A Mage wears cloth, so the crafting profession that makes your own armor is Tailoring. That matters less than gold in the first weeks, which is why most of our picks start with gathering.

Our two picks

  1. Tailoring + Enchanting: Your own cloth gear, then disenchant what you replace.
  2. Cooking: Optional: you conjure your own food and water, so Cooking only matters for buff food.

While leveling vs at 60

  • 1–60: two gathering professions, or one gathering plus the crafting profession that uses it. You'll pass far more nodes and corpses than you can craft.
  • At 60: keep the pair that feeds your raid or dungeon role, and drop the other gathering profession once you have the gold for a mount.

Camping changes Cooking

Cooking's campfire is now a shared camp: up to three nearby players can each add a profession-crafted Camp Feature, and some camp buffs don't stack with class buffs (Blizzard launch post). One Cooking player in a regular group is enough.

Per spec

Arcane Mage (professions) · Fire Mage (professions) · Frost Mage (professions)

All professions, with which ones Blizzard has named for Forever so far: professions hub. The Mage guide has the rest of the class.