As a mage, fire and frost are terrible for leveling until about level 40. Fire and frost are extremely proc based, and they basically don’t get enough of their procs to do reasonable damage until that level. Their filler spells, fireball and frostbolt, probably do about 5% of a mobs health until they get more procs.
Blizzard needs to make serious adjustments to what levels procs like Fingers of Frost, and Brain Freeze become available. Like, we should have all of those abilities by LVL 20 in my opinion, and jesus christ, why isn’t fire blast castable while casting as a firemage until -level 32-???
Arcane spec is alright, and doesn’t need nearly as much adjustment. They get their most damaging abilities, arcane missiles and arcane blast at around before level 20. Even so, they aren’t excellent, just not as awful as fire and frost.
To make an apt comparison to another class, Warlocks get Malefic Rapture at like level 10. Now imagine if they had to wait until level 37 to get that ability, and level 32 to get, idk, agony or something, so all of their damage just came from corruption and shadowbolt. That’s how Frost and Firemage feels until lvl 37-40 in its current state.