Magery and the pre Cataclysm events.

My mage in WoW finally dinged 80. I've played around with all three specs and formed impressions of all three:

Fire: Undoubtledly the most involved of the three, it requires juggling Living Bomb, FFB and Scorch, watching for Hot Streak procs and timing combustions. The tree has one very, very noticable problem though; pyromaniac requires 3 or more targets so it's useless on boss fights with no adds, but very strong when adds are present. I struggle to get as good overall DPS out of fire spec than frost or arcane, but I have a tendency to clip LB just before it explodes, which is less than ideal.

Arcane: Still a total faceroll of a spec. Arcane blast, repeat. Brings the strongest single target DPS of the 3 specs due to the ease of play and strength of AB. Also has the major quality of life upgrade that is Improved Blink. The main reason I keep this spec at all is for that talent. At 85, with it being accessable from Fire or Frost spec, I can't see me speccing arcane

Frost: Balanced between the DoT watching of fire and facerolling of Arcane, Frost has gone from PVP/Solo only to a fairly competative raiding spec. It plays not dissimilarly to pre 4.0 ret pally, in that you're constantly proc watching. The combination of Icy Veins, Deep Freeze and Cold Snap gives tremendous burst damage too. Although it lacks the amazing quality of life upgrades on Arcane, it has amazing survivability, soloablility and good raid damage, as well as bringing replenishment. This will probably be my secondary spec at 85.

On the pre Cata events:

The elemental bosses are fun, however, the loot tables make them extremely annoying to queue for, as plate gear isn't evenly spread across all three bosses.