You are Bad. You are Mean. You are Uber. You have ground and ground
until you got up to level 85, beating dungeons, feeding your group, etc
until you got all the elite gear you could buy with Justice Points and
Valor Points? Yet noone takes your seriously because most Monsters
One-shoot you at close range? Oh yes... and you wear a dress.

Well, you are one of the squishy ones that cannot heal, and cannot
fear, and have to rely on raw firepower, polymorph and invisibility
to do most quests within the game. You are screwed. Roll another toon.
Preferably one that does not wear dresses. End of Post.

What? not going away yet? Of course not. You did not get to be 85
with a squishy character by rolling over and playing dead. You are
and obssessive mono-maniacal bastard that does not know how to stay
down after beeing killed while trying to quest. Death is the mages best
friend. Once we die it is usually because we took at least one monster with us.
And so we go for the next one.  Never give up, never surrender. ;)

So, you are reading this because you want to keep climbing the ladder
and hang out with the cool kids from the "core raiding group". Right?
Well, since I am a noob, I can only tell you a couple of things. Pay attention.

1. You and your Gear.

Since we are so squishy, gear usually means crap for us. That does not mean
that you can go around playing the game naked. *Ahem* (No smarty remarks please)
Gear for us mages usually means... we hit harder, longer... and uncut! just like
the South Park movie!  We do not need it to mitigate damage, we do not need it for
 mana regen, we only need it to dish out pain and maybe get a bit more health to take
 2 hits instead of one before dying. Take good care of your gear.

Tips about Gear? pffff... www.askmrrobot.com I think. There is also the
www.wowarmory.com but I am not sure if it shows upgrades anymore.

And remember to ENCHANT your gear. Some decent enchants only take
dusts and crystals. You can buy them with Justice Points. Some of the top
enchants are insanely expensive... you can skip them until you get those
UBER-BEST-IN-SLOT epic gears. :) If you do not know what enchants to use...
well... ask around. Check out the other mages in the wowarmory. It shows
the enchants they use. It also shows the Gems. Which brings me to the gems:

Get SOME GEMS! I know, regemming sucks after each upgrade. The same as
with enchants, you can get away with using the gems 1 or 2 notches below the
top ones. Usually 1 notch below for epics, 2 notches below for blues.

Remember, you can barter some gems/enchants with some of the guildies. :)
Ask around. Some might have a surplus and give you a dust or donate a  gem
if that is the only thing you are missing :)

2. You and your spells

So, you are nothing without your spells. You cannot use physical attacks.
You do not have a shield. The only way you have to inflicting damage is
your spells. :) Better have a lot of mana handy. Oh yes, you have a tiny
wand that can do like 2k dps if you happen to run out of mana on a long
fight. Hope that does not happen.

Unfortunately I know squat about mage spells. That is why I ask around.
:) There are some mage addons that keep track of some cooldowns. :)
They are for sissies. Real Mages fail with no addons installed. :) Of course
some macros might be helpful. And some addons to see how bad you really
do compared to others are helpful too. But I will get to those later.

Right now, ask around and find out what the best rotations for your
specs are the ones that the cool kids from the "Core Raiding Team" use.

3. Your add-ons

So, you wanna be cool like the rest of them and talk about threat and
agro and spell cooldowns and crap like that? Well good luck... there is a
lot of crappy reading involved. If you are dumb and lazy like myself,
you can just ask around to see what people reccomend. If you are just
lazy, here is a short list of the ones that I use.

Sheep Monitor -- Helps you track those pesky CC (crowd-controlled)
                                   polymorphed monsters so they do not rape someone
                                  while the group is busy taking care of a bigger badder
                                  monster. I like this one because it can be gossipy about
                                  your CC and when it is about to end... I find it annoying
                                 for raids though, so I am always turning off in raids. Too many
                                 people chatting. Anyway, this shows a little bar with the timer
                                 running out on your target. Very useful. Frees you to do
                                 lots of pew-pew without having to check on your CC to see
                                 if the time is up or not. Still, remember to resheep about half
                                way before it runs out, some times it runs out early, and some
                                times you die accidentaly. :) Be nice and give the group some time
                                before the polymorph breaks in case you die. :) 
 
SpellStealer --  This one tells you with a small message on your screen
                              when your target has a stealable buff. Useful to steal those
                              things that might inflict unnecesary damage on the tank
                             and therefore drain the healer's mana faster. You still need
                             "spell steal" on your cast bar, but it is nice anyway.

Decursive --- This one is my first add on. Again, to cleanse some of those
                           nasty curses that might dmg your tank and group and suck away
                          that precious healer's mana. In some raids curses are specially nasty.
                          This simplifies your life by making a separate group of squares where
                          you can click to cleanse someone without having to target them and
                          makes possible to not  have "remove curse" on your spell bar.

Omen -- This is a threat meter. Useful if you are running with an undergeared tank.
                  Play a thundering sound when you cross the tank threat level and are
                  probably going to get mashed, killed and raped, not necessarily in that order.
                  If you have some experience, you can do away with it. Personally I always
                 click "hide omen" but still have it play the thunder sound, just in case.

Recount -- This I use to remind me of how Uber I am, or how much I suck compared to
                      the rest of my party members. If someone's DPS is too low, I go take a look
                     at their gear to see if they are wearing PVP gear in a Dungeon or Raid...
                     It can show how much healing is done, or received, or dps, or other stuff.

MageNuggets -- I learned about this one recently. Has cooldown-tracking functionality
                                 to allow to keep track of all your cooldown with little lines on your
                                 screen instead of having to watch down at the cast bars. It also has the
                                spellstealer buff-show capability, and the sheep monitor tracker
                                ability but without the chatty-gossipy function. I tried it, but did
                                not like it that much. I have most stuff disabled, but I keep it cuz
                                 I like the messages for when someone casts "magic focus" on you.
                                You can try it, see how you like it. It also works for priests, with
                                 gossipy messages when you cast the angel thingy on someone to
                                keep them from a nasty death. :)

DeadlyBossMods -- THIS IS A MUST FOR RAIDING. If you are lacking some brains
                                        and common sense, like me, this thing is your eyes, and ears,
                                        and tells you when to move out of the fire, or stop casting or
                                       some other crap in all the fights. It is pretty useful for dungeons
                                       too. The only problem is that when new patches arrive, it gets
                                       broken, but still, you are never going to be one of the cool kids
                                       if you do not have it. When you are truly l33t you might get away
                                      with not having it, but mean while... learn it, love it, use it... or
                                      get BOOTED OUT OF THE RAID for standing in the fire (or doing
                                      other stuff when you are not supposed to do it) too many times.


 What frigging number is this? 3? ah 4... right

4. Macros

Macros are for wussies. And Sissies. Real mages rage click and face-mash the
keyboard to do dps. Anyway, since I am a sissy, and a noob, I will share
2 useful macros I got here.

a) assist
/assist "tank name here"
Remember to edit it every time you start a run. If you have a bunch of
targets and do not know which one to hit... click it. To make sure you are
hitting whatever the tank is targetting. Hopefully your tank will not be
autoattacking and checking out something else. I am sure there is some
key combination to select the tank with F1 or F2 or something... and then
hit f to assist or whatever... but I am slow and get confused with the keyboard
in the heat of the battle... so this is my most used macro.

b) coord
/run px,py=GetPlayerMapPosition("player"); DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(format("%s (%0.1f,%0.1f)",GetZoneText(),px*100,py*100));

I think this is supposed to be one line. Not sure anymore. It tells you the
coordenates of the point on the map where you are standing. Useful if you
do not have a coordinate addon. Hmm I think it is 2 lines. Semi-colon is
the end of line I think.

c) focuspoly
#showtooltip Polymorph(Black Cat)
/stopcasting
/focus [target=focus, noharm] [target=focus,dead] [modifier]
/stopmacro [target=focus, noexists] [modifier]
/cast [target=focus,harm] Polymorph(Black Cat)

I got this one from ... Vridel's post, very useful.
Damn, this was more than 2... I cannot frigging count...

5. Ventrilo

Ah yes, we know it is confusing to install. I am too lazy to write
about it here just now... but I am sure if you download it and
install it someone might help you to configure it. :)

Remember to log in. Talk from time to time so people get
to know your voice. I know, I do not do that myself.
I am microphone shy. Damned mexican accent. I get
tongue twisted with all the hard-to-say words. Anyway.
Try to talk from time to time so you do not cause a wipe
in a raid when you say something and everyone switches
out of the game to vent to see who it was that talked.

And better yet, learn the voices of the people in the guild
so you can follow directions and get familiar with their
accents :) 

6. Common Sense.

This one you have to learn through practice. You are on your own. The little
things like... casting counterspell on a caster mob that is too far away from
the group being tanked that might pull agro when some other mob walks
by it, or sheeping the occasional stray mob that wanders into the party....
or not casting frost nova when some monster attacks you and the healer
happens to be near you and the mob... or moving out of the fire... those
things are hard to learn.

So, if you find some way to learn common sense... let me know cuz I am
clueless...

Good luck playing with the cool kids and the big boyz and girlz :)