Mage Talents - is this good?Follow

I am a newbie at this type of talent system - i havent gotten to play yet but ive read miles of forums on the Mage talent lines and i have a question about them - this is directed at a closed beta mage of mid-high lvl.

I am planning on going Most frost / some arcane:

Arcane Talents (17 points)


Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.


Wand Specialization - 5/5 points
Increases your damage with Wands by 25%.


Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.


Improved Arcane Explosion - 4/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.2 seconds.


Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.



Frost Talents (34 points)


Improved Frostbolt - 4/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.4 seconds.


Permafrost - 1/5 point
Increases the duration of your chill effects by 1 second.


Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your frost spell critical strikes by 100%.


Improved Frost Nova - 3/3 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by 3 seconds.


Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.


Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target's movement speed to 28% of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.


Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.


Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.


Shatter - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your frost spells against frozen targets by 50%.


Improved Frost Ward - 1/1 point
50% of the damage absorbed by your Frost Ward is added to your mana.


Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.


Frostbite - 5/5 points
Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.



Fire Talents (0 points)


None

Is this a good idea ( yes i want to go frost event though it sucks), should i do more arcane then frost i wanna keep it forst/arcane - can someone help me out with this, i dont wanna put poitns where they are useless - thanks =)

He was asking if they looked good, not if it was right or wrong.

IMHO, they look excellent. Good job.

My mage is level 43 with, at the moment, all points in the arcane tree, with the remainder going into the fire tree once I place my last couple of points in arcane in another level or two. Conventional wisdom is that the fire tree is for players high on PvE, the frost tree for those high on PvP, and the arcane tree as somewhere in the middle. Sticking with just 2 trees I think is best.

What you've got there is fine, but I'd make a couple of changes in the arcane tree:

Wand specialization: I'd forget that talent entirely. You'll get Scorch in your lower 20s (before that you really don't need it) that, in reality, does a small amount of damage compared to your other spells. It's usefulness comes from being a fairly fast cast with decent range that is used as your "nail in the coffin" for fleeing mobs. At the moment wands are single shot (you have to keep pressing the fire button for each shot you want to take) and who knows if they will change it to continuous fire. Scorch is going to do more damage than your wand and has a VERY low mana cost. To me it's a waste of talent points to get Wand Specialization if you have Scorch. Many people don't take the skill (I didn't at first) until they realize what it is useful for: a last shot to kill a fleeing mob that is low on health. You certainly don't want to find yourself in a pissing contest with a mob that is only "somewhat" low on health and you only firing wand shots at it. Having to take 2 or 3 wand shots at it is just waste of time that may get you killed when the Scorch skill can take it out in one shot.

Improved Arcane Explosion: go ahead and get the 5th point. That makes it instacast. Useful against taking out multiple lower level mobs even if you have to use it 4 or 5 times in a row. They'll all die fast and all die simultaneously.

If you're going to limit yourself in the arcane tree then the others you've chosen are great to have. One more I'd consider, maybe to replace Wand Specialization (and still give you a couple points left over since it only takes 3 points total), is Arcane Subtlety. Arcane Missiles draw an insane amount of aggro even with a warrior taunting. Anything you can do to reduce that threat level in a group is going to help your longevity in a tough boss fight.

Kaine has better input than I would - I could only give you real advice when it comes to playing a priest - but did you check all this out on a talent calculator somewhere? It seems to me when I played my mage, however briefly, that there were prerequisite issues that you aren't dealing with. Maybe I'm just confusing spells though. (I thought Ice Shards took 5/5 on the two tier 1 abilities.)

Frost does not completely suck; it just isn't the same as fire. Fire is for maximum dps to a single creature, but I don't think the mage has any fire AEs and of course frost slows the mob. Do actually buy your fire spells though; I knew someone that didn't and ran into real trouble when they came up against a water elemental.

I seem to remember my one attempt at using a wand and noticed that they fire like bows/guns do; they keep firing till you turn it off. That might have been in one of the latest patches because this was during the server test.