Best leveling spec for mages

[Deleted]

Hello,

What is the current best spec for mages when leveling?

I've tried both frost and arcane and I seem to take more damage than I actually progress XP-wise when leveling.

[Deleted]

your not supposed to take dmg from random mobs as a mage (very easy to kite).

I lvl'd as frost and it was easy enough frost bomb with deep freeze and the mob was pretty much dead.

[Deleted]

Perhaps I am lacking kiting skills or something. How are you using the skills in order?

[Envyadams]

Frost gives the best survivability and you really need the control with your freezes later in the levels. Fire is ok but with gaining lvls and the gear available your stats don't scale well.

Arcane...if you want to lvl as arcane go ahead but thinking your gonna be stopping all the time and i don't see the dmg prior to 90, anyways this is all imo so take it with grain of salt and just lvl how you want.

---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 09:30 AM ----------

Perhaps I am lacking kiting skills or something. How are you using the skills in order?

Frostbolts (slows target) Mage Bomb use your pets freeze and if the mob catches up use Nova and Blink away.

It should almost be natural for you to kite as a Frost Mage.

[Tokhar]

I've been leveling my little mage as arcane (currently level 50) after having both frost and fire as offspecs to try every few levels. Granted I'm in full heirlooms, but the AOE ability (nova ftw) and the fairly quick switching time between targets for an arcane mage in instances is largely OP. you are fine in the wild so long as you kite even a little bit, but the spec seems to really shine in group play in instances, especially those with large group pulls. For some reason I still find myself decursing and sheeping ranged mobs that are on healer, too

frankly, all three specs are scary fast to level, it depends on whether you prefer control (frost) single target boom boom (fire) or great aoe and a lesser mix of single target control and kill.

Biggest surprise for me has been that the mana bar never moves from full...

[taishar68]

What I've experienced in MoP (Level 85+) is that kiting isn't always possible, given the density of mobs in certain areas...but with Ice Barrier being available to any spec, you can face-pull a mob and kill it without taking any or little damage. I chose to level with Fire due to Arcane's lack of Mana regen until 90 (perhaps not a huge deal for leveling, but still), and, due to a lack of crit, I find it takes way too long to kill mobs...my overall impression is that mobs in Pandaria don't hit all that hard, but they take a long time to kill...still just 88 so perhaps I'll see if I can kill faster with Arcane without having too much downtime. Playing as Fire has no mana issues at all; I have not tried Frost, but that definitely affords the most control and you can easily kite mobs, assuming the first part of my statement doesn't apply at the given moment.

[Biged781]

It should almost be natural for you to kite as a Frost Mage.

Yep.

OP, do you play any PvP? If not, you may consider giving it a shot. Frost mages have a wide array of control spells. So much so that you can cycle through them essentially indefinitely. A "dumb" pve mob should never even get close to you. Between your pet freeze, brain freeze, frost nova, cone of cold, the slow applied by frostbolt, blink, polymorph... I mean, I could keep going and look how long this list is already!

Setup good keybinds, learn how to strafe, play some pvp, and you'll seriously never get hit by a mob again. I can take on 4-5 at a time without much thought, it's just that easy with a frost mage.

What I've experienced in MoP (Level 85+) is that kiting isn't always possible, given the density of mobs in certain areas...

This is the case in some areas, true. However, you can kite and keep the mobs fairly close at the same time. You do have to be a bit careful in the crowded areas. Last resort -> Invis and run away.

[Imnick]

Personally I think the best opener for Frost while levelling or doing dailies goes;

Frostjaw > Frost Bomb > Frostbolt > Deep Freeze (it hits before Frostbolt lands, giving you shatter), Frostbolt x 2 (Frostbolt hits harder than Ice Lance when it benefits from your mastery), Ice Lance (hits at the same time as your second Frostbolt and gets Shatter even if you have no FoF procs) > Frostfire Bolt

In the unlikely even that the mob is still alive use Freeze > Frostbolt > Ice Lance and it shouldn't be any more
This is of course only if you are fighting one target, considering Frost's two AOE roots, powerful 60 second AOE cooldown, Frostbomb and Shatter you should probably be pulling several at once.

[Skelebones]

Frost by far, maybe fire.

My frost rotation - open with frost bomb, frostbolt, pet freeze into deep freeze, ice lance x4 (bomb goes off giving a brain freeze proc) but mob is usually dead so use that as an opener on next mob. Always use frozen orb, mirror images, deep freeze on cooldown.

Fire is susceptible to good/bad streaks of crits, even with inferno blast which really lowers damage output without getting enough pyros out.

This video does a pretty good job of going through each mage spec the rotations and timing how fast each spec can go through about 12 mobs.

[Deleted]

Frost by far, maybe fire.

My frost rotation - open with frost bomb, frostbolt, pet freeze into deep freeze, ice lance x4 (bomb goes off giving a brain freeze proc) but mob is usually dead so use that as an opener on next mob. Always use frozen orb, mirror images, deep freeze on cooldown.

Fire is susceptible to good/bad streaks of crits, even with inferno blast which really lowers damage output without getting enough pyros out.

This video does a pretty good job of going through each mage spec the rotations and timing how fast each spec can go through about 12 mobs.

I got exactly the same rotation i just start with frost bolt and then frost bomb. I just don't like looking at a mob that isn't slowed :S