WoW Confidential

My main is an undead mage and I wanted to experiment with using videos as a medium to present information to you readers.

This video shows my current build I use for leveling from 66 – 80, it is designed for maximum dps against one target at a time with minimal downtime.

Combine this with a leveling guide like Zygor’s Leveling guide or Joana’s guide for maximum efficiency and to get a level every 2-3 hours. For a free alternative check out my write up about leveling guides in this post.

Continue reading to see how this build is used most effectively

Macros Used

Frostbolt – makes pet auto attack, uses your trinkets and icy veins if available, also takes away the annoying sound “I can’t cast that yet”:

#showtooltip Frostbolt

/petattack
/run SetCVar(“Sound_EnableSFX”,”0″)
/use 13
/use 14
/cast icy veins
/run SetCVar(“Sound_EnableSFX”,”1″)
/cast Frostbolt

Water Elemental Freeze – allows you to bind a key to your pets freeze for easy access to pull off the deep freeze/frost bolt combos:
/click [pet] PetActionButton5

Talent Build

At level 70 your build should look like this: 10/0/51

At level 75 I am currently using this in the video: 13/0/53

Finally, at level 80 your build should end up looking like this: 18/0/53

The build takes all necessary mana efficiency talents while picking up all the critical strike bonuses and chances possible to maximize damage. Deep freeze is fantastic to use with the water elemental pet and brain freeze is a great addition to free instant burst damage. I opt to take Torment the weak last as the initial frostbolt on a target doesn’t benefit from the 12% damage and I’d rather have 5/5 Chilled to the Bone and Deep Freeze.

Consumables/Glyphs

Glyph of Water Elemental

This brings down the time to cast your elemental to 2 minutes, and combined with Cold Snap your pet should be up very often and in most fights, not only is the dps boost from him shooting his 1200 dmg frost bolts a great increase but the ability to use the freeze to get off your deep freeze and combos make mages look godly by spiking off 3-4 mobs in a matter of seconds.

Glyph of Mage Armor

Keeps mana regeneration with mage armor on at a respectable level – 50% of your mana regeneration continues while you are casting. Blizzard has stacked tons of items with spirit in WOTLK and this talent will come in handy to make that spirit useful.

Spell Rotation and Strategy

As you can see in the video there is a pattern to follow in each encounter depending on which cooldowns are available:

Water Elemental – start casting your frostbolt (macro) – Pet freeze before frostbolt finishes casting and spam Deep Freeze – spam 2 ice lances to finish off target – if the mob is still left alive with <6% health Wand down or ice lance, if >6% cast another frostbolt.

After that first encounter is finished, ensure you cast Cold Snap whenever it becomes available to refresh your water elemental so the cooldown timer can start refreshing and your pet will be available right away after the current one despawns.

If no pet: Spam Frostbolt, if any frostbites proc – ice lance then deep freeze then span 2 more ice lances. That is it, use evocation whenever you are below 40% mana and keep up your consumables and purchase the highest level of water/food you can buy; since the mage conjured food/water isn’t the highest we can use until level 80.

There you have it, use these builds and a good leveling guide and you will be 80 in no time.