Title says it all man. I haven’t even been seriously pushing keys for too long and I’m already tired. Bleeds tick for 60-70% of my health in 17s and above. I’ve never felt more unsafe and scared in Mythic raiding since I’ve started raiding 3 years ago.
In what world does it make sense that frost has access to 2 blocks and 2 barriers, fire has access to a cheat death, and arcane has literally nothing? How did we go from only arcane having the 60% DR on greater invis to giving frost and fire the 60% DR as well for NO reason, to completely stripping arcane of its exclusive defensive. Also WHY did we revert improved barrier from baseline, back into the tree, again, for NO reason?
That talent could EASILY be a 15%-30% DR EXCLUSIVE to arcane AGAIN like it USED to be. Greater invis can be 1 minute now, so lower the DR. It is quite literally THAT simple. Would not care if the DR is as small as 15%, just PLEASE give us something.
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I want a choice node to give invis or mirror images %DR. At the very least it would make us not insta die all the time.
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Yeah, we could definitely use some help there. I even thought about swapping in a defensive embellishment or two, but this time around everything seems geared toward offense.
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hoenstly, tanking/healing trinkets might be in my future…
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It’s a good thing this M+ season has been one of the easiest ever or we would be cooked. Arcane has the worst defensive of any of the Mage specs and Mages have the worst defensives out of any class.
That said, I haven’t really felt in danger much. I PuG so if I get a psycho tank that over pulls and bites the dust that’s really the only time I die but the whole group dies too so it’s not on me, lol. The only scary moments are in Skyreach when the birds charge you and in MC when the eagles jump behind you and start raking you with their talons and can kill you in seconds if you don’t get out of the way. Aside from that it’s been pretty smooth sailing even in 10+.
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I think I’d like to see the choice be between a Greater Invis DR (for proactive defensives) and Diverted Energy (for reactive / passive defensives). If you don’t remember Diverted Energy, it healed us for a portion of the damage our shields received.
Mages often suffer from rot damage (constant ticking damage throughout a whole fight). We’ve got tools for handling major hits, but nothing for those slow burns.
Half of why I’m suggesting it is just so that we have reasons to think about the encounter we’re about to do and choose our talents accordingly. There really aren’t a lot of decisions to be made right now.
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Even as Arcane, you still got more than some classes out there, brochacho. Your defensive suite beats pretty much every other caster, and that’s an objective fact. Just because it isn’t the best doesn’t make it bad, it just makes it not as good as Fire or Frost.
Mages ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE THE WORST DEFENSIVES OUT OF ANY CLASS. They were reasonably soft targets back in like, Vanilla. Currently though? You’re virtually immune to CC (2 charges of Blink), have a reliable invuln (that can be talented to instead be a really very beefy shield-wall), have a barrier for 35% max HP on a 30 second CD (if talented, otherwise 25% max HP), have a weak cheat death with Alter Time plus it’s autofire talent, and to ice the cake you’ve got spellsteal (so any buff that can be stolen can be yours instead). Come right TF on, brother - mages aren’t squishy like they used to be. A pretty solid argument could be made that apart from classes that have a literal tank spec, Mages have the BEST of the defensive suites. The singular thing you don’t do is self-heal, but you do have pretty much everything else in spades.
That said? I guess the defensives could stand to be balanced among mage specs. It is technically unfair to Arcane, because Arcane’s thing used to be being more mobile than Frost or Fire. Kinda isn’t really a thing anymore. Personally, I think they’re good enough already, but I do understand wanting the specs to have comparable ability.
To be fair, if you’re trying to compare classes, you should factor in cloth armor. Sure some classes have equal buttons to press, but have defense natively. If you take a bleed or anything physical with nothing to press, you’re in trouble with cloth. Gone are the days we just blink away to avoid physical damage.
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I think you probably don’t play arcane in high level content.
Now I know you don’t play arcane in high level content.
We lost 80% of our defensive abilities and icy flows. Life, especially in m+, is not fun for arcane.
Something tells me this is a pvp based opinion, because it’s sure not pve.
Okay. That is nice. But 25% of the lowest Hp pool, with the lowest armor value is not much at all. The cheat death is about the only real argument you made. There is a reason arcane has the second highest death rate in the game right now. Also look at every other caster and tell me we’re not the worst? All healers are out since self heals are nice. All hybrids are out for the same reason. That leaves warlock, the actual tankiest non-tank in the game.
Arcane Mages have a fake self heal, the longest DR% CD in the game (because there is no argument to take ice block right now). Our passive damage reduction is basically non-existent since most damage is physical damage.
What our kit was and should always be is using technical skill to avoid damage. But that is gone now. We can hit a button every 3.5 minutes.
Funnily, shamans get a 60% every 2 min, can summon a 100% agro tank with a massive HP, get passive 3% DR, have amazing self heals, auto heal damage once every 3 seconds, have CC removal 3 different ways, have auto cleanses, and the best mobility in the game. Also the second highest armor rating.
Warlocks are stacked with leech and chunk HP healing, massive shields, big DR, and can summon a tank with a 0.5 second cast time that they can heal infinitely.
Priests have CC, tons of vamp and self heals, sheilds, an auto revive, and tons of other buttons.
Like which caster is worse than us? 
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Posted in one of the other threads.
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We are talking about Arcane here, in addition to the lack of defensive like double IB shield, Cheat death, the arcane mage is the most sensitive in term of interrupt, if you lock an arcane mage there is no more automatic auto heal or alter time, no more invisibility, no more blink, no more shield, no more spell steal, NO MORE SHEEP (this one is the automatic frost and fire response to interrupt in pvp), NO MORE COUNTERSPELL (lol if I interrupt you you wont be able to interrupt me haha say the frost fire mage), no more remove curse, no more snare with chrono shift, you can only use your single IB or if by chance you are close enough you can use DB or frost nova but without blink good luck to place a DB. And this lock state you cannot trinket it which is the worst CC ever.
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How about this:
“When you cast Greater Invisibility, you also cast Prismatic Barrier”
You get 1 extra Barrier every 1 minute if you fully invest into GInvis. I’d like that for Arcane.
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It doesn’t matter. Even though Frost has “double” the amount of defensives compared to Arcane, it’s still top 3 in most deaths overall. Mage defensives as a whole need to be looked at.
Pls yall stop trying to make greater invis a defensive. It’s useless in solo play where defensives matter the most. 
Put it on mirror images. G-invis is the perfect utility right now. Drops all agro and lets you reposition with 40% move speed. If it’s a defensive then none of that matters. It can’t be used to skip without wasting your survivability.
Mirror images in wow and literally every other form of media is a “defensive”. Let the mage fantasy be functional.
Hey, that’s fair. Good thinking, honestly.
Maybe we can get 20% DR on MI or something then.
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Better off than priest (no invuln, worst mobility in the game full stop, no cheat death), warlock (no invuln, worse mobility, no cheat death), shaman (no invuln, worse mobility, literally 30x the CD on cheat death), evoker (no invuln, no cheat death outside of Aug), druid (no invuln, no cheat death)…
Honestly, I’m just going to leave it there. Two of those are, themselves, cloth even. I don’t really feel like listing out literally all of the ways mages are actually better off than a good many of the other classes out there. I think what I slapped down there’s sufficient.
I’m also not going to say armor doesn’t matter at all, it just matters a whole heaping lot less than it used to. There really aren’t many pure physical damage classes out there anymore, with elemental this or that, or bleed, or poison. And you probably shouldn’t be getting knuckled up in PvE besides. Seems like you probably should be kiting, or have a tank taking the hits (if you’re in a dungeon/raid). Delves are delves, it is what it is; pick up the health orb and move on.
^ Absolute, unequivocal proof you’ve never done m+ or raided above LFR in your life.
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They are eating you up in the replies for good reason, I have nothing else to add. You have no idea what you’re talking about at all.
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A defensive is supposed to let you survive damage, not force you to kite every mechanic like you’re soloing old content. Mobility is great, but in group PvE it doesn’t stop raid‑wide hits, unavoidable pulses, or mechanics that require you to stand still and actually play the fight. Acting like “just move” is a valid replacement for real mitigation is the same logic as saying:
“If a player had Indestructible armor, why would it matter if you died?”
If your defensives tools don’t keep you alive, then they aren’t functioning as defensives.
That’s exactly the situation arcane mages are in. We technically have a toolkit, but Midnight stripped out so many pieces that what’s left doesn’t form a complete defensive package anymore. Other classes can patch their weaknesses with layered DRs, passives, or self‑healing. Arcane can’t. So when a groups comp doesn’t have externals or off‑healing, those missing tools turn into real, gameplay‑impacting gaps the rest of the party has to cover.
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