Reply thread here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12661337306&sid=1

Additional resources:

The SEARCH Feature! - please use this before making a new topic. it is likely your question has already been answered.

Theory Craft-o-matic – useful for comparing the damage potential of different PvE specs
http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/tcom/index.php

Zaldinar's Proven Theorycrafting Stuff - Very good and interesting stuff in here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=109841969

Subcreation – small community, but lots of good advice available here:
http://forums.subcreation.net/viewforum.php?id=21

Elitist Jerks – if you are seeking to improve yourself in end-game PvE content look here:
http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php
*I strongly suggest reading these to start with since the EJ forums are heavily moderated and useless posts, like the majority of the ones on this forum, will result in you being banned. Make sure you also read their forum rules if you do decide to post so you can avoid getting into trouble. You have been warned.

Arena Junkies – if you are seeking to improve in end-game PvP content look here:
http://www.arenajunkies.com

Contents
I. Basics
II. Talents
III. Leveling
IV. User Interface
V. Miscellanous

I. Basics

The role of a Mage:
The mage is best described as a ranged, direct-damage, support class. Mages can deal damage through 3 separate schools of magic: Fire, Arcane, and Frost, which means that mages can deal damage to almost any type of creature (mob) in the game. Mages also have the best AoE, or area of effect damaging spells in the game. Your main support function as a mage will be Polymorph, which is the best single target crowd control (cc) ability in the game; because of this ability mages are highly sought after for instances and other groups. Mages are also the only class in the game that can conjure food and drink for their allies, which saves a great deal of cash for not only the mage, but other group members as well.

Mages bring a lot to a group, but we are also highly effective soloers because of our high damage output and kiting abilities. Generally speaking:

Any mob whose level appears green or yellow is safe to kill. Mobs whose level appear gray offer no experience and you should not waste your time with them while leveling.
Any mob whose level appears orange is also killable, but will cost you a significant amount of health and mana.
Any mob whose level appears red will probably kill you before you kill it, so stay away from them!

Mage Stats:
Primary Stats
There are two primary stats that are important to a mage, intellect and stamina. Intellect is important because it increases the size of your mana pool and when you have more mana you can deal more damage to a boss, or kill more mobs before drinking while leveling. Stamina is also important because it adds to your survivability by increasing the size of your health pool, and since mages have very low health to begin with making sure you have enough of this stat is essential to your success in PvP and PvE.

There is one last stat this is of limited use to mages, spirit. Spirit regenerates your mana and health, which sounds good at first, but you will not start regenerating that mana unless you haven't casted anything for 5 seconds. So since mages are usually constantly casting during a fight we don't get much use out of this stat by itself. Before you dismiss spirit as useless though keep in mind that talents like Arcane Meditation and spells like Mage Armor will allow some of your mana regeneration to continue while you are casting spells, which comes from spirit.

Secondary Stats
Spell power is a very important stat for mages since it is the primary way we increase the damage of our spells, and the only way after reaching level 80. The amount of spell power that a spell receives varies from spell to spell, but generally speaking the longer the cast time the more benefit it receives, this is called it's coefficient. Listed below are the coefficients for some mage spells:

142.9% = Arcane Missiles (28.57% per wave)
115% = Pyroblast (DoT = 5% per tick)
114.3% = Blizzard (14.2% per wave)
100.0% = Fireball
85.71% = Arcane Barrage
85.71% = Frostfire Bolt
81.43% = Frostbolt (unaffected by glyph)
80.53% = Mana Shield, Fire/Frost Ward, Ice Barrier
71.4% = Arcane Blast
42.86% = Scorch
42.86% = Fireblast
23.57% = Flamestrike (DoT = 12.2% per tick)
21.4% = Arcane Explosion

Hit rating is another very important stat to a mage, but only to a certain point. Hit rating increases the chance for you spells to hit, so if you plan on raiding or doing other end-game PvE content you will need to make sure you have enough. Hit rating does not affect resistances, if you do not land a spell due to hit it will show up as 'miss'. For raid bosses you will need a 17% chance to hit, for PvP you will only need 4%.
Your chance to hit is as follows:

Your level -3 99%
Your level -2 98%
Your level -1 97%
Your level 96%
Your level +1 95%
Your level +2 94%
Your level +3 83% (87% if it is a player)

All raid bosses are considered 3 levels above the max, which is why you need a 17% chance to hit if you plan on fighting them. If you do not have enough hit you are severely limiting your damage potential in PvE and your overall effectiveness in PvP. At level 80 a 26.2 hit rating equals a 1% chance to hit with spells.

Spell penetration bascially lowers the amount of resistance that a mob has, namely raid bosses. See most raid bosses have resistances that will decrease the amount of damage your spells will do due to resistance, called partial resists. Any spell with a damage component can be resisted in this manner.

Hit and spell penetration work together in the game, sort of. Basically when you cast a spell the game does a series of calculations, or “rolls” if you will. The first roll is to determine whether or not your spell will hit, which you can improve with hit rating as described above. The second roll is to determine how much, if any, resistance will occur, which you improve with spell penetration.

Haste rating is also a very important stat for a mage, and is much more plentiful in WotLK than in BC. Basically what haste does is increase your casting speed and reduces the global cooldown of your spells, which translates to shorter cast times for your spells. At level 80 a 32.8 haste rating equals 1% haste, which means 0.025 seconds off your cast times and global cooldown. That might not sound like much, but when chain casting on a boss, and when casting anything in PvP, those extra tenths of a second make a difference.

Crit rating is also useful for mages since virtually all of our spells can crit, but how much you need depends on your build and whether you are doing PvE or PvP. Crit rating increases the chance that your spells will do more damage than normal, or critically strike. At level 80 a 45.9 crit rating equals a 1% chance to crit with spells.

Resilience is a very important stat for PvP mages since it helps increase our survivability in PvP situations. Resilience reduces the chance to be critically struck and reduces the damage of critical strikes on you. At level 80 a 81.9 resilience rating equals a 1% less chance of being critically struck and reduces critical strike damage by 2.2%. You cannot achieve greater than a 33% critical strike damage reduction.

Armor, Weapons, Professions and More!:
Armor
Mages wear cloth, always and forever. We cannot learn any additional armor types.

Weapons
Mages start out with proficiency in Staves and we can learn to wield daggers and 1 handed swords. You should train to use both daggers and 1 handed swords at some point, to do so see the weapon masters in Undercity or near Silvermoon City.

Professions
Mages, like all classes, can learn 2 primary professions and all secondary ones. Tailoring has traditionally been a very popular profession for mages, but not all choose to go tailoring. Generally speaking gathering professions like mining, herbalism and skinning are better for making money, while crafting professions like tailoring, enchanting, and jewelcrafting benefit other players more. You can still make good money from a crafting a profession though. Secondary professions include fishing, cooking, and first aid. First aid is highly useful because it is one of the few ways we have of healing ourselves, and with cooking you can make food that provides nice buffs to yourself and other players.

For more on professions visit the profession forum:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11116&sid=1

Also take a look at the professions page: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/professions/index.html

New spells
New spells are available for mages on every even numbered level: 2, 4, 6, 8, etc up to level 60. After level 60 new spells become available on every level. As soon as new spells become available to you be sure to visit a mage trainer as soon as possible, it will be more difficult for you to fight mobs without updated spells.

Portals
Mages can learn teleport (level 20) and portal (level 30) spells from portal trainers located near the mage trainers in the major cities. These spells allow you to transport just yourself (teleport) or group (portal) to any major city of your faction from anywhere.

Glyphs
Glyphs are enhancements to the abilities and/or spells of a player and are divided into major and minor glyphs; major glyphs are often more powerful than minor glyphs. At level 1 all your glyph slots are locked and as you level you will unlock more glyphs slots until you have 3 major and 3 minor glyph slots available to you at level 80. To add a glyph simply open your spell book (default key is 'p') and click the glyphs tab at the bottom. You must also be near a Lexicon of Power to add a glyph, which can be found in the cities, ask a guard for directions.

List of mage glyphs:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=16.8

II. Talents

Once you reach level 10 you will earn something called a talent point that can use to improve your spells and/or abilities. To access your talents you can click the icon on your action bar or use the default 'N' key to view your talents and spend your points. Be careful when you spend your talent points because once they are spent the only way you can unlearn them is by talking to a mage trainer and paying them gold. You will earn 1 talent point per level from level 10 through 80 for 71 talents point total at level 80.

Talent Trees:
Mages have 3 different talent trees that we can train in, Arcane, Fire and Frost.

Arcane – This tree improves your arcane based spells, such as Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast. Arcane based spells usually aren't a good source of damage until you reach level 80 due to their high mana cost, but this tree also offers improvements to mana efficiency, so don't write it off right away.
Popular talents: Improved Counterspell, Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, Slow, Arcane Barrage

Fire – As you might suspect the fire tree improves your fire based spells, such as Fireball and Scorch. Fire spells are arguably the best source of damage for a mage, but the fire tree offers very little for survivability. If you prefer more damage than survivability then fire might be the tree for you.
Popular talents: Ignite, Pyroblast, Improved Scorch, Blastwave, Combustion

Frost – The frost tree improves your frost based spells, such as Frostbolt and Frost Nova. Frost spells allow mages to control a fight better than any other tree. If you prefer more survivability than damage then frost might be the tree for you.
Popular Talents: Improved Frostbolt, Ice Shards, Icy Veins, Shatter, Summon Water Elemental

Talent Calculators:

Wowhead Talent Calculator
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent

Talent Builds:
Most of the time you will see talent builds stated something like 0/53/18 or 20/51/0, what this is referring to is how the talent points are alloted across the 3 trees. The mage trees are organized as Arcane/Fire/Frost, so a 0/53/18 build would be expected to have 0 points in Arcane, 53 in Fire, and 18 in Frost, if the talent point allotment does not follow this pattern then it should be specified which trees the points are in.

At this point it is really difficult to tell which builds will be good, so these are subject to change.

PvE
The following builds are designed primarily for end-game PvE content, attempting to use these builds any other way may result in less than desirable results. It should also be noted that these are based on theorycraft and are therefor subject to change.

Fire
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0hZ0EcbRhIhVubhct

Frostfire
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZfVcbRhIhVubhctbIccoc

Frost
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZfVZVIcssfu0fdgfst

Arcane
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0IzxGuMued0E0bR0h


PvP
The following builds are designed primarily for end-game PvP content, meaning arenas. Attempting to use these builds any other way may result in less than desirable results. Frost is generally the strongest PvP spec for a mage, but I will list examples of other specs as well.

Frost
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ofcbf0MZZAIcbofuhfdMfot

Fire
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VfzMMzZfVcfou0ufurzsx

Arcane
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ofxVfzMfdcGuMuedfV00o

There is a lot of freedom in PvP specs usually and most players specs will look somewhat different from the ones above. Most players will spec based upon which bracket they participate in (2s, 3s, or 5s) and what their team setup.

For more on PvP specs and PvP in general I recommend visiting Arena Junkies: http://www.arenajunkies.com/

III. Leveling

Unlike other classes there really isn't a right or wrong way to level a mage, just different ones, fire is not superior to frost nor is frost superior to fire; each has advantages and disadvantages. If you choose fire to level you will be killing mobs much faster than you would be with frost, but you will also have less survivability and more downtime than frost. If you choose frost you will be killing things slower, but you will have more survivability and less downtime than you would as fire.

Most mages will use a fire build to start with and then if they want to will switch to frost in the level 40-50 range.

Leveling Builds:
Frost:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZZVIcIsfu0czMbst

With frost try to get to shatter as quickly as possible and make sure you pick up 3/3 Ice Shards before getting there. Also remember to pick up Elemental Precision and Frost Channeling for the mana reduction to spells.

Fire:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZ0E0rRhhuiu0hst


Arcane:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=o0xVszMIzxGzMtxd0E

With arcane you will still be using fire based spells for the most part. There is also a trick with this build should you want to try it out, whenever you gain the 'Clearcasting' effect use Arcane Missiles instead of Fireball, using this method is not necessary though. For this build your first 10 points should go into Arcane Stability and Arcane Concentration, then your next 10 into Improved Fireball and Ignite, then finish filling out the arcane tree.

Once you have reached your 51 point talent where you go from there is really up to you. Some mages will prefer to put some points into the arcane tree. Some mages will go for an elementalist build and instead of investing in arcane will invest in points in fire if they are frost, or frost if they are fire. You could also just continue putting points into whatever tree you are already investing points into.

Finished Leveling Builds:
Frost: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vou0fZZVIcIsfu0czMbst
Fire: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0GZ0E0rRhhuiu0hst
Arcane: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=o0xVszMIzxGzMtxd0E0rR0h

Leveling Stats
The primary stat you will want to focus on while leveling is intellect, the more mana you have the more mobs you can kill before drinking. Spell power is also a useful stat while leveling, but there isn't a whole lot of it available until you reach Outland, so focus more on stamina as your secondary priority until you reach Outland. Spirit can also be useful while leveling because it will help regenerate your mana between pulls, or while casting if you use Mage Armor or have Arcane Meditation, but do not make it a priority over intellect.

Leveling Strategy:
The basic sequence is this:

bolt, bolt, bolt, frost nova, strafe to max range, bolt till low hp. Once the mob is at low hp use your wand to finish off the mob and not Fireblast, especially not Fireblast, or any other mana using ability if you can avoid it

To use a wand open your character pane (default shortcut key is 'c') and drag the wand from your inventory to the ranged slot, then open your spell book (default key is 'p'), click the general tab, and drag the “shoot” ability from the spell book onto your action bar. You will now be able to click that action bar icon to use your wand attack. More on UI set up later.

Bolt is your bolt of choice, so if you were fire then bolt would be Fireball, and if you were frost then bolt would be Frostbolt.

Be sure to use mage armor while leveling and make sure you glyph it as well.

Questing
The easiest way to level is to simply complete quests. The best questing strategy is to accept every quest from an area, complete as many as you can, turn them all in at once, then repeat until you have completed all the quests that you can from that area before moving onto the next area. If a quest is too hard don't be afraid to skip it completely or save it for later.

Instances
Instances can be fun and can provide good loot to players who do them, but they are not required content for leveling. Instances will help you learn your role in a group setting and how to play well with other classes. Usually in an instance your most important role is providing crowd control through polymorph, then damage, then buffs and food/water. All these roles are important however and if you neglect any of them you are not fulfilling your role as a mage in an instance.

Grinding
Grinding alone is not the most efficient way to level a mage, or any class. Grinding is when you simply kill mobs in an area over and over again in order to level. As you might imagine this can become very boring very quickly. Good mobs to grind for mages, single target or AoE, are melee mobs that have no ranged attacks, abilities that affect spell casting speed, or abilities that can prevent you from kiting them, like knock down.

James' guides are very nice if you want more specific information on leveling
http://www.wow-pro.com/leveling_guides

IV. User Interface Setup & Mods

How well your user interface (ui) is setup can be an important factor in determining your success in the game, so I'll go over some basics in setting it up optimally with the default ui.

Action Bars
Action bars are what you put your spells and inventory items like potions on so you have quick access to them. Your main action bar is at the bottom of the screen and uses the numbers 1-9 as well as 0,-, and =. There are multiple pages to this main action bar, which you can access by clicking the arrows at the end of the bar or by using the default shortcut key, shift + page up/page down. These pages use the same 1-9, 0, -, = bindings. You can add more action bars to your ui to put more spells and items on if you wish. To do so bring up the interface options menu by hitting the 'esc' key then click Interface from the menu. Once at the interface options menu click action bars from the side menu, then enable as many action bars as you wish, the max you can enable is 4 for a total of 48 extra buttons. Since your at the interface options menu already you might want to check out all the other options available for interface customization. If you don't know what an option simply move your mouse over it for a brief description.

Key Bindings
One of the easiest ways you can make yourself “better” at this game is to bind commonly used spells and abilities to keys for quicker access, rather than having to click on them. To bind keys hit the 'esc' key, then click Key Bindings from the menu. You will notice that the first set of options is movement keys, I recommend using 'A' and 'D' for strafe left and right respectively and using the right mouse button to turn your camera. This makes the game play more like a shooter like Counterstrike or Halo, which allows you to move more quickly than someone who uses 'A' or 'D' to slowly turn their camera.

You can bind keys to any of your actions bar buttons, scroll down until you see the MultiActionBar Bindings section, this is where you will bind your keys for your extra action bars. When you bind a key the bind is for that button on the action bar, not the ability, so any ability you put on that button will use that bind. You want to try to bind keys that are close to your movement keys, W, A, S, and D so you can use these abilities while moving

My key binds:
1- Scorch
2 – Fireball
3 – Frost Nova
4 – Fireblast
5 – Blastwave
6 – Polymorph
7 and later are hard to reach from my movement keys so I'm leaving them out
Z – Trinket/Combustion/AP/PoM macro (depends on spec, sometimes this is Ice Barrier or Dragon's Breath)
X – Mana Shield
C – Counterspell Macro
R – Blink
T – Ice Block
Q – PvP Trinket or Combustion/Trinket macro
E – Ice Lance
V – Will of the Forsaken
G – Mount
F – Netherweave Net
F1 – Healing Potion
F2 – Mana Potion
F3 – Mana Gem
F4 – Misc. uses

Some players like to use E, D, S and F for movement keys and by doing so they free up W and A to bind, and allow other keys like 'Y' and 'H' to be reached more easily.

If you are using a mod like Bartender for your action bars you will have to find the bartender section under the key bindings menu to bind keys to it.

Mods
There are number of mods out there to enhance your interface through functionality and/or making it look pretty. Listing all the available mods would be near impossible, so I'll just list the most popular

Bartender – Bar mod that adds action bars to your screen and allows you to hide them to save screen real estate.

Quartz – Castbar mod that allows you to add a latency bar to your castbar so you can start your next cast sooner, basically this mods helps you do more damage.

MSBT (Mik's Scrolling Battle Text) – Allows extensive customization of damage done, auras gained, etc. Highly useful for notifying you when you gain special effects like clearcasting or fingers of frost or brain freeze.

Pitbull, ag_unitframes, X-Perl – Unit frame mods, able to move them around the screen and will display what class a player is in some fashion when selected and are nicer to look at than the default ones.

For more mods and to download these visit: http://www.wowinterface.com/find.php

V. Miscellaneous

This section contains interesting, weird, strange, and other things that really don't fit anywhere else. It is possible that a lot of things listed here are bugs and will be fixed. I will do my best to keep this section updated.

Improved Blizzard will not proc FoF (Fingers of Frost) unless you also have specced Frostbite.

Torment the Weak will only work on bosses when the "Slow" spell works.

Frostfire Bolt may or may not receive 6% hit from Elemental Precision depending on the patch.
Frostfire Bolt does not get pushback protection from Icy Veins.

If you are unable to cast spells when the explosion from Living Bomb is supposed to go off, it will not. Like if you are silenced, counterspelled, dead, ice blocked, etc..

Arcane Potency can be consumed by non-damage spells like counterspell, slow, etc...

Higher ranks of Molten Armor will proc Ignite

The cast time for lower ranks of Flamestrike are now 2 seconds, higher ranks still 3, and the DoTs from multiple ranks will stack.

FoF charges are consumed by Molten Armor
You can get a 3rd spell under the FoF buff if you cast an instant cast spell right after your 2nd spell under the FoF effect.

Arcane Missiles rank 11 and Blizzard rank 6 will not proc Master of Elements

AoE spells with a knockback effect (Blastwave) are quite disruptive in a raid setting and have already been banned by many raid leaders.

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

That's all folks!

Looks Nice. Sticky!

Sunday probably wasn't the best day to post this

Sticky!

If you could come up with info on +crit/+hit and their benifits/draw backs, it would be a good addition.
Also if you could put more info on your +damage secton, I know a lot of mages that feel that +damage gear is one of the most important stats to build.

Other than that it is a very good summerazation of the mage class.
Thank you

copy + paste nice.

Look forward to what you've got.

updated the +damage section with numbers and such. I'm not very math inclined, so if the numbers are off would appreciate it if someone whould let me know.

also added some hit, crit and penetration info as well as resilience info.

Bump for the night

would you mind doing an aldor and scryer section also.