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Welcome to Ten Ton Hammer’s Mage Talent Builds. Up to date as of patch 3.0.3. Below we’ve listed all of the Mage builds that we know of that are current viable for leveling, endgame PvE and endgame PvP. The following builds are not only great as a “set” (as in completed) but also work as wonderful starting points so that you can custom make your character.

As you level up, I’m  going to lie to you, there is not a “set” build that you should follow to do your best. Furthermore, as you hit your level 60-70ish area you’ll find yourself moving more toward your final spec than anything else. However, there is one tree you should really consider as you level up: Frost.

Frost contains all of the necessary components needed to level up. You’ll have high damage, mana-efficiency, survivability, and the ability to control the flow of battle. Fire may offer the awesome ability to chunk flaming balls of fire at people but it does not offer mana-efficiency and survivability like the talents in the frost tree does.

A basic leveling build for frost will include 5/5 improved frostbolt, 3/3 frostbite, 3/3 ice floes, 3/3 ice shards, 3/3 permafrost, 3/3 frost channeling, and 3/3 shatter. All of these abilities work together to make sure that you’re using less mana, doing a lot of damage, and keeping enemies snared within your icy magic. As you level up more you’ll want to play around with what other talents you get (there is no “perfect” build) but things like cold snap, ice barrier, shattered barrier, fingers of frost, and summon water elemental are all excellent choices and should be gotten as you level up.

Fire is viable too, but you’ll be sitting down more but killing faster. You’ll be killing slower with Frost but sitting less. It depends on what you prefer. Do you want to sit and do nothing more or put more work into it to always do something

Fire & Arcane

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This is your generic PvE fire build. Fire is all about damage

There isn’t a lot to discuss here since it’s pretty cut and dry. You have a few options if you don’t like blast wave and dragon’s breath you can put the two points into molten fury. The basic playstyle of this build is to give you as much fire damage as possible and to use your remaining points to give you clearcasting and arcane meditation to help with the major mana problems that fire builds face. Living bomb is there to give you that “finishing touch” so to speak, along with pyroblast (an old fire build favorite) for that huge lead off PvE burst damage, and combustion to give you that massive increase of DPS every now and then. Loads of passives allow you to shred through most any PvE encounter. I forewarn you though: be careful about aggro management. You’re going to be doing a lot of damage fast and this can end up with you face first into the ground.

Fire & Frost

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This build is nearly identical to the one above (this shows an example of switching out blast wave/dragon’s breath for molten fury since those are more of solo than group abilities) but you go into Frost instead of Arcane for your mana regeneration. Frostfire Bolt is going to replace your Fireball spell for damage since it’s going to near the same amount of damage and use less mana. Some will alter this build to get Cold Snap and give up Living Bomb.

Frost

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This Frost build is all about one thing: staying alive and doing burst DPS with frost abilities. A lot of high level encounters will wear through your HP like mad and having the ability to shrug off large amounts of damage with your abilities is a surefire way to stay alive. You won’t do nearly as much raw damage as fire but you’re going to be alive longer to do more and won’t be drawing so much aggro that you’re going to shred yourself into oblivion.

Arcane

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Arcane is more of a build for people who want to be unique. It’s ok, but it’s more of ok for PvP than PvE. That’s just my opinion though and I’m sure there are those who would argue it. Anyway you’re going to use mostly Arcane Barrage and Fireball with Scorch used to add a debuff to the enemy. Every time Pryoblast is up you should Presence of Mind it.

Player vs. Player builds are difficult to give due to the nature of PvP. PvP is all about how you want to play. There is no min/maxing to get the best build when you may or may not have time to use some abilities that would be optimal due to constantly moving around and you might want more survivability and less damage or you may prefer to burn through enemies before they can get you. It’s all up to you.

Use the following builds as a starting point for your career.

Classic PoM Pyro Fire Build           

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Ahh, the classic. The key to a fire PvP build is Blazing Speed. Whatever else you get, go for it, but Blazing Speed is really important for gaining distance. Not to mention lots of critical strike for slaying players as fast as possible. You’ll give up Living Bomb to get PoM which is important: PoM + Pyroblast = A TON of instant damage. Do not neglect this! Use it as much as possible. Throw in Combustion to make things even more insane.

As for Frost, look at the PvE build and change things to fit your playstyle. The PvE frost builds are great starting points.

More on PvP build will be available with the next arena season as it’ll then be possible to see what does and does not work in 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 with the new talents. Check back when the arena season begins to see more.

Go questions or comments? Post on our forums or email us.