Mage build advice sought

[Selby]

I did Fire and Arcane all the way to 60 and raided there for a while. It is great for soloing and just killing everything quickly. More mana, more damage, more free spells (via clearcasting, etc). The biggest problem is if you aren't the one doing the killing (like in raids and instances) or get more than 2 monsters on you, it becomes very problematic. How the battle began was important. If I got jumped or picked up an add-on, it could end badly. Having the extra mana was good, but I still required a decent amount of health to take the beatings I was getting. If I started out the fight on my terms, monsters died VERY quickly. The biggest issue in groups was either sitting around not doing anything except tossing in the occasional support spell like Silence and Arcane Missiles or you end up taking 1-2 hits and going down for the count on the big monsters (this was more a problem in raids than anything else). I could still solo like no other for hours on end without having to run back to town for supplies, so it was a very effective method of play for me. I re-spec'd to Frost and Arcane when TBC came out and it has served me well, although I don't kill as fast as I used to. I do have better crowd control though, so that is a bonus.

I'm currently leveling another mage through Frost and some Arcane (only for CC and Silence). It's been interesting so far, I don't kill anywhere near as fast as I used to but I can take on more monsters. It seems to be personal preference. I don't see any reason to go too deeply into the Arcane tree. Slow doesn't seem to me to be that worthwhile, I just haven't encountered any situations where I thought "gee, wish I had that." The high end Arcane skills are useful and I enjoyed them, but I'm not going to build a mage that way this time to find out. I'd spec the Arcane ones I wanted while putting most of my points into either Frost or Fire depending on how I wanted to play. Just expect to re-spec a few times throughout your career ;-)