f13.net

I never play caster classes in MMOGs, but I figured I'd give the WoW mage a shot.

So, general advice, class specific bugs, etc?

The only two things I've noted so far is that Arcane Missile behaves oddly, and the mentioned Frost Nova teleportation bug.

11 Arcane, 40 fire here (yeah, i know, i know)

Spec at very least 11 points into Arcane when you can.  Evocation is awesome, and can be a lifesaver in instances when a pull goes bad and you are nearly out of mana. And non interuptable Arcane Missiles are basicly a mages mele attack.

Fire is nice for damage / PVE, but chances are if you go Fire for PvP you will want at least enough Arcane to get PoM for the insta cast Pyroblast, and probably just go all the way Arcane for the massive front loaded damage bursts most fire mages PvP with.
Immolate is a must for fire builds, probably get a few points into impact also. Other talents are largely a matter of preference and how far along the fire tree you want to go..

Arcane is somewhat a preference thing and largely depends on if you are Fire or Ice.  I have managed to get by without instacast Arcane Explosion (also teaches you a bit more about tactics and positioning when you have to think about where to drop your AoE's instead of just jump spamming like an idiot), but I am beginning to regret missing out on Improved counterspell. 

Havent played Ice, but it is a very nice PvP spec, what with the talent that lets you instantly refresh all cast timers, a bit better mana efficiency then Fire, and the Icebarrier / iceblock for better damage mitigation.  Not sure how bad the diminishing returns slow effects nerf hurt, but chances are most fights will be over before enemies become immune to your slows.

I'll get into a longer post later (gonna go play atm) but if you're starting a mage, I thought you might like to see this video.

Mage video (http://www.chun-san.com/zxcv/Screenshots/howtowin.wmv)

This is why they added DR to frost nova, doesn't help with AE though.

The best way to level up a mage is to use the sequence fireball->fireball->fireball->FN and run away->fireball(->fireball->scorch til dead). You mix it up with fireblast if you want the mob dead NOW when you get it low, or use (improved) arcane missiles if the mob resisted your FN and you need it dead ASAP and it's HP is not in fireblast range. So for leveling you definately want improved fireball and flamethrowing to make the combo possible. After that there are two ways you can go IMO, either you climb the fire free to improve your fire damage with or without grabbing improved arcane missiles before you do (make sure to get burning soul if you do, helps quite a bit), or you can go into the arcane tree for better instance abilities. Every instance after and including gnomeregan wants improved arcane explosion and I honestly think you would be doing yourself and your group a disservice not to get it if you are going to run them. My favourite progression is:

- Improved Fireball 5/5
- Flame Throwing 2/2
- Improved Arcane Missiles 5/5
- Arcane Concentration 5/5
- Improved Arcane Explosion 5/5
- Improved Counterspell 2/2 (rocks in pvp and great for pulling spellcasters to your group in instances)
- Evocation 1/1

I've had a few mages (I keep wanting to make them but then delete them when I get frustrated at not being a healer... one day I'll just leave my mage when I get sick of em and come back later but Im obsessive about having a clean roster), and this is by far my favourite progression. Those first few fire talents are the best bang for your buck early on, and the arcane talents are necessary (IMO) for instances. Can't help you with endgame specs 'cause I've never been there. :P

Also, unless you simply must be a frost mage it's much better to start off as fire and respec to ice later apparently. I don't know about the respecc, but I do know that early frost didnt thrill me.

from personal experience, every instance encounter is Very easily done without the need for IAE.  IAE is the lazy mage's way out. I refused to get shoehorned into the IAE spammer role, and quite frankly have never seen a need.  Any half way decent player can get by in any instance with out needing to resort to IAE spam to take down groups. (I have done 5 man Baron runs as the only AoE and sailed through it, so it isnt hard)

Tank taunts to gather them up - Flamestrike + Cone of Cold + (Combustion + Blastwave) + Flamestrike + frost nova + reposition and Cone of cold again, and if it isnt dead you are doing something pretty wrong.

To be honest I looked at the frost line and wasn't blown away. I'm more interested in being a PvE mage than a solo PvP mage.

Right now I tend to start off with a frostbolt, and THEN spam fireball/arcane missiles/fire blast until it dies. Frostbolt has a shorter range than fireball, but for right now (level 11) I've found I can get more nuking in before the enemy gets to me if I frostbolt it first. Frost Nova is a great panic button...when it works properly. I've had a few enemies magically (irony, lawl) teleport to me after using it.

Too think I quit in late December because I felt Mages couldn't compete at high levels with Rogues/Hunters vieing for the coveted DPS/Util slot, and now this.  Why is it that blizzard always manages to breack my favorite class or race in every one of their games?

It really depends on what you want to do with your mage. My best friend online (been gaming with him for 11 years now) is a mage, and pretty much always is a mage in any mmog. So what Im saying is not first hand, but fairly reliable.

First, are you PVPing or PVEing? Next, do you want to mana dump people for pure DPS or do you want a bit more utility?

One of the major PVP specs is Fire, with enough arcane to get presence of mind. Thats a decent build, and the most common build. That is your mana dump dps build.

My mage friend after playing around on the test servers with battlegrounds, has just respecced from the above build, into what he calls his Scorch build. Im not exactually sure what this is, but he feels it will be a lot better for mass pvp.

Another way to go is frost mage. They do quite a lot less DPS, but they have some great large scale pvp utility abilities. Like being able to root people with their AEs (not frost nova) and also getting the ice block. It is a common missunderstanding that ice mages suck. It was really funny, one of the first ice mages on our server was always mocked for being frost spec, a common encounter with him went like this.

"Haha, here come Justyn  the ice mage. stupid noob, doesnt he know ice mages suck?" Fighting ensues..... "damn im dead, thats ok, Justyn still sucks cause hes an ice mage"

IAE is easy and everyone has been in groups where a mage has done it. Personally I like the easy way because easy is good. I never got people saying "I don't want to be X" because I use what works. If you don't want to spam IAE thats fine but realise that while you're dicking about with FS and CoC you could have just been standing there spamming a button for the same effect.

As for frost bolt as a starter... yeah I do that @ ~lvl 10 sometimes, it's also efficent to use whatever spell is your most recent out of either frostbolt or fireball. Once you get the talents tho you don't gain anything from the frost bolt (due to range) and you don't screw your combo if the first spell is resisted.

Right now im 40/11 Frost/Arcane build and really enjoying it. PvE solo I can kill most things before they get to me, Group/Raid im normally highest damage dealer and mass PvP i'm feared by the other side. Solo PvP I would say would be my weakest point.

The thing about frost compared to fire is there are no obvious must-have talents, they all layer on top of each other. So your improved Blizzard slows down the mob running at you while frostbite increases the chance of rooting them in the blizzard. You can then use improved cone of cold to do extra damage with shatter increasing the chance of critting, causing you to do double damage because you have ice shards.Its always nice to do 1k+ damage to multiple targets while slowing them to 35% speed.

Blizzard also replaces IAE as the AE of choice in any instance. IAE has the downside of having to be very close to the target mobs to do damage so you quite often get hit, blizzard you are standing 35+ yards away and with all your frost talents theres hee-haw chance of mobs getting to you before they are dead.

Mass PvP on my server consists of x-roads/tarren mill standoffs where a frostbolt with frost talents behind it can bugger up someones day pretty quickly. Try running back to your lines at 35% speed while ranged characters are sniping you or you are caught and rooted in a blizzard, you'll be dead in no time.

This is all for a 60 mage though. I would definately go the arcane/fire to level up with because frost doesnt come into its own until you have a lot of points in it

Looks like I'm one of the few Frost Mages here.  I don't remember the frost-line talents' names and can't look them up right now, but here's the highlights:

15% chance of any frost spell freezing an enemy in place, including getting struck while Ice Armor is active, which is *very* nice.
+50% chance of getting a critical strike on a frozen enemy.
Frost Shield absorbs more damage than mana shield and drains no additional mana.  It only has a 2 minute cool-down.
Ice Block makes you invicible for 10 seconds.  Kind of useless when you're soloing, but works great in a group.
Cold snap instantly refreshes all Frost magic.  If I need to, I can get 20 seconds of invicibility and/or a Frost Shield that absorbs twice the damage, every 10 minutes.

The rest of my points are in fire magic.  Stunning Scorches are nice to have.

I have heard you can pick up a case of the Stunning Scorches pretty easily by visiting the right 3rd world hookers.

I prefer my mages have IAoE ... just so much better.

How many points in Arcane does that require?  I'll have 10 more coming my way after I get Pyroblast.  If that's not enough, I might skip it.  Is Pyroblast worth it?

Hmmm...more then 10 are needed I think it's more like 15.  I know it's deeper in the tree but i'm not logged in to check.
But you need it.  I don't care what mages say they get by without it.  Sure you can get by without it but why would you.  It makes life much easier in instances.

I was considering dropping Ice barrier, being dispellable with a low mana spammable instant cast and all.  (fuck is that a stupid bug)  In it's place I was gonna take PoM.  I watched some Korean frost mage video and the guy has spec'd in  PoM instead of Ice barrier and he's kicking the crap out of multiples.  It's gonna gimp me in instances though.  I depend on that shield quite abit.


I've played frost from the start.  You get less damage, and you don't get any cool talents till a little bit into the tree but ifire mages can't kill me, and everyone is a fire mage so...
Actually I went arcane before I went frost.  But I was a young and silly mage.  I thought arcane missles were the shitz.
I was wrong.

Is that really a bug, or does Blizzard intend for a 31 talent buff to be dispellable?  And what's PoM?

I'm reluctant to drop Frost Shield.  My guild's Fire Mages get killed at least 5 times more often than I do inside instances, including the ones 10+ levels higher than me.

PoM = Presence of Mind = Instant cast any spell, cooldown 5 min i think

Very nice ability, especially in PVP teamed with pyroblast

For fire and arcane mages aye. For frost mages Blizzard dumps all over IAE from a great height

Blizzard is channeled.  You won't be getting more then a wave or 2 off in a real fight and you will lose the mana as if you cast a full spell.  Blizzard is more useful in PvE, and only has it's moments in PvP.   And only in massive raids where you can hide amongst the other toons.


I'd like to think it was overlooked.  But so long as we keep calling it a bug, maybe it will get fixed one day.

Purge is far FAR to overpowered.  It's a bit of a joke at all lvl's now that i'm noticing with my 36 druid (already noticed with my mage).  If you remove a 500 mana buff, it should remove 500 mana from the shaman.  Let's make this purge take a little skill to use.  If you want to take down my 800hp shield, you should lose 800 hps for doing so. 
Make you think twice about spamming the hell out of that button.

Druids are so much fun but you CANNOT gank with them.

Find a way to screw over cleanse or the priest debuff cleaners and I'd halfway consider that.  Sorry, you don't correct a spell by making it fucking useless.   No shaman in their right mind would use it in that situation.  There is just some stuff it probably shouldn't work on, like talents that cost huge amount of points to get to.  Everything else is fair game.  Double the mana cost would probably be an option too.

Honestly, they should probably just replace purge with cleanse.  That would shaman another thing to do on raids, quell some of the "Alliance is easy mode" bitching, and squash all of the incessant nerf talks.

That's when Frost Shield (or mana shield if it is down) comes in handy.  There's also Cold Snap to instantly refresh it.  Also, when combined with other talents, Blizzard causes over a 50% decrease in speed from chill, with a 15% chance at least once per second to freeze them solid (which in turn has over a 50% chance to cause triple damage while they are frozen).

I don't have either talent to add to my Imp bliz.  The freezing one spreads mobs badly and getting a crit off a frozen target in pvp with DR is near impossible I find anyways.  Plus with your shield being purged, or if you get stunned by a rouge (I believe stuns still work through the shields, but im not totally positive, it makes trying to channel a spell sorta tough.
I'll get my specs for my mage tonight and post them so you can see what i've got to play with.  I was gonna respec to PoM but that shield does come in so handy at times.

As for nerfing shamans, I've never played one past lvl 10 so really I don't know how to go about fixing them properly.  The way it works now though is really just not...fair?  I don't see why purge isn't on at least a 30sec if not a min timer.
And feel free to nerf priests.  Especially shadow ones.
I've been trying to level one up...man that's a boring character at low levels.

Heh. My mage is now level 18. I stoned back to Goldshire and was immeadiately challenged to a duel by a level 12 rogue, who I proceded to frost nova and nuke back into the stone age.

...and she called me a "cheater", and challenged me 3 more times, all of which ended with the same result. I ended up having to log to go check on some food that was cooking, but I'm sure she would've challenged me until she won.

Sorry bitch, I barely have 300 HP since all my gear gives me only int and spirit bonuses. I'm not letting you near me if I can help it.

An 18 mage should destroy a 12 rogue, not sure what the heck she was thinking. My 50 rogue has a tough fight against 50 mages - frost mages are particularly hard to beat.

It must be about the player then.  I DESTROYED a level 54 Mage the other day with my 50 rogue.

It was really, really embarrasing for the poor boy - he'd come in to 'save' the hapless lvl 30 noobs that were getting owned near Ratchet.

I'm not joking either - destroyed.  His Ice wall and freeze and blink and all the other little tricks just fell to Gouge, blind and Cold Blood.

Wish I'd frap'sed it.

Duels and real PvP are way different. Rogues always have the advantage of choosing when to fight and when not to, which is HUGE. As a priest, I have a good class but I have a huge target on me, and it doesnt help having forum notoriety.

I agree with Morphiend's take on the Mage. Here's a timeline of my specving from level 10:

- First 21 points into Arcane, up to Presence of Mind. Allows for easier soloing using Arcane Missiles and the instant Arcane Explosion is loved by one and all.

- Rest of points into Fire for DPS, including Pyroblast. Running up Fire made soloing much easier, especially with the PoM/Pyroblast combo.

- Got level 60. RESPEC for raids

- 30 Arcane/21 Frost for the following abilities:

Frostbolt: Improved for casting time, -15% casting cost from talent, +20% range from talent (this is the ultimate mana conserve spell.. it's very efficient and I use it constantly)

Ice Shards: Ice spell critical damage increased by 100%

Ice Block: A lifesaver on many occasions. It not only prevents ALL damage (but allows heals) to you for 10 seconds it also purges all debuffs (including "The Bomb" in MC) and can stop you falling. I've survived so many more MC boss encounters after getting this, and I hear it's priceless in PvP after blinking in and unleashing the AoE.

Cold Snap: To reset Ice Block

Evocation: I use this constantly. Priests and Warlocks will hate you for it. With decent spirit I get about 66% of my mana back during a battle.

Improved Counterspell: 100% chance to silence for 4 seconds.

Arcane Instability: +3% crit chance and +3% damage to spells. Yum.

Arcane Mind: +8% to mana pool, giving me 7k+ mana unbuffed

It was a duel.  I should have mentioned that.

Well done then :)

Last night me (60 priest) and my 60 warr friend took on all of the gadz alliance hanging around. The 2 of us consistantly beat 5 - 50+ noobs. I was in the zone.

I had heard this was the way to go, and started my mage that way. After getting my ass handed to me repeatedly for 20 levels, I respecced and added in some fire for Improved Fireball and a couple of other things. Might just be playing style thing, but I had a lot of trouble with Arcane only as a n00b. I will still end up with all the Arcane goodies, but it will take a bit longer. A good tradeoff for survivability for me.

Now that I think about it, had I gone Fire earlier it probably would've been much easier. PoM + Pyroblast is really the point at which soloing becomes trivial, so any path to that end would be a good one.

I know this thread is old but it answers some of the questions I had about Mages. Would you say the information here still applies? Or is there more I should consider before speccing my mage. I plan to solo and group PvP a lot. But I don't want it to take years to hit 60.

Nice necro - I was about to beat Wayabvpar about the head for playing with another friend all of a sudden.

I had to decide what was worse...Rez the thread or make a new one.  :-D

These days Ice Mages are VERY powerful. They are the most common builds. One of the new builds that has taken off for PVP is whats called an "Elemental Build" Its basically Ice and Fire spec with no Arcane. Your major loss is Instant Arcane Explosion, but you have the utility + dps of an ice mage, AND the dps of a fire mage. You do lose presence of mind, and maybe arcane power, but this spec is very powerful. It sucks for PVE though.

Do you have any idea what the key talents are for the "Elemental" spec?

I'm by no means a veteran mage lvl'er (13 mage atm,) but I've been going the ice route and that seems to be a very safe leveling direction.  I don't know if it is the quickest, but I die very little while that has always been a complaint I've seen from others.

My biggest learning curve has been to treat my mana pool just like my HP pool.  Seriously, if you are out of mana and still have agro, yer dead.  At least Priests have some def (inner fire, shadowform) and hps (blessing) to have a chance, but mages are paper thin.  Rarely is mana a problem for my warlock.

I had good luck grinding w/ IAM->AC->Evocation, then Fireball->Flame Throwing->Ignite(3pts)->Pyroblast, then back to arcane for the IAE, then fire tree Ignite->Impact then back to arcane for arcane med (4 pt) and presence, then back and all the way down the fire tree imp scorch(2 pts), Critical Mass, Imp Scorch, Fire Power.

Once you hit 60, respec for whatever you're going to be doing.

This is a pure leveling/solo build. Use IAE until level 25, then switch to fireball, then when you're 36 switch it up to IAE and use leveling discretion from there... most of the time you'll be doing FB+FB+FB (or FB+FB+Scorch), FN, back up, FB+FB+Scorch, and replace the first FB with pyroblast when avaiable... or for some specific levels (level 37-40 in badlands for mid-north elementals for instance are AWESOME), just shield, fireball one, scorch one, run into third and IAE until dead (sometimes you can FN and back up out of range and still IAE). Remember to walk sideways backwards for the 100% move, don't back up, that's only 70%.

Make sure to buy the higher level water if you can use it (which is half the time) and arcane power then elixir of the sages potions... they speed things up pretty dramatically. Use engineering if you can afford it, for gnomish death ray and the helper pets (chicken, dragonlings). Get as much int gear as you can and work at it so you can solo w/ mage armor instead of frost/ice armor. Don't give in to the temptation to do fedex quests or to hunt a specific, rare monster... stick with the easily stackable, high grind "whack 30 bunnies", "need 10 bunny skins", and "10 vials of bunny blood" type quests that you can all do in the same area WHILE getting XP. Consider quests a supplement to your killing XP and not the other way around. Yes, it sucks and sucks the fun out of the game, but if you're just trying to get to 60 it's the way to go.

You just hit up the key talents for each school... move points around for what matches your playstyle.

Ice: Shatter, Imp. Cone of Cold, Ice Shards, Ice Block
Fire: Blastwave, Pyroblast, Ignite, Impact

I've been tempted to try this out a few times, but frankly I think Imp. AE and Imp. Counterspell are simply must-have talents and you gimp yourself far too much without them.

Improved Counterspell and Evocation are simply too much to be without imo.

But ya, once I get my mage to 50+ I might switch to a blizzard build for AV.

I made an elemental pvp spec that was all the improved AE stuff (minus the arcane naturally) and I had great fun in AV. It's nice being able to make a difference on where the front line is all by yourself. Lead with a flame strike, blizzard, blink in, blast wave, turn around, ice block, blink out and laugh. Good times. Now I'm tempted to re up. Bastards.

Also keep in mind that in the next patch after the soon to be released one, mages will be recieving their class overhall.  So things could change drastically (albeit, its probably a ways off as they are slow with patchs).

Lemme refresh this again.  :-D

My main focus these days is on my mage. Lots of fun. I'm specced 18/0/33 for a Shatter/Frostbite/Blizzard build, with mid-range blue/green gear from all the big instances. 2800hp, 5600mana, somewhere around +80dmg.

I just hit Stone Guard, and really want to get one or two more officer ranks before easing off on the battlegrounds (they're getting a little stale after 4 weeks of them nonstop). Now I'm thinking of respeccing to the Arcane/Fire specs to help out in this last push. Anyone think it'll help at all? With frost, I feel I make contributions towards winning the BG entirely. Kiting people around at AB flags, snaring and slowing flag runners in WSG, AoEing the shit out of the alliance zerg in AV. I stick to my strengths and help the team win... or so I hope. But I get significantly less kills. Would respeccing to the more damage heavy, killing specs boost my honor gains past my current frost style? Our queues are between 20-45 minutes when I play, and AV is always 2 hours+. So there's the idea that I can squeeze more honor out of each session by cranking up the DPS for awhile.

I always thought people complained about mages getting so much honor from their AE abilities. The concept being that you do damage to many targets at once and as such get a bit of the honor off of each of them.

I may not totally understand the way honor is gained though.

The people who complain about this, also think that being #1 in kills matters more than winning.  You get honor from the first 4 times a person dies with you on their hate list for that day.  Note that's not per-battleground, that's per day.

So if you're in an Alliance group and someone suggests "Let's turtle and farm honor" it's quite possible that just quitting right there will be better for your honor rate (even with the 15-min 'coward' debuff) than spending the 30mins turtling.  Take a smoke/ drink/ piss and you still get into the queue 15 mins before everyone else in that BG. You're out a mark, but if it's not a Holiday weekend and your team doesn't cap a flag you're getting 0 honor anyway.

Tip: To maximize honor earned save-up those tokens, don't turn them in 3 at a time.  You get ~350 honor for every 3 Wsg/ AV/ AB tokens.  Doing 3 turn-ins nets you ~1100 honor.  Doing ONE turn-in of the "Combined Efforts" (dunno what it's called for Horde) where you turn-in 3 from each BG will get you ~2080 honor points.   This is a great way to boost your honor on weekends you haven't played a lot, or on the non-holidays so you push-up farther in that week's ladder.  (Obviously you're going to do SOME single turn-ins, because you wind-up with a lot more WSG/ AB tokens than AV, but always make sure you have at least enough banked to match the # of AV sets you have.)

Well, I don't have access to Av yet, so I'm stuck with WSG/AB.

But the honor you get from your first 4 kills on someone is based on the amount of damage you do to them. Hence my considering going for a higher damage spec.

One of the best things to get is Honor+ for titan panel. This keeps daily running total of everyone you kill and gives you the *real* honor points of both your kills and your battleground victories. It also plugs in/forwards stuff to SCT so you get to see the pretty scrolling "+25 honor points gained", gives you daily/weekly honor totals, etc... everything an aspiring poopsock ladder-climber needs to judge his next pellet feeding rank.

I've always been a frost mage.  I have a secondary mage that's doing fire but he's only 18.  I haven't seen much info about frost talents (though I haven't had a chance to read page 2 yet) so I'll put in my two cents.

Frost mages have very good survivability in PvE, especially raids.  On a wipe, I'm usually the last one to die.  Ice Block only costs 15 mana and makes you invicible for 10 seconds.  Most observant healers will throw a regen spell on you if they see it.  Paired with Cold Snap (refreshes all frost spells), that's 20 seconds of invincibility.  You also have Ice Barrier, which is a damage shield that stacks with Mana Shield and gets depleted before Mana Shield starts consuming your mana.  This also mitigates not having Improved Arcane Missiles (no channeling interrupt when hit) if you prefer putting the talent points elsewhere.

Five points in Shatter gives you a +50% chance to get criticals on frozen targets with frost spells.  It's not uncommon to crit with both Frost Bolt and Cone of Cold after hitting something with Frost Nova.  With 5 points in Ice Shards, critical hits cause double damage.

Frost Bite gives any spell with a chilling effect a 30% chance to completely freeze the target (this includes getting hit when your Ice Armor buff is up).  I made a nuissance of myself at level 51 in AV by throwing Rank I Frostbolts at everything within reach.

Improved Blizzard chills for a 70% reduction in movement.  Combined with the aforementioned talents, it has a 30% chance of freezing per second that they remain in it, after which case they will probably recieve double damage.  It also has a good chance to trigger PoM so you can cast it again for free.  Sometimes I've gotten three free Blizzards in a row in AV, where it really shines.  If you're not spotted right away, you can stop a push single-handedly, especially on bridges.  And forget about mounted zergs... They might as well be riding three legged turtles.  It's also an effective counter to fear bombing.  When your side gets feared, cast it where the line used to be, and the other side will usually be reluctant to press the attack.  The time it buys is usually enough for the feared front lines to get their shit back together.

In PvE, my opening spell sequence is Frost Bolt, Arcane Missiles (twice if they are frozen), Fire Blast, Frost Nova, Frost Bolt, Cone of Cold.

In Arcane Talents, you definantly want Evocation and PoM.  I haven't had much use for IAE in PvE, but it's great in AV.

I'm just curious how he was owning with a Frost and PoM spec. Obviously I'm inexperienced. Can someone enlighten me as to how PoM and Frost work well together?

granted i have never been an ice mage, but I imagine PoM for ice works much the way it works for fire: Burst Damage.

When dealing with multiple enemies, being able to drop one in a split second (especially if one or both can heal) is your edge.  Since Ice builds have higer direct damage then fire, due to larger crit base damage, beign able to Ice bolt, PoM, Ice Bolt, and potentially drop one target almost instantly could easily be a good tradeoff for having the survivability of IceBlock (which wont really save you from a competent player.

PoM Ice builds only really work well with a good amount of +dmg. Even with all the right talents, Ice burst damage is really subpar compared to fire. Once you boost up your damage, it's pretty even. So then you can Icebolt, PoM-->Icebolt someone when they're frozen for those mad 50%+ crit rates. There's an excellent chance they'll both crit, and you just knocked 3500+ dmg off someone, who's chilled and can't chase you down.

Before I respecced fire, I thought of dropping Ice Barrier to try it out. But I really prefer Ice Barrier, because it absorbs all damage types, including magic. It helped a ton when fighting casters, and it kept rogues and warriors off me juuuust enough to keep kiting them if I happened to screw up, or got an unlucky resist. I have to commend Blizzard for their talent balance in this case (even though Mage talents are getting a review next). The tradeoff of shuffling around just 3 points like that makes a huge difference in your playstyle.