So I’m looking at forsaking the ties that bind us to fire. I like fire conceptually, but even though I had only begun dabbling in it at the end of bfa, the sl changes to aoe and ignite make it feel less than great imo.
Having said that, I enjoy all pve content but not at crazy competitive levels. This isn’t a “which spec should i choose”, but rather which content do frost and arcane excel at and which areas are more of a trouble spot for each. Any light shed is appreciated.
Right now fire is considered BiS across the board. That’s looking to change in 9.1. Frost is getting some good burst back into their kit, paired with their slows and roots makes them very attractive for pvp. Frost will also do well in mythic plus with tanks able to take advantage of your massive AoE potential. The only downside is they will need to play around the static nature of frosts AoE and keep them in your blizzard. For raids, it’ll depend on the fights. I haven’t looked too much into that content yet, so that’s a wait and see. Overall frost is looking mighty tastey.
As for arcane, they have a lot of buts. They have some of the highest burst in the game, but, they’re limited by their mana and very reliant on CDs. They are nearly impossible to catch in pvp due to chrono shift and their damage is great, but, it’s a lot of fishing for procs and can be inconsistent because of that. Arcane is my favorite spec. I’ll be playing it in 9.1. There are some scenarios that they are heavily punished in IE movement heavy fights. But overall they have a great kit that can adapt to any content if you know how to play around your CDs and capitalize on moments of heavy damage.
Sorry for the long winded explanation. I hope I helped in some way. 
have a great day my friend.
What is this due to?
All good, just the kind of discussion im looking for! Thank you for taking the time to reply
Frost shines in sustained aoe or consistent cleave. Particularly in long aoe fights as it makes it far easier to lower the CD on Icy Veins. They also have some of the best two target cleave in the game with their Freezing Winds legendary (generates fingers of frost when frozen orb is out). Problem area is single target if you aren’t venthyr or aren’t using a single target legendary (which you wouldn’t in m+) however being venthyr is enough to negate this and do pretty good single target damage.
Arcane out shines frost in single target burst and aoe burst. Arcane is a far better spec than frost in low m+ and decent at higher levels. Arcane sacrifices far less single target to go a heavy aoe build in terms of legendary choice. Hurts on sustained single target fights. Also has some annoying cooldown management with night fae. And will likely be heavily harmed in m+ on bosses with the loss of prideful.
This is what scares me.
Frost has gotten no changes other than the cov legos, none of which are bursty.
Frost
Pros:
Cons:
Best at:
Worst at:
Arcane
Pros:
Cons:
Best at:
Worst at:
My mistake. Frost isn’t getting new burst. Their burst is staying. That’s why there is some buzz about frost being the new go to spec.
Fire is getting hit pretty hard but frost is maintaining all the things that made them strong. I was mistaken bout specific buffs. But that Ice wall pvp talent looks super fun.
As someone who mains/plays Arcane at a fairly high level and has played each covenant, losing prideful is a non-issue. Arcane has a very strong base kit and each covenant provides a different damage profile further amplified by the legendary you choose to run.
Kyrian:
Pros:
Extremely High ST/Priority Damage
Short CDs so you have mini bursts in between your big burst
Runs resonance so you don’t miss out on cleave or AoE damage
Removes the need for fishing CC procs
You only run 1 legendary - Arcane Infinity (Harmony)
Cons:
Very restrictive with movement (I.E. You can’t move for the 10 seconds that it takes to burst otherwise you lose out on damage)
Punishing if burst is executed poorly
Very easy for people who don’t know how to manage mana as a resource and evocation to go OOM and do no damage (This goes for arcane as a whole, not isolated to Kyrian)
Kyrian is weak for frost/fire. Would only recommend playing kyrian if you’re 100% going arcane.
Necrolord:
Pros:
Very high cleave capability (3-5 targets)
2nd Highest ST damage (roughly 0.5% behind Kyrian)
Best covenant overall if you wanted to play all 3 specs at a decent level - this being 15-17 keys and heroic raids. You can definitely do mythic though you will have to choose between arcane/frost.
Cons:
Not really any cons for necro that are general to arcane as a whole, the only gripe I have with necro and the other covenants (other than Kyrian) is that you need different legendaries for different scenarios. Bombardment for M+, TW for raid, harmony has niche uses and siphon storm has some meme plays.
Venthyr:
Pros:
Great ST damage
Semi-eliminates the need for CC fishing
Cons:
Low cleave if not running arcane echo/harmony in mythic plus
Night Fae:
Pros:
Great AoE profile for mythic plus
Relatively short CDs
Cons:
Due to the nature of Shifting Power, it’s easy to desync your CDs so you need to manage them properly
Poor ST damage
Overall:
It really depends on what covenant you choose for Arcane. Each covenant provides a different damage profile. Do you want High ST/Priority damage with decent cleave? Go Kyrian. High ST/High Cleave? Necro. High AoE? NF. High ST? Venthyr. The only thing bringing down arcane is community perception and the only time you should ever consider going fire is if you’re pushing <22+ keys. I can’t say go fire for mythic because I was progressing as Arcane with my guild and did well.
Sums it up perfectly.
Just switched from venthyr and after 3 months of using the mirrors of torment I started to just get annoyed by the playstyle around it 
Can’t agree there. The loss of Prideful may not hurt us in the AoE department just because of how good Bombardment is but it’s loss will most definitely be felt when it comes to boss damage especially on Tyrannical weeks.
This won’t only affect Arcane though, it will be an across the board nerf to boss damage in M+ unless the new Domination affix offers something comparable which, as things stand now, it does not (not to mention the apparent RNG factor to it).
To be fair, double ice block is only really useful in heroic as on a lot of mythic bosses anything that can be immuned is generally not usable. For instance on heroic SLG you can immune the damage from the soaks (echoing reverberation) but on mythic it will do damage through immunity so you can’t double or triple soak it with ice block (it does prevent the application of the debuff but you will still likely die if you soak 2). I suppose you are right, because you can immune two inerva adds, but on the further in fights blizzard makes sure immunities aren’t too important so you don’t stack them on prog.
Depends on the burst, you did already mention that they are strong at cleave fights, but they can do good burst especially with the Freezing winds leggo as that negates most of your rng during your frozen orb window. A partial reason they can destroy inerva as their add and boss dmg cleave is strong in that short window.
Also they suck at spread out aoe, I mean barrage’s range to hit multiple targets feels sooooo short.
Good points.
Sure, prideful buff is nice but at the higher levels you skip some prides anyways. And if we can skip prides on bosses at 20+ keys where bosses feel like they’re on tyrannical during fortified weeks then losing it next patch certainly won’t be something we should worry about.
Uh no, for progression double block has immense value, even on mythic:
Eg: Mythic Huntsman, Mythic Inerva, Mythic Hungering, Mythic Sire, Mythic Sludge, the list goes on. M. SLG is literally the exception
On farm when you let adds go through to pad, yes. I agree.
That may be true for higher keys but the vast majority of players never see anything past a 15, if that, and at those levels a mechanic like Prideful is a straight up boost with virtually no downsides and frankly served as something of a crutch this season. I am genuinely concerned about what M+ will look like without it especially for folks who PuG their keys and only want to get their weekly vault and/or some level of Keystone (which is the overwhelming majority of players). Blizzard have continuously tried to balance the game around top end players this expansion and its wreaked havoc with the rest of the 95% of folks.
Huntsman sure, if your guild stacks their sinseekers close enough, for mine we needed moving immunities because they were slighlty too far apart. Inerva, still not that important, same with hungering, sire maybe but only really on early prog where iceblocking a nighthunter would save a lot of damage going out to the raid and even then they might not have to due to the p1 dps check which I’m sure was far harder a while ago. Blocking p2 doesnt matter and in p3 you could maybe block to soak but that doesn’t matter. Blocking the 3rd ravage also doesnt matter because you will still take the dot damage so you might as well walk into the other ravages. Sludge, you typically block a roar, but it is far more beneficial to be fire as you are more likely to die to a pillar slam than a roar. And you don’t block pillars.
On Sludge, third chain slam onwards if you get baited into it your only hope of surviving is by Blocking, wont kill your ally, as he pulls you in even when you’re blocked. Also you never die to a pillar as Frost, even the 4th pillar as long you’re decently geared (224+) topped off and you do Ice Barrier > Alter Time.
All you’re describing in Sire seems to be Heroic related?
Also this “not so important” argument only flies on farm, which I agree with. On progression, blocking adds on fights like Innerva or immuning on Hungering has huge value.
This burst is incredibly weak for a ST encounter, because at its core Frost does better ST damage with Slick Ice over Freezing Winds.
Frost’s shortcoming is always its lack of a single target burst. Take any fight where a group lusts off the bat. No matter how geared the Frost mage, he/she will be nowhere on the charts for the lust, but will creep back up by virtue of being able to get back to back Icy Veins casts, etc. but this requires the ability to turret the boss consistently.
The amount of dmg throughput that arcane has in 15 keys, tyrannical or otherwise, even without the pride buff is more than enough to crush it. I won’t speculate as to its performance next patch because so much can change, but as things are right now if we didn’t get a pride buff we would still do ridiculous dmg in 15 keys.
To OP, by far the biggest thing that irritates me about playing arcane is community perception. Even the people I run with are skeptical to bring my mage as arcane, even though they know what it is capable of. If you rock arcane, be prepared to be excluded lol.
Wouldn’t know, wasn’t paired by the algorithim to ever be part of chain slam baits at the end of the fight.
Well the mechanics have the same names in mythic, soooo.
But it is not anywhere nearly as valuable as a something doing 7-10% more boss damage. And with decent healers Hungering even on prog isn’t much of a problem when he desolates (or whatever the essentially roar ability is called) because you should have spirit shell, AM, or some other healer cd covering it. And ice blocking the orbs is useless because either your off tank soaks them all or a hunter/pally/dh.
I mean, if you claim that you’re losing 10% damage by blocking for literally 1-2 seconds, that’s a STRETCH, to put it mildly.
The timings for ideal Ice Blocking in mythic are different.