is there an easy way to let you see my characters gear and stats aside from writing it all down and retyping it here?
The point of WoW is that it’s an online game, therefore a social one. You can level up solo just fine, but instances are for groups. The end game is all about grouping and raiding.
Yes. Just look yourself up on the Armory.
ok. here’s my character: actually im lvl 63…
I notice that you’ve only done 5 quests in Hellfire Peninsula.
Honestly, doing the quests there and in Zangermarsh and equiping any cloth quest rewards would be an upgrade to anything you have on, except maybe for your belt. There is nothing, gearwise, for you in any instances that aren’t in Outlands.
‘Of Spellpower’ greens are okay, but if you don’t have the hit points or mana it won’t do you as much good as quest rewards or ‘of the Invoker’ gear.
I’ll leave it to those more experienced with mages to give more specific advice
Not very mage-experienced, but…
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Fix your gear! A little more combat and a lot of that is going to be “broken”, meaning you will get no effect from any of it.
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The Argent Dawn Commission does nothing for you if you aren’t in the Plaguelands or in Scholo/Strat. Ditch it in the bank. There’s a quest chain or two in Hellfire that give good trinkets.
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Do those Hellfire quests. You don’t even have to go into the dungeons there to get good gear. My warlock upgraded her staff alone three or four times before leaving the zone, just from quest rewards, not to mention the green drops off monsters. If you’re bored or the ones left are group quests that you can’t find groups for, move to Terokkar or Zangarmarsh, do some quests there for a while.
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Don’t be a slave to item name color. If a blue or purple item you’re wearing is honestly better than a new green item, then keep the old one, but be very careful in those stat comparisons so you don’t screw yourself out of something good just because you’re thinking that blue/purple must be better.* The jump from the original game to the Burning Crusade/Outland gear is especially true for this - a quote at the time when that game expansion was released was “Green is the new purple”. Meaning, people were selling their old uber-powerful blue and purple items to vendors in favor of the new green loot they were getting from quests and trash.
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Professions: I note that you have a little Enchanting and pretty much no Inscription. These professions aren’t doing you any good. Unless this is a recent changeover and you have another character who is feeding this character herbs, that Inscription skill will go nowhere. Options are: 1) drop Enchanting and pick up Herbalism, then go run around the old world and work on your flower-picking (I did this with my Death Knight) to then level your Inscription, 2.) drop Inscription and pick up another skill to complement Enchanting - a common combo is Tailoring, so you can disenchant any green-name item that you made just to raise Tailoring, and then you use those disenchantment products to raise enchanting. (Otherwise you’re stuck buying/farming a lot of low-level green magic items off lowbie mobs, to raise your enchanting, or spending a lot of money on materials. At least with Tailoring you’re just farming low-level cloth pieces.) It sounds like you want/have to be self-sufficient, so I would personally lean towards the Enchantment + Tailoring combo so you can enchant your own gear.
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Secondary professions: Farming lots of cloth for Tailoring might be a good idea because you appear to have a 0 in First Aid, which also requires a lot of cloth. First Aid is important! You can slap a bandaid on yourself during a long fight when you’ve already blown your potion cooldown; this might save your butt when soloing (you’ve got the mob sheeped/iced and have a sliver of health) or in dungeons when the healer is low on mana and has to choose between healing the mage or healing the tank keeping the monsters off everyone else at the moment. You can also slap a bandaid on that healer who’s not healing him/herself that well in favor of others. Cooking can be lovely to learn too - you can cook up your very own buff-giving food for yourself. (This will require killing a lot of low-level animals, usually, though the basic Spice Bread recipe with ingredients off vendors will get you maybe 50 pts to start out.)
That’s a lot of info, but the main points are to do those Hellfire quests, and to fix your stuff!
- I have a guildie who is, well, an airhead. She doesn’t play that much so I don’t blame her for not being all “hardcore” or whatever, but some things she just doesn’t think about. In her mid-70s her priest was wearing a purple-name cloak from Karazhan, the level 70 end-of-Burning-Crusade dungeon. A cloak with defense and armor, not a caster cloak. Even after I sent her a lovely blue-name caster-friendly cloak for free from my tailor character. A friend of hers had to talk a little sense into her about how even though it sounds like a good idea, a warrior-type cloak will not really help her do her job, and that lvl 70 purple does not always/often beat lvl 76+ blue.
Cool, thanks for posting this. Folks have given you some good advice; let me add some more. First, your gear:
Head: Not bad. Could be better, but not bad. Generally the single-stat items are inferior to those with more stats on them. I would look for items “Of the Sorcerer” or “Of the Invoker” if you can find them in your AH.
Neck: How long have you been wearing that? It looks like a low level item. You can easily replace it–can’t remember if jewelcrafters can make better, but ask around. The Nature Resistance is essentially useless to you.
Shoulders: Those are healer shoulders. “Of the Whale” items aren’t even very prized by healers, but definitely bad for mages. You want spellpower, intellect, crit, stamina…spirit is important but for leveling it’s secondary to the others.
Cloak: Yeah, it’s blue. But you’re wasting itemization on Fire Resistance. Get yourself a cloak with spellpower, intellect, stamina, crit…
Chest: See comment on hat. And the +25 health enchant is okay, but +stats would be better.
Bracers: Not bad, but you have a +Defense enchant on them. Defense if for tanks. Nobody else needs it.
Weapon: Waaaay too low level. Get thee to Thrallmar (oops–you’re Human–Honor Hold) and do the opening Hellfire Peninsula quests. There’s one chain that rewards an item called “The Staff of Twin Worlds.” It makes that thing you’re using now look like a twig, and it’s not hard to get at all at your level.
Wand: er…what wand? Get yourself a wand. You won’t use it much offensively, but you can stack some more stats on it.
Gloves: Now we’re getting somewhere. Those aren’t bad. Again, though, the enchant is all wrong. Mages don’t enchant for armor. We’re glass cannons. If things are hitting us, we’re doing it wrong. 
Belt: Fine. Correct level, good itemization.
Pants: See commentary on hat and chest.
Boots: Those are fine too.
Ring: Not bad.
Other ring: That’s a healer ring. Mages don’t generally itemize for MP5. Go to Falcon Watch in HFP and do the quest chain there that will get you a nice ring (it’s the one that sends you out to retrieve the researcher’s backpack). (Edit–this one won’t work…just realized you’re human. But there’s probably an Alliance equivalent).
Trinkets: Um…no. The Argent Dawn commission is useful only when you’re killing undead, and the Mark of Resolution is a melee trinket (or a PvP trinket at best, for a caster). Do you have any others? Even the Carrot on a Stick would be better than the Argent Dawn commission for questing.
Okay, Talents.
First of all, why did you put 5 points into improving your Fireball when you’re a Frost mage? You shouldn’t even be using Fireball, except on Frost immune mobs or when you get a Brain Freeze proc, at which point the normal one is fine.
Here’s an alternative to try: Dragonflight Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
That’s just a quick and dirty version, so feel free to move the points around some if you prefer–but I would suggest not taking the talents I didn’t put any points into. Again, mages are focused on damage, and Frost mages are very good at controlling mobs–Frost Nova, Ice Barrier, freezing targets with your attacks–you might not kill them as fast as a Fire mage, but they’ll take a lot longer to get to you so it evens out. I’ve played both, and they both have their advantages.
Anyway, see what you think. And if you do take Brain Freeze, be sure to train yourself to look for the icon that indicates you get a free Fireball, or get an addon like PowerAuras to pop something up on your screen to show you.
Good luck, and hope this helps!
Oh, replying to myself…one more thing: your glyphs.
Why do you have a glyph of Fireball when you’re a Frost mage? 
I would suggest for Major glyphs you get Frost Nova and Water Elemental (note: don’t get Frostbolt–it’s a great raiding glyph, but for soloing it’s not so good since it removes the slow effect from your Frostbolt and you’re going to want that).
For Minor glyph, get Slow Fall–nice not to have to use Light Feathers. Glyph of the Penguin is cute, but that’s purely cosmetic. For leveling, the Glyph of Frost Armor would be nice too.
I added points to fire because I had maxed out my frost points and thought maybe i’d like a fireball. As to my glyphs, I forgot about that. I built my character as a fire mage and then switched to frost.
As for the rest of the advice. Thanks. But you’re talking about colored items and places to get them. The WoW world is so big, I have not even noticed that certain things can only be gotten in certain places. This is probably due to the fact that, as others have pointed out, it’s supposed to be a group game.
I was looking at the Blizzard WoW site at a mage build that had a whole set of epic gear with insanely high stats. Are there people playing that actually have all that stuff? I’m guessing it must be rare, cuz if you go to auction house, many things are not for sale, even assuming the person had the insane amount of gold that would probably be charged for it.
True…though most if not all of the items I suggested to you can be obtained from quest rewards (quests that can be soloed) or from the Auction House. I don’t know what green items sell for on your server, but on mine you can usually get all sorts of cool green-quality gear for less than 10g each.
Most likely what you saw was a raiding mage–in order to get the best epics, you either need to raid (which requires getting together with 9 or 24 other people to go into special raid instances where the bosses are a lot harder but drop better gear) or to be very good at PvP (battlegrounds) where you can earn honor points that let you buy PvP gear. Unfortunately, though, most of that requires that you be max level. There are raids for level 60s, but the quality of the gear is not all that good anymore–Outland greens are actually better in many cases. There are several raids you can do at level 70, and if you get some 80 friends to go along with you, you can do them with much fewer than the required number of appropriately leveled folks. But again, that requires grouping. My mage is a raider and he’s got some pretty good gear, but I spend a lot of time playing. Here he is, if you want to take a look.
For someone who prefers solo play, your best bet for epics is probably to level your Tailoring skill and make them yourself. There are several very nice epics (for example, the level 70 Spellfire or Frozen Shadowweave set) that you can make for yourself with items that you can farm or buy at the AH–no raiding or grouping required.
Replying to myself again: I realized this morning when I was thinking about this that you don’t actually have Tailoring, so leveling your Tailoring wouldn’t currently be a good solution. 
However, I do reiterate what other posters said about considering dropping Inscription for Tailoring, since your Inscription is still so low. Tailoring is a great profession for a mage (especially one that likes to play solo) and it meshes very well with Enchanting.
If you can chill it.
Frost.
You need to play keep away. You need to kite. You need to take control of the fight. If you get an add, sheep it immediately if you can. I will assume you are frost, and have the frost elemental. When I am expecting a tough fight, I use “him”.
Summon the elemental. pop trinkets and icy veins. Use the “long distance frost nova” that the elemental has. let the elemental take the initial threat. Then start using my frostbolt/icelance shatter combos and my own frost nova.
And play Keep Away, while keeing your shield and ice barrier up.
The above is assuming you have certain ablilties - it’s been a while since I was youre level and my memory isn’t perfect.
Actually, warlocks can. Affliction locks can drain tank, demo locks with a felguard have their own personal tank. They just have to be smart, and not get too many bad breaks. They also have to know that some rooms are NOT a good place to seed everything 
Tailoring. Frozen Shadoweave. It’s the shiznit if you are frost. If you are fire or arcane, there are other pieces that are craftable.
Armory my mage (Popgunn, on Moonrunner) for a decent frost build. Armory my priest (Queron on Moonrunner) to see the Frozen Shadow gear. Then fix your spec and get/make the gear.
aside from all the other great advice I just want to second/third/500and34th Work Your First Aid. at your level you can bandage for something like 3khp (maybe more, its been a long time since I played) and I am willing to bet you have died many times when a well timed bandaid would have turned the fight in your favor. I know its saved my rogues ass more than once and helped me kill quite a few mobs that should have owned my ass.
and this isnt meant to be taken the wrong way but one reason you might suck isnt because you suck its because you solo all the time, you arent getting exposed to other tricks and methods that more social players pick up from each other. so I would recommend you do some reading on your class. lots of posts on message boards and the like where people post how they did X.
I tried playing mages and I totally sucked so I have no advice there. I switched over to a warlock and found that to be more inline with my playstyle and I love it.
I would recommend taking up tailoring as well. The majority of the time at least half of my gear was stuff I made for myself. I solo’d to 80 and rarely grouped and never raided so tailoring provided good gear for me.
Also once you get to 70 you can make the Frozen Shadoweave set as mentioned above. I did and wore it until 76 when I finally replaced the chest piece. So that was a great investment. Now at 80 all of my gear is stuff I made myslef. Everything but the head piece I made with tailoring and the head piece I made with engineering.
Here’s my gear.
There are plenty of people who have all epics (and thread upon thread of why that’s “ruining the game”), but almost all gear of that level is bind-on-pickup, so it never gets to the auction house.
I don’t know the first thing about mages, so I can’t answer class questions. I can tell you that level matters far less than gear does, though. Tailoring cannot be beaten unless you end up in hardcore raiding guild, and even then, it’s close.
If you want to look up gear thottbot is a good site.
Actually your character’s level is the single most important thing in the game until you’re level 80.
Why are you trying to solo instances? That is not how the game was designed, dungeons are multi-player places.
If you really want to keep playing the game then you’ll have to switch your playstyle more to things that actually work at progressing your character–otherwise your situation won’t change, there’s no trick that will make you better at soloing instances. Even with very good gear many classes can’t solo instances at all, unless they are 20+ levels lower than them, in which case you would be getting zero experience and loot that was unusably bad for your level.
If you want to get your guy to 70+, see the Wrath expansion and see what the game has to offer at 80 you need to start questing. Go back to Hellfire Peninsula and start working on all the quests there. There are several “quest nodes” in Hellfire, if you’re lost or don’t remember where to get quests first head to Honor Hold, that has a good portion of the zone’s quests and if you get quests from Honor Hold they lead to virtually every other quest in the zone.
The way quests work at level 70+ is they essentially guide you from quest to quest. Very few of them are one off quests, most of them lead to other quests. Read that quest log, it tells you very explicitly where to go and how to complete your quest.
Confused about a quest?
Check out WoWHead. It’s a very simple site, if you have a quest and don’t know how to complete it, type the name of the quest (exactly as it appears in your quest log) into WoWHead’s search engine. Within seconds you’ll have all the answers you need to complete the quest.
If you are adamantly against grouping with others there are options for you at level 80, primarily by doing the many Wrath daily quests and building up the reputations available. This will eventually open up lots of gear options. You can also get heavily into tailoring and farm mats to make epic quality gear for yourself at 80. You can get your character decently kitted out with nothing but solo play.
If you’re a die hard soloer I definitely wouldn’t recommend Lord of the Rings Online (which I tried about four months ago.) That game is very fun, but I just didn’t have time to play it much after I got my char to 60. However LotRO seems to be much more group-focused than WoW. While I’m sure many people solo 1-60 in LotRO, the class I chose to play (champion) ran into some serious issues leveling up by myself. Lots of quests launch “on-the-fly” quest instances some of which are nigh-impossible to solo. It isn’t like WoW where you can easily and seemlessly level 1-80 without ever being in group with another person. Like I said, I’m sure it is possible in LotRO; but if you’re not able to get past 63 in WoW then you’re going to have a harder time with LotRO, WoW is an easier game at least in terms of leveling up. I never did any of the big Fellowship stuff in LotRO so I can’t comment as to how difficult that is.
No, really, your gear makes a gigantic difference. Try leveling with greens more than 5 levels old in BC or Northrend, and compare that with leveling with level appropriate quest rewards, and compare that with fully twinked gear for that level.
What really brought this home to me was bringing my geared lock to 80 was quick and easy, while leveling my pally through Northrend was much slower.
Because he wants to? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to solo instances, and doing so will teach you how to get things from your class that other people can’t. The best tanks I know all solo level 60 raids, and level 70 heroics, and most pet classes can do at least some of those solo as well.
As I said earlier, I don’t know mages, personally. I know that they are one of the most difficult classes to solo with, having little self healing, a pet only with a certain spec, and, IIRC, on a longish cooldown, and are cloth wearers with the lowest stamina gear (my imp still ends up with more HP than a couple of our mages, when both are fully raid buffed).
There is one other option, one that can be successful:
Get a “pocket healer”. My priest used to heal for an arcane mage, and we used to 2 man Scholo just for shits and grins.
As for the easiest classes to solo an instance with, I have to pretty much go with this list:
druiid
hunter
shaman
warlock
rogue
They have ways to either abosrb the beating or simply outlast it or stealth past it. They have ways to heal through it either through mend, heal, or draining. They have an “oh shit” button for when things go wrong. The two easiest are probably druid and hunter.