I’ve always mained mage if a spec felt bad I’d just change spec for a tier until it was fixed. My preferred spec being Fire.
However 11.1 I might actually drop Mage as my main because it’s been so mishandled for the first time ever I may actually main Warlock for a tier.
It’s just sad 
I have nearly every rep at exalted on this character and it feels disgusting to main something else but I’m at the breaking point.
I changed to warlock as they have made fire really unfun for me. It seems like every mage spec is over complicated now. I feel like I’m staring at my WA most of the time.
I am beyond that, I just stopped playing the game altogether. But I definitely understand how you feel. At the start of the expansion I leveled more alts than I ever had before, partly because there was nothing else to do because of the inane timegating and partly because I was curious about various hero specs. Literally every other spec I tried has felt x10 smoother to play than any of the 3 Mage specs and I’ve been maining Mage since Vanilla. Destruction Warlock is basically a much better Fire Mage and Devastation Evoker a much better Arcane Mage so there is no reason to fight through the 20 years of bloat and hotfixes for things that no longer even exist but are inexplicably still a core part of the class.
Yup. I feel the same way. Honestly im sick of feeling like I need to watch a ton of videos to understand my class. Mage has become so complex that it just doesn’t feel fun anymore. I was playing Warlock and I was considering maybe this is the class for season 2 because it doesn’t stress me out.
Way ahead of you. I still enjoy the mage, but I have switched mains to my druid because I like being able to do more than just ranged damage.
Im just tired how Blizz is treating the mage- esp. the frostmage.
I rly had hoped they could give us the pet in an alternate gameplay-wise. Not op, but just fun for the pet-lovers.
Atm after some break i only want to clear the hero raid with my mage and then retire him next season.
Still hoping that there will be a new class that is fun +soon+ like Bard, Tinker or so.
Till then i guess i will tank a bit with my warrior but nothing wild. Just relaxed some delves, raids and so on. No M+ stress.
From how I been seeing for main locks they are dropping the warlock. Seems all clothie classes are just falling apart at the moment…leaves me Wondering what is blizzard doing?!
Literally nothing, this expansion died faster than a mayfly in June, lol!
I was playing earlier tonight, and my mage just felt so underpowered. I have a Shaman and a Paladin with much lower gear scores, the damage, refresh rate, survivability, utility spells are just so much better for those classes than the mage. The skill tree for arcane is just bad. If I were to guess the only input for at least the Arcane Mage for this expansion had to come from raiding players. It seems that everything is geared for “cleave” or AOE damage. Arcane missiles are frustrating AF, as you have to wait for it to proc, and since the best way for that is to get close for the short range AOE, the mage is now subject to all of the really nasty lethal damage usually the plate classes or classes which can heal themselves, not us. I would have to agree with the rest of the people in here, Blizzard will most likely not read this forum and will definitely not make any positive changes for this class, especially Arcane. New expansion, new port, more nerf, more complication, more disappointment.
Yes, sort of. Since I only play mage, I’ve just stopped playing. Shaking my head as to what they are trying to do. And their comment “we are happy with where arcane is right now.” Was salt on the wound. I doubt I’ll ever come back to the game. But if suddenly there is consensus of joy in arcane forum posts maybe I’ll peek back in.
Arcane Mage felt so good to play at the start of TWW that I mained it for most of S1 even though I am usually a healer main.
And then they somehow managed to nerf the fun out of the spec gameplay-wise when they were trying to nerf its numbers.
Typical Blizzard.
I recently returned to WoW after a few year break (had twins) and have been bouncing between classes. My mage was my main for 2 expansions. My original main was a rogue for the first 3 expansions.
I have been playing my Desto Warlock and have been really enjoying it. Level 70 currently.
I have also been leveling a bunch of other alts on the same content to see how they play. All of them are between lvl 40 and 50 currently.
Out of the bunch, (mage, warrior, shadow priest, paladin, hunter and rogue) the mage is the worst by a large margin as far as survivability and damage output. Also the game mechanics aka button pushing is not enjoyable or rewarding at all compared to the other classes.
I spent a few days just playing the mage to make sure I understood the play style. It didn’t help at all. In fact it made it more frustrating.
The mage needs a complete overhaul in my opinion.
The warlock you can figure out when to use a spell, count on the rotation to give you shards for what ever situation you are in. The spells that grant shards are effective, unlike the mage where they are pretty much useless and seemingly random in producing the more powerful spells to proc.
I removed my mage from my favorite list and moved it to the bottom and decided not to spend the time leveling it.
I completely agree that I feel mage needs a complete overhaul at this point.
Yeah it feels kind of sad at this point. Being a key guy myself, objectively knowing that I top out at absolute BEST around 1.5 mil when i see other classes doing 2 plus is depressing. And this is with me taking less damage less heals and dying less than anyone else. Being sunfury arcane doesnt help, but its absurd that theyve designed things this way.
Yeah it feels horrible to parse a 99 in damage, but do way less than the shaman who parsed an 87
I don’t know if blizzard creates the meta on purpose or just from being not in control of balance but it’s no fun when the gap is very wide.
Who knows – maybe they nerfed mage to the ground because it had been meta for so many seasons and just took a fire and brimstone approach to it, which could also cause frustrations with the rotation since it changes to find damage.
It would feel better if boss damage was still really good like it was in DF, but these meta specs do amazing boss damage too. I stopped doing M+ this season because I felt kinda useless, and I felt like I was just trolling people applying to keys because I had less to offer than most classes out there. I could play frost but I don’t enjoy frost these days
And giving each spec atleast 2 ways of playing and the perma pet OPTION for frostmages again <3
Would make some people happy.
Not only the old boring stuff from legion talents or so.
I was kind of leaning that way but then vault gave my mage the rare neck my ele a shield.
Then TW this week gave my mage the spy masters, my ele got a 1h which I didnt need because craft -_-
Mage is 622 shammy is 603. I do feel Im not hitting hard enough in keys as mage vs shammy I feel strong for my ilvl.
I need to get my shammy to equal gear and test further. If my ele could get that trinket too!!! Ugh.
Gear won’t make a difference in the relative power levels sadly. Im basically perfectly geared and run of the mill shammies still kick my teeth in. Its like playing diablo 4 as a sorceror vs a spiritburn. By and large the gap is so great that skill and loot doesnt change the fact that your still pissing into the wind.
Dang. Its that crazy unbalanced and shamans didnt really get anything but buffs in some places… Guess I gonna go to the more unlucky zappy boy.
Clearly the only way blizz will do anything is when all mages just go shaman.
Which I also play. 
The curse of only playing the mage archetype in a Blizzard game, lol. Meanwhile mages in every other game I’ve played recently are OP af. In DAV you’re literally immortal with the right gear as a mage and hit like a truck because all your spells always crit, return the mana you spent on them, heal you, and give you iframes while you’re casting them, in PoE2 the Stormweaver sorceress is one of the top ascendancies, and in LE same for the Runemaster. Oh and of course in Elden Ring you get Khadgar’s laser. But in WoW and D4 we have errant sparks of electricity hitting harder than meteors, you know, the giant flaming rocks that fell out of the sky and killed the dinosaurs! I am not bitter at all…
P.S. As I was writing this I realized all those other games I listed also have meteors that do proper damage. Blizzard really hate magic, muggles!!! 