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Great info you've got here m8, well done =) Finally got the specc iv been lookin' for =D

I must disagree with prayformojo,


i feel that the frost tree is much more effective, in terms of gaining very fast xp, and (from what i have heard) in end game instances. Farming with blizzard gives faster xp than anything/class//quest/race in the game period. You DONT need two mages to do it (or any other class). All you need is yourself. get rid of frostbite, it ruins rapid farming.


Go'shek farm (arathi highlands, 34, 39)

1. mana shield, run in.
2. gather 10-12 mobs, run in, cast FN
3. take 2 steps away cast blink, turn.
4. BLIZZ.
5. BLIZZ again.
6. COC, step back, most will be dead or nearly dead by now (also FN will be cooled down so if you need to repeat steps 1-4.)
7. Imp AE, once or twice, then loot the bodies.


this is how you get levels real fast, you don't need a priest or anyone. it takes practice, but everyone will envy you once you nail it. :)

badger.

I was wondering what the pvp talent points for arcane and fire are because the no longer show up when you click on the links to see the build?

Well today is Tuesday, so the site is down, I will check the links later to see if they are all working or not, if not I will fix them.

my build is http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?0050550010231530000000000000000005150003102301000
to explain why, in end game mana is important, you may say that you have enough mana to just about everything, but at the last bosses you will need more. hakkar is a 10 min fight, at least the first few kills. ragnaros is shorter, but you get some adds halway trough that can take a lot of mana if you use aoe to kill them.

arcane tree:
if you spend 5 points on IAM or on the other 2 on tier 1 arcane depends on where you are endgamewise, IAM is not needed until second boss in BWL.
the arcane instability is nice to have, so too get points to get there, put points on everything that improves mana.

frost tree:
on frost the points goes to the normal improved dmg (shorter cast will improve dmg).
frostbite is avoided at all cost, imagine in zg, tank is playing around with a blooddrinker, and needs to move it cuz it is raping the raid, and there is limited space to move without aggro other mobs, and you freze the target with frostbite.....
ice block is nice to have, it takes away debuffs like blowing up and other debuffs.
cold snap gives you 2 of these fast.

Edited, Sep 6th 2006 at 6:08am EDT by oyvind

i have no doubt that you have a tad bit experience with endgame :D

not everyone has, and if one need advise on build he/she most likely does not have experience with endgame. in that case mana is a problem for most, enough mana comes with gear, and the gear you have from 5-10 man instances are usually not enogh. and they most likely does not have experience in best use of gems/manapots/evocation.
without the points i have on the arcane tree i would have had trouble with ragnaros.

edit: besides, it is very individual what is best, some do best with one build, while other do best with a completely diferen

Edited, Sep 6th 2006 at 9:08am EDT by oyvind

your dps is a bit higher given the shorter cast of frostbolt, and dont worry, as long as you keep steady dps you will be up there on the list, and throw in a fireblast in between frostbolts and you will compete with tank about the top of dps.
when you rach lvl 60 your gear will get better and up your dps too.

As far as I'm concerned too many ppl. sweat the "crucial" PVP build of either 31A/20Fire or a similar build where POM becomes the mage's crutch. In non-PVP (ie raid environments, not necessarily griding) ppl focus on a 18-20A/0Fire/33-31Frost build. From personal experience I've played w/ my 60 mage (malfurion PVE server US) with several different builds on the "intelligent" and "proven" advice of others.

First I started with my grinding build with the following talent spec:

ARCANE TREE
Arc Subtelty: 2
Imp Arc Missles: 5
Arc Concentration: 5
IAE: 3
ICS: 2 (17 arc total)

FROST TREE
Imp Frostbolt: 5
Ice Shards: 5
Frostbite: 3
Imp Frost Nova: 2
Piercing Ice: 3
Cold Snap: 1
Arctic Reach: 2
Shatter: 5
Ice Block: 1
Imp Cone of Cold: 3
Ice Barrier: 1 (34 frost total)

This build worked great b/c you crit approx. 60% of the time with minimal gear help according to TheoryCraft (if you don't have it yet, get it)! I liked to refer to myself as critastic during those days...

But then, after watching about 100 videos w/ my roomate where every mage was specd 31Arc or minimum of 21Arc 20/30 respectively fire talents I decided it was time for a change, so I did.

My talent tree looked as follows:

ARCANE TREE
Arc Subtelty: 2
Imp Arc Missles: 5
Arc Concentration: 5
IAE: 3
ICS: 2
Arcane Meditation: 3
POM: 1 (the "must have") (21 arc total)

FIRE TREE
Imp Fireball: 5
Ignite 5
Imp Fireblast: 3
Incinerate: 2
Pyroblast: 1
Burning Soul: 2
Master of Elements: 3 (interchangeable for some with Imp Scorch: 3)
Crit. Mass: 3
Blast Wave: 1
Fire Power: 5 (30 fire total)

Now this build worked for about a 2-3 wk period until I realized it sucked. Sure you do a ton of dmg when you have POM up and you crit (w/ some decent gear by this time my crit rate for Fireball was 15% approx, and 18-20% with scorch and fireblast - TC stats). However, when you don't crit your ignite talent is basically worthless and it's more or less a waste of 5 talent points.

At this point I was ready to respec again, but confiding in my friend's intelligence I decided to stick w/ a fire damage based build. I was ready to commit to the Arcane Tree because AP and POM combination are supposedly "nasty." I bought into the arcane tree and my talents looked like this:

ARCANE TREE
Imp Arc Missles: 5
Arc Concentration: 5
IAE: 3
ICS: 2
Arcane Meditation: 3
POM: 1
Arcane Instability: 3
Arcane Power: 1 (31 arc total)

FIRE TREE
Imp Fireball: 5
Ignite 5
Flame Throwing: 2
Imp Fireblast: 3
Incinerate: 2
Pyroblast: 1
Burning Soul: 2 (20 fire total)

I figured that what I lost from [crit mass: 3] and [fire power: 5] I would make up with [arcane instability: 3] and AP/POM combo for damage -- I was very wrong. My crit strike chance dropped even further, despite having even better gear by this time (9.83% with Fireball and 12.25% with Scorch and Fire Blast). My overall dmg suffered dramatically especially when AP wasn't up. PVP wise this build really hurt me b/c I relied almost exclusively on these talents despite having about 125-175 dmg bonus depending on the gear equipped at the time. Also, I found this build to rely heavily on dmg bonuses since I lost so much extra damage from my talent choices.

This got me to thinking...why have a mage on one hand that can crit a lot (60%+), but doesn't get any real bonuses from talents like ignite. At the same time, why have a mage that relies on cooldown talents? This seems preposterous in PVP and even in raid environments b/c you can't dish out max dmg when you're waiting on talent cooldowns. And under the last build (31A/20Fire/0Frost) mana becomes a real issues. Despite having about 6.1K mana unbuffed w/ the Arc Mind talent AP took out about 50% of my mana pool, esp when used in conjunction w/ POM b/c you cast so much. Also, fire is highly resisted by a lot of mobs (obviously in MC and BWL) but even in PVP where ppl find/farm fire resist gear easily since it is so abundant. My friend, who suggested my 21/30 and later 31/20 Arc/Fire builds, dueled me w/ his MC raiding rogue w/ about 150-200 fire resist gear resisted about 1/4 of my spells completely and halved the dmg on most of my hits. Even though I could beat him when my POM and AP were both up (and i got lucky w/ a crit on Pyroblast) in PVP circumstances both arc heavy builds got toasted.

So, last night I came back to the talent trees and decided that it was time to combine the best of both worlds -- Fire/Frost build. I will be implementing this new build today and will post my results after a fair amount of trying it out, but this is what I suggest as a devastating PVE and PVP build due to the combination of talents between the two trees. Before I explain why I think this will be the best build here is what my trees will look like

ARCANE
ZERO! (GASP!) /slap

FIRE TREE
Imp Fireball: 5
Ignite 5
Imp Fireblast: 3
Incinerate: 2
Pyroblast: 1
Burning Soul: 2
Master of Elements: 3
Crit. Mass: 3
Blast Wave: 1
Fire Power: 3 (28 fire total)

FROST TREE
Imp Frostbolt: 5
Ice Shards: 5
Frostbite: 3
Imp Frost Nova: 2
Piercing Ice: 3
Shatter: 5 (23 frost total)

OR

Insead of Crimson]fire power: 3[/Crimson substitue the extra points into [imp. cone of cold: 3]
creating a 25Fire/26Frost. I feel as though going the Crimson]fire power: 3[/Crimson route will work out best because you'll benefit more from ignite talent since your dmg will be increased by a total of 6% which translates into about 60 additional base fire dmg from Fireball without gear bonuses and an additional 30-40 dmg per tick from ignite when fireball crits.

Now, the naysayers will bring up the following:
Lack of Imp CS -- True, but if you're not a F*&^ing moron you'll still be able to silence the caster from casting their primary school of spells.
Lack of Imp Arc. Missle -- True, but I personally never use it and I've only seen one mage in my entire WOW life cast Arc Missles during mob fights/boss fights during raids and never (ok, almost never) seen it happen in PVP.
Lack of Clearcasting -- True, this one was one of the hardest ones for me to lose, but think about what you're getting in Fire/Frost spec. Crimson]master of elements: 3[/Crimson allows EACH spell crit to regenerate 30% of that spell's cost. Clearcasting certainly helps when you're in a bind, but it only procs 10% of the time and can't be relied on. However, when you're critting a minimum of 50% of the time (not incl. any gear or any other talent crit increases) from ANY FIRE OR FROST spell you'll be regenerating a lot of mana constantly instead of hoping your Clearcasting talent will proc.
Lack of POM -- Ok, let's be serious, relying on a 3 min cooldown is devastating when you're not criting most of the time anyway. Also, POM Pyroblast is not that crucial when you can crit a target that's nova'd over half of the time increasing your overall damage by a huge margin given, yes, you guessed it Crimson]fire power: 3[/Crimson. So for all the haters what would you rather do: crit 10% of the time instantly or crit 50%+ of the time in 3 sec or less depending on the spell used.
Lack of Arc Power -- It's not worth 31 talent points. Increasing your dmg for 15 sec every 3 min when you can increase your overall dmg by 6% in each school in addition to critting a lot? Need I say more, probably not, but consider this too...When you use AP you're going to deplete your mana pool. A mana-less mage is like a walking sheep - worthless. No mana = death. A holy spec priest could pwn you no matter how good your gear is or your personal skill with his smite or maybe even his wand (if he has wand specialization).

I guess for me it comes down to this: crit a lot and maxamize your Crimson]fire power: 3[/Crimson talent or every 3 min be able to kill one thing? Think about it and I'll get back to you guys in a week or two with how the Frost Fire experiement went (Frost Fire (tier 2 mage set) has the nastiest full set set bonuses so maybe the nastiest and most overlooked build will also have the best results.

GL. WOW=LIFE! /loser ----> VAG Malfurion US

A friend off mine has over 200 days played on HER MAIN. So it excist worse then him.

I was wondering if you guys could comment on my Build, Im only lvl 19 atm, but this is what I'm aiming for for my end-game build. I plan on doing more raiding then PvP, so my build is better suited for raiding in my opinion, without further Adu:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=RbhE0ocZZVVMIcfzuo

Thanks In Advance!

Hi guys,
I'm a new mage that has only been playing a couple of months. I just had my build to what I thought was pretty well rounded(I had points in fire,arcane and frost) and now it is gone because of the new patch. I'm a casual player, I play with my hubby and friends and don't plan on joining a guild for end game content. Can anyone help me with a well rounded build please? I was trying to get to Slow on the arcane build but it seems to take most of the talent points in arcane to get there and I really like Pyroblast. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much!
Prescilla
46 mage
Uldaman



Edited, Dec 11th 2006 9:40pm by Elvisia



Edited, Dec 11th 2006 9:47pm by Elvisia

Edited, Dec 11th 2006 9:49pm by Elvisia

Edited, Dec 13th 2006 7:42pm by Elvisia

Eh, I havent gotten my mage past 20 yet but I would suggest going with a build that utilizes at least one lvl 41 talent. (the 31pt'ers). From what i've heard, stick with a pure fire until about 45, respect to frost until you hit Naxx with guild, then back to fire. (My plan)