Mage is the only one of the nine classes with nothing in the “gone” column. Every one of the 49 Classic Mage talents is in the Forever tree, five new ones join them, and exactly one of those five uses a spell that does not already exist in Classic. What Mage got instead of new toys is a re-tune: 23 talents changed tier, rank count or prerequisite, and 20 of the 47 that can be compared line for line pay different numbers at maximum rank.
Game data from build 1.60.1.69913 against Era 1.15.9.69722. The tree is in the Mage calculator.
The five additions
| Talent | Tree | Ranks | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
 Arcane Blast | Arcane, 11 points | 1 | 50 to 58 Arcane damage; each cast adds 10% to the damage of your other spells and 175% to its own mana cost, stacking four times for 8 sec |
 Missile Barrage | Arcane, 16 points | 1 | Arcane Blast has a 40% chance, and Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt a 20% chance, to halve the channel of your next Arcane Missiles, make it free, and fire it every 0.5 sec |
 Hot Streak | Fire, 16 points | 1 | Non-periodic Fire criticals grant a 25% Pyroblast cast-time cut for 15 sec, stacking three times. Requires Pyroblast |
 Ice Lance | Frost, 11 points | 1 | 26 to 30 Frost damage, 300% more against a Frozen target. Six ability ranks from level 20 |
 Fingers of Frost | Frost, 21 points | 2 | Chill effects have a 15% chance to make your next one or two spells behave as if the target were Frozen |
Two more abilities arrive outside the trees: 
Frostfire Bolt at level 40 with three ranks, and 
Teleport: Dalaran at level 50.
The level-50 teleport goes to Dalaran, which Blizzard has listed among the nine launch dungeons (Blizzard: Deep Dive Panel Recap). There is no matching portal spell in the Mage’s list in this build.
Spell resistance became spell hit
Two talents, one in each of the two trees that had them, were rewritten from the Classic “reduce the chance your target resists” model to a flat hit bonus.
| Talent | Tree | Era | Forever |
|---|---|---|---|
 Arcane Focus | Arcane | −10% chance for the target to resist Arcane spells | +5% chance to hit with Arcane spells |
 Elemental Precision | Frost | −6% resist chance for Frost and Fire, 3 ranks | +5% chance to hit with Frost and Fire, 5 ranks |
Six talents wear a new name
| Era | Forever | Tree |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Arcane Missiles |  Improved Channeling | Arcane |
| Improved Arcane Explosion |  Arcane Impact | Arcane |
| Magic Attunement |  Arcane Geometry | Arcane |
| Improved Mana Shield |  Arcane Shielding | Arcane |
| Improved Fire Blast |  Wake of Fire | Fire |
| Incinerate |  Incineration | Fire |
The last one is not arbitrary. Warlock’s Destruction tree now has a real 
Incinerate as its 31-point talent, so the Mage talent that shared the name became Incineration; see the Warlock guide.
Same name, different effect
| Talent | Tree | Era | Forever |
|---|---|---|---|
 Arcane Mind | Arcane | +10% maximum mana | +10% Intellect and +100% critical damage bonus on Arcane spells |
 Arcane Meditation | Arcane | 15% of mana regeneration continues while casting | 50% |
| Arcane Geometry | Arcane | +50% to Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic | +6 yards of range on Arcane spells |
| Arcane Shielding | Arcane | −20% mana lost per point of damage under Mana Shield | −33%, plus +50% to the resistances from Mage Armor |
| Wake of Fire | Fire | 1.5 sec off the Fire Blast cooldown over 3 ranks | 2 sec over 2 ranks, plus a 50% critical chance on the next Fire Blast after a kill |
| Incineration | Fire | +4% critical chance on Fire Blast and Scorch, 2 ranks | +6% on Fire Blast, Scorch, Ice Lance and Arcane Blast, 3 ranks |
 Winter's Chill | Frost | Applies to all Frost spells, 6 stacks | Applies to Ice Lance and Frostbolt only, 5 stacks |
 Improved Blizzard | Frost | Blizzard’s chill slows by 65% | By 40% |
 Permafrost | Frost | +3 sec on Chill effects | +33% duration on Chill effects |
 Combustion | Fire | Ends after 3 Fire criticals | Ends after 4 non-periodic Fire criticals |
 Arcane Subtlety | Arcane | −10 resistance, −40% Arcane threat | −15 resistance, −30% Arcane threat |
Shatter pays the same +50% critical chance against Frozen targets over three ranks instead of five, and lost its Improved Frost Nova prerequisite. 
Magic Absorption halved, from 5% to 2% of mana back on a full resist, and dropped from five ranks to two.
The three trees in numbers
| Tree | Talents | Ranks | Era talents | Not in the Era tree | In Era, not here | 16-point talent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arcane | 18 | 47 | 16 | 2 | 0 | Missile Barrage |
| Fire | 17 | 46 | 16 | 1 | 0 | Hot Streak |
| Frost | 19 | 53 | 17 | 2 | 0 |  Ice Block |
Frost’s 16-point talent is Ice Block, moved down from the 21-point row; Cold Snap took its place at 21 and Ice Barrier now requires Cold Snap rather than Ice Block. Hot Streak requires Pyroblast, which sits one tier earlier, so in practice it is the 17th point at the earliest rather than the 16th.
The spellbook
22 Mage abilities read differently. Most of it is retuning downward (
Pyroblast rank 1 deals 95 to 125 against Era’s 141 to 187, 
Scorch rank 1 deals 35 to 43 against 53 to 65), with three behaviour changes worth knowing:
Flamestrike can only have one instance active per Mage at a time.
Remove Lesser Curse removes a Curse or a Bane, which matters because Warlock’s curses were partly renamed to Banes.
Blink frees you from Stuns and Immobilizes where Era says stuns and bonds.
Arcane Intellect lasts 60 min rather than 30, and 
Amplify Magic and 
Dampen Magic both got stronger by about half.
Beta state
The beta cap is 20, rising to 30 later (Blizzard: Beta Now Live). Arcane Blast and Ice Lance both arrive at 20, so two of the five new talents are testable at the cap; 11 talent points reach the 11-point row and nothing above it. Nothing Mage-specific appears in Blizzard’s Known Issues thread for September 17.
Orc Mage is one of the six new race and class combinations, and Alliance-aligned Skyborne can be Mages (Blizzard: Deep Dive Panel Recap).
Not settled yet
Coming soon The stack limit on Improved Scorch, which the game’s own text leaves unfilled in this build.
That these trees are the ones a Forever character spends points in is our reading of the beta build, not something we have confirmed in game. The reasoning is in Forever talent trees.
Changelog
1- First version, from the game data of build 1.60.1.69913 compared with Era 1.15.9.69722.
