Honestly, this sort of response comes off as disconnected label association that relies on denying things for the sake of moping.
“I miss mage Whitemane”
“I want a mage healer”
“Attacks are being forced, so she can’t be a mage”
“Mage, mage, mage mage”
If she isn’t a ‘mage healer’ now, then she hasn’t ever been one.
What even is a ‘mage’? (rhetorical and non question)
WoW mages are defined by burst damage, aoe, and crowd control.
By extension, Jaina, Kael’thas, and Kel’thuzad are ‘mages’ from WoW. Do they have burst damage, aoe, and crowd control?
Yes
In HotS, “mages” tend to echo that sentiment and have similar qualities; they tend to have 3 damaging abilities, or have talents to enable all abilities to be able to deal damage (such as Li-ming with calamity). The more damaging abilities they have, the bigger the sequence of burst they can get from their aoe combo.
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Can whitemane have all of her abilities deal damage?
No
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Does she deal aoe damage?
Not really (lash might hit more than one target, but that’s not the same thing)
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Does she have cc?
Only at the end of the game, and if she talents for it.
– and even then, it’s pretty much weaker than all other characters with cc already.
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Does malf have CC, aoe, and ‘burt’ damage?
baseline cc, talent heroic for more cc, aoe.
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Does auriel have cc, aoe, and ‘burst’ damage?
baseline cc, aoe damage base and talented, burst potential with a conditional wombo
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Does stukov have cc, aoe, and ‘burst’ damage?
baseline aoe cc, can talent for more cc, and can talent for conditional burst.
Of those, only 1 of them can build around having their entire kit be capable of dealing damage, however, damage isn’t unique to healers. (though most of them get it late in the game now) What is unique is a hero that heals from all sources of damage that they deal.
In the older topics responding to the rework, people conceded that they already attack with whitemane: her abilities have longer cooldowns, and even have delay in their effects, so she may as well attack in the gaps between to help prop up her healing.
Are mages not allowed to attack?
Name a mage that doesn’t have an attack-boosting mod for conditional damage increase.
Conditional attack boosts are a way of adding to the aoe/burst of a ‘mage’ character, so most of them can talent into that. The key exceptions being Gul’dan and Probius (for those that don’t make exceptions for Probius being a ‘mage’ since more a ‘summoner’ archtype) and they have really low cooldowns and spell range to compensate casting for attacking.
So, in the absence of other ‘mage’ qualities, is the one to then take away from this is having a cooldown low enough that it compensates for attacking opportunities by being able to cast more?
Lash has a 1 second gap, followed by a 1 second cdr, so that (conditionally) matches the cdr on gul’dan. So the question then becomes, what does whitemane do with those two seconds? Channel her other damaging spell or… use basic attacks?
Any comparison to other mages, Whitemane can either currently match, or she couldn’t match then, so she doesn’t now.
The ‘future’ doesn’t look ‘bright’ because I doubt it’d be realized for you, or anyone else, because what you call a ‘mage’ doesn’t align with how you describe whitemane.
She is going to attack; it benefits her healing, it matches her spell range, and she has time to do it between spell casts. The sort of talents that enable her attacks mirror mage talents for a similar effect.
If she isn’t going to attack, then she’ll probably build around E to compensate, at which point W is for cdr so she can cast more. If her goal is to cast more, then that’s a ‘mage’ like quality.
So all the gimmicks you use to bemoan whitemane sound like double-standard definitions that otherwise rely on veiled language that hopes the gaps convey something more specific to anyone else already ‘in on it’
The trouble with that, is that whitemane pretty does not hit the metrics for a ‘mage’ caster before, so she wouldn’t now. The mainstay difference is damage potential, at which point it’s likely less the amount of healing, and just the fantasy of picking a ‘healer’ and instead having an assassin.
While it certainly isn’t specified, the general gist of what’s otherwise being reference would be an assertion for having something that
a) completely undermines intended character weaknesses (generally a bigger deal for ‘healers’ than not)
b) demands something that is otherwise going to be OP and exploitable rather than ‘hard’ or reward ‘skill’.
Without particulars for what people actually want, people are going to fill in the unspoken gaps with similar trope comparisons and find that she already hits those marks. So if your tactic is to bemoan people for thinking that aspect is ‘fine’, you’re doing yourself a disservice with this effectual farce.
