Still hate it. Wish It would go away forever
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I also don’t like it. Anything that makes a spec that needs to sit there and not move, for a spec that already needs to do it, is going to be problematic with the current design of encounters where movement is mandatory.
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Yea, being a spec that has to sit and not move to do its damage really sucks.
Were we talking about RoP?
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RoP just feels terrible to play with, always has and always will. I refuse to use it on principle, don’t care if it’s better dps or not.
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My last post was a (failed) joke that RoP already seamlessly fits the playstyle of arcane, which is forced to always play standing still. I suspect that it was probably an arcane baseline spell in testing and then moved to a talent.
Either way, being serious here, if RoP were something that you had no choice but-to-use I would feel way more empathy, but its got fair alternatives doesn’t it? You can choose to be mobile with Incanters flow or focus magic which, if put on the right class, is the most powerful of the 3 and contributes to your team effort so much nicer. But I’m going to assume that the OP’s sentiment is that they feel locked into RoP and it doesn’t compare to IF or FM.
Based on this assumption perhaps we can say that maybe boosting IF to 25% would be better? Or what else would be comparable? It could be something more fun like instead of spell damage, a flat 15% boost to haste. Or even more fun, we can do something like target weakness to magic? In torghast you have that elemental thing where any spell damage boosts the dmg of the other 2 elements a certain amount. Mages would have a lot of fun with that, in place of incanters flow.
I also refuse to use it as a matter of principle. And, frankly, I have never been fully convinced that it is the substantial DPS increase sims claim it to be because they simply do not account for the very real possibility that you will either be forced to move out of it or have to hold it instead of using it on cooldown to avoid having to move out of it.
RoP is only a reliable DPS when you so out-gear the content that you can safely ignore mechanics (or burn down the boss before they even have a chance to occur) in which case it’s really pointless. Correction: it’s not pointless for people who wanna be “pumpers” and pad the meters because parsing and logs have become their own mini game at this point. 
With that in mind, it’s incredibly inconsistent and the only reason it’s powerful is because of the cooldown stacking potential. Which is particularly frustrating since Blizzard have repeatedly said they don’t like that play style and want DPS output to be more evenly spread out, yet everything they do actively encourages that kind of play style.
Make it make sense.
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RoP is a talent you can be “stuck with”. Being an Arcane Mage isn’t.
“pumpers” are people that do high DPS. And parsing is a good thing because it shows you are playing your class correctly and playing it at a higher skill level then most. So when a Mage grips about how RoP is never fully used…then good Mages will know that THAT Mage doesn’t play the class that well because you can’t pre-plan. Sometimes…“stuff happens” sure…but you get around that with experience.
For me and most Mages our RoP uptime is actually very very high.
Padding the meters? Yeah, you might have some people that do that. But then you may just have people that are simply that good and can play their class and plan their CD’s accordingly.
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That’s my point though, by the time you have the “experience” (aka you out-gear the content and have it on farm) needed to fully utilize RoP’s potential it’s largely irrelevant outside of “pumping” lol. And I think you underestimate just how obsessed some people are with their logs. Over the years I’ve literally had people ask mid fight if we can wipe because they screwed up their rotation and don’t want to end up with a bad parse… never mind that the encounter is going smoothly and looks like a sure kill at that point. We’ve long since passed the point where the vast majority of players use logs and parses for their intended purpose i.e. as a way to gauge performance and have devolved into some kind of a toxic pissing contest.
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I also hate it, especially this expansion when every encounter is like a session of DDR. Feeling glued to one spot, for any amount of time feels like an inconvenience. Just easier to accept the DPS loss or play another class.
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You don’t have to be stuck on rop… the range is enough that you can move out of whatever your not suppose to be in and still be in range of the rop… any boss that is going to force you to move from it because the phase requires constant movement is scripted and predictable and you shouldn’t be casting rop at that time. I can really only think of a few in plague lands and SD. You can also set your alter time to it get out the way and back in
You will notice a huge decrease in dps for mythic + content for sure as bursting down bosses is pretty much all you do.
I would rather be able to cast focus magic on myself for sure though.
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I don’t mind it so much, but I also played black mage quite a bit in Final Fantasy 14 where your major cooldown is just… rune of power. Rune of Power is much more forgiving than the FF version though. If you step outside the circle you lose the buff, RoP has a VERY forgiving radius.
people wanting to play their class to the best of it’s ability are thought of negatively by you? wut
Or you could watch your timers, be mindful of how mechanics affect RoP usage, and gradually increase your consistency as a player rather than plateau for half a decade. RoP is consistently usable across all PvE content.
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rop is like 3 times the size of its icon, if you cant sit in it the whole time youre just using it very badly lol
And if you’ve never stepped out of it to catch a potion on the Lady Darkvein fight (or literally any other mechanic in that fight) you’ve probably wiped your raid. And that fight is not a one off either. Even the “Patchwerk” style fight in this raid tier requires constant movement. In that kind of an environment RoP is far from optimal. 
thatd be covered in the using it badly part, yeah
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That is the only fight. and you grab the potions during the lull. there is nothing to be fighting I don’t know what you’re talking about. ROP is not a hard mechanic lol. it’s more forgiving in raids for frost anyways you could get away with incanter’s flow (because you wont be bursting any of those bosses down) but you’d still be putting yourself behind for something that’s not really that hard to do. for mythic+ I don’t think you have a choice the dps loss will be way to much. or get another frost mage and swap FM I think FM out does ROP.
I was thinking more of solutions to RoP and here’s a really simple idea that could replace it, taken from talents in past expansions:
When you stand still for x seconds, you get boosted spell damage. Bam. I mean, it would be tuned lower because you’d have it way more consistently than RoP but simple testing could get the perfect number, I’d anticipate something like 20% probably.
And then mages would probably want some form of synergy with burst, some way to summon the ability on demand. So you could just make it so that icy veins or arcane power or combustion automatically set the new ability to its max value when cast.
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I love it one week and hate it another, honestly
Its the talent that vexes me most
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