After the destruction of the kingdom of Dalaran the arcane arts spread to all corners in the world and magic is now practiced by many different races. The Mage is an invaluable party member with its high damage spells.

The Mage relies on ranged combat and different spells that immobilizes the enemy. With the high damage Fire Spells and the slowing Frost Spells the Mage can deal high damage before getting hit at all. What makes the Mage so important in a group is the high damage Area of Effect spells and the most powerful spell of them all; Polymorph.

Polymorph transforms the enemy to a sheep and forces it to wander around for the duration of the spell. While Polymorphed the enemy can not cast spells or attack but it will regenerate health very quickly. This spell is useful when you pull more than one enemy at a time.

Mages can also use teleportation spells to all the major cities and open portals for other group members for faster travel.

What is supposed to be the role of the Mage class?

The Mage class is primarily a ranged damage-oriented support class that has three separate schools of magic available to them: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The three different forms of magic schools available to the Mage make it a very flexible class to deal damage to almost any type of creature in the game. The Mage also has the strongest multiple target area of effect (AoE) damaging spells/abilities in the game. Other support functions that a Mage can provide include single target control [Polymorph], and short-term crowd control [Frost Nova/root effects]. The Mage class is also the only class that has the ability to conjure food and drink This saves a great deal of cash for the Mage and his/her friends. The Mage is very highly sought after class for groups, raids, and instance dungeon crawls.

Although the Mage is a very strong group-role class, it makes a very effective character in soloing many same-level quests and creatures on its own. The general rule is:

* Anything below your level is safe
* Anything one/two levels above your level will cost a good portion of your mana but is usually safe and you should expect resistances at around 10-25%
* Anything three levels above your level will cost you a majority of your mana and a decent supply of your health and you should expect about 50%+ resistances.
* Anything four levels above your level or higher will cost you all of your mana, all of your life, potions/mana gems, and you should expect around 75% or higher resistances. Success is not ensured and may result in an unplanned visit to the Spirit Healer in some cases.

What character stats are most important to my Mage?

How important a stat is to your Mage truly depends on how you wish to play your Mage. It is the general understanding of the Mage community that Intellect and Stamina are the two top priority stats a Mage should focus on: intellect impacts your Mages critical strike chance with spells and increases your available mana pool; stamina increases your Mages health points. Spirit, although the description states it regenerates your mana and health pools, is largely seen as insignificant by the Mage community simply because of its diminishing returns at higher stat levels and lack of effectiveness during spell casting. Agility and Strength stats primarily affect melee-based characters defensively and offensively. Although these melee stats can affect a Mages melee abilities, the benefit from these stats alone will not impact your function in combat as greatly as the others [intellect, stamina, and spirit].

What armor, weapons, and tradeskill professions can a Mage learn?

* Mages start out with proficiency in Cloth armor; Mages cannot learn any other armor types, regardless of their character levels.
* Mages start with the weapon skill Staves. Mages can also learn how to wield Daggers and 1 handed swords in addition to their existing weapon skills.
* New spells become available to Mages on every even-numbered level: 2, 4, 6, etc to 60. Be sure to visit a Mage trainer as soon as you can upon reaching an even-numbered level: you will be finding it more difficult to fight creatures at your new level without updated spells.
* Mages, like all characters, have the ability to learn any two of all the available tradeskill professions.