Well after maining a Mage for past 19 years, I will now place the Mage back on the shelf and main my Balance Druid.
My Mage spec is Frost (after a long stint at Arcane), and quite simply, the Frost Mage DPS is absolutely pathetic to say the least AND Arcane is slightly worse.
Ilevel is 614.
In T8 deleves my Druid is easily getting 1.5m+ damage yet my equally geared Mage is struggling to get 400k on some foes. I look at the Details numbers and I shake my head in disbelief. Even low health mobs take ages to go down.
And what’s worse is being a cloth wearer, dies like there’s no tomorrow!
I use Hekili and follow the rotation precisely, yet final T8 delve bosses take twice as long to die (compared to my Druid), AND THAT’S AFTER I HAVE DIED AT LEAST TWICE.
BTW, my Brann is level 56 and I’m convinced that the higher he goes the worse his healing ability is.
Happy sunday to you as well! Almost had me!
Frost is meta… no way i can take you serious lol. 19s not knowing how to play mage I guess
So basically, what you’re saying is that since a top 1% player did a +19 dungeon the OP’s opinion is invalidated
From what I can see, Frost is mainly about AoE. Good AoE clear, not the best single target in PVE.
For Arcane, you need to track buffs and do a few very specific things very correctly to do good damage. You don’t want to expend your arcane charges, not unless you have some way to get them back quickly. You also get a buff after clearcasting arcane missiles/explosion, which gives you 2 charges of increase damaged on your arcane blast/barrage. You need to have a bunch of haste to really push these blasts out, and from my experience it’s only ever worth casting barrage when you get the proc to make it do increased damage and not spend any charges. But you can also barrage if you have arcane orb charges up and can get them back quickly.
Jeez, if I had a nickel for every spell with ‘arcane’ in its name here. Anyway, I’m not an Arcane expert by any means, might not be worth taking anything I said here at other than face value, but I think it’s worth looking into a guide.
I recommend taking the Frostfire hero talent tree if you havent already. It turns your frostbolts into frostfire bolts and they do a lot better damage and proc off everything. My dps went way up after switching from Spellslinger.
Frost is kicking buttox.
So, you are a newb or a troll. Pick one.
Fire Mage is ever worse and set to be worse in 11.1 
Re-read my post. Have been playing Mage for 19 years, so hardly newb.
And if you think Frost is kicking buttox, then try a Balance Druid using this 3 button combo… Force of Nature (Treants) - Celestial Alignment - Convoke the Spirits then sit back and watch EVERYTHING drop dead around you. Now THAT is kicking Buttox. Frost is wimpering at best.
No, its objective fact based off their raw numbers, metrics, utility, and survivability. His opinion is invalid because its provably wrong. Frost mage was also excluded from Break the Meta, which is a non-meta spec tournament every season. Frost mage is VERY strong. But it doesnt help someones case when the 2nd highest mage in the world plays frost, and frost is the most popular mage spec right now.
Frost is the 6th most popular dps spec for M+ out of all 26.
Combine all specs and mage is #2 class overall, beaten only by paladins.
It’s operator error.
Something definitely is wrong on your end, Fire is the worse between the three and even I pull more than that in Delves on trash.
Interesting… Everyone is in love with Spellslinger, yet I just swapped over to Frostfire and hit the dummies. I must say, I was impressed.
Raidbots is telling me I lose 17,000 DPS using Frostfire BUT I am not seeing this.
so you claim to have mained a mage for 19 years but now it’s going back on a shelf. The only way It can go back on the shelf as if it was on the shelf previously which means it hasn’t been a main for 19 years. why not just come out and complain about the changes and call it a day?
My 598 mage can do 800k on a target dummy and routinely clears m+ dungeons with more than enough DPS. The only thing I can think of is that hekili is wanting you to use flurry after glacial spike and your latency doesn’t allow this, meaning you aren’t shattering your highest damaging ability.
Try using flurry > comet > glacial spike > ice lance instead. It’ll make sure every single one of your GS procs shatter.
This is one of the few times I’ve felt reasonably powerful.
Which hero spec? I find frostfire hits like a truck. Lots of procs for instant casts as well so it’s extremely mobile.
Delves are not the best place for Frost to shine, it’s all about fishing procs and the low hp / pack on pack isn’t great for it, while some bosses are heavy on tricks. Boomy on the other hand is straightforward, comboes great, dots, and spreads/cleaves perfectly, with huge instants that don’t require “proc on proc” and nuke hard.
The innate randomness of Fire and Frost can be really frustrating, so, of course, it can also be super rewarding. There’s a reason Boomy is branded “dull”. And go Frostfire.
19 years and not knowing how to play Frost Mage is the most believable thing I’ve heard all day.
Frost Mage players are a unique breed.