Hello gang! I’m leveling a mage and I was wondering what is the ideal leveling spec? I’m leveling as Fire right now which seems ok, but my buddy was saying how he likes frost more for the control over the mobs…arcane I guess is now the healing spec? Which one would you guys recommend for leveling? Especially with phase 3 coming out. Thanks in advance!
Fire and arcane are the preferred choices in sod. Frost is the under performer.
Depends, open world or dungeons?
Once you get to SM GY, having at least 1 imp blizz mage in a mage group is very beneficial.
Then in lib and upward I want all 3/4 mages to be imp blizz.
For a general SM strat please see this post. New Mage help - #2 by Archewing-azjolnerub
Otherwise for open world I would just stick with fire.
generally fire or arcane is faster
frost is more fun and less dangerous though
Going to depend on what level you are and what runes you have access to.
When you are able to get arcane blast rune, that’s going to outperform fireball or frostbolt dps by a mile. I’d suggest grabbing this early if you can. It really doesn’t matter what spec you go with arcane blast, cus the arcane tree doesn’t really buff arcane damage all that much. I personally went frost, so that I opened with a frost bolt (on mobs), slowing them and allowing me to get more arcane blasts off without being touched.
Then as you hit later levels, like 30+, your talent tree choice is going to have a bigger influence on your damage output. Here are some options for a viable “leveling spec”:
- Stick with arcane blast as your primary damage dealer, and put talent points into arcane. Benefit of this is it’ll make you extremely mana efficient. If you can pick up spell frost bolt rune, you can weave this in between your arcane blast to keep the mana cost in check.
- Go fire. This will be your highest damage dealer, but not by THAT much. It’s also very mana intensive, so you’ll find yourself drinking a lot more between mobs. I personally don’t think the increase in DPS is worth the much more frequent down time required for drinking.
- Go frost/fire hybrid. Put points into both ignite and ice shards for big crit damage. For this build to work, you’ll need to pick up frostfire bolt rune. This is another fairly mana efficient build that I personally like for leveling. Great balance between damage output and mana efficiency for less downtime.
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Arcane, and spec 5/5 into Imp. Arcane Missiles. Throw on Regeneration and blast away.
Also try to get Missile Barrage ASAP for that machine-gun “majik misle” ((Am I too old…have people forgot about casting magic missiles at the darkness???)).
Plus you can heal as Arcane (way more efficiently), which is a huge plus if you want to get into group content; DPS is a plenty.
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Is arcane viable in both open world and dungeons as far as damage?
Also is it soley a healing spec now?
Arcane is pretty good for damage. You kind of lose aoe tho bc the best aoe spell (living bomb) shares rune slot with arcane blast. But if youre not doing aoe farm runs, arcane will give you very good and mana efficient dps.
All of this is pretty bad advice so far.
Frost is the absolute king of leveling for mages overall, you will hearing things like fire dealing more damage or being faster, or arcane having X novelty, but those specs don’t support the playstyle that leveling requires.
Frost has the easiest and most consistent single target setup, as well as being the best and pretty much only spec for aoe lvling unless you are very advanced at mage.
The thing that trips people up about mages is you use all 3 schools of magic regardless of spec. When you get arcane blast you can open with 1 frostbolt and arcane blast 2-3 times for better damage/dps/damage:mana ratio, you will still want to be frost spec during this time, for example.
In dungeons you can spam living bomb, living flame, and then lay down an IMP blizzard and control large pulls basically solo. For single target you lose very little by being frost but gain a lot and if you pay attention mostly make your group wipe-proof (mobs can’t escape easily with frostbolt on them).
The proof(besides the spells) is the lvl 11, 21, and 31 talent points. Cold snap is better than pyroblast, iceblock is better than blastwave, and ice barrier is LEAGUES ahead of combustion. Leveling tests your characters ability to repeat a pattern safely and efficiently, frost is better at doing this with those 3 tools than fire or arcane are.
Living bomb is a frost mage spell
Arcane blast is a frost mage spell
Living flame is a frost mage spell
Swapping to arcane surge pants when low on mana isn’t reserved for arcane mages.
Literally frost no matter what content you are doing, unless you have dual spec to go fire for level-up gnomer, and even then frost would be sufficient if you are pushing appropriate buttons.
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It doesn’t really matter what spec you want to play tbh. Frost is good for control, and normally is really good, but in SOD, it doesn’t matter.
Living Bomb / Living Flame for runes and ur chillin. Play which one you like the most.
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Frost bolt is just as much of an arcane mage spell as living bomb is a frost mage spell. You could still open up with frost bolt and proceed to arcane blast mobs away.
The benefits of arcane tree is mana efficiency, and having uninterrupted arcane missile for arcane barrage procs.
Imp blizzard is not required for aoe’ing mobs down in dungeons.
Dont get me wrong, frost is a good leveling spec. But with runes there are many other viable options
It really does not matter as a mage. They are super easy to level.
You can get 600-1.2K dps in dungeons using living bomb, living flame and arcane explosion. Just living bomb eveything that moves, throw a living flame in the mob pack and arcane explosion all over them. The more mobs the tank pulls the higher the number goes.
Throw in regen for open world AoE face tanking and you can solo with the same mix. Pick whatever talents catch your fancy.
Frost is more efficient than arcane, all said and done.
If you were stuck on an island with only one aoe spell you would take bizzard 10/10 times. For general gameplay intentions, frost and blizzard are king, fire and arcane contribute almost nothing to living flame and living bomb. (including ignite on LB)
1 solo Russian guy with a frost mage got the first level 60 in all of classic and he was against a team of people. It isn’t good, it has the most control and breaks world records.
Those options enhance frost more than the opposite. But you can level with any spec, SOD does make it easier, but new players need to hear the truth. Frost is king.
FoF and blizzard for chain critting Living bomb is better than 6% crit and ignite any day.
Perma frost letting cone of cold slows overlap before the debuff drops is king.
Frequent +50% crit chance is more mana efficient than 10% chance to get a free spell. Especially while ice lance doesn’t break novas.
I leveled a mage in vanilla, vanilla tbc, 3 or 4 more on unmentionable servers, 2 in classic wow, and 1 in SOD. Frost is the best spec, there is no contest. Pick what makes you happy, but don’t trick the new guys.
i did arcane and it was waaay better than fire/frost for open world content IF you like aoe grinding.
- pre cast regeneration
- pull 6-8 mobs with living bomb
- living flame
- Arcane exp till everything is dead.
blizzard wont do enough damage to kill mobs same lvl as you. fire is slight worse than arcane for leveling. But fire is bis for endgame.
Frost is good for dungeons because you still have living bomb/living flame which is most your damage but you also can take Improved Blizzard and Permafrost to use Blizzard (rank 1 to save mana) to prevent mobs from running off.
But the other specs do more damage.
Spec also doesn’t matter as much as mage with runes in play. Getting decent runes as early as possible affects leveling more so than spec.