1.0 Brief Overview

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So you're thinking of rolling a mage
The mage is best defined as a direct damage ranged class. Most of your fighting will be done at range with powerful elemental spells. The potential for damage is great, however the price is relatively low stamina and armor compared to other classes. At your lower levels, most of the spells you will be using are frost or fire based, however at higher levels you will be able to utilize powerful arcane missiles and bolts as well. Mages bring any group great utility via a group intellect buff, arguably the best PvE crowd control in the game, as well as being able to provide others with free food and drink. As a soloist, depending on talent specialization, you can either debuff and damage mobs with slowing frost spells or simply blast them to death with fire so they never reach you. No matter what your play style, the class holds a great deal of enjoyment.
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Picking your race
Each race has a few abilities which are unique to them...some of these are beneficial to a mage, others are not. Please keep in mind that what is most important is playing the race that feels right to you. Don't roll a belf mage if you really want to play a troll just because of the different racials.

Horde Mage Racials

Troll --"Have you come for de Voodoo?"

Active:
Berserking: A self-haste buff every three minutes gives troll mages that extra edge in longer PvE fights.

Passive:
Regeneration: Not as useful for troll mages, as if you're stopping to drink every few pulls, might as well eat too.
Beast Slaying: AN often overlooked racial that's helpful due to the large number of beasts encountered while out in the world. Also applies to hunter pets and Shamen and Druids in animal forms.
Throwing Weapon and Bow specializations: Useless. Mages can not equip or use either.

Forsaken -- "Victory for Sylvanas!"

Active:
Will of the Forsaken: Probably the race defining ability, this mostly PvP ability does come in handy in certain PvE encounters at times as well.
Cannibalize: Not as helpful for mages as for other classes, as you can eat as you're drinking.

Passive:
Underwater Breathing: Minorly helpful in leveling, that's about it.
Shadow Resistance: Negligible at max level.

Blood Elf -- "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?"

Active:
Mana Tap: Mainly used to accumulate charges for arcane torrent. At level 70, mana tap grants 120 mana.
Arcane Torrent: Helpful as an AoE silence. When used with mana tap, it returns 161 mana per charge at lvl 70.

Passive:
Arcane Affinity: Minorly helpful in skilling up enchanting.
Magic Resistance: Negligible at max level.
Alliance Mage Racials

Human -- "For the Alliance!"

Active:
Perception: Primarily a PvP talent.

Passive:
The Human Spirit: The recent changes to mana regeneration mechanics make this racial better then it used to be.
Diplomacy: Hands down the best human racial. So much in this game replies on grinding out reputations to progress.
Mace and Sword specialization: Useless. While mages can equip swords, there is no reason to ever melee in combat.

Gnome -- "My, you're a tall one."

Active:
Escape Artist: THis talent gives a mage an extra snare remover in addition to blink.

Passive:
Expansive Mind: The best gnome mage racial scales very well with gear.
Arcane Resistance: Negligible at max level.
Engineering Specialization: Minorly helpful in skilling up engineering.

Draenei -- "What do you mean 'there's an octopus on my face?"

Active:
Gift of the Naaru: Pretty nifty HoT which costs no mana. Heals for (Level x 15) + 35 and +healing gear DOES effect it.

Passive:
Inspiring Presence: An extra 1% to hit with spell for you and your entire party. Very helpful PvE talent.
Gemcutting: Minorly helpful in skilling up jewel crafting.
Shadow Resistance: Negligible at max level.
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Stats to Stack
Leveling: Azeroth
When leveling your mage, stats you should be looking for in gear will be mostly intellect, stamina, and spell damage. For a mage, intellect determines how large your mana pool is as well as contributes to your critical strike chance. Stamina gives you more hit points, and damage gear adds raw power to your spells, allowing you to kill that much quicker and level faster.

Leveling: Outlands
Once you reach outlands, the gear itemization becomes much greater. Gear with large amounts (comparatively) of int and stam come coupled with nice amounts of plus damage, spell hit, spell crit, and sometimes penetration. At this point, you should be able to stack as much spell damage as you can, with spell hit and crit being secondary considerations.

Now you're 70
Once you reach level 70, things change a bit. The pieces of gear you will be picking up might be with you for long periods of time. Gear choices here depend greatly on how you want to play your mage.
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PvE: For the PvE instancing and raiding mage, spell hit is the most important stat (up to being hit capped, seeSection 2.7), then damage, then crit/haste, then penetration.
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PvP: For the PvP mage, the most important stats will be stamina (try to be ~10k), resilience, and spell damage.

2.0 Stat Points Explained

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Intellect
Intellect increases the size of your mana pool. Every point of int you have equates to 15 mana. Intellect also increases your chance to critically strike with spells, however this is variable based on level. For example, every 59.5 points of Int at level 60 equaled 1% chance to crit, but at level 70 it's every 80 points of int to 1 crit percentage.
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Stamina
Stamina increases your complet number of hit points. Each point of stamina is 10 hit points. This is true at all levels for all classes.
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Spirit
In patch 2.4, the mana regeneration mechanic was redone and is now the same across all classes. Mage MP5 is now based on a combination of spirit AND intellect, however regen will still scale much faster stacking spirit. See this explanation.
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Agility & Strength
Strength and Agility points benefit the mage class very little. Strength increases melee attack power and Agility increases chance to dodge, melee crit strike chance, and armor.
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Spell Damage
Spell damage directly increases the damage of your spells. The amount of your current spell damage that is applied to the spell is a function of the spells cast time, normalized to 3.5 seconds. This means that the amount of damage applied is equal to:

[(Spell Cast Time) / 3.5] x Total Spell Damage

Instant cast spells are considered to have a 1.5 second cast time. Keep in mind that the cast times of improved fireball and frostbolt are still considered to have 3.5 and 3.0 second casts respectively for the basis of the damage calculation.

Second Cast : %Damage
6.0 : 171.4%
3.5 : 100.0%
3.0 : 85.71%
2.5 : 71.43%
1.5 : 42.86%

Pyroblast with it's 6.0 second cast is an exception to the rule. Its 171.4% is broken up in that 100% is applied to the direct damage portion and the remaining 71.4% is applied to the DoT.

Fireball, despite having a DoT, is treated as all direct damage. No spell damage is applied to its DoT.
Frostbolt, like all other spells with a secondary effect, i.e. its snare, suffer a 5% reduction.
AoE spells suffer from a 66.67% spell damage penalty. For example, Arcane Explosion receives (1.5/3.5) x (1/3) = 14.29% of bonus damage. In the event an AoE spell also has a snare, such as Dragon's Breath, these penalties are multiplicative.

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Spell Crit
A critical strike with a spell will hit for 150% what a non crit would. Mages have several talents that can increase the crit bonus, e.g. the frost talent "ice shards" which increases frost crits to 200% of normal, the arcane talent "Spell Power" increases crit damage to 175% of normal. These two talents even stack, making an arcane frost mage's bolt crit for 225% natural damage!

Spell crit is affected by întreg intellect and crit rating. At level 70, every 22.08 crit rating you have equates to 1% to crit.
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Spell Hit
Spell hit is a combat attribute that increases a caster's chance to hit with spells. The more spell hit a caster has, the less likely they are to miss (have the mob resist) a cast. The game calculates base percent to hit based on your level relative to the mob. For example, if you and the mob are the same level and you have no spell hit from gear or talents, your chance to hit is 96%. However, if the mob is higher level, your chance to hit goes down.

Levels Above You : Chance to hit
+0 : 96% hit chance
+1 : 95% hit chance
+2 : 94% hit chance
+3 : 83% hit chance
+4 : 72% hit chance
+5 : 61% hit chance

As you can see, once the mob is 3+ levels above you, the amount of misses you will see is pretty considerable.

Spell hit negates this. At level 70, every 12.6 spell hit rating translates to 1% increased chance to hit with spells...this is capped at 99%, meaning there is ALWAYS at least 1% chance to miss with a spell no matter how much hit rating you have. Having enough spell hit rating to increase your chance to hit 99% is known as being "hit capped." Having more hit than your cap is worthless.

In PvE at 70, to be hit capped on a raid boss (which are considered lvl 73) a mage must increase his +hit via talents and gear by a total of 16%.
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For a mage with no +hit increasing talents, this means a rating of 202 from gear
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For a frost or fire mage with 3/3 Elemental Precision, this means a rating of 164 from gear
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For an arcane mage with 5/5 Arcane Focus, this means a rating of 76 from gear
In PvP at 70, this is much less of an issue, as your opponents are all the same level. Only 3% must be accounted for.
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For a mage with no +hit increasing talents, this means a rating of 38 from gear
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For a frost or fire mage with 3/3 Elemental Precision, this means a rating of ZERO from gear
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An arcane mage only needs 2/5 Arcane Focus to be hit capped in PvP
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Spell Penetration
Spell Penetration reduces the target's resistance to your spells; it is a different mechanic from spell hit. Penetration only works against mobs that have resistance to begin with...and it will never lower a target's resistance to less than zero. As an example, if a mage has 10 penetration and their target has 20 resistance, the penetration effectively makes it so the mob only has 10 resistance.

**A note on spell resistance**
Spell resistance helps mitigate spell damage in a particular school in 25% increments up to 100%. The following equation gives you the amount of damage mitigated over time.

Reduction% = (Resistance / (Caster Level * 5)) * 0.75

Using this equation and assuming that your target has at least 10 resistance in whichever school you're casting in, we see that 2/2 Arcane Subtlety is an effective 2.1% increase in damage on a same level target when averaged out over a long period of time. Also note: there is 5 additional resistance per lvl in all schools for a raid boss, meaning that all raid bosses have an additional 15 resistance that can not be mitigated by penetration.

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Spell Haste

Spell Haste increases your casting speed and is not to be confused with reducing a spell's cast time, which certain talents such as Improved Fireball, or certain abilities, such as presence of mind, can do. At level 70, the theoretical spell haste rating cap is 1570. This means you are capped at 100% spell haste, allowing two spells to be cast in the amount of time it would take to cast one. As of patch 2.4, spells can be cast faster than 1.5 seconds as spell haste can reduce the global cooldown to 1.0 seconds.

The formula for calculating spell haste is as follows:

New Casting Time = Base Casting Time / (1 + (Spell Haste Rating/1570))

So, every 15.7 spell haste increases casting speed by 1%, or 101 spells in the amount of time it would take you to cast 100.

Spell haste is a very powerful tool for increasing DPS over long fights and it's a good idea to sacrifice crit for it when you can.

3.0 Talent Trees

Your choice of talent points is a huge part of playing your mage and the merits of different specs are furiously debated. The three mage talent trees require distinctly different styles of play to be successful, and what your spec is really comes down to what you want to do with you mage. PvP builds revolve around roots, snares, stuns, survivability and burst damage. PvE builds are more about sustained damage over longer periods of time.

The following section is a brief overview of the talent options available to the mage class. For more detailed "cookie cutter" specs, see section 4.1

3.1 Fire Explained

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Improved Fireball: A staple of any fire build, decreasing the casting time of FB by 14%.
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Impact: Mainly a PvP or solo mage talent. Will proc on damage from molten armor.
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Ignite: This talent is to fire spells what ice shards is to frost. Except while ice shards increases your crit damage to 200% or norm, ignite grants 210%.
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Flame Throwing: Great talent. Extended range is always a good thing. This talent is unique in that it adds a flat 6 yard increase instead of a percentage, netting greater range on fireblast.
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Improved Fireblast: Mainly a PvP talent, however a point here does help with certain arcane spec rotations.
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Incineration: Worth picking up if you're going deeper into the tree.
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Improved Flame Strike: Not worth it. You simply won't be using this spell enough to warrant the points here.
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Pyroblast: Ahh, Pyroblast. A handy opener while solo and great if you manage to spellsteal a haste buff. Worth the point.
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Burning Soul: Worth picking up, needed for the PvE threat reduction, helpful in PvP because of the pushback resistance.
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Improved Scorch: An absolute must for the PvE mage due to the debuff.
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Improved Fireward: The dud of the fire tree. But it's better then arcane fortitude.
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Master of Elements: Anything that increases your DPM is a good thing.
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Playing with Fire: Dublu edged sword with a special PvE slant.
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Critical Mass: Perfect talent.
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Blast Wave: Great utility talent, adding another instant cast spell to your arsenal. The fact that it's an AoE with a built in 50% speed daze and can proc ignite and impact is just gravy.
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Blazing Speed: Pure PvP talent. Allows you to get range very quickly.
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Fire Power: Another must have talent. This talent is applied AFTER the addition of spell damage and stacks multiplicitivly with other percentage increases in damage.
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Pyromaniac: Another solid talent, increasing crit and DPM.
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Combustion: This adds nice burst damage.
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Molten Fury: This is the equivalent of a mage execute. An extra 20% damage is huge.
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Empowered Fireball: This talent makes fireball damage even better. Staple of the deep fire build.
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Dragon's Breath: Handy spell, adds another conal AoE instant cast with a daze effect. Not really needed for raiding, but if you're that deep in the tree, there is no reason not to.

3.3 Frost Explained

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Frost Warding: I would classify this as a filler talent and worthless in PvE combat. (PvP mages, please post in thread with thoughts on it's PvP viability, i will update accordingly)
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Improved Frostbolt: An absolute must for frost mages. Handy to put points here as fire or arcane, for an even faster rank 1 snare frostbolt.
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Elemental Precision: This talent is a staple for fire or frost builds, PvP or PvE. In PvP, 3/3 is enough to be hit capped against same level opponents. In PvE it is worth ~37 spell hit rating, leaving you free to stack more damage on your gear.
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Ice Shards: Another must have for the frost mage. This ability increases the critical strike damage bonus of frost spells, meaning, where a natural frost crit crits for 150% of normal, a 5/5 ice shards crit will crit fro 200% of normal.
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Frostbite: This ability lacks in utility for the raiding mage, as most bosses are immune to being frozen. Very helpful for leveling and PvPing and has great synegry with deeper frost talents.
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Improved Frost Nova: A great PvP and solo talent. Well worth picking up, as it is a prerequisite for shatter.
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Permafrost: Great ability for the solo or PvP mage, as this talent augments many abilities. Staple in AoE grinding builds.
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Piercing Ice: Good all around talent, with a PvE slant. The extra 6% is more for long sustained DPS boss fights and is not as usefull for burst damage.
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Icy Veins: Great early frost talent that effects spell haste across all magic schools. This DOES stack with other spell haste increasing effects, however it is multiplicitive. For example, a 6 second pyroblast cast with icy veins, troll berserking, and bloodlust becomes 6 - (1.2 x 1.1 x 1.3) = 4.28 second pyro.
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Improved Blizzard: Keep in mind that the chill effects from this talent are increased with points in permafrost and can also proc frostbite.
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Arctic Reach: This talent is worth the two points. Not only does it effect your direct damage nukes, but it increases the radius of blizzard and frost nova and the conal area of CoC.
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Frost Channeling: Purely a PvE talent, increases your DPM as well as decreasing threat.
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Shatter: The increased crit against frozen targets makes for great burst damage. Please note, most bosses can not be frozen. This effect is additive.
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Frozen Core: This is the worst talent in the frost tree. I can
think of no situation where three talent points would warrant a 6% decrease in incomming frost and fire damage.
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Cold Snap: Cold snap in its new position as the 21 point ability is just as powerful and a must for a frost build. With its cooldown reduced to 8 minutes (~6.5 minutes with the talent ice floes) it is a global reset of all frost cooldowns.
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Improved Cone of Cold: Not a bad solo or PvP talent for a deep frost mage. This talent increases the effectiveness of an instant cast direct damage spell with a built in snare.
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Ice Floes: Probably only worth it for the decrease in cold snap's cool down.
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Winter's Chill: Well rounded talent, probably more useful in a
PvE setting, as it takes time to stack 5 debuffs.
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Ice Barrier: Excellent defensive spell, absorbs 1075 base damage at max rank and scales with +damage gear.
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Arctic Winds: Worth picking up for the increased damage alone. The extra avoidance is just a bonus.
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Empowered Frostbolt: Required for frost raiding.
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Summon Water Elemental: Probably the best mage 41 point talent. This little guy pumps out considerable DPS for is 45 seconds of life (40% of your frost damage is his damage, with a 2.5 second nuke, that's 28.57% [0.4x2.5/3.5=0.2857]of your întreg +damage on his water bolts). He also has a ranged frost nova attack on a 25 second cooldown.

4.0 Tips, Tricks, and Tactics

4.1 Cookie Cutter Talent Specs

Raid Fire
The traditional 10/47/3 +1 fire build or the newer 2/47/11 +1 are going to be the best way to maximize your PvE DPS, with the former being slightly better DPM and the latter being more DPS. In both cases scorch to 5 debuffs, then fireball, refreshing scorch as needed until boss is dead.

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Pros: Excellent sustained DPS as well as blastwave and dragon's breath for some burst damage when needed.
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Cons: This build is strictly for damage and lots of it. Very little in the way of survival talents here.

Raid Frost

All the main talents are shown here: 0/0/49 +12 . with an extra 12 to put where you like. Rotation here is simple, frostbolt and summon the elemental is often as possible.

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Pros: Very good DPS, excellent DPM, and lots of survivability. Good flexibility if you're looking to PvP and PvE without respeccing often.
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Cons: Keeping frost DPS close to fire is very reliant on keeping the relatively fragile water elemental alive and up for its entire duration.

Raid Arcane

The 43/0/11 +7 build is everything you want from a heavy arcane build. It's a great introductory raiding build because of the reduced threat, the "free" 126 worth of spell hit rating in arcane focus, and the extra spell damage from mind mastery. This comes for the price of DPM. Your rotation here is going to be 3x AB, an AM, and a frostbolt.

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Pros: 40% reduced threat, extra spell damage from intellect.
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Cons: This build has very poor DPM. During longer fights, you will be chain popping mana gems and mana pots.

Raid Arcane Fire/Frost

In these next two builds, the heavy presence in the arcane tree is for the tree's augmentation of the respective elemental tree and overall utility. I would only recommend a 40/18/3 or 40/0/21 if you and your raid are just starting out. In the fire build, the rotation is scorch x5, then fireball keeping the scorch debuff up. For the arcane frost build, the rotation is AB x3, frostbolt x3.

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Pros: Extra mana regen and spell damage, combined with arcane power and PoM add an extra bit of burst.
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Cons: Lower DPS then the "pure" elemental builds.

PvP Frost + Imp CS
17/0/44 is the current PvP flavor of the month cookie build. Talents of note in this build are Imp CS, Frostbite, Shatter, and Water Elemental, however points may be shuffled around in the frost tree as play style dictates.

Follow this LINK for more info on cookie cutter specs.

4.3 The Art of Macroinstruction

Macros in WoW allow you to perform tasks far more rapidly then you would be able to manually. The time that this saves can be the difference between life and death, can increase your DPS, and just makes your life all around that much easier.

Macros can contain any of the non-protected functions found in the World of Warcraft API, as well as any slash command in the game. They are limited in length to 255 characters and one macro can not call another macro.

I'm not going to list many mage macros here, as they are readily available from other sources, however I will list a few tips that will nudge you in the right direction.

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/stopcasting - This command will immediately cancel whatever spell you are currently casting. It is the equivalent of moving or jumping while casting, without the moving or casting. This command is very helpful when you want to cancel a cast to start another in as little time as possible, such as needing to get off a quick counterspell, polymorph, or emergency iceblock. Please note, spells which are prefixed with a /stopcasting command in a macro are still bound by the GCD.
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/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear() - This command suppresses error messages that may arise from spamming macros. For example, if you have an "on use" trinket equiped with a cooldown macroed to a spell like fireball, this will use the trinket when its cooldown is up and hide the error message when it's not.
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The modifier conditional - It is possible to bind different spells to the same button and assign them different modifier keys to invoke them. For example, /cast [modifier:alt] Arcane Brilliance; Arcane Intellect will cast single target AI when clicked and group buff AB when <Alt> + Click. It is even possible to make the conditional the difference between a right, left, or middle button mouse click with the "button" modifier. This is a great way to add more utility to your hot bars without increasing their size or space.

5.0 General

5.1 Scryer vs Aldor

A decision you will have to make at a fairly early stage is which of the two Shattrath factions to ally yourself with, the Aldor or the Scryer.

As far as mages go, the rewards for both factions are fairly similar, however Scryers probably have the best DPS caster rewards. It is true that the Aldor have some pieces, such as the Anchorite's Robes chestpiece and Auchenai Staff, but that's about it.

The Scryers, on the other hand, have the much harder to replace Scryer's Bloodgem trinket and the epic ring Seer's Signet.

As far as the shoulder enchants go, both factions have a plus damage and spell crit enchant. The Scyer's Greater Inscription of the Orb verses the Aldor Greater Inscription of Discipline. As you can see, the Aldor inscription has slightly more damage, while the Scryer has more crit rating. While it is true, mages want to stack damage before crit rating, the differences between the two are a non factor in choosing a faction.

Both factions have various different recipes and patterns, however, while the patterns themselves are BoP, the item themselves are BoE. For mage tailors, being able to make your own spell thread leg enchants make going with the Scryers worth it.

So, which faction to go with? Seemingly, the Aldor seem better for the casual mage while the Scryer would be more beneficial to the raiding mage. In fact, if you plan on getting into raiding or heroics with your mage, you will easily be able to replace the Aldor chest and staff. However, the one item that is worth going Scryers for by itself is the Scryer's Bloodgem. This trinket is part mini ToEP/ZHC and has the passive effect of adding spell hit. (See the section on spell hit of this FAQ for more information on the importance of spell hit to overall mage DPS)

5.2 Profession Advice

Primary Professions

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Alchemy: Good all around profession. If you're considering PvE raid content, this profession will save you big bucks from chain popping mana pots.
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Engineering: This professions has mainly gimmicks and toys. There is some utility for the PvP mage.
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Tailoring: A great way to gear yourself out for endgame. The Spellstrike Set combined with your choice of Spellfire Set (for Arcane or Fire) or Frozen Shadowweave Set (for Frost) hold their own well into Negru Temple PvE content.
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Leatherworking: Almost useless - Leatherworkers can make Drums of Battle which increases the DPS of you and your entire party.
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Blacksmithing: Useless
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Jewelcrafting: A few BoP gems are available to give you that extra few DPS at 70 and JC only trinkets when leveling are helpful here.
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Enchanting: Being able to enchant your own gear WILL save you money, however during end-game play, it is possible to use the same piece of gear for a very long time. It is possible to make money selling rare enchants, but this is of course dependant on obtaining the usualy BoP recipies.

It is also possible to take two gathering professions and use the money from selling herbs, ore, and skins to fiance anything else you will need.

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Skinning
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Mining
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Herbalism

Secondary Professions

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Cooking: Although you are able to conjure your own food, skilling up cooking is worth while because of the many foods which will give you benificial "well fed" buffs.
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First Aid: An absolute must to skill up. Helpful in solo, group, PvP, and PvE raiding.
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Fishing: While not essential, this profession pairs well with Alchemy and Cooking, as those two professions often require catchable fish as reagents