Mage

Races that can play Mage

Skyborne: High Order (Alliance). Skyborne guide →

CGN does not rank races for this class yet. Every race has two active and two passive racials in Forever, and Blizzard reworked most of them.

Full race and class table →

Blizzard Confirmed Blizzard, Sep 22, 2026 ↗ · Blizzard, Sep 22, 2026 ↗

What changed from Classic

Mages keep Arcane, Fire and Frost and gain Arcane Blast, Ice Lance and Frostfire Bolt, with talents that let the schools mix. Blizzard calls the class one of the strongest damage dealers and the best at crowd control, and still very fragile in melee. Several changes target gold farmers and boosters.

Baseline changes

• Comprehension is a new Mage-only minor tradeskill. Comprehend Scroll (General tab of the spellbook) lets a Mage read scrolls that creatures drop, and Blizzard says the benefits are for players to discover.
• Frostfire Bolt is a new level 40 spell, past the beta cap. It counts as Fire and Frost, takes a 3-second cast, hits hard up front and leaves a damage-over-time Slow. It uses the higher of your Fire and Frost spell damage and the lower of the target's two resistances. Blizzard's example: Ignite plus Ice Shards makes it crit for 280% of its damage.
• Cone of Cold lasts for less time and Mage Armor returns more Mana from Spirit. Blizzard says the shorter Cone of Cold and the weaker Improved Blizzard Slow (40% at most, down from 65%) target gold farmers and boosters who kite packs of creatures.
• Talents that give a free effect on a spell cast now trigger less often when you cast far lower-rank spells (Arcane Concentration and Impact are the named examples), so low-rank spam cannot fish for procs. Blizzard says other classes' talents get the same rule.

By talent tree

Blizzard Confirmed Blizzard, Oct 7, 2026 ↗ (summarized in CGN's words; the Blizzard article has the full list)

Blizzard says class abilities and talents may keep changing during the beta. Where a later beta build changed something, the beta section below has it.

How talents work: Talents start at level 10 and keep Classic's rows. One-point milestone talents sit at 11, 21 and 31 points spent, and a new 16-point milestone was added. Some talents are unchanged from patch 1.12, some are changed, and some class buffs that used to be talents (Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild, Divine Spirit) are now baseline. To respec, including Legacy talents, visit a class trainer in a major city. Dual Specialization arrives at level 40.

Talent trees and milestone talents

Each tree has one-point milestone talents. This table is built from the same beta talent data as the planner (October 1 build, with Blizzard's October 8 talent changes). A level 30 character has 21 talent points (one per level from 10 to 30), so the 31-point talents are out of reach at the beta cap. The Legacy perk Talented can unlock talent points up to five levels earlier.

Open Mage in the planner

Beta Data Blizzard, Oct 1, 2026 ↗ · Blizzard, Oct 8, 2026 ↗ (talent data is Icy Veins' calculator data for the October 1 build, with the October 8 talent changes from Blizzard's notes)

Tier placement at level 30

These are Wowhead's October 6 level-30 beta placements, verified on October 7 and shown on CGN's tier lists. Wowhead groups several DPS classes at this level bracket, and CGN expands those class placements across the applicable DPS trees. Level-30 Beta Rankings: not level-60 launch or raid rankings.

Community Observation Wowhead, Oct 6, 2026 ↗ · Wowhead, Oct 6, 2026 ↗ · Wowhead, Oct 6, 2026 ↗ (Wowhead's terms bar automated reading; see the tier lists page for how CGN handles that)

Level-30 builds

CGN publishes one 21-point level-30 build per role-spec, each decoded from Icy Veins' level-30 guides and validated against the planner data.

A build here is not "best in slot": CGN has not validated a full item pool at the beta cap.

Beta changes so far

Every change, by build → · Known issues →

Beta Build Blizzard, Sep 24, 2026 ↗ · Blizzard, Oct 1, 2026 ↗ · Blizzard, Oct 8, 2026 ↗

Open or promised beta issues that mention Mage

• Chaining spells does not play the next cast's pre-cast effects and sounds until the first cast finishes (for example two Fireballs in a row).
• Several debuffs, such as Faerie Fire and Demoralizing Shout, do not cause threat. On October 8 Demoralizing Shout and Demoralizing Roar were fixed; Blizzard's notes don't mention Faerie Fire, and the issue is still on its list.
• The glancing blow chance for casters is wrong at every level, and so is the damage reduction. Work in progress.
• The glancing blow damage penalty for melee is wrong against targets above your level. The chance, and the penalty against equal-level targets, are right. Work in progress.
• Taking damage while channeling Arcane Missiles fires a full-damage bolt instead of a reduced one.
• Mages who learn Research can be prevented from accessing it.
• Create Firestone ranks 3 and 4 do not show the conjured item tooltip. Blizzard said the next build fixes it.
• The Cooldown Manager is still a work in progress, and how complete it is varies by class. Banes and curses do not track after you drop and re-acquire a target, Healthstone, Arcane Blast, pet cooldowns and item enhancements (Windfury, rogue poisons) cannot be tracked, a Mana gem needs another spell cast to start tracking, and Priest tracks all spells by default.

What we don't know yet