Question about mage AOE specs for dungeon farming

[Sacrum]

Hey, me and my brother are planning to multi-box our way through vanilla dungeons for leveling (I control 3 chars and he takes the other 2) with a warrior, priest, 2 mages and a warlock. The plan is to spec purely for AOE and aoe tanking, and AOE down tankable pack sizes. The idea is that we can handle pretty big pulls eventually by using frost nova to buy time for the warr to build AOE threat, and then using hellfire+pyroclasm to reduce damage.

However, I'm having some trouble in deciding how to spec my mages. I thought arcane down to improved arcane explosion is a good place to start, but after that I'm not sure if I should go fire or frost, or perhaps continue with arcane. The slow from blizzard seems like it might be unnecessary as the plan is to tank the pulls and the warr is getting piercing shout for kiting anyways.

Impact seems pretty good for some further damage reduction through stuns, but I'm not sure if it procs off flamestrike ticks, which in case it doesn't makes it a bit meh. Blast-wave also seems easy to incorporate into the arcane explosion spam. However, I'm not sure if the damage can compete with a fully specced cone of cold on frost novaed targets with shatter and that whole shebang. Also, the slow from blizzard might make it easier for the warr to get more threat safely before he's got enough threat for it to be safe to hellfire.

So, does anybody have any experience with this kind of scenario? What's the best spec damage wise for this scenario? And how difficult is it to pull this off? Obviously a paladin would be ideal for blessing of salvation, but I'm considering raid healing at max level, and paladins are such boring healers in this regard that I'd rather play priest if it can be helped.

Sorry for the wall of text!

[MrPeakyBicepsMan]

I believe the only talents you need for aoe dps on a mage in dungeons is the first 2 points you spend in arcane for 40% reduced arcane threat. After that you’d might as well just go frost or fire for you single target since you gain very little from the rest of the arcane tree (until you’re 60, some some more options open up)

[xandorz]

Pyroclasm stun chance is for the entire duration of the spell. Hellfire is 15 seconds long. So 26 / 15 = 1.73% chance to stun per second.
Don't expect it to reduce damage taken much.

First 2 talent points spent in Arcane gives a -40% threat on Arcane explosion, that is pretty huge.

Some math that can be very wrong:
At lvl 22 Arcane Explosion deals 0.5 dmg per mana and 40 dps.
At lvl 20 Blizzard deals 0.625 dmg per mana and 25 dps.

Before taking into consideration spell power or crits I think the values at lvl 60 is around this:
At lvl 60 Arcane Explosion deals 0.65 dmg per mana and 169 dps.
At lvl 60 Blizzard deals 0.9 dmg per mana and 158 dps.

Arcane Explosion gains 9.52% of spellpower per second.
Blizzard gains 4.125% of spellpower per second.

So Blizzard is always more mana efficient than Arcane Explosion although not too much early on.
Arcane Explosion has great dps early on.
Later on Blizzard should deal almost same dps and be more mana efficient than Arcane Explosion.

Spellpower should make Arcane Explosion deal more dps than Blizzard later on since it gains more of it per second.

[gismo2054]

I tested 1 Paladin 3 Mage 1 Priest

Yes it's ok for AOE but the main problem I did encounter with the AOE spec is that as multiboxer i wasn't able to manage a frost spec correctly with the 3 mage to make big Pull like you plan to do.

I ended with 3 Fire Mage + 1 Holy Priest, and it was more easy and efficient. The pull were smaller, but I was able to chain much better and safier.

in 10 Sec 3 frost mages will make :
1 Nova each one, 1 Cone of Cold and 3 Arcane Explosion

in 10 Sec 3 Fire Mage will make :
1 Flamestryke, 1 Blast Wave, and 3 Arcane Explosion and it burn on crit

at the End Fire got a bigger burst for quick AOE
Flamestryke will have always +25% Crit chance and Blastwave +10% with Talents
And Fire spell got 10% Chance to Stun mobs, this help a lot

In your Team you have Warlock if i'm right his AOE have chance to stun aswell, so for me Fire is a good choice with your Team.

[Perrigrin]

interesting, I had not considered going Fire AE... I was thinking Frost as I'd expect there to be many single target pulls as well - Where frost would be stronger?

[Quiding]

Blizzard should gain most from crits

Do you have some more info on that? I haven't seen blizzard crit on classic/vanilla streams, I don't think it can.

[xandorz]

Do you have some more info on that? I haven't seen blizzard crit on classic/vanilla streams, I don't think it can.

Dmn, I was just stupid... It can't crit. It was changed to be able to crit later, I think it was made being able to crit in wotlk.
So will do just below Arcane Explosion in damage at 60 (but much more mana efficient) and then just get further and further behind with more spellpower.

[Mercbeast]

AOEing as frost mages as a multiboxer is going to be very difficult to manage, because your tank is not going to hold threat on big aoe pulls (if you use one), and there is a lot of skill based micro management involved in frost nova/blinking and arcane explosions.

If you want to run an AOE based spell cleave, I'd actually consider running warlocks or hunters. Warlock AOE comes online at 20 and 30, you can run a full pack of voidwalkers for superior threat control, pull a bunch of stuff, stack dots, and then aoe away, much more safely. You might even be able to run a soul link build, that focuses on ring of fire and hellfire. This would be IMO the easiest aoe group to run. Hunters wouldn't be able to pull packs as large due to their more limited aoe, but, they will blow through small groups REALLY quickly via multi-shot and traps. You might get enough utility out of volley to make bigger pulls work. You could also perhaps try throwing mages into the mix with locks, with voidwalkers being there to help control threat for the mages to go ham.

Mages will just be really difficult to make work, unless, you decide to do a lot of under conned dungeons, aka, dungeons when they are predominantly green conned monsters. You might be able to tank these well enough that the finesse required to normally aoe well with mages isn't as needed.

[Lyonheart]

This is a bit of a necro. I ended up going with fire/arcane for no other reason than fun factor. It feels like it does better damage than the frost specs i tried..but the visuals and sounds of adding blastwave into the rotation, the occasional stuns and killing bosses faster, all adds up to make it feel more rewarding for me.

This is the spec im using based on a guide for best non-raiding fire spec. Its mostly for single target sustain dps, but the aoe is still more than good enough for dungons. ( its becomes best for raiding after ZG-AQ-NAX due to less fire resistant mobs)