Dungeon spec when new

Working on my mage. Kind of struggling with fire, especially with this SKB leggo. Only 246 ilvl and no tier yet.

Wondering if I should play Frost for a bit til I get some better gear / push higher dungeons? Haven’t done much past 10s yet.

If Frost is NF + Freezing Winds best for pugs? Or maybe Necro + Slick Ice?

Thanks for the suggestions!

If you really wanna stick as fire you can play DC leggo instead of SKB. I’ve been playing SKB in m+ since the start of the 9.2 even before completing my tier set. My reasoning is that you need some additional practice for SKB to become second nature like keeping track of the heating up, hot streak, SKB stacks, and SKB buff timers, when to dump the stacks on the current pack or hold on to it for the next pack, etc. I am biased towards SKB too cause I played DC all of 9.0 and I find the SKB playstyle incredibly fun and engaging this tier.

Thanks for the reply!

I can tell the more I play with SKB the more Im understanding and getting a feel for it all.

Also bring your mythic gear that’s head,hand,shoulders,legs and chest to the catalytic converter and convert them to tier pieces.

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Need more cosmic flux but I was able to get my 2 pc at least

For Frost, Necrolord + Slick Ice.

I’ve never had an inkling at all to touch NF. You’ll get some mages that’ll say that’s an viable option, and it is, but Necro + Slick Ice personally is all-around better. Never had an issue, and I’m highly competitive with my party; especially single target.

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Definitely a build ive been curious about! I have a choice to continue practicing fire w/ SKB or refund the leggo and try out that Necro build with Slick Ice.

Or farm more torghast so I dont have to refund it lol. I swear with alts Cosmic Flux is the hard thing to build up, spending it on trying to get Tier or leggos lol

Necro with slick ice is kind of troll in any key lower than really a 20 or so. The entire build is based on spamming as many frostbolts as possible and getting a huge intellect buff, but in low keys things don’t live long enough to get that ramp up and start to really damage things, and tanks will not pull around your cooldowns in pugs. It’s considered better to run Night Fae with Freezing Winds in low keys.

None of these are really my own thoughts it’s all parroted from this reddit thread here that you can read up on

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Awesome!

Thank you very much for the reference!

To add onto Deathspacito’s comment;
Yes, SI doesn’t live up to potential until higher keys/Tyr/ToP/SOA etc. that’s a longer conversation.
Under 20’s FW NF is the best option. Post 20, CF NL or SI NL are the best competitive options when pushing.

On the fire side, I tried to get competent at SKB, but for some reason it felt clunky and just not great for me. Maybe I didn’t put in the proper time. I did play DC Fire back in 9.0 and it was my first mage spec. If 9.4 makes fire king by a significant margin again, I’ll relearn it. But until then, I like the util and defensives that frost gives.