New mage help

[Dayoh]

Ok im back into WoW, lvl 14 Und Mage.

Never used a mage before, a very fun class :P.

Now, what spec from what iv heard Fire is for dps/Frost is for PvP and do not touch Arcane

I think ill dabble in arcane for the hell of it lol.

But please fellow WoW-heads share your wisdom

[Kamikaze_Chicken]

Arcane helps, it adds additional armor and crit chancing

Frost is probably the best, as Blizzard hates fire, as most things that are even remotely related to fire have fire resistance through the roof.

[Anoiktos]

A little note: Quest in Quel'thalas/Silverymoon if you're horde from 10-20. Or just start now. The quest rewards there are far superior to anything else you can get at that level, and the quests are easy and the experience is great. There is no reason not to do so if you have the expansion. Take the portal there from undercity.
Arcane helps, it adds additional armor and crit chancing
Arcane resilience is crap. It's moderately useful when you have very high INT, but it's not something a mage should take while leveling. You are correct that arcane does have many good +crit talents, but fire's are generally superior, especially with its +% damage talents. A 33/28 build is sometimes used to get the effects of Arcane's crit bonus talents *and* fire's, creating absolutely huge scorch crits and large stacking DOTs with ignire, but this build has fallen out of favor compared to 2/48/11 of late.


Talents

For leveling, I recommend fire. 2/48/11 is the current favored full fire spec, (2 arcane subtlety, going 11 in frost to grab the Icy Veins talent and elemental precision), it's not very good in PVP (better than it was, but as a 17/0/44 mage I can assure you that the water elemental changes everything in PVP).

Go full fire, and quest or grind caster mobs when you can. Only consider frost for leveling if you're on a PVP server.

Arcane is currently a viable spec when using the Tier 5 mage armor only, as its bonus to Arcane Blast makes that spec worthwhile with an AB/AB/AM/fireblast rotation. This is due to AB's incredible mana efficiency and AM's incredible DPS when fully specced arcane, and the ability to time the AB debuff to maximum effect with a carefully laid out rotation.

This doesn't work on fights that require movement (i.e. shade of Aran and similar), but works most of the time.

For fire, you first want improved fireball, then flame throwing/ignite, then burning soul/incineration, in that order. After that, well, improved scorch is good if you use scorch, any talent which gives you +crit % is good, and improved fireball is good.

Pyroblast and Blast wave are good, blazing speed is *fun* (though not really useful in PVE unless you're trying to run away), firepower, pyromaniac, and molten fury are all good (though molten fury is really mostly useful against bosses), and dragonsbreath is invaluable (replace cone of cold with it on your bar) due to the momentary disable it grants.

Note that as I said, the *core* talents for leveling are to improve DPS (improved fireball), crit (incineration), and your ability to cast even while being attacked (burning soul), as well as range (flame throwing). I personally recommend spell damage gear, as the more spell damage you have, especially while grinding, the less you have to cast to kill something, and the less time you have to wait for your mana to regen (because you both have less mana and used less mana killing mob X)

If you're having a lot of trouble with things hitting you, get 5/5 improved frostbolt and use rank 1 of it (.5 second cast) after your initial fireball or pyroblast (never use pyroblast as anything but an opener unless you have Presence of Mind) to slow things down.

Professions

I highly recommend, despite its clichéness, enchanting/tailoring as your professions. Enchanting grants you the ability to enchant your rings with spell damage, which you otherwise cannot have an enchanter do for you, and tailoring allows you to make shadowcloth or spellcloth robes/boots/shoulders, which are the best possible raiding gear for a mage until T6 at least, as well as the battlecast set (which stacks with the shadow/spellcloth and is better than T5).

Enchanting is also an excellent profession for making money once you max it. Before then, it's a huge money sink. If you ever have disenchanting mats you can't use (i.e. you don't get skillups for using them), sell them on the auction house, as they sell for quite a bit.

If you don't want those, pick up skinning and one of the other gathering professions (mining or herbalism), or Jewelcrafting/Mining. Selling the raw materials from those (or the RAW jewels gotten from mining/jewelcrafting) will make you a mint. Remember, raw materials sell for more than not-raw materials.

Strategy

In general, your combat should go like this:

Fireball (or pyroblast), Fireball, Fireblast, frost nova, back up, Fireball. If what you're fighting isn't dead by then, you can scorch, fireball, fireblast, and cone of cold until it goes away.

Against elites... Don't, as fire.

Against casters, use counterspell when their spell is near finishing (time your spells around it) to waste a maximum of their time.

Against multiple opponents, Fireball one, polymorph the other, and continue as normal.

When running away, frost nova once they get to you, then blink once they get to you again, and hope they've either given up by that time or your frost nova is back up by the time they get to you again.

Use Dampen Magic on yourself at all times *when not in a group*. It helps in PVP and makes casting mobs trivial.

Other options

If you find Fire just isn't for you, either go arcane (improved arcane missiles has no pushback, so you can just spam it) or frost (things are slow so you get more hits in before they get to you).

2/48/11 and 17/0/44 are respectively considered the best specs for most gear levels in PVE and PVP at 70.

AOE Grinding

If you're new, don't try this. If you feel confident, have a large mana pool (you want INT/STAM gear for this, +dmg is almost useless for AOE spells), and know what you're doing, spec frost and start grinding. You want full permafrost and improved blizzard, as well as the improved frost nova talent. You do NOT want, under ANY circumstances, frostbite while AOE grinding.

Steps:

1. Gather up your foes. Use a mount for this if you can. Start with things around two levels lower than you, preferably with no ranged attacks or special abilities, who are tightly packed together (groups of 4-8, practice with 3).

2. Dismount, frost nova.

3. RUN as far as you can (just out of blizzard range, you'll get used to how far you can push it) and target the back edge of your blizzard onto your foes.

4. Channel the blizzard. Repeat steps 3-4 if you think you can get away with it before they get to you. (they go *very* slowly)

5. When they get too close, cone of cold, then start running. When frost nova's back up, use it, rinse, and repeat.

6. When they're all dead, rinse and repeat.

Note: if they're almost dead, you can sometimes frost nova then arcane explosion to burst them down, but this is usually unnecessarily dangerous.

[Dayoh]

Thank you for the very detailed responce.

With the professions, i was going to do tail/chant but i have a friend who has maxed both of these skills on his main; So i went with Herb/Alch

Quest in Quel'thalas/Silverymoon if you're horde from 10-20.

Im questin at "the sepulcher" at the moment, the quests in "Ghostlands" arent too bad. The thing is iv already done the Quel'thalas quest (my very first was a Belf Pally), Iv never rolled an Und before so thats why im doing the Und route.

Ill toy around with the talent calc before "sticking" to one (in the end it costs too much money to repec so im trying to minimize it).

thanx

[Anoiktos]

With the professions, i was going to do tail/chant but i have a friend who has maxed both of these skills on his main; So i went with Herb/Alch
Herbalism and Alchemy are excellent professions, but regrettably the most useful parts of enchanting and tailoring are applicable for the tailor or enchanter only, wheras Alchemy gives you little benefit that you could not otherwise get through gold. Still, it is a fun profession, and easy to skill up.

Im questin at "the sepulcher" at the moment, the quests in "Ghostlands" arent too bad. The thing is iv already done the Quel'thalas quest (my very first was a Belf Pally), Iv never rolled an Und before so thats why im doing the Und route.
The difference is that you will receive in the ghostlands early +dmg items that would otherwise be mostly unavailable until level 58. Either way works.


Ill toy around with the talent calc before "sticking" to one (in the end it costs too much money to repec so im trying to minimize it).

Good idea, but the 'improved fireball' and 'improved frostbolt' talents are extremely good, so while saving is an excellent idea if you're unsure, I would advise not delaying for ten levels before picking one. Five or so (until level 20-22) is.. Okay, but you will really notice the difference.