Hybrid?Follow

Inc. wall of text:

I'm a 70 warrior by trade, and I'm leveling a mage to be my next 70. First things first: I KNOW that whatever spec ends up will NOT be the best PvP spec or the best raiding spec, what I want is a spec (I imagine it'll be frost, but if it's fire that's cool, too) that will be viable in PvP and PvE. I know I won't break 3k arena rating or zomgroflstomp raid dps charts with the spec, I just wanna be able to be spec'd in such a way that I can do 5-mans (including heroics), and maybe raid Kara while picking up some Welfare Epix in PvP. I'll be a tailor (spellfire or shadoweave will depend on this build probably), and an enchanter.

What I was thinking of was something like this: Frost
Or this: Fire

The Frost build is based off the 17/0/44 arena build while picking up some PvE talents, and the Fire build is based off 10/48/3 while taking a couple PvP toys in the fire tree, as well as shying away from "Playing with Fire." They may both be totally unrealistic, I'm n00b to mages.

Is this in anyway viable? Again, I know better spec'd mages will do better in both areas: good for them. I'm cheap and don't wanna respec (maybe it's my bias from being a tank for too long... repair bills + respecs for PvP + 375 BSing = /cry), and I like to do both PvE and PvP... plus it's a mage and it'll be my farming toon on occasion.

My final question: is this even possible? Or am I simply asking too much of one spec and need to l2daily and respec from a Spellfire 10/48/3 to a Gladiator 17/0/44 ? Any comments / critiques are appreciated, as I said I'm a total mage-n00b, so feel free to offer all kinds of pointers and such :) Thanks all!

Thanks for your reply; my mage is far from 70 (sitting pretty at 27 right now, lol), and I'm not worried about holding a guild back: I've done hardcore raiding before, got my tank into 3/5 T4 (back when T4 meant something), and it's just not my thing anymore, but I'd still like to clear Kara every week, maybe take a shot at ZA for giggles.

Tailor-n00b question: I can have both the spellfire AND frozen shadoweave gear? How? Or am I misunderstanding the last sentence of the above poster?

(P.S. Anyone else find it odd that Mozilla thinks "mage" is spelled wrong?)

If you can clear Kara, you can get the first 2 bosses in ZA, probably. That'll be about it. I have some friends that are in BT and they wipe several times clearing ZA. Have fun leveling your mage! When you get to 70, make your frozen shadoweave. Then respec to spellfire and craft that (have the mats around first), then spec whatever you like and you'll have the gear for it. Just make sure you take into account what Anobix said about the cost of respecing your tailoring, as frozen shadoweave does a spellfire tailor the same good as dilapidated cloth does.

I wouldn't arena in it... but I'd BG in it. ;-)

Ok, so I can do the dual tailoring thing, but it sounds like you're all saying that they're both just PvE sets... I guess I can still try them both for raiding, see which I like better. Suggestions for rotations for frost v. fire specs in raids?

Any word on the "hybrid spec" at all? Or just l2respec and use the cookie-cutter builds available?

Ok, so I guess the consensus seems to be "l2respec, you're a mage gold is easy now," but I'm thinking I'll just try and hit up a full frost (i.e. 0/0/61) build and see what happens. Frozen Shadoweave for PvE, Resil gear ftw in PvP. I'm thinking the talents I avoid then are Frost Warding and Frozen Core, with everything else in Frost maxed out?

Fire spec raiding question: in the 10/48/3 build, do you just /yay when clearcasting procs, or is that an ok time for a pyro (provided you have enough aggro room)? Or is pyro a outside of raid thing only? I haven't crunched the numbers on the DPM vs DPS (though in clearcasting I supposed DPM is rather irrelevant), but it seems to me that at a clearcasting proc a nice Pyro crit would help your DPS a tad.

Thanks to everyone who's replied so far! I'll do my best to make the mage community proud :P ;)

You would be better off casting fireball or throwing in a fireblast when you have clearcasting up as pyro has a very low damage per mana rating and fireball and fireblast are higher dpm. I usually open up with a pyro when I am specced fire as it lets the tank get some aggro for 6 seconds. I have found myself sometimes needing to in the middle of a fight use pyro as I am approaching the tanks threat but if it crits, I am sol anyways.

One final question before I ding 28 (zomg w00t), is there any viability of lvling into that 61 pt. frost spec? Or should I just stick with arc / fire lvling? This is my current build here.

Basically I got Pyro, 70% avoid interrupts, range, and maxed out impact cause I didn't think I'd crit enough to make Ignite worth it. I've got pyro, now I'm going for PoM. Thoughts? Can I switch to frost and be ok? I read the stickies and didn't see anything about a frost lvling build (entirely possible I'm blind), but I didn't really see much about a lvling build anywhere. As always, I appreciate your feedback! :)