Since the talents are coming out early.Follow

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VckMcZZVVhzobtbfdGfsu

I'm sticking with frost. Can't wait for the nova, shatter combo, fingers of frost proc, deep freeze, shatter combo, shatter combo with pet nova SUPER COMBO :)

Still learning about trying to give myself the max amount of damage, so here's my first try at it.


I tried to incorporate it in a way to the fire build (2/48/11) that I'm going for right now on my 60 mage.

Poldaran, I presume you posted your raiding spec until WotLK hits, not your leveling spec.

I'd get Living Bomb. If you can sustain the mana, it's a great single-target DPS boost, at least for Molten Fury range. Take a point out of firestarter for it. Now that Arcane Focus is only 1% per point, I't put 2 in there. Since you can't get IV with LB at 70, my build would look like this:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oMZ0E0bRhuuVubustbhc

I will probably level as frost. Tried it on beta and it works like a charm. Shatter combos + reduced mana cost = fast killing. Water Elemental + Ice Barrier to get you out of trouble.

Yup, that's what I was thinking .. Pol's spec is a raid spec .. fair enough.

I'll probably also try frost again, but only as soon as my spellfire gear becomes unusable ... no point doing it before that.

From a fire levelling perspective though ... is Hot Streak really all that worth it .. I mean, if I string TWO crits in a row together, let alone 3, the mob's dead.

I was thinking more in terms of maxing out instant crit chance, maybe through World in Flames or Incineration (or both maybe)

Burnout also seems a lot more worthwhile in raids than it does for levelling, and I'd rather see impact in my spec than that .. maxing out Playing with fire and firestarter would also be a consideration.

I haven't given it any thought at all, beyond the last 5 mins, but here's my levelling / Dailiy farming spec come 3.0.2.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oMZbEcfR0IuVubGozbhc

Another soloing build which could be worthwhile is a frostfire build ... haven't given THAT much though either, but it could be interesting.

Speaking of which, is there some kind of 'cookie cutter leveling build' for mages? I'm curious as to what people think work best. I just went straight for pyro, then filled up frost until cold snap, and then continued in fire. Liked it a lot; before 60 pyro won't need +damage to be a damn good spell (or so it seems), and the bits I got in frost give me nice survivaling capabilities. I'm actually using pyro in instances; combined with frost nova/shatter, fireball and target switching/aggro managing I've managed to come out on top of damage done in pretty much every instance I've done so far (level 43).

Edit: I agree with Turicus on Elemental Profession. I've found all those statboosters to be pretty useless before 70. As for the imp Scorch story; that is exactly the problem I'm facing. I fixed it by simply not picking imp scorch. Then again, like I've pointed out before; if that glyph makes it to life that allows me to get 5 applications of the debuff with 1 scorch cast, it becomes quire alluring.

Edited, Aug 28th 2008 3:19pm by Mozared

It's all about the Arcane. At least for leveling. I really want to try out arcane barrage. I also want to see how Arcane Shielding does with Incanters absortion.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0ifubIzxGzGtcdc

I still expect to go frost for raiding, but that's along way away.

Good point about elemental precision, may open up some options on the arcane side then.

As for fire levelling ... I levelled fire to 70, with a brief jaunt into frost from 64-67, and both are just as good for levelling. I did, however, find frost a tad slower, albeit with a lot more control. The thing is that "2 crits and it's dead" can generally be converted into ... "1 big crit and it's dead". Ignite doing the work there.

This allows you to fire off a pyro, get a big crit, then ignore the mob and start on the next one. By the time the first mob gets to you - he dies from the ignite. 1-shotting mobs ftw. Yes, you need to understand what damage your spells do, and have a good feeling for how your ticks perform, but that should be second nature after 70 levels. I can crit with a ~4600 k pyro on the blood elves on quel'danas (I've done 5500 with stolen fel armour), the ignite tick there is ~1000 each. Those mobs only have around 6k health, so right there, a good opening crit, fire ward up (for the warlock-type BEs), and you're good.

As for 2 forstbolts doing the same job ... maybe they could, maybe they couldn't (depending on your gear) - I always found the mob dieing before he got to me in both situations, with fire, it's 2-3 spells, with frost it's 3-4, sometimes 5 spells, its the chill effect that does the work there. End result ... mob dies before you're hit in both situations, win both ways.

FFB is really going to be interesting, cos it's got the DoT and the slow. Perhaps I'll have replaced my spellfire set by then with general spell power gear, and I can really play with it properly.

See? This is why I like Poldaran.

I'm staying fire as well. No reason a raid spec can't be used for leveling. Half of raiding is trash and that's all xping is. It's not rocket science.

Anyways, I like that spec, Pol, might try it out or work up my own spec.

ZOMG. You spelled my name correctly.





You'd be surprised how often people mispell it.



Actually, I'll probably do a little minor reworking on my build for leveling. Something more like this. Why? Because I REALLY like Impact. I always have.

Edited, Aug 29th 2008 1:55am by Poldaran

Agreed there - impact is as awesome as frostbit .. to not take either depending on whether you go fire or frost is a shame, but why not put the 10 points in frost into Arcane instead to get clearcasting. I would seriously remove points from hot streak to make up the 10 required for 5/5 Arcane Concentration - HS it doesn't seem to have any synergy with the short fights you'll be doing while solo.

Or am I missing something?

Pold, as usual, I love your build that you linked at the first post as the standard fire build. I wonder what the dps increase/decrease will be compared to having icy veins somewhere in there.

Which leads me to consider this:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oZ0E0bRhuuVubGsLrhc0o

The name is a combination of Polgara and Beldaran(her sister) that I came up with on one hour of sleep a long time ago to name a character in another MMO. When I went to WoW, I kept it.

Raid Spec:
5/0/56

Dropping Arcane Concentration because I don't have many mana issues atm, also dropping some aoe boosts from frost to focus on single target boosts (shatter to wrok with FoF for example). Also not sure how good Brain Freeze is (do I need to use FiB as my next spell and will the gcd be worth it?), so I may drop some points in arcane to pick that up.

Probable Levelling Spec:
20/0/51

Though I may be tempted by:
0/54/17