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Mage Talent Builds
July 12, 2008 by Zuggy
If you’re looking for the best mage talent builds then you’ve come to the right place. This mage spec guide will be continually updated to reflect the current best arcane, fire, frost and hybrid builds for pvp, pve, leveling and more! With that said, let’s get to the good stuff!
PvP Mage Specs
When we consider mage pvp builds their are a variety of factors we must consider. The first, and most important is the purpose of the build. We basically have two types of pvp builds, those builds for arena, and those builds not for arena.
For the purpose of arena we are really looking at 2 types of mage talent builds. Mage builds that focus on burst or mage builds that focus on longevity. In essence, frost vs. arcane.
- 20/0/51 – frost, high survivability, high mana longevity
- 58/13/0 – arcane, high burst, moderate survivabilty
- 55/16/0 – arcane, variation on stanard arcane burst build, very similar to 58/13/0
If you’re looking for additional information on pvp and arena, head over here, mage pvp specs guide.
The following pvp specs are great for battlegrounds and world PvP, though I don’t consider them optimal for arena. That said, if you have the right type of team they could work.
- 0/56/15 – fire, high burst, moderate longevity, great for battlegrounds
PvE Mage Specs
The one thing I really love about raiding as a mage is the wide variety of potential specs you can choose to raid with. There are many great mage talent builds out there for PvE. They all offer a slightly different experience and play style, but each is viable in it’s own regard.
- 18/0/53 – frost
- 0/18/53 – frost
- 30/0/41 – frost / arcane hybrid build
- 0/51/20 – frostfire
- 18/53/0 – fireball
- 57/3/11 – arcane
Mage Leveling Build
For leveling purposes I like to keep it pretty simple…let’s just say we’re going to have a few points in frost. The following build is your ideal leveling build, you’ll have great AoE spells for pulling huge packs, mana longevity, and survivabilty. It’s the perfect build for long grinding and questing sessions.
- 0/0/71 – full frost
Additionally, if you’re looking for a kick ass guide to help you power through your levels check out this, level 1-70 in 6 days 5 hours. I’ve personally used this guide myself and let me tell you, it’s got an awesome in-game mod that guides you the whole way!
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You got that 61-point build from Orichi? Been curious to see it, but I could never find it.
Took a bit of searching, but I found it in the archives of my old site. Went ahead and posted it under the pvp specs section. Thanks for reminding me about that one, Scythe.
heya when i click on your fire mage guild in the paragraph
For all you fire fans out there I suggest going with 2/48/11 fire mage build. It’s got the best overall damage of any fire spec and will optimize your DPS with rolling ignites. You should note that there are 3 free points in this build, I’ve chosen to put 1 in pyro, 1 in improved flamestrike, and 1 in blastwave. You could toss those 3 in really any talents of your choice.
of your article, it only hows up to level 45 of the talents, I would love to see the 2/48/11 build if poss
Many Thanks xx
I intentionally left those 3 points out of the actual build, those 3 points are optional and can be put in what ever you’d like.
As I said in the section of context you copy pasted I would put 1 point in pyro, 1 in imp. flamestrike and 1 in blastwave.
Hey, I am trying to do your “http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VcZZVAMIsfxsbot” talent sheet, 13/0/48. For some reason when I click it I get 13/0/41. Is their someway you can send me a screen shot of how its supposed too look like.
Thank you for the help!
hey horgrrathi…here’s the fixed build.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VcZZVIcIsfuI0zg0o
unfortunately when wowhead changed their linking structure a few months ago it broke all of my talent builds. Haven’t a chance to get back and fix them all, but I’m working on those in the next few weeks.
Cool, thank you so much!
Just our of curiosity, where would you place the other 10 points. I was thinking of going all the way down but for me Deep Freeze does not sound very impressive. Any ideas?
Thank you for the help, the talent build is helping a lot?
I would probably just fill out the rest of the frost tree. In all honesty, you could just go 61 points into frost while leveling. There really aren’t any bad talents in the tree.
Hey Zuggy,
i was just wondering wouldnt arcane be better for power leveling? Because you could just spam Arcane explosion? With the improved Arcane Explosion Talent tree , talent…. Also in arcane spec you have 3x to crictal strike an enemy, during combat then in frost. Also Arcane does a butt load of damage knocking frost off the charts. I just dont understand why you spec Frost as power lvling, i would go Arcane, the fact u do more damage at once then in frost where u have to freeze then slow them down……Correct me if im wrong…i may sound harsh but im only to get the right spec for my mage.
It’s simply a mana issue in my book. You’re correct, arcane will do a lot more damage …as will fire in most cases, but if you are chain grinding you are going to simply run out of mana far before you do with frost.
As frost there is virtually zero down time, which in the long run gives it the edge over both fire and arcane in my book.