Planning to play arcane mage or balance druid. I have not decided yet. I think I will be waiting 9.1 and see how things will go.
So in your opinion:
Yes it is fun and it can be fun. It is that way to me because I like the playstyle (some issue with core design, though), but mana management and how you utilize your abilities makes it feel worth while after you get used to it.
As for 9.1 with your question in pvp, there’s a post about that with people talking about the new pvp talent so there’s where I have to stop on that with pvp, aside from the usual problems that still plagues arcane in both pve and pvp with heavy movement and needing to hardcast more than frost and fire. So, for now, 9.1 arcane is the same as 9.0 arcane aside from a new pvp talent. Still punished by heavy movement fights but, you could use arcane explosion if you’re able to get near the boss and arcane blast with PoM, but after that you still can’t match how mobile fire and frost to some extent are able to be with their instants. Then there’s the procs for CC which is not very reliable and can be frustrating sometimes.
As for arcane vs balance druid. That is personal preference. If you’re like some of us who has no issue with dealing with and figuring out how to maximize use of arcane then go for it. However, if you’re not a fan of what I’ve posted concerning its shortcomings then laser chicken all the way (frost or fire at least).
Arcane is fun for awhile but I always end up going back to frost on my mage cause I get tired of drinking/mana management.
Balance Druids are obviously really strong right now but I’ve never been a big fan of their play style.
It was the least fun I have ever had on my mage. I only did it once, and it was in torghast, so… YMMV
Fun is subjective to what I’m doing. It’s really fun in Torghast. It’s not so fun everywhere else.
Fun is subjective. I really enjoy Kyrian Arcane mage right now. Others think it’s boring.
i haven’t played druid at all.
Arcane can either be a fixed turret spec or reasonable mobile, depending on your talent choices.
You can check warcraftlogs and see how arcane compares to balance druids in both the raid and m+. The raid emphasizes single target damage and that plays well into arcane’s strength. Mythic+ emphasizes aoe and that strongly favors balance druids.
Aoe takes some getting used to because the main aoe attack requires your to stand just outside of melee and your can often get hit with more damage if you’re not careful.
While I think Blizz needs to give arcane some love (make nether storm and Supernova baseline and bring back mark of aluneth as a talent), I enjoy playing the spec and it’s my favorite make spec. It’s so much better than it was in bfa (extra offensive cd, fixed arcane orb, and clearcast stacks to 3).
The funny thing is Balance druids are one of the easiest classes for me to beat as arcane (assuming equal gear). Mirrors of Torment helps tremendously.
Arcane outperforms Balance in M+ style AOE. However, Balance brings a lot more support.
Arcane is extremely fun in m+ with the orb, arcane power, execute leggo, shifting power set of tools because it is a lot of back to back aoe/cleave pulls where you get to just pop off and destroy things. As stated above however, you would just be bringing damage and lust. Your utility is actually negligible as arcane for the most part.
Arcane is definitely clunky and not so fun in raids. Here the problem isn’t pure damage because arcane does have the throughput to be a top raid spec…The problem is the variance in ability to execute that damage. Arcane dps is significantly tied to managing the burst window (more than any other spec) which requires a) being able to stand relatively motionless while doing so b) being able to poor in the exact amount of procs with the most buffs up to get a big boom of damage out. This is really hard to do vs boomkin mostly being able to be more mobile and channel its main damage out for similar results.
Arcane is going to be balls to the walls fun in pvp tho in 9.1. The changes they’ve made to klepto (arcane only now) and the addition of the new dps pvp talent (which can be charged during greater invis) actually makes for strong arcane burst and makes them a direct mage counter due to their ability to purge all buffs with klepto.
What about Arcane mage necrolord?
I think Arcane will be really fun with Arcanosphere. Take Ring of Frost and Supernova aswell and we are talking about some serious CC options. Extremely slippery playstyle and has insane amount of survivability.
All covenants for arcane are pretty close to each other. That being said the necrolord ability has a whopping 3 min cd and I’m not a fan of that but you start dishing some serious nukes when you pair it with AP.
This is because most Boomies go for NF for the ST burst. A Kyrian Boomy can wipe the floor with an Arcane mage in M+
It’s the least played mage spec, so it can’t be that fun. Personally I don’t like the playstyle, but if you master it, you can pull off some impressive numbers.
I like arcane and it can be fun. My issue with it is I sometimes get tired of mana management. The rotation is mostly set for you which is nice, but gets stagnant. Lastly movement can be very detrimental to your damage.
Balance is fun and I like the class utility. I don’t really like the eclipse play style though, mostly because I don’t like to think about which phase I’m in and switching over to the right buttons for that phase.
Arcane is great if you like seeing big numbers 130k barrage is easy to pull off, 80k TotM also great.
You can literally erase trash in m+ im at 200 ilvl with my mage and im pulling some insane numbers 10k dps or more (aoe) and around 5-7k dps during bosses (4-6k in tyranical).
If you end up choosing arcane play kyrian it fixes all the rng problems the spec has, your Burst windows are shorter, so you worry less about movement and well… you see the big number im telling you 30k AB and stuff like that. However if you use your cds badly you will be heavily punish and will be doing tank like dmg
about balance ive never play it so … i have nothing to say about it
I play NF Arcane in m+ and it absolutely pumps. I don’t think I’ve seen any other spec on any class that can pull such big numbers on basically every single pull. Boomies and Monks can go big when they have CD’s, but NF Arcane has CD’s up pretty much all the time. And with pride buff, just straight up deleting mobs.
The most mobile mage spec for dungeons hands down.
It’s not quite as fun in raids as someone else mentioned, you are really dependent on performing well during your burst phase. Fire mages get to do all their burst in 12 seconds and then just work on getting combust back. But arcane needs a solid 30 seconds or so where they are focused on pumping.
This is the truth! I pulled 9.1k overall the other day in a Mists 16. Granted Mists is ultra padded lol, but still Arcane pumps and I’m not sure why randos think it doesn’t 
I still get kicked for not being fire sometimes.
You do start to feel its lack of meaningful utility in 20+ though.
Arcane is fun if you have the ability to git gud. It will also probably perform better next tier given the recent round of laser chicken nerfs.