aoe leveling worth it?

[SupersizeMe]

well i was wondering if u spec rite would aoe leveling be faster than questing?
i saw this interesting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ9DOKIGotw
what do u guys think

[Cherubin]

It makes leveling so much faster. I wish I would've known better when I went from 1-70. I tried about 5 different specs to level from 70-80, which includes arcane, firestarter, frostfire, single target frost, and frost aoe. Frost aoe wins imo. I specced it the first time only to spec back into it later. It only took me a few days to hit 80; I was the opposite of a power leveler from 1-70.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

That was my spec at 73. It maximizes mana regen considerably. Couple that with a mage armor glyph and a mage has 80% mana regeneration while casting. Spirit is actually a useful leveling stat. I rarely drank, even when I spammed aoe's. My crit rate was very low, but frostbite + improved blizzard + winter's chill + FoF = what you saw on that video. Add permafrost, and mobs are slowed to a crawl.

The single target damage is indeed weak with this spec. However, this was a godly spec when I ran the majority of the instances to level. A mage can spam aoe, and the tank doesn't have to wait for the mage to drink after every 2 pulls. What I did with my remaining talent points was invest in the water elemental and frostbolt to help with bosses, because no other talent affects aoe dmg other then Arctic Winds and possibly World in Flames (but it would be a little late for that). Choice is yours.

You have to try it to believe it. It's awesome. I kited 2 mobs better with blizzard then my other mage tools and didn't worry about mana too much. If I had to do it again, I'd spec this way again in a heartbeat.

edit: To answer the original poster's question, I aoe grinded quests

[miekkagoon]

i have 72 frosty and i do Qs simply pulling kill 0/10 10 mobs and simply starting to let blizzard do work for me

(lol bad joke)

[SupersizeMe]

hmm interesting build, i was thinking of something like this for pure aoe:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

[Cherubin]

hmm interesting build, i was thinking of something like this for pure aoe:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

I actually tried a build very similar to that. The only difference is that I had master of elements too. The stun procs with blizzard is nice, but I found that I ended up drinking too often.

[Proxiz]

I wish he had made a longer video, why? He shows 4min with prime farming, with all CD's. If he had to do 1 more pull he would not have a IB to round all the mobs up. I did this as well, but found it hard to pull every single mob when IB and coldsnap was on CD.

But all in all, its better xp/hour then questing by fare.