Hi all.
I’m wondering if there are any other Mages out there who are NOT leveling via AoE?
I love Questing and see no reason to rush. 
Yes, I’m a Frost Spec, Frostbolt lover and it feels so satisfying.
Thou slower than AoE I am enjoying it. 
PS. Avatar shows Lvl 50 but Im almost Lvl 55.
Have a wonderful day everyone. 
Lot of mages don’t AoE level.
Even saw a mage in Arathi that was leveling as fire.
You can pretty much do whatever you want and whatever you find enjoyable.
My husband and I only AoE when we have to kill a lot of stuff for a quest. Other than that, we find it pretty boring to continuously kill stuff over and over again.
I’m having fun pacing myself as I level, though! I’ve died a lot, but I love being a glass cannon.
I haven’t cuz I find it super boring.
I’ve never AoE leveled. I like the mana conservation and timing of frostbolt leveling. I don’t even feel like it’s slow.
Even though i’m mostly leveling by grinding mobs, and targeting ones with good drops to make gold, I’m not going AOE. Its too involved for long stretches of play for me, and half the time I gotta hold a baby so I need an easy spec for such times.
I’m built to get the most out of each frostbolt, with both 2/3 permafrost and 3/3 frostbite. I don’t have imp blizzard or cone of cold. After level 45, I moved toward clearcasting and improve wands.
I built my gear for spellpower over intellect, so my mana pool is low. I clear mobs with about 4 frostbolts on average, and drink every 4 to 6 kills depending on clearcasting procs. Because my mana pool is low, when I drink I never have to finish the whole thing. It keeps me moving pretty quick.
For rotation, I get out 3 to 4 frostbolts up front, then switch to wand. R1 nova for distance, and then finish w/ the wand. At level 55 now, I aim to take the last 300-500 health with the wand, and otherwise cast one more frostbolt. I rarely use fireblast unless I’m in trouble, and don’t use cone of cold—both are just burst that aren’t mana efficient.
My time per level has put me ahead of most people questing, since I spend almost zero time traveling. I mount up a couple times per level, since I’m always on foot from one mob to the next
Leveled as Fire spec. Surprisingly ended up being first 60 mage on ally side I think on my server.
Back in Vanilla I did the AoE thing and it’s neat and novel but I don’t find it fun to do for long periods of time. Frost single target is easy and safe but boring… Fire you drink more often but you also kill **** faster. It’s all about the satisfaction of the burst damage. I didn’t see too many people when I was leveling but when I did I was killing an average of 3 mobs for every one mob other people were(tbf a lot of the times people were questing in areas 2-3 levels higher than them, understandable since at the time it was near impossible to find groups for dungeons. Do not fight enemies higher level. Better to grind mobs 1-3 levels lower).
Unlike the other clothies we don’t dot & wand so instead of relying on 5sr it’s far more efficient for us to kill quickly and drink as drinking is the fastest way to recover mana(though technically if you need more mana per damage to get a couple more kills per mana bar you can use Pyro and the dots with wand aren’t bad). Find a spot that you can stand roughly in the same place and turret down mobs around you. I mention this because I see a lot of mage’s spending a ton of time wanding. Not finishing a mob off with 5% HP(which is the correct use of wands) but whittling down a mob at 20%. Either because they developed a habit early on due to the strength of the low level enchanting wands or they absorbed it from hearing people repeat about wanding for locks & priests.
Single target frostee here. I’m having fun.
I mix mostly grinding (because it’s easier to find groups that are simple to kill) with a quest here and there, usually selected for the rewarded items.
Until the 40s, it’s more efficient to just single target, and only use AoE when you have to pull a pack. You’re going to either take so much damage, or burn so much mana on mana shield that you just don’t save any time. Once you have ice barrier combined with all your other talents you need to keep control during blizzard, THEN AoE grinding becomes your best bet.
I’m not AoE leveling.
It’s boring and seems a lot slower than just Quest-leveling.
I AM AoEing quest mobs though - but not for hours on end. I just gather up what I can handle and AoE them down until I complete my quests. Then I move on.
I did a couple SM Cath runs with an AoE group. But as soon as I got Whitemane’s cap and a couple other upgrades, I went back to STV.
I’m a big Nessingwary fan.
Hello fellow waterholic,
I’m leveling in an elemental Frost/fire build 0/24/27.
Single target is murder, AoE is decent as well. You only really need 3 points into Improved Blizzard to not be awful with the AoE’s when needed.
Depending on what I’m fighting, I’m either using Frostbolts to slow/spam for crit or Fireballs+scotch to spam for crit/stuns.
I can run dungeons with great success and also engage in PvP with a decent win ratio.
I posted before about AoE, streamers and the AoE farming spots… long story short, I tried it and went right back to Frost/Fire.
Good luck sir,
May the Scotch crit/stuns be ever in your favor!
I’m leveling as fire, with a dash of frost… so I guess I’m Elemental? I did lvl non AoE frost briefly, but got bored of the frostbolt spam.
Typically mobs die after a fireball, a few scorch’s, and wand for killing blow. I have to drink a lil more often than frost, but it’s more fun and that’s what the free water is for!
You can double shatter with frostbolt and nova or fireblast. Just a tip if you want. Unless it doesn’t work in classic like it should.
The aoe grinding spots get heavily camped, if/when I make a mage I definitely won’t be emphasizing aoe play. Even if it’s faster, competing for mobs just isn’t fun to me
My wife really wanted to level as fire but all the guides lead you to believe frost is the only viable build so she is speccing that way but likes single target more than aoe.
Fire levels fine. Dont use a guide play how she wants
Don’t take everything you read on the forums to heart. This is the vocal minority.
Just because it may seem like every mag is AoE grinding when you read threads here, the truth is that most mages are just out there questing and killing things single-target.
Most of the good spots to actually AoE grind can’t support more than 1 mage doing it, anyway.
I really do enjoy classic but reading this…
Thinking about this rotation almost put me to sleep. Frostbolt three or four times then wand. That is one complaint that I do have about wow in general (retail also, classic just exacerbates the problem) is very boring and minimal rotations.
In a game like Aion on my sorcerer (old patches, dont play retail now, heard it went down the toilet) I would, on a regular basis use four full quickbars all keybound, plus another one to click. Somewhere between 50-55 skills used on a regular basis and another 5-10 a few times a day.
The difference is just… wow. One is super interactive and requires decision making, and the other is just spamming a single button. snooze
If only it had done better with the non-Korean crowd.
I gotta be honest. 55 different skills? That sounds terrible .
The learning curve can be pretty hard. A lot of people just never get good at it because it is more complex than your 2 button mashing.