My heart goes out to you – using boosted gear haha.

The unfortunate reality is that TBC’s launch will effectively determine your leveling strategy. Why I say this is because if Blizzard doesn’t create enough layers for us, Mages and Paladins alike are going to be competing for each prime grinding location, we’re going to have hundreds, if not thousands, of other players competing with us for quest mobs/objectives. The main takeaway from this is that if this does happen, you’ll find it very difficult to AoE grind to any degree.

Frost does boast higher survivability, while providing less damage overall. Fire is the opposite of that. Not only will Fire allow you to contribute more while in groups, it will also make your grinding/questing significantly faster since you’ll be killing mobs a lot faster than if you were single-targeting while Frost spec’d.

I’m also a believer in learning the spec you’re choosing for level 70 as early as possible. (Talents, spells, rotation, debuffs, effects, etc.) I believe until you put something into practice and test it out for yourself, it’s just theory. For example, the Fire Mage rotation is admittedly pretty basic, but in order to maximize the benefit from the rotation, you’d need perfect latency, which seems to be hit or miss with players. In this case, 9 Fireballs would be the absolute maximum during the Scorch debuff before reapplying it, and that requires perfect latency. Some players may only be able to get off 5-6 with their internet.

Heya Avi!

I apologize for the delay in my response, but I’ve just been trying to figure out the best build to allow for Improved Blizzard while maintaining high damage output for boss/single-target encounters.

In heroics, Improved Blizzard is one of those things that are essentially hit-or-miss, with the determining factor being your tank. For example, if you have a Paladin tank, you have a much better chance of being able to use Blizzard than if you were to have a Warrior or Druid tank. Realistically, Improved Blizzard would be utilized in anticipation of the tank losing aggro, so that whomever gains aggro has the chance of surviving until the tank can taunt the mob. However, Improved Blizzard does have an advantage in caster groups since there’ll be more AoE happening. The sad reality of pugging any groups is that in one group, you may have a tank who LOVES AoE damage and encourages you to use it whenever, while the next group’s tank will get mad at you for using it.

In terms of farming, it really depends on how you look at it. On one hand, Improved Blizzard does provide extra control, but on the other hand, without various talents under Frost, your pulls will be small anyway since you’ll be relying on using Mana Shield which can be seen as a negative since it drains your mana instead of just straight-up absorbing damage. Can Improved Blizzard help when farming? You bet. It just depends on how you orient your pulls, how much it will help.

Dropping Pyroblast and Blast Wave is fine if you want to grab Improved Blizzard, but I wouldn’t drop Dragon’s Breath. If you intend on AoEing throughout heroics, there’s a good chance that you may steal aggro, and with Dragon’s Breath, it disorients the target(s) for up to 3 seconds, unless damage is caused to it, but that will give you time to either create distance or get closer to the tank for a Taunt to regain aggro. Blast Wave does daze targets, but that really only affects melee mobs.

Here’s the build that I came up with to grab Improved Blizzard.

Heya!

I’m confident that you will love TBC Classic!

It’s a great point to bring up that Mages, along with every ranged DPS class, should avoid going into melee range at all costs. While the main reason is because we don’t have to in order to deal damage, it’s also notable to remember how threat works…

While we’re within melee range, we’re allowed to exceed the tank’s threat by 110%.

While we’re outside of melee range, we’re allowed to exceed the tank’s threat by 130%.

Dragon’s Breath and Blast Wave are both usable from outside of melee range. (Not as far away as you can use Blizzard, granted, but it’s still outside melee range.)

The other thing to consider with both spells is that Ignite can proc on each and every mob the spell lands on, causing additional damage. They both also daze mobs, allowing you to potentially escape a little easier from situations where Blink is on cooldown.

Frost Warding will never be utilized since if we were to use Ice Armor, we would lose 3% Critical Strike Chance and the 5% reduction in the chance for us to be critically hit.

There are only two spells that benefit from Frostbite outside of Ice Armor – Frostbolt and Cone of Cold.

In regards to AoE pulls;

1.) If we combined Cone of Cold with Frostbite, that’s actually potentially a recipe for disaster. Even using Frost Nova in pulls can lead to deaths just the same as surpassing your tank’s threat can. If a mob is frozen and the tank is out of their melee range, that mob will just attack whomever is in their melee range, even if the tank technically had aggro. This tends to happen quite frequently in raids such as Karazhan, for example.

2.) Because Cone of Cold deals less damage than Blizzard, Blast Wave, Flamestrike and Arcane Explosion, it would only be used as a means of crowd control. By the time you can go and use Cone of Cold on a pull, the tank generally has it where they want it, so Frostbite doesn’t actually benefit anyone at that point. On top of that, you’re more likely to enter melee range, which reduces your threat leniency. So, realistically speaking, you’d be wasting 3 talent points on something that doesn’t really benefit us and has a pretty low chance to actually proc anyway.

In regards to Improved Frostbolt;

1.) 99% of the time in heroics, you won’t be using AoE spells, until you are within Tier 5/6 content and the tank can handle the incoming damage without the use of Crowd Control spells/abilities. For this reason, you are much more likely to use Frostbolt than Cone of Cold in heroics.

2.) With Improved Frostbolt, the overzealous mages who just can’t wait for the tank to pull (and they do exist) have a better chance of survival since we are able to complete more casts quicker.

In groups with Warriors or Druids, a Mage using Flamestrike may cause them to get aggro. While Warriors and Druids can appear as though they have the pull under control, that may not be entirely true. In an AoE pull it is completely possible for the tank to have threat on one mob, while only having what’s considered “pull threat” on the others.

Pyroblast is phenomenal single-target damage. In most cases, this would be used mainly on bosses, rather than trash pulls. And to boot, the DoT from Pyroblast stacks with the DoT from Fireball.