So what draw’s you to your preferred spec?
I have loved fire spec for mages since vanilla the stun that you could get while using fire spells well just stayed with me even though that has been removed I still love fire spec to this day. Getting pryo hot streak chains and getting free pyro after pyro is just so much fun.
Now as my question what spec of mage do you prefer and why?
From lore PoV - Arcane. Being the master of space and time that can shape energy and change reality sounds very good. It is a pity that it is also currently the worst Mage spec in both PVE and PVP.
From efficiency PoV - Fire. It is decent in both PVE and PVP.
I dislike current Frost, whose rotation includes 3 rng procs, is entirely based on Icy Propulsion conduit in PVE and if you lose its uptime because of mechanics / death your dps falls down greatly and who cannot even freeze his enemies solid. I hope it will receive decent overhaul in Dragonflight - less RNG, Icy Propulsion removed entirely with damage balanced without it and some CC addition.
I only play this mage in M+ so it changes based on the affix. Necrotic spiteful? Frost. Inspiring? Arcane… Aesthetically though, Arcane is my favorite.
i like fire more, but arcane this xpac is very very fun
Arcane is my fave. Thematically is the coolest mage, and even though kyrian arcane bursting is fun, they could do so much more with the spec to give it more class fantasy
Ordinarily I’d say Frost, as that has been my chosen raid spec since Mists (except BRF when I went Arc/Fire). However, between this expansion and BfA I lost a lot of love for Frost. Frost for MoP, WoD and Legion felt pretty great to play but the changes they made more recently have broken it. Damage numbers aside making it overly reliant on IV uptime, proc RNG, RoP and so many talents that never see the light of day it just hasn’t been fun for me. If DF makes large scale changes, I’ll be back to it. If not, WotLK exists.
kyrian arcane is the most fun ive had as mage was frost then switched fire which was fun but got old and old arcane is so boring. kyrian arcane makes arcane fit a hole mages had i feel frost is the high up time consistent dmg fire isnt as peaky burst as it was with lego its the more mobile burst and consistent dmg leaning towards burst with mobile evecute phase and arcane is the high burst low uptime window hitting class more setup but it pays off when you do it at the right time in the right way. nothing like having the hardest hitting spell in the game
Some more cc for frost? lol do you hear yourself?
Frost has snares that most melee can almost ignore with their multiple gap closers and roots that most melee have one or multiple ways to break. Against ranged classes both of these are barely useful as well. So yes, some hard CC addition would not harm, especially if Deathborne is removed in Dragonflight.
I really hate how fire mage plays this expansion. Combustion is so clunky and unforgiving. I have to use a macro to make sure I execute the burn properly. And outside of the burn phase, fire mage dps feels like utter crap. And its AOE outside burn feels awful.
Frost spec is fun and fairly easy to play. I like it.
Kyrian arcane feels ok. It’s not great, but not awful.
Currently Frost
Reason being is with my current set up I get CD reduction on all my major CDs. Venthyr frost with the unity legendary has a cd reduction on every major CD, it makes the cd cycle pretty short and a lot of fun in M+.
I tried necro because it’s supposed to be better, but the 3 min cd is so gross I can’t play it. Nobody likes feeling useless for that long between burn cycles
I always played frost and dislike necro because it feels clunky with the way you have to set up your rotations.
Kinda none to be honest. I have a hard time enjoying my mage, Frost is too RNG reliant, Fire is too Combustion reliant and Arcane… Man, I don’t think Arcane has ever felt right since we were locked into specs and turned into magi novices instead of the archmages we’re supposed to be.
I play arcane mage. I love all three specs, and mage is fun to play. For some reason arcane has that mage vibe.
I love frost the most except when I don’t get procs. I enjoy arcane, but I don’t like the current mana management design for it.
Arcane.
Completely unique playstyle different from all other DPS, with nice rotation introduced in SL.
Too bad they are consistently bottom in m+ and terrible in raid right now
I prefer playing my Mage as Arcane, but leveled as Fire and ever since I got Sun King’s Blessing, I have not enjoyed playing it one bit. I may end up biting the bullet and swapping to Arcane permanently and rebuilding with Kyrian instead.
SL Frost all the way, I couldn’t play NF Fire due to covenant restrictions in 9.0
In BFA both Frost and Fire, I loved the Glacial Spike gameplay and the mastery amp or the 100% crit fire mage build. Corruptions made mage super fun. Frost had the least damage to its gameplay post artifact removal.
Legion- All three specs were fun.
WoD - All three specs.
MoP- brain is foggy digging that far back on a video game but Frost.
I like to switch between frost and arcane spec. Though this expansion arcane has not been keeping up with the other two specs. I wish frost had more options in the talent tree hate the fact that there is only one option in most of the talent rows. Never cared for fire end game, I always felt like a spaz pressing two buttons as fast as i can for 8 seconds every minutes ish.
None atm, all bottom 5 garbo atm. Sadly.