Mage leveling is horrible.

[Easo]

I have no idea how you are playing, OP, but there should not be any issues killing couple of mobs at the same time and getting away from more if required. And that limit increases as you gain levels and tools. I am not saying you have to become the Jokerd, but with Frost you are able to do funny things.
And not having to buy any food at all saves you so much time and money.

[kichigaijin]

Meanwhile, world first 60 was a mage...

[Elkfingers]

This kind of arguments are allways strange to hear for this endless MMO. Gear resets happen in one way or the other and your time spend for most things, is allways just weighted by yourself only.

Why grind pre-raid gear, when you could just wait, come back later and get a boost in T1.
Why grind T1 gear, when you could just wait, come back later and get a boost in T2.
etc.

As for the higher ilvl thing. Before TF you had vendor gear/catch up gear every tier and players just spend time to get them. The current iteration at least allows a bigger pool of items with different stats to be used every tier unlike the old system, wher the limited catch up gear could vary a lot between tiers.

The grind never changed, just the pool of usefull items got bigger.

You've missed the point completely. The skinner box design is fine, as long as it's actually anchored to something. The problem with the current iteration of it is that it is not, and it's done in a way that's so openly cynical that the facade disappears entirely.

[Freezzie]

Leveling for mage becomes mindlessly easy after you get blizzard at 20, especially once you have improved blizzard, unless whatever youre fighting is ranged you can just gather them up, freeze them and drop blizzard on their head and watch it die, before 20 just stick to frost bolt, use sheep to your advantage, and frost nova to keep things under control, also having a good wand helps. Youre going to be drinking almost every other fight until you get gear with int on it.

My exact opinion. I am at 22 and still need to drink after every fight against solo mob of my level.
Conjure water isn't a convenience - it's a must for mage who wants to kill mobs fast.

[d00mh4cker]

I have now ran all dungeons up to LBRS without tank. People saying classic is hard is delusional.

You can srsly pull 30 mobs as frost mage and just mow it down. Its just a bit slower then retail but just as easy.

[lllBlackSunlll]

So I am almost to level 20 on my mage & let me say it has been a painful grind to say the least. I die A LOT! I got frustrated & decided to roll a Paladin; plate armor & healing abilities, unstoppable right? Um, no. I survive a bit better; now I can pull 3 maybe 4 mobs if I get lucky, but I'm far from invincible . This game is just hard & that is okay. Now I'm playing my mage again & not feeling like a squishy nub.

So mage is the 2nd best leveler, that is not disbutable.
Mages are such a powerhouse in leveling that if you struggle with them they are probably not your thing.

[Firebeast]

Thanks for sounding like an elitist prick

[Kithelle]

So I am almost to level 20 on my mage & let me say it has been a painful grind to say the least. I die A LOT! I got frustrated & decided to roll a Paladin; plate armor & healing abilities, unstoppable right? Um, no. I survive a bit better; now I can pull 3 maybe 4 mobs if I get lucky, but I'm far from invincible . This game is just hard & that is okay. Now I'm playing my mage again & not feeling like a squishy nub.

The game isn't hard, it's just slow...it isn't retail, you aren't meant to go around soloing half a dozen mobs each pull.

[Bigbazz]

If you wanted to tell people you suck you could have just done it on discord or something, rather than a blog post. Vanilla requires a bit of situational awareness and hazard perception to survive, but mage is arguably the easiest/strongest levelling class, it's quite clearly the fastest.

[iETHOSi]

And abuse the layering technology and add in literal years of experience playing on (illegal) private servers doing speed runs. You need to add both those to get the true Jokerd experience.

Clever usage of the layering technology and playing on a private server literally have nothing to do with his knowledge of how to properly solo farm with a mage.

[maccajoe]

Mage leveling is peasy.... It gets easier as you go on and braindead at 20+. Its vanilla so its slower overall you can pull 4 things plus most of the time.

[Jtbrig7390]

Anyone got a good guide for AoE farming or places worth just killing mobs at.

Kinda burned out on questing.

[Xemioza]

My first class was priest, started lvling mage as an alt and was dying like f. I could chain pull mobs with my priest because of flash heal, renew, shield etc. I really missed that with mage xd never finished tho, TBC hit when my mage was 30-40, dont remember exactly.

[Bryntrollian]

And abuse the layering technology and add in literal years of experience playing on (illegal) private servers doing speed runs. You need to add both those to get the true Jokerd experience.

Joker started layering for literally only 2 levels (58.5-60) while the next guy was still level 55. It's the basic mage toolkit that got him there.

[Gaidax]

Mage leveling is fine - free unlimited water and food is huge and mage picks up a shitton of power with levels.

It's slow at start, though still better than many others simply because you can spam spells like no tomorrow because of free drinks, just need to try and avoid closed caves and such because getting a bunch of adds without good escape route is RIP at low levels.

[RealRevChris]

If you wanted to tell people you suck you could have just done it on discord or something, rather than a blog post. Vanilla requires a bit of situational awareness and hazard perception to survive, but mage is arguably the easiest/strongest levelling class, it's quite clearly the fastest.

You could have said something helpful, but no, you gave so much more. Thanks for the negativity.

[SkagenRora]

I level as mage, I drink/eat after every 2 mob. The conjured water between lvl 20 and 30 is horrible, so each "Drink session" was like 45 sec- 1 min.

My mage has +frost dmg on almost all gear pieces, thus barely any health, so i have to be careful, 2 mobs at the same time and i'm dead.

All you need is patience and not to stress the gameplay, If you don't stop to eat/drink you will just die, so there is no need to rush

[Frozenbro]

Enjoy the lvling with mage, cause in endgame pve all you are going to use is frostbolt.

[iosdeveloper]

you are doing something wrong, bro
mages are a hero class, ez mode

[Mirabai]

Frostbolt = resist
Forstnova = resist
CoC = resist

What im supposed to do?! I have fights with 30-40% resist of all my spells.....