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October 22, 2007

Spec For Success - Mage Leveling Builds

Patch 2.3 is more than just Zul'Aman, easier to acquire heroic keys, ret pally buffs, or the disappearance of the hunter dead zone. It's a chance to take advantage of all the Azerothian leveling changes by breaking out that sporadically-played alt and finally making the push to 58. But wait! Before you drop everything and head to Dustwallow Marsh, have you looked at your talents lately? Did you know what you were doing when you put that spec together, or were you just filling in points haphazardly? Now's the perfect time for a tune-up, so if you've got a mage alt in the wings, let's talk pre-Outlands talent trees.

Keep reading for my rationale on what talents to take when for each spec, or just use the links below to hop straight to a talent calculator for my recommendations for arcane, arcane/fire, fire, or frost leveling specs.



Arcane


Ten points in arcane has long been a favorite start for fire and arcane builds alike, but it's only since the Before the Storm patch that arcane has become more than just a support tree. You can actually put together a really solid leveling build of arcane talents, but after 45 points, I strongly recommend you take a look at expanding into the fire tree. Here are my thoughts:

Your first five points should go into Improved Arcane Missiles, and your second five into Arcane Concentration for clearcasting. From there, pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (and remember to keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing) and 3/3 Arcane Impact, which will give you enough points to fill out 3/3 Arcane Meditation (after patch 2.3, this will give 30% mana regeneration in combat instead of just 15%). Put two points in Improved Counterspell, and you'll have opened up Presence of Mind. Snag it (and start using it for insta-fireballs), and you should now have your talents set through level 30.

If you're continuing straight down the arcane tree, your next stop is to max out Arcane Mind for a 15% intellect increase. Put your next three points into Arcane Instability, then one point into Arcane Potency, which lets you take Arcane Power. At this point you're level 40 with a lot of great talents at hand, but the very first thing you should be dumping points into is 3/3 Empowered Arcane Missiles — this talent is critical to real arcane dps, so take it first, and then stick your two points into Spell Power. From there you can put 4/5 into Mind Mastery, pick up Slow, and then hop back up to finish the 5/5.

You're now level 51, and you've got some choices to make. Find yourself fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? The first tier talent Arcane Focus can increase your +hit with spells by up to 10%, but in my mind, it has marginal returns for leveling mages after 3/5 points due to the nature of the spell hit mechanic. Grouping more often, and finding yourself with uncomfortable amounts of aggro? 2/2 Arcane Subtlety will reduce your arcane spells' threat by a whopping 40%. If it were up to me though, I'd stick my last seven points into the fire tree if I hadn't gone arcane/fire already. 5/5 Improved Fireball followed by Ignite will increase your flexibility, and get you that much closer to the dreaded Arcane Power-POM-Pyroblast.



Arcane/Fire


Although I discuss dropping a few points into fire at the end of the pure arcane build, this build is aimed more at the mage who wants the mana regen benefits of arcane while casting a lot of fire spells. It's a solid combo for steady, efficient leveling, although in my mind there's a real advantage getting deep into a tree early on. Here's how it looks:

Put your first ten points into Improved Arcane Missiles and Arcane Concentration. Every time clearcasting procs, you should use it as an excuse to cast AM. Follow that up with five points in Improved Fireball and five points in Ignite, then swap back to arcane to pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (again, keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing), 3/3 Arcane Impact, 3/3 Arcane Meditation, and 2/2 Improved Counterspell. You're now specced through level 30, and your next two points will give you a powerful combo: Presence of Mind and Pyroblast. Use them together and use them often, but don't wait until your target is almost dead to use them -- most of the power of Pyroblast is in its DOT, after all.

You're now done with arcane and can go back to the fire tree. At this point I recommend increasing your range with 2/2 Flame Throwing, followed by 2/2 Incinerate and 3/3 Master of Elements. If you're experiencing a lot of pushbacks, you could take Burning Soul, but since you already have un-interruptable Improved Arcane Missiles, I suggest trying to change your playstyle instead of your build. Next, 2/3 Improved Scorch will open up Blast Wave, which is an awesome AOE talent. Drop your next three points into Critical Mass, and then finish out that last point in Scorch. Three points in Fire Power will take you to level 58, and from there it's on to Outlands.



Fire


Fire builds are all about raw damage — when you're playing a fire mage right, you should be able to kill your target in two or three shots, preferably before it even reaches you. The main challenge to doing this successfully in Azeroth is the lack of real +damage gear. (Fire scales extremely well with +dmg, which is part of why 10/48/3 is such a well-liked PvE spec.) That plus the fact that most pre-Outlands play is now soloing is why I tend to think frost is the strongest leveling build at the moment, but that doesn't mean fire can't be for you. If you don't mind drinking or dying a bit more often and enjoy lighting the furry creatures of the forest on fire, this spec can dish out a ton of damage and be a lot of fun to play. Here's how I'd build a fire mage:

Take 5/5 Improved Fireball and 5/5 Ignite, then snag an extra 6 yards of casting range with 2/2 Flame Throwing. Put your next two points into Incinerate, then pick up 2/2 Burning Soul to reduce pushbacks for when you can't quite kill a mob before it's beating you in the face. Improved Scorch and Master of Elements are the next talents to consider, and the order in which you take them is somewhat playstyle-dependent. Imp Scorch gives a lot of value for very little mana, but stacking scorch debuffs just isn't practical while soloing same-level regular mobs (it takes too long; they die too quickly). So it's a nice talent to have, but I'd put my first three points here into Master of Elements, then one point into Imp Scorch for now. This opens up Critical Mass at level 30.

Once you've taken 3/3 Critical Mass, I'd hop one more tier up and pick up Pyroblast so that you can take Blastwave next. (Yes, we could've taken Pyroblast earlier in this build, but it's a long, slow, mana inefficient spell that doesn't really shine while leveling unless you have Presence of Mind.) At this point you have two new talents open: Fire Power and Blazing Speed. Blazing Speed is fun, and a great PvP talent, but in my mind it's a distraction from the awesome dps talents we're working our way down towards. (Plus, you didn't roll a fire mage for the surviveability anyway, did you?) So take 5/5 Fire Power instead, and then pick up Combustion at level 40. From there I'd grab 3/3 Pyromaniac and put a first point into Molten Fury, which opens up the talent we've been working our way down to: Empowered Fireball. Max it out, and you can then pick up Dragon's Breath.

Finish up the bottom of the fire tree by putting your 42nd point into 2/2 Molten Fury, and now it's time to make some choices. Find yourself drinking a lot and/or fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? You could hop over to the frost tree and put three points in Elemental Precision, an excellent talent that will increase your +hit with fire and frost spells by 3%, and reduce their mana cost by the same amount. Think you'd like a stun talent like the shadow priest's Blackout? 5/5 Impact is for you. Still want to play with Blazing Speed? Now's the time to pick it up.



Arcane/Frost


If you ask me (and you are reading my blog, after all), arcane/frost is a silly leveling spec. Frost is mana efficient enough on its own, so why go dumping ten points outside the tree? I'm told some people do it so that they can use AM on clearcasts, but the occasional free arcane missles just doesn't seem worth the cost to me. If you're determined to try it out, go ahead and put ten points into Imp Arcane Missles and Arcane Concentration, then use my frost spec to work your way down towards Ice Barrier, which you won't get for another ten levels because you decided you really wanted clearcasting, you fool!



Frost


I've never leveled as a frost mage, but when my boyfriend asked how he should spec his mage alt, I had no reservations telling him to go full frost. (He's level 69 now, and will be respeccing to fire at 70.) With Azeroth increasingly becoming a land of solo quest grinds, frost's control, survivability and mana efficiency make it a real winner for pre-Outlands leveling. Some talent guides out there are still focused on AOE grinding, but if you ask me that's 1) boring and 2) going to be much less XP efficient with the increase to quest XP in patch 2.3. So I'd spec a frost mage like this:

Five points in Improved Frostbolt gives you a primary source of dps. Next grab 2/2 Improved Frost Nova, and 5/5 Ice Shards. Three points in Piercing Ice opens up Shatter, and once you put five points in it you'll have a 50% chance to crit any frozen target. It's one of the critical talents in the frost tree, so pick this up as soon as possible. You're specced up to level 20, and have four excellent options to dump points into: the slowing talent Permafrost, the Frost Nova-like proc Frostbite, the mana/threat reduction talent Frost Channeling, and the increased range talent Arctic Reach. You'll want all four of these, but since I have to pick an order, well... take Arctic Reach first, then two points in Permafrost, then 2/3 Frostbite, then 3/3 Frost Channeling. We'll come back to finish off Permafrost and Frostbite, but before we do, at level 40 it's time to pick up the frost mage's favorite friend, Ice Barrier. Take Ice Block (fairly useless for solo grinding), then Ice Barrier. Add your new shield to your bar, and keep it up as much as possible.

Okay, got Ice Barrier going? Good. Hop back up the tree and stick those last two points into Frostbite and Permafrost. You could also pick up Cold Snap at this point, and to be honest, many frost mages seem to like it, but I just can't see a 10 minute cooldown being worth a whole talent point for a leveling mage, so I'd put your next two points in Ice Floes instead. This will open up Empowered Frostbolt; max it out. Level 50 gets a bit lonely grinding out in the Blasted Lands all alone, doesn't it? I thought so, which is why I'm having you put your next point into Summon Water Elemental, the frost mage pet. Aww, isn't he cute? He's on a three minute cooldown, so you can use him as an emergency tank or a damage boost.

We've worked our way down to the bottom of the tree, but there are still valuable talents aplenty in it. Elemental Precision is a good choice for your next three points, and I'd choose Arctic Winds for your final five.

Congratulations, you're 58! Go kill some hellboars.

27 comments:

Leiandra said...

I know your topic is Leveling Builds, but I think you're downplaying Arcane/Frost too much. If I ever decided to go to Frost, I decided I was going to use the 40/0/21 build I saw over on Wow Insider. http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/04/17/build-shop-mage-40-0-21/ It makes a lot of sense. I've seen a number of fire builds that follow somewhere along the same lines.

Girl Meets WoW said...

It's not that I mind arcane hybrid builds (heck, I have one myself at the moment), but I'm going to have to refute the idea of that WoW Insider spec being a good one to begin building before Outlands. (If that was your suggestion, which it may not have been!) I don't like that build for questing/PvE because it's too split: why grab ice block and not also take ice barrier? Why go to the arcane tree for damage boosts and mana efficiency when you can pick up the same thing in frost, and get more for your points by trying to split your points so much?

In fact, if you check out the guy who originally submitted it on the Armory, you'll notice he's respecced to 13/0/48, a much smarter talent distribution and one that I could recommend. That said, if you were going arcane/frost, I would recommend you put those first 48 points in frost before you went over to the arcane tree, which would still make you full frost at 58.

That said, keep in mind that 1) I would always recommend a respec at 70 from "leveling build" to "whatever you're doing now" build, and 2) none of my comments on the WoW Insider build apply if you're talking PvP or arena/raiding hybrid specs. I think there are a fair number of folks using 41/0/20 in that context.

But keep the comments and criticism coming; it's great to hear from other mages!

Girl Meets WoW said...

That should be "get more for your points by NOT trying to split them so much."

Unknown said...

With the re-do of all the instance rewards in 2.3 a lot of the cloth is getting +dmg instead of other stats.

Unknown said...

There is one very good reason for speccing 40/0/21 and forsaking Ice Barrier: hard-hitting crits on demand and thus insane burst damage. Frost Nova + AP + Frostbolt + POM Frostbolt + Ice Lance + Fireblast + Cone of Cold is a whole lot of damage. Stuff just.. dies before you even finish that sequence. However, you are correct in assuming that it doesn't work properly until level 70. Taking all of those high-damage Arcane talents without getting any of the talents that would make it viable on it's own (Imp. Arcane Missiles, Emp. Arcane Missiles).

Personally, I love deep frost. Sustainable and highly controllable damage. The path you're recomending is good for single-target damage, but there is an alternative for those who like high risk and high rewards: AoE farming. Improved Frostbolt is a no-brainer, but after that skip Ice Shards and Frostbite. Instead, invest on Improved Frost Nova, Permafrost and Improved Blizzard. Piecring Ice, Cold Snap and Frost Channelling is also good to have. In your mid-20ies you should start doing some experiments with AoE. Round up some furbolgs in Ashenvale (or farmers in Hillsbrad, if you are Horde). Frost Nova them, run away for a few steps and blink. Turn around and cast Blizzard. When the first Blizzard is about to end, cast a new one in front of the mobs. Continue until the mobs reach you. Frost Nova them again, run for a few steps, Blink and continue. Use Arcane Explosion or Cone of Cold as a finisher. With some practice, you should be able to kill around 10 mobs at a time (if you pull more, you hit the AoE damage cap and gimp your damage). Especially if you combine AoE farming with kill-ten-rats type of quests, you'll rack up fame and fortune (and more importantly, experience) very quickly. Consult your local mage forums for a list of good AoE farming spots. These spots have a bunch of melee-only mobs clustered together and thus are cannon fodder for a frost mage.

Low-level Outland mobs generally have some annoying skills that make AoE farming difficult, but by then you have enough talent points to get all of those other neat toys from Frost for single-target farming. Although Outland quests are more than enough to get you to 70 (I dinged halfway through Netherstorm solo quests with Shadowmoon Valley completely untouched), so there's no need for AoE farming. However, at around level 68 you can go to the Manaforge Duro and farm the Blood Elf miners for Netherweave Cloth, Scryer rep turnins and random drops.

Girl Meets WoW said...

@Mike - Good point there, and it may up the oomph of fire in Azeroth a bit so that there's more burning and less mage squishing.

@Shalkis - Really excellent commentary on 40/0/21; that gives me a better idea of what it could do in PvE, even if it's still not a leveling spec. Thanks! As for AOE farming, I've played around with it from time to time, but my guess (and it's a total guess, btw) is that it's going to be much harder for pure Azeroth AOE farming to stay competitive in terms of XP gain with quest XP being bumped up 15%. But we shall see.

Green Armadillo said...

Necropost, I know, but I got linked to this blog from elsewhere and can't resist the chance to chip in with my 2c on a mage spec thread. :)

On the fire end, I think people really under-rate the value of Impact. That 2 seconds of stun means two seconds of not being hit, increasing the odds of killing the mob before it gets to you. Ignite is one of the best talents in the tree once you get your spell crit up, but at low levels you're not critting enough to make it worthwhile (especially if you're 2-3 shotting foes, since they're only really going to live long enough for the ignite to matter if it's your opener that crits). I took 3/5 impact to fill out to level 20 (and took pyroblast to use as an opener from max range) and have started going back for ignite in the mid-20's so I'll have it ready when Critical Mass opens up.

On the frost side, I recommend Frostbite as early as level 17. If it procs at range, your foes don't get to you for a longer period of time, and once you get shatter it's a good chance of double damage on your next frostbolt (it also procs off of ice armor, so sometimes the mob freezes itself right before your frostbolt casts and eats a shatter crit). Ice block is moderately useful solo for removing conditions (e.g. long-lasting diseases) and for hiding in an ice cube while you wait out the last few seconds of your frost nova cooldown. If you're PVPing at all, it becomes a must-have, otherwise it can afford to wait for a bit.

Cold snap isn't that useful when it opens up, but it's worth having by level 50 so that you can re-summon your water elemental. The combination of two elementals (two ranged frost novas each), an ice block (to make the mob turn around and run from you back to your elemental, and then turn around again when you unfreeze), and a number of your own frost novas and ice barriers allow frost mages to solo basically any elite quest boss that can be frozen, and some that can't.

Girl Meets WoW said...

That's actually a good point about impact vs. ignite, GA. I chose ignite because I was generally trying to create builds that you wouldn't have to go in and respec once you got deep in the tree (where fire mages pick up a good chunk of extra crit), but at low levels, impact may be the better use of talent points.

Anonymous said...

I have a level 41 (frost) mage that will probably get some love now that leveling 20-60 should be faster... Thks for the guide and thks to Green Armadillo for reminding of the "cleansing" effect of Ice Block! I'll try to remember it more! :)

Richard Parry said...

I've levelled a couple Mages to 70 in WoW, and a lot of the builds have different merits.

Personally, Frost is a good tree for controlling fights, learning kiting, and stuff like that. There's some good synergies to be had with Frost/Fire as you level, and even at the end game.

Fire is my personal favourite for levelling, I've got the personal mastery of control with Frost so I just want speed and more speed. Fire gives me that. For me, Fire's more about damage efficiency vs damage speed; I'd argue a good Arcane/Fire speed is a higher burst spec but has more downtime, so I stay mostly Fire for levelling (with the 3 points in Frost of course).

One thing I'm not sure is well highlighted in your original post is the value of respec'ing at various points in the levelling tree. What you use from level 1 through 20 is often not the same best thing from 21 through 40, and so on. I usually get a few points in, then respec at key points up the chain.

I'm a bit out of touch with WoW so won't embarras myself by posting my old spec here, many patches may have gone by that negate the effectiveness :) But this is a really neat post overall, and gives some good insights without being overly mathematical in how to spec. Plus, I dig the little icons you use :)

dahut said...

I wouldn't recommend speccing frost until you at least get to level 24. It's the synergy between shatter and frozen targets that give frost its power. You can control as other specs with rank 1 frostbolt, coc, and frost nova.

Perrins said...

woot
love the article im glad i came across it. I have been a mana fearing person for so long. I always had a toon that did not require mana, but with a bunch of guild drama happening I rerolled a mage and im loving it. I was wondering about a leveling spec for so long bc all my mage buddies are telling me different things. This made it soooo much clearer. Thanks so much!!

Btw check out my blog on warriors and hunters

http://perrinswow.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I am playing with the arcane / fire. Will let you know how it pans out.

Tauntress
www.angryguildleader.com
www.dvdwizards.net

Aceed said...

I'm currently levling a mage by your frost build (apart from the tweaks I needed to go by since it's outdated after 2.4), and I'd like to add that "Of frozen wrath" random magic green gear is the way to go in Azeroth.

Simple put, you're mana efficient enough not to need any int or spirit from dungeon gear, and specialized damage gear is always stronger than general (there's a lack of blue frost gear pre-outland).

I can currently 3-shot most mobs I encounter, and the survivability of the frost build more than quadruples my survivability. I rarley get hit in the first place and if I do there's frost barrier.

Also, great build.

Anonymous said...

After reading this I came up with something like this, it's only for 1-70 but what do you think?

FROST
10-14 Improved Frostbolt 5/5
15-17 Ice Shards 3/3
18-19 Ice Floes 2/3
20-22 Piercing Ice 3/3
23-24 Improved Blizzard 2/3
25-27 Shatter 3/3
28-29 Arctic Reach 2/2
30-31 Permafrost 2/3
32-33 Frostbite 2/3
34 Cold Snap 1/1
35-37 Winter's Chill 3/3
38 Ice Floes 3/3
39 Permafrost 3/3
40 Ice Barrier 1/1
41 Frostbite 3/3
42-44 Arctic Winds 3/3
45-46 Empowered Frostbolt 2/2
47-48 Arctic Winds 5/5
49 Shattered Barrier 1/2
50 Summon Water Elemental 1/1
51-53 Improved Water Elemental 3/3
54 Shattered Barrier 2/2
55-59 Chilled To The Bone 5/5

ARCANE
60-64 Arcane Stability 5/5
65-69 Arcane Concentration 5/5
70 Magic Attunement 1/2

Don't know if this came correctly due it's from Excel.

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