My life as a noob mage
So my cousin has been leveling on a different server, so I packed up some of my heirloom items on a middling toon and transfered over to try rolling a new mage.
I'm level 42 now, I've pretty much exclusively been leveling with the Dungeon Finder, and just some filler quests and profession stuff while I'm waiting for queues to pop. It's not as efficient as questing, but I just can't bring myself to kill coyotes in the badlands again.
I've found the mage super fun for the most part. I'm not sure either of my leveling specs are that efficient. I started with frost, and focused on aoe talents, thinking that I would be solo aoe farming more, but since I really haven't had long queue times in the LFD finder (Blackrock is crazy overpopulated, so I never wait more than like 5 mins), I haven't even been doing that much.
I basically Cone of Cold whenever its off cooldown no matter how many targets there are, and if there is only one target I frostbolt it, and if there is more than one target I Blizzard. If I pull aggro (which is likely with my half enchanted heirloom items), I frost nova the mobs, blink away, and pray my tank can pick up the slack. Ice barrier has saved me a few times.
When I hit 40 I had my transfer money so I bought my dual spec and got a fire build, but I don't know if I've found my groove with that spec yet. Most instances are just chain pulls of aoe, especially with pally tanks. I am hoping when I get dragon's breath I'll be able to aoe as much as my frost build, but right now I find that in between flamestrikes, I am just single targeting. I know I probably should be blizzarding there, but it seems strange, with my fire spec.
Can anyone recommend a good mage blog, particularly one with leveling theorycraft?
Cata talent preview
I also browsed the talent previews on mmo-champion. I thought the resto shaman ones were super boring, and I was a little perplexed by the priest "smite" talents showing up. For a second, I thought it would make holy leveling more fun, but someone on EJ pointed out that without the damage bonus of the masteries (that you only get in shadow spec), holy leveling will still be painfully inferior. So i guess it's for bored healers in instances to dish out a little damage when their tanks overgear the instance? Sounds kinda lame to me.
The only spec that interested me so far is the ele shaman tree. I do like that they're getting what looks like a flamestrike aoe, and there are some new mechanics coming there way that seem cool.
Zigi out.
5 comments:
Have you checked Psynister's notebook for leveling specs & whatnot? I know his focus is generally on solo play, but you might find some good things in there for dungeon running.
As a leveling protection warrior I hate those overaggroing mages.. ;)
When a friend and I brought up our Priest-Mage RaF combo, frost was simply amazing for questing and instances. It started to fall off in damage once he got around the 65+ range(it was only noticeable if you looked at dps meters in instances), though with heirloom items, you'll still likely outpace most of your LFD teammates. When I brought up my former BC main from 70 to 80, I did it solo as frost, and the lack of downtime while questing was well worth it. I could kill just about anything before it came within arm's reach, and with the innate mana efficiency of the tree, it meant I could simply chain pull without drinking/eating. (I still did incredibly well in instances, but then I was in BT/Sunwell gear.)
But hopefully, the awesome power of the glass canon won't tempt you too much away from the wide world of Resto. ^_^
Heh, no Vix, I'm unpacking my totems as soon as Cataclysm rolls around.
My first toon was a pure dps class (rogue), and it kind of bored me to tears. And comparing the mage and the lock, I still preferred the leveling as a lock, so far.
I actually suspect I would not like the mage leveling experience at all if it weren't for the novelty of leveling with the LFD tool for me.
So you're saying around 65 or so I should switch to Arcane or fire? Arcane interests me, but it seems like you need a lot of talent points to even consider switching over to that tree.
And @Windsoar, I saw Psynister's blog and thanks for the rec. He is pretty gung-ho about frost and sorted out some rotation and glyph questions I had.
Checking back with my friend, he actually said that he didn't pick up Arcane/Fire until the mid-70s, when he picked up a dual spec. (Guess I wasn't as tuned in as I thought! D'oh!) He stayed frost for all our level-by-questing adventures, but wanted better damage when we did instances. From all accounts of the FH guys who have mages, the real fun comes not in leveling, but rather after you get some gear and start destroying meters. ^_^
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