I’ve loved and tried to play a mage since cataclysm. every time it never clicks for me either because fire is too finicky and slow or frost just doesnt vibe with me etc. Arcane though… Arcane scares me.
Its definitely one of the harder specs to learn and play correctly. So my question is how long did it take you to get it? How long to be actually good? I heard that all specs are very gear dependant and dont show their true value until high ilvls.
Monk is my main since mid-dragonflight and looking to alt mage going forward 
Wait, you find Fire slow? It’s one of the highest APM casters.
If you have good general knowledge of how WoW works it shouldn’t take more than a few days to be comfortable with the class, but you need practice to build muscle memory. Frost and Fire are more reactive and Arcane is probably the most scripted spec there is but has a very long script to memorize.
At low ilvls without all the procs and things dying quickly it feels like its much slower than I see people at high ilvls playing. Low haste may be a factor, or it could be that using the flamestrike build slows things down a lot as your not instant casting all the time. Hard casting flame strike and hoping that the tank stands in flame patch feels awful.
I also have not played this this season, so maybe it changed with higher tier gear?
Leveling is a meme so I don’t take that into account. You don’t really need to be giga geared to do well but more Haste as Fire certainly feels different and it’s very rare for Fire to be hardcasting Flamestrike outside of activating SKB, especially with the tier set giving us so many extra Phoenix Flames to feed into even more SKB and Combustion uptime.
I already got gotted by mage soon as I saw TWW changes to arcane and the hero talents, especially sunfury.
Bet itll be a blast to finally enjoy arcane
Mostly played mage this expac. Frost was relatively easy to pick up, so honestly not that long. But fire took me all of season 3 to begin to “get it”. S4 I’ve got the muscle memory down, but there are times that high movement, heavy mechanics or target switching moments pull me out of the rhythm and causes me to mess up. Thankfully this tierset and talent build is far less punishing than season 3, making it so that a mistake doesn’t feel as disastrous.
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Frost was the easiest by far. You can slam your head into the keyboard and do just fine damage. (Not intending this as an insult, it’s just the easiest spec to do consistent damage on)
Arcane is my favorite spec and also pretty easy but it initially took me probably a week or so plus a good amount of time of training dummies….its completely choreographed so once you commit it to muscle memory, its really not that hard.
Fire was the hardest for me. Took me an entire season of messing around with it and various builds to understand the role it has as a dps depending on the content you’re doing and just the flow of it in general.
obviously everyone will have their own experiences, these are just mine!
1084 days played, I haven’t gotten mage since around the time they made it where shimmer & ice floes was a mutually exclusive choice. That single decision ruined mage and they’ve yet to fix it.
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I mean, I miss shimmer, and wish I didn’t have to choose…but I could never play without Ice Floes at this point (as Fire at least). Probably SKB stockholm syndrome lol.
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I’m still struggling with Arcane, I’m just not as dexterous as I use to be, but after seeing the Arcane changes in TWW, I’m definitely going to try main it once again!. Very excited.
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I picked Mage up in Cata.
I never had Fire Ball on my bars because Scorch was a quicker cast and could cast on the move lol.
I also never specced into Living Bomb because I thought it would turn me into the bomb and I’d blow myself up to do AOE damage.
Later into the expansion I joined a Guild. A couple of dungeon runs with my Guild and the GMs girlfriend actually took me aside at the target dummies and taught me lmao. Ever since then I was heavily into Mage up until the end of Legion.
I’m the other way, I could never play without Shimmer.
Hell, even on my Warlock I try to Shimmer mid-cast sometimes and I’ve not played Mage in years.
Best advice you can give anyone, “Find a good guild”. I was garbage when I started out and progressed into better and better guilds that were willing to help me learn. Eventually got all the way to Cutting Edge, but ran out of time/talent and just do Heroic farm every week and work alts now. xD
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Honestly? It clicked right away for me. I’ve played a mage since BC and mained one from BC to Legion, but even after making it an alt I always level him and keep him somewhat current.
It’s always been my favorite class, but over the years I feel like it’s gotten so overly complicated and it’s just not as fun as it used to be. Arcane mage for example, I used to LOVE that spec. Nowadays it’s so convoluted and overly complicated I don’t even touch it. It’s sad tbh
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I main Fire in arena.
I’ve been doing M+ since S4 started to rank up the bullion rings and staff; and I HAAAAATE pve fire so much it hurts.
Think you can just walk into m+ and just blast? OHHH NO, you have to maximize your oPpenNinG coOomMbBuSsT rOtaTiOonN!
Better not munch those Heating Up! procs or you’ll rip your SKB value! :DDDDDDDDDDDD
Now let me explain to you what double pyroblast is and how not getting it down makes you kiss 1/4 of your dps goodbye…
Edit: OH YEAH, let’s also force ourselves to jump constantly because the devs can’t tune missle speed to save their lives.
Do you have a link to a breakdown of the arcane choreography?
Everyone will thank you for it.
I was fairly comfortable with frost in a couple days.
Fire took me months before I felt like I wasn’t a two toed tree sloth trying to play piano. Understanding and mastering the double pyro trick took me an embarrassing amount of time.
Never been interested in arcane.
Mage was the first class I played and the one I learned the quickest. I can say I learned how to play a mage in Vanilla (Cast Frostbolt until the enemy is dead), but we didn’t have any kind of damage rotation until they added more tools in TBC and Wrath. I’ll say The Burning Crusade was my first time where I felt like I was playing a more complete class. I didn’t get comfortable with Arcane until Wrath and Fire until Cataclysm. I prefer Frost and Arcane over Fire, but I can play all three if I have to.
I’m still trying to get mage… Been playing since 2004 and still trying lol…
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I’ve mained Holy Paladin since mid-TBC, but I’ve dabbled with fire off and on since Wrath. In terms of “getting it,” I feel like I “got it” right away–conceptually. Fire is conceptually quite easy. In terms of execution? Not so much. I’m a little too slow with my fingers and my reactions to execute it really well. Not sure how much of it is me, my computer, or my setup/keybindings/etc.
Please stop necro’ing this post.