I think if you are going to be doing BGs often, or roll on a PVP server, you best go frost.
If you are strictly PVE, your levelling and dungeon experience will be just fine, if not better imo with fire.
Or, if you are lucky enough to be doing premade BGs, having a PoM/Pyro mage might be fine too.
Im not sure if its been mentioned yet, but the biggest advantage fire has over frost is that the main spell, fireball, is always learned 2 levels before its frost equivalent. This makes makes fire much better until the mid 20âs to early 30âs when frost talents actually make it better than fire.
Do the talents actually make Frost better than Fire though? I know that shatter becomes good by time you are reaching into the 30s. But taking into consideration of the talents you can obtain in fire as well, would shatter combo still be able to outdo it?
At level 40 you can have Pyroblast and 5/5 Shatter. And in 1.12 Shatter applies to all spell types, and not just frost. Thatâs potent.
Yeah, frost gets way more efficient than fire when you have shatter, +100% crit damage talent and the -15% mana talent.
Point well taken with the Mana efficiency talent. All things taken into consideration. I will probably start with fire until frost is more efficient. I donât expect to actually respec much since I will be looking to level an alt to do gold farming with.
Itâs not as efficient but AOE grinding supplements questing & dungeons
Had a vastly different experience leveling as fire. It is totally doable and at a decent clip. Are farming is not as high though. Things just explode.
I went frost all the way in beta and it didnât really feel good until mid 20s. Might try fire at launch. Frost is really nice once you have shatter and improved cone of cold.
If you are on a PVP server I would definitely get Ice Barrier ASAPâŚitâs really nice against possible gankers.
Only other question I will add to this since it was brought up earlier. Should Elemental Precision be considered while leveling with fire or just ignore until going frost?
Yes get it first
Now this would have been before 1.12, but when my wife leveled her mage originally she started as fire and ended up swapping to frost. She said the difference in survivability and efficiency made frost much easier to level than fire.
Just curious on peopleâs perspective of mage leveling in regard to gear dependency. Was there any level ranges that were especially difficult if you were behind on gear?
As far as I know, mage is not really gear dependent. They simply benefit from reduced downtime if you have Spirit gear. Intellect doesnât help too much for uptime since the amount of Intellect needed to increase your crit is substantial enough. So you primarily take Intellect to have more uptime with the increase in mana.
No but biggest place you will feel it is with lack of stamina. Specifically PVP as well as AOE situations, especially dungeons. Spirit is really nice too.
Itâs nice to have int/spirit and int/stam gear on hand to swap between. Or spell hit. Bag management can slow you down though if youâre not organized.
Of the eagle greens are great. Just make sure you get the Wand from Duskwallow/SM. The robes from RFD are also really nice.
Thanks for the info. I played a rogue back in vanilla and remember having some struggle points when I was behind on weapon options, so that made me wonder about how mages played. I definitely need to ensure I get ahold of a decent wand in certain level ranges.
There are some good guides on wands out there. First one you can use is level 5 and can be created by Enchanting
Fire is better for dropping mobs 1vs1.
Frost is better if you want to aoe grind.
In dungeons, it doesnât really matter.
Fire is definitely more fun, but Frost is best if you donât want to re-spec around 50 for higher-end dungeons and raids. Also, as Fire, youâre likely to die if you are ganked as you have little survival abilities.
I definitely found fire to be more fun. At one point I switched to frost to AOE farm which starts out fine but after a while I found it tedious. Have to find just the right mobs that are good for that sort of thing, wait for respawns on them if you grind all in an area down too fast, and also seems like a good way to get ganked if you are on a PvP server because any smart rogue is going to wait from a distance, watch you blow your CDâs on the mobs and then strike.