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31 Arcane/20 Fire
The classic mage. Damage, damage, damage. Solo versatility and power. My personal choice.
Arcane Talents (31 points)
# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane
Missiles.
# Arcane Focus - 2/5 points
Reduces the chance that the opponent can resist your arcane spells by 4%.
# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.
# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8
seconds.
# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.
# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.
# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an
instant cast spell.
# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.
# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
# Arcane Power - 1/1 point
When activated, your spells deal 35% more damage while costing 35% more mana to cast. This
effect lasts 15 seconds.
Impact is a 10% chance to proc a 2 second stun off of any fire damage spell. Insignificant you
say? No, not at all. Two seconds is huge in PvP, and stuns interrupt casting... It's not so great in
PvE but is a must-have for Arc/Fire mages in PvP.
Ignite is 40% more damage to your crits, but since your crits are already 50% more damage than
a regular hit, Ignite in essence gives you 110% damage crits. Well-worth it.
Pyroblast has two uses. One, vs. a sheeped target when you can afford the 6 second wind-up
time. Two, combined with PoM to nail enemies for instant damage. PvE wise it's a slightly more
mana efficent opener, but the spell is a shade of its former self. Not a must-have, but a good
place to drop a point.
Incinerate is a relatively new... 4% more crits on Fire Blast is great for PvP and 4% more crits on
Scorch is handy for instancing in PvE. Fire Blast's enhanced crit rate makes this worth it in PvP,
in my opinion.
Flame Throwing is more range. More range is good. 41 yds on Fireball and Pyroblast. Get it if you
go Arc/Fire.
30 Fire/21 Arcane
Perhaps the most viable Fire mage. Choosing 10% more damage all the time at the cost of 8%
more mana and Arcane Power's 35% more damage some of the time. More reliant on Fire,
however, and thus more vulnerable to those dastardly Fire Protection Potions.
# None
Combustion (5 minute timer, next fire spell is guaranteed crit) is passed up in favor of PoM... if
you were focused on PvE, I would recommend Combustion instead of PoM, but for PvP being
able to instant cast spells is worth far more than a guaranteed crit, in my opinion.
33 Frost/18 Arcane
The 'full' frost mage. Trading up damage and instant casts for control... Excellent in group PvP
with a good supporting group. Fares poorly solo vs. casters/ranged, whilst completely destroying
melee. Just as powerful as Arc/Fire, but in a completely different way with a very different
playstyle.
Ice Armor) a 15% chance to proc Frozen for 5 seconds. Excellent vs. melee. Also... consider this
with shatter and you begin to see the stacking power of Frost. However, once again, Frostbite
has a tendency to break prematurely when other people are hitting that same target.
Ice Barrier is a power word:shield for mages. Strange timer though, 1 minute duration, 2 minute
cooldown. Also can be dispelled, making it somewhat bleh. However, it absorbs all damage,
including magic... helps keep Frost Mages alive.
Arctic Reach is vital, because Frostbolt has a base range of 30 yd. With this talent you reach 36
yd, which is a little more tolerable (especially if you're used to playing fire).
28 Arcane/23 Frost
A variant of Frost/Arcane, lessening dependence on Frost and opening up some of the goodies of
Arcane. Shedding Frost Nova/Shatter (limited utility in groups since things are rarely frozen long)
in exchange for Arcane Instability, Presence of Mind and Arcane Mind. This is my personal
choice if I choose to go Frost.
Arcane Talents (28 points)
# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane
Missiles.
# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.
# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8
seconds.
# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.
# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.
# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an
instant cast spell.
# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.
# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
Frost Talents (23 points)
# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.
Piercing Ice is a good place to drop three points for 6% more damage to frost. Frostbolt will still
be your primary damage spell so you might as well make it more powerful Smile
PvE Talent Progression, Levels 10-50
End-game PvP builds are great for level 60s, but of limited utility for a level 10 mage, freshly
talented, whose main focus is getting levels. In that regard, I present what I believe to be an
excellent PvE talent progression. Remember, you can respec your talents for merely 1 gold (the
first time, 5(n-1) gold for 1<n<10 after which it is always 50g to switch), making levelling up with
one set of talents and then switching at high levels very practical.
Fire is simply better dps and Frost's mana efficency doesn't kick in until high levels (even then, it
still kills slower than Frost on net, based on my testing). Thus Fire is best for PvE. Arcane's
Presence of Mind and Arcane Power are of limited utility in PvE, making deep focus in Fire a key
to a successful mage.
Without further ado, a Mage PvE Talent progression for levels 10-50, listed in order:
Levels 10-14: Improved Fireball the best dps increase you can get at this level, since your Rank 3
Fireball has a base 2.5s casting time, this lets you get them off at 2.0s each.
Levels 15-16: Flame Throwing is nice because range is convenient and lets you get in more
fireballs when fighting mobs. Also, Ignite can be put off since your Intellect (and thus crit rate) is
still pathetically low.
Levels 17-21: Ignite is a raw damage increase for when you crit.
Levels 22-26: Improved Arcane Missiles because it's time to build Arcane to get Instant Arcane
Explosion for use in instances.
Levels 27-31: Arcane Concentration to get clearcasts.
Level 32: Evocation for mana regen once every 10 minutes... at this level it's going to be around
100% of your mana pool, which is very nice. Be warned, it starts fading away from there around
level 40ish and at level 60 you can expect about 50% of your mana pool back from Evoc.
Level 33-37: Improved Arcane Explosion is very good for the instances you'll be doing at around
this level and up -- Gnomeregan, Razorfen Downs, Uldaman, Temple and on up really appreciate
it.
Level 38-39: Incinerate to make Scorch more useful in Instances, since you'll now be able to
scorch for a clearcast to fire Arcane Missiles on.
Level 40: Pyroblast because it's the best place to drop a point in Fire and you might as well get it.
It's really not that great... though it is slightly more mana efficent than Fireball but I haven't done
tests to see whether that justifes the extra three seconds it takes to cast it as an opener vs. a
mob.
Level 41-45: Improved Scorch because Scorch is very much an PvE Instance spell and this talent
makes it all that much more mana efficient. Impact won't really do that much for you in instances
and Blast Wave isn't worth the points in Flamestrike for its PvE utility.
Level 46-48: Critical Mass for more critical strikes... damage increase.
At this point you can either respec to a partial implementation of your final PvP spec and/or
continue in Fire, dropping two points somewhere (Impact perhaps has the most utility) and
building Fire Power for 10% more damage and Combustion for guaranteed criticals (handy with
Flamestrike and Pyroblast).
Other Talents
And the other talents that I didn't mention in the process of my discussion above...
Arcane Subtlety allows you to reduce threat from offensive arcane spells by 20/30/40%. Not that
great, since most of the time I've found myself to use arcane as a supplement in instancing
(either Scorch or Frostbolt for clearcasted Arcane Missiles, or spam AEing, or fireball/fireblast for
DPS) and thus this talent isn't that great. The only time I found myself using pure arcane was
while AEing... and there's not much that the tank can do in the current aggro system to prevent
you from getting aggro from most of the mobs when you AE, and a 40% threat reduction isn't
going to make a difference there. This is a PvE only talent.
Wand Specialization is next to useless, since the only time I ever use wands is killing a mob that
has a sliver of life left in PvE, or for killing totems. Wands are also a pain to use as source of dps
because there's no autoshoot, you have to mash the button over and over again...
Improved Dampen Magic isn't worth the talent points considering the limited utility of the spell
itself. I only use Dampen Magic when soloing vs. caster mobs or players, and even then it doesn't
make that much of a difference. Since it reduces healing by twice as much as it reduces magical
damage intake, I would never use it in a group. Not worth talent points to make a rarely used spell
slightly better.
Arcane Meditation might be useful if it was 15% of your Mana regeneration while casting per
talent point. But it's 15% for five talent points, which is too small to be noticeable... there are
better places to drop 5 talent points in Arcane (e.g. get 8% more mana with Arcane Mind and get
PoM).
Improved Fire Blast has its uses... but I don't think the talent point cost is worth it. Fire Blast is a
great instacast spell that I use a lot of PvP but the talent will only reduce it by 1.5s (to a 6.5s
cooldown :-/) which isn't worth five talent points in my opinion. You can conceivably drop a point
or two in Improved Fire Blast if you wish, but even a point in Pyroblast has more utility than 0.5
seconds less cooldown. For PvE soloing, it's not that mana efficient though it is good to drop in
between fireballs to up DPS. Maybe a point in this talent is worth it (0.5s for a point), but no more
than that really.
Burning Soul is a great talent for people new to mages in PvE. It lets you cast your fire spell
without spell casting time set backs while you're taking damage (65% of the time) which is nice
for PvE. For PvP there are too many outright spell interrupts to make Burning Soul worth it. It's
handy for PvE but not vital and if you learn to nova properly you can often kill mobs without
getting hit at all. I weaned myself off this talent -- if I need to do damage output while getting hit in
PvE with my nova and cone of cold timers down I'll use arcane missiles, which are 100%
uninterruptable instead of just 65%.
Improved Fire Ward isn't worth it. I use Fire Ward in PvE vs. fire mobs and in PvP I try to have it
up as often as possible to absorb any incoming damage from fire casters. The talent doesn't let it
absorb more, it merely reflects part of the damage back to the original caster. Not really worth it,
the applications are too few. I can't think of a situation where reflecting 35% of 300 absorption
back on a caster would contribute to their downfall.
Combustion is a fine PvE talent. The timer is a bit longish, at five minutes, but it's handy for
fighting tough mobs. It doesn't really stack that well with the rest of the fire tree since the fire tree
increases your chance to crit, making combustion less necessary since you already have a higher
chance to crit. That said, a Combusted Blast Wave is a very good thing... I just can't justify giving
up PoM in Arcane to get Combustion for any fire build.
Permafrost has little point. If you're frost, you're going to be mostly casting frostbolt. Since you'll
be casting frostbolt over and over again, you'll be continually reapplying the snare. Why then,
would you want a talent that makes the snare last longer? It already lasts 9 seconds or so initially
at level 60... more than enough time for you to get off another 2.5s cast time frostbolt to reapply
the snare. I don't see the point of this talent.
Winter's Chill is too little for too much. Three talent points for a 10% extra movement speed
reduction is overkill. Maybe this could be useful if you wanted a really nasty Blizzard snare (it
would be a 15% speed snare or a 17.5% speed snare, depending on how Winter's Chill is
calculated -- I believe it is a flat 10% extra speed decrease however, but haven't tested) but I'd
rather just get Piercing Ice and do 6% more damage. 10% extra snare isn't going to let you slip in
a fifth frostbolt before the mob gets to you either, so it isn't worth it there. Also with Shatter, you'd
want to nova the mob after the third frostbolt so you can get a 50% chance to crit off the frozen... I
would recommend against Winter's Chill.
Improved Frost Ward is a nice improvement to a spell almost never used. Very few mobs use
frost magic... there aren't many frost mages out there... I never find myself casting Frost Ward.
50% of the damage of the max level Frost Ward would be 150 damage... meaning 150 extra
mana, not even enough for a frostbolt. This talent isn't even worth a point's investment.
Improved Cone of Cold is 35% more damage on Cone of Cold for 3 talent points. I'm not a fan of
Cone of Cold because it's an instant cone spell -- which, because it is an AoE of a sort (cone
effect) has a high mana cost, making it inefficent for solo mobs. I only really use Cone of Cold for
its 50% snare when fighting melee or to snare mobs when I'm AoEing them. I don't turn to Cone
of Cold for AoE damage, preferring arcane explosion instead. However, the talent isn't bad and if
you find yourself using and liking Cone of Cold it could be worth investing in it.