Before I reach 60, I'll have to decide which talents to get first. So, should I go for shatter/frostbite/ice shards first and then take the arcane part, or should I start with the arcane side? FYI, I'm leaning towards getting frost first.

That is exactly why I haven't gone frost. I won't do so until 58, actually. I've found instant arcane explosion to be pretty much essential in instances where I'm the only person AEing, and that happens a lot, so there's 15 (or 16, with the quick point in Evocation) that I'm not willing to lose. With my remaining points, I can't finish the shatter/frostbite/shards combo, which is the mainstay of the frost build, so I'm holding on to fire until I hit 58 and can respec to a full implementation of a frost/arcane build.
But you may not feel the need for instant AE the way I do, or group with more mages in instances, so of course its entirely up to you what you do.

33 Frost/18 Arcane
The 'full' frost mage. Trading up damage and instant casts for control... Excellent in group PvP with a good supporting group. Fares poorly solo vs. casters/ranged, whilst completely destroying melee. Just as powerful as Arc/Fire, but in a completely different way with a very different playstyle.

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Q u o t e:

Arcane <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">Talents</SPAN> (18 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Frost <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">Talents</SPAN> (33 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Improved Frost Nova - 2/2 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by ?.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target's movement speed to 25% of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Shatter - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your frost spells against frozen targets by 50%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.

# Frostbite - 5/5 points
Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.

# Ice Barrier - 1/1 point
Instantly shields you, absorbing 455 damage. Lasts 1 minute. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.

Fire <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">Talents</SPAN> (0 points)

# None

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18 in Arcane as detailed in the Must Haves section.

Improved Frostbolt grants you a 2.5s cast time, increasing dps and making it easier to snare targets. Far better than Permafrost, since you'll be casting Frostbolt all day long (get used to it, ice has lesser single target spell diversity than fire) and there's no need for a longer snare because you'll be continually reapplying the snare with Frostbolt.

Ice Shards gives you 100% frost crits, instead of merely 50%. Well-worth it, considering how other frost <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">talents</SPAN> come into play. Frost is a tree that builds upon itself, as will be seen.

Improved Frost Nova is slightly more useful than it once was, but is only gotten because it is a prereq to Shatter.

Shatter raises your chance to crit on Frozen targets by 50%. Well worth it and central to solo Frost Mage damage output. As for groups, frozen has a way of not lasting that long when other people are doing damage to the same target.

Improved Blizzard is a frost must-have. It lowers target speed to 25% of normal _and_ does damage and can proc Frostbite to hold them in place even longer. Excellent zerg control. Blizzard is a huge radius AoE as well. Unfortunately I've never seen Blizzard crit, I've /bugged it, however.

Cold Snap lets you reset your cold spell cooldowns instantly. Good for when you need to reapply Ice Barrier or need to drop another Nova.

Frost Channeling is another Frost must-have. It makes the line so much more efficent. I'd pick this over 6% more damage (Piercing Ice) any day of the week.

Ice Block is your oh crap spell. Use it to become immune to everything except for a dispel for 10 seconds. Great for getting assist trains off you in PvP or when you draw too much aggro in PvE. Otherwise... it isn't that great. And yes, it can be dispelled.

Frostbite is a key talent in Frost line, giving all your ice spells (including the Chilled proc from your Ice Armor) a 15% chance to proc Frozen for 5 seconds. Excellent vs. melee. Also... consider this with shatter and you begin to see the stacking power of Frost. However, once again, Frostbite has a tendency to break prematurely when other people are hitting that same target.

Ice Barrier is a power word:shield for mages. Strange timer though, 1 minute duration, 2 minute cooldown. Also can be dispelled, making it somewhat bleh. However, it absorbs all damage, including magic... helps keep Frost Mages alive.

Arctic Reach is vital, because Frostbolt has a base range of 30 yd. With this talent you reach 36 yd, which is a little more tolerable (especially if you're used to playing fire).

28 Arcane/23 Frost
A variant of Frost/Arcane, lessening dependence on Frost and opening up some of the goodies of Arcane. Shedding Frost Nova/Shatter (limited utility in groups since things are rarely frozen long) in exchange for Arcane Instability, Presence of Mind and Arcane Mind. This is my personal choice if I choose to go Frost.

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Q u o t e:

Arcane <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">Talents</SPAN> (28 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.

# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.

Frost <SPAN style="COLOR: #ffa34f">Talents</SPAN> (23 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target's movement speed to ? of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Piercing Ice - 3/3 points
Increases the damage done by your frost spells by 6%.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.

Piercing Ice is a good place to drop three points for 6% more damage to frost. Frostbolt will still be your primary damage spell so you might as well make it more powerful

This coming from a guide posted on worldofwarcraft.com forums.

Can be found here at

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-mage&T=23&P=1

Credit is due to Alcaras

Hopefully this will give you a idea of how you want to go.

Lol^^ Yeah, I already read that from the page you quoted. I'd go fire/arcane till 58 too, but I want to be a frost mage throughout the game, not just level 60. Well I'll mess with the talent gen a bit and see how things look I guess.

Edit: I can get Shatter rank 5 and Ice Shards rank 5 at 29 with this build:

Arcane Talents (0 points)

Think it'll work?

[Edited by Rhazarot at 10:09 AM on 12/17/2004]

Well, the problem with that build is that shatter works against frozen targets, but without frostbite giving you a chance to freeze targets, the only time they're frozen is frost nova, so its far less effective than it can be.
Its not bad, but its just my opinion that without the holy trinity of frost combos, it doesn't measure up to a fire or arcane build. Then again, I'm a fire man at heart, so I'm biased.
I've also heard a lot of frost mages claim they leveled faster than fire mages, so there may be some merit to going frost the whole way. I don't know. The thing about mages is that all three of our options for talent lines are so different we could spend forever discussing the merits of each. Do what ya want, and good luck :)

Oh, and Plice, you might want to consider improved cone of cold instead of improved blizzard. The 60 frost mage I talk to considers CoC a staple in his AEing arsenal, and hardly ever uses blizzard. Even improved, the mobs still move fast enough to where you'll get hit before finishing the channeling, from what I hear.

[Edited by Revith at 12:17 PM on 12/17/2004]

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Revith wrote:

Oh, and Plice, you might want to consider improved cone of cold instead of improved blizzard. The 60 frost mage I talk to considers CoC a staple in his AEing arsenal, and hardly ever uses blizzard. Even improved, the mobs still move fast enough to where you'll get hit before finishing the channeling, from what I hear.

[Edited by Revith at 12:17 PM on 12/17/2004]

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That might be something to look at when I get above 45.

Right now im a fire mage and im level 32, so im in no hurry to look at the frost side just yet. I like doing damage and I do well with fire.

But thanks for the suggestion

hello, im new at this mage thing, im lvl 11. "evocation" I do not see that anywere in the talents at all. Plz help me! I dont know were to put my talent points, i know i want to be frost / arcane though. I talked with the trainer and it shows it as a spell so i dont know.

[Edited by blackmagic34 at 9:05 PM on 6/22/2006]

it's a trainable spell now