I’m thinking of mage alt for s2. Mostly do m+. How is mage mobility and is it a ton of buttons? Watching yt vids, frost looks fun, but I have no exp with mages. Thank you.
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Only you can truly know if Mages will be fun for you but to answer your questions Mage mobility is pretty strong, Arcane and Fire have very specific button presses but Frost is a very simple rotation based around procs.
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Mage can be fun, it has a lot of buttons, especially with the amount of utility you have in your kit.
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I was playing round with my mage…arcane to me sucks…it hits like a wet noodle .fire idk.I have not tried it df frost…wow…frost is really good… hit like a mack truck…just make sure your talents are in the right sequence and make sure your spells are in the correct order…and you should be good to go…
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Frosts rotations are simple but has a significant amount of utility. Fire is very hard to learn for M+. You need to be able to combust once or twice every single pack, usually chaining an SKB proc from a previous pack into the next one. I have no experience on arcane.
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I think they are fun. Sometimes difficult and very easy to die from 1 or 2 hits, but I still enjoy the mage experience, despite some of the frustrations with the lack of Blizz development/attention to the class.
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For me mage is always “fun” as I have played it for years and just enjoy the fantasy of it. I will say I think they are in the worst state they have ever been as far as gameplay goes. Depending on the spec (fire/arcane) you will be working significantly harder than most classes to achieve the same, if not lower, dps. Frost overall is pretty simple and holds its weight in m+. I will say though, you will be surprised with the lack of aoe damage compared to what it seems like you should be doing with having multiple orbs out etc.
This is subjective but from having a warlock alt and dev evoker alt around the same ilvl, mage is way more complicated and prone to error. Hoping to get the next pull going in time for SKB or having to sit there and not spend a pyro in order to not lose the buff while playing fire is aggravating, and if it doesnt work out your damage can fall under tanks very fast.
Arcane, I personally love arcane and the whole build up of damage, but it did not scale well damage wise and one missed cast or misplay and that burst damage is down the drain.
I recommend starting frost and branching out from there. If played right you can give your tank infinite kiteability while doing decent damage. With equally skilled players you wont be topping charts but you can easily handle 20+ keys.
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As long as I’m chained to rune of power, I’ll never find it fun. Totally subjective, however, so you should try it for yourself.
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You know, playing RoP is not that bad when you realize that the actual radius is nearly 2x the size of what the game shows. But regardless, I only play more casual content like mild M+ or normal raids (heroic sometimes), so taking Incanter’s Flow when I’m not in the mood of RoP shenanigans is not that bad, especially if you set up a weak aura to track when it is at 5 stacks.
I’m finding Mage fun, especially in battlegrounds. Last night I got an EotS and as Arcane, I was able to sneak in a middle point full of enemy players with Invis, and throw 8+ people off the cliff with Blast Wave and capture the flag. 
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Can’t say any different
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This is mentioned in literally every single thread about ROP. Sometimes multiple times. We know. Everyone knows. It doesn’t resolve the problem of ROP being the worst talent available in the game right now from a gameplay perspective.
Wait what? Trying to ‘game’ IF has been a dps loss since its inception. Did something change?
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I didn’t say it was better than RoP, just is not terrible at the content I usually do. I - can - play around RoP just fine, but sometimes I just want a more casual experience without having to worry a lot.
mage is fun if you don’t look at your dps meter.
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mage is the FUN class…all other classes are just mage support classes…
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It depends what spec you play but no, mage is not fun.
Main reason for it is rune of power and sun king’s blessing. Makes it clunky, awkward and punishing. Sun King’s Blessing is fire specific but the other specs aren’t much better. Arcane got a ridiculous setup, frost is everything happening at once or nothing happens.
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Real, than you will cry
I’m actually a pretty big fan of SKB. To me it’s a welcome break from slinging out instant casts. Grounds you back to the fact you’re a caster.
I completely agree with this, it’s either spamming procs or fishing for them.
If Frost had some kind of SKB mechanic it would ease that. Which is why I like it for Fire.
Frost had that as a legendary and an azerite trait … a hard cast flurry … which we all hated and no one used.
SKB is the sole reason I won’t play fire. Hated in SL. Fire is already boring outside of Combustion but at least you’d get to Combust Time and rapid fire in exciting fashion. Having to track a buff and then stop for a painful hardcast in the middle of that made the playstyle clunky and unfun.
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here R1 mage
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This guy is spot on. He speaks for us all.
This is from Ion’s interview yesterday:
- Situationally, having multiple build options feels better than having one dominant build and a bunch of dead talents, but that may be a less critical issue in the short term as compared to specs which have fundamental problems and negative feedback about their core gameplay. Those are things the team are going to prioritize fixing first, but in the long run, they very much want the talent trees to be all sets of interesting choices. If there aren’t any choices and one build is commonly used for everything, then they’ll try to vary it up over time.
Reading that as a mage player is concerning as I don’t want to get my hopes up that they actually know how terrible it feels to play the class right now and might actually do something about it … the little angel on my shoulder says it’s his usual lip service fluffy interview speak and they really have no idea how people feel about mages right now.
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