Levelling in a party- Frost or Fire?Follow

Before I begin, I'd like to point out that I've read the FAQs, I've lurked on the forums, and I feel that I've done quite a bit of research. Here goes:

Starting at level 15, I'm going to be levelling my mage exclusively with a group of friends. There will be five of us total, and it'll be a pretty basic 5-man setup (tank, healer, 3 dps). We'll be doing instances regularly, but because I doubt we'll do any single instance more than once, we'll probably be getting most of our experience from questing and killing non-elite mobs.

I was initially planning on levelling fire, and ending up with a cookie-cutter 10/48/3 build. But as I've been doing more research, I've noticed that fire does more damage at endgame mainly because of two things: Ignite and Root-Immunity. Almost all raid bosses are immune to roots, which nerfs Shatter and therefore a lot of a Frost Mage's damage. Boss fights also definitely last long enough for Ignite ticks to add a sizeable amount to a Fire Mage's dps.

Which brings me to my dilemma. While levelling with this party, I doubt that any mob is going to survive long enough for Ignite to do any significant damage. I also suspect that having snare and root effects consistently affecting the mobs will help the party survive (especially the squishy classes like myself). Does it make sense, in this case, to level as Frost instead of Fire? I really have no preference, so it really comes down to what will be the most effective, and what will benefit the party most.

At this point, my mage is only 12, and regardless of spec, my first three talent points have gone into Elemental Precision, and will stay there. I'd like to decide between Fire or Frost before I spend any more talent points, though.

Sorry for such a long post, and thanks for reading. I look forward to any and all input the forum can offer me.

I am still sorta new but I have a lvl 62 mage that I lvl exclusively with my friend (a 62 rogue) and I have to agree with previous post play what you think sounds like fun. If you are going to lvl with quests with 5 ppl you guys will be absolutly ripping through mobs and it dosent matter what spec you do you be killing so fast mana prolly wolnt even be an issue. my friend and I kill quests just the 2 of us i cant imagine if we had 3 more ppl I am pretty much all fire btw.

Another *interesting* thing you'll find is that you get your next higher rank of fireball much sooner (2 levels or so) before your next rank of frostbolt, so even if you spec frost, at low levels (before frostbite is maxed out and such), fireballs may still hit much harder.

Arcane it up =P

In Instances or even just group Questing with Subtlety you can start your AM Rotation immediatly without worrying about agro... On regular mobs it depends on the Melee classes but you'll generally only get 1 AM off before a mob dies and thats a heck of alot more damage than 1 Frostbolt or 1 Fireball.

I noticed Fire in groups often having to wait a few seconds (or Scortch-Building a few seconds) before being able to DPS which gets ridiculous after a while.

On the flip-side If your Tank is a Protection Paladin go with an Frost Build that includes at least rank 1 of Improved Blizzard, Frostbite, Shatter, and Ice Shards. Let the Pally secure agro real quick with a Consecrate and just TEAR up with Blizzard. This'll work until Outlands as long as the Pally is geared/specced correctly, and against non-heroic Quest mobs this will work all the way up to 70. Trickiest thing there is a few annoying instances which include SM:Cath, ZF, and certain parts of Mara and BRD.

Just some off-the-wall ideas for ya~