[Mage] Fire, Ice, Arcane...?

I am currently specced for fire. I feel this is the best MOB killer and I am sticking with it till I hit 70. Not sure what I am going to do at 70. I was thinking about researching an arcane spec. Any other spec stories out there?

Well I have not leveled a mage but I think for leveling I would spec fire because that does the most damage, if I wanted to do pvp at 70 I'd go ice and if I was more of a raider I'd go arcane/fire.

I don't think I know anyone who would ever go full arcane, just because the slow seems so worthless for a final talent spell. But anyways, I'd probably be a frost or PoM-Pyro mage, because they're both sweet.

PoM I was reading about that one day because one of the servers I was logged into there was a guy crying about how incredibly cheap and noobish they were. So I figured damn that must be awesome ...what the hell is it. I tried reading up on it but didnt get any good information. Would you care to share exactly what the PoM Pyro Spec is??

A PoM-Pyro spec is a fire/arcane spec, designed around two main abilities, Presence of Mind (PoM, in the arcane tree, pretty far down, it is an instant cast spell that doesn't activate the global cooldown and has like a 3-5 minute cooldown [not sure which one and I'm too lazy at the moment to look it up] that makes the next spell you cast that has a cast time under 10 seconds an instant cast) and Pyroblast (Pyro, is a few rows down the fire tree, that has a six second cast time and does ridiculous amounts of damage, plus extra damage over time [this is the spell that fire mages talk about getting 6-10k damage crits with]). What a PoM-Pyro mage does is make sure they're not noticed, get off the full cast time of a first Pyroblast, then hit PoM, and then hit Pyroblast again, only now, because of PoM, its instant cast. That's pretty much a two hit kill against anyone. It is a completely overpowered spec at the moment, but its unlikely to get any alterations, since victory with it involves getting the drop on the opponent with the first Pyroblast before they know you're there, or before they can get to you (and six seconds is a long time in PvP).

The only problem with this spec is its really only good for PvP, since it doesn't really have much staying power in the way of DPS, unless there are alternate builds that work differently than the ones I've seen. Pyroblast is very mana intensive, and its not really worth spamming. And you can only use the PoM-Pyro combo once every few minutes.

EDIT: Apparently, after looking up this spec on WoWhead, I've been understanding this spec wrong. It does have staying power, since you're supposed to save the PoM-Pyro until they're at about half heath, because now-a-days with all the stam gear that people use in PvP, unless you get a lucky double crit it won't kill them, you're supposed to wait and get a full set of Scorch debuffs on them, then use it. That way it also gets an extra 15% damage on them from each pyroblast, plus all the extra fire damage from the debuff.

EDIT2: I figured I could design a talent spec outline as well, as far as I can tell, this or this is what a general PoM-Pyro spec looks like.

Thanks for the info PJ. Looks like this really wont be worth looking into until I am 70 and ready for some real PvP.

I was sad and frustrated the other day. I dueled a BELF Pally the same level as me and literally could not move or cast anything. I know you might say that as a exaggeration when you were fighting a stunlock rogue. But this is no joke or exxageration. I couldnt do a single thing in the way of casting or moving. Even my instant casts I could not get off before I was either stunned or dead. I fought him 15 times and there was one match where I was able to cast but I think he was toying with me because he was using one of those infamous bubbles to block damage and just kind of standing there. I am sure this was a combination of gear, spec, and my selfadmited lack of pvp skill, knowledge, and practice but man it pissed me off. I was thinking I knew I wouldnt win but you think I would be able to get close at least once if I wasnt a total noob.

ANYWAY - this whole rant was to explain why the sudden look into specs. I was thinking anything that would make another player whine about it being unfair in PvP would be worth looking into. Because it sure as hell felt unfair that I could do absolutly nothing effective against this other player.

It happens. I can't fight against any caster or hunter as my paladin, since I have no long range abilities, and they can kite me easier than a mob. That combine with my low damage output (even in ret spec) makes Paladins not a very viable class for PvP. What spec was the paladin you fought? It sounds like he/she was ret, since they had more than six seconds of stun. Though it shouldn't be possible to have more than 12 seconds of stun on you, and six of that would dispel right when he attacked you anyways, so I'm not quite sure what happened to you (unless he happened to be really lucky using [Stormherald] or something similar, which is possible, but shouldn't happen that many times in a row).

He was 66 at the time so there was no way he had that. I really dont know what was going on PJ but it made me pretty angry LOL

No offense but who ever said Slow was worthless is incorrect because they put slow on the target and run back and spam arcane missles, and pyroblast . Slow is really cool for arcane... but Frost is the spec to go for PvP but arcane is amazing for raiding and dailies

So far all the info on this I have read has been good and true. But my mage has raided through BT as a arcane/fire mage, and have no trouble at all getting at the top dps. But thats for raiding. I spec all the way fire when I PvP just because I love drop them before they even get close, 46% crit =p.

But if your looking into raiding with our mage, hit me up I have a great build I can give and some pointers.