Is leveling up as fire viable?

[ozusteapot]

Hello! After leveling up quite a few mages in the past via the frost spec, I'm wondering if Fire is viable as a leveling spec in Vanilla. I'm asking because it's giving me quite a bit of trouble with a few of the Barrens mobs so far. It seems way more like a glass cannon though, which is keeping things interesting, but I'm afraid I might just bump into more and more fire resistant mobs along the way. Yay or nay?

[Lazermon]

everything is viable, fire just has way worse mana regeneration so you will be spending more time drinking compared with frost.

[TyrantRC]

everything is viable, fire just has way worse mana regeneration so you will be spending more time drinking compared with frost.

this is not true at all, you do more damage as fire and the early talents from fire are usually better than the early ones from frost. I used both talents tree when I was leveling the mage, and so far the fire tree is way better to solo mobs, when I was lvl 37~ or something like that sometimes I killed mobs of my level with just 2 spells. The good thing about ice is the control and pvp potential at low level, you can also aoe farm mobs which with fire is almost impossible at low level.

Fire is also really annoying in dungeons since you go oom sooner but this is not because you lack damage or the bosses take longer, it usually happens when you are cleaning the path to the boss (killing mob after mob)

Frost only becomes better at soloing 1 mob at lvl 40, when you get ice barrier which is extremely useful, but even then you can still burst out mobs with fire before they even touch you and you can solo elites quickier than with ice

[Paulberios]

1-24 fire, then frost aoe.

[Impsie]

Yes, if you gear for fire spell damage along the way. Otherwise no. You will not be able to solo elites as easily as Frost can either, if at all.

[Lazermon]

everything is viable, fire just has way worse mana regeneration so you will be spending more time drinking compared with frost.

this is not true at all, you do more damage as fire and the early talents from fire are usually better than the early ones from frost. I used both talents tree when I was leveling the mage, and so far the fire tree is way better to solo mobs, when I was lvl 37~ or something like that sometimes I killed mobs of my level with just 2 spells. The good thing about ice is the control and pvp potential at low level, you can also aoe farm mobs which with fire is almost impossible at low level.

Fire is also really annoying in dungeons since you go oom sooner but this is not because you lack damage or the bosses take longer, it usually happens when you are cleaning the path to the boss (killing mob after mob)

Frost only becomes better at soloing 1 mob at lvl 40, when you get ice barrier which is extremely useful, but even then you can still burst out mobs with fire before they even touch you and you can solo elites quickier than with ice

No, the damage from fire is not enough to justify the amount of time you lose sitting down drinking.

We're not talking about the ability to kill a mob, we're talking about how much time you need to spend to get those levels.