I’ve never had an expansion where I didn’t main a mage but after BfA and SL, my mage is just an occasional key runner now.
I did do a normal clear of SoD as frost just to see how it would feel (terrible). The only place as a frost mage I feel like I’m actually functional is doing keys.
Looked at the Kyrian Arcane build but it just read so terribly and the people I’ve talked to that have played it described it as “boring” or “clunky.” I was an arcane mage until BfA. The standard arcane rotation (ie: Legion Arcane) was a joy to play for me … but that’s long gone with the missile changes and addition of TotM.
I was fire for the last 2 tiers. I find the Fire rotation outside of Combustion very boring but can’t take away from the mobility that Fire has over the other two which, as usual, is a key component of raiding.
If I were to take my mage seriously again it would likely be Fire for ST fights, Frost for stacked cleave or stacked AoE raid fights, and Frost for keys … but at this point I’m likely just to bench him altogether.
I canceled my 6 months subscription today after a long period of inactivity. It just seems so unfair to spend so much time gearing up, meeting certain requirements, and completing boring quests just to have an average or below average performance in group content. It pains me to see mages who have been playing this game for more than five years barely doing more damage than the tank when they were top scorers in previous expansions. You might argue that even if we cannot be the best in every type of content, it’s the “journey and not the destination,” and that might be the case if you play with friends and don’t have to deal with pugs. Unfortunately, I play very late at night or very early in the morning and people want results, high dps numbers, “fast games.” And quite honestly, I’m a competitive person myself, I’d rather not play than feel my dps is inadequate for the situation. So, yeah, maybe it’s time for me to find a new hobby 
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I’ll be on break. I got my legendary and Korthia and PVP gear as far as I can go on my own. Would’ve liked to do Tazavesh and some mythics and RBGs but no one needs a pug mage.
Mages are very in demand for M+. I have no trouble getting invited to pugs.
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Gross.
I’m know there are plenty of people who love M+, but for me the thought of running the same 7 dungeons for 2 years with people who take that content far too seriously is torturous.
I’ll remain subbed for now, but other than the 3 hours I log on for raid night most of my WoW time will be spent in TBC. When T5 raids get stale, I’ll take a break until T6 but I have no real interest in the retail raid or what’s to come in 9.2.
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As Frost I feel good and do good in m+. In SoD, I don’t feel great on most fights or do that great. The Eye, The Nine, KT, are decent ones for me. I also know using Freezing Winds on most single target fights in SoD is one of my issues. Getting Slick Ice to 262 strictly for those single target fights would be nice.
The issue for frost is the fight designed favor fire and arcane damage profiles way more than frost and that’s even more true in mythic.
This isn’t true. There is a demand for cleave and lust off of us. Even in fire. I’m not performing great but I’m currently breaking out in 10s and getting my dps steadier over 5 k on bosses. Which keeps me competitive until someone beats my Ilvl by 10 or more. You simply have to get your I.o. Up until you break 1k and then it’s easier to get invites
Keys mages are def stronger than in a raid, but it just feels like so much work to be average. Our purple parses are other specs blues.
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That’s fair. But look at the buffs over the last couple months too. Fire mage single target, frost dmg and cleave, arcane minor buffs and legendaries. While it’s happening slow, tuning and changes are happening now more than ever. See how it plays out at least
Revert every 9.1 nerf would be a nice start
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I’ll give you that. The nerfs were…heavy handed
Add to that the 9.0 pre-patch nerfs and we might finally be in a good spot. I know “the fights don’t favour Mages” but that’s been the case for what, 5 or 6 raid tiers now? Even for the few fights that do favour one of our specs, there are other classes that are just as strong or stronger on those fights and are considerably higher on the other fights too.
Which is fine, but the problem is players aren’t going to stick around in the hopes that their chosen class/spec isn’t going to suck in 6 months time. They want to enjoy the game now. What’s more is that Blizzard does one minor tuning pass then calls it a day until the next tier, when we all know they’re fully capable of making smaller adjustments throughout the patch. They simply don’t want to because it’s more work for them and it might upset the world 1st race or MDI.
Lol. Anyone stayed past 9.1?
Playing 3 different covenants for 3 different specs and different covenant for PVE and PVP.
Nah.
Well all you fire mage folk are actually having to try now instead of having your deeps handed to you on a silver op platter. Welcome to the world us less favored mage specs have been dealing with for years lol. You can pull the numbers, you just have to be better than the other players in your raid.
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No deeps were handed to Fire.
With the 1 min Combustion CD you were either busting and hoping not to screw up one minor thing or hit a lag spike so you didn’t tank the entire pull, or you were managing CDs on abilities and trinkets and hoarding IBs 20 secs ahead of time prepping for bust.
I swear to god I don’t even remember 8.3 or 9.0 raids beyond my own UI.
At least as Frost I can see what’s going on and help with mechanics. Sure, I get carpel tunnel from FW and my damage blows, but at least my raid leader only expects an Int buff out of me…
To be fair right now I burst to 19-21k and sustain anywhere from 4-8k depending on how well I’m rolling my rotation. I am night fae fire and 229
I don’t feel like I’m losing ground to the other 2 specs just because I’m fire. But also, don’t mess up. 7-8k is perfect rotation and activation of sunkings blessing. Anything less is when I messed up or didn’t have any procs. At the moment I mess up a lot but I have had whole boss fights over 6k and over 8k. Once I’m tired of pushing and watching, dps falls to 4-5k