| rdfs:comment
| - Mages debate heavily about talent selection, or spec (from the term specialization). Mages can select talents from three schools of magic: Arcane, Fire, and Frost, and when you see three numbers divided by slashes, as in 18/0/43, the numbers indicate talent points spent in each of the three talent trees in that same order. Generally speaking, players choose to specialize in one school or another. Note Mage specs, or builds, are also discussed in the topic Mage builds.
* Damage per second (DPS)
* Battle control
* Survivability
* PvP
* Control of DPS and damage per mana (DPM)
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| abstract
| - Mages debate heavily about talent selection, or spec (from the term specialization). Mages can select talents from three schools of magic: Arcane, Fire, and Frost, and when you see three numbers divided by slashes, as in 18/0/43, the numbers indicate talent points spent in each of the three talent trees in that same order. Generally speaking, players choose to specialize in one school or another. Note Mage specs, or builds, are also discussed in the topic Mage builds. Each spec benefits a mage differently and feeds different aptitudes. Most mages place the highest importance on one of these categories:
* Damage per second (DPS)
* Battle control
* Survivability
* PvP
* Control of DPS and damage per mana (DPM) Ultimately, it is a matter of play style: what casting fits the player's style better, allowing the maximal performance. In a raid in Burning Crusade, the mage's role is generally accepted as primarily to provide DPS, along with crowd control (CC) of humanoid and beasts and removing of curses. Often the discussion on what talent selections are best depends on the player's belief about issues that are not quantifiable, such as survivability.
* For raid DPS at level 70, the 51/10/0 Arcane Barrage Ignite build is theoretically the highest single-target caster DPS build in-game as of patch 3.0.2 according to SimulationCraft [1]
* Deep Fire builds also provide competitive PvE single target DPS and very powerful AoE DPS
* While Frost mages used to be unique in having Ice Block as a tool for dropping aggro temporarily and removing debuffs, now all mages have Ice Block and Frost mages were given another talent, Icy Veins. While they have traditionally been viewed to be worse for raid DPS than Fire mages, Icy Veins changed that image. They also have a significant burst DPS and mana recovery utility ability granted them by the Water elemental. It is without question that a deep Frost mage has the best (solo PvE) AoE ability with the slowing talents for Blizzard and the target-able Frost Nova a Water Elemental gives. Frost mages are also considered superior in PvP. The 51 point talent Deep Freeze was given the ability to cause significant damage to any enemy that could not be snared or stunned (effectively, most bosses) in the 3.3 patch, which when combined with the Fingers of Frost talent gave a powerful burst damage ability.
* Arcane/Frost builds, specifically 40/0/21 produced great DPS in high-end (T6+) raids before 3.0.2, but Blizzard removed such ability by increasing the mana penalty for spamming Arcane Blast.
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