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How To Stay Alive Mage WOW
How To Stay Alive Long Enough to Reach Level Twenty

So, here we go, a Mage’s Guide To Survival.

Twenty  No – No’s and Yes - Yes’s for a Gnomic/ Human Mage

1. Target your enemy and watch your longest range spell icon until it turns from a red number to white, fire immediately and keep firing. Remember you cannot move and fire at the same time. I keep the longest range spell in the furthest left hand box with my mouse forever poised over it. Fractions of a second can mean getting in another shot before the enemy gets close.
2. Should your first strike be deflected, remember the old maxim ‘run, run, run away and live to fight another day’ is preferable to ‘a long walk to my body for the tenth time today’. Creatures that inhabit an area will often not pursue you far. If they do, at least you’ll be a bit closer to the nearest graveyard.
3. Don’t bother targeting anything at a higher level than yourself until you’ve got some armour and a decent staff. You are going to die. Very quickly and frequently until you learn not to be so stupid.
4. Never venture deep into a mission area. If you are zapping eight mangy wolves, stick to the edge of the area and get them to come to you.  
5. Be very careful with pack attack creatures, stay on the edge of an area and try to pick off lone enemies. Pack attack enemies are where if one attacks you, the others join in, such as Kobolds and Deflias Brotherhood. Wild boar do not pack attack. Note that a wandering bear is likely to join in a fight if it spots you in trouble.
6. Keep a weather eye out for groups of players taking out an area. For example, the Gol Bolar Quarry can be deadly for a lone Gnome mage (you become trapped against one of the walls) but tagging behind slaughtering bands of warriors is a good way to pick off your enemies safely. Mages are good opportunists as they can hit enemies missed by others from a distance, then dash in and loot the body.
7. Complete all the missions in your immediate area before venturing a-field, a low level mage is very prone to getting jumped by a marauding snow leopard or hungry bear.
8. Stick to the roads wherever possible, you are less likely to get waylaid, even if the distance traveled is longer.
9. Upgrade armour and spells as soon as you can and always cast frost armour on yourself. If you find a piece of armour, upgrade in the field, not when you get back to an Inn.
10. Arrange your ability bar icons in a sensible manner to ensure fast clickability of your best spells, this will make a huge difference to your ability to survive. All my fighting spells are in a logical order on row one and then food and drink are on row two.
11. Always use armour that upgrades your important abilities even when it has a lower armour rating. Add leather armour kit as soon as you can (+8 to four pieces of armour.) An upgraded ability is worth a slight loss of potential armour points. You will never match most other classes in the armour stakes and will be typically be only 30% to 50% in armour points compared to those of a similar leveled warrior. Coupled with your rather weedy weapon skills, it typifies why you won’t last long close up and in your face.
12. When you have critically wounded an enemy, use your staff to finish it off to gain melee experience.
13. Make sure you have some apples and as soon as you can afford it, milk, to restore health and mana as fast as possible.
14. Learn a skill as soon as you can. I chose skinning and leather working as there are a lot of skinnable corpses out there and armour is easy to sell. You can also create the leather armour upgrade that is worth 32 points to your armour befence. However, herbs and potions are also a good idea.
15. Always check the color of your quests and try to complete the green ones. Yellow and orange quests are going to find you very dead and often somewhere a long way from a cemetery. My warrior has far more success on hard missions than Metrognomic ever does.
16. Join a group whenever you can when on a ‘pack’ mission. The Quest to collect Miners Gear in Ironforge is a good example of a group mission. Make sure you have a couple of fighters, stand back and just keep firing; let them do the close quarter slaughter and then dash in to do your share of looting.
17. Never abandon a group halfway through a quest. A group I was in were deep in a mine when the 17th Level Female Night Elf with us completed her quest and departed on the spot. We were all killed, time and again until we managed to complete the quest and reach the entrance. I’m still looking for her.
18. Seek out the Gryphon Trainer in Ironforge/ Stormwind as soon as you can. Take the Deeprun Tram to/ from Stormwind and seek out the Gryphon Trainer there. As soon as you get to Thelsemar in Lake Modan, seek out the Gryphon Trainer. Then you are up and running for getting from A to B to C without getting butchered. Gryphon travel is fun and fast.
19. Never forget you are far more vulnerable to a close quarter death than other Classes some levels lower than you, so don’t mix it just because a lower level warrior nearby is beating up all and sundry.
20. Use your Talent points (from Level ten) immediately and wisely.