Immortality

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Pray your steel does not chip and shatter, for I have the power of Mother Earth herself

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"Take from the rich, give to the family." - http://thepiratebay.org/

I was a frost mage my entire WoW career up until about a week ago when I decided to give fire a try. What it boils down to is this: "What do you want to do?". I can already tell you that frost or arcane spec is going to give you a much more friendly instance experiance. Arcane mind will give you a large amount of mana and points in frost channeling will decrease the amount of mana your forst spells consume. Frost is much cheaper on the mana pool to use. Also in instance such as BWL, you will run into many encounters where the boss of the instance is immune to fire. Vael, Firemaw, Ebonroc, Flamegor, and Nefarian are all 100% immune to fire. Molten Core isnt as bad, however 90% of the mobs in there have high resistances to fire based attacks. So, if you are looking to top the damage meters in these instances then frost is going to excell over fire.

If you plan on spending most of your WoW life PvPing, then fire very well might be the way to go. As a fire mage you will hit hard and have a large amount of burst dps. First of all Combustion, the 31 point talent, is useless. The most popular fire spec would be 30/21 Fire/Arcane. This will allow you to instant cast pyroblasts, which is much better than having a 100% chance to crit for 1 shot.

There is also the factor of your gear. Fire mages and Frost mages look for different strong points in their gear. Fire mages look for a large percentage of spell crit in their gear. Frost mages typically look for large amounts of +dmg. The crit helps proc ignite, a must have for all fire mages. this will give a 2K fireball crit 2 ticks of 400+ dmg.

Frost mages are not to be underestimated as damage dealers. As a frost mage I could crit for 2200 unbuffed. However, that is with around +550 frost damage and is only achievable with epic quality gear.

Here are a list of some of my favorite specs:

[B/]AP/Frost spec (AP is great if you have the +dmg to back it up, no ice block is a downside but can be work around)[/B]
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/cla ... 0000500000

Class is almost over but I will add more to this when I can, net is down at my house for an unknown reason so it might be awhile till I can get add to this.

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"No matter how learned and knowledgeable, how wise and how wonderful, how powerful and puissant, there is always one more sliver of power, one more bit of knowledge, one more secret to be learned by any mage."

-Medivh

Ill add my Perspective having played a 31 Arc/20 Fire mage to 60 and PVPing.

Its Great, Although I'm still in almost full blue, my gear adds about +159 to DMG, and 5% Crit. Havent gotten all my Target pieces, when i do, ill hit About 7% Crit and +200 DMG.

In PVP, Its a blast, almost literally. The Damage i can output in so little time is rather insane ( Sheep -> AP/Fire Ruby ( Level 50 Quest Trinket ) -> Fireball -> PoM -> Pyroblast -> Fire blast = a Retarded amount of DMG Even if none crit. ) However, as in anything, All the DMG has its downside. Lacking the CC and Mezzing abilities of a Frost specced mage, I find that im rather Squishy. Sometimes i wish for Ice-block. =P

In PVP, atleast in the Blue instances ( Strat, Scholo, ETC ) I usually top the DMG meter. This can easily be construed as bad, as in a few of the Groups and guilds at this level of play im known now as a battlemage: I end up tanking anything I hit. Hey. its more challenging that way.

You'll find that the mage class has no way to reduce aggro in PVP besides the Ice Block, which kind of limits the Damage you can output in PvE. So Forst is definately the way to go, as you wont burst DMG as quick, you'll have an excess of mana since your spells will be rather efficent, and you'll have iceblock. =D

Im Rambling. Tired. Ill stop now. =P

Thistle hits the nail on the head:P It depends really is the best answer, barring that however there are a lot of viable possibilities in the mage talent trees.

I lvled from 1-60 as a fire mage (30 fire/21 arc). It worked fine for me. Pure fire till 40 ish, respec for POM, then back to fire. I respecced to Ice for MC at 60, not to say that fire doesn't work in MC, its just that for a guild without it on farm I would personally recommend all mages be ice. Especially for rag. Extra range and mana effeciency I think helps a lot for newcomers to the fight.

The spec aeacus listed I think is the stereotypical AP frost build. The only areas which switch around (from what I have seen) is the 2 pts he has in arc focus, either for subtlety or meditation and then some people who switch 2 out of shatter for arctic reach.

Recently I switched to AP/fire build (impact/ignite/pyro) and I have enjoyed it immensely. The crits are spectacular (even If lower than what I was critting for frost, damn ignite being a dot not up front dmg) and pvp burst is pretty well insane. I miss iceblock though, that 10 seconds *HEAL THE BIG BLUE MAGE* sign really helps sometimes especially in pve.

What it all boils down to in my mind is what you are going to be doing. Is it PVP is it pve is it lvling are you going to be using +dmg gear or are of the eagle stuff. All of those are questions which play a role in which spec works out best for you. And of course, personal preference is the big one. hehe. As long as your build has presence of mind it is a viable pvp/pve hybrid. Of course, that just could be my opinion because I think elementalist builds suck. ^_^

-Em

Since your gear will most likely suck when you first hit 60, I'd respec to a Scorch type build.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?kMxxtMzZVgrchca

Rely on the procs from impact and the daze effect from blastwave to survive, also the much longer range. You'll rarely get interupted by melee with burning soul and imp arcane missles, your sheep will barely get resisted, and you can throw a POM Fireball or Flamestrike for added damage. You'll get high crit rate just from tallents, and since scorch doesnt need +dmg, this build is good if you have low level blues/greens.