Potential New Mage: What Exactly are the Playstyles?

[Deleted]

Hey! So I have mained a warrior for a longtime and will continue to in legion as my melee main, I am however, considering a Mage as my caster main. There is only one problem I can't get around; how exactly do they play mechanics wise? I may just be an idiot but even from watching new legion beta videos I still can't figure out how the three specs would play in general. I was wondering if someone here who is a diehard Mage would be able to enlighten me on how each spec plays? I enjoy the thematics of all three specs so that isn't an issue. Just seeing my two favourite lore characters (Khadgar and Varian) on the forefront of legion I want to try give Mage a go.

Thanks

[Deleted]

Fire is a run of the mill case of "cast, wait for proc, cast something based on the proc" and it has a lot of instants now but it's generally a very simple spec (maybe too simple to stay like that or to be that strong for it). Frost is very similar in style but it might be more complex to play in 7.x than it used to be and it has some more elaborate synergy of spells depended on other spells with the pet etc. Arcane is kinda an arcane art in the sense that it needs some management of the mana levels and the timings of the burn and it can be penalized more than any other spec if it messes up timings.

In detail it's not that simple of course, that was only a very general rough picture. For example the Talents can change the character of the specs quite a bit. Or, fire depends a lot on cooldown timings too.

[LordAmbrosia]

Arcane: Build and spend playstyle with arcane charges. Uses mana as a meaingful resource unlike any other dps spec. Frequent and potent burn phase lining up with your cooldowns. Mostly predictable playstyle, relies on managing your resources more than anything else.

Fire: Quick and reactive playstyle, based around Hot Streak (getting chains of crits in a row). Fire is tied to the critical strike stat stronger than any spec in the game is reliant on any stat, far as I can tell. Devastating single target burst, solid AOE.

Frost: Frost has a lot of buttons. Involves weaving many long cast times abilities together while still reacting to the necessary procs that show up. Keeping everything on cooldown without wasting procs is the challenge here.

[Deleted]

Fire is probably the most fun during the cds with chain pyro casts, although pretty straight forward outside of them

Frost is proc based but quite nice all the way with possibilities like permanent icy veins on single target. And burst AoE cds.

Arcane has very good mechanics which mostly revolve around mana management than anything else, but complex nevertheless. But the arcane blast single target is really slow right now and punishing if you don't do it correctly.

Overall, the specs are probably in the best place they have ever been considering mechanics and disregarding numbers, then they have ever been

[Deleted]

a lot has been said yet, which sum up the speccs correct, but one additional thing:

In contrast to the mage in further expansion, the mage now involves a lot of 40-45 sec CDs, overlapping every 2nd times with one of your bigger cds, eg. combustion, arcan power and icy veins (not sure if this wasn't a 3 min cd!?)
I find this trend rather anoying as you have to keep track of more buttons to press every 40 secs, which in most cases don't provide fun and also don't seem to be well to utilize them in special raid situations, as you will most likely always want to stack CDs because of the Rune of Power (40s CD). which clearly is too strong in this case, thus kind of mandatory which takes effect with all other (coincindentially 40 sec CDs) vice versa.

This is a new playstile for the mage and artifacts amplify this trend except for arcane. arcane got a 60 sec cd spell on the weapon and got one big flaw in its mechanic: The Aoe relies on you beeing close to the mobs, almost melee range. Most raid mechanics don't allow you to be in melee range as a range dps. And arcanes mana costs are too high to play the specc in a long fight in a satisfying way.