Mage skills are divided into three trees: Arcane, Fire and Frost. Arcane skills contains not only the talents obtained through the Arcane talent tree, but also most of the utility skills a Mage has to offer. Various skills to create food and water can be found here as well as the different polymorph and portal spells. If the Mage is specced into arcane talents he will also find the following skills in his spellbook: Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, Slow and, most important, Arcance Barrage. Arcane Barrage is an instant attack spell, giving the Arcane Mage a strong attack skill usable while on the move.

The talented skills for a fire Mage are Pyroblast, Blast Wave, Combustion, Dragon's Breath and Living Bomb. Most of these abilities have a rather limited use, often leading to Fire Mages skipping these skills and using their talent points to buy other, more powerful talents. Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath are often omitted, while some Fire Mages even forgo Combustion in favor for another talent point in the Arcane Tree.

The Frost talent tree offers several new skills. The Icy Veins skill increases the Mage's casting speed and most Arcane and Frostfire Mages try to obtain this skill as well. Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, Water Elemental and Deep Freeze are skills available only to Frost Mages. While Deep Freeze is only used as a PvP skill, most of the other abilities offer some great PvE utility to the Mage. Cold Snap resets the cooldown of all other Frost spells, allowing the Frost Mage to benefit from Icy Veins for an extended period of time or doubling his Water Elemental uptime.