WoW Den

A. What are the Paladin Talent Trees, and what do they focus on? 

Holy - The Holy tree is concerned with healing, Holy damage, and increasing your Mana reserves.
Protection - The Protection tree is used to increase your survivability, help protect other players, and increases threat management.
Retribution - The Retribution tree mostly deals with damage dealing, either by giving new abilities or increasing the effectiveness of skills you already have (with a few notable exceptions).

B. Which tree is the best tree? 

All of them; there is no best tree. Each one offers very good abilities all of which complements the paladin’s play style. A better question to ask yourself would be, “What kind of Paladin do I want to be?”

C. I’m just starting out and am confused! Help! 

If you are beginning a new Paladin, your first five talent points should go into Spiritual Focus. This will help you in every way in your quest to reach level 60, since it allows you to reliably heal in combat (especially so once you receive Concentration Aura). Most Paladin talent builds you encounter will include Spiritual Focus for that very reason. However, from there on your path is entirely your decision.

Many paladins will rush into Retribution to get Seal of Command and Consecration as soon as possible to enhance their damage generation or reduce their required Mana investment in battle, while others will invest another six points into Holy to get the “free heal” every two minutes from Illumination and Divine Favor.
The Protection tree is rather weak for solo play until you have 25 or more points invested (level 39 minimum if you have Spiritual Focus). Thus, unless your major focus is being the main tank in a consistent partnership or group of friends, you would be better off investing your points in Retribution or Holy.

Our power is above average up until level 40 (where our abilities begin to plateau) so talent choices beyond the first five points are not a major issue until then. At that point the 1 gold to redo your talents is easy to obtain, and you can build a paladin that best suits your play style.

D. Should I go with one-handed or two-handed weapons? 

Both would be ideal. A smart paladin knows when it’s time to use a shield, and when it’s time to whip out their war hammer.

E. What Seal and Judgement combinations are best? 

Well, there really is no best Seal combination, but there certainly are a number of combos you may find useful.

Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness - Use of this combo will increase a basic level 60 Seal of Righteousness from 67.5 average damage per proc to 106.7. Your Seal’s pre-avoidance DPS will subsequently increase from 13.5 to 21.3. Certain talents will increase this combination’s effectiveness substantially.

Judgement of Light or Wisdom + Seal of the Crusader - Judgement of Light and Wisdom have a flat chance to proc per swing, rather than most of our abilities that proc a certain number of times per minute. Increasing your swing speed by 40% will also increase the rate at which they heal your Health / Mana by the same, while still maintaining a tolerable DPS.

The Mana regeneration provided by this Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Wisdom - combo is unsurpassed, especially when coupled with Blessing of Wisdom. This generally only gets use when you are trying to solo elites your level or greater, or are burning Mana exceptionally fast in a group. The downside is that you take a good five minutes to kill any single target, making it extremely inefficient for gaining experience or farming for cash. However, if you somehow end up as the last man standing against one target, this could mean the difference between five minutes of downtime and re-clearing an instance.

Judgement of Fury + Seal of Righteousness - Paladins that are their group’s tank will find this combo exceptionally useful. Judgement of Fury greatly amplifies the amount of threat generated by your Holy damage abilities, of which Seal of Righteousness is one. This Seal combination — coupled with Holy damage talents like Consecration, Holy Shield, and Holy Shock (among others) — will all but guarantee you are the person your target is hitting.

Judgement of Justice + Seal of Anything - Judgement of Justice prevents your target from fleeing, which can be invaluable in groups, or when soloing in tight quarters against Humanoids. It’s not really a ‘combo’  per se, but still exceptionally useful. =)

F. What does each of the five stats do? 

Strength - Increases melee attack power and damage blocked with a shield.
1 Strength = 2 Attack Power = ~0.14 DPS
(Shield block formula required!)

Agility - Increases Critical Hit rate, Dodge rate, and Armor.
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = 2 Armor

Stamina - Increases Health.
1 Stamina = 10 Health (Note: Stamina gained at level up does not increase
Health)

Intellect - Increases Mana, and Spell Critical Hit rate.

1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Note: Intellect gained at level up does not increase Mana)
1 Intellect = 0.01% spell critical rate.

Spirit - Increases Health and Mana regeneration rate.
(Formula required for Health and Mana regeneration!)

G. Which stat is the best stat? 

Like talent trees, the best stat combination is one that defines the type of Paladin you want to be. A deep Protection paladin will probably prefer Stamina and Agility to Spirit, while a Holy paladin will jump at the opportunity to pick up more Spirit and Intellect. And neither of those two will care terribly much about Strength, but a Retribution Paladin sure will.

That’s not to say that you should neglect any given stat, but that your priorities will vary depending upon your talent build and play style.

H. What does Skill X do? 

Thottbot and Allakhazam both have excellent information on what each skill does, related websites. However, this guide covers as do several other World of Warcraft-the math behind any skills that are affected by talents.

I. What profession should I be? 

The Profession question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this guide. Most Paladins choose Blacksmithing or Engineering as their Profession, although nothing is stopping you from being a Tailor, for example. More information can be found elsewhere on this forum.

2. Holy Talents 

Improved Lay on Hands
Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 30% bonus to their armor value from items for 1 minute.
When you use lay on hands on someone, it usually means they’re in a very near death situation, so giving them full health plus an armor boost can be a huge lifesaver. This is especially useful when used on the tank, as it gives them a minute of that much less damage, possibly giving healers time to recharge slightly. However, this talent is situational. Because of the long cooldown time on Lay on Hands, this talent will not be used as much as some others. Revelation greatly boosts this talent’s utility.

Spiritual Focus
Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
This talent is almost a must have, no matter what build you make. Being able to heal when monsters are pounding on you no matter what the situation is always a good thing. Some heavy damage builds which assume the paladin will never be the main tank can overlook this talent, but for the most part this is a must have talent.

Improved Holy Light
Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light spell by 12%.
A useful talent, it increases your heal average from 1292 to 1447, an increase of 155 health. Gives your already mana hungry holy light spell a boost to efficiency. A must for healer builds.

Revelation
Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands and Divine Intervention spells by 20 minutes.
In long instances, this can give you one or two more lifesaving heals. In solo play, this means you can be a bit more reckless since you have your “third life” available more often. A good talent for two points, even one point has a big impact.

Illumination
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light or Holy Light spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain Mana equal to the base cost of the spell.
This talent is usually taken only when you are taking Divine Favor as well. Our int values are usually far too low to expect critical heals on a regular basis, unless you are making a point to put a lot of points into intellegence. That being said, a critical heal that takes no mana is an extremely good thing, considering how mana hungry Paladin heals are. With Divine Favor, you are able to be assured of using this ability once every two minutes, which makes this talent absolutely…divine.
Note that this doesn’t make the heal a no-mana cost heal. You still need the mana to cast the heal, as the mana is drained then returned to you. Also note that it does stop your mana regen just like any other spell.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom
Increases the effect of your Blessing of Wisdom by 20%.
At it’s highest rank, Blessing of Wisdom will restore 30 mana every 5 seconds. This talent kicks it up to over 36 mana. This is an additional 72 mana every minute. All caster classes love Blessing of Wisdom, and enjoy this talent even more, and the extra mana per regen isn’t horrible. The question lies in the utility of this blessing. Generally while whittling through normal mobs or normal elite mobs, an unimproved Blessing of Wisdom will serve fine since most of the time the party has time to rest after an encounter. During very long encounters, such as instance bosses, the weak casters want Blessing of Salvation so that the tank can hold aggro better. If there is more than one paladin though, this is not an issue. Healer and mana intensive holy builds will get this talent, other builds generally will not.
Note that this is also a pre-req for Divine Wisdom, one reason many people get this talent.

Divine Favor
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light or Holy Light spell a 100% critical effect chance.
An absolutely divine talent. No healer build should be without this. Works extremely well with illumination. See Illumination’s description for its utility. Some have asked exactly how the talent combo of DF/I works. Illumination is a Passive Talent, Divine Favor is an instant cast spell. To trigger this combo, you cast Divine Favor first, you then get the Divine Favor effect which either lasts for 8 seconds, or until you cast a Holy Light/Flash of Light. If you successfully cast your healing spell in that 8 seconds, then you will gain a critical heal effect. Illumination then steps in (passively) and returns mana that you just used to cast the healing spell.
So Divine Favor works perfectly fine without Illumination, Illum. is just used to give this talen that extra useful kick.

Improved Seal of Righteousness
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness by 15%.
First off, this skill is a pre-req for Holy Shock which makes many people get it automatically, whether they are going to use it or not. Beyond that, a first glance at this skill makes it seem somewhat interesting. Extra holy damage builds more aggro and causes a bit more damage, and this talent affects both the seal and the judgement. If one isn’t going for Holy Shock or Sanctity Aura, then it’s useful to look at how often this skill will be used. The comparison is between Seal of Command and Seal of Righteousness. There are several good posts (add link later) on comparing and showing the two seals, but Theras sums it up nicely: “It would be wiser to suggest that this seal is used more with low damage weapons rather than fast weapons. The testing that has been done in the days since you wrote this guide indicate that Righteousness will fire off at an average of 12 times per minute regardless of weapon speed. Once the damage of your weapon (on the character screen) surpasses an average of approximately 295 it becomes far more effective to use Seal of Command than Righteousness. Some talents may affect the point at which point each skill is more effective, but I find that a good threshold for the average paladin.” So basically figure out of you are going to USE SoR and then decide whether to get this or not. No matter how you look at it, this is still one of my favorite talents since I’m an advocate of Paladins being a holy damage machine.

Improved Flash of Light
Reduces the Mana cost of your Flash of Light spell by 12%
Another must have for healer builds. This talent makes those quick cheap heals even cheaper. Any mana reducing talents are useful since the paladin is constantly using mana for other abilities. Only useful for Healer builds, most builds pass this talent up since there are better places to put talent points in order to be useful.

Improved Concentration Aura
Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 15%
Improves your Concentration Aura to a 50% chance to not be interrupted.
Although the talent increase is quite good, it’s usefulness is questionable. Like most paladin auras, Concentration Aura is situational. If your casters are constantly being hit then this aura is useful so that they can get their spells off…but on the other hand they might want Devotion Aura in order to stay alive longer. Useful when trying to get off a heal, this talent may or may not be useful in your build. As a comment about the Aura itself, Concentration will stack with Spiritual Focus in an additive manner, so that even with an unimproved aura, The bonus for Concentration and a fully specced Spiritual Focus will make it so your Holy Light/Flash of Light are never interrupted. This only prevent interruption from damage, you’re still vulnerable to specific stuns/interrupts.

Divine Wisdom
Increases your total Mana by 10%.
More mana gives more ability to heal or use mana heavy skills. A very good talent, and worth getting for if going for a Healing or a Holy build. A 10% increase to 3000 mana may not seem like a lot, but that extra heal or holy shock can make all the difference.

Sanctity Aura
Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. Players may only have one Aura on them per Paladin at any one time.
A must for Holy damage builds, also a pre-req for getting Holy Shock. Amazingly useful when combined with Exorcism, Seal of Command, Seal of Righteousness, or any other holy damage dealer. In a group of other Paladins and Priests, this talent can increase group DPS significantly (10% increase to ALL holy spells). One will have to think about the tradeoffs with other Auras, but if you are this deep into the Holy tree, you are most likely already dealing heavy holy damage. This Aura can also be turned on briefly, cast a exorcism/holy shock, then turns back off for a quick damage boost.

Improved Seal of Light
Increases the amount healed by your Seal of Light by 15% and the duration of your Judgement of Light by 30 seconds.
As opposed to most talents which increase the effectiveness on both the seal and judgement side, this one has a different effect for each side. Your Seal of Light will heal you for more with each hit you make, allowing you to regenerate your health that much faster, and can be a lifesaver at times. Your Judgement of Light allows the judgement to stay for 60 seconds on your target as opposed to the normal 30 seconds. This allows for mana conservation, or the ability to judge a few seals of righteousness while you continue to attack. Although not mandatory in Holy builds, it is useful and usually a playstyle decision.

Divine Strength
Increases your Strength by 10%.
If you’re this deep into the Holy Tree, you are not specced for physical damage, so purely holy builds may skip this. Comparable to Blessing of Kings since this is passive and does not take up the blessing slot which BoK does, but this only increases one stat. A Holy damage build benefits from this skill since Seal of Command works off physical damage. Higher strength also equals more damage blocked with shields and more ability to keep aggro when attacking monsters. It’s worth noting that this talent appears to add only to base strength and not strength after items, which makes this talent less useful than at first glance. Divine Strength is playstyle talent, and generally obtained unless specced purely healing, or focusing purely on holy damage and not physical attack power; the points may be better off elsewhere.

Holy Shock
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 365 to 395 Holy damage.
This is the ranged attack. This is the reason so many Paladins invest into Holy.
This is a very good PvP skill, and a useful PvE skill. However this damage comes with a low range, high mana cost, and very high cooldown. A slightly overrated ability, one should never make a Holy Build based around this talent, only as a complementary build to this talent. That being said, this ability is great for burst damage, and for surprising your enemy in PvP. It will take down runners (though some people argue this is what Judgement of Justice is for) and it is a great puller.
This ability is the single highest aggro inducer for the Paladin, and combined with a Judgement of Fury, will keep the monsters nipping at your heels.

3. Protection Talents 

Improved Devotion Aura
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 25%.
At early levels, this talent seems excellent, but its usefulness decreases and by the time you hit 60, this talent is very questionable. It gives an additional 183 armor to your devotion aura. With 6000 armor, that’s an extra 0.75% DR. For a mage’s 1000 armor, That could be another 2%DR, so it’s more effective for the cloth classes. Not the best talent in the world, useful only for heavy protection builds or for additional armor in 2-handed builds. Some people say that if your goal is simply to go down the protection tree that Redoubt is better as a first level skill.

Redoubt
Increases your chance to block attacks with your shield by 30% after being the victim of a critical strike. Lasts 10 seconds or 5 blocks.
A good talent for any 1H protection build. The extra blocking you will get from this talent will more than make up for the damage caused to you by the critical hit.
This is a pure 30% addition, not a percentage of your block rate already. A necessary skill for any shield users with protection. Most people believe that if you simply wish to head down the protection tree, this is the better of the two abilities, but in general it depends on your playstyle and if you’re using a 2Hander or not.

Improved Blessing of Protection
Reduces the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection by 120 seconds.
Very useful, since it gives you your physical shield every 3 minutes instead of 5. This can help a great deal in parties with a lot of cloth or leather users who keep getting attacked. Extremely useful in PvP, since it allows you to shield yourself or others that much more often. Just remember that it only  blocks physical damage, not spells. Most protection builds should get this talent, although some prefer to simply not get into situations where this is required and use the points elsewhere.

Toughness
Increases your armor value from items by 10%.
A huge increase in armor. Due to your armor levels at level 60, this will boost your DR about 2.5-3%, which means you gain a large amount defensively. This talent is a must have for all protection builds. This thread explains toughness extremely well. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=87461

Blessing of Sanctuary
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by 24 for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
If you’re going into the protection tree, get this. This reduces ALL sources of damage so that even less gets to you from spells, melee, and other effects.
However this damage reduction is done before other damage reduction is factored in, i.e. before armor is accounted for, so for someone with 50% Damage Reduction, this will only reduce damage by 12 points. Not as useful as a first glance shows, it is still a very good blessing for the main tank in instances, as well as for others to increase their survivability. Rogues and pets are especially good targets for this. This talent is also used in a retribution aura build, where you want a group of monsters to beat on you or someone else constantly, tanking damage and yet dealing piddly damage. Extremely useful in PvP against quick damage dealers like rogues, less useful against slow heavy hitters.

Improved Seal of Fury
Increases the amount of threat generated by your Seal of Fury and Judgement of Fury by 15%.
This increases the effectiveness of your tanking ability. A better Fury will draw better aggro, and a judgemented fury will cause that much more aggro from your holy damage. Believe it or not, the extra 15% DOES make a difference, I have seen it. If your role is as primary tank, get this. Remember that the group as a whole needs to practice good aggro management since even improved talents won’t hold aggro if the mage goes nuke crazy.

Shield Specialization
Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 25%.
A decent skill for all defensive and protection builds. It increases the effectiveness of your blocking, but not by a huge amount. The block has to occur first, which means Holy Shield and Redoubt are necessary to get the most use out of this skill. Also a 25% increase comes to about a 10-15point block. Very useful on fast hitting mobs, not so useful on heavy hitting slow mobs. Also required for Holy Shield. A good strength stat and a good shield helps the effectiveness of this talent since the amount of damage absorbed is based on both of those items.

Improved Blessing of Freedom
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Freedom by 5 seconds.
This skill tends to be more of a PvP skill than a PvE. The additional time to get away or move around can be critical. Many effects have other ways to break free such as equipment or other spells. Although useful in PvP, the paladin still lacks the ability to close with an enemy, however it is useful to keep the enemy from pounding on him. Usefulness is dependant upon your playstyle, but there might be a better place to invest five points.

Improved Seal of Justice
Increases the frequency that your Seal of Justice stuns the opponent by 5 per minute.
A bit more useful than players might state, this skill is still not the best in the world. Both monsters and players become immune to stuns after a three stuns, so all the extra hits are now useless. By increasing the frequency of hitting, you gain a higher chance of actually stunning your target in one or two hits as opposed to four or five, so it is useful in both PvP and PvE. Most people don’t consider it worth investing in unless they’re heading towards Repentance.

Reckoning
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.
Not so useful if all your are interested in is absorbing damage, but extremely useful for adding that bit of extra hatred to the monster so that you keep aggro.
Extra damage is always nice as well, although if you are this far into the protection tree, damage is not your forte. However for fighting fast attacking monsters and players like rogues, this adds that extra umph. Unfortunately this skill seems to be bugged from several reports at the moment, otherwise this would rate higher.

Holy Shield
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 seconds and deals 130 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.
The bread and butter of the defensive paladin. Increased chance to block whenever the paladin wishes. Low cool down time. Damage dealt for every block which increases aggro that much more and keeps the monsters attacking you and not the mage. The only downside is a rather high mana cost, but that’s a small price to pay for such an excellent talent. A must have for every defensive build, when combined with Shield Specialization and Redoubt it makes the paladin quite hearty indeed.

Improved Blessing of Salvation
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Salvation by 10 minutes.
This talent will increase the duration of one of your blessings by 5 minutes per point. Many people opt not for this because of the reasoning that all other blessings have a five minute lifespan still, so since you’re recasting blessings anyways, what’s one or two more? The talent points could be spent elsewhere.
The place where I can see this talent being useful is in extremely long Boss encounters(lasting 5 minutes or more obviously), especially raids, where the paladin wants to salvation a bunch of people and then forget about them. Most of the other blessings aren’t a huge issue if they fade in a fight, but loosing salvation can mean the end of a mage or a rogue.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with one-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Not the most incredible talent in the world. If you proceed this far into the tree you might as well get this since you’ll be using 1H/shield all the time anyways, and extra damage leads to shorter fights and more aggro. Not a massive damage booster though.

Repentance
Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation for up to 6 seconds. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Only works against Humanoids.  Crowd Control at it’s finest. Much more useful in PvP than in PvE. Going 1v1, this can be an extra “shield” for you to toss off an uninterrupted heal. It can also stop a player who is kiting or a rogue who keeps moving. It’s comparable to Gouge or Polymorph, although for a lesser amount of time. There is a large number of usese for this in PvP. In PvE situations, this has much less utility. It can stop runners assuming you forgot to judge justice, and it can interrupt casters as well. Not as useful in PvE but still quite useable. This talent very much worth getting if you have dug this far into the tree.

4. Retribution Talents 

Improved Blessing of Might
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 20%.
Very useful for lower levels, not so useful for higher levels. The dps increase from this attack increase is not that great: 2.3DPS. Although more damage is always nice, unless you’re going for an extreme damage build, it’s worthyness of 5 talent points is questionable. However it still adds more dps than an Improved Judgement of Crusader adds to SoR. A good alternate for a retribution build if one isn’t getting BoK perhaps.

Benediction
Reduces the Mana cost of your Retribution spells by 15%.
Now this is a talent, the 2nd best of all the first tier talents right behind Spiritual Focus. This reduces the cost of your retribution spells across the board. A must have for consecration builds, and extremely useful for all other builds. Remember, Judgement is a retribution spell. Very nice if you are casting Seal of the Crusader, and especially if judging it for extra holy damage. I would pick this over Improved Blessing of Might if you simply want to climb the retribution tree.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Does what it says. Get it if you’re going for heavy damage with two handed weapons, otherwise forget it.

Improved Seal of the Crusader
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Seal of the Crusader and the Holy damage increase of your Judgement of the Crusader by 15%.
More damage, and more holy damage. All holy damage builds will probably have this skill as it increases the power of the judgement that much more. JoCr adds 20% to Seal of Righteousness, so 15% more damage is some, if not a lot. If your goal is pure damage and you don’t use the judgement, Improved Seal of the Crusader and Two-Handed Specialization are about the same in terms of damage increase, it’s you judgement call on which to get, although getting both is still good. For one handed builds this skill helps build aggro and cause damage that much better.

Deflection
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
Oddly enough this is in the retribution tree as opposed to the protection tree. This is quite likely THE best passive defensive talent the paladin has. In general this effectively doubles your chance to parry, which cuts down on the number of times the monsters will hit you. Even better than Toughness in my opinion since not getting hit 5% of the time is even better than taking 2.5% less damage from all hits. All defensive builds must come down this far into the tree to get this talent.
Check the description of Toughness for a link to a useful thread comparing these two skills.

Vengeance
Gives you a 15% bonus to Physical and Holy damage you deal for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike.
First lets look at what it takes for this talent to proc. This talent is useful only if going for a build with high agility and conviction. The Paladin’s chance for a critical hit is 5% base, and will most likely hit 8-10% by level 60 without trying for specific equipment. Conviction will give you another 5%, and if you use the right equipment you can get your critical rate even higher, even over 20%. For a heavy damage build, this is an excellent skill since you’ll be trying to get criticals anyways. And a 15% increase to both your physical and holy damage is great. Some people will use Seal of Crusader until they hit a critical, then switch to a Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command depending upon what weapon they’re using to deal that extra holy damage. Note that ALL holy skills get the holy damage increase, including holy shield, consecration, and retribution aura. A very useful skill across the board, assuming your crit rate is high enough to make use of it.

Seal of Command
Fills the Paladin with the spirit of command for 30 seconds, giving the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to the damage of the Paladin’s weapon. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy for 30 seconds, causing 82 Holy damage any time the enemy becomes stunned. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.
This seal is Seal of Righteousness’s counterpart. Whereas that is used with low damage one handers, this seal shines with high damage two handed weapons (or even the more powerful one handers). The damage from this seal can be increased by Judgement of Crusader, making it even more powerful. This damage “acts like” physical damage in that the holy damage can cause a critical, and be dodged/parried/blocked or just plain miss. Even with all of these issues, Seal of Command is still one of the highest rated damage dealing skills in the Paladin’s armory. The same as I added comments from Theras in SoR, here are comments from him here:
“Again, the speed of your weapon doesn’t really factor into the proc rate, so you can remove that part of the analysis. As mentioned above with Righteousness, I tend to use Command on weapons with an average damage of greater than 295 on the character panel. Before avoidance is calculated, it will proc about 4.8 times per minute. Being pessimistic, I lowered that to 3.8 for comparison purposes against Righteousness (to assume a 15% avoidance rate, and 10% critical hit rate). It is also very important to note that Rank 5 Seal of Command does not generate a higher proc rate or more damage than Rank 1 Seal of Command. Thus if going for straight damage, you only need to expend 110 mana per minute to keep up steady damage, while Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness requires 970 mana per minute to keep up. This frees you up to fire off, say, two Consecrations (and thus adding another 768 damage per target in range). The bottom line is, if you have a very high damage weapon, Seal of Command is the best damage Seal we have.”
Judgement of Command is an interesting effect, one which is not used very often but has it’s place all the same. Since mobs and players become immune to stuns after a certain number, this isn’t as useful as one would usually think and isn’t my first choice for a seal since I could judge Seal of Light or others. This skill comes into play more in PvP where stuns are constant and players go down quickly.

Anticipation
Increases your Defense skill by 10.
A so-so skill, it does do more than meets the eye. It increases block/parry/dodge each by 0.4%, and it also lowers the chance for an opposing monster or player to hit you and cause a critical hit on you. Useful as a defensive skill, but considering there are so many items out there with +Defense on them, there are certainly better skills to spend five talent points on.

Improved Retribution Aura
Increases the damage done by your Retribution Aura by 25%.
If you love your Retribution Aura, then you will love this talent. If you dislike it, then this talent is worthless to you. If you are one of those people who uses Retribution Aura extensively, then an additional point of damage per point of talent is very nice. This talent goes along well with the paladin’s AE retribution aura build. More useful for those who use a shield than two-handers because of the extra damage you’re taking by not using devotion aura. Not so useful in raids or boss encounters, very useful for grinding or fighting many monsters at once.

Consecration
Consecrates the land beneath the Paladin, doing 384 Holy damage over 8 seconds to enemies who enter the area.
The Paladin’s only area effect spell, if you come this far into the into the retribution tree you better get this. A very nice way to cause aggro to a large group of mobs, it also causes a decent amount of damage as long as the monsters stay near you. Not very useful in PvP as most players will run from you. However very effective in large groups of enemies. Holy damage increasing skills will affect this such as vengence and sanctity aura. Useful for most situations.

Precision
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
Not much to say about this. Some people skip this skill in their retribution builds, but a higher chance to strike always equals more damage which equals more threat and faster dead monsters. A good talent.

Conviction
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.
Again, not much to say about this. If you’re this far into the tree, get this skill.
More crits = more damage. Note that this will also cause Vengence to proc more often so you will gain more than a pure 5% critical strike rate.

Blessing of Kings
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

The ultimate blessing? The jury is out on this. Is it the best overall blessing? Sure. If you go far into the retribution tree this skill is certainly worth picking up. When cast on anyone this provides and increase to damage, health, mana, dodge/parry/block, mana regen, crit rate and spell crit rate. Any class with an agl build loves this blessing. However it does all this in relatively small amounts. For a more general class like a Paladin or a Druid this is very useful, but for other classes this is of limited use. Tanks will want Might or Sanctuary. Casters will want Wisdom or Salvation. The main tank will want Light. Blessings are very situational and although this is an excellent blessing for normal grinding and questing, in instances and against bosses, other specialized blessings can be more useful. Like any other blessing, watch the situation

Must Haves

You won’t go far in PvE or PvP without these talents:

Arcane Talents (18 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Improved Arcane Missiles is the best choice for an initial five point investment in arcane, which is necessary to unlock the better parts of the tree. Arcane Missiles is best used off a clearcast or for chasing runners in PvP, since if you start the cast while they are in range, missiles will follow them for the duration of the five second cast time as long as they stay within 50 yards or so. I call ‘em homing missiles.

Arcane Concentration provides you with a 10% chance of getting a clearcast of a damage spell. Very useful in both PvP and PvE. In PvE I tend to Scorch (a 1.5s cast time mana efficent direct damage spell) until I get a clearcast and then I will hit Arcane Missiles. In PvP, if you get a clearcast you can usually !@!#& it out for a Blizzard, saving 1400 mana and getting 1216 damage for free (or more if you’re frost).

Evocation is still worth it, though with its recently nerfed 10 minute timer (it used to be 5 back in stress test 1 days…) it is only really useful for emergencies. At level 60 it gives you back around 50-80% of your mana depending on how heavily you’ve invested in Spirit.

Improved Arcane Explosion is a must have for both PvP and PvE. This makes the spell instant cast, allowing you to cast it while moving and also never have to suffer with casting time delays from getting hit. You won’t get groups in BRD and above without this spell. It’s also great for taking out clumped groups of players in PvP.

Improved Counterspell is a PvP must have. Four seconds of silence is priceless, in addition to locking out an entire school of magic for 10 seconds. You can also use it offensively, before an enemy even starts casting, so that you block any instant spells. Note: Paladins can still divine shield through silence, so don’t waste it on that.

Now that we’ve gotten the Must Haves out of the way, let’s turn the various viable PvP and PvE builds available for mages. We’ll first consider endgame builds and we’ll look at a PvE build and progression at the end.

31 Arcane/20 Fire
The classic mage. Damage, damage, damage. Solo versatility and power. My personal choice.

Arcane Talents (31 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Focus - 2/5 points
Reduces the chance that the opponent can resist your arcane spells by 4%.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.

# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.

# Arcane Power - 1/1 point
When activated, your spells deal 35% more damage while costing 35% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 seconds.

Frost Talents (0 points)

# None

Fire Talents (20 points)

# Improved Fireball - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds.

# Impact - 5/5 points
Gives your fire spells a 10% chance to stun the taget for 2 seconds.

# Ignite - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

# Flame Throwing - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.

# Incinerate - 2/2 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Fire Blast and Scorch spells by 4%.

# Pyroblast - 1/1 point
Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes 148 to 195 fire damage and an additional 56 damage over 12 seconds.

Arcane Focus is just where I chose to dump points to get to 20 to unlock deeper parts of the tree. It’s somewhat useful but not vital, in my experience.

Improved Mana Shield can be a life safer and can be the death of you at other times. Use with care, since it’s a careful line between staying alive and running out of mana. I like Improved Mana Shield and a +int/sta equipment build for PvP, which lets me use mana shield for emergencies. It’s much easier for mages to get back mana than hp (gems, evocation) so it is worth it to trade off mana for hp sometimes. That said, Mana Shield upgraded with talents absorbs 998 melee damage at the cost of 1996 mana… so be aware your mana pool will take a hit. I don’t run around with mana shield on all the time, saving it for emergencies (usually when melee catches me by surprise). The talent itself isn’t that great, but it is a good place to drop 2 points to unlock deeper parts of the tree and has more utility than just going to 4/5 in Arcane Focus.

Presence of Mind is on a three minute timer, meaning that once every three minutes any spell with less than 10 seconds casting time is instant (i.e. no instant teleports Razz). This wonderful for PvP and is a must have for Arcane/Fire mix PvP builds. It isn’t that useful in PvE.

Arcane Mind is 8% more mana. Can’t go wrong with more mana, and it is worth the points… 8% more of a 6000 mana pool is 480 mana.

Arcane Instability is 3% more damage and 3% greater chance to crit on all damage spells. A wonderful talent, since it affects all your damage spells and not just one line. The 3% chance to crit is pretty big, since 100 int = 1% chance to crit.

Arcane Power is 35% more damage for 35% more mana for 15 seconds. Limited utility in PvE (mostly useful when AEing stuff that needs to die asap) but this ability is wonderful in Solo PvP. You can also use it effectively with instant AE vs. clusters of enemies… it’s a great talent, probably the best top tier talent out of all the trees for PvP.

–

Improved Fireball is 0.5 seconds off a 3.5 second spell, giving you 3.0 second fireballs and increasing your damge per second. It’s a great investment at low levels and is probably the best first place to allocate talent points for Arcane/Fire builds. I am ambiguous on its utility in PvP since I tend to rely on instants and AoE in PvP, but its utility at low levels in PvE cannot be understated.

Impact is a 10% chance to proc a 2 second stun off of any fire damage spell. Insignificant you say? No, not at all. Two seconds is huge in PvP, and stuns interrupt casting… It’s not so great in PvE but is a must-have for Arc/Fire mages in PvP.

Ignite is 40% more damage to your crits, but since your crits are already 50% more damage than a regular hit, Ignite in essence gives you 110% damage crits. Well-worth it.

Pyroblast has two uses. One, vs. a sheeped target when you can afford the 6 second wind-up time. Two, combined with PoM to nail enemies for instant damage. PvE wise it’s a slightly more mana efficent opener, but the spell is a shade of its former self. Not a must-have, but a good place to drop a point.

Incinerate is a relatively new… 4% more crits on Fire Blast is great for PvP and 4% more crits on Scorch is handy for instancing in PvE. Fire Blast’s enhanced crit rate makes this worth it in PvP, in my opinion.

Flame Throwing is more range. More range is good. 41 yds on Fireball and Pyroblast. Get it if you go Arc/Fire.

30 Fire/21 Arcane
Perhaps the most viable Fire mage. Choosing 10% more damage all the time at the cost of 8% more mana and Arcane Power’s 35% more damage some of the time. More reliant on Fire, however, and thus more vulnerable to those dastardly Fire Protection Potions.

Arcane Talents (21 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

Frost Talents (0 points)

# None
Fire Talents (30 points)

# Improved Fireball - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by 0.5 seconds.

# Impact - 5/5 points
Gives your fire spells a 10% chance to stun the taget for 2 seconds.

# Ignite - 5/5 points
Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

# Flame Throwing - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards.

# Pyroblast - 1/1 point
Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes 148 to 195 fire damage and an additional 56 damage over 12 seconds.

# Improved Flamestrike - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike spell by 15%.

# Blast Wave - 1/1 point
A wave of flame radiates outward from the caster, damaging all enemies caught within the blast
for 160 to 192 fire damage, and dazing them for 6 seconds.

# Critical Mass - 3/3 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your fire spells by 6%.

# Fire Power - 5/5 points
Increases the damage done by your fire spells by 10%.

21 points in Arcane following the same pattern as in Arcane/Fire…

Only difference in the Fire tree is no more Incinerate (since you’re getting Critical Mass anyway, and that gives you 4% more damage with 5/5 Fire Power).
Improved Flamestrike is a prerequisite to Blast Wave… but handy for AoEing… or for PoM+Flamestrike.

Blast Wave is a very mana efficient, high damage, AoE fire spell. It also has a 6 second Daze component to it (somewhat buggy last time I tested it, but I’ve since had mobs use it on me and had it work). Great in Combos or stacked with multiple Fire/Arcane Mages to take out zergs. Blast Wave, PoM+Flamestrike, AE spam and the enemy is a world of hurt… Imagine that with 3 or 4 mages… Zergkiller?

Critical Mass is more crits. More crits are good.

Fire Power is 10% more damage all the time. Great in PvE, good in PvP too. Whether it’s as good as Arcane Power and 8% more mana is up to you… and also whether the aforementioned fire protection potions are prevalent on your server.Page 6

Combustion (5 minute timer, next fire spell is guaranteed crit) is passed up in favor of PoM… if you were focused on PvE, I would recommend Combustion instead of PoM, but for PvP being able to instant cast spells is worth far more than a guaranteed crit, in my opinion.

33 Frost/18 Arcane
The ‘full’ frost mage. Trading up damage and instant casts for control… Excellent in group PvP with a good supporting group. Fares poorly solo vs. casters/ranged, whilst completely destroying melee. Just as powerful as Arc/Fire, but in a completely different way with a very different playstyle.

Arcane Talents (18 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

Frost Talents (33 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Improved Frost Nova - 2/2 points
Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by ?.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target’s movement speed to 25%
of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Shatter - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your frost spells against frozen targets by 50%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.

# Frostbite - 5/5 points
Gives your chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target for 5 seconds.

# Ice Barrier - 1/1 point
Instantly shields you, absorbing 455 damage. Lasts 1 minute. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.

Fire Talents (0 points)
# None

18 in Arcane as detailed in the Must Haves section.

Improved Frostbolt grants you a 2.5s cast time, increasing dps and making it easier to snare targets. Far better than Permafrost, since you’ll be casting Frostbolt all day long (get used to it, ice has lesser single target spell diversity than fire) and there’s no need for a longer snare because you’ll be continually reapplying the snare with Frostbolt.

Ice Shards gives you 100% frost crits, instead of merely 50%. Well-worth it, considering how other frost talents come into play. Frost is a tree that builds upon itself, as will be seen. Improved Frost Nova is slightly more useful than it once was, but is only gotten because it is a prereq to Shatter.

Shatter raises your chance to crit on Frozen targets by 50%. Well worth it and central to solo Frost Mage damage output. As for groups, frozen has a way of not lasting that long when other people are doing damage to the same target.

Improved Blizzard is a frost must-have. It lowers target speed to 25% of normal _and_ does damage and can proc Frostbite to hold them in place even longer. Excellent zerg control. Blizzard is a huge radius AoE as well. Unfortunately I’ve never seen Blizzard crit, I’ve /bugged it, however.

Cold Snap lets you reset your cold spell cooldowns instantly. Good for when you need to reapply Ice Barrier or need to drop another Nova.

Frost Channeling is another Frost must-have. It makes the line so much more efficent. I’d pick this over 6% more damage (Piercing Ice) any day of the week.

Ice Block is your oh crap spell. Use it to become immune to everything except for a dispel for 10 seconds. Great for getting assist trains off you in PvP or when you draw too much aggro in PvE. Otherwise… it isn’t that great. And yes, it can be dispelled.

Frostbite is a key talent in Frost line, giving all your ice spells (including the Chilled proc from your Ice Armor) a 15% chance to proc Frozen for 5 seconds. Excellent vs. melee. Also… consider this with shatter and you begin to see the stacking power of Frost. However, once again, Frostbite has a tendency to break prematurely when other people are hitting that same target.

Ice Barrier is a power word:shield for mages. Strange timer though, 1 minute duration, 2 minute cooldown. Also can be dispelled, making it somewhat bleh. However, it absorbs all damage, including magic… helps keep Frost Mages alive.

Arctic Reach is vital, because Frostbolt has a base range of 30 yd. With this talent you reach 36 yd, which is a little more tolerable (especially if you’re used to playing fire).

28 Arcane/23 Frost
A variant of Frost/Arcane, lessening dependence on Frost and opening up some of the goodies of Arcane. Shedding Frost Nova/Shatter (limited utility in groups since things are rarely frozen long) in exchange for Arcane Instability, Presence of Mind and Arcane Mind. This is my personal choice if I choose to go Frost.

Arcane Talents (28 points)

# Improved Arcane Missiles - 5/5 points
Gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channeling Arcane Missiles.

# Arcane Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target.
The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%.

# Evocation - 1/1 point
While channeling this spell, your mana regeneration is active and increased by 1500%. Lasts 8 seconds.

# Improved Arcane Explosion - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Arcane Explosion by 1.5 seconds.

# Improved Counterspell - 2/2 points
Gives your Counterspell a 100% chance to silence the target for 4 seconds.

# Improved Mana Shield - 2/2 points
Increases the damage absorbed by your Mana Shield by 75%.

# Presence of Mind - 1/1 point
When activated, your next Mage spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

# Arcane Mind - 4/4 points
Increases your maximum Mana by 8%.

# Arcane Instability - 3/3 points
Increases your spell damage and critical strike chance by 3%.
Frost Talents (23 points)

# Improved Frostbolt - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Frostbolt spell by 0.5 seconds.

# Ice Shards - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Frost spells by 100%.

# Improved Blizzard - 3/3 points
Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell. This effect lowers the target’s movement speed to ? of normal. Lasts 8.50 seconds.

# Piercing Ice - 3/3 points
Increases the damage done by your frost spells by 6%.

# Cold Snap - 1/1 point
When activated, this spell finishes the cooldown on all of your cold spells.

# Arctic Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Frostbolt spell and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 20%.

# Frost Channeling - 3/3 points
Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 15%.

# Ice Block - 1/1 point
You become encased in a block of ice, protecting you from all physical attacks and spells for 10 seconds, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.
Piercing Ice is a good place to drop three points for 6% more damage to frost. Frostbolt will still be your primary damage spell so you might as well make it more powerful Smile

PvE Talent Progression, Levels 10-50
End-game PvP builds are great for level 60s, but of limited utility for a level 10 mage, freshly talented, whose main focus is getting levels. In that regard, I present what I believe to be an excellent PvE talent progression. Remember, you can respec your talents for merely 1 gold (the first time, 5(n-1) gold for 1<n<10 after which it is always 50g to switch), making levelling up with one set of talents and then switching at high levels very practical.

Fire is simply better dps and Frost’s mana efficency doesn’t kick in until high levels (even then, it still kills slower than Frost on net, based on my testing). Thus Fire is best for PvE. Arcane’s Presence of Mind and Arcane Power are of limited utility in PvE, making deep focus in Fire a key to a successful mage.

Without further ado, a Mage PvE Talent progression for levels 10-50, listed in order:

Levels 10-14: Improved Fireball the best dps increase you can get at this level, since your Rank 3 Fireball has a base 2.5s casting time, this lets you get them off at 2.0s each.

Levels 15-16: Flame Throwing is nice because range is convenient and lets you get in more fireballs when fighting mobs. Also, Ignite can be put off since your Intellect (and thus crit rate) is still pathetically low.

Levels 17-21: Ignite is a raw damage increase for when you crit.

Levels 22-26: Improved Arcane Missiles because it’s time to build Arcane to get Instant Arcane Explosion for use in instances.

Levels 27-31: Arcane Concentration to get clearcasts.

Level 32: Evocation for mana regen once every 10 minutes… at this level it’s going to be around 100% of your mana pool, which is very nice. Be warned, it starts fading away from there around level 40ish and at level 60 you can expect about 50% of your mana pool back from Evoc.

Level 33-37: Improved Arcane Explosion is very good for the instances you’ll be doing at around this level and up — Gnomeregan, Razorfen Downs, Uldaman, Temple and on up really appreciate it.

Level 38-39: Incinerate to make Scorch more useful in Instances, since you’ll now be able to scorch for a clearcast to fire Arcane Missiles on.

Level 40: Pyroblast because it’s the best place to drop a point in Fire and you might as well get it. It’s really not that great… though it is slightly more mana efficent than Fireball but I haven’t done tests to see whether that justifes the extra three seconds it takes to cast it as an opener vs. a mob.

Level 41-45: Improved Scorch because Scorch is very much an PvE Instance spell and this talent makes it all that much more mana efficient. Impact won’t really do that much for you in instances and Blast Wave isn’t worth the points in Flamestrike for its PvE utility.

Level 46-48: Critical Mass for more critical strikes… damage increase. At this point you can either respec to a partial implementation of your final PvP spec and/or continue in Fire, dropping two points somewhere (Impact perhaps has the most utility) and building Fire Power for 10% more damage and Combustion for guaranteed criticals (handy with Flamestrike and Pyroblast).

Other Talents
And the other talents that I didn’t mention in the process of my discussion above…

Arcane Subtlety allows you to reduce threat from offensive arcane spells by 20/30/40%. Not that great, since most of the time I’ve found myself to use arcane as a supplement in instancing (either Scorch or Frostbolt for clearcasted Arcane Missiles, or spam AEing, or fireball/fireblast for DPS) and thus this talent isn’t that great. The only time I found myself using pure arcane was while AEing… and there’s not much that the tank can do in the current aggro system to prevent you from getting aggro from most of the mobs when you AE, and a 40% threat reduction isn’t going to make a difference there. This is a PvE only talent.

Wand Specialization is next to useless, since the only time I ever use wands is killing a mob that has a sliver of life left in PvE, or for killing totems. Wands are also a pain to use as source of dps because there’s no autoshoot, you have to mash the button over and over again…

Improved Dampen Magic isn’t worth the talent points considering the limited utility of the spell itself. I only use Dampen Magic when soloing vs. caster mobs or players, and even then it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Since it reduces healing by twice as much as it reduces magical damage intake, I would never use it in a group. Not worth talent points to make a rarely used spell slightly better.

Arcane Meditation might be useful if it was 15% of your Mana regeneration while casting per talent point. But it’s 15% for five talent points, which is too small to be noticeable… there are better places to drop 5 talent points in Arcane (e.g. get 8% more mana with Arcane Mind and get PoM).

Improved Fire Blast has its uses… but I don’t think the talent point cost is worth it. Fire Blast is a great instacast spell that I use a lot of PvP but the talent will only reduce it by 1.5s (to a 6.5s cooldown :-/) which isn’t worth five talent points in my opinion. You can conceivably drop a point or two in Improved Fire Blast if you wish, but even a point in Pyroblast has more utility than 0.5 seconds less cooldown. For PvE soloing, it’s not that mana efficient though it is good to drop in between fireballs to up DPS. Maybe a point in this talent is worth it (0.5s for a point), but no more than that really.

Burning Soul is a great talent for people new to mages in PvE. It lets you cast your fire spell without spell casting time set backs while you’re taking damage (65% of the time) which is nice for PvE. For PvP there are too many outright spell interrupts to make Burning Soul worth it. It’s handy for PvE but not vital and if you learn to nova properly you can often kill mobs without getting hit at all. I weaned myself off this talent — if I need to do damage output while getting hit in PvE with my nova and cone of cold timers down I’ll use arcane missiles, which are 100% uninterruptable instead of just 65%.

Improved Fire Ward isn’t worth it. I use Fire Ward in PvE vs. fire mobs and in PvP I try to have it up as often as possible to absorb any incoming damage from fire casters. The talent doesn’t let it absorb more, it merely reflects part of the damage back to the original caster. Not really worth it, the applications are too few. I can’t think of a situation where reflecting 35% of 300 absorption back on a caster would contribute to their downfall.

Combustion is a fine PvE talent. The timer is a bit longish, at five minutes, but it’s handy for fighting tough mobs. It doesn’t really stack that well with the rest of the fire tree since the fire tree increases your chance to crit, making combustion less necessary since you already have a higher chance to crit. That said, a Combusted Blast Wave is a very good thing… I just can’t justify giving up PoM in Arcane to get Combustion for any fire build.

Permafrost has little point. If you’re frost, you’re going to be mostly casting frostbolt. Since you’ll be casting frostbolt over and over again, you’ll be continually reapplying the snare. Why then, would you want a talent that makes the snare last longer? It already lasts 9 seconds or so initially at level 60… more than enough time for you to get off another 2.5s cast time frostbolt to reapply the snare. I don’t see the point of this talent.

Winter’s Chill is too little for too much. Three talent points for a 10% extra movement speed reduction is overkill. Maybe this could be useful if you wanted a really nasty Blizzard snare (it would be a 15% speed snare or a 17.5% speed snare, depending on how Winter’s Chill is calculated — I believe it is a flat 10% extra speed decrease however, but haven’t tested) but I’d rather just get Piercing Ice and do 6% more damage. 10% extra snare isn’t going to let you slip in a fifth frostbolt before the mob gets to you either, so it isn’t worth it there. Also with Shatter, you’d want to nova the mob after the third frostbolt so you can get a 50% chance to crit off the frozen… I would recommend against Winter’s Chill.

Improved Frost Ward is a nice improvement to a spell almost never used. Very few mobs use frost magic… there aren’t many frost mages out there… I never find myself casting Frost Ward. 50% of the damage of the max level Frost Ward would be 150 damage… meaning 150 extra mana, not even enough for a frostbolt. This talent isn’t even worth a point’s investment.

Improved Cone of Cold is 35% more damage on Cone of Cold for 3 talent points. I’m not a fan of Cone of Cold because it’s an instant cone spell — which, because it is an AoE of a sort (cone effect) has a high mana cost, making it inefficent for solo mobs. I only really use Cone of Cold for its 50% snare when fighting melee or to snare mobs when I’m AoEing them. I don’t turn to Cone of Cold for AoE damage, preferring arcane explosion instead. However, the talent isn’t bad and if you find yourself using and liking Cone of Cold it could be worth investing in it.

What is supposed to be the role of the Mage class?

The Mage class is primarily a ranged damage-oriented support class that has three separate schools of magic available to them: Arcane, Fire, and Frost. The three different forms of magic schools available to the Mage make it a very flexible class to deal damage to almost any type of creature in the game. The Mage also has the strongest multiple target area of effect (AoE) damaging spells/abilities in the game. Other support functions that a Mage can provide include single target control [Polymorph], and short-term crowd control [Frost Nova/root effects]. The Mage class is also the only class that has the ability to conjure food and drink – This saves a great deal of cash for the Mage and his/her friends. The Mage is very highly sought after class for groups, raids, and instance dungeon crawls.

Although the Mage is a very strong group-role class, it makes a very effective character in soloing many same-level quests and creatures on its own. The general rule is:
-Anything below your level is safe
-Anything one/two levels above your level will cost a good portion of your mana but is usually safe and you should expect resistances at around 10-25%
-Anything three levels above your level will cost you a majority of your mana and a decent supply of your health and you should expect about 50%+ resistances.
-Anything four levels above your level or higher will cost you all of your mana, all of your life, potions/mana gems, and you should expect around 75% or higher resistances. Success is not ensured and may result in an unplanned visit to the Spirit Healer in some cases.

What character stats are most important to my Mage?

How important a stat is to your Mage truly depends on how you wish to play your Mage. It is the general understanding of the Mage community that Intellect and Stamina are the two top priority stats a Mage should focus on: intellect impacts your Mage’s critical strike chance with spells and increases your available mana pool; stamina increases your Mage’s health points. Spirit, although the description states it regenerates your mana and health pools, is largely seen as insignificant by the Mage community simply because of its diminishing returns at higher stat levels and lack of effectiveness during spell casting. Agility and Strength stats primarily affect melee-based characters defensively and offensively. Although these melee stats can affect a Mage’s melee abilities, the benefit from these stats alone will not impact your function in combat as greatly as the others [intellect, stamina, and spirit].

What armor, weapons, and tradeskill professions can a Mage learn?

- Mages start out with proficiency in Cloth armor; Mages cannot learn any other armor types, regardless of their character levels.
- Mages start with the weapon skill Staves. Mages can also learn how to wield Daggers and 1 handed swords in addition to their existing weapon skills.
- New spells become available to Mages on every even-numbered level: 2, 4, 6, etc to 60. Be sure to visit a Mage trainer as soon as you can upon reaching an even-numbered level: you will be finding it more difficult to fight creatures at your level without updated spells.
- Mages have the ability to learn any two of all the available tradeskill professions.

Where can I find more information about tradeskill professions?

The official Blizzard profession guide can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/professions/
The player community has put together an awesome amount of in-depth information [FAQs] regarding all available professions, here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-professions&t=40&p=1&tmp=1#post40

What tradeskill professions should I train into for my Mage?

Tradeskill professions vary in effectiveness on a per-player and per-character basis – There is no one perfect profession that is absolutely best for every Mage; all of us play our Mage differently and have different goals/needs for our characters. It would be strongly advised to read through the above mentioned links to better understand tradeskill professions and decide upon which, if any, you would like to explore with your Mage. It is a general rule of thumb that the gathering professions have the potential to make money without as much effort, time, or money as the crafting professions – gathering professions can sell their items directly on the auction house whereas crafting professions must gather/buy resources, learn how to create the item, create the item, and then sell it. However, the crafting professions do provide your character with the ability to produce useful items for your character without the need to purchase them from someone else.

What are talents and which are available to the Mage class?

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 60 – 51 talent points in total at level 60. 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.

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.

Where can I find more information about available Mage talents?

An excellent resource for creating a talent roadmap for your character is here:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View&category_select_id=4

What is this 33/18, 30/16, 31/20 talent thing I keep hearing about?

Class talents are broken down into categories, as mentioned previously, and players tend to create what are called ‘talent builds’ for their characters. Talent builds are usually represented in the form of numbers and slashes: numbers representing the number of talent points into a talent tree and the slashes separating different talent trees. For example, if you see a 33/18 Frost/Arcane talent build, you would expect 33 talent points allocated into the Frost talent tree and 18 talent points allocated into the Arcane talent tree.

Alcaras began a thread in the Mage forums whose sole focus is on talent builds and explanations of talents. This excellent guide/thread can be found here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow- mage&t=23&p=1&tmp=1#post23

Most popular talent builds, for all talent trees, can be found here:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Templates.List&class_select_id=Mage

I am having some problems understanding what some of these spells do, help! Do not panic, you are not alone in having a difficult time understanding all your spells. Not only are some of the Mage spell descriptions misleading or very vague, they are sometimes just insufficient in explanations. I will list some of the most popular spell-related questions here:

- Amplify Magic: This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will amplify [increase] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective to cast on tanks when fighting against pure melee targets; increases healing effectiveness. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Dampen Magic: This is the exact opposite of its sister spell Amplify Magic. This spell can be cast upon yourself or your group mates and will dampen [lessen] any magical effects on the character; this includes healing spells as well as damaging spells and effects. Uses: Very effective against casting targets that deal a majority of their damage via spell/magical damage. This spell also affects damage shields, such as Fire Shields, and in many cases lessens Elemental creature melee damage [because it is considered magical, in nature]. Each rank of this spell increases its effectiveness on spell effects.

- Arcane Missiles: This is a multiple volley channeling spell which must require your Mage to stand still, facing your target, and not perform any action while casting. This spell has multiple rounds; meaning that Arcane Missiles will launch a magical missile every second, dealing its respective damage each round. Remember, like all channeling spells, if your character is hit during the channeling of Arcane Missiles, it will stop the remaining Arcane Missiles from launching – Unless you place talent points into the Arcane talent tree to become uninterruptible while casting Arcane Missiles. This spell is currently known to be bugged in the game where your character will channel the spell; however, no damage is dealt to the target.

- Polymorph: This spell is the Mage class’ single target control that allows the Mage to place one target out of combat for a period of time. There are some very important side effects of this spell that every Mage must keep in mind: Your target will regenerate their health and mana very quickly while under the effects of Polymorph; you will only be able to Polymorph another player for up to 15 seconds, during PVP combat. A target under the effects of Polymorph will wander around aimlessly in a five yard radius surrounding the spot it first came under the spell’s effects – If you look closely you will even see the Sheep graphic eating grass and blinking its eyes at you. Any damage done to the target, including Damage over Time effects, will cause the target to break out of the Polymorph effect.

-Portals and Teleports: These lines of spells are very rapid methods of transportation for both the Mage and his/her group mates. A Mage will gain his/her first teleport and portal spells beginning at level 20 by finding the Portal Trainers at any of the major capital cities of their respective faction : Undercity, Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and Ironforge. At level 30 the Mage will be able to purchase the remaining teleport spells: Thunderbluff and Darnassus. Teleport spells are self-only rapid transportation spells and require a reagent component that is consumed each time the spell is cast – Reagent “Rune of Teleportation” is found on Arcane Goods/Reagent vendors throughout the game and must be purchased in order for the teleport spells to function. Portal spells are group teleportation spells that enables the Mage’s group to travel to a target location very quickly. The locations are the same as the Mage teleport spells, however, unlike the teleport spells group mates must click on the portal to be transported to the destination. Spell availability for locations is identical to the teleport spells, except for the levels required to purchase the spells: level 40, first round and level 50 for the second/final round of locations – Reagent required is “Rune of Portals” .

-Blink: This is an instant spell that propels the Mage forward for 20 yards in the direction he/she is facing – Only exception to this rule is that there must be a clear walkable path 20 yards in front of the Mage, jumping or climbing paths will not work. A major side effect of the Blink spell is its ability to propel the Mage out from many root and stun effects. The casting cost [mana] required for this spell will gradually increase each level your Mage gains after obtaining the spell.

-Slowfall: This spell will allow the Mage to float for 30 seconds, allowing the Mage to not take falling damage while under the spell’s effects. A Mage’s downward momentum will be slowed while under Safefall’s spell effects – read: You will not fall as fast as you would if you did not have the effect cast on you. Safefall is a self-only spell that requires a spell reagent – Light Feather. Youcannot purchase Light feathers from Arcane goods/reagent vendors, you must obtain them either through the auction house [from other players] or kill feathered creatures throughout the game.

What’s with Wands? How the heck can I use one?

Wands are magical ranged attack items that are found throughout the game as dropped items, purchased from vendors, and can be created by enchanters. Wands use the school of magic listed on them to induce their damage to your target. To use a wand simply open your character equipment portrait (keyboard shortcut key is “C” ), drag your wand from your inventory to the Ranged slot on your character. Open your character abilities/spells book and click on the “general” tab, select the “shoot” ability and drag the icon to your action bar. You will now be able to click that action bar icon to perform your new wand ranged attack. Keep in mind, like melee weapons, wands have delays and your ranged attack ability will require it to refresh in order for it to become available again for use; and unlike melee weapons wands will not auto attack your target, you must click the icon in order to perform another attack round.

A good listing of available wands in the game is available here (notice the magic school name next to the damage range, this is the school of magic the particular wand uses to cause damage): http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?s=wand

What is this + damage thing I keep hearing about?

+ damage is a very vague effect that can be found on some armor, weapons, and items within the game that increases the damage caused by a particular school of magic by a certain amount of damage points.

Here is a link for the official answer on + damage:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=785402&p=1&tmp=1#post785402

There are actually two different types of + damage gear in the game. An example of the first “up to…” type would be an item that “increases damage done by Frost spells and effects by up to 10″ . One would think that reading this would mean every Frost spell cast by the item wearer will be granted a flat + 10 damage bonus. However, it has been discovered that the casting time of a spell directly affects how much benefit these + damage effects truly give the wearer. This means if the wearer casts two different Frost-based spells, with different casting times on both spells, the wearer will be granted different + damage bonuses for both of those spells. The damage bonus for all channeled spells (Blizzard and Arcane Missiles are both excellent examples) will apply across the WHOLE spell. This means that if you have a five second channel spell (Arcane Missiles) and obtain a +10 damage bonus item, your Arcane Missiles will have the chance to land +2 damage each round for a total of five rounds.

An example of the second type of + damage gear is the “wrath” series. These pieces of equipment have a straight + xx damage to yy type of magic. You will see these items with the appropriate names, such as “Uber Sword of Fiery Wrath” which will have the description somewhat like, “+ 50 Fire Spell Damage” . This type of + damage modifier is straight to the spell line; meaning + 50 Fire damage to your fire spells. Just like the “up to…” damage gear, the damage bonus for all channeled spells (Blizzard and Arcane Missiles are both excellent examples) will apply across the WHOLE spell. This means that if you have a five second channel spell (Arcane Missiles) and obtain a +10 damage bonus item, your Arcane Missiles will have the chance to land +2 damage each round for a total of five rounds.

Please take note that a majority of + damage items within the game have a serious lack of any stat increases and should cause you to pause for a moment and think about the benefit of the item before accepting it over a stat increase piece of equipment; this is not to say that + damage items are worthless, however, in some cases stat increasing equipment would grant your character a larger benefit and vise versa.

Help! I see spells on my trainer and have the appropriate level; however, I cannot purchase them!

Relax; you have not been kicked out of the Mage community [unless you’ve received a letter from us…]. You are probably referring to the many of the talents that Mages receive in the form of new spells. Talents such as Pyroblast, Blastwave, and Ice Barrier, to name a few, are all rank two spells unavailable on the Mage trainer until you purchase rank one via the appropriate talent tree.

Here’s your guide for how to get engy to 300 in a little under an hour and a little under 100g

1-20: rough blasting powder
21-30: Rough Dynamite
31-50: Handful of Copper Bolts
51: Arclite Spanner
52-65: Copper Tube
66-75: Copper Modulator
76-90: Coarse Blasting Powder and Coarse Dynamite
91-100: Silver Contact
101-115: Practice Lock(Don’t even bother trying to sell these, they’re absolutely
worthless)
115-130: Flying Tiger Goggles
131-145: Heavy Blasting Powder
146-175: Big Bronze Bomb
176: Gyromatic Micro Asjuster
177-195: Solid Blasting Powder
196-215: Goblin Land Mine(Mithril Tubes if you can’t get the Schem for Landmines)
216-245: Hi-Impact Mithril Slugs
245-260: Mithril Gyro-Shot
261-280: Thorium Widget
281-300: Thorium Tube.

There ya go. This doesn’t require any specialization, but you will need to go to winterspring to pick up some schematics.

I would go Gnomish if I were you, but make a Rogue Alt to level 20 so he can get up to 225 engy, give him Goblin, and make him into your personal Goblin Sapper Charges bitch. I Cannot stress how powerful those are