New-ish Character, not sure what spec to use.

[Altima]

Hello, all. I'm newish to mage for Warlords. I decided to make an alt and gear her because there's not much else to do but raid this expansion. Long story short, before I made my mage I did some homework about the class, figrued out Arcane is the spec I ideally want to play when sufficiently geared with frost as my fofset for HFC. Here's the issue I am having: my character,Altima, is in a lot of Baleful cobbled together garbage. My damage is also not super great, either.

So, I've done some poking around and I'm struggling to find a real answer: At low gear levels without 2 piece and decent trinkets, am I better off as frost or arcane in HFC? The gear will come in time and my alt raid leader is blessedly patient about this due to my mechanics awareness and experience--so I'm mostly curious what's the best spec for my current gear, so that I can be more worth my raid spot.

For what it's worth our currently struggling encounters are Socrethar and Fel Lord. My rotation cna use some improvement, especially when it comes to managing the elemental as frost, and icy veins/not using comet storm. But I'm more interested in what my gear can even support currently.

[Chev]

Don't worry about gear. Play the spec you like the most.

Yes, gear does matter but perfecting your rotation is more important. You have already said you need to make improvements in that area so start with the spec that you enjoy the most and go from there. You will learn faster if you enjoy it more which is why you start with the spec you enjoy the most but if I was going to make a recommendation I would say Frost as is the easiest to learn and is less punishing should you make a mistake.

[DeathDefier]

Yeah like Chev said, play what you enjoy and plan to play later. All muscle memory you gain now will help you when you finally get the gear in the future.