80% chance there is at least 3-4 frost / arcane mages on each team. Guess everyone is trying to level one and learn it before 9.1. Mine is level 53 and frost and it’s fun but tough right now in the current state. I do good aoe burst with my FO/ Ice Nova/ Comet Storm / Shifting power wombo combo and can get decent shatter procs occasionally but usually I’m blown up in 4 seconds. Hopefully the practice now pays off for when they get buffed. Super fun spec
I’m still having more fun with arcane in BGs… forget about playing it in arena right now.
The mobility is insane, and once I get enough reputation with the MAW I will get some nice sockets to help my mobility even more 
Now I just need to stop being lazy and switch to Venthyr for the double door of shadows.
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Lol, frost and arcane got buffed and suddenly everyone level one. 
I just expect that frost and arcane do not become meta, if they do there will be a bunch of FOTM rerollers.
frost is and always was the apex mage spec.
True, whenever I do bgs as arcane I just spam missiles and barrage and delete people. Its pretty fun.
Uhh, no they didn’t. Fire just got nerfed. All the mage specs are going into 9.1 in a terrible state if things go live as they are now. If people are switching it’s because they didn’t like Fire to begin with and felt forced to play it because it was the only fully functional one of the three.
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if you play a spec you dont like and feel forced why are you even playing it? That feels like a awful way to play…
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I am not, never have. Literally always been Arcane because it’s the one I like. Same with my main alt, a Destruction warlock. The vast majority of people, however, do exactly what the online guides tell them to because just as in real life most people are sheeple. 
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Well you are right, only buffed in PvP.
Frostbolt dmg was increased in pvp to be 100% and deep shatter dmg buff decreased to 75%. With this it feels less mandatory.
With arcanosphere and ice wall, people already started to cry about Blizz being biased towards mages, and that pvp season 2 will be a mage season.
If Blizzard was really biased towards mages they will give deep freeze back to frost mages, make our dps cooldowns not dispellable, make PoM work for other spells not only AB, bring back poly stun for arcane, remove/redesign triune ward as they did with Sacrolash Affli lock lego, because it’s toxic… none of this is happening 
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Yeah, PvP is all about the instant casts. Idk what they were thinking with the buffs to Frostbolt and Arcane Blast. I guess to incentivize use because they saw the logs but buffing those spells won’t make that happen since the issue is the over abundance of interrupts and the same school lockout not the spells comparative weakness or strength.
Ice Wall and Arcanosphere are definitely welcome additions but honestly more of a flavor thing rather than truly impactful abilities. And even if they prove to be more useful than I believe they still don’t solve the underlying problems casters face in PvP, especially in the Arena setting.
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Arcane Blast should be one of the highest dps spells in PvP because it’s almost impossible to get off versus any competent team in arena and it locks out an entire spec from doing anything.
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Yea the lockout thing is why I’m not gonna choose arcane. With frost you have 4 schools of magic to use. You’ll more than likely only ever get locked out of frost / arcane. Which you would then have fireblast and either shifting power (nature) or Mirrors (shadow) depending on covenant plus your CC or plus your normal dmg.
I would like to see Ice Form include interrupts but I guess that would make it way too powerful since I think it will be pretty much baseline next season.
It’s not just the lockout… you also have to deal with horrible line of sight issues. Those arcane buffs on PTR will not help arcane in arena but it will help them dramatically in BGs.
Anyone know if the frostbolt damage buff also benefits arcane and fire?
^ This. I don’t know why people are all bent out of shape about arcane “buffs” in pvp, AB you basically don’t use without POM because of the reasons you mentioned. If I read the hadouken ability correctly it’s a long cast thus making it pretty useless as well.
frost did get buffed… did u read the notes ?