Good day. Ive been dabbling with mage as an alt for a while but been wondering if it would be possible for me to main one in DF.
My main concern is arcane. The wowhead rotation page is miles long compared to any other class i play.
How hard is arcane to master?
Arcane is harder than Frost & Fire simply because any kind of heavy movement will kill your dps (which isn’t great as it is in SL).
Sadly the new talent trees seems more of the same.
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According to wow forums it’s the “easiest spec with lowest apm”
For real, Frost will stay nice and beginner friendly in DF, but arcane will be EVEN HARDER to play, but maybe also way stronger
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Arcane does look very complicated at first but in reality it’s not that hard to grasp really, infact it’s easier now with the unity legendary because we no longer want to spell queue for the last spark stack and only really need to hard cast the first arcane blast during arcane power and can do the rest with presence of mind and remain mobile while blasting.
This guide covers pretty much all you need to know.
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You basically have 3 different rotations, that you have to use based on your cooldowns.
AOE has 4 different rotations based on mob count and your cooldowns
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A lot of mages just play fire and frost. Makes life easier.
Kinds funny because in the earlier expansions Arcane was just 2 buttons
DF will be excellent time to start play Mage, because expansion and design will be fresh and everybody are in same line once you get to level 70 and into the end game.
I know your question is about Arcane,but if you even wanted to try frost , just DONT , dont even think about it.In s3 at 270 ilvl, with all cd’s + LFR’s The First Sigil , i used to do 25 k dps on bosses (with BL) My overal damage was anywhere from 9 k to 13 depends on dungeon and build (splitting ice vs comet storm)
Now at 278 ilvl i am doing 7.5 k dps overall and my burst never gets over 17 k.People literally laughing at me in m+ telling me to reroll fire.
Since i aint doing that because i dont like fire/arcane ,i think i am going to quit doing m+
Destro lock and surv hunter (both nerfed supposedly) still doing 70 k aoe dps and 25k+ on bosses. (even tho people who main those classes say they haven’t notice any drop in dps)
As for how hard is to master certain classes,after a while rotation becomes a reflex,and you do it without even thinking about it.
Only way you could potentionally compete is to play fire,because as far as i noticed,everyone does insane damage,except frost mage i guess. In Gambit,fire does 60+ k dps troughout whole fight until first Boss.Arcane does solid damage too,frost on the other hand,i have to pop every cd,even covenant ability,damage spikes to 60 k on first pack,and it drops 10 seconds after that ,to 25 k.
As a frost,in order to do damage,you need to pop every cd’s,have tank not to move around,while certain classes do 25 k dps on the move,not getting punished by any mechanic.
But best option would be to reroll destro lock or ww monk or go healer and hever care about any rotation
Sure i could finish 15s doing 8 k dps,while others are playing game for me and doing all the hard work,but i wont do that.If i cant be of any use,i wont play at all.
Don’t get intimidated by arcane. It sounds hard in theory, in reality once you learnt your 2 combos for aoe and st you are golden. There’s no much complexity and the rotation is easy to execute, it’s just a matter of remembering the order you need to casts the spells in.
I would absolutely refute anyone that says fire and frost are easier alternatives. Combusting correctly is much more demanding than anything arcane asks from you.
Frost is defenetly easier mechanicly, but due to the nature of now being a 3 minute cd spec and being heavily dependant on uptime, you can easily send your damage to the gutter if you don’t know what you are doing.
Meanwhile arcane has a 45cd cycle that you can allmost allways just send and do good damage with.
I think fire is the most complicated, it’s more reactive, and if you get the cd wrong your dps loss is huge.
I don’t get people who are saying that arcane is hard, i don’t think it is, but boring, yea.
I much preferred legion arcane, bfa/shadow arcane is straight up inferior.
Reroll before its too late
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No point playing anything other than Fire
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If you love Arcane, then play Arcane 
I personally love Arcane myself, I love the mage fantasy itself and Arcane mage just comes off as what fits the fantasy for me personally. I do love Frost as well.
Is it in the M+ meta? No - But if you are rolling for M+ Meta, you will be rolling tank, one of the top 3 healers, SV hunter, Outlawrogue or Warlock, for being sure to get an inv.
But if you aint aiming high in M+ you can still run your own keys. On my mage I usually down my key to a 2, and inv the valor famers. I get gear, and valor to upgrade it with - I might miss out on the KSM though, because people are picky.
I will say though, that I do believe that Arcane is somewhat slept on, and just suffers for the stigma.
Then again I do not know what your focus are. If you just wanna dabble with dungeons, low end mythic+ and stuff like LFR it is more than possible that it could be a good main for you. Once you get used to it, it is FUN (Imo).
If you want to go do old raids and dungeons as well, Arcane mage is a VERY good pick for a main 
If you want to raid, mage in general usually is a solid pick. It might not be exactly Arcane mage, but you can play and have loot/gear for the spec you will use in raid/M+ and just Respec arcane when you are on your own - that’s how I started to learn my Arcane 
Now however, I just fell in love with the Arcane regardless of how bad it is, so I choose to play only that - just knowing that I then might make it harder for myself to enter some content, but that’s okay with me. I HOPE it will finally be a relevant spec next expansion, but I can’t be sure, and that is also fine with me.
If you can make that same choice - there’s no reason as to why you should not be able to main, or learn Arcane mage
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