If you are playing world of warcraft and wondering what the best build for your mage is. Here is a short sweet to world of warcraft mage talents.

All classes obtain the ability to train in class talents upon achieving level 10 with their character. Talents are ability/spell enhancements for your character classes. Once your character reaches level 10, a new icon will be placed on your action bar that allows you to access your class talents allocation page the keyboard shortcut key is by default the N key. Training in your class talents requires one talent point per ability/skill/spell ranking you wish to learn. Your character will gain one talent point per level from level 10 through level 70, 61 talent points in total at level 70. A character cannot move allocated talent points once they have been spent. The only way a character can clear their talent point allocations is to visit their class trainer and ask them to reset their talents. Please remember that this will reset ALL your talent points, it is not a selective process and you will be refunded all of your talent points as if you never spent them. This talent reset process is expensive: 1 gold for the first time you reset your talents and the price increases steeply afterwards; try to plan ahead on a talent roadmap if you can. The cost to unlearn talents will decrease over time however.

For a Mage, talents are split into three categories: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. A character can train in any of the three available talent trees [tabs/categories available on the talent allocation page]. As a matter-of-fact, a majority of players train into two or more talent trees because they wish to have spells and abilities within multiple talent trees available to their characters. Remember that just because your Mage trains into one talent tree does not mean that your character cannot use any other schools of magic. For example, if your Mage character has trained extensively into the Frost and Arcane talent trees it does not mean he/she cannot use the Fire-based spells any longer; although you may find it more effective to use those magic schools you have placed talents into.

he Arcane tree has traditionally been viewed as the support tree, as arcane-based spells such as Arcane Missles, Arcane Explosion, and Arcane Blast usually aren't your best source of damage. With the introduction of Arcane Blast in The Burning Crusade however, some mages like rotating in arcane blast with their normal dps rotation. Many raiders also like the arcane tree since it offers boosts to mana efficiency through talents like arcane meditation, arcane mind and clearcasting, and boosts to damage through talents like arcane instability, arcane power, arcane mind, spell power, arcane potency, and mind mastery. The arcane tree is an attractive option to many raiding mages.

The Fire tree offers improvements to your fire spells. Any mage that wishes to use fire as their primary damage source would do well to put points into the fire tree. The fire tree offers little options for survivability, but offers many increases to damage. Talents such as fire power, critical mass, playing with fire, pyromaniac, molten fury, empowered fireball, ignite, incinerate, improved scorch, blastwave and pyroblast all offer and increase damage either passively, or through the use of a new ability. Fire mages sacrifice survivability for damage.

The Frost tree offers many defensive options, as well as damage increase to your frost spells. Ice Shards and Shatter are two of the best talents that the frost tree offers for damage increases. Mages that spec frost enjoy increased survivability and control at the cost of a lower damage output. Frost is the tree of choice for mages that like doing arena pvp.

-Brandon C. ; aka. Darksun22