Mage Talent Guide
How you build your talent tree can play a major role in your character's success. Because redoing talents can cost you some serious gold, it's important to get the build right from the beginning. This Mage talent guide will show you several popular options for building your Mage, and guide you on where best to spend your points.
For Mages, it is essential to pick one tree to specialize in, with a few points spent on a secondary tree. Do not spread out your talents over all the trees equally, as you will find that not having a specialty will greatly hurt your character.
Frost Mage
Generally speaking, specializing in frost is the best choice for Mages because it does not use up as much mana as other builds, and has the added benefit of allowing you to control and manage mobs efficiently.
Must Have Frost Talents:
- Improved Frost Bolt. Since you will be using frost bolt as your primary weapon, maxing out Improved Frost Bolt should be one of the first things you do.
- Icy Shards and Shatter. Increasing damage from critical strikes allows you to take down enemies much quicker.
- Arctic Reach. In addition to frost bolt, the frost mage will likely rely on frost nova quite a bit. Arctic Reach will increase the range of the frost nova along with other frost spells
- Ice Floes. Some people may disagree with me on this, but I consider Ice Floes to be very important, especially if you get caught up in long battles. The reduced cooldown for your frost nova can make the difference between winning a battle and biting the dust.
- Frost Channeling. If you don't want to spend time drinking to recover mana, this skill will reduce your downtime by quite a bit.
- Any 1 point Talent. These usually give you a lot of bang for your buck, so grab them whenever they become available. Icy Veins and Cold Snap are two of the earlier ones you need to get.
Fire Mage
The primary advantage of fire talents is that it allows you to kill mobs faster. However, that comes with a price, which is longer downtimes.
Must Have Fire Talents:
If you have decided to specialize in the fire tree here are some talents you should not do without.
- Incineration. This is one of the first talents you should get.
- Improved Fire Blast. By reducing fire blast cool down, you'll be able to take down mobs even faster.
- Critical Mass. This increases your critical strike damage, and will be available to you after you have 20 points in the fire tree.
- Pyromaniac. Also increases critical strike, and helps with mana replenishment.
- Burnout and Ignite
- Any 1 point Talent. These usually give you a lot of bang for your buck, so grab them whenever they become available.
Arcane Mage
I do not recommend the arcane build as the damage you do will be lower, and it will be very difficult to solo with this build. One possible advantage of the build is that it does allow you to control mobs, however, the frost build does that just as well in my opinion.
This is not to say that you couldn't benefit from a few well-chosen arcane talent points, however, I would not use it as my primary talent.
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