Leveling Post 3.3.3Follow

Hey guys, I never post here but I check every now and then because I keep thinking to myself "one day I'll level a mage...one day". Well with my rogue settling into a nice ICC25 rhythm I want to pick up a new class to pewpew and flex my e-peen. I'm thinking mage, especially since I already have the 2 cloth heirlooms. Now, while I know that any spec will level with ease because it's not hard to quest, even with no talent points spent, I would like some suggestions on a good build that I can level efficiently with as well as do dungeons/pvp leveling without too much difficulty. I saw the update by Anobix and the 57/3/11 build, considering giving that a shot, But I also saw a frost build somewhere not too far down. It was only up until 70 but it had filled out all 61 points into Frost so I'm wondering how viable that is. Thoughts/suggestions/gfto noobs?



-Drgn

I would definitely go frost. Your burst damage is insane if procs work right, and when you get your Elemental your dps in dungeons will beat everyones. I managed 1450dps on a singletarget boss at level 63. It was a very short fight, but still made me feel all warm inside.

With the number of Fail Knight tanks you are likely to meet while levelling being frost is nice for the survivability. You can prevent a wipe by kiting 4 mobs at once after the tank dies, you can Iceblock twice if you pull aggro.

And when questing if you have Brainfreeze and FoF procced as you go into a fight you can effectively 1-shot the mob with your Frostbolt, Fireball and Waterbolt all hitting and critting at the same time. Replenishment and stupidly cheap spells means you will probably never stop to drink.

Can you tell im a fan of Frost?

I levelled as fire and a bit as arcane, personally. I find fire best if you do a lot of dungeons because by deviating just a bit from the cookie cutter you can grab four talents which effectively give you an AOE rotation (yes, you read that right), which is SICK for DPS in instances where trash comes in the shape of 3 or more mobs (read: pretty much every instance). That, and it's still quite effective on single-target DPS as well - probably moreso than a pure frost build would be pre-80.

That said, as a mage, really everything just seems to work. As a priest, if you go holy, you might end up having some mana problems. As a rogue, assassination will suck completely until you can get Mutilate. As a druid, balance will just be proper weird and it'll be impossible for you to find groups. As a mage, none of the three specs seem to have a drawback that is actually large enough to ruin your efficiency in instances, PvP and pure questing. All three specs are literally viable for all content, all the way up to 80. And then even when you do get the magic ding, your spec only really starts to matter in arenas or proper raids.

With a modified Frost build (sacrificing Frostbolt to buff Blizzard), Frost is pretty sweet in instances as well.

Ran a couple of randoms and pushed 400-600 DPS on almost every pull. Though my DPS did suck on single targets due to Improved Frostbolt not being in the build, it was pretty nice pushing almost 1k DPS on a large trash pull.

At level 42.