Tips For Mage Leveling In World Of Warcraft

Tips For Mage Leveling

When it comes to mage leveling it is helpful to know that mages are one of the greatest damage dealers in the game. Also mage leveling can be tricky at times because you either move through your talent tree effectively or you end up with things you don’t need.

Mage leveling can either go well for you, or not so well for you. I personally use a mage leveling guide, you can see my own experience with it here.

For this report I wanted to focus on mage leveling 4.0 patch and Cataclysm

With the addition of Cataclysm came some awesome buffs. It propelled the mage leveling capability. But with every great buff comes a great Nerf, and yes, it effected the mage leveling capability as well.

One thing that will affect your mage leveling capability is the way you set up your talent builds. If you are unclear about world of warcraft talent then check out this post we put together.

For mage leveling consider some of limitations that come with talent builds.

At level 10 you get to pick your first talent. When you do you are locked into your choice of specialization. There’s no more of this fire playing with frost nonsense. Until you spend 31 talent points (at level 69) you will be fire or frost or arcane. After you have spent those 31 points you are free to branch out into other areas. Note that you don’t actually have to buy the top tier talent to branch out, you just need to spend the 31 points.

Obviously this means that 31/10/0 or 31/5/5 is about as far as you’re going to get into any hybrid builds, assuming that you have any interest in hybrid builds.

Mastery is a trainable skill that you have access to upon achieving level 80. Gear will come withMastery Rating, which will increase the Mastery effect much like Crit Rating does now. Whether stacking lots of Mastery is really worthwhile, compared to crit or anything else, remains to be seen and we won’t say much about it on this page.

You no longer learn several levels of spell. You buy the spell once and it scales as you level.

Mage Leveling Tips

When it comes to mage leveling you want to make sure you begin your rotation with your opposition at maximum range wherever possible and blast away.

The best thing is to use frost to keep them from shortening that gap between you and them. You also want to have a great wand with you. If you are hord there is a wand shop in the blood elf city. This allows you to do fare amount of damage without using all your mana. Especially if you are soloing.

When you are mage leveling at lower levels this is not as important, but once you hit 81 and above it seems like everyone is hitting you like a mac truck. I am consuming tons of Food in the higher levels – Keep well stocked. Regular foods are great if you need to recover a lot of HP. Beverages keep your mana up. Your Create Water & Create Food are free, use them. You can usually find beverages that will recover more mana than the spell in certain level ranges, so grab those when appropriate, but again… the spell is free.

Mage leveling First Aid - An essential skill, too bad there isn’t a “first aid for Mana.” Keep it maxed.

Mage leveling Gold: Make sure you have plenty of it. Believe it or not people are making $500 gold an hour all day long in world of warcraft. This is the WoW farming guide I use.

Mage leveling Wands - these aren’t quite as useful as with other caster classes, since they mobs will usually be running towards you, rather than away from you (fear spells,) but if your tank is holding aggro and you’re low on mana, then wands are great.

Mage Leveling Gear - Stam, stam, and more stam. With some Int if it comes with the Stam. Get the biggest bags you can afford. Carry plenty of food and bandaids and beverages.

The below section is nearly identical for all three specializations of mage, this is due to the usage of almost entirely the same stats for any mage no matter the talent build/elemental specialization.

Mage Leveling- Number Crunching

Sell Hit – 12.6 = 1%
Spell Critical – 22.1 = 1%
Spell Penetration – 1 = 1 Lost point of Resistance
Spell Haste – 15.7 = 1%/0.025 seconds off of Global Cooldown & Spell Cast Time

Spell Damage Coefficients:

Scorch = 42.8%
Fireball = 100.0% OR 115% W/Empowered Fireball
Pyroblast = 135% (or 115% intial damage/20% over duration of DoT)

Spell Hit Cap W/ (3/3) Elemental Precision = 164 For Fire & Frost/126 (Frostbolt Only)
Spell Hit Cap W/ (5/5) Arcane Focus = 76 for Arcane
Spell Hit Cap W/ (3/3) Elemental Precision & (3/5) Arcane Focus = 126 for Frost & Arcane

Mage Leveling Spell Hit, Crit, etc.

The Numbers above detail the percentage to which each point of +Spell Damage actually effects any given spell. For instance, 1 point of spell damage does not automatically equal an increase of one damage, rather it will increase it to a percentage as listed above.

If the spell you’re looking for isn’t listed above then simply take the base casting time(without talents) and divide it by 3.5. However, a different formula will apply to AoE spells.

Defacto Priority:

Spell Hit(Until Capped) – Spell Damage OR Haste – Spell Critical

What to shoot for when entering Karazhan & Heroics:

Just to make sure you are ready for karazhan and heroics try aiming for the stats below as an absolute minimum, surpassing them however is recommended.

Spell Hit: 90

Additionally, you can downgrade these stats somewhat for the easier heroic dungeons as Karazhan is definitely more challenging than most if not all of them.

Spell Damage: 600
Spell Critical: 20%
Health: 6,000
Mana: 7,000

What to shoot for when heading into 25-Raids:

These numbers should cover you for passing Karazhan into the 25-man raiding content, statistics such as spell hit will be notably harder to achieve prior to gearing up in Karazhan & Heroics quie a bit. Otherwise if you have this or higher by the time you eclipse Karazhan you’ll be fine.

Spell Hit: 10%
Spell Damage: 800+
Spell Critical: 25% or 28% W/ Molten Armor
Health: 7,000+
Mana: 9,000

Scattered Shots: So you want to be a Hunter - Levels 1-9

This week we'll be reviewing what to expect as you level your Hunter from 1-9. Yes, we'll eventually get all the way to Level 80, just not today. No, this isn't a speed leveling guide. However, I will provide some tips on how to make leveling less of a grind.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page here's some guidelines for using this guide.

• So you want to be a Hunter is for the new player and/or a new Hunter.
• This guide is not a "How-to get to 80 in less than 3 days" leveling guide. It's more of a "What to expect as you level" guide.
• Except where highlighted, this guide does not take into account Recruit a Friend or heirloom bonuses.
• Since most players tend to level by themselves, all talent build suggestions will focus on a solo leveling/grinding build.
• This guide focuses on the leveling the PvE Hunter. We will discuss PvP and raiding in other guides.

Before we discuss how to level our Hunter, it might be a good idea to review the role a Hunter plays and the talent trees that help us accomplish it.

The Hunter's role

Hunters are a focused DPS class. Our job is to consistently shell out as much DPS as possible while the tank (our pet when we're by ourselves) distracts, harasses and keeps the mob focused on them. We have a wide range of attacks and abilities that help us accomplish this task.

We accomplish our role of providing consistent DPS by using one of the three talent trees:

Beast Mastery (BM) - A BM Hunter has an almost symbiotic relationship with their pet. A Ferocity pet can provide as much as 25% or more of the BM Hunter's total DPS. Because a BM Hunter relies on their pet for a good portion of their DPS, pet management and increasing their Attack Power are critical in achieving their full potential.

Marksmanship (MM) - The MM Hunter is less focused on the damage that their pet can provide than their BM counterparts. Unlike the BM Hunter, the Marksman Hunter focuses on their individual performance. Using a combination of Agility, Attack Power, precision and mana efficiency to provide superior DPS, MM Hunters typically view their pet's attacks and abilities as added bonus.

Survival (SV) - The SV Hunter has relationship with their pets that is similar to the MM Hunter. However, there are some differences with how each are played. For example, where the MM Hunter is almost purely focused on individual performance, the SV Hunter divides their attention between providing mana replenishment to the party, while being able to consistently string together one explosive critical strike after another. SV Hunters accomplish this amazing feat by focusing on increasing their Agility and Critical Strike Rating.

You might be wondering what is all this talk about Agility, Attack Power, Critical Strike Rating, etc... Well let's take a look at these important Hunter stats and what they mean to the Hunter.

Hunter Stats

Deciding what stat to stack is probably the most confusing area in the game today. You'll often hear that you don't need to worry about Hunter stats until you reach endgame and start raiding. Though this is technically correct, knowing which quest reward will be an increase for you and why can keep you from being a Shammy Hunter.

What's a Shammy Hunter? This is a Hunter that mistakenly stacks Shaman related gear instead of Hunter gear. (No, not everything is really Hunter Loot. Really! It's not.) How do you keep from becoming a Shammy Hunter? It really is a lot easier than it seems. All you need to know is what stat is really important to Hunters. To make it easier we'll review Hunter stats below.

Hit Rating – Without going into too much detail. Hit Rating is your chance to miss the target. This is the best and easiest way to increase your DPS. And if that is still confusing, then just remember that the most important thing is to reach the hit cap, the Hit Rating required to guarantee no misses. At level 80 the hit cap is 263 or 8% (230 or 7% if you're a Draenei).

Agility – Agility is the Marksman and Survival Hunter's main stat to stack after Hit Rating as they level and play. This is because each point in Agility adds 1 Attack Power and approximately 40 Agility adds 1% Critical Strike Rating.

Attack Power – Attack Power not only determines the Hunter's DPS, but also the Hunter's pet. This is why Beast Mastery Hunters will stack Attack Power over Agility. Don't think BM Hunters don't benefit from Agility, they do. It's just that Attack Power will give a better overall benefit.

Critical Strike – Critical Strike or "Crit" is when your attack is awarded a 100% bonus. Yes, I do mean an attack that does double the damage. This is why Marksman and Survival Hunters value Agility as a base stat so much. It can mean the difference of an Auto Shot from Giant's Bane maxing at 684 to being a 1386 crit. If that doesn't get your attention, not sure what will.

Armor Penetration – This is becoming more important than it was previously. Put simply, Armor Penetration reduces your targets armor. The major downside to this stat is how it stacks. Armor Penetration is taken into count after debuffs like Sunder Armor or Acid Spit from a worm.

Intellect – This isn't as important unless you decided to put talent points into Careful Aim. Then it is another avenue to increase your DPS by converting each point of Intellect into an equal point of Attack Power. Then this stat can add up to huge gains. But remember, it still follows building your base Attack Power or Agility.

Haste – Haste affects how quickly you are able to fire off shots. However, you will still only want to stack enough Haste to get your Steady Shot to match the Global Cooldown. This is when your Haste Rating is around 523. If you're Beast Mastery you probably don't need to worry about this, and if not then you can work on getting your Haste to the soft cap of 523 and then go back to focusing on increasing your Agility or Attack Power.

Now that we have a better understanding of what a Hunter needs to stack, we can review the first 9 levels.

Levels 1-9

There really isn't anything too exciting to talk about for the first 9 levels. The main things to learn from these levels are finding your Hunter Trainer, tracking, and maintaining your distance from your targets.

Also by level 8 you have already started learning the basics of creating and using a shot rotation. You get exposed to this concept at level 4 with the introduction of Serpent Sting. Then at level 6 you add Arcane Shot and Hunter's Mark. Then finally at level 8 you add Concussive Shot.

By level 8 you will have mastered the following attack order:

1. Apply Hunter's Mark
2. Concussive Shot
3. Serpent Sting
4. Arcane Shot

If this doesn't finish the mob before they reach you, they'll be weakened enough that Raptor Strike typically finishes them off.

Key Quests

When you reach level 2 you'll want to find your Hunter Trainer and begin learning your new attacks and spells. I've outlined each race's quest below.

Horde

• Etched Note (Tauren)
• Etched Tablet (Troll)
• Etched Parchment (Orc)
• Hunter Training (Blood Elf)

Alliance

• Hunter Training (Draenei)
• Etched Sigil (Night Elf)
• Etched Rune (Dwarf)

There you have it. We've given an overview of what it means to be a Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, or Survival Hunter. Reviewed the basics of what stats to stack as you play your Hunter. And we touched on what happens in the first nine levels.

Horde Guide – Reasons To Give Cooking A Try!

If you are a fan of the World of Warcraft, then you would probably know that one of the most underestimated skills in the game is the cooking skill.

If you look at a Horde guide, the cooking skill isn’t necessary per se. But it can be very useful. If you have done a secondary profession like fishing, cooking can bring in a relatively decent amount of gold with very little effort. Cooking is also a fun diversion when you want to get away from the usual activities of the game.

For World of Warcraft players the cooking skill was largely ignored. However when the Burning Crusade expansion came along, one of the aspects the game enhanced was the secondary profession – cooking was among them. Now, there are ways to capitalize on your cooking skill. They are easy and fun to do, if you give them a try.

The Basics

Starting out your cooking skill is easy enough. All you need to start a fire is some wood, tinder and flint. As most players would know these go hand in hand with your spell book where the Basic Campfire spell can be cast by anyone. Remember that your basic campfire lasts only for a short period of time, so make sure that you are ready to cook as soon as the spell is cast.

The cookbook is also found in the spell book where various recipes can be found. Every recipe requires different set of ingredients, so make sure that these ingredients for your chosen recipe are ready too. As you successfully complete recipes, you will improve your cooking skill. You will be able to purchase ingredients from a Cooking Trainer. As you complete your quests you will find yourself encountering cooking items on a regular basis.

Leveling Your Cooking

Finding the ingredients for advanced cooking skill can be tricky. Start in Ironforge and make 60 spiced breads. This will boost your cooking skill to 40. Next, consult your Horde guide and make your way to Auberdine, where you can find some Moonkin and kill enough to get you 20 eggs.

To boost up your cooking skill to 225, go to Ashenvale to find crawler mobs. These will give you clam meat. Take them back to Ironforge and cook whatever eggs you have left. Go to a cooking trainer to find out what recipes you can for the clam meat. Finally buy the Expert Cookbook to reach 225.

Making Money

A good fishing skill will help you get the most out of your cooking and help you earn gold. But even without a fishing skill, there is money to be had. Example, Mok’Nathal Shortribs can easily fetch you 1 gold per set. The same is true for Warp Burgers. There are also seasonal recipes that you can take advantage of. During the Christmas season, Egg Nog can also fetch up to 1 gold. This is due to the quests WoW requires during this season.

You can make money faster when you grind for your ingredients rather than buying them from the store which cuts down your profit margin. Even without a Horde guide, we all know that doing your daily cooking quest is also one of the fastest ways to get ingredients and it is also a great way of getting powerful new recipes.