Mage Talents: Breakdown

Arcane Talents

All talent descriptions refer to fully speccing in that talent.

Arcane Subtlety
Reduces the threat generated by your offensive arcane spells by 40%.
Since this talent only applies to arcane spells, it’s of limited utility. Most of the time you won’t be casting exclusively arcane spells, however, there are a few notable exceptions to this. Higher level instances typically have mobs immune to Fire which means that if you’re not Frost, then Arcane Missiles is the spell to use. Reducing your threat by 40% will let the warriors hold aggro easier. Another application for this talent is when you’re AEing. The threat reduction comes through and makes keeping elites off of you easier. All that said, this is very much a PvE only talent (threat doesn’t matter in PvP); however, it can allow you to unleash more DPS in PvE without getting aggro, making you that much more effective in a group.

Arcane Focus
Reduces the chance that the opponent can resist your arcane spells by 10%.
This is useful in both PvP and PvE, but I can’t say that I’ve noticed a tremendous difference on high level raid mobs with or without this talent. (Molten Core or Onxyia’s level 63 raid elites resisted quite a bit whether or not I had the talent, and there wasn’t a statistically significant difference from the data I collected). Also, the Warlock’s Curse of Shadow, see
http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?k=828, which also reduces Arcane resist, has far more noticeable effects on Arcane damage. Still, if you’re going for 31+ Arcane build, this talent offers a viable place to drop spare points to unlock the deeper tiers. Also, preliminary testing indicates that Arcane Focus may make Polymorph’s duration more consistent and longer in PvP.

Improved Arcane Missiles
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.
This allows you to do damage while getting beat on. Note that it only prevents to interruption from damage—this talent does nothing against Silence, Shield Bash, Pummel, Kick, Earth Shock or any of the other spell-interrupting abilities. It’s worth getting no matter what your mage will turn out to be as it has applications across the board. That said, you can safely delay getting this talent if you’re interested in pursuing a different tree. Some people feel that it’s a coin flip whether want to put 5 into this or 5 in Arcane Focus to get to the next tier, however, having an uninterruptable damage spell is very nice.

Wand Specialization
Increases your damage with Wands by 25%.
Mages don’t use wands enough to justify this talent’s cost.

Arcane Concentration
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%.
Any time you cast a damage spell—which is most of the time for a mage, you have a chance to proc Clearcasting and get your next damage spell free. Note that the Clearcasting effect fades after about 15 seconds so this talent isn’t quite a 10% mana cost reduction because you might proc on your killing spell with no new target in sight (or yourself low on mana). You can also cast low mana cost/high efficiency spells (such as Scorch or Frostbolt) until you get a clearcast and then use a high mana cost spell (such as Arcane Missiles, Flamestrike or Blizzard) thus boosting your net mana efficiency. Many mages spec this talent.

Improved Dampen Magic
Increases the effect of your Dampen Magic spell by 50%.
Dampen Magic itself is a spell with rather limited utility—I only use it when I’m fighting casters without a healer, in other words, when I’m soloing. The talent probably isn’t worth investing the points unless for some reason you’re fighting a lot of low damage caster mobs. Without the talent dampen magic at its highest rank reduces spell damage by 50 and reduces healing by 100. With the talent it goes to 75 and 150, respectively. Note that for periodic effects, such as Shadow Word: Pain or other DoTs, dampen magic only applies to the total damage not to each period, thus greatly lessening its utility against DoTs.

Improved Arcane Explosion
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.
Astute readers will note that Arcane Explosion’s casting time itself only 1.5 seconds… which means that 5 points in this talent makes Arcane Explosion in effect instant, allowing you to cast it while moving and making it uninterruptable. This talent is invaluable for AEing (whether solo or grouped) since it means you can always put out damage, even when mobs are beating on you. It might even be called a ‘must have’ talent, since almost all groups will assume you have it for higher level instances (the Lyceum in Blackrock Depths comes to mind). Improved Arcane Explosion is a wonderful talent that no mage should honestly be without, aside from perhaps some very deep Frost builds that rely on Improved Blizzard to AE.

Evocation
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.
Essentially this is a manaheal on a 10 minute timer. Since it acts on your mana regeneration, you’ll want to keep up a decent amount of Spirit before using Evocation. At lower levels (before equipment makes mana pools grow substantially) it’ll often be a full mana heal. At level 60 it can range from 40% to 75%, depending on how much Spirit gear you’re wearing. Because it’s on a 10 minute timer, it’s best to save this ability for when you really need it—e.g. you get an unexpected add right after killing a mob and you only have enough mana for a Polymorph—cast your Polymorph, Evocation, then take out the add. It’s also very useful for prolonged boss fights or raid encounters where you won’t be able to get out of combat to drink.

Improved Mana Shield
Decreases the mana lost per point of damage taken when Mana Shield is active by 20%.
This makes mana shield more efficient. It might be worth the points, depending on how often you find yourself using Mana Shield. You might also want to pick up the PvP gloves, which have a bonus of +285 absorb on Mana Shield.

Improved Counterspell
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.
A very useful talent for PvP, since four seconds can oftentimes be an eternity. Certain classes (priests come to mind) can be completely undone with a well timed Counterspell: Silence—an interrupted heal, no healing for 10 seconds and no casting at all for 4 seconds. You can also cast it before any spells are cast as a blanket silence; this is useful when you’re frontloading on a target (presumably sheeped) and want to take away any opportunities they might have for counterplay. Paladin’s immunity works through silence at this point in time, so keep that in mind if you find yourself fighting them. Silence complements an Arc/Fire or Fire/Arc build quite nicely. It’s still nice to have in a Frost build, but isn’t quite as necessary since Frost doesn’t frontload as much.

Arcane Meditation
Allows 15% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting.
On my level 60 mage, this talent translates to about 10 mana a tick while casting… moderately useful, and it could be more useful if I invested more into Spirit gear. It’s also worth considering this talent if you’re going to be spamming Frostbolt in Molten Core—combined with Mage Armor, you’ll be able to get 45% mana regen while casting which begins to be somewhat substantial.

Presence of Mind
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.
This gem of a talent is on a three minute timer, so be sure to use it often if you have it. I commonly use it with Polymorph, Frostbolt, Flamestrike and Pyroblast, depending on the situation.

Arcane Mind
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.
If you’re going for Arcane Power, it’s worth putting points into getting more mana (there also aren’t that many viable alternative places to put points). 8% of a 6000 mana pool is about 480 mana, not that much but also nothing to sneeze at.

Arcane Instability
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
Since there are only a handful of ways for mages to raise critical strike chance (100 int = 1% crit, and 100 int is hard to come by), this talent is a gem. It’s further bettered by the fact that it works across all your spells, regardless of line. A very useful talent.

Arcane Power
When activated, your spells deal 35% more damage while costing 35% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 seconds.
If you’ve put at least 30 points in Arcane, be sure to get this talent. Note, however, it is dispellable. Still, it is a 35% increase to damage for 15 seconds—excellent for upping your burst damage.

Fire Talents
All talent descriptions refer to fully speccing in that talent. For talent-based spells (e.g. Pyroblast), descriptions refer to the highest rank.

Improved Fireball
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds.
This is a decent dps upgrade to Fireball. It’s more notable at lower levels. In PvP, battles tend to use instants and not casted spells but since it’s a requirement for Pyroblast (and thus the AP PoM Pyro insta-combo for Arc/Fire mages), it’s worth getting it. It’s probably the best place to first put points for mages since it at levels 10-14 it has a greater utility than any of the other first tier talents.

Impact
Gives your fire spells a 10% chance to stun the taget for 2 seconds.
Useful in PvE, it truly shines in PvP where a stun will interrupt casting and also generally break players’ rhythm. It procs off of all fire spells, making it a wise investment. A Flamestrike opener when AEing that stuns several of the mobs/players is very handy. Combusted Blastwave with this talent is absolutely devastating, especially if stacked with other mages. You’ll sometimes get lucky with it and proc a stun at the perfect moment—e.g. right before an enemy finishes casting a heal.

Ignite
Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.
It’s 40% more damage to your crits, but since a crit is already 50% more damage, in effect this means that your crits are 110% damage. A nice way to increase your dps if you’re focused around crits (and since our mana stat, Int, is our crit stat as well...). A good place to put points. Note that it applies its damage as a DoT and thus can be dispelled.

Improved Fire Blast
Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Blast spell by 1.5 seconds.
This talent has its uses, but I’m not a fan of cooldown reduction talents personally. It can take your cooldown from 8 seconds to 6.5 seconds, which is noticable (primarily in PvP) but the question then becomes what you have to get up to get those 5 points for this Talent, and I’d rather have Impact or Ignite. Also, it isn’t as if you can’t cast other things while waiting for Fire Blast’s timer (e.g. Instant Arcane Explosion). Still, this talent is personal preference and may work for your particular playstyle. Some people swear by it.

Flame Throwing
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.
This lets Fireballs and Pyroblasts have 41 yd range, the longest range in game aside from Marksmanship specced Hunters. Useful in PvP (especially stand off situations) and those 6 yards can be handy in PvE in terms of getting another spell off or just more reaction time when soloing. Also in instances, the extra reach on Fire Blast is handy for taking our runners.

Incinerate
Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast and Scorch spells by 4%.
Fire Blast is a core PvP spell and Scorch can be a core PvE spell (because of its fast casting time you’ll proc more clearcasts per fight) and thus increasing the chance to crit on both these spells is generally a good thing.

Pyroblast
Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes 716 to 890 fire damage and an additional 268 damage over 12 seconds.
Don’t get Pyroblast unless you get Presence of Mind. With sheep lasting at most 15 seconds in PvP and very often much less, you often will not be able to sheep, back up, and get off a full 6 second Pyroblast cast before your target is unsheeped. It’s moderately useful in PvE if you’re purely focused on mana efficiency (as an opener), but it truly shines with PoM. Since the additional damage is a DoT, it can be dispelled. If you’re a Fire Mage, a Combusted Pyroblast is a thing to be feared and is useful when fighting especially tough mobs, but in all honesty, rarely will you have opportunity to successfully land a 6 second casting time spell in PvP. A crit AP PoM Pyroblast is the best burst damage in the game and can be cast while chasing a target (Blinking towards a fleeing enemy then unleashing a fiery ball of death is a fun thing to do, and one of the reasons I love my mage ;).

Improved Flamestrike
Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike spell by 15%.
Required for Blast Wave. Useful if you’re doing a PoM/Blast wave build, since you can PoM FS, then follow with a Blast Wave and front load AoE damage.

Burning Soul
Gives your fire spells a 65% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
A good mage doesn’t need this talent, in my opinion. If for some reason you’re trying to cast while getting hit, Improved Arcane Missiles offers a 100% chance to cast without interruption. In PvP, spell interrupts like Silence/Pummel/Kick aren’t prevented with either Burning Soul or Improved Arcane Missiles… and thus Burning Soul becomes relegated to casting when a mob is hitting on you and you don’t have Arcane Missiles. Note that it isn’t that useful with Scorch since you can often time your Scorches to cast and land between a mob’s hits on you… and you can almost always Nova and step back or CoC and blink away… I suppose Burning Soul could be useful to a pure Fire mage fighting archer mobs, but even in that situation I’d recommend 100% uninterruptablity with Arcane Missiles. To summarize, it isn’t a bad talent, but just one I find unnecessary for my particular playstyle. If it fits your playstyle, then by all means take it and enjoy it.

Improved Scorch
Your Scorch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire damage. This vulnerability increases the Fire damage dealt to your target by 2% and lasts 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Probably only useful in PvE, as it is unlikely you will be able to cast 5 scorches on the same target in PvP—in short, there are better places to spend your points in Fire for a PvP mage.

Improved Fire Ward
Causes your fire ward to reflect 35% of the damage absorbed back to the caster.
At first glance this seems cool—I can reflect 35% of damage at an enemy mage! But if we look a little deeper… top Rank 5 Fire Ward costs 320 mana and absorbs 585 Fire Damage. This means that at most you’ll reflect ~204 Fire Damage, often at the cost of 320 mana. Not the most efficient… there are better places to drop a point in the Fire Tree.

Critical Mass
Increases the critical strike chance of your fire spells by 6%.
More critical strikes (and thus more Ignites) on your fire spells. All around damage increase and useful for a deep Fire Mage.

Blast Wave
A wave of flame radiates outward from the caster, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 462 to 544 fire damage, and dazing them for 6 seconds.
The daze is essentially a 50% snare. This spell might shine in Battlegrounds, but it’s very situational and since it has a 45 second cooldown timer, you’ll pretty much only get to use it once a fight. Still, another instant is always handy and the snare is useful for getting away from melee, even in 1v1 confrontations. Do note however, that if you get Blast Wave, you won’t be able to get Arcane Power and thus an Arc/Fire Mage can out burst DPS a Fire/Arc mage… that said, a Combusted Blast Wave is very very painful.

Fire Power
Increases the damage done by your fire spells by 10%.
More damage, all the time. Not much more to say than that.

Combustion
When activated, this spell gives your next fire damage spell a 100% critical strike chance.
Useful for PvE as an opener with Pyroblast or Flamestrike/Blast Wave and useful in PvP in conjunction with Blast Wave or (to a lesser extent) Fire Blast.

Frost Talents
All talent descriptions refer to fully speccing in that talent. For talent-based spells (e.g. Ice Barrier), descriptions refer to the highest rank.

Improved Frostbolt
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.
Much like Improved Fireball, a DPS upgrade, letting you get a 2.5 second frostbolt at its highest rank… and also allowing for a 1 second Rank 1 Frostbolt, handy for snaring runners in PvE and PvP.

Permafrost
Increases the duration of your chill effects by 3 seconds.
Typically frost mages will be chain casting Frostbolt, which means they’ll always reapply the snare, making Permafrost not really do anything in that situation. With the changes to Improved Blizzard in the March 2005 patch, Permafrost may not be worth it since the chill is reapplied each wave. However, since Blizzard is now resistable, it might be worth it. The patch isn’t out at the time of this writing and my character isn’t on the test server so I can’t test.

Ice Shards
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.
This makes Frost spells crit for 100% instead of 50%. E.g. a untalented Frostbolt that normally hits for 100 would crit for 150, but with this talent it would crit for 200. A core talent of a Frost build.

Winter’s Chill
Increases the power of your chill effects by slowing the target’s movement by an additional 10%.
An extra 10% snare… shines in combination with a Frostbiting Improved Blizzard to essentially immobilize enemy armies. For 1v1 PvE, not really worth the points since you want the mob to get close to you so you can drop Nova, back up and have a chance to Shatter (especially before you get Frostbite). It’s handy when solo AEing as frost.

Improved Frost Nova
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by 4 seconds.
A prereq for Shatter, useful in its own right since it lets you unleash the Nova+CoC combo more often.

Piercing Ice
Increases the damage done by your frost spells by 6%.
Depending on your particular build and playstyle, may or may not be useful. Frost is much more about control than damage. Does offer a very slight efficiency bonus.

Cold Snap
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.
Incredibly useful ability that lets you get off two Frost Novas, or two Cone of Colds right after each other. Also refreshes your Ice Block and Ice Barrier timers. Not to be passed up if you’re a Frost Mage.

Improved Blizzard
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target’s movement speed to 35% of normal. Lasts 1.5 seconds (4.5 seconds with full Permafrost).
The ultimate zerg CC. Blizzard is not intended to crit (according to Kalgan, Blue poster)—however, as of the March 2005 patch, the chill is reapplied each wave (conceivably this means Frostbite will also have a chance to be reapplied each wave, but I’m not on the test server and aren’t able to test at the time of this writing).

Arctic Reach
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.
More range on Frostbolt (to 36 yds) and a wider CoC and Nova. Debatable, and not as much of a must have as Flame Throwing is for fire, simply because the Frost playstyle is different. Once you get Frostbite, for example, you won’t mind mobs hitting you so much since they might freeze themselves by doing so, enabling you to step back and get a Shattered Frostbolt on them. For PvP, however, more range is almost always good. This talent is also very useful in Molten Core, since you can stand just outside the 30 yd AE range and nuke at your pleasure.

Frost Channeling
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.
An efficiency upgrade for Frost. You might want to drop these three points in Improved Cone of Cold instead.

Shatter
Increases the critical strike chance of your frost spells against frozen targets by 50%.
Another core Frost Mage talent. What this talent means is that if you have chance to crit of 5%, then against frozen targets (e.g. Frostbitten or Frost Nova’d targets) you will have a 55% chance to crit. A well-played Frost mage milks Shatter for all its worth.

Improved Frost Ward
50% of the damage absorbed by your Frost Ward is added to your mana.
First off, very few enemies will even use Frost magic on you. And secondly, Rank 4 Frost Ward absorbs 430 damage at the cost of 255 mana to cast it initially. That means you’ll get back 215 mana… not even as much as you put into the spell. There are better places to drop a point in the Frost tree.

Ice Block
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.
This spell shines when AEing or in group PvP. It cannot be dispelled so essentially you can prolong your life for 10 seconds. If a pull goes bad while AEing or a healer is stunned, you can hit Ice Block and buy time. A small note: there’s about a 1 second ‘casting animation lag’ between hitting the button and actually getting Ice Blocked, so don’t wait too late to hit it. I play with ~50 ms to WoW and have seen the Ice Block animation go up and found myself dead anyway b/c of latency, so keep that in mind. Probably the most valuable talent in Frost for group PvP, simply because you make yourself unkillable (granted, you can’t do anything during those 10 seconds, but you stay alive and continue to pose a threat). Also, you can cancel Ice Block by hitting the button again… be aware of this and don’t spam the button because you might turn it on only to turn it right off afterwards…

Improved Cone of Cold
Increases the damage dealt by your Cone of Cold spell by 35%.
A useful upgrade to Cone of Cold. For PvP I’d choose this over Frost Channeling and for PvE I would as well, if I found myself AEing a lot. At 60, this lets your crit CoCs hit for ~1000. A nice combo with Nova CoC. Sometimes you can even, Nova, Frostbolt, and CoC quickly and get both to crit using the Shatter off the Nova.

Frostbite
Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.
A chance to proc a root off of any chill effect which you can then Shatter off of. Another core talent of the Frost line. Again a great talent to have maxed for AE Soloing as it gives you more time to damage without being touched.

Ice Barrier
Instantly shields you, absorbing 818 damage. Lasts 1 minute. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.
A great talent IMO as it works great while power lvling. Just pop it on beofre you aggro 5-6 lower lvl enemies and it works like a PW: shield for 1 minute absorbing damage as you are dealing it.