Raiding as Fire

Quick Stats

Most Common Specs
10/47/3 - Clearcast raid fire
2/47/11 - Icy Veins raid fire
Gains 210% damage from critical hits.
Spell Hit Cap: 164 rating


Raiding as fire.

We're talking 47 points of awesome into the fire tree, and the others spent wherever you deem fit.

It's easy.

It's unoriginal.

And it works.

Fire is, and always has been, considered THE raiding spec for these reasons. It is easier to play than either arcane or frost, and is especially tailored towards a raid environment.

Let's break out ye old spec analogy again, shall we?

All three main mage specs for raiding (here we're discussing raid arcane, raid fire, and raid frost), play differently.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

So, in the effort of providing the information that will help you decide what car is best for you, I present: Raiding Fire.

Firstly, the spell rotation of a fire mage, ideally, will be endless amounts of fireball spamming. By itself, fireball produces some of the very best damage versus time versus mana spent of any spell in the game. A warlock's shadowbolt is the only competitor.
However, a fire mage has this nifty little trick up his sleeve, called "Fire Vulnerability" (the talent is called Improved Scorch). Essentially, every time you hit something with Scorch, they take an extra 3% damage from any and all fire spells and effects. This effect stacks up to 5, meaning if you hit a mob with Scorch five times in a row, that mob will take 15% more damage from any and all fire spells. This debuff lasts 30 seconds.
So, on any given raid boss, you want to build this debuff up to its full stack of five, and then simply refresh the debuff every 28, 29 seconds to keep it going.
Therefore, you will start each fight with Scorch x 5. Once the initial debuff is up, you'll be doing fireball x 9, Scorch once, then repeat.
Obviously, if you have enough spell haste to fit in 10 fireballs in that 28 second time frame, kudos to you.
Essentially, you want to get in as many fireballs as possible between the 30 second timer mark on the debuff, and about 2 seconds away from where the debuff would "fall off". You DO NOT want to lose your stack, so make sure you are casting Scorch by, at the very latest, the 28.5 second mark.

This is, however, depending on a fight where you do not have to move. On fights where you may be switching targets frequently, or moving around a lot, you'll probably want to refresh Scorch more often.
For example, say the Void Reaver fight. If he flings an Arcane thingy at you, cast Scorch one last time before turning and running. Again, losing the Scorch debuff stack is a horrible thing to happen, and will waste many seconds rebuilding it.
To put it bluntly, fireball has, and always will, provide greater DPS than Scorch could ever hope to achieve. Any time spent rebuilding the debuff is time spent not using fireball, which is time spent doing less than your optimal DPS.
You do not want to cast fireball while there is no Scorch debuff, by simple fact that you are losing 15% of your damage if you don't have it up.
If you take nothing else away from this blog, take this:

The Scorch debuff is KEY to maintaining DPS.

If you have other fire mages in the raid, great! All of you can contribute to building the stack as fast as possible, and then have one of them refresh it every 28 seconds while the others do only fireballs. However many mages are not casting Scorch will have higher DPS than if they were the only fire mage in the raid. The one on Scorch refresh duty will have his usual DPS, but the other mage(s) doing nothing but fireball will have higher DPS because of it.

Keep this in mind. The scorch debuff does not just benefit mages, but it also benefits other classes that use fire spells, namely Warlocks.
To be blunt, a full on Scorch debuff increases the damage a warlock deals with fire spells by 15% as well. So we can help out our soul-sucking children, even though they always use Curse of Not-Helpful.
Random Raiding Tip: there are a couple fights during raiding where a warlock must tank a boss. Leotheras comes to mind. Consider this: the warlock pretty much has to spam Searing Pain to get enough aggro to hold the boss. If a full Scorch debuff is present, aforementioned warlock will generate 15% more threat. Sound good? Of course it does.

But what about trash mobs? Attempting to build the scorch debuff, only to have the mob die at 4 stacks can be an issue. If you're guild already has very high DPS, then it might not even be possible to build the scorch stack before the mob dies.
Scorch is a precursor to actual strong DPS. It is not the DPS itself, but is foreplay to the real deal.

Unfortunately, you will have to use your brain about trash mobs. I know, what a cad I am for forcing you to think.

The general rule of thumb across the entire WoW universe is that anything that will be alive for 10 seconds or longer should be Scorched first.
You will have to get a feel for your guilds damage dealing strength to decide how much of a debuff you are going to place on the trash mobs, and it also depends a lot on how many other fire mages there are in the raid.

Let's use me, for example. Being the only fire mage in the raid, I'm the only one who can provide the Scorch debuffs. The DPS power of the raid is also very strong, so there is really little time to cast spells at a mob before it dies.
On the "weak" trash mobs, i.e. the relatively low health caster mobs, I bring scorch up to 3 or 4 stacks, then get off a couple fireballs before finishing with fireblast.
On the stronger trash mobs, the ones with high amounts of health, Scorch is brought up to the full 5 stack, the fireball spamming commences.
If there's two of you fire mages in the raid, there is no reason not to have the full scorch debuff up before hitting fireball.

Similar to frost, and any mage at that, cooldowns should be used the second they are avaliable to be used, with a couple caveats.

Fire produces more aggro than any of the other mage trees, and as such immediately using all your powerful cooldowns might cause too much aggro at the get go. As well, using Combustion at the opening of a fight will pretty much "waste" the cooldown, as most of your Combustion procs will occur on the initial Scorches, which 1) don't have a lot of damage and 2) will not have the full debuff up yet, so you will lose out on damage.

As fire, cooldowns should be used as soon as it is feasible for said cooldowns to be used for fireball spamming, once the Scorch debuff is fully stacked. Make sense?

I'd like to turn your attention to a fire tree talent called "Molten Fury". It increases the damage dealt to targets under 20% health by 20%. To put it bluntly, this ability can be incredibly powerful, but you have to take advantage of it.
Against most trash mobs, for instance, this won't really be noticed, as the mob will only be alive in that health range for a few seconds. On these types of mobs, at the end of a fight, try to time it so a fireball hits right when the mobs health drops under 20%, then finish it off with Scorch / Fireblast to get as much Molten Fury damage as you can.

On boss fights, whatever boss you are fighting is going to be under 20% health for a long, long time. To take full advantage of this, you are going to want to "save" your cooldowns for when said boss drops to 20%, for the sole purpose of stacking powerful cooldowns with Molten Armor.
The reason why "save" is in quotations is because you are not going to go the entire fight without using a single cooldown... right? You're going to be smart and use them about 3 minutes before the boss will hit 20%, right?
You don't want to not touch your cooldowns at all, you just want to make sure you have them avaliable when the boss hits 20%.

If you remember, at the top of the post, I linked the two most commonly used fire builds out there.
The fire tree is always the same, those 47 points there are pretty much solidified.
About the only one you could skip getting would be Dragon's Breath, since it has extremely situational raid usage, and really, its only there to look cool.

You should always have the two points into the Arcane tree for the threat reduction, for all those times where you have to Arcane Explosion spam. Talented, it is the most amount of AoE damage possible for the least amount of threat. All raiding mages should have it.
Also, at least 3 points in frost for Elemental Precision is mandatory. That increases your spell hit, which of course is absolutely necessary.

Choosing between the clearcast spec and the Icy Veins depends entirely on how deep your mana pool is.
Clearcast lets you cast for a longer duration, effectively 10% longer. Icy Veins gives you a boost to your damage dealt, a rather significant one, I might add. Stacked with other cooldowns and Molten Fury, the boost can be staggeringly high.
The downside is that each spell has the same mana cost, so your mana consumption will rise significantly.
As a general rule, if your mana pool is 8500 (unbuffed) or higher, go with the icy veins option
If you have less than 8500, stick with clearcast until your gear gets a little better.

The final, unused point can go wherever you want, it doesn't matter.

And that is how you raid as a fire mage.

Raiding as a Mage

The leap from solo WoW to group WoW can be a tough one. As you probably know by now, group play demands that you excel at what your class is good at, and completely ignore everything else.
When you, mage, go off to kill some mobs, you are providing the pulling, the tanking, the DPS, and the heals, all by yourself. Pull a second mob by mistake, and now you're doing the crowd control as well. You have to fill all of the classic group roles with you and only you.
This all changes when you group up with other people. Grouped up, you no longer have to tank, heal, pull. That stuff is not your responsibility, and you can safely ignore them and leave those tasks to the classes who excel at them.
You will never tank an instance. There are a couple bosses where you tank, but that is far out from the norm.
You will never heal an instance. It just won't happen. K?

For we mages are here for two things: dealing damage to the bad guys, and turning the bad guys into cute farm animals. Thats what we do.
You don't need to kite a mob, because someone else will be tanking it for you. You don't need to worry about people's health bars, someone else is taking care of that.
So what do you, the grouping/instancing/raiding mage need to know?

Synopsis of the 3 main specs in a raid.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

Raiding as Arcane

Raiding as Fire

Raiding as Frost

Dealing Damage

This will be your primary role in a grouping scenario. You're a mage, you're a purist DPS (damage per second) class.
Depending on your spec, you will have what is called a "spell rotation", a series of spell casts you use to do as much damage as possible. What spells you use depends entirely on what spec you use.
The goal of DPS is to continue casting, to continue dealing as much damage as possible for as long as possible.

Step 1: The Mana Pool

In order to cast spells, you must have mana to cast said spell. You should start each confrontation at full mana, so you will be able to continue casting for quite some time before going OOM (out of mana). During most "trash" (i.e. non-boss fights) your default mana bar will be enough to last you the entire fight.
However, during boss fights, this will almost never be the case. Your mana bar will run out, and it is your responsibility to keep your mana bar replenished, to keep you casting spells as long as possible.
You have the following options avaliable to restore mana: Mana Gems, Mana Potions, and Evocation.
What limits you fro having an eternal mana bar is the fact that these mana restoratives have cooldowns attached to them. Both mana gems and pots have 2 minute cooldowns, and Evocation can only be used every 8 minutes.
You have to be a little smart about when to use your mana restoratives, or you will find yourself with an empty mana bar rather frequently, especially if you are specced arcane. As a general rule, never, ever wait until your low on mana to use a consumable.
Let's say you have 3 mana potions, and no gems for some reason, and 9000 mp.
Now, these mana potions restore 2.5k mana per potion.
As the fight goes on, you want to use the first mana potion right when your mana bar hits the line where it will be almost completely filled.
In this example, you are going to want to drink the first mana potion at 6500 mp. Don't drink it any sooner, or you will have wasted mana. If you drink it at 8000 mp, you just wasted 1500 mana points. Don't do that.
Let's compare a mage who drinks intelligently, and one who drinks only when his mana is almost gone. (These numbers were picked arbitrarily).

Let's say each of these mages use 3k mana every minute. They each have 9000 mana to go through. Without using consumables, they will each be able to cast for 3 minutes before going OOM. Now, these mages are using Super Mana Potions, which for some odd reason, always restore the maximum 3000 mana.
The first mage will use his mana potions intelligently, using it whenever he can make use of it.
The second mage will only use it when he's OOM.
So. Here we go.

Minute One - Each mage has used 3k mana. Mage 1 uses his mana potion at this mark, restoring him to full mana. Mage 1 = 9000 mana. Mage 2 = 6000 mana.

Minute Two - Each mage has now used 6k mana total. Mage 1 has 1 minute left on his potion cooldown. Mage 1 = 6000 mana. Mage 2 = 3000 mana.

Minute Three - Each mage has now used 9k mana total. Mage 1 drinks another potion, the second the cooldown is up. Mage 2, being OOM, now uses his first potion. Mage 1 = 6000 mana. Mage 2 = 3000 mana.

Minute Four - Each mage has now used 12k mana total. Both mages have 1 minute left on their potion cooldown. Mage 2 is now OOM, and spends the next minute scuffing his shoes. Mage 1 = 3000 mana. Mage 2 = 0.

So you see the difference using the mana restoratives does. Use 'em smart.

Step 2: Threat

When you hurt a mob by setting it on fire or whatever, this causes the mob to start to get angry at you, and eventually, hate you so much it wants to rape your children then force-feed their corpses to you.
Now, in a group, there a multiple targets for the mob to choose from, and ideally the mob will choose the tank (the tank here defined as "Not You"). So, once the tank has "aggro" on the mob, meaning the mob is hitting the tank and not anyone else, you can feel free to open up on the mob in question.

How to Not Pull Aggro

And that's all there is to it! Keep your mana bar up, keep your threat bar low, and your DPS will soar.


Crowd Control

We're going to talk about the Almighty Polymorph here. While some disagree, polymorph is the best crowd control effect in the game. There. I said it. End of story. Able to be used on humanoids and beasts, the mobs it can crowd control far outnumber those it cannot. Why is polymorph so good?

Why Polymorph Is So Damn Good.

When you are assigned a mob to crowd control, it is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, to make sure that mob stays sheeped and never, ever gets lose. Because of its incredible ease of use, usually you will be assigned to control a mob that is difficult for other forms of crowd control to handle. For example, that ranged caster than can wipe your entire party in 6 seconds if it was lose. Yeah, you gonna sheep that 'un.
Sheep your mob as soon as possible. Be on the safe side for the first few pulls to get a feel for the timing of how this particular group does their pulls. Sometimes the tank will pull with a ranged shot, sometimes a hunter will do the pulling, sometimes the tank will simply run into the mobs and face pull them. Get a feel for the timing, and get Polymorph to land no less than a second after the mobs get aggrod onto the tank.
For example, if your tank pulls with a crossbow, as soon as you see the shoot animation start, begin casting polymorph. If your tank is a Paladin, and pulls, start casting Polymorph as soon as the Avenger's Shield cast bar pops up. It will land shortly after the Shield hits.

Next, you need some way to keep track of your polymorphed target while doing other stuff.

Start of by setting up a focus. World of Warcraft let's you "save" a target, which is kept in a separate frame. When you type /focus, whatever you had targeted will show up in the focus frame and stay there no matter what you do with regular targeting.
If you are using UI replacement addons like pitbull, make sure you have a focus frame enabled.

Second, get a macro set up here. At the minimum, you need a macro that sets your focus, and one that targets your focus.

To set focus:

/focus target

That's all you need. It will put whatever your target is into the focus frame

To re-target focus:

/target focus

This will switch your current target to your focus.

Of course, you can make these macros as complicated as you like.
For example:

/target focus
/cast Polymorph

Or do something like this macro:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus,exists,harm] Polymorph; Polymorph

When you press this one, assuming you haven't polymorphed something already, your current target will be thrown into the focus frame, and you will polymorph it. Any time you press it again after that, it will simply recast polymorph on your focus. Once the polymorph mob is dead, simply press the same button when targeting something else to focus and sheep it.
If you need to sheep a new target, and your old sheeping target is still alive, target the new mob, and clock the macro while holding down the shift button. That will clear your focus, reset it, and then cast Polymorph.

Snazzy, huh?

Third, you need a timer of some sort that will keep a little counter bar somewhere on your screen that keeps track of exactly how much longer you have on sheep. Whether you get something like Cryolisis2 or natur enemy castbar, it doesn't matter. So long as it keeps track of the time on your sheeps. Personally, I use natur enemy castbar, but what you use is strictly up to you.
The addon you get needs to have the following:
- Countdown in seconds until the sheep breaks
- Visual bar, that flashes when the countdown is almost up
- An audial warning, such as Cryolisis2's "Bah Ram Ewe" thing


Etiquette

Before going into any instance or raid, make sure you know the rules of the loot. Fights over loot is a very common problem, that can almost always be simply cleared up by letting everyone know what the loot rules are.
If you're going to have an argument over loot, make sure you have it before there is any loot to argue about.

If you want to call "dibs" on a specific drop, do so at the start of the run.

During a raid, make sure you know how the guild's DKP system works.

Know if the Karazhan runs go with DKP or simply rolling on whatever drops.

And for the love of everything purple, DON'T LOOT IN COMBAT. Wait for everyone to be up on their feet, recovering, drinking, whatever, before looting anything.
Every single time you loot in combat, a GM kills a cat in the blood elf starting area.

Generally, most standard instance runs have everybody roll "Greed" on the Bind on Equip items, and boss loot is either "Need" or "Pass", if someone can use it.
Like, if a caster robe drops that will be an upgrade to both the warlock and mage, they both roll Need on it, and the rest of the party simply passes. This is usually how boss loots are dealt with.

If you win the roll, do the standard "woot!" or whatever in party chat, and toss on your new duds and /dance.
If you lose the roll, do a /cheer on the 'lock or whatever, tell them "grats" and ask them to /dance for you.
If they win the roll and you complain or otherwise act like a prick, just stop, And never, ever run an instance again with anybody ever. They rightfully won the drop, so you can just shut it and move on, you selfish bastard.
Going with this same example, let's say on the second boss some caster gloves drop that, again, both you and the warlock can definitely use.
You just won the robe, didja? Well, guess what. Your passing on these gloves, the 'lock gets to have them. Why, you ask? Because your a nice person right? This warlock is putting in just as much time as you are here. You already got an upgrade, time to let the warlock snag something too. You're not a loot whore, right? Right?

Mistakes can be made with looting, however, just like anything else.

Don't worry if you make a mistake in looting, every one slips up now and then. Don't shrug it off, though, either. Apologize if you are responsible, say it won't ever happen again, and then make sure it never does happen again. Then move on. Don't do something stupid like apologizing over and over again for the next ten minutes. Once is enough. We get it. You're sorry, you'll never do it again. End of story.

Same thing applies to other mistakes, like pulling the boss early or breaking a sheep. Apologize and move on with it. Find out what you did wrong, and strive to never make the same mistake again.

If someone else had a little screw-up, if the tank accidentally rolled need on a caster wand, or the hunter forgot to dismiss their pet before jumping off that retarded ramp (y'all know the one I'm talking about), DO NOT immediately assume that person is a jerk/moron/idiot/huntard.
Again, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. Don't ignore the mistake, obviously, just point out what happened rationally. That is, of course, assuming the person who made the mistake doesn't acknowledge it themselves.
If a warlock accidentally puts a Curse of Agony on your sheep, and they apologize on the spot, accept it and move on. No need to QQ over cursed sheep.
If they don't, point it out like so:

/p Hey, [Warlock], you put a Curse of Agony on my sheep back there. Try to avoid that in the future; makes it reeeeal hard to keep it polymorphed

Something like that. Toss in some smiley face emotes or winky face emotes as they fit your personality.
Usually this is all it takes, and the problem never arises again.

Of course, if they blow you off, say something like "shut up i didnt break it" or something like that, whatever you do, DON'T blow up at them. Consider:

Mage: Yo, druid, you accidentally tossed a moonfire on my sheep. Try to avoid doing that again, ok? Makes it hard to keep the thing sheeped when its taking damage.
Druid: huh? what r u talking about? i didnt break it

We have two reactions we can go with here.

Mage: Ok, fair enough, but somebody had a DoT on the mob I was supposed to sheep. You break it, you tank it, fair? Leave ma lambchops alone!

Good job! Now you've not only informed, pointed out the mistake, but also made a joke and showed the rest of the party you're a perfectly mature and reasonable person. Not an easy feat.

Mage: Oh for fucks sake! What is wrong with you@! I clrealy saw that damn moonfire there! Are you retarded or something? God, what a noob

Guess who looks like a jerk now. Thats right, you do. Don't be this mage. I've been there, it isn't pretty. Play the game with hostility, you will only ever generate more hostility. Play the game with friendliness, and you will generate more friendliness.

Homework

Before going into any instance / raid, do your homework. Find out what the instance / raid will demand from your class. Find out about any threat resets, any special tricks the bosses have. Spend at least a little time reading up on strategies so you aren't a clueless moron walking in through the entrance.
Any knowledge you can get going into an instance / raid will serve you very well.

Listen

This right here is the most important thing to do while raiding. The raid leaders themselves have done a lot of work putting this raid together. They've gone online, they've done research. They know the fights, they know the strategies. They know the timings, they KNOW THEIR SHIT.
LISTEN to what they say. When the raid leader speaks, you shut your fucking mouth and listen to what he/she is saying. If the raid leader says "ranged DPS move to the left of the pole at the 2 minute mark", your little DPS heinie is moving to the left of that pole at the 2 minute mark.
If the raid leader says "Ok, stop DPS now" you begin to do nothing. Stand there until you get the go ahead to keep DPS'ing.

The raid leader's job is to know the fight. So they go off and learn the fight. Then they pass on the pertinent information to you. They're focus is raid wide, and they need the raid to follow their directions in order for anything to be successful.
Stuff like what your spec is, what spells you use, your threat levels, thats all you.
Where the raid is at the 4 minute mark, the positioning of the melee DPS group, that is what the raid leader is for.

Do what they say, when they say it, and your raids will be successful.

Raiding as Frost

Quick Stats

Most Common Spec
10/0/49 - Clearcast deep frost
Gains 200% damage from critical hits.
Spell Hit Cap: 164 (126 for Frostbolt)



So. Raiding as frost. Can it be done?

Yes, yes it can. And well, I might add.

All three main mage specs for raiding (here we're discussing raid arcane, raid fire, and raid frost), play differently.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

So, in the effort of providing the information that will help you decide what car is best for you, I present: Raiding Frost.

Firstly, your spell rotation will look something like: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt.... you get the idea.
Frostbolt is your spell. Use it, love it, bind it to every key on your number pad and mash your fist against it.

Secondly, USE YOUR FUCKING COOLDOWNS!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!
Get a giant USB "Big Red Button", bind "Summon Water Elemental" to it, and every time that cooldown is up, YOU PUSH DA BIG RED BUTTON.
Get some spell damage trinkets, and spam the HELL out of those things. When Icy Veins gets released, HIT THAT MUTHER TRUCKER EVERY FRIGGIN CHANCE YOU GET.

The power of Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt is rather limited.
A lot of the true power of Frost's raid DPS is getting the absolute most out of your cooldowns.
The Water Elemental is a significant source of DPS, about 350 DPS when you, the frost mage, have around 750 spell damage.
If you don't take advantage of it, you are a magnificent moron. USE IT. LOVE IT. Trash pull going down and you need to spam sheep? Summon Elemental, send it after one of the other targets, sheep your mob. You get some nice DPS.
Standard trash pull, expected to go for a minute and a half? Summon your Elemental, sick it on something. When it expires, Cold Snap and get it right back out again.
350 DPS is a lot to lose out on, simply because you're too lazy to push a button.
Quite bluntly, a water elemental will account for a good 10-15% of your total DPS when you actually use it. Did you do 200k damage in a boss fight? That coulda been 220k if you had used the water elemental.
Timing the water elemental will be the hardest skill to raiding frost. It has low health, and no ways to protect itself. Therefore, literally any AoE effect will pretty much kill it outright.

Similar to fire, frost also has its own debuff. Whereas the Scorch debuff increases all fire damage by 15%, the frost one increases the critical strike chance of frost spells by 10%.
Just like the fire version of the debuff, you want to have it up as much as possible (yes, the water elemental gains the 10% improved crit as well).
However, you don't need to cast something besides your standard nuke for this debuff. Keep right on frostbolting away, it will build on its own.
However, due to the lower duration of this debuff (15 seconds) it will be harder to keep it up and running at all times during movement fights.
Keep in mind that Ice Lance does refresh the debuff, so use that whenever movement is required. Never, ever use an Ice Lance when a Frostbolt could be used instead. The damage difference is so huge, that spending a GCD on an Ice Lance when you could be casting a Frostbolt is a serious waste of time.
Only use it when movement is required, and you simply do not have the time for a frostbolt.


There is an interesting thing to note about frostbolt. It is, mathematically speaking, one of the oddest spells a mage has. It has two unique quirks that no other spell has. First, it receives what the mage community has dubbed a "ghost hit" from elemental precision. Namely, frostbolt receives a total of 6% spell hit from the talent rather than the 3% everything else gets. This is most likely due to the second quirk.
Most spells can do one of three things when they are casted at a mob. They can "miss" (which will show up on screen as "resist), be resisted in the technical sense (do partial damage), or hit, doing full damage.
Frostbolt is, mathematically, a binary spell. This means it can only do one of two things. It can either hit, or it can miss.
Non-binary spells can kind of hit, landing what is caused a "partial resist", whereby some of the damage is shrugged off the mob you casted at.
Like, if fireball is partially resisted, instead of doing the 2200 damage its supposed to do, it will do a measly 1100 damage. You get the picture?
Frostbolt CANNOT do that. It can only hit and miss, and cannot be partially resisted. Which means that when you cast frostbolt, it is unaffected by level based magic resistances.

(Level based magic resistance is thus: when mobs have a higher level than you, they have an innate spell resist to anything you cast. Mathematically, a level 73 mob (like a boss mob) will have a resist value of 24. This works out to about a 6% resist rate. This level based spell resist cannot be overcome by any means. GG, spell penetration.)

While both arcane and fire magic will see ~6% of their spells be resisted or partially resisted because of this level based magical resistance, frostbolts will never see that. They will always, mathematically speaking, hit 99% of the time.

Frostbolt, oddly enough, does NOT proc Judgment of Wisdom, that handy Paladin buff that some paladins toss on mobs so the casters can snag some more mana.


Anyways, there ya go. Raiding Frost. Make sure you have the Frozen Shadoweave set, and go kick some ass.

How To Not Pull Threat

A very real danger to any DPS class is the risk of pulling aggro from your tank, and thus getting yourself horribly squashed, and potentially wiping the party.
If you have mad DPS, but keep pulling aggro and getting killed 15 seconds in, you are useless. Worse than useless, you are a liability to the party.

Don't be the warlock who opens each fight with a Shadowbolt crit of 4k.

Don't be the Boomkin who starts off every boss fight with a Starfire crit.

And please, for the love of all that is Mageness, don't be the mage who fires off PoM + Pyro the same second the Paladin first hits the mob.

So, here are some strategies on mitigating threat, and how to work with your tanks to avoid being a dumbass.
You may not always be able to avoid threat, but you can mitigate it.

1. The most obvious way to avoid pulling aggro is to put points into whatever talent reduces the threat your spells do. For Arcane, its Arcane Subtlety (40% reduction), Fire mages have a 10% reduction through Burning Soul, and Frosties have a 10% through Frost Channeling. There is no reason not to get these talents, and the Fire and Frost versions are painful to go without.
   
2. Give your tank a little bit of a head start. If there is a hunter in the party, misdirect will give your tank a huge boost to their threat, but it still won't be enough if you drop three crits in a row right off the bat. As Arcane, ease slowly into the fight with Arcane Missiles, and ramp up from there. Does AM hit hard? Why, yes, it does. But, as a channeled, its threat is more spread out than any other Arcane spell. An excellent opener. As a note, though, the Arcane tree has rather low innate threat, so you can simply open as normal with Arcane Blast. As a frost mage, don't worry about it. Chances are pretty good frostbolt won't cause any problems, and if it does, well, the target is slowed and so easily controlled. You can Ice Block twice as much as anyone else. If you do ever run into aggro issues, ope with an Ice Lance or two to start the crit debuff with generating practically zero threat. As Fire, open with Scorch. Scorch does not produce a lot of threat, even when it crits, and has an added perk that practically requires you to open with it. The whole increased fire damage thing? Yeah. You gimp your own damage if you don't have that at max debuff at all (or almost all) times. If there is still aggro issues with opening with Scorchx5, then downrank. Rank 7 works very well for avoiding early aggro, and has the added bonus that it still tossses up the debuffs. Wait to use fireballs for at least 10 seconds.
3. Get an enchant. A new enchanting formula for your cloaks and capes reduces all threat by 2%. Far, far better than the 20 Spell Penetration alternative... unless you're one of those kinky mages who likes Agility.
4. Don't be afraid of using Invisibility when it is needed. Whatever threat you have, it cuts it in half. If you use it around midfight, or a little earlier, it effectively means that it is impossible for you to pull aggro, no matter what you do. Take, say, Mechano-Lord Capacitus in heroic mode as a fire mage. Full Scorch debuff, then fireball away, and let the crits flow. When you hit about the 110% aggro mark of the tank, hit invis, let 6 seconds go by, cancel it, and keep right on fireballing. You'll be at the bottom of the threat list, blasting out thousands of damage in a single fireball.
5. If you suddenly snag aggro, Ice Block. This option will become avaliable to any and all mages soon, and its an instant aggro dump. You get all that threat back, however, but its ten seconds where you were doing nothing and your tank was furiously getting aggro back. However, don't dump the aggro on the poor Holy Priest next to you. That's just uncalled for. Dumping aggro in the Hunter next to you is acceptable.
6. Do something else. Mana running low? Evocate. Took some AoE damage in a fight like Grandmaster Vorpal or Thespia? First-aid yourself. An add pop up that needs to be taken care of? Sheep it if you can. Healer suddenly pull aggro from a flesh monster thingy in Arcatraz? Take care of the situation, and save your healer and tank a helluva headache. The latter option is especially good for frost mages. A non-elite mob that can be rooted? /scoff
7. And above everything except #1, KNOW YOUR TANK. If its a Warrior, give them a bit to get at least one or two sunders up before you damage the mob at all. Same with druids, except its called Mangle or something. It looks like a little slashy mark on the debuff bar. In the case of a Paladin, you can start right away, but start low. Use a downranked spell a time or two. In the case where multiple mobs are being tanked, Warriors are the most sensitive here. Do not attack ANY mob until the warrior has put at least two sunders on it. Again, same with druids. Paladins it doesn't matter too much, so long as you let Consecrate do its work for a bit. A good rule of thumb: on the main mob, let about 8 seconds of continuous casting go by on the main mob. Fire can judge this the best, as the perfect time is when Scorch reaches max debuffs. Then, unload with some AoEs. Flamestrike, Blastwave, Dragon's Breathe, whatever, you'll be good to go. Paladins are the best AoE tanks in the game, revel in it.
8. Get an addon that shows people's threat levels. Omen is arguably the best one out there. It's pretty, full customizable, it keeps track of aggro on multiple mobs, and is backwards compatible with threat meters like KTM.
   

World of Magecraft, Volume IV

Sorry this was so long in coming.

Now, for this issue of Magecraft, we are going to assume that you, lovely mage, have just reached level 70. So now what?
Well, first off we're going to go over the standard builds for level 70 mages. You'll see these referenced on the forums as "10/48/3" and "LOL 17/0/44 nub", and other such enlightening and pointless verbiage.

Commence buildshop!

(Disclaimer: the following talent specs are cookie cutters. This means that they are intended as an excellent place to start your own theorycrafting about where talents should go. They are meant as an outline to end-game specs rather than an end-all. Of course, these specs are cookie cutter for a damn good reason.)

These are the three specs primarily used for PvE.

The Raiding Standard
10/48/3

This is an extremely popular end-game build, and one that yours truly uses for any serious group PvE. This build capitalizes on the heavy innate damage and crit rate that comes from the fire tree. By stacking full Scorch debuffs, it essentially gives any person using fire spells a 15% boost to their damage! This turns your fireball spell into an incredibly powerful weapon (even more so now that 2.3 has scrapped the damage co-efficient). This build scales extremely well. Obviously, it gets better the more spell damage and crit rate you have, but because of the nature of the fire tree, it gets more returns than any other spec from those stats. Flat out increased damage, and Ignite provides a ton of damage that only gets more powerful the better your gear gets.
Master of Elements and Clearcast gives you very solid mana-efficiency, and elemental precision is an absolute must for the hit rating.
A very solid raiding build, and comes highly recommended by me. Remember, make sure you have max Scorch debuffs at all times. Make sure to refresh it with a scorch at least every 25 seconds, so that nothing stupid happens and you lose the whole stack.
Drawbacks: A hefty chunk of the damage you can deal is left up to random chance (crits, and thus ignite).

Arcane Raiding
50/11/0

Note that the random point spent in Magical Attunement can be put pretty much anywhere. It doesn't matter, its kind of a silly leftover... thingy.
This is the alternative build to a Fire raiding spec; this is the arcane raiding spec. Arcane is... an unusual spec, to say the least. Let me put it this way... the damage that can be dealt by a fire specced raiding mage is limited by two things: cast time and crits. Those are the two ruling factors for a fire mage. The same holds true for frost. But with arcane, your damage is limited by how much mana you have. Take Arcane Blast as a perfect example. It's cast time is reduced at the same rate as its mana cost goes up. Hence, you are limited by the amount of mana you have. In addition, as an arcane mage, a percent of all your Intellect becomes spell damage. What does this mean? You make your mana pool bigger, thus letting you cast longer. It also increases your crit rating. It also increases how much spell damage you have, which gets ridiculously powerful with Arcane missiles nabbing an extra 45% of bonus spell damage.
Quite bluntly, if you stack endless amounts of Intellect and Spell Damage, you will make tanks weep.
This Arcane spec also has the unique property in that it is the only Mage spec where Spirit is actually useful. Combine the (improved) Arcane Meditation with Mage Armor, and spirit looks very tasty indeed.
Drawbacks: Lack of range leaves you standing within several bosses AoE effects. You will have to be fast and clever to avoid these without hurting your DPS. Oh, yeah, and it goes Out of Mana faster than a Moonkin with 600 spell haste rating.

Frost Raiding (LOL spec)
10/0/51

A highly contraversial spec for raiding, by simple merit that it has the least amount of innate damage than any other PvE spec. A lot of the burst damage from frost comes from being able to "freeze" the target, and thus gain Shatter abilities. Sadly, most of the end-game raiding mobs are immune to being frozen, and only one boss in the entire game can be rooted. Due to this mechanic, frost is sorely lacking in the DPS department. Frost emphasizes control, controlled burst damage and survivability above all else. For raids, it is a poor choice. However, it is an excellent 5-man Instance spec, due to those same reason. Very few mobs in 5-mans are immune to freezes, meaning frost can gain some very respectable damage from this type of PvE. As well, the control the spec offers is highly useful for Heroics, adding a very nice cushion for screw-ups. Hell, any mob that can be rooted or slowed is solo-able by a frost mage.
Again, you'll see we put 10 points in Arcane. Couple Clearcast with Frost channeling, and frost will have mana long after the other specs have run OOM.
Drawbacks: Lowest damage output of the three cookie Mage specs.

Now, for PvP, things get a little different.

PoM + Pyro!
48/13/0

Like any non-frost spec, this build simply will not hold up inside an arena. It is used to its best effect in Battlegrounds, and can only perform well in 5v5 arenas if played very well.
This is the PoM + Pyro spec that is QQ'd about endlessly on the mage forums. It has the best burst potential of any build in the game, provided some jackass shaman doesn't Purge you. You'll be seeing a lot of the kind of super-heavy damage Arcane puts out, as long as you continue to have hefty amounts of Intellect and Spell damage in your PvP gear. And, of course, if you pop the classic PoM + Trinket + Arcane Power + Pyro, you'll be seeing that single spell crit of upwards of 4k damage. Against people without Resilience, it is entirely possible to get close to one-shotting them.
Prismatic Cloak and Improved Blink are not necessary to take, but, seriously, where else are you going to put them? They are very nice survivability talents, and will help you nicely in Battleground scenarios. If you adore Arcane and Arathi Basin, this is the build for you.
Drawbacks: You are so squishy, a Ret Paladin will most likely two-shot you. You also have the least PvP control capabilities of either the fire tree or frost tree.

Scorch Spam
17/44/0

The PvP Fire build. Before we start, note that the points currently spent in Emp. Fireball can be spent roughly anywhere. In PvP, you generally won't be using Fireball; you won't have time. Once you enter the brawl, or the brawl comes straight at you, you'll be using fireblast and Scorch almost exclusively. PvP changes too much, too fast, to warrant a 3 second cast. Otherwise, snag all the usual increased fire damage stuff and crit talents. Skip "Playing With Fire", and shove points into Blazing Speed. A contraversial talent, you will fall in love with it while fighting warriors and rogues. Yes, it has a relatively low proc rate, but when it procs, it's basically a huge "Fuck you" to the melee classes. Combined with Impact/Molten Armor, it basically gives you a 20% chance at a "I win" moment when anyone hits you in melee. And you'd still have all the usual Blink, Frost Nova type tactics to rely on. Dragon's Breathe is also annoyingly awesome for pretty much everyone. The 3 second stun can ruin a casters day, especially a healer.
Now, lets look at the Arcane side here. Put points into both Clearcast and Imp. Arcane Missiles. Whenever clearcast procs, hit Arcane Missiles for an uninterruptible, un-LoS kitable, powerful burst spell. Once Arcane Missiles starts casting it will complete even if the target runs out of range or breaks LoS. And it won't cost you mana to do. This is a common tactic for many PvP mages.
Also, getting the Improved Counterspell is just cruel. It is an excellent way to kill Paladins and Priests. Get it. Love it. It is sexy.
Drawbacks: Very squishy, and smart use of your Instants and Counterspell will quickly make you the "KILL FIRST" target of... well, everyone. That, and you'll probably be on top of the damage charts, thus making you an even higher priority target.


For any Frost PvP talent, you MUST have the following talents:
5/5 Improved Frostbolt
5/5 Ice Shards
2/2 Improved Frost Nova
1/1 Cold Snap
5/5 Shatter
3/3 Frost Channeling (shocker, I know, but you desperately need the mana efficiency. There's so little Intellect on PvP gear, you cannot afford to go without this talent)
1/1 Ice Block
1/1 Ice Barrier
5/5 Arctic Winds
5/5 Empowered Frostbolt
1/1 Water Elemental

The following talents are very useful, and you can pick and choose them at will. I highly suggest testing them, and seeing how they work out for you.
Frostbite
Permafrost
Piercing Ice
Arctic Reach
Improved Cone of Cold
Ice Floes
Winter's Chill

Personally, I can't bear to play without Improved Cone of Cold. I use it a lot as a direct damage spell, so I need to squeeze all the damage I can get out of it. If you're the type who uses it as a snare and nothing more, by all means skip it.

So. For speccing frost fore PvP, there are basically two other trees to use in support. You can either pick Arcane or Fire as a backup.

17/0/44 - Remember the whole Clearcast/Arcane Missiles thing? Yeah, same here, coupled with Improved Counterspell. Pick and choose your frost talents as you wish.

0/8/53 - This takes almost all of the awesome frost talents, and pairs it with Impact and the fastest cooldown Fireblast avaliable. Impact is excellent in PvP, since you'd better be running with Molten Armor. Stuns are good, learn to love them. The rapid Fireblast is also very important, the more you cast it, the better.

40/0/21 - An interesting spec, this combines a lot of the burst damage of the Arcane tree with some of the survivability of the frost. It allows for such neat tricks like PoM + Frostbolt. And, of course, combining Arcane Power and a Shatter combo will see Ice Lance critting for... well, an extremely high amount. Difficult to pull off, but this spec can be incredibly awesome. And you don't lose Ice Block, either.

0/14/47 - Also known as "ADD" spec. It goes deeper into fire than 0/8/43, to get the improved fireblast/scorch crits, and Burning Soul. The idea is, that when your frost tree gets shut down for some reason, you drop scorch's until its back up. Your damage dealt doesn't slow because of this, but you do lose mobility.

0/27/34 - The very strange Elemental Spec. Essentially, it combines Blazing Speed with Ice Barrier, to gain... a very odd spec. It has strong control and survivability, and some very interesting burst damage from fire. If one tree gets shutdown, its very easy to switch to the next. Being able to Ice Block and Blastwave at the same time will confound the shit out of your opponents.



And thats it! Those are the specs most people end up using.

World of Magecraft, Volume III

Here you are now, leveling up your mage. You've picked up your professions, and have a good idea of what kind of build you'd like to use. But where do you put these talent points when you're leveling?
This section here is a brief guide on where to put your talent points while making the grind to 50.
We're only going to cover you're first 40 talent points, since by level 50 you should know how to play the class. I'm also going to cover the stats in the game, as they pertain to spells, and mages.

While leveling your new mage, there are two routes to go. You can either go with the fire tree for leveling, or the frost tree. If you choose fire, you will be able to quickly take down a target mob. You will be able to move from one target to the next rapidly, quickly downing mobs one-by-one. You will have trouble taking on multiple mobs at once, at least until you get Blastwave. There is little to no room for error leveling as a fire mage; if you screw up, you're dead.
If you choose frost, you will not be able to take down mobs nearly as quick as fire. A fire mage can usually 3-4 shot an equal level mob; as a leveling frost mage you will probably take more than 5 spells to get the same job done. However, you can take multiple mobs on at once, with little of the difficulty fire has. You also have a very large margin of error. If a fire mage accidentally pulls 5 mobs instead of the one he was looking for, he's close to screwed. A frost mage will pull 5 mobs on a regular basis.

Take your pick. Rapid killing one-by-one with almost no margin for error, or slower killing with a very large margin of error?
Please, don't pick arcane. It is terrible for leveling, and doesn't get any good until much later in the game. It has no inherit kiting ability, which fire gets very early on and frost always had. It cannot match the damage output of fire early on, and you will run OOM (out of mana) much faster than either frost or fire.
Save yourself some grief. Say no. You gain nothing by trying to level as arcane, except a hard time.

Also, be aware that all mage trees are "top-heavy". That means all the good stuff is deep in the tree, and not at the beginning. Thus, while leveling, don't split trees. Stay focused, and keep putting points into the same tree as you level.

Your first 40 points - FIRE

Level 10-14 - Put your first 5 points into "Improved Fireball". This is your base attack spell, and you will be using it constantly. Cutting down its cast time means you get more damage off in less time. Self-explanatory. It gets even better at level 15.

Level 15, 16 - Put your next two points in "Flame Throwing". This increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards, and you will adore this. Mages do best attacking at range; you're hurting the mob while it's not even touching you. Range means you do more damage, and take less damage. Coupling this talent with Imp. Fireball will give you an extra fireball to cast at a mob before it even reaches you.

Level 17-19 - Put three points in Ignite here. You may not crit that often at this low level, but when you do, the extra damage helps you a great deal. And you're a mage, get all the damage you can get.

19 PVP BUILD - No. Just no. You will get horribly slaughtered again and again.

Level 20 - This is where there is some argument as to where your tenth point should go. Many suggest putting your next two points into Burning Soul, so you don't get your spells interrupted anymore. I say, at this stage of the game, you shouldn't be letting mobs beat on you anyways. You already have a 41 yard range and frost nova, why are you letting them hit you? At this point in leveling, your spell rotation should be something like : Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Frost Nova, Fireball until dead. No mob should survive 5 fireballs. Maybe six if you're taking on something 4+ levels higher than you. In case of unlucky resists, thats what Fireblast is for. You don't need to pick up Burning Soul right this second.
HOWEVER, Pyroblast is an excellent spell at this stage in the game. It won't stay this way forever, but in your twenties, Pyroblast is vastly more powerful than fireball. Open every fight with it, attacking at maximum range. Pick it up at 20, it will give you a very nice damage boost at the start of fights

Level 21, 22 - This is where you pick up Burning Soul. Now you have an amazing opener ability, and an ability that will let you keep right on casting in the face of adversity.

Level 23, 24 - Finish off Ignite. Now your spell criticals will do almost half the damage again whenever you crit. If your opening Pyro crits, you will be seeing a tremendous amount of damage at this stage in the game.

Level 25-29 - Now you're going to want to pick up Impact. Incinerate and Improved Scorch are just not that useful when leveling. Nothing will stay alive long enough for Imp. Scorch to stack, and you should only be using scorch/fireblast at this stage of the game as an "OH SHIT" button. Fireball is still your best spell. Impact will give you a 10% chance to stun a target upon being hit with a fire spell, and it is an excellent talent for leveling. It will keep your target at range that much longer. giving you time to fire off more spells before your target can do anything about it.

29 PVP BUILD - Remember those 5 points you put into Imp. Fireball? Well, put them into "Incinerate" and "Improved Fire Blast" instead. Viola! You have the best possible PvP build for mages at 29.

Level 30 - Pick up Blastwave.

Level 31-33 - Put 3 points into "Critical Mass". This is where we start seeing some more powerful abilities in the fire line. With an increase of your crit chance, you will be seeing Ignites far more often, which means even more damage.

Level 34 - Put a point into "Master of Elements". It will add to your mana-efficiency, which is a very good thing while leveling. The higher your crit chance, the better this talent gets. And you're crit chance will only go upwards as you level, so get it, and enjoy a little extra mana.

Level 35-39 - Shove all five points into "Fire Power". 10% more damage from fire spells. Thou shalt not go without it.

39 PVP BUILD - Same thing as the 29 build. Put the points from Imp. Fireball into Incinerate and Imp. Fireblast. 39 is a really good bracket for mages, we really come into our own here. We do fine at 29, but we're better at 39. Pwn some nubs, 39 is a great bracket to be in. And if you're a twink, even better, because you can put all those new enchants from TBC on your gear. Before you ask, yes, you can put the Sunfire enchant on the Staff of Jordan if you really, really wanted to. A twink mage at 39 can easily be a god of fire damage.

Level 40 - Get Combustion. Even more crits for you!

Level 41-43 - Put 3 points in Pyromaniac. You get a little bit of mana efficiency, and even more crit chance. You'll be pumping out a lot of damage at this point in the game.

Level 44 - Put a second point in Master of Elements. You will be critting a lot at this stage of the game, get a little extra mana back.

Level 45-49 - At this point in the game, you should have bonus spell damage on your gear. At bare minimum, have at least 100 of the stuff. Shoot for 200+. As such, pick up Empowered Fireball, and get all the more damage out of your main spell as you can.

And that is that. Congratulations on making it this far, you should have an idea of how a fire mage works at this point. Feel free to mix it up, try a 49 PvP build (another really fun bracket). Or put 10 points into Arcane for Clearcast. Its up to you, and 70 is the limit.

Your First 40 points - FROST

Level 10-14 - Put your first 5 points into Improved Frostbolt. Same reasoning as Imp. Fireball, you use this spell a lot, use it even more, and get even more damage out of it.

Level 15-17 - Your next three points should go into Frostbite. 15% chance on any chill effect to freeze the target. So thats... 15% chance on every spell you cast to root the target. Frost is all about control and leeway while leveling, this makes your time even easier.

Level 18-22 - Put 5 points into Ice Shards. You won't be critting very often at this point in the game, but when you do, it will hurt a lot. Most importantly, this talent is going to come into its own in a huge way in a few levels.

Level 23, 24 - Put 2 points into Imp. Frost Nova. By itself, this will give you more leeway in controlling the encounter, just in case something goes wrong and you need another frost nova right away. Most importantly, this talent lets you take Shatter next level up.

Level 25-29 - Put all 5 points into shatter. This is a godly talent, and seeing as you freeze your target in place a lot, you will be critting quite a bit. And remember that Ice Shards we took a few levels ago. Yeah. You will be critting very hard, and often.

Level 30, 31 - Put 2 points into Arctic Reach. You don't need the range as much as fire does, thats why we left it until here. But add the range, and this will give you even more manuevering room when taking on random mobs. You already have a chill effect, a faster casting time than fire's main spell, a 15% chance to outright stop your target, and now you're adding even more range. Life is good. Mobs shouldn't even be able to touch you.

Level 32-34 - Put 3 points into Piercing Ice. Its 6% damage, it's kind of a no-brainer. We didn't take it earlier, because we need to turn you into a god of kiting. Which you are now, so go ahead and take the extra damage. It won't have much of an impact of you take Piercing Ice before Arctic Reach, I just prefer to widen the margin of error first. If you're still sucking and still getting hit by mobs, get some more kiting help. Skip Piercing Ice, and put these three points into Permafrost instead. You shouldn't need to have Permafrost while leveling, but hey, if you're that bad at kiting still, take it and get better.

Level 35-37 - Put 3 points into Frost Channeling. A 15% reduction in the cost of frost spells is huge, and it will keep you up and casting for a much longer time. It's the best mana reduction talent in any mage tree, so get it and love it.

Level 38 - Get Ice Block here. We're going to add some powerful special abilities to the frost tree here. Start with Ice Block. The biggest uses this spell has is letting you wait for the frost nova cooldown freely, and wiping any stupid disease effects or whatever a mob throws on you. Not very important at all for leveling. But, we need it for Ice Barrier, which is simply awesome.

Level 39 - Get Cold Snap right now. This is your "OH SHIT" button as frost. Other specs and classes have them, but this one is yours.

Level 40 - Get Ice Barrier. You may have noticed that the frost tree doesn't have any spell interrupts. This is why we needed to get you good at kiting. But, now we have this little handy spell, which will keep your pecious cast bar ambling towards completion rather than failing.

Level 41, 42 - Put 2 points into Ice Floes. Now that you have all these special abilities kicking around, get this so you can use them more often. Feel free to cry that it doesn't reduce the cooldown on frost nova even more. I know I did.

Level 43, 44 - 2 points into Arctic Winds, to add some much needed damage to your frost spells. You're probably jealously looking at fire mages and their large damage output at this point. Go ahead and treat yourself to a little more damage.

Level 45-49 - All five points go into Empowered Frostbolt. Like the fire side of things here, you should have at bare minimum 100 + spell damage. Make your main spell even more powerful. The fact that it also increases the crit chance of frostbolt by 5% is just free candy on the cake.

And grats, you've made it to level 49 as a frost mage. Ding 50 and snag the water elemental, and rejoice. You are a kiting god, and as long as the mob can be snared/rooted, you can kill it without even being touched. Congratulations, now go grind on some elite dragonkin.



STATS

You see it all the time in noobie zones. People asking in General about what stats are most important, you see it on the forums sometimes too. So let me summarize everything up here for ya. These are the stats in the game that effect mages, and what you need to know.

• INTELLECT - This is the core stat for mages of any kind. Each point of intellect gives you 15 mana and a 0.0125% chance to crit. No matter what you plan on doing, you need a mana pool. And for a mana pool, you need Intellect. Its basic knowledge, but there it is. Intellect is a very important stat
• STAMINA - This is a core stat for every class in the game, however, its emphasis for mages is somewhat lower than most other classes. As ranged DPS, we have very low natural stamina, and little real need for it. For anything other than PvP, stamina is not very important for mages. In PvP, of course, stamina is very important and you need a lot of it. However, no matter what you do, you never need to worry about it. For PvE gear, it will come with its own stamina regardless, and you'll have enough hitpoints to get by just fine. For PvP, any and all PvP gear already comes with stamina, so you still don't need to be concerned about it. If you get PvP gear, you will get stamina, and lots of it, by default. It will not hurt in the least to toss some Stamina gems into your sockets, if you are that high of level.
  
• SPIRIT - Spirit just isn't a very good stat at all. Literally any other mage stat should be considered more important than spirit, even spell penetration. See, spirit will only regen mana every 5 seconds while you're NOT casting. If you're not casting, you're not doing your job. Healers (especially priests and druids) have all sorts of strange tricks with the "5 second rule", but we mages do not. You should be casting almost all the time. Try to avoid spirit in favor of pretty much anything else.
• ARMOR - Armor is of little importance to mages, with just a few grains of salt. In PvE, its pointless and kinda stupid. If something is hitting you with physical damage, something is very, very wrong. In PvP, armor is somewhat more important, since many classes will be trying to hit you with physical attacks. But, like stamina, this is not a stat you need to concern yourself with. If you're wearing PvP gear, which is the only place armor is useful, it will come by itself on the gear.
• RESILIENCE - Another defensive stat that is only good if you PvP. Resilience reduces the chance that targets will critically hit you, reduces the damage of critica hits, and reduces the damage of Damage over Time (DoT) abilities. 1 Resilience gives you a crit chance reduction and DoT damage reduction of 0.0254%, and a crit damage reduction of 0.051%. As a whole number, 39.4 resilience will reduce crit chance/DoT damage by 1%, and crit damage by 2%. Similar to stamina, PvP gear will come with this stat on it. Unlike stamina, Resilience is well worth stressing over and stacking with gems and such. You should shoot for at least 200 resilience before taking yourself seriously at high-end arenas. 300 is a good average, 400 is roughly where you want to be at the highest competitive level. If you have a yellow socket in your PvP gear, it should have a resilience gem in it.
• SPELL DAMAGE - Damage from spells is the lifeblood stat of mages everywhere. The more spell damage you have, the harder your spells hit. This stat should be treated as the most important spell for PvE of any kind, and a very important spell for PvP (alongside stamina and resilience). You should be looking at all times, at any level, for gear that increases spell damage.
• SPELL CRITICAL STRIKE RATING - This used to be a contraversial stat in the old days. More spell crit means more spell damage, right? Well, not quite. Spell crit is a very complex stat, and depends a great deal in circumstances. Lets start with the nature of a critical spell. A spell hits for 100% damage. Barring talents, when it crits, it crits for 150% damage. Therefore, 1 spell damage = 1 spell damage, and 1 spell crit = 0.5 spell damage. In a flat scenario, spell damage is twice as good as spell crit. However, there are so many other factors that can be included. First off, there are abilities that only proc in critical strikes. Take Ignite for example, which does an additional 40% of a spells damage. With this talent, a spell crit will actually do 210% of the spells base damage. Therefore, for a fire mage, spell crit = 2.1 spell damage. Again, though, that is a flat scenario. There are many talents that affect crits in the mage trees. Both frost mages and arcane mages can increase the damage spell crits do, and as was already mentioned, fire mages add a DoT after a crit. By itself, spell crit is a very nice stat, giving mages a chance at some very high damage. With talents, point-per-point, it is better than flat + spell damage. For arcane, spell crit is 1.75 spell damage; fire, spell crit is 2.1 spell damage; frost, spell crit is 2 spell damage. HOWEVER. That ratio is assuming that you, the mage, actually crits. Let's say you're a fire mage with 25% chance to crit. This means that you crit a quarter of the time. Now, every spell you cast, assuming no misses will benefit from your + spell damage. However, only a quarter of those spells will benefit from your spell crit rating. Thus, in this scenario, spell crit is only worth 0.525 spell damage. With this in mind, that essentially means that if you are a fire mage, + spell damage is better point per point than spell crit, unless your crit chance is within a few percentiles from 50% chance. Thus, as a general rule, spell damage > spell crit. As for PvP, spell crit is a terrible stat. Anyone who is anyone in pvP will have plenty of Resilience on their gear, which totally negates your crit rating. And if you try and stack crit rating for PvP, you're sacrificing other, more important stats for it. Just say no. There is one very important stat we need to discuss. But we'll get to that in the next point.
  
• SPELL HIT RATING - Lets say, just for ease of use, that you are level 70. You shoot a fireball at a level 70 target. There is a 4% chance that fireball will "miss", showing up as "Resist" on your screen. Spell hit reduces the chance you will "miss" with spells. There is always, ALWAYS a 1% chance your spell will miss, no matter how much spell hit rating you have. Thus, there is a "cap" to spell hit rating. Against an equal level opponent, the spell hit cap is 3%. With 3% spell hit rating, you will almost always land your spells. This is why, if you wanted to, you could have ~3% spell hit rating for PvP and nobody would gripe at you. It IS the hit cap against fellow players, after all. But, if you have either spell hit talents, you don't need any of it. Against higher level mobs, this stat ramps up exponentially. Let's say you, a 70 fire mage, attack Illidan Stormrage. Now, he is a skull-marked boss, but the game will calculate him at level 73. Meaning, there is a base chance to miss Illidan Stormrage with spells of 17%. 1% you cannot get rid of, but the other 16% you can mitigate through talents involving spell hit. To be an effective raiding mage, you will need to gather 16% spell hit rating to avoid missing these boss mobs. Frost/fire builds with elemental precision will need to stack 13% spell hit, while Arcane mages will only need to stack to 6%. For PvE, spell hit is an incredibly important stat. If you miss a spell, that means you did no damage at all. To hell with your +spell damage and +spell crit, you outright missed, you get nothing. At end-game, spell hit should be something you stack to the hit cap as soon as you can. Spell hit is also more important than spell crit, but only to a point. If you're an arcane mage, you only need 6% to your hit rating. If you have 6.7%, that .7% is a total and utter waste, and you can feel free to put spell crit there, if you wanted to.
• SPELL PENETRATION - This stat is... well, silly. It's supposed to be the PvP version of spell hit, but it's situational to the point of being sad; you shouldn't even consider trying to get this on your gear. Spell Penetration reduces your targets resistances to your spells, as in those little numbers in the top-right corner of your character panel. Here's a quick example. Say you cast a fire spell at a Paladin. The Paladin, for some inexplicable reason, has 40 fire resistance. You have 25 spell penetration. As such, the resistance "check" to see if the Paladin resists your spell will be calculated as if he had a fire resistance of 15, rather than 40. As such, spell penetration is useful in the following situations: against druids, paladin aura buffs, and priests against shadow spells. Thats it. Of course, its very handy if you fight some joker who's wearing a bunch of resist gear. But when do you ever see a warrior running around in a battleground in full fire resist gear? Spell Penetration is a pointless stat, don't ever go out of your way to get it. As a side note, spell penetration has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER in PvE. Any resistances calculated for NPC characters are a flat rate, and cannot be changed by spell penetration. A raid boss, for example, will always have an innate spell resistance of 15. And you cannot overcome that.

Ranked highest to lowest (Very Important, Important, Useful, Meh, Stupid, Worthless)
This is the quick version:

INTELLECT - PvE = Very Important, PvP = Important
STAMINA - PvE = Useful, PvP = Very Important
SPIRIT - PvE = Stupid, PvP = Worthless
ARMOR - PvE = Stupid, PvP = Useful
RESILIENCE - PvE = Worthless, PvP = Very Important
SPELL DAMAGE - PvE = Very Important, PvP = Very Important
SPELL CRIT RATING - PvE = Useful, PvP = Stupid
SPELL HIT RATING - PvE = Very Important (up to the cap), PvP = Meh
SPELL PENETRATION - PvE = Worthless, PvP = Stupid


And so concludes Volume III

World of Magecraft, Volume II

Welcome, to the World of Magecraft, volume II.

- Professions

- Talents, thorough analysis

In volume I, I established a mages position as a glass cannon, and covered each races abilities, and how they effect the mage as a class.

So, by now, you’ve created your mage, and have started the lengthy leveling process. What next?

At level 5, your newly minted mage is able to learn professions. In no particular order, here are the professions and how they affect the mage. Note that there are two kinds of professions, Primary and Secondary. You can only learn two Primary professions, but all of the Secondary ones.

Alchemy – (primary) In essence, alchemy is the act of taking stuff and turning it into other stuff. In this game, alchemy is essentially making potions, and transmuting some stuff. Transmuting is only really used at very high skill level, doing stuff like creating Primal Might from the different Primal elements, turning Primal Air into water, and such like that. With potions, there are essentially three different types. Consumables are like health potions, one use and one instant effect. Then we have elixirs, which are buffing potions. These come in two types, Battle elixirs and Guardian Elixirs. You can have one of each type active at once. Alchemy is a solid choice for a PvE mage, giving you access to additional buffs for yourself, mana potions, and a very solid money-maker, assuming you sell your transmutes. Alchemists are also very heavily desired by raiders, because you provide a ton of goodies for anyone running an instance. Everything from long-lasting buffs that persist through death, to powerful elemental protection potions, you can provide.

Sadly, from a PvP perspective, alchemy is a very weak profession to have. You cannot use anything alchemical in the Arenas, except for the Philosopher’s Stones. Most of the self buffing potions you can produce do not persist through death, and you will die very often in PvP.

Pair this with Herbalism to get the most out of this profession.

Blacksmithing – (primary)Totally worthless for a mage. Don’t even consider getting this

Cooking – (secondary) Now this is an interesting one. You do not need to have cooking for the intrinsic value of having the food, you can already summon food. You don’t need to eat anything cooking produces. However, similar to alchemy, the things you can cook/eat with this profession can be very handy at the upper level instancing/raiding. There is food that increases your spell damage, food that increases your stamina, whatever you name; there is a type of food that buffs it. If you’re serious about raiding and bringing all your own consumables and buffing yourself to the moon, pick up cooking. Otherwise, skip it, and borrow the steak from a hunter.

Also worthwhile to note this profession is totally useless for PvP, as any effects go away upon death.

Enchanting – (primary) Enchanting is the profession that makes gear better than it already is. Essentially, you add stats to select types of gear. You can add more stamina to boots, for example. Enchanting requires special ingredients, which can only be gathered by destroying magical items. “Green” gear, your epic “purplez”, the act of disenchanting them (referred to as d/e or “sharding”) is the only way to get these ingredients. Enchanting is a very solid choice for a mage to take, and as a stand alone profession, can be coupled with anything else. There are tons of great enchants to be gained through this profession. You can amplify your spell damage on… pretty much everything, toss 30 intellect on your staff, plunk spell crit rating on your gloves, whatever you want. You can also provide enchants to other people, and some are in very high demand. The high end agility enchants, for example, will cause Rogues and Hunters to basically offer you their children in exchange for an agility enhancing weapon enchant. This profession can be very, very lucrative.

However, enchanting is a very, very expensive profession to level. Any ingredients you gain means that a high-end magical item, and thus a source of gold, was lost. The runed rods that all enchanters need can run you a fortune to buy from Blacksmiths. You will spend a fortune leveling this profession, but if you do it right, you can make a LOT of cash back from this. Back when the level cap was 60, people would gladly drop 100g on a Crusader enchant. Now it’s much, much more with TBC. People want Mongoose. People want spell damage enchants. And they will pay through the nose to get them.

Engineering – (primary) Engineering is one of those funny professions that can benefit anyone, provided the profession is done right. This profession is similar to enchanting, in that you will spend a fortune leveling it. However, you stand to make little or no money from it. Almost everything you make in engineering can only be used by engineers, and chances are pretty good they can make it themselves anyway. Through engineering, you can make yourselves very, very nice headpieces, and a plethora of random gadgets. Exploding sheep, rocket launchers, trinkets that can resurrect people and flying mounts just to name a few. Want to know how wacky this profession is? Check this out.

Every April 1^st, Blizzard releases “joke” content on worldofwarcraft.com. This year, they featured the item “Tinfoil Hat” which would hide you from the wowarmory, turn your character into a pixellated monstrosity, and hide all your gear from inspection. While this item was a joke, engineering is not far from this.

Engineering can be a very rewarding profession, but it can also be an endless money and time sink. If you do get engineering, pair it with mining. It will save you a lot of time and money. And please, do yourself a huge favor, and find a leveling guide. It will get you to the good stuff a lot faster. This profession has some of the best headpieces for casters in the game.

First Aid – (secondary) First Aid is a profession that takes cloth you pick up, and turns it into band aids that you can heal yourself with. It effectively has a 1 minute cooldown, can be interrupted by pretty much everything, and if you don’t get it, I will punch you so hard, your mother’s ovaries will cringe. Mages cannot heal themselves in any way, and being the squishiest class in the game, we die fast if we don’t take care of ourselves. First Aid can be used anytime, anywhere, and at max level, is 3400 health in 8 seconds. The following are situations where First Aid is invaluable: Insances, Raids, general PvP, Arenas, solo PvE. That about covers everything, don’t it? Yes, it does. In a group PvE context, first aid relieves a lot of pressure on the healer. In solo PvE, you effectively restore your own hp, and can keep right on grinding without stopping. PvP, it’s a way for anon-healer class to heal themselves. Take this example: near the end of an arena, it was down to me and a shadow priest. The priest didn’t have the PvP trinket left, but still had full health. I sheeped the priest, and got off the entire duration of First Aid, restoring 3400 health. After that, the priest was killed off fairly easily. It’s a dirty trick to pull, and this profession has single-handedly won about 30% of the arenas I’ve been in.

Shut yer trap, and get this profession. It is more than worth its weight in cloth.

Fishing – Only get this profession if you’re picking up cooking. Getting ingredients for stuff like Golden Fish Sticks is the only reason to pick up this profession. Otherwise, it is an endless and pointless time sink for a mage. About the only possible thing it’s good for is fishing in the little pool in Orgrimmar while waiting for a battleground queue.

Herbalism – Only get this profession if you’re pairing it with Alchemy. Gathering professions serve two purposes. One, to provide you with a source of cash. Two, to provide you with materials (mats) for a given profession. Herbalism provides you with mats for Alchemy. It is a very poor source of cash; if you need a cash generating profession, skip this one.

Jewelcrafting – Similar to engineering and enchanting combined. You make yourself (and others) rings and necklaces, and various gems that augment high level armor pieces. Just like enchanting, this profession is very expensive to level, but very lucrative at the higher levels. People always want various gems cut, and if you happen to have a rare pattern that’s in high demand… you can charge a premium for it. Can be very good for any character, not necessarily mages alone. Couple it with mining, and save yourself a lot of headaches, time, and cash.

Leatherworking – Skip it. Worthless.

Mining – If you pick up Jewelcrafting or Engineering, you simply must have this profession. It will provide you with a lot of the stuff you need to level those professions. And if you need a cash generating profession, this it the one to get. Raw Ores and Bars are some of the most lucrative items on almost every single server. Almost all professions need something that can only be gotten through mining. Blacksmiths, engineers, jewelcrafters, enchanters, even alchemists doing transmutes rely on mats that can only be gotten through mining. With only a skill level of 150, you can start to make a fortune with this. On most servers, you can even still get away with selling a copper ore stack for a gold. This profession generates a very large amount of cash, so if you do get it, be prepared to compete with other people doing the same thing.

Skinning – Only pick up this profession if you need a cash generator. Skinning can produce quite a bit of money, but per capita falls far short of mining. A stack of Rugged Leather will sell for a lot less than a stack of Mithril Ore. However, if you maintain this profession all the way to Outland, the beasts of Nagrand can provide you with a LOT of leather, and its far more concentrated than mining nodes. Each stack will sell less than a mining stack, but you can get a lot more of it a lot faster. And being a mage, you can farm those clefthoof very, very fast and get a lot of leather. I did it myself for a while, and through doing the Nesingwary quests alone had gathered 6 stacks of Knothide leather. Sold ‘em all, made myself a pretty hefty chunk of gold. ‘Course, after that, I never, ever wanted to see a clefthoof ever again in my entire life.

Skinning is Lucrative if you’re willing to farm it heavily, and very, very boring.

Tailoring – An excellent profession for a mage. You can make yourself bags, you can make yourself very good gear all the way through the levels. And at max level, you can make yourself epic cloth pieces that are simply amazing. You can get a full set of Spellfire from tailoring before you even set foot in any 70 instance, and that same Spellfire set will last you far into Tier 5. And even Tier 5, the upgrade is questionable. Only Tier 6 is a clear upgrade to these Tailored epics. This is also why tailoring is considered one of the most overpowered professions in the game. The gear is absolutely fantastic with this profession. Get it, level it, revel in it. It can be expensive to level, but not nearly as expensive as, say, Engineering or jewelcrafting.

Now you’ve got your mage, you’ve got your professions, and you’re happily leveling away.

“DING!” you cry, excited as hell to reach a double-digit level. Now, young mage, you’ve reached the point in your life where you can begin to allocate points into various talent specs. Before you get started spending points, keep in mind that the mage talent trees are very top-heavy. All the best stuff is deep in the tree, and you won’t get access to all the fun stuff until your late 30’s, early 40’s. And the trees don’t really come into their own until you’ve spent at least 30-ish points in them.

Let’s look at what we have, shall we?

ARCANE – the arcane tree is full of random tricks, and enhances the mages arcane damaging spells. A very poor choice for leveling, it has the lowest range of the three schools, and no kiting capability. Spells cost a lot, and you will run OOM (out of mana) very fast if you try to level with this. The arcane tree is best used as either a high-end raiding spec, or as a support tree for either fire or frost. This tree is also unique in that it contains the best and the worst talents available to mages.

FIRE – the fire tree is the out-right damage tree. Most of the talents here either give you more damage or higher crit rating. It is an excellent leveling spec, and an excellent PvP spec pre-70. It is also a very good tree for raiding. In fact, most raiding mages run with the 10/48/3 talent spec.

FROST – the frost tree is designed to add as much control to the situation as possible. This tree makes it a lot easier to control your target, makes kiting a breeze, and greatly extends the survivability of the mage. It, too, is a good leveling spec, and the BEST spec for high end PvP. The frost tree is a poor choice for low-level PvP, and doesn’t really come into its own until at least the 50’s bracket. It is a poor choice for raiding.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what we’re dealing with here.

So, on with the analysis!

ARCANE

Tier One

Arcane Subtlety – Reduces your target’s resistances to all your spells by 10, and decreases the threat generated by your arcane spells by 40% - A must have for an arcane mage, and if you’re using arcane as a support tree, this is a good place to put those first few talent points.

Arcane Focus – Reduces the chance that the opponent can resist your Arcane spells by 10% - Another must have for an arcane mage, and another good place to put points in if you’re using arcane as a support tree. You use polymorph, right? Then get this, it will help.

Improved Arcane Missiles – Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles – Must have for Arcane mages. Pointless for everyone else, unless you’re using Clearcast procs for these. Personally, I feel using AM during a clearcast proc is a waste of the clearcast. If you’re using Arcane as a support tree, the Arcane Missiles will not benefit from any of your other talents.

Tier Two

Wand Specialization – Increases your damage dealt with wands by 25% - At some point during the development of WoW, this talent was placed into the arcane tree by complete accident. See, it was almost 3AM, and one of the priest developers had been working for a good eight hours trying to fix the Discipline Tree. Tired as he was, he took this Wand Specialization talent, and pasted it into the tree that he thought was the priest tree. Tired as he was, he had accidentally opened the Mage folder and pasted it in. To this day, Blizzard leaves it in as a running bet to see how many idiots spend points here.

Seriously, this talent is worse than worthless. Do not put any points here. Ever. Even Arcane Fortitude is better.

Magic Absorption – Increases all resistances by 10 and causes all spells you fully resist to restore 5% of your total mana. 1 sec. cooldown – Remember how I said the arcane tree was full of the best and worst talents mages had? Here’s another one of the worst talents. This talent only any good if you spend a lot of time running people through Scarlet Monastery with your 70 mage. There is a lot of better places to spend talent points, such as:

Arcane Concentration – 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% - This talent is absolutely amazing. If you are spending any points at all in the arcane tree, put 5 points here. This talent is the sole reason why many mages put 10 points in Arcane in the first place. Get it. Love it.

Tier Three

Magic Attunement – Increases the effect of your Amplify and Dampen Magic spells by 50% - Don’t go out of your way to get this talent. Only put points here if there is literally nowhere else to put them, and even then, seriously consider putting them elsewhere. Both Damp and Amp magic are very situational, and when you do use them, they’re ok. There are better places to spend talent points than here.

Arcane Impact – Increases the critical strike chance of Arcane Explosion/Blast by 6% - A must have for any arcane mage. Arcane Blast is an excellent spell, and improving the crit on that is golden. AE is an AoE used by literally any mage, so if you’re going deep enough in Arcane to nab Improved Counterspell or Presence of Mind, this is a good place to put three points.

Arcane Fortitude – Increases your armor by 50% of your intellect value­ – There is only one reason to put a talent point here. If you have literally nowhere else to spend a talent point, put it here. Depending on your intellect, it’s a couple hundred extra armor. Pretty much pointless.

Tier Four

Improved Mana Shield – Decreases the mana lost per point of damage when Mana Shield is active by 20% - A sad attempt at making the Arcane tree viable for PvP. If you’re arcane spec and trying to PvP, definitely put some points here, it’ll make you feel better about yourself at night. This talent is a waste of points, Mana Shield by itself is already an abomination of a spell at any level above 45. Why would you try to improve something that’s better off banished to a corner of your spell book, never again to see the light of day?

Improved Counterspell – Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance of silencing the target for 4 seconds – This talent is gold. It is incredible for PvP, and a “shitkick in the pants” for a healer. This is another very good reason to use Arcane as a support tree, its an incredibly potent talent.

Arcane Meditation – Allows 15% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting – A golden talent for arcane mages. As a high end arcane mage, the amount of casting you can do is limited only to how much mana you have. This is why arcane mages raid with Mage Armor, and why arcane mages never complain about the spirit on their gear. Also a good place to toss some points if you’re only here for Presence of Mind.

Tier Five

Improved Blink – Reduces the mana cost of your blink spell by 50% - Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good talent. Blink is used by mages constantly in PvP, pretty much every time the cooldown is up. As a very expensive spell, it is an unnecessary drain on the mages mana pool. This would be a perfect place to put a couple of points… but for one tiny little problem. This deep in the arcane tree, literally any and all of the surrounding talents are far, far better than this one. Due to its position in the tree, Imp Blink is a poor talent. If it was bumped down a couple of tiers (perhaps replace the abomination that is Wand Spec?) and this talent would get a lot better.

Presence of Mind – When activated, your next spell with a cast time under 10 seconds becomes and instant cast – This is an incredible talent. Absolutely incredible. This is the source of the rightly-feared and QQ’d about PoM+Pyro maneuver. For PvP, it is one of the top talents available to mages (although hampered by the fact the arcane tree forgets a little something called survivability). If you’re in the arcane tree this deep, it’s a no-brainer. Get it. You will never regret having it.

Arcane Mind – Increases your intellect by 15% - By itself, this talent looks good. A 15% increase in intellect is a really good thing, especially for arcane mages who need as much mana as they can get. But wait! It gets even better! Scroll down for “Mind Mastery”, and you’ll see why this talent is a must for any arcane mage.

Tier Six

Prismatic Cloak – Reduces all damage taken by 4% - Yet another feeble attempt to add survivability to the arcane tree. Like Imp. Blink, this talent would almost be worthwhile if it could be reached far earlier in the arcane tree. As it is, it is literally surrounded by talents that are far, far better. It simply is not worth it to spend the points here this deep in the arcane tree. If points could be spent here earlier, such as in tier two or three, it would be worth it.

Arcane Instability – Increases your spell damage and critical chance by 3% - This is a bread and butter damage talent. You would have to be a complete and utter idiot not to get this.

Arcane Potency – Increases the critical strike chance of any spell cast while Clearcasting by 30% - Right around here in the arcane tree, you are going to see a lot of absolutely amazing talents. This is one of them. You are getting this talent. End of story.

Tier Seven

Empowered Arcane Missiles – Arcane Missiles gain an additional 45% of bonus spell damage effects, and cost 6% more mana – See, this is why arcane mages need a lot of mana. Arcane Missiles is a very expensive spell in the first place, and this just ramps it up higher. That said, this talent is a fundamental to arcane mages DPS. Skip it, and no-one will ever believe you were smart enough to install WoW by yourself.

Arcane Power – When activated, your spells deal 30% more damage and cost 30% more mana to cast. Lasts 15 sec. ­– Starting to see the trend yet? More damage for more mana. This is another key arcane talent, and you will have this talent this deep in the arcane tree.

Spell Power – Increases critical strike damage bonus of all spells by 50% - Another talent that you simply will not be a good mage without. Get it, and revel in your new found super-crits.

Tier Eight

Mind Mastery – Increases spell damage by 25% of your intellect – Arcane mages need mana. The more mana they have, the longer they can cast. To get mana, you need intellect. And with this, all that intellect will make every cast hit that much harder. This is an incredibly well-designed talent for the arcane tree. Props to whoever came up with this.

End tree

Slow – Reduces targets movement speed by 50%, increases cast time by 50%, increases time between ranged attacks by 50% - Overall, a very “meh” talent for an end tree. It adds some much needed kite-ability to the arcane tree, but it isn’t pulled off that well. It’s expensive, and it can be dispelled very cheaply. Being a magic effect, all the usual dispellers like Paladins and Priests can get rid of it. Being a snare-type effect as well, stuff like druids shape-shifting also removes it. It’s a nice talent, to be sure, but being an end-tree, being so expensive, and so easily dispelled, its only “meh”

FIRE

Tier One

Improved Fireball – Reduces the cast time of fireball by 0.5 seconds – This talent is pretty good. Reducing the cast time of your main nuke is always a good thing. !BUT! Right now, there is a hidden 10% damage reduction on fireball, if you take this talent. Which means for 0.5 seconds off the cast time, you lose 10% of the damage. This is getting removed in 2.3, so this talent will definitely become worth it. It’s a good investment of 5 points.

Impact – All fire spells have a 10% chance to stun the target for 2 sec. – This is an incredibly useful talent, just not in group PvE scenarios. It is an amazing talent in PvP, and, in my experience, has an uncanny ability to proc exactly when it is needed most. In solo PvE, a two second stun is a very, very nice thing when you’re taking mobs down. It adds some ability of kiting to the fire tree, by simple tossing in a stun. In instances, a 2 second stun on a mob is actually detrimental to the raid. Tanks need to be hit by mobs in order to get all of their good threat generation abilities in. Stunning the main target means the main target isn’t hitting the tank. Which means the main tank isn’t generating rage (or getting redoubt/shield spike procs in the case of a paladin), which means the tank isn’t generating threat. For end-game PvE, skip it.

Tier Two

Ignite – Critical strikes from fire spells cause your target to burn for an additional 40% of the spells damage over 4 sec. – If you are speccing fire, you will take this talent. Fire crits a lot; the more you can get out of it the better. Right now, it’s only a really good talent, because you can only have one ignite ticking on a single target. Any new crit will replace the old ignite. For example, if pyroblast crits for 5k, but then scorch crits for 1.5k, the scorch’s ignite will replace the pyroblast ignite. Still, it is a very good talent, and a very potent source of damage for the fire tree. Supposedly, ignites are going to be changed around in the next patch, either to where the highest ignite tick is kept, or to where multiple ignites can be on the same target. I’ll update once I know.

Flame Throwing – Increases range of fire spells by 6 yards­ – Range is good, no matter what you’re using the fire tree for. Whether it be raiding, PvP, or solo PvE, this talent is very helpful. Get it.

Improved Fire Blast – Reduces cooldown of Fireblast by 1.5 sec.­ – This is purely a PvP talent. In any group PvE setting, this talent is very close to useless. In solo PvE, it’s only good assuming that you lose control of the situation enough to actually have this be worthwhile. However, in PvP, it is incredible. Fireblast is an instant, and in PvP, you use instants whenever you can. No matter what spec you are, you are going to be chucking fireblast every time it’s ready to go. Shaving 1.5 seconds off that will mean you blast more often, therefore doing more damage, and are that much closer to victory. I heartily encourage anyone considering PvP to get this talent.

Tier Three

Incinerate – Increases crit chance of Scorch and Fireblast by 4% ­- Not a very useful talent while leveling, it is golden for PvP fire mages and raiding mages. Scorch and fireblast are used very heavily in PvP, and high end raiders will be using Scorch a lot. You’ll most definitely want to have this talent for group PvE, coupled with fire vulnerability, scorch becomes a very nice spell indeed.

Improved Flame Strike – Increases crit chance of Flame Strike by 15% - This talent would be good but for one thing: Flame Strike sucks. Flame Strike is an incredibly useless AoE, having a very small area of effect; a long cast time, and not a whole lot of damage. If it was a good spell, this might have been worth a few points. As it is… it’s not worth it at all.

Pyroblast – New spell. 6 sec. cast, high damage – Pyroblast is an excellent spell to level with. As a leveling fire mage, it’s a wonderful opener when you fight a mob. But… that’s it. Unless you have PoM (Presence of Mind), you will only ever use it as an opener spell in PvE. You will never touch this in group PvE. Still, definitely get it as a stepping stone to get Blastwave, which is a very good spell.

Burning Soul – Reduces threat caused by fire spells by 10%, and gives a 70% chance to avoid interruption by damage while casting fire spells – You should get this talent for the interruption avoidance alone. If you plan on casting a fire spell, you MUST get this talent. Its usefulness knows no bounds. The 10% threat reduction is a bonus here, but a very necessary one. As fire, you will crit a lot, and thus create a lot of threat. Mitigate it as much as possible, get this talent. It’s a must for any situation.

Tier Four

Improved Scorch – Scorch has a 100% chance to make your target vulnerable to fire damage, increasing fire damage dealt by 3% per stack. Stacks 5 times, lasts 30 sec. ­– This talent is only good for group PvE, where your target is going to live at least 30 seconds. Very poor for leveling, as nothing you’re fighting should live long enough for this to even stack to full. Only moderately useful in PvP, it’ll mess up their healer/dispellers. However, this talent really shines in Raiding content, where this talent essentially means you, and anyone else using fire spells, gets 15% more damage. Mages and warlocks unite! Combine this with Curse of Elements, and your DPS will soar.

Improved Fire Ward – Gives a 20% to reflect fire spells while active – No. Just no. Fire Ward is very situational, and this talent will help you with one spell while fighting other fire mages, some warlocks, and stupid shamans. There are a ton of better places to put talent points. Hell, Improved Flame Strike is far better. Skip this talent.

Master of Elements – Your fire and frost spell criticals refund 30% of their base mana cost – This is a very handy talent for getting some mana efficiency behind the fire spec. The higher your crit rate, the more you get from this talent. Again, another fire talent that is very fine for high-end PvE, but not so good anywhere else. This talent is worst in PvP builds, as with all the resilience going around, your crit rate is going to be low. As well, “mana efficiency” is something that just isn’t mentioned for PvP.

Tier Five

Playing With Fire – Increases all spell damage dealt and taken by 3% - Fire seems to have a lot of these types of talents. This is another ability that is really only good at end-game PvE. Look at it this way… it’s a 3% increase in your spell damage. For end-game PvE, you’re not ever going to be the main focus of spells in the game, and if you are, 3% is not going to make much of a difference either way. You shouldn’t take much, if any, spell damage in a proper raid/instance run. 3% more damage from you, though, IS going to make a difference. It’s pretty lame for PvP, because you’re going to take 3% more damage, which is counter-productive to the general emphasis on survivability in PvP. 3% more damage in PvP isn’t going to make any difference

Critical Mass – Increases your critical strike chance with fire spells by 6% - You’re getting this talent. You must get it. Crit is central to the power of fire; therefore you will get this talent.

Blastwave – New spell. AoE damage with a daze on all targets – Picture this as the fire version of Arcane Explosion. Except its bigger, does more damage, has a cooldown, and adds a daze. It’s a fantastic AoE spell, get it.

Tier Six

Blazing Speed – 10% chance when hit by melee or ranged attacks to increase your movement speed by 50%. It also removes all movement impairing effects. Lasts 8 sec. – This is purely a PvP talent, and adds a great deal of mobility to fire as a PvP spec. Note that this ability does not remove root effects, like frost nova, just movement impairments, like hamstring. The usefulness of this spell is mixed. It is very effective against melee classes, allowing you to quickly gain range on them without having your cooldown abilities like blink and frost nova. It can also be very effective against hunters, essentially preventing them from kiting you. Pre-70, if you want to PvP, fire is a very solid tree to go with, and Blazing Speed is a pretty good talent to pick up. PvE, don’t even consider it.

Fire Power – Increases damage done by fire spells by 10% ­- A no brainer. A mage is supposed to do damage. Fire Power increases damage. Hence, you get this talent. K?

Tier Seven

Pyromaniac – Increases critical chance and reduces mana cost of fire spells by 3% - Another no brainer talent. Fire spec loves its crit, and here’s some more. The 3% mana reduction is a nice bonus, and if you pair it with Master of Elements and Clearcast, a fire spec mage can cast for a very long time.

Combustion – Causes each fire damage spell to increase crit chance with fire damage spells by 10%. This stacks to 100%, and lasts until you have dealt 3 critical strikes­- This is the 3-minute cooldown ability of the fire tree. It is a very potent spell, basically giving you a much higher chance of critting for a while. Some people lament the old combustion, which would simply guarantee the next fire spell to be a crit. In any case, it makes you crit more often. Get it, enjoy it.

Molten Fury – Increases damage dealt to targets under 20% hp by 20% - A passive execute for mages. This is an example of another fire talent that is solely for raiding. Solo PvE, you won’t notice this. PvP, it has a little use in finishing off a foe. But in raiding… you will adore this talent, and the substantial boost it gives to your damage. If you plan on raiding/instancing, get it, it will rock your socks.

Tier Eight

Empowered Fireball – Fireball gains an additional 15% of your bonus spell damage – Simple. The better gear you get, the stronger your fireball gets. It’s a no brainer, get it and get some mad damage from your basic damage spell.

Tier Nine

Dragons’ Breath – A fire mage’s sexy version of Cone of Cold – Yeah, get this spell. You’ll never stop loving it. It hits hard, and effectively stuns all targets for 3 seconds.

FROST

Tier One

Frost Warding – Increases Armor and resistances provided by your Frost/Ice Armor spells. In addition, gives your frost ward ability a 20% chance to reflect frost spells while active – Picture it like Improved Flame Ward, except far, far worse. Only get this if you happen to be offtanking, and as such use Ice Armor a lot. That was very hard to say with a straight face.

Improved Frostbolt – Decreases cast time of Frostbolt by 0.5 sec. – Just like Imp. Fireball, get this quick. Reducing the cast time of your base spell is awesome. Also, this makes Rank 1 Frostbolt, a very handy snare, a 1 sec. cast. This is worth it, take the points.

Elemental Precision – Reduces mana cost and chance enemies can resist your frost and fire spells by 3% - This talent is very nice to have for end-game raiding, where mages need to stack to 16% hit rating to guarantee that “resists” won’t show up on your screen. Add this talent, and you only need to stack to 13%. This is the “3” in the 10/48/3 build all the raiding mages talk about. Pretty much useless anywhere else besides end-game, unless you really like 3% mana reduction?

Tier Two

Ice Shards – Increases critical strike damage bonus of frost spells by 100% - Effectively, this means your frost spells will hit double damage when they crit, instead of 1.5 damage. This talent is key to any frost build, whether it be for PvP, PvE, whatever. You must have this talent if you’re speccing frost.

Frostbite – Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 sec. – Another must have in the frost tree. It is incredibly useful pretty much anywhere; you will feel it’s awesome the most in PvP and solo PvE.

Improved Frost Nova – Reduces the cooldown of frost nova by 4 sec. – By itself, this talent is only useful in PvP. However, any and all frost builds will have this talent, simply because you need it to get “Shatter”. But we’ll get there. Amazing talent for PvP, allowing you to have that much more control over the encounter.

Permafrost – Increases the duration of all chill effects by 3 sec. and the slowing effect by 10% - Very, very handy for solo PvE. It makes kiting even easier then it already is. It’s also handy for PvP, slowing your enemies just a little bit more. Frost is all about control, this provides a little extra. Not the most phenomenal talent in the tree, but its pretty good. If you need the points elsewhere, don’t feel bad about ditching Permafrost.

Tier Three

Piercing Ice – Increases damage done by frost spells by 6% - Obviously, you’re getting this talent. No matter what you use frost for, this will help you out. A lot. Get it.

Cold Snap – 10 minute cooldown, instantly resets the cooldown on every other frost spell – This talent, when you’re first able to get it, is pointless. But, the deeper you get into the frost tree, the better it gets. It starts looking really nice once you have Ice Block. It looks awesome once you pick up Ice Barrier. And once you have the water elemental and Ice Lance, this talent is bloody phenomenal. Don’t bother picking it up while leveling at first, but once you have at least 3 or 4 frost abilities with cooldowns, it becomes well worth a single talent point.

Improved Blizzard – Adds a chill effect to Blizzard, lowering target’s movement speed by 65%. Lasts 1.5 sec. – This talent is only good for those of you who do the whole AoE farming thing. If you were good at it, you would pick up this talent and basically slaughter 10+ mobs at once. You could rake in a ton of xp really, really fast. However, with the changes to leveling on Patch 2.3, AoE grinding will no longer be viable, and this talent will get kicked to the curb. Useless, you might say.

Tier Four

Arctic Reach – Increases the range of Frostbolt/Blizzard by 20% and the radius of frost nova/cone of cold by 20% - How many times do I have to say it? Range is good, range is awesome. You should get this talent just for the frostbolt thing. The improved FN/CoC part is just an added bonus, although a very handy one at that. It makes both those spells far easier to aim, and it will affect far more targets.

Frost Channeling – Reduces mana cost of frost spells by 15%, and reduces threat caused by frost spells by 10% - This is the best mana cost reduction talent mages have, and this talent alone makes frost one of the most mana efficient specs there is. The threat reduction here is also very, very nice, making this a must-have for any frost mage doing group PvE.

Shatter – Increases the critical strike chance of all spells against frozen targets by 50% - This is the most well-known and the most feared talent in the frost tree. This talent alone has sprung Legendary (capital L) stories about mages in any form of PvP. This talent is the core ability that any frost mage builds on. Quite simply, if you do not have this talent, you are not a frost mage.

Tier Five

Frozen Core – Reduces damage taken by fire and frost effects by 6%. ­– No. Just no. Never. Don’t even think about it.

Ice Block – Adds a new spell that makes the caster immune to all forms of damage for 10 sec. Caster cannot move, but can be healed by others. Also causes Hypothermia, preventing Ice Block from being recasted for 30 sec. – You absolutely MUST get this talent. It can be used for anything in this game, even end-game raiding. Warlock dotting your ass to hell? Ice Block. Hunter popped Beast Within? Ice Block. Moroes stick that 5 minute Bleed debuff on you? Ice Block. Hit by Watery Tomb by Hydross? Ice Block. Some random mob beating on you and you don’t have frost nova? Ice block, and wait for the cooldown. Accidentally jump off from Thunder Bluff? Ice Block right before you hit the ground. If that’s not enough, you need this to get Ice Barrier. What are you waiting for? Get Ice Block dammit!

Improved Cone of Cold – Increases the damage dealt by Cone of Cold by 35% - A lot of mages underestimate this talent. The fact is, any and every PvP frost mage must have this. Why? Glad you asked. A mage in PvP has a hard time actually being able to cast any spells. Thus, a PvP mage uses any instant casts, whenever possible. Generally, every time the cooldown is ready to go, the spell is cast. As a frost mage, you will be using Cone of Cold a lot, pretty close to every 8 seconds. Also as a frost mage, Cone of Cold hits hard and crits very, very hard. Plus, you can hit multiple targets with it. So, I ask you. Why wouldn’t you want, no, NEED to improve the damage on that? If you’re going to PvP with your frost mage, you must have this talent.

Tier 6

Ice Floes – Reduces the cooldown of Cone of Cold, Cold Snap, Ice Barrier and Ice Block by 20% - Frost depends a lot on its cooldowns. For freezing people avoiding damage, the powerful instants; it all comes down to cooldowns. As a tree, frost is far more reliant on cooldowns than the other two specs. Reduce them. Get this talent. You’ll never figure out how you survived without it.

Winter’s Chill – Gives a 100% chance to apply the Winter’s Chill effect, which increases Frost spell critical strike chance by 2% for 15 sec. Stacks 5 times – This is very much a PvE talent, similar to the Imp. Scorch in the fire tree. If you’re raiding frost, you need all the help you can get. Get this talent. Strangely, it is also handy for competitive PvP, in that this effect can be removed by dispellers. Hence, by slamming this into various other peoples, it seriously messes up the dispellers on the other side. Also a handy way to “protect” your polymorph from being dispelled. Won’t really be useful in, say, BGs, but it comes into its own in competitive arenas.

Tier Seven

Ice Barrier – Adds a new spell that absorbs damage (base 1003 at max level). Lasts 1 minute. While it holds, spells will not be interrupted by damage – This is mandatory for a frost mage to take. This spell benefits from bonus spell damage effects. At +600 frost spell damage, it absorbs 1237 damage. This is another trademark of the frost tree, you will get this. It hugely adds to your survivability in any aspect of the game. Get it, love it, hate shamans who purge it.

Arctic Winds – Reduces chance melee and ranged attacks will hit you by 5%, and increases frost damage by 5% - Back when this talent just reduced the melee and ranged hit chance, it was a terrible talent. But now, thanks to the damage increase. You have to get it. It’s mandatory, you will have Arctic Winds as a frost mage.

Tier Eight

Empowered Frostbolt – Frostbolt gains an additional 10% of your spell damage, and an additional 5% chance to critically strike – Another mandatory talent. Ask yourself. How often do you cast frostbolt. If you answered “Its all I ever actually cast”, then you are a frost mage. Not getting this would be outright stupid.

Tier Nine

Summon Water Elemental – Self explanatory – The WE does about 750+ damage per bolt, and it can crit for around 1100-1200. It also has a freeze mechanic, basically a targeted ranged frost nova. This is an incredibly potent tool, and an amazingly powerful weapon in the hands of a frost mage. Get this; it is the pinnacle of the frost tree for a damn good reason.

WALL OF TEXT CRITS YOU FOR A BAJILLION