WoW Forever Mage Guide

Mages in WoW: Forever keep their role as ranged damage dealers with the best crowd control and group utility, but each school of magic now asks for more decisions mid-fight. The headline addition is Frostfire Bolt, which counts as both Fire and Frost and opens hybrid builds. Blizzard also nerfed several tools gold farmers used to abuse. This page summarizes Blizzard’s official class deep dive.

Plan your build: the WoW Forever Mage talent calculator uses the full talent trees from the game client’s own data, with every rank, row requirement and tooltip.

Orc Mages are new in Forever, and High Order Skyborne (Alliance) can be Mages too. Horde-aligned Windshaper Skyborne cannot.

Baseline changes every Mage gets

• Frostfire Bolt (new, level 40): a 3-second cast that hits hard like Fireball and leaves a damage-over-time slow. It counts as both a Fire and a Frost spell, so most talents for either school boost it. It uses whichever of your Fire or Frost spell damage is higher, and whichever of the target’s Fire or Frost resistance is lower.
• Comprehension (new): a Mage-only minor tradeskill. Use Comprehend Scroll (in the General tab of the spellbook) on scrolls dropped in the world for various rewards Blizzard wants players to discover.
• Cone of Cold lasts a shorter time, as part of a fix against kiting large packs for gold and experience.
• Mage Armor gives more mana regeneration from Spirit.

Blizzard’s own example of a hybrid build: take both Ignite and Ice Shards so a Frostfire Bolt crit deals 200% damage plus another 40% of that as Ignite, for 280% in total.

Low-rank spell penalty

Blizzard explained in the Mage section that talents which proc a free effect, such as Arcane Concentration and Impact, now have a lower chance to trigger from spells of a much lower rank. The same penalty applies to similar talents on other classes. It targets the old trick of “fishing” for procs with cheap low-rank spells.

Talent structure

Talents start at level 10 with gold medal talents at 11, 16 (new), 21 and 31 points. Respec at a class trainer in a major city; Dual Specialization unlocks at level 40.

Arcane

• Arcane Blast (new 11-point gold medal): a 2.5-second cast that increases the damage of your other Mage spells and its own mana cost, stacking up to 4 times for 8 seconds or until you cast something else. Unlike the expansion version, it is designed to make you use the rest of your toolkit.
• Missile Barrage (new): Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt can make your next Arcane Missiles channel twice as fast for free. Blizzard’s deep dive listed it as the 16-point gold medal, but the latest game data (client build of October 21) moves it to the first row with 2 ranks and puts a new talent, Arcane Wrath, in the 16-point slot. Our Mage talent calculator follows the game data.
• Arcane Geometry (new): longer range for Arcane spells.
• Arcane Mind now increases Intellect and Arcane crit damage. Arcane Focus now adds hit chance. Arcane Impact adds crit to all Arcane spells.
• Arcane Resilience is no longer a gold medal and costs 2 points. Arcane Power now requires Presence of Mind.
• Magic Absorption has a 1-second internal cooldown. Magic Attunement is now baseline.

Fire

• Heating Up (new, requires Pyroblast): crits with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Fire Blast and Scorch shorten your next Pyroblast by 25% per stack, up to 3 stacks (a 1.5-second Pyroblast). It is Forever’s take on Hot Streak.
• Ignite is now separate for each Mage rather than one shared debuff, and damage is no longer lost when crits land too close together.
• Wake of Fire (formerly Improved Fire Blast) shortens Fire Blast further and empowers it after kills. Incineration also affects Ice Lance and Arcane Blast.
• Improved Scorch now only benefits you. Blast Wave no longer requires Pyroblast. Improved Fireball also speeds up Frostfire Bolt.

Frost

• Ice Lance (new 11-point gold medal): an instant, low-damage spell that deals 300% more to frozen targets.
• Fingers of Frost (new): Chill effects can grant charges that make your spells treat the target as frozen.
• Ice Block becomes the 16-point gold medal; Cold Snap becomes the 21-point gold medal with a 10-minute cooldown.
• Improved Blizzard now slows by up to 40% instead of 65%, again to curb area farming by gold sellers.
• Winter’s Chill only benefits you and only boosts Frostbolt and Ice Lance. Permafrost now scales Chill duration by percentage. Shatter no longer requires Improved Frost Nova.

Strengths and weaknesses, according to Blizzard

Mages remain one of the most powerful damage classes, with Polymorph as one of the best crowd control spells and the strongest, most varied ranged area damage of any class. They are extremely fragile if caught in melee. Arcane manipulates mana for damage, Fire produces heavy crits, and Frost offers unmatched control. Groups always value their buffs, food and water.

What is not confirmed yet

• What the Comprehension scrolls give; Blizzard left that for players to discover.
• Exact per-level damage and healing numbers in some talent tooltips; these scale with your character, so our Mage talent calculator shows them as formulas or dashes.
• Best-in-slot gear, which depends on items that go live at launch and with raids on December 9.

Related guides

• Mage talent calculator
• All WoW Forever classes
• Race and class combinations
• Class picker tool
• New dungeons