The Arcane tree has traditionally been viewed as the support tree, as arcane-based spells such as Arcane Missles, Arcane Explosion, and Arcane Blast usually aren’t your best source of damage. With the introduction of Arcane Blast in The Burning Crusade however, some mages like rotating in arcane blast with their normal dps rotation. Many raiders also like the arcane tree since it offers boosts to mana efficiency through talents like arcane meditation, arcane mind and clearcasting, and boosts to damage through talents like arcane instability, arcane power, arcane mind, spell power, arcane potency, and mind mastery. The arcane tree is an attractive option to many Holy Beast Gold mages.
The Fire tree offers improvements to your fire spells. Any mage that wishes to use fire as their primary damage source would do well to put points into the fire tree. The fire tree offers little options for survivability, but offers many increases to damage. Talents such as fire power, critical mass, playing with fire, pyromaniac, molten fury, empowered fireball, ignite, incinerate, improved scorch, blastwave and pyroblast all offer and increase damage either passively, or through the use of a new ability. Fire mages sacrifice survivability for Holy Beast Gold.
The Frost tree offers many defensive options, as well as damage increase to your frost spells. Ice Shards and Shatter are two of the best talents that the frost tree offers for damage increases. Mages that spec frost enjoy increased survivability and control at the cost of a lower damage output. Frost is the tree of choice for mages that like doing arena pvp.
