Mage Arena Talent Specs

17/0/44 Arcane / Frost
This was considered the bread and butter arena spec season one by most mages, and still many considered this to be the most viable form of frost. Frost is going to be the only truly viable spec for a traditional balanced team that includes a mage. The survivability, snares, crowd control, and outlast power it provides is superior to any other talent tree.

The biggest difference between 17/0/44 frost and 0/5/56 frost is going to be the improved counter spell. Beyond the fact that it’s a bonus 4 seconds on all schools of magic, but it’s also a great to through your CS right before you know your teams burst damage is coming. In essence, shut down the possible NS heal, BoP, etc.

All in all the frost spec is going to be your best bet for most arena teams. Without the additional survivability that the frost talents grant you, well you simply cannot be competitive at high-level arena.

0/5/56 Impact / Frost
Now, it’s not to say that the 0/5/56 spec wasn’t around season one, I’m sure it was, though it certainly hadn’t reached the level of popularity that the bread and butter 17/0/44 had. However, more and more mages are trading in improved count spell for the extra points in frost and impact.

Which when it comes right down to it that is going to be your biggest decision. All of the talents up to improved counter spell are more or less filler points. So it’s basically impact + bonus points available for frost tree vs. improved counter spell. For mages who are so confident in their ability to hit that CS every time it’s an great trade off, and can certainly pay off when you get that fortunate impact proc.

Other Specs
Like most classes there are unfortunately there very precious few specs which make it through to become vaiable for PvP, the two I’ve listed above are those specs. That said, there are some scenarios where other talent builds may be better suited. For example, if you are running a tri-dps blow up team, let’s say rogue / mage / shadow priest. You may choose to have your mage spec AP PoM in order to quite simply “blow the target up”. Though AP PoM is effective in some very special team compositions it isn’t something I’d suggest you bring into a traditional matrix.

As far as deep arcane goes, and I realize slow may sound quite appealing, well just stay away from it. The arcane tree, though it’s been considerably buffed since pre-expansion, is still incredibly weak in comparison to the utility of a frost-based spec.