that spec might be the bestest for raid mages, but what about a leveling mage? I'm planning on rolling a goblin mage, and speccing her fire, and then she will get hit by the things that she is lighting on fire. At least until 85, would the pushback talent not be useful? And then one can respec to an optimal raiding spec. Or is it better to just get used to a raiding spec since leveling is so fast now? :P

@Trilynne: You're better off doing a respec when you get to top level. Raiding specs are really not that well suited for leveling. Sure, it'll work (practically anything will work), but you definitely want as much utility and things like pushback protection while leveling as you can get. Save the min/maxed raiding spec for when it makes sense.

Trilynne, I was sort of reading the article as an 80-85 guide, so your question is really good. I would still say that pushback protection won't be all that important, even for a newly leveling mage. You open with pyroblast which should one-shot virtually everything at super low levels, and a fire blast or a scorch should finish off in a two-shot.

Fire is great at single target, and has awesome and really fun AoE capabilities once you get to the level cap. However, from 1-70ish, frost is the king of AoE and surviving huge mob pulls, and fire and arcane end up being pretty squishy if they try to emulate that. What I'm saying is that if you are fire, and you have 3-4 mobs pounding on you as you are solo'ing lets say in your 20s or 30s, there's a good chance you are going to die. This is about the only situation where that talent would matter, and even with 100% pushback resistance, it's not likely to save you.

This is the kind of thing Archmage Pants means when he says, "For you newbies, here's magehood condensed into sound effects: Pew pew! Splat! Rez!"

Starting from your first talent point, I would put 2 into Improved Fire Blast. That extra 8% crit might not look like much, but remember what being a fire mage is all about: You kill it before it kills you. That extra 8% might be enough to push the dice roll in your favor and blow something up that is about to decapitate you.

At higher levels, once you gain blast wave and dragon's breath, those two abilities give you a way to slow your enemies and disorient them to get away. Both are instant and pushback has no effect. Even if you are pvp'ing, burning soul isn't worth it. PvP mages basically spam scorch (because it's fast and you can do it on the run, and fish for hot streaks), living bomb, hot streak pyro, fire blast, blast wave, dragon's breath. Fireball does get cast occasionally when you are on a perch and not being targeted, or when you are way behind the lines, but even then, it's not that often. The main reason you take burning soul is for the pushback on your fireball or frostfirebolt, and there are just so few situations where you'd be casting a fireball while getting smacked, it's just not worth it.

There is one other benefit to taking minimum points in burning soul: It's giving a big middle finger to blizzard for putting such a boring talent in an otherwise awesome tree. Plus you're taking an awesome talent instead.

Whoop wanted to add for ya Trilynne, theorycrafters are making out Burning Soul to be a must-have talent for raiding at level 85. Since I was never on the beta or raiding, I don't know if it really is an issue. If you see a lot of pushback getting hit on your cast bar once you hit cataclysm dungeons and raids, then yeah, you'd probably want to respec with full 3/3 burning soul.

Personally, I'll believe it when I see it, but others have said it, so it definitely could be true.

D'oh... I forgot to ever check glyphs on my leveling mage. And I've been watching my light feathers dwindle away...

Thanks for pointing out the glyph.