There aren’t any individual resistances anymore, so I just can’t think of the point as to why there are specific schools of magic (coding wise) anymore. Is there a mechanic I’m missing?
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Being locked out of a spell school.
It’s a very big factor in PVP. A Frost mage being locked out of Frost shuts them down completely.
A Warlock being locked out of Shadow still gives them options.
As for PVE it’s pretty much just flavor. It happens sometimes, a raid boss will have a spell lockout mechanic. But it’s rare.
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Having a single spell school would ruin many specs in pvp every caster would become like shadow priest unable to do anything when kicked.
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Technically racial resistances DO still exist. They’re just so miniscule they don’t matter.
For PvE Purposes, Elemental damage types and their resistances were all sent to the wayside to allow for more specializations to be usefull. For Example, In Vanilla, Fire Mages are worthless for the first 2 raid teirs, because they’re full of Fire elementals, Dwarves that can cast Flame Ward, and Dragons. So you were literally forced into playing Frost for the first few raids in order to deal any damage.
So, Enemy resistances were all removed so anyone can play any damage type without feeling screwed.
In the WC3 Days, Chaos Damage was only dealt by very specific things and it was unique in that nothing resisted chaos damage.
So, In World of WarCraft. To reflect this: Abilities that Deal Chaos damage, like Eye Beam or Chaos Bolt always critically hit.
It’s not much, but it’s something.
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Bring back resistances. It’s a good RPG thing to have.
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Stop throwing in endgame systems that lock you into being optimal in one spec only and I honestly wouldn’t mind it, since we can freely swap specs these days.
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As Ixenn said above, sucks getting spell locked with only 1 magic type. A fire mage can still blink away. An arcane mage cannot!
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Knowing more about schools of magic will make your kicks that more delicious. Which reminds me few months ago I saw a rogue that kicked incinerate, I nearly had a stroke.
Spell buff abilities also exist. a boost to holy damage wont boost your frost damage.
more recent memory is from torghast where you get a flat power boost but have your (specific spell school damage and healing reduced)
as a Druid, if he negative is for holy. then the buff is basically free. but if its nature, then it is prob not worth it.
mobs can also do specific damage types, and other mechanics can still give you resistance/ damage reduction vs that kind of damage.
its also relevant in dispelling. you may be able to remove a magic debuff but not a disease.
spell locking enemies can also be advantageous.
also, i think some races may still have a 1% resistance to certain spell schools. 
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We Vulpera take less fire damage because we grew up in the hot deserts of Voldun!
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Having to farm hours to craft resist gear for AQ sucked, no thanks.
I figure resistances could still work if they weren’t all or nothing. A high resistance to an element could just make it do like 1-2% less damage or something, like how the racials work, instead of making them immune. Attacking with an element where the target has low resistance would make it do 1-2% damage more.
That way, the differences aren’t too major but some RPG flavor is maintained.
But that wouldn’t make anything better.
You would just wind up with a fire raid, and group leaders go “Oh, you’re a fire mage? Well you’re 0.01% less useful, DENIED” because people, ARE, that petty.
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That would for sure happen. But it would happen anyways, they would just find some other minor detail to harp on. Might as well have an RPG and not an action game if they complain either way.
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That’s not true, there’s other abilities that deal chaos damage that don’t critically hit every time, such as Chaos Strike. Eye beam doesn’t even critical constantly until a certain level where you get that as a passive upgrade to Eye Beam. Chaos damage has nothing to do with critical strikes, more info on the wiki (remove the space):
h ttps://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos
It’s basically just all the damage schools combined into one (always includes Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow and can optionally include Holy and Physical, depending on the spell), but Chaos chooses the lowest resistance when calculating damage. However being kicked while casting Chaos technically means you’re locked out of all the damage schools now.
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That is not correct. Eye Beam and Chaos Bolt always critically hit, but this is not shared among all chaos damage abilities. The 100% crit rate is part of those abilities the same way it is a baked in part of other non-chaos damage abilities such as Fire Mage’s Fire Blast. For instance, Annihilation on Havoc also deals chaos damage but does not always critically hit.
Chaos damage in WoW is counted as all damage types. What that means is that when a chaos ability hits something, it will do damage as though it were of the damage type that would deal the most damage. Damage type resistances, while typically not large, do still exist in modern WoW and that’s how they’re used. This also means that since chaos spells are considered to be all schools, being interrupted and becoming chaos locked will stop you from casting anything.
There actually was a semi-recent example of damage type mattering in modern WoW. Granted it was two expansions ago but during the add phase on Argus, each of the 7 adds took double damage from a different damage type. So it was beneficial for players to know what type of damage all their hardest hitting abilities did so they could reap the rewards for targeting the right add. Demon Hunters however were spoiled for choice as their hardest hitting moves all did chaos damage and thus did double damage against ALL of the adds.
This is actually how all multischool abilities work in WoW. There’s only seven base schools and any damage type not among them is just a mixture of two or more schools, dealing damage as if it were the more advantageous of the two. The creatively named Shadowfrost is simply a combination of shadow and frost damage. The slightly more creatively named Astral is a combination of nature and arcane.
Aside from the very negligible effect of resistances, sometimes classes will have internal mechanics that care about the spell school. Shaman’s Master of the Elements talent buffs the next Nature, Physical, or Frost spell they cast, which means it will not work on a Fire spell like Lava Burst or Flame Shock.
Chaos damage always includes all of the schools. You’re thinking of chromatic damage, which is every school except for Holy and Physical.
EDIT: Nope I was wrong, looks like it is selective. Wonder why they don’t just make them chromatic damage then?
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I remember Xul’Horac back in Hellfire Citadel in WoD. His big gimmick was that bad things happened if Fel and Void came into contact. So players would get a debuff that would make it so they would explode the next time they took either fire (Fel) or shadow (void) damage. The Maiden boss from Tomb of Sargeras worked under a similar principle if I recall.
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Interrupts
Interrupting only stops the interrupted magic school, so if you interrupt say penance you’re open to mindgames/mind control/shadowmend etc
It’s a crucial thing to be aware of in pvp
Well, there’s obviously PvP, but also being interrupted (by a shout or something) in PvE, then getting locked out of a school of stuff. Example being if a Warlock gets interrupted on Shadow they can still use fire spells, or Chaos Bolt, but not fear or port.
I think that it’s neat, especially in PvP.