Is the (Shadow)Priest the better Mage in WOW?

[Skandranon]

Skan, if you don't wish to dance, don't come to the party, but don't deny others can dance and spectacularly.

I don't deny that they can dance and that it might be spectacular. I deny that they can dance and that it will be effective. Spectacular doesn't equal effective. Spectacular makes its greatest impact on people who don't play mages, and is least interesting to people who do. Spectacular but not effective is your complaint about the Infernal, so I'm sure you understand what I'm saying.

Mobs have a number of safeguards built into them to ensure that clever players can't befuzzle them. One of them is that you can't really run away from them; they'll keep scoring hits from some distance away. You can't keep mobs mesmerized by dancing: they can and will turn instantaneously and without breaking stride to follow you, blink or not. Without blink you can't really run from a mob. You can run in the sense that you can easily reach the edge of their chase radius and send them back to their spawn point in evade mode, but you can't run in the sense that you can buy space to cast or avoid a single hit. I can move around and blink and toss instants and whatnot, and I'm sure it'll be a good show. But they just aren't going to care.

Here's where you're missing out. PvP and Duels particularly hone your mobility skills, and sadly on a PvE server you seem to have been able to completely ignore them. Without said dance of death, mages would seem utterly bland in comparison.
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I move around plenty in PvP. In duels, I'm all over the place, and I ruthlessly abuse blink, FN, even the little snare provided by Frost Armor. In mass PvP I'm always in and out, looking for people to pick off, occasionally blinking in for AoE runs. That's because mobility matters in PvP. I have well-developed movement skills; they just don't matter in PvE. Mobs ignore most of the benefits of moving and instance design emphasizes the negatives. Mobs don't have that moment of frozen action when I blink out and they realize that I could be virtually anywhere; they don't run in circles frantically trying to catch sight of me. Their spells don't fail because they don't have the proper facing; their melee attacks don't miss because they're five yards away.

The issue is not conflating PvP combat with PvE instances. Mobility's value is unquestioned in PvP: even warriors and rogues hop around when fighting point-blank. But just as aggro control is worthless in PvP, mobility's advantages vanish faster than most might expect in PvE. The game is just designed that way.