Mages do amazing damage, and have some of the best crowd control in the game. They are also the easiest class to die. Basically, Mages are glass cannons.

With their direct spells, Mages are able to unleash a great amount of damage in a small amount of time and they have the useful AOE (area of effect) spells that retard and harm all enemies within range.

Mages have great crowd control. Their enemies are left to wander around lost and dazed as they are polymorphed by the Mage into sheep and other critters. They are able to retard the enemy in a frost blizzard. The Mages crowd control works well in both PVP and PVE gameplay.

Mages are depended upon to cause major damage in groups (raids and instances) as well as give out intellect buffs to all casters, polymorph key targets and set a nice table by way of conjuring a Table of Refreshments providing food to regenerated mana and health.

Suggested Professions

Tailoring with Enchanting is a good choice for a Mage (if you have lots of gold to level these expensive professions). You can create awesome armor for yourself that won’t be exceeded until you get raid gear.

An excellent choice for various buff is Alchemy which will either compensate for you deficiencies (more life, damage absorption) or improve your strengths (more spell damage).

Obviously, Blacksmithing and Leatherworking have little to offer, unless you are able to make them into lucrative gold-making professions.

Mage Talent Build

When you level you get a talent point starting at level 10. You can customize you toon using the talent trees. There are differing abilities in the 3 talent trees that there are to choose from. Be sure that when you level to spend your talent point.

It is vitally important that careful planning is done on what talent tree or talent trees to spend the points on. To get talent points refund there is cost involved which you need to pay. A few suggestions for the best mage build are made for your class in World of Warcraft Mastery guides - http://www.wowmasteryguide.com.