Having a hard time picking between the three specs as the general rotation/purpose appears too similar.
Describe the differences in the specs play styles. For example, fires more run, gun, and dot? Frost more cc and stationary? Etc.
Fire is turret, frost is turret, arcane is tourettes.
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Frost mage mostly spam ice lance in pve. And it’s not bad, since DF is really doesn’t want you to hardcast
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Arcane is best at everything right now, then frost, then fire.
Arcane does over 9 million damage in 0.000142340 seconds then spends the next 90 seconds dealing healer like dps, maybe even worse, and a little higher when you use your second rune. You can also cast while invis with mass invis. Harder to catch if you run multiple invises and combine it with root break from prismatic barrier. Best mobility.
Not many options in the arcane tree worth swapping out. Siphon storm nerf and radiant being so important for damage, and the orb barrage final talent thing just majorily sucks and is bugged, giving only 1 charge per clearcast (havent tested they may have fixed). Arcane is pretty much locked to one way to play atm. Kleptomania keeps arcane very very valuable in arena as well.
Frost is just pressure. Press glacial spike when your ready for someone to die. You can sometimes stun someone with garbage pvp talent. Only mage spec with a stun. 2 ice blocks. Some more cc.
Fire doesn’t really do anything interesting at all right now. I think it was supposed to be a bit of both playstyles. Some steady pressure, and big dam during combustion. Interesting pvp talents though. Greater Pyroblast is a pretty cool meme i guess. Some of the pvp talents look interesting but i’m probably not even going to try this spec until I see some other players doing well with it.
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Frost is constant bling bling play. Push that which blings.
Fire is combustion play. Do everything around combustion and after fut around sucking thumb.
Arcane is play perfect during burn phase or else and fut around sucking thumb.
Eff around and find out is arcanes motto…until you miss 1 button in your 14 button rotation…then YOU find out.
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Arcane: least mobile; hardest
Fire: kinda mobile; pretty straightforward
Frost: most mobile; press ice lance
I’d recommend giving fire a shot (very biased) - not too hard to figure the basic rotation out, very satisfying when played right, and a lot of room for optimization / good skill ceiling. That said, I’d recommend against ever trying shimmer as fire, because you’ll only have to mourn the loss of double blink to make the optimal build more palatable (can do it, but way more challenging) - better to never even get used to having it
Fire Mage - “combust or bust”
Frost Mage - “Sir Lance a lot”
Arcane Mage - “CD stacking addict”.
If seriously, Fire Mage is more bursty profile, concentrated on extending and resetting Combustion as much as it can, as without it the damage drops dramatically. It is also quite reliant on Ignite in Dragonflight and uses it to deal both ST and AOE damage.
Frost Mage is sustained damage spec that tries to get as much Icy Veins uptime as possible. Can AoE decently well 2 targets and 7+ targets, but has scaling issues and troubles with 3-6 targets AoE.
Arcane Mage pumps damage in general, but relies on long ramp-up and CD stacking very much, making its rotation more disruptable than rotations of other specs.
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Is this some sort of sick joke? Fire boys are clearly the most mobile…
Ayooo! I am howling! 
Pvp wise, Arcane is the best but relies the most on casting interruptible spells. It has lots of neat little tricks with Mass Invis, Radiant Spark, etc and is probably the hardest to play well. It has the highest instant burst.
Frost is all about dropping Frozen Orb and spamming Ice Lance and flurries, then dropping blizzards to reset Orb. You’ll find about 70% of your damage is Ice Lance and very few hard cast abilities. Some of the best Mages in solo shuffle don’t even cast Frostbolt at all.
Lances cleave a second target so they’re good at putting put tons of pressure against healers and dampening.
Fire is sort of like Frost where they play around their main cooldown (Combust) and try to reset where they can. Damage is a bit under tuned right now and just feels like Frost with larger, but less frequent bursts.
We flamers are way more reliant on RoP and hardcasting long, dumb spells. You can drop an orb, a blizzard, another orb, and just keep lancin’ til the world ends
Frost - Keep Icy Veins up as long as possible and press ice lance
Fire - combustion
Arcane - insane burst window then meh damage
I admit it, this made me laugh.
in pvp theyre all instant cast what you can then run and blink and pray they dont catch you.
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Frost: Ice Lance, IL, IL, IL, IL, IL … oh wait I’m casting slower now … IL, IL, IL,
Fire: Combustion pew pew pew … oh wait, time to stop pew pewing and do a painful hard cast … pew pew pew and when combustion ends you grab a wet noodle and slap the boss with it.
Arcane: Set up this damage modifier … and this one … and that one … oh and that one … NOW I UNLEASH MY FURY … wait, why is the target dead now? Mess anything up in the 18 spells you cast before you damage and you have to go to Dalaran and borrow a wet noodle from a fire mage to slap the target with.
I would describe them as this for someone new.
Arcane - very plan oriented super burst spec. You need to know when and where to use your upcoming burn as you’re going to need to be stationary for some time while casting a very specific series of spells. Afterward insane burst, then fill while planning next window.
Fire - it’s half plan oriented/half reactionary burst spec. You need to conserve your fire blast charges for your combust window, but you also need to be using them outside of that window. The burst is acting upon crit procs quickly and weaving blasts between both hard and instant casts.
Frost - mostly reactionary continuous dps spec without the need for much planning other than using rune of power in a good place and time. Otherwise you’re sending everything you have when it’s available to send. Most damage comes from instant cast proc based spells.
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Frost mage for me. Sweet and simple 1-2-3-Boom!
For anyone new too ~ while frost has the least buttons to press it has the highest APM in the entire game so keep that in mind
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