Skyborne mage

At a glance

• Available only to Alliance-aligned Skyborne charactersConfirmed
• Horde-aligned Skyborne get shaman insteadConfirmed
• Rooted in the Highborne arcane legacyConfirmed
• Gives the Alliance an elven mage for the first time in ClassicConfirmed
• Racials, and whether they touch mana, arcane resistance or crowd controlUnknown

How to read these labels. Confirmed — Stated by Blizzard at BlizzCon or in official material. Strong signal — Datamined, or consistent across every previous Classic launch. Usually right. Speculative — Our read. Reasoned, but not fact, and we will say so when it turns out wrong. Unknown — Nobody has said. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

The lore is doing real work here

The Highborne were the arcane caste of the night elf empire, and their magic use is the reason night elves abandoned the arcane in the first place. A playable Highborne-descended mage on the Alliance is the most lore-loaded class option in Forever — and it explains why night elves themselves still cannot be mages in Classic.

What it does to Alliance mage

Alliance mage has been human or gnome for the entire history of Classic, and gnome’s intellect racial has quietly decided the choice for min-maxers. Whether Skyborne displaces that depends on racials nobody has seen.

The more interesting question is aesthetic. Elven mage is the fantasy a large slice of players have wanted on Alliance since blood elves went the other way in 2007, and Forever is the first time they can have it.

What we need from beta

Racial abilities, casting animations, and whether the race has any hidden interaction with the rebuilt arcane tree. Beta opens 17 September and is capped at level 30, so early impressions will be levelling impressions, not raid ones.

Related

• Skyborne elves