Brand new Mage! Help!

[Brood]

Hey all,
last night I decided to take a break from my lock and made a new blood elf Mage. I asked a couple people a good talent build for leveling, and they all said FROST. I really don't understand why though. It seems I kill things FaST with firebolt and flame spells. Can someone clarify for me? I honestly thought that the best for leveling would be arcane(similar to affliction for the lock). Thanks!

[wachuwamekil]

I was a fire mage up until about 20, and I re-speced frost.

You likely wont notice a difference until you get to the higher levels, but simply put with Frost you gain control.

The ability to freeze mobs in place and then pelt them with everything you have is great, not to mention the freeze/blizzard combo.

Fire is great for instances, but I personally had a VERY difficult time soloing with it past 20. Also I found that frost controls mana better than fire, I was using half as much mana with frost than I was with Fire.

And it boils down to personal preference, I also choose frost so I could pvp every once and a while, a frost mage is deadly on the bg (not saying others aren't, the survivability is higher). I do love freezing, blinking, flipping and going to town. Spell steal is also vital, but both specs have access to that.

Fire = High Crits, High Damage, Low Control, Moderate Mana Costs
Ice = Low/Moderate Crits, Moderate Damage, High Control, Low/Moderate Mana Costs.

Bottom line it is your play style that dictate the spec, I just prefer not taking hits

[Brood]

Thanks for all the helpful info wachu! It really helped me in understanding the frost tree a bit more. What about arcane? What's that mainly for?

[antacus]

I also am trying out the mage class. At first I was fire and things went fine until about lvl 45 (give or take). I started having a hard time with killing things so borrowed 1,000G and did the dual spec deal and added frost as my 2nd. Well I did frost per some things I read (does not match Zygor's guide 100% but it is close) .

Anyway, I use frost for about 85% of my solo play and only pull it out when I find immune mobs in outland.

[wachuwamekil]

NP, glad to help.

Obviously the mage is pure ranged DPS, from what I can tell Arcane is more of a Redonclious DPS tree. The trade off with that is that it uses ALOT of mana.

I cannot attest to this fact though, only because I have not rolled an arcane spec before. This is just based off of what I have seen and talking to friends at work etc.

[Brood]

Thanks for all the help guys! It arms like frost is the way to go! I'm surethts what's in zygors guide also for the levelig build. I'm definetly gonna give it a go!

[Cartman]

I played my mage as deep fire until level 80. I now use a frostfire setup. Personally I like fire as it is much fun seeing all those big numbers.

I think a fire mage does a bit more damage to single targets but needs a lot more mana (compare firebolt to frostbolt) and takes more damage as enemies are quickly at close range.

Arcane does even more damage but you need to get good gear or you are out of mana after 3 mobs.

[dizzygamera]

I specced a frost mage and found, despite common wisdom for mages, spirit heavily outweighs intellect, especially with Mage Armor + Glyph. After I got Evocation, I stopped conjuring drink. Bye bye downtime.

I tried fire spec, but while the damage numbers came up nice and big, unlike my frost spec those numbers also came up nice and big on me taking damage. With frost, mobs shouldn't even be able to break your shield. Blink? Don't think I ever used it. And the rotation has to be the simplest ever. Shield, spam frostbolt, step back, (reshield), spam frostbolt.

To summarise my levelling drawbacks with all three mage trees, frost has low dps, fire has low survivability, arcane has low mana (maybe intellect works better for arcane specs).

End-game though, frost rules for pvp, fire for small raids/dungeons, arcane for the big boys.

[sonalita]

frost mages are awesome for levelliong because of aoe grinding:

- mount up, ride around agroing as many mobs as you can get a hold of
- when they are all in nova range,frost nova and blink
- blizzard them down from max range, if they get to you before they're all dead, iceblock, wait till nova is off cd again and nova/blink.

You can easily kill 10 or more mobs at once with this technique.

[antacus]

This does work and I'll add to be careful ... expect mass death

When I first changed to frost I tried this method and it took a lot of getting used to. I bet that at first I died every other fight and I was limiting my pulls to 4-5 mobs at a time. Practice on something a tad bit easier then your normal fights till you get the hang of it.

Maybe I had/have problems because I have normal blue/green equipment, dunno. This lvl 70 mage is my biggest char and as such I do not own a single purple and my blues only count up to 2, maybe 3 slots

[Skippyninja]

I have an Arcane/Frost Spec.

I spent 25 points in Arcane and am spending the rest in Frost. I chose Arcane talents that augment my defenses, (Arcane Fortitude, Magic Absorption) increase my stats (Student of the mind for the extra Intellect and Arcane Meditation to allow 50% of my mana regen to continue even while casting), and to help with the range of my Arcane spells and prevent pushback.

Frost is great for controlling the way an enemy gets to you, I kill most things before they can touch me. Frost also has quite a few talents to enhance Ice Armor and Glyphs. Frost also gathers less aggro than Fire or Arcane.

My tip for raiding instances: Use mage armor, Combined with Arcane Meditation 100% of your mana regeneration will continue all the time.