changer. Most Mages are going to have to take some time figuring this out. But lucky for you, I can just tell you exactly how it works.
Just like the way that it looks in WoW SOD, it puts down a little trail of fire going towards the mob whenever you use it. But the key thing to focus on is keeping the mobs in that fire. No matter what. If the mob moves, the Living Flame will follow it, sure. But it will not cause damage during the time that it’s not directly under it.
The most reliable way to do this all the way up to Level 25 is to just let the mob hit you. And while this might feel awkward at first, you can pretty easily do this with three mobs at once. Anytime that Living Flame is off cooldown, get in the habit of doing this, and it will increase your leveling speed dramatically.
Tips On Using Runes
Speaking of burning things, you’ll need to find another player to unfreeze the Burnout Rune. But if you can’t, you could substitute it for the Enlightenment Chest Rune. However, it’s definitely a downgrade, and playing by its rules doesn’t really get you adequate rewards. Of course, like all casters, it’s a good idea to invest WoW Classic SOD Gold in some wands. That way, you can use it whenever you run out of mana.
The big thing whenever you hit Level 10 is Frost Nova because we can use it to root enemies in our Living Flame so that way we don’t have to take their damage anymore. At Level 10, you can conjure Level 5 water, so stop buying milk unless if you just want to save time conjuring it. And now for which talents to level. As TLDR, you can do whatever you want.
Another good investment is buying ice-cold milk, which, after Level 5, is much better than the water that you can conjure. And normally, I don’t recommend doing any professions. But tailoring is always a good pickup on Mage since we can use our cloth for that over first aid and we can just eat our conjured food.
You can execute mobs with Fire Blast or Ice Lance if they’re low and you don’t want to hard cast something. And you can always write simple macros to slash cast spells so that way you don’t have to constantly put the higher ranks on your bars whenever you train them.
Talents For Leveling
Now for which talents to level in WoW Classic SOD. Major thing that Frost has going for it is rushing to Ice Shards, which has great synergy with Burnout. You also get the hit rating from Elemental Precision right in the tree. You don’t have to go into a different tree for it. I gave Frostbolt a try with Fingers of Frost to see if they always proc at the same time, like they do in Wrath, and they do. So I wouldn’t recommend using both of these together; it’s just overkill since Fingers of Frost is a chest rune. You could just run Frostbolt with Burnout if you want.
As for Arcane, it’s a solid choice because of clear casting, and it’s the premier option if you’re AoE leveling most of the time. Lacks the lower cast time on Fireball or Frostbolt, which is very good at lower levels when you don’t have Arcane Blast yet. It also doesn’t have any crit damage multiplier, which we really want since we’re getting 15% crit from Burnout.
My recommendation is going to be the same as Rested XP, which is Fire from 10 to 20. Fire is really strong in this level bracket, specifically because Fireball outclasses Frostbolt a huge amount of the time due to getting higher ranks sooner. Without the deeper Frost talents like Shatter, Frost spells, in general, aren’t that powerful.
Although at higher-level ranges, they are more mana-efficient. High went improve Fireball, then Ignite, which is great with Burnout. Then putting the rest of the points in Burning Soul for the pushback reduction, Flame Throwing or Elemental Precision and Frost, whatever order you want. You can also mess around and get Impact for the stun if you want. Although these talents affect your Fire spells, they don’t really affect AOE farming all that much since you’re using Living Flame and Living Bomb. And the only parts of those that can crit is the Living Bomb explosion.
Regeneration For Level 10 To 20
You can get a Greater Magic 10 to 20 and Regeneration wand as soon as you’re Level 13, and you should, for multiple reasons. First, it’s very cheap and crafted by enchanters. Second,it’s extremely high DPS for its level. And third, it’s an Arcane damage wand.
Around Level 12 to 14, you can get the Regeneration Rune. You will lose Burnout on your chest if you run this, but you’ll be able to cast a heal on yourself that leaves a buff that will heal you whenever you deal Arcane damage, including Arcane wands.
The self-healing from this Rune has been nerfed multiple times, but it still heals you from the damage done by Living Flame because it’s Spellfire damage, which is extremely broken. This is going to allow you to just face tank mobs while you’re killing them with Living Flame and your Arcane wand.
You will almost always want to run Regeneration when you’re AOE leveling.
Speaking of AOE in Season of Discovery, at Level 14, you get Arcane Explosion, which adds a massive punch to your AOE pulls. Especially anytime Living Flame is off cooldown. Healing you will get from Arcane Explosion damage is reduced by 80%, but it will still help you kill the mobs faster. You also get Frostbolt rank 3 at Level 14. And if you are Frost, you’ll be using this until rank 4, all the way at Level 20. And then that’s the last one you’ll get in this entire phase.
Around this level, Alliance Living Bomb Mages can get Living Bomb from the trogs in Loch Modan. But for Horde, you have to do the Talking Head Quest on Fenris Isle, which is a Level 18 Quest and requires you to be level 12 to start. All you really need to do this is to be smart and patient because you just need to 1v1 a Level 19 null a few times.
And then once you get the Talking Head, all you have to do is kill one mob on top of the grave, talk to the grave. Then I recommend dying at the base of the castle. Then whenever you run back, res on the roof of the castle. And then kill the patrolling null and the null guarding the bookshelf. And then you’re out. You will very likely run into other Mages while you’re doing this, so group up with them.
Living Bomb
Now, when you finally got Living Bomb, I thought that the rest of the game was just going to be on easy mode. This is the perfect ability to pull things with when you’re AoE leveling. And then once they’re all grouped up, just use Living Flame and tank them while the bombs go off. You get spam healed from Regeneration.
Level 15, you can buy WoW SOD Gold to buy water again. Melon juice is much better than the Level 5 water that we can conjure.
Plus Healing
At Level 18, you get Fireball rank 4, which is a must-have if you’re killing mobs one by one. This is also the level that you get Amplify Magic. And I bet you’re wondering, does this increase the healing that I get from Temporal Beacons? But unfortunately, it doesn’t. It only increases the healing done by Regeneration and Mass Regeneration spells themselves. Which isn’t all that much healing.
It’s still better than nothing, so buff yourself with it whenever you’re full mana. Around this level, you can also go get Arcane Blast from The Zoram Strand and Ashenvale because it’s a rune and not tied to a spell rank. It’s usually your highest damage hard cast even without the Arcane Blast Stacks.
Level 20
Now you are Level 20 in WoW SOD. You can now conjure Level 15 water, teleport to two out of three major cities, and Blink. At this point, I highly recommend just AOE grinding the rest of the way because we have all the tools to do so. And we have access to tons of areas that are packed with fantastic mobs to grind. It depends on your situation, though. If you can only play during peak contested hours, then it might be a good idea to just chill and keep on questing.
Honestly, the hardest part of AOE grinding for me was keeping a Temporal Beacon on myself before I see it. It’s also a great idea to pick up some of the Eagle Gear from the Auction House, which can easily double or triple your Mana pool for more Arcane explosions. Bonus Health gives you a bigger window to pull stuff with before you have to heal up from Living Flame. If you want to drop some cash, a Sky Collar Wand is a great investment because of its high Arcane damage.
Mages are also exceptional in dungeon. Consider doing Wailing Caverns for the Crescent Staff, Deadmines for the Emberstone Staff, and Shadowfang Keep for the multiple caster items that drop in there. Anything that’s blue and has Int on it is going to look good. Whenever you’re trying to get into BFD groups, you could easily trivialize these dungeons if you can coordinate with your tank and do really big pulls with Living Flame.
As soon as you’re Level 22, you want to go train Arcane Explosion rank 2. And at Level 24, there’s Fireball rank 5.
Level 25
When you finally reach the finish line of Level 25, you don’t really get all that much other than the ability to drink sweet nectar, which I highly recommend buying some with your WoW SOD Gold. You can always sip the Level 15 conjured water on the server tick while you’re drink-walking.
Raiding Talents
Now that we are Level 25, we have one big problem to solve: what spec do we go for raiding? It might seem obvious looking at WoW logs that Fire is outperforming Arcane. But I did BFDs both just to see what would really be best for a beginner.
We get Fireball rank 5 at Level 24, and we have Burnout and Living Bomb and Living Flame. But this Fireball just costs an insane amount of mana. You compare it to Arcane Blast. It costs like 6 times more. On long fights, you will definitely run out of mana, even if you bring tons of mana pots, which you definitely should. The Lesser mana potions are like 5 to 10 silver.