Originally Posted by Auran
Mage: It's been a while since I leveled my mage, but even 3 years ago, AOE grinding was very effective (back in my day, we had to spec insta Arcane Explosion). It's my opinion that frost is the superior leveling build, especially toward the higher levels (when you can get all the nice talents for shatter, etc). A few things support this: frost tends to be more efficient, frost crits are instant and are less likely to go "unused", and your survivability will be quite a bit higher.
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OK. Having completed a mage to 70 using fire I have a new one coming up with Frost.
Rank for Rank it seems Fire's base damage is near the Frosts top damage. Now the advantage of frost of course is slowing the mob down but until you can increase the range you start from that advantage is not all that great. Frost spells cost around two-thirds the mana of an equivalent fire spell. (example 100 mana versus 140 for rank5 I believe). While
I have found that frost isn't good until around 30 or so when you can fully fillout Ice Shards and Shatter. Throw in the fact that Cold Snap shows up then and it becomes pretty easy. Still you have to increase the base range with Artic Reach right afterward simply because fighting stuff higher than you tends to put aggro range outside or just on the edge of base Frostbolt range.
The problem I found between the two is, it takes more casts on average to down a foe. For the most part my fire mage survived on Frost Nova and Sheep to crowd control. The FN would last long enough with the power of fire spells to drop the first target and the Sheep could be refreshed. This allowed easy management of 3 targets.
Frost so far has been a disappointment. The primary problem is that the base damage is just so low compared to Fire on a spell per spell basis. Worse, Fire gets their bolts 2 levels before frost gets its equivalent exaggerating the difference. Now while fire can cost half again as much per cast (rank5 frost=100 fire=140) it hits harder. Frost has the advantage in casting time by rank 5 and forever holds it from thereon by half a second.
Now the movement slowing of frost is fine but you start out closer to your target and you need that slowing effect because your not putting it down fast enough. Still there are times with +2 and +3 level targets where I found my aggro range was just on the edge if not outside of my base frost bolt range!
One thing I don't know but figure someone has a chart for is the dps/mana/time efficiency charted for untalented and talented frost/fire spells. That might help with the equation.
I do think frost is getting more viable as my mage (zeroryoko on eitrigg) passes into her thirties. Shatter and Frostbite are filled out providing the opportunities for the big crits. The problem with lower levels is finding items to help her crit.