I've been suffereing with my mage for a long time, trying to pick up playing with him only to get frustrated.  From the very beggining I named him Moroz, which means frost in Russian.  I inteded for him to be frost from the beggining.  I've tried so many time to respec him into pure frost frost and arcane and frost for AOE gridning.  Yet even after I started to have fun with the frost AOE, i got bored of that, and still got owned by a mob a few levels above me.

Finally, finally at level 30 i've specked into pure fire.  Boy-oh-boy.  Things are pretty easy now.  I don't run out of mana, and mob goes down pretty quickly.  Perhaps fire is the way to level a mage after all. :)