Hello all! I created this topic because I’m curious what exactly makes other people both play Mage class and pick one of the specs over others. It is also a thread that Blizzard devs can list through (if they even do that lately though) and find ideas for both Mage class design and gameplay improvements in 10.0 to make them more appealing both for people who play them and newcoming Mages.
I’ll start from myself. I like elemental and arcane magic and usually play such casters in games. As I usually prefer conjured magic over “religious” based, my main is a Mage and not a Shaman, who is an “elemental priest” by the lore. This left me with 3 specs to choose.
Frost Mage in WoW left me unimpressed, as I usually imagine Frost Mages freezing enemies solid and breaking them apart (some Neverwinter Online player drawbacks), not as applying 1-2 roots that almost every enemy player and their pet can easily remove and fishing for two different RNG procs to deal damage.
I liked Arcane Mage more because I adore energy / time manipulation magic and it does have some abilities which correspond to my perception of what this spec should do. Arcane Gatling aka Clearcast Arcane Missiles is one of my favourite abilities in the entire game. However, I was pushed off with both its underperformance lately, especially in PVP, and its severe vulnerability to interrupts that make you spend most of your time in PVP (especially group PVP) being locked on Arcane or CC-ed.
That left me with Fire and that is the spec I actually enjoy the most:
- While fire is one of my least favourite elements because it is mainly destructive and not as versatile as 3 others, it is still one of 4 elements and I like them, so 0.5 / 1 here.
- I definitely liked Fire gameplay that weaves instant casts and off-GCD casts into rotation. It makes it feel much more dynamic than other 2 specs. After maining Arcane for some time and pressing 3 abilities to do most of your damage rotation (Arcane Blast / Arcane Missiles / Arcane Barrage), rotation that involves many different abilities and instant casts / off-GCDs was refreshing. It is also least RNG based of all three because of controllable Fire Blast charges, so that is an additional plus for me. 1/1 here.
- From viability perspective, Fire was also a breath of fresh air for me. As Arcane, having 0 normal CC to cover Polymorph / Ring of Frost casts and suffering a lot from being one-major-school spec that has very many hardcasts that can be interrupted, a multi-school spec with Dragon’s Breath, lots of instant casts and instant cast Combustion burst was like earth and sky for me. 1/1 here.
Totally it is 2.5/3 and is the reason why Fire is my main spec for now.
What is your preferred mage spec and why?
