Trying classic mage for the frost time and not sure if one spec is generally wanted more than the others?
Using Icy Veins and they have three builds listed
Cant link it tho
you’re going to play a mage and not shoot pyroblasts and fireballs? really?
forget recommended, go fire.
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I have seen 2 mages use a fire spell.
This is bad advice until AQ. Don’t listen to this.
There are multiple good frost mage builds so it depends on what you want to do. There’s one for AoE leveling, one for single-target and one for maxing your power in raids. Both icy-veins and wowhead have all of them.
well i usually pick up arcane for the anti resists in the top row, and put the rest into frost tilll i reach cold snap, then spend 1 gold to redo talents and put them all into frost
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Basically for some raids you go full frost because mobs are fire resistant.
For the rest of the raids you go Fire because a huge portion of mage damage in a raid comes from rolling large ignite procs on bosses. If all 4 mages are fire in a raid, then they can roll a huge Ignite proc for the entire fight.
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frost till AQ is released, then fire. then when tbc rolls out, arcane and frost. if i recall
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Ragnaros and Baron are the only immune mobs. The rest resist but still get hurt pretty good by a fire mage. maybe 40% resist or so at most? i played straight Fire before, in Era.
Instead of trying to hard sell you on my favorite spec, I’ll just tell you what I observe in game right now –
AoE frost mages are basically instantly invited to every group, and are useful even underleveled and undergeared. A frost mage with the right aoe build spamming Blizzard on trash pulls at max distance is worth pretty much 2 of any non-mage while doing 5 man content.
Anniversary realms have dualspec at 40, so feel free to try Random Forum Poster’s pet spec as an alt, but if you wanna be invited/coveted in dungeon content, go AoE frost for now.
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Frost is the way, however I’m going to go pyro anyway, survival as hunter, assassination rogue not combat and holy as priest, all stuff I’ve never bothered to do because … meta. don’t even care if its bad lol
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Fire is fine for leveling.
Frost is better, but fire is fine.
I’m going to go against the grain here, and I’m aware that you’re asking because you’re looking for the “best” build; however.
First, it is my opinion that you should just play the game. It is a GAME. The point is to play, not to obey your meta overloards and follow the Horde (if you’ll pardon the pun) of people who just blindly do what they’re told. So in that sense, go with what feels like fun. Now that dual spec is available at level 40, you have even more room to play around, as well.
On the other hand, it has been my experience that a Frost build — of pretty much any type — has more survivability in solo play, but that if you want to kill (most) things fast, a Fire build will allow you to blow a lot of enemies to flaming smithereens. Combining the two will often mess up your Frost effects, breaking freezing in place by adding damage over time.
The only one I haven’t played as much was an Arcane build, but I was unimpressed overall as it didn’t seem to have much to make it stand out, at least not early on in PvE.
All that said. Play the game the way you want to. If you want to follow someone’s guide and go with a meta build, then do it. They’re considered meta because they do tend to give what most people find easiest to play. 
on my mage im Pom pyro for pvp and aoe farming as my off spec. dont care to raid MC just getting r14
51 Arcane is bis. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
I think most people are lame if they just invite frost mages for 5-man content, min-maxing a 20-year old game or playing warrior/mage for meta. As a tank and healer when I start group, I invite people closer to the dungeons that are ready and committed, not half-heartedly queuing from half of the world away. I just had a group with 2 hunters and 1 rogue, and a priest healer and me as a druid tank. Our group didn’t argue about loots and I don’t care about loots either.
I think only inviting frost mages isn’t great (you need physical damage at times), but I think avoiding frost mages is a huge mistake.
There’s a marked difference between a run with zero frost mages and one frost mage. A good tank can do incredible things mid-blizzard, and it allows for the rest of the party to actually AOE trash.
Level and pvp imp blizzard, raid 31/0/20