AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Call customer support if you want to try recovering the account.

I don't. I came to my fucking senses. I'd rather have this roadblock up to keep me from spending anymore of my time playing this game.

Got my Archmage Staff. Now I'm only running Theramore to get the Everlasting Fireworks and the JP to buy two heirloom AGI maces for my gnome monk.

My only reason for getting back into WoW would be because I just like to experience all the different raids and instances. The actual daily grind is very off-putting to me.

So what classes DON'T have a self-healing ability now? Apparently hunters can heal themselves for 30% and fully heal their pet using no resources other than the cooldown.

i think techincally every class can heal itself in some way

And technically, BM hunters had a self-heal before that, if they had a spirit beast.

Trying out Frost now in Theramore and I feel like a machine gun. I rarely even shoot Frostbolts, I just run up to a group of mobs, launch a Frost Orb, then spam Ice Lance as Fingers of Frost procs constantly. Mobs are dead in seconds.

You see, that's what I don't like. Every class/spec combination shouldn't be capable of everything. The direction it's going now is that all classes must be equal in all aspects and be able to beat any other class/spec combo.

Well, continuing with Madican's mage talent stuff, each spec is a different way of playing the mage. Arcane is your steady sustained damage spec, Fire is your volatile nuke everything to death spec, and Frost is your freeze 'em then take 'em out spec. Frost and Fire are similar in that they both rely on criticals, but Fire is based around criticals where Frost is based around procs from criticals. As such, the two use similar (if not the same) gear/stat makeup. Arcane, however, is based more on actual damage and big hits than popping crits, so you'll build more into magic damage or whatever it's called now.

However, on the flip side of that, each spec is about doing damage AND NOTHING ELSE. Sure, they're "DPS" specs, but even Warriors have two different ways of dealing damage. Arms is about dealing huge hits and reducing enemy mobility, and Fury is about flinging your weapons wildly and keeping yourself alive in small ticks while doing it. Even Rogues, another all-DPS class, have three unique playstyles for damage. Assassination is about the poisons and keeping your opponent taking damage, Combat is about going toe to toe and basically being a rogue tank, and Subtlety is about sneak attacks and strikes of opportunity. With the mage it's just "Cast spells, cast fire spells, cast ice spells" and there really isn't much variety save for how you play them. Don't get me wrong, nuking shit down with chain-proc instant Pyroblasts is fun as all hell, but I can do basically the same with Frost and that's something that should not be.

Noooo, no, no, no. Frost plays totally different from Fire and Arcane.

When I was fire I was strong versus single target while able to run around casting Scorch while moving and putting Nether Vortex on things. Fireball was the filler spell outside of Inferno Blast when Heating Up proc'd from a crit then unleashing a Pyroblast, Combustion, Inferno Blast again.

Frost however excels at control over damage. When you have control you get the damage, but it's best against large groups of enemies because Orb of Frost has a chance to proc Fingers per hit on each enemy. Ice Lance hits two enemies so it functions as a cleave. Add in the pet's Frost Nova and your own freeze spells and you can command the battlefield.

To give an example of the differences, in Fire spec for the final boss of Theramore I spent my time hitting him hard, then putting up Mirror Images while running the hell away. After Mirror Image ran out I was running the entire time. When I did it as Frost though, I still ran away but in more controlled bursts. I was able to lock his movement so he could never come close to me while waiting to deal my damage until he was frozen, something Fire doesn't do.

I was talking about in a more general sense. I thought I stated that Frost was more about freezing and damaging than outright nuking, but oh well.

Yeah saying Fire and Arcane play similarly is kind of off as well. Fire is more about dot management while arcane is... weird. I guess it's mostly about mana management? It's probably the most unique dps spec in the game in all honesty.

Edit: no I'm stupid I misread your post

Rock-paper-scissors is certainly a nice notion, but as it stands, PvP seems to be based around arena and small comps. In order for every spec to be viable in arena in some way, they have to be normalized to some extent.

However, there can still be quite a difference in the way the specs work. Take warlocks; Affliction and Destruction are pretty different in terms of playstyle and damage potential. Sustained vs. Burst, etc etc

Balancing classes around arena is what many people have issues with.