Mage Leveling - So Far

Evening,

So last night my mage finally got to level 58. I had to get off after that so I have yet to take her into outlands to start the massive xp whore that Hellfire will be. I wanted to get my thoughts on the leveling process for me up to this point. I didn't get duel spec until around level 50 and then only to try out other specs to see how they played at this point. My primary leveling spec has been frost and will continue to be so. Now on to my thoughts of each spec up to this point.

Frost-

• Awesome mob control
• Best survivability of all the specs
• Best AOE damage and grinding capability
• Average DPS when Icy Veins is up/when it becomes available the elemental helps this a lot, though I didn't glyph it for the frost nova when AOE grinding
• There is a lot of drinking until you get the replenishment effect

Arcane-

• Capable Dps
• Very mana efficient due to Clearcasting and mage armor/shortened Evocate cooldown makes any bad points very easy to deal with
• Almost no AOE grind availability
• Using Flamestrike and Blizzard together AOE DPS is just as capable as Frost but more mana intense if Clearcasting procs are not very friendly
• Mana shield can be talented cheaper but I didn't use it, with proper use of Frost Nova there was no need for it

Fire-

• Very long cast times make it feel very slow
• can kill almost any mob before they reach you
• very mana intense, will be drinking even more than Frost due to most mana return coming from the crit DOT ticking which it rarely gets to
• In instances things tend to die so fast you don't have time to really get the DPS rolling even though I would say it has the highest DPS potential at this stage

So as you can tell I prefer frost for just about everything. Even though I have really been enjoying Arcane Missiles in instances. AOE grinding quest is defiantly the most time effective way to go with frost. Arcane doesn't really kill single target any faster than frost at this point. I really didn't care for fire at all. I just felt so so slow with the very long cast times it has.

I will continue to update this list and my feels as I continue to level. I am very excited about getting Living Bomb and Arcane Blast. I want to try AOE grinding with Living Bomb and see if I can make something work. Arcane Blast is what makes arcane viable so I will defiantly be using that for some good massive damage fun.

/breaths a sigh relief