Hello, my magi brethren!
I've recently been playing a mage and I have to say, I'm loving the class. Portals, invisibility, conjuring food, fun abilities...I'm actually considering making my mage my main when he reaches 90!
However - I'm not sure what to use in AoE. I'm aware that we have a choice between three attacks - Arcane Explosion, Flamestrike, and Blizzard. Before playing a mage of my own, I assumed that you used the fittingly-named spell depending on your spec (for example, you'd use flamestrike if you were Fire, and Blizzard if you were frost). I've looked at Icy Veins and Noxxic for guidance, yet they don't even mention Blizzard.
Personally, Blizzard is my favourite AoE spell for mages, as I enjoy channelled spells (Dat Blood Elf channelling animation!) so I hope it's viable to use. But is it? What I've gathered is that I should slam down my AoE DoT and keep it up, and flamestrike on cooldown. My mage is dual-specced Arcane/Frost, and I enjoy both so I'll probably use both for raiding - but I'm leaning towards Arcane. After casting flamestrike and while it's on cd, should I run into the batch of enemies and spam Arcane Explosion? Or use Blizzard from a safe distance? I'm not that great a mathematician, so looking at the descriptions of both of the spells doesn't show a clear winner in DPS for me.
Can anybody give me advice on what to use? Thanks in advance!