Difficult to level Mage 90-100

[Mazaxist]

I leveled 90-100 as fire. I never died from pve mobs but got close to dying a few times because I underestimated amount of mobs I have pulled. Damage seemed to be ok if I used combust.

I was in almost full mythic gear ilvl 580.

Can't imagine playing fire with ilvl 500... Because we lost a lot of kiting tools like cone of cold. And blizzard

[Sosoulsu]

Ice Nova
Round up a mob of 10+
Double ice-nova; frozen orb, Ice Lance spam, Freeze, more Ice Lance, Ice Nova if it comes up, Mirror Images if they get close to you and Blizzard until they're all dead.

I've cleared every mob-dense area like this and didn't come close to dying on my 90-100 journey.

[leomuller]

Now things are on track, I would like to add that I started at 90+ without raiding gear, maybe some timeless, but not even everything. You obviously can't compare your mage with item level 520 to mine that has 450, it is a big difference. Now that most pieces have been upgraded, and with the new talents and rotation things seem much more of a breeze. The good news is that also blizzard realized that mages were underpowered, and they are increasing the damage by quite a lot +25% for frostbolt and more:

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) (december 8th 2014)
Class Tuning Changes
Mage
Arcane
Arcane Barrage's damage has increased by 16%.
Arcane Blast's damage has increased by 16%.
Arcane Explosion's damage has increased by 10%.
Arcane Missiles' damage has increased by 16%.
Fire
Enhanced Pyrotechnics now causes a stacking 10% increased critical strike chance (up from 5% per stack).
Molten Armor now increases spell critical strike chance by 15% (up from 5%).
Frost
Frostbolt's damage has increased by 25%.
Talents
Arcane Orb's (Arcane) damage has increased by 10%.
Comet Storm's (Frost) damage has increased by 25%.
Meteor’s (Fire) damage-over-time effect has increased by 25%.
Nether Tempest's (Arcane) damage has increased by 10%.
Supernova's (Arcane) damage has increased by 12%.

[Deleted]

I started playing mage in WoD and had 0 problems with leveling 90-100 as frost.

Git gud.

[maizensh]

Leveling a mage difficult?
Try leveling a priest... No aoe, single target dps below 100 is weak, one weak burst on a 3 min cd, very weak on demand heals (DP heals fine, but tied to dps), can't reliably drop combat, snare is tied to a channel, one cc, no casting on the move, no cc breaks.
Now compare to mage. Aoe? check. Single target damage? check. Small burst on a one minute cd, very strong burst on two min cd? check. Free snare? check. Reliable combat drop? check. cc chaining? check. cast on the move? check. cc breaks? check.

Only true advantage priest has is when queuing for dungeons, you can heal and get extremely short queues. On the flip side, dungeons don't net you a lot of xp, so it's hardly worth it.

Leveled both (both were geared), and mage is easier by far.

[Heartfrost]

Don't know if your going to even see this post but here we go anyway. It mainly sounds like your under utilizing you skills. I found the best talent for lvling to have is mirror images. Also go frost, the kiteing is pro. Now I had 560 item lvl but I still had no problems by the time I upgraded all my purples with greens and blues along the way. I killed all rare and elites in my way and soloed ring of trials. When taking a rare all you need to do is pop IV, Mirrors, FO, and Time warp (on the really tough ones). (I don't know about you but I think ice Flows is the best movement talent to have.) If you have a dps cd use it right. Also when you get to nagad fuck the demolisher get the frost wolf. I have soloed a few of those nagrad rares with that thing makes kiteing a breeze. Also if you fuck up you can just run away. also you can fucking blink while mounted, badass!

[Photek]

PEBUAK.

Problem Exists Between User and Keyboard? I think you wanted to say PEBKAC.

[Xires]

I started leveling up in WOD (duh), no problem with my monks, paladin, warrior but I find questing in WOD with my mage extremely difficult. Fights keep on taking way too long, and I seem to have lost ALL ways of self healing (evocation, mana gem) and regularly die. There are not many spells left tbh. Yes, I can now sheep none humanoids as well, but I kind of liked to play the mage as burst DPS, the kind of hit the arcane blast button all the time and do insane damage,but that aint working. I tried both arcane and frost.

I am not sure if I am doing something wrong here. I started WOD in timeless gear. but to me it seems something is very wrong here, since all other classes are by far more superior.

So santa, if you are listening, please give me more survivability, and some real DPS so I can get to 100 and enjoy it instead of running around as a ghost all the time.

That's why your DPS sucks. Your DPS is going to continue to suck until you get proper gear at lvl100. Remember if you have lvl90 timeless gear and you level up to 91 all of your stats drop further and it continues until 100 and even then timeless gear is only 496-535 and generally has crappy stats. I level'd WoD in mythic SoO gear so I plowed through everything until the late 90's when my stats at that point just sucked. No procs and FB hitting like a wet noodle.
This is something you will have to deal with every x-pac.
You wanna live longer? You gotta learn to kite. You can't just stand there and take it to the face with a Mage.

[Deleted]

Having minimal health regen options does suck, however grab some health pots of the AH as they really do help. and Ice barrier most important thing ever!.

Didnt have any real problems on any of the toons 90-91, the wife has levelled 4 characters to 100 so far (boom, hunter, lock & retadin) and the hardest for her to survive was the ret which was gear based.

From seeing people in guild priest seems to have been the hardest so far, even with 570+ gear which would be consistent with how it has felt to me since cata, and i used to love my priest