Advice RE: Mages

[stabby]

I saw the PvP & PvE Mage thread, but ... no help there, so here I come with what I'm sure will be the first of many questions about WoW.

Thus far my primary character is a female Human Mage. She is now level 10 and has received a talent point to distribute, her first of many I hope. In order to keep her effective, will it be smarter for me to focus primarily on building one branch of her abilities, as it was with a D2 sorc, or should I plan to spread these points through fire, frost and arcane talents in order to balance her?

Realizing that many situations will require co-operative play, I am by nature a solo player and will remain so for as much of the time as possible. (I don't know if that little chunk of info. will effect your advice to me.)

If this is not a good section in which to post these types of questions, please advise me.
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I don't have any experience playing mages in this game, but I do have a lot tanking for them, and with soloing, which has a lot of principles that apply across all classes.

A lot of things about mages in solo vs. group play tend to be at odds with each other. In groups, you need to mind your aggro and make sure that you apply your crowd control ability (polymorph) approrpriately. While solo, you benefit from not having anyone else around to accidentally break your polymorphs, but your goal changes from "work with your team to minimize downtime and maximize killing speed" to "put whatever you're targetting on the floor as ground and mana-efficiently as you can."

With this latter idea in mind, I have to recommend not placing points in talents that reduce the aggro you gain from casting spells, and instead focus on things that improve your damage output, and allow you to more effectively manage your mana supply. Looking at your talent trees, I'd say that you should go at least 11 points deep in the Arcane tree for Evocation (8 seconds of 1500% mana regen, every 10 minutes, while you channel -- basically a free mana bar every 10 minutes), probably by picking up 5 points in Improved Arcane Missiles (20% chance of preventing interruption of its channel per point, for 100% when fully specced -- a great buy, since Arcane Missiles does excellent damage for not much mana) and 5 points in Arcane Concentration (2% chance per point of making the next damage spell you cast free after each damage spell hits a target -- a definite good choice, especially compared to Wand Specialization).

One other early talent that catches my eye is Impact in the fire tree, which adds a 2% chance of stun per point to all your fire spells. Stun is a great thing to have when soloing, as it interrupts enemy spells, causes enemy melee attackers to stop hitting you for a couple seconds, and stops runners from making it far enough to call their friends for help.

I hope that my advice at least provides you with some jumping off points for your talent spec.