Mage Facts

Lamnethx:

Only thing I can think of right now is if you are on PvP go for "of the eagle" items.

Of the Eagle gives a boost to INT (our main stat) and Stamina which will boost your horridly pathetic MP.

You can boost your spirit with of the owl but post 30-40 (somewhere in there) you will have so much mp that no matter how much spirt you have in the long run it will not help.

I can also suggest that on PvP you need to devote your first 18 talent points into Arcane.

With this you will get 5 things

Improved Arcane Missle
This gives you a 100% chance not to have your missles' channeling interupted via damage.

Improved Concentration
Gives you a 10% chance every dmging spell of gaining a clear casting state aka your next spell is free. In long fights this adds up fast.

Improved Arcane Explosion
Makes AE instant cast, nuf said

Improved Counterspell
Your counterspell will alaways silence the target for 4sec bye bye spell casters

Evocation
Ability 3 min cooldown.
8 sec channeling time
while channeling increases mp regen rate by 1500% (thats not a misprint) how much is this you are wondering.
I can go from 0 to 2800 in 3 sec flat.

Filterspawn

Defense
As stated in Lamneth's post, mages have pitiful defense. It is absolutely pathetic. So in regards to that, ALWAYS have your Frost/Ice armour active. Paladins are your friend if you are Alliance, the armour bonus they give may just keep you alive long enough to kill the mob that just wiped out your tanks up front and is headed for your healer in the back.


Damage
There are other classes that do decent damage. You are the king as a mage. The reason you have low defense is because you have such high killing power, the term "glass cannon" is rather appropriate when talking about mages.

DOT or damage over time is almost nonexsistent for mages, forget about it. All the damage you do is called burst damage, because it may take you 3-6 seconds to get that fire spell off, but when you do people notice it. I critical for around 500 at level 32.

This is where it gets tricky for new players. Once you get your first talent point, you may think like me and go "oooooh so many to choose from" Don't just grab it if it sounds kool. I will discuss the relative mage types more in a bit. For now remember this.
Fire Mage= Largest damage dealer in the game.
Frost Mage= Awesome crowd control.

As Lamneth said Those talents in the Arcane tree are must have. After that what you pick will define you as a mage. I personally went with a Fire/Arcane spec, to provide the most damage output.


Travel
No one travels like you do. Mages travel in style. Yeah yeah Rogues have sprint, hunters have aspect of the pack, you have Teleport and blink. Blink is your best friend, EVER. Saved myself and many mage friends from certain death at times. Use it to escape and use it to just get around places when you are not fighting. Now as to teleports. They allow you to travel to any of the major cities after you train them at level 20. these are as follows:
Alliance- Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus.
Horde- Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff.

YOU MUST GO TO EACH CITIES TRAINER TO LEARN THAT RESPECTIVE LOCATIONS SPELL. Sorry for the caps but so many mages always asking me ingame where they go to learn a teleport. At level 40 you get Portal, which does the same thing as Teleport except instead of just you it allows your entire party to go to the city you cast it for. As a last note in travel, keep in mind that teleport and Portal take reagents to cast, which you buy from a regeant vendor in most populated areas. Try not to forget this, nothing will make you mad faster than when a hunter beats you back to town all because you forgot your reagents.

PvP
Mages are not the gods of PvP. But they can come pretty damn close. The trick to being successful is distance. Mages cannot and NEVER should try to fight close up. This is what frost nova is for. It roots your enemy in place for up to 8 seconds, so if you get jumped that should be the first thing you cast, then you blink away. After that I personally like to open with my most powerful spell to knock a large chunk of hp of their bar and blink again. You can get 1-2 more casts off before your frost nova timer wears off and you can let them get close to cast again. After that I like to Frostbolt them to slow them down and blink away to finish them off. You can experiment and see what works for you.

One last thing in PvP, Counterspell is God, learn it, use it, love it.

Alot of people whine about polymorph. I don't use it in 1v1 unless I am running away. It lets their health regen too fast to be worth it. So try not to use it if possible unless its at the very start of a fight. Also with the new patch players have an increased chance of breaking polymorh, that's bad for you.

In large scale PvP your role is a bit simpler. Stay in the back and pick people off. Let the tanks do their jobs up front. It's easy to miss a mage hiding in the back in all the confusion. Two things to worry about in that situation though, hunters and rogues. Hunters mark is satan, if they mark you everyone and their brother will be trying to kill you, have someone (Don't recall which class) dispell it off you ASAP. Rogues are evil because they like to stealth and sneak around behind you, if a rogue gets the jump on you, you are dead. A good rogue can and will kill a cloth wearer in under 6 seconds. Pray a friendly hunter sees them before they get to you.


Partying and Instances
Everyone loves having a mage around in an instance. We have polymorph which is a godsend when you get adds. Something to be aware of, especially to all you former FFXI players out there. Aggro in this game is different. The paladin cannot cement hate on himself in this game, 1-2 casts from you is all it takes to get an angry thing with sharp claws and teeth to rip into your fragile cloth wearing body. With most normal fights it's not a big deal because the party will kill it so fast, if it's a boss or sub-boss, watch it though, you don't wanna go down after the first 5 seconds. Let the tanks beat on it a bit then start your casting.

With your AoE (area of effect) spells you have to be REALLY careful. If your party is fighting, lets say 6 mobs, Blizzard might be a bad idea unless they are all almost dead. The reason is that the melee can only beat on 1-2 at a time, so if you piss of the whole group and they all come after you, you are dead and then so is your healer because he was trying to save you. No one wants that.

The one time it's not such a big deal is if there is more than one mage in the group. I did an instance at level 31 with a full group that had 2 mages. We both nuked to holy hell with our AoE spells and since there was so much damage coming from all sides the mobs didn't know what to do, so they died.


Mages types
There are a few types of mages, these are as follows:

Fire/Arcane: Emphasis on the fire talents and HUGE damage output.
Frost/Arcane: Emphasis on the frost talents and great crowd control.
Arcane/Fire and Arcane/Frost: Like the above but with more emphasis on arcane than the others.

I will not go into talent builds here. There are a ton of sights around with builds on them, that is for you to figure out on your own. Just remember the basic setup as to what type of mage does what. Also you can have frost spells on a fire speced mage and vice versa, they just will not be as powerful as they would on a frost or fire mage. (I know that sounds obvious, but I have had that question before)