Assistance With BuildsFollow

Having put in a couple months of time and tinkered with a couple of classes I've found that my mage stands out as the character I love most. And I've worked him up to 55th over the course of a couple months. I've got a good bit of experience with pulling, AOE combat, and other healthy caster staples from working my way up the ladder in other MMOs, but I've run into a bit of a problem.

I simply have no idea how to put together a great build to take me from my mid 50's and drive me up into the outlands. I was using a pure fire for the longest time, until I ended up running with a few friends to work on some instances, and dropped into deep ice for AOE combat. But I've found that ice is a joke in one to one combat against a single monster, and I haven't a clue why.

To give you an idea, as pure fire I could drop nearly any enemy of appropriate level in about 4 hits (pyroblast, fireball, fire blast, frost nova, then either a fireball finisher or a few bolts from the wand). But ice seems to take 6-8 hits to drop the very same monster (and takes up 1.5X as much mana), and winter's chill seems like a complete joke at this level. Perhaps its something strange in the math, but I used to land one crit on every monster... Some times I'd land two or three -straight- crits, -without- the use of my combustion, it completely baffled me, because my crit rate was 'supposed' to be ~12% (according to my spell stats in the character pane).

So, if my standard crit rate is ~8% and two bolts in I'm at 12%, where is the ludicrous ammount of crits I was getting when I had a 12% chance in pure fire?

And don't get me started on how Winter's Chill doesn't work with blizzard, I almost strangled the respec gnome after that one.

I suppose the question I'm looking to have answered, is what build should a really well equipped mid-50's mage be looking for (mostly for solo play) to drop as many foes as possible, as rapidly as possible, and still manage to have a decent amount of survivability. Fire's looking like the only choice, I've been there, and it was great... but the numbers themselves aren't adding up, and I want to know if I'm 'missing out' on some critical aspect by pouring myself into deep fire.

Any thoughts?

Hopefully you can view it from this link, was easier just to do a WowReader dump than to try and provide adequate information in text.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?2490431

Even from the sticky reading I've done and googling I've done I know this build needs some serious work, there are some skills in here that don't stack up, and some skills that are unnecessary, and I should probably be stearing away from a pure build into a more balanced arcane/fire or arcane/ice as I drive towards 60, to take advantage of some of the sweet arcane talents. Its important to remember that the above build was designed 'mainly' for AOE, and although I understand its unfair to criticize frost's inability to stack up in 1:1 combat with an AOE build that doesn't include shatter or frostbite... but fire didn't have these problems, it was lethal in AOE -and- in 1:1, and it didn't trade much C/C for it.

So, given that you can see all my current gear and current talents, I'll throw down a couple of build ideas, and let me know what you think.

Deep Arcane / Fire (35/11)
Arcane Subtlety 2
Arcane Focus 3
Arcane Conc. 5
Magic Absorb 5
Arcane Med. 3
Imp. Counter 2
POM 1
Arcane Mind 5
Arcane Pot. 3
Arcane Ins. 3
Spell Power 2
Arcane Power 1
Improved FB 5
Ignite 5
Pyroblast 1

Middle Arcane / Fire (18/28)
Arcane Subtlety 2
Arcane Focus 3
Arcane Conc. 5
Magic Absorb 5
Arcane Med. 3
Improved FB 5
Ignite 5
Flame Throwing 2
Pyroblast 1
Burning Soul 2
Incinerate 2
Improved Scorch 3
Critical Mass 3
Blast Wave 1
Playing W/ Fire 1
Fire Power 3

Deep Fire / Arcane (37/9)
Improved FB 5
Ignite 5
Flame Throwing 2
Pyroblast 1
Burning Soul 2
Master of Ele 3
Imp. Flamestrike 3
Critical Mass 3
Playing W/Fire 3
Blast Wave 1
Fire Power 5
Pyromaniac 3
Combustion 1
Arcane Subtlety 2
Arcane Focus 3
Arcane Conc. 4

Deep Ice (All 46)
Improved FB 5
Ice Shards 5
Frostbite 3
Imp Frost Nova 2
Piercing Ice 3
Cold Snap 1
Arctic Reach 2
Shatter 5
Frost Channel 3
Ice Block 1
Improved COC 3
Ice Floes 2
Ice Barrier 1
Arctic Winds 4
Emp. Frostbolt 5
Elemental 1

Arcane / Frost (18/28)
Arcane Subtlety 2
Arcane Focus 3
Arcane Conc. 5
Magic Absorb 5
Arcane Med. 3
Improved FB 5
Ice Shards 5
Imp Frost Nova 2
Permafrost 2
Piercing Ice 3
Cold Snap 1
Arctic Reach 2
Shatter 5
Frost Channel 3

My 2 cents...

If your intentions are to AOE to the Outlands stay pure frost. Drop Frost Warding to pick up improved Frost Nova. This along w/ Permafrost and Improved Blizzard (which you already have) will allow you to AOE w/out ever being touched. See Leatherpatches guide for the technique. Are you a big fan of instances? If not, and again your focus is to AOE to the Outlands I'd drop Winter's Chill. Pick up Shatter for when you have to solo your way to an AOE site. You did good by passing up Frostbite. Now this next one is gear dependent. My mage is my first toon so I didn't have the gold to throw at gear. I didn't buy any through my 50s since the drops/quest rewards in the Outlands are great. With my limited mana pool I found Frost Channeling very important when I was dumping those repeat Blizzards on a pack of mobs. You could pull those points from Artic Winds. Looks like you had some pretty good gear so it's up to you.

Omenv

Sounds like Arcane is working out for ya. Arcane Fire is a strong way to go once you're higher up there and before you get the spell damage that's required to make full fire more dangerous.

As for tweaking your build, it looks right about where it should be for that kind of setup at that level. So I'd stick with it.