So I plan on following the Icy Veins leveling guide for single-target frost mage. The suggested talent order listed is:
3 points in Elemental Precision
2 points in Improved Frostbolt
3 points Frostbite
2 points in Ice Shards
Any suggestions or opinions on this?
I’m not sure what you’re asking here. The talents are pretty straightforward. Getting your spells resisted sucks, so you max your Elemental Precision ASAP to avoid that. You dump a couple of points into Improved Frostbolt (which you eventually max) in order to access the next tier of talents. Next, you max Frostbite because this build’s entire premise is to keep mobs frozen in place to proc your crits more frequently and prevent mobs from hitting you. Then you max Ice Shards for the DPS boost. Be sure to maintain a safe distance. If stuff is close but frozen, blink or run away before spamming more Frostbolts.
I was just trying to get a thread started on something other than PvP complaints.
I’ve actually been resisting the urge to roll (another) mage, this time to go the AoE leveling spec just to see what it’s like.
One difference I’ve seen on the Frost ST leveling build is only going 2 points in Elemental Precision and 3 in Imp FB. The idea is while questing/leveling, you’re less likely to be up against mobs 3+ levels higher.
Another difference is going full in on Ice Shards first (get the crit to 100%) before doing Cold Snap and then Frostbite. I’d suspect some differences might related to whether you’re on a PvP realm or not. (PvP needs more CC, PvE can focus on pure damage.)
I, for one, appreciate that. 
It’s been too long since I played my frost mage in Classic, so I’m rusty, but I do agree with Elemental Precision right away.
Also, I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I could never really get the hang of AOEing mobs with blizzard, even after level 40. >.<
Edit: Oh, he is level 36. I just checked. Not yet 40. But still, I’d rather fight mobs one-on-one than mess with the blizzard grinding. All my talents are messed up, 
Agreed. There is definitely room for flexibility in the middle of the tree. I held off on Ice Block and Cold Snap a little longer than recommended. Cold Snap lets you pull off some next level BS in very niche situations (for example, soloing elite mobs and PvP), and Ice Block can save you when you’ve gone overboard with the threat in dungeons, but they are useless 95% of the time if you’re mostly leveling through quests on a PvE server.
The Icy Veins guides are just that: guides. You should tailor your personal build to your personal playstyle. Lots of haters complain that Classic is too easy, but I contend that its ease is exactly what provides the flexibility that lets you play the game in the way that you prefer. I think you’ll really enjoy leveling your mage.
I leveled 1-60 purely in a glass cannon fire spec, and ya know what- it was a blast. I had way more fun leveling as fire, definitely not efficient, but loads of fun. If you plan on leveling in groups just go fire, you’ll thank me later.
Actually, I can agree with this!
I started a second mage with a friend of mine. He chose Warlock and I wanted to experiment with a fire mage. We made a great team, especially once he got the voidwalker tank, so it was like our own little mini dungeon group.
You should start off with a fire build and then switch to frost when you get Shatter and can crit more often…frost build with no crit did absolutely nothing for me.
In fact, it seemed slower than fire.
The point of single target is not to kill stuff faster. It’s survivability. If stuff is frozen and/or slowed, it has a much harder time hitting and interrupting you. If you’re leveling with a tank, fire may be the way to go. I haven’t tried that, so I can’t compare. All I know is that with single target frost, I don’t get hit.
Sux the void sucks so much in threat in Classic. It won’t be viable to use for long, outside of someone saccing it for the hp regen, or hp shield.
Frost leveling is for grouping mobs that can’t shoot you from afar and making them die slow and horrible deaths to Blizzard and/or Cone of Cold. It also makes you fantastically sturdy when things go wrong.
Fire is for nuking limited mobs while solo but killing them really fast, and it is also way more fun when grouped.
I’ve leveled my Mage as Frost entirely and I’m using the Flamestrike/CoC build for super speedy ZF farming, but it isn’t useful for the mega-Mara-pull. I haven’t tried it in DM:E but I can’t imagine it would fail since you don’t really need Blizzard to do DM:E as a Mage.
I understand that the point of it is mana-efficiency and survivability…however, at lower levels, the efficiency and survibility didn’t seem to outweigh the speed at which I killed things with a fire build. Also, with a fire build, your target will be dead before it reaches you anyway up until you hit 20-25 (which is about the point at which you can respec and get a few good points in Shatter). That was my experience, at least.
It’s really just preference though.
Literally does not matter which order you take talents until level 40 as long as you have the correct ones.
Unless you’re on a pvp server in which case you want cold snap asap.
Cold snap first for pvp serv
Shatter asap if you solo targeting
My alt is a single mob Frost spec. The boredom and downtime is almost game breaking. I’m thinking of changing to Fire. Is it really that much more engaging?
More than two points in Elemental Precision is a waste while leveling.
I had the same experience…I actually had more downtime as frost than as fire up until about level 30…
You end up having to cast too many weak Frostbolts because of your inability to crit…which seemed to tank efficiency for me.
I found no use for Shatter while leveling simply because I saw no need to ever have to prioritize single target or rely heavily on anything other than Blizzard. I also stayed far away from Frostbite as I wanted things consistently grouped, not randomly frozen.
Shatter with CoC/FS/FN is stupid fast, but is specific to mobs you can group and AoE safely with those skills, like ZF farming.
If your blueberry isn’t holding threat, you’re doing it wrong.
OP is asking for single-target advice though (I think?)…
Your leveling experience seemed to be based around AoE leveling, if I’m not mistaken.
OP get Shatter. It’s worth it.