BFA Mage Retrospective

Classes Mage
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I have attempted to give an overview of what Mage has felt like in Battle for Azeroth. While this is certainly personal opinion, a lot of these thoughts have been collected and filtered through observation and interaction with the Mage community as a Contributor for Altered Time, as well as through individual and group theorycrafting discussions for Simulationcraft work. Big thanks to Kuni, Zulandia, Norrinir, Malon, Toegrinder, Frosted, Dorovon, Komma, Preheat, Sergrand, and probably several other notable Mages I forgot to write down in this list (I’m sorry!) for their help in organizing and refining this document.

Overview

Mage in BFA saw some drastic swings from start to finish that really highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the class. While some of it comes down to raid fight design, the overall mood that prevailed for a large part of BFA was “I’m here for the int buff”. Two major reasons contribute to these feelings:

1. All three Mage specs are primarily focused on single target with the potential for stacked passive cleave. This has historically been the point of Mage, and is an iconic core part of the class feel. Unfortunately, it has not always been the case that Mage specs have been able to excel at this role compared to other ranged classes, who performed just as well in this area and then were able to be further amplified when their niches presented themselves. This leaves Mage players feeling, bluntly, like other classes are simply “better” with little to no tradeoff.

2. Mage has a large amount of personal utility (in PvE). This is also deeply tied into the class feel, where spells like Blink, Ice Block, and Barriers form a useful bag of tricks that skilled Mages can call upon to keep themselves alive and maximize their time spent casting. The downside to this, however, is that Mages rarely can contribute to group utility, outside of using the immunity of Ice Block (which, since Tomb of Sargeras, seems to be something the encounter team has tried to avoid creating too many uses for). This becomes even more evident in dungeons, where the long cooldown on Counterspell, the restriction of Dragon’s Breath to a single spec, and the overall lack of generally useful situations for slows and Polymorphs (or worse, other classes having the same tools as well) become very apparent.

Together, these elements combine to leave Mages feeling like the only role they are there for is to turret into enemies. And when they don’t manage to go above and beyond classes that have additional roles in an encounter (or, as has been the case in several tiers, actually performs worse than others), it leads to the aforementioned malaise: “I’m the only Mage in here, and it’s just for Arcane Intellect”.

Below are some comments on individual specs.

Frost

Frost Mages have had a weird time for most of the expansion, where one of their core abilities (Ice Lance) was actually able to be removed from the rotation entirely and used only when nothing else could be cast while moving. Feelings on this are fairly mixed, but most agree that it seems unintuitive at a glance, and it additionally has the effect of removing part of the most iconic piece of the Frost rotation, “Shatter” combos. The Azerite trait Flash Freeze is a big culprit here, but the underlying cause is rooted in the design of Mastery and how it affects Frostbolt/Flurry (as it stands right now, it is possible to gain DPS by avoiding Ice Lance just by having enough Mastery, before talents or traits are even considered).

On the flip side, Azerite has led to the most unique situation among Mage specs, where another set of talents and traits allows for a very different, Ice Lance-focused build in combination with Frozen Orb. Personal opinions on which build is preferred vary greatly, but it cannot be understated how much players seem to enjoy having another competitive option if they happen to dislike one setup but still want to play Frost.

Compared to other Mage specs, Frost is the most stable in terms of damage output. While the reliability itself doesn’t feel bad, it has become increasingly apparent that the lack of any “burst” windows for the spec ends up as an overall detriment. When balanced to be about even in average performance, Fire and Arcane’s ability to rapidly dump damage at specific times offers them more flexibility, usually leaving Frost performing worse in real encounters. Additionally, Frost and Fire both compete on the niche of stacked cleave, but Frost is significantly more limited in target count while lacking the option to burst down a group.

Fire

Fire had a very underdog story throughout BFA, coming from a last place, niche execute-phase pick up to the most desired ranged spec overall. Despite the common myth, this has nothing to do with Fire “scaling well at the end of the expansion” (which wasn’t ever true) but rather is the result of a combination of very powerful items and effects that weren’t present at launch of BFA. This leaves Fire in a tenuous position moving into Shadowlands, as the loss of Hyperthread Wristwraps, Memory of Lucid Dreams, Blaster Master, and even Azshara’s Font of Power will significantly weaken most of the current strengths of the spec.

Speaking of those strengths, Fire has several very desirable ones. The first is Ignite, which when amplified by all the aforementioned effects, turns Fire Mages into an absolute monster for those 10-15 seconds of cooldown use. The high APM gameplay and free, passive, bursty cleave of Combustion is typically one of the biggest draws to the spec. Even on a single target, Combustion is a powerful window that typically feels good to play now, when every cast is instant. To many players, Fire just feels good and fluid at all points, but especially when popping everything. Additionally, Fire’s nearly full mobility during Combustion and (if talented) below 30% boss HP made playing Fire in hectic final boss phases feel strong and versatile this expansion.

Not much is said about the other 90+ seconds in between Combustions, and for good reason: while it’s not jarring to play by any means, the “regular” Fire rotation is fairly simple and also very weak. Some people don’t mind this, but it definitely is one of the worst-feeling aspects of the spec. Also tied into this problem is the lack of good AoE damage during this downtime. Flamestrike has a number of issues, the most significant of which might be that casting it can actually lose Ignite damage. Additionally, when talented into Flame Patch, the best behavior is simply to hardcast Flamestrike as much as possible, instead of doing a more normal rotation and spending Hot Streaks on it. This counterintuitive behavior for class mechanics is a running theme for Fire. The fact that Crit is not a necessary stat to play the spec, or that Ignite can require you to AFK to kill short-lived targets effectively*, or even the previously mentioned myth about scaling during an expansion are all misunderstandings that frequently muddy the waters for players.These issues aside, Fire covers a lot of roles and does them well, so barring significant imbalance it often ends up outshining the other two Mage specs, without turning a large number of people away. The biggest worry moving forward is that this enjoyment is temporary due to the upcoming loss of many expansion-specific items and powers.

*Clarification on this point: On targets that will die before a full Ignite would expire, refreshing the Ignite will redistribute the remaining damage out over a full duration, reducing the DPS it deals and losing any damage stored in Ignite when the target dies. Ex: 3 ticks of 80k vs 10 ticks of 24k, where the target dies after 5 seconds.

Arcane

Arcane had a rough time in BFA. There’s no other way to really put it, most of the systems and items added to the game did not benefit the spec as much as they did Fire or Frost, and it is very much pigeonholed into either a single target build for raid or an AoE build for dungeons, with little cross-over in terms of Azerite itemisation or talents. Multiple times the spec has needed buffs simply to keep up with the power creep Frost and Fire received, and even then real raid encounters often sidelined a spec that can only do single target damage. The introduction of Equipoise moved Arcane to an even stricter burn/conserve cycle, limiting the ability to adapt or focus a target if things didn’t happen to line up just perfectly with cooldown timings. The increasingly long setup of buff-related GCDs before moving into the often-memed “single-button spec” rotation turns many curious Mages away, even when the spec might be able to compete.

There probably isn’t a single cure-all solution to what Arcane needs, and player commentaries on it run the whole gamut from wanting old abilities back or useful (Arcane Orb, Nether Tempest, Quickening) to more extreme ideas like shifting the spec to healing or tanking. Dedicated Arcane players seem to mostly stick with it for the pure purple magic identity or the fundamental concept of being a sorcerer. On a practical level, one of the biggest gripes is usually how boss and trash toolkits are completely different, yet Mythic Plus requires both in equal measure. This difference is extreme when compared to other classes, and makes Arcane feel like a hindrance in at least one role no matter what they choose.

The last and thorniest issue for Arcane is that of Mana. As mentioned above, Equipoise threw the spec into very strict percentage-based gameplay; but even before the introduction of the trait, the issues were clear. With how Arcane Charges work, it is mathematically unstable* for the spec to be flexible with its mana spending, and this is what typically creates the burn/conserve cycle that locks Arcane into its current playstyle. Most of the bad feelings about Arcane can point to this as their source. Arcane Blast spamming doesn’t feel good when you do it in both burn and conserve. Arcane Barrage is the only way to take a few steps while casting, but also resets your Charges. Arcane Missiles are no longer tied to Charges, so you are free to use them without worry; but since they no longer stack you must use them immediately, which means you cannot save them for utilizing Slipstream. In AoE situations, Arcane Charges behave just like Combo Points to be spent on Barrage. Some of these comments are fresh to BFA compared to Legion’s design, but those that aren’t highlight the underlying feeling of Arcane players: the spec doesn’t have enough variety, and the spells it does use are frequently overloaded with conflicting roles.

*If dumping charges (by casting Arcane Barrage etc) is high dps, the rotation will gravitate to trying to dump as often as possible. Conversely, if spamming spells at high charges is high dps, the rotation will attempt to maximize the amount of time spent in this state. Any equilibrium in between the two that allows for tradeoffs like choosing when to burn mana etc. is inherently unstable, and a slight tip in the balance one way or the other will drive the optimal rotation towards one of the two extremes.

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Hello Blizzard pls read this

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Nailed me there.

Great post. Clearly a lot of effort was put into writing this.

I think some of what could help ease Arcane’s issue with being all-or-nothing ST or AOE would be making abilities like Arcane Orb or Nether Tempest baseline, with talents that increase their potential in some way, rather than simply give you the ability as currently is the case.

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While I will agree adding very powerful items like the Lucid, bracers, and font were a problem, I will disagree that saying Fire doesn’t scale well wasn’t a myth. It was true. It was why no matter the expansion Fire has always went from the lowest spec to the highest spec due to scaling, and why the last implementation of Combustion had to get changed so much during Cata through MoP. Even if you remove the issue items, including coral from agi/str users, FIre would most likely remain where they are or at least near the top.

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In recent expansions (typically considered post-MoP), Fire’s late-tier dominance has usually been attributed to systems changes and additions rather than anything to do with secondary stat values. Since this is a BFA-focused post, we can look at Fire’s trajectory throughout the last few years:
In Uldir, prior to the discovery of maintaining Blaster Master stacks, Fire was not a common pick for Mage players (outside of G’huun execute phase). However, even this early on, Fire’s underperformance was not due to a lack of Crit or any other gearing issue (Crit was one of the least desired stats).

Fast forward to Eternal Palace, and not much had changed (BoD was a rough time for all Mages except Jaina). When Essences were introduced, Memory of Lucid Dreams shot Fire to the top of the Mage pile very quickly, so much so that the proc chance was nerfed for Fire specifically. As players started to get loot from Heroic Azshara, several players were able to succesfully experiment with Font of Power to stack two on-use trinkets for large Ignite damage, which was already being buffed by Blaster Master.

At the same time, the Hyperthread Wristwraps, overlooked by most specs in the game due to the lack of useful abilities that benefitted from cooldown reductions, were found to reduce Fire Blast twice in a strong synergistic way with Lucid Dreams’ major effect. Again it must be reiterated, stats had nothing to do with any of these changes.

Finally, in Nyalotha, the existence of Masterful corruptions, which increased the value of Blaster Master, helped push Fire even further beyond. It’s not that Fire finally had more Mastery and scaled faster. It’s that corruption effects were amplifying an Azerite trait that was already very strong.

At no point was Fire lagging behind due to low Crit, or slow casting speed (Haste was only briefly a potential problem when trying to hit an elusive extra stack of Blaster Master, before the change to the trait). Mastery was frequently the worst stat for Fire in raids simply because there weren’t fights that could utilize Ignite well, and when there were occasional cleave opportunities, Blaster Master provided the bulk of the stat anyway.

(There are similar stories for previous expansions as well, but I keep putting too many words on the page at once already :upside_down_face:)

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In cleave situations maybe due to how amazing passive ignite can get. In ST though Fire would fall off without the big ignite burst Lucid and font allows for.

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My view of my mage:

Arcane blast…mob dies

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Pretty much arcane in a nutshell.

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Good read, no arguments. I’d mention that frost currently excels in 2-3 target scenarios (see: Raden) relative to other classes/specs.

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Excels so much relative to other classes and specs that there’s only 1 Frost Mage in the top 1,000 logged kills. Truly a Ra-den powerhouse.

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I cannot agree more than throughout BFA Mage has always felt like other classes just do it better, with less effort. While I love Frost (despite it being relatively weak, and extremely craptastic to play until 8.3) there’s always been classes who have higher burst, higher sustained, better cleave/aoe, better mobility (maybe) and better raid utility.

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Excuse me. Last time I checked it was a top 3 spec on the fight… now it’s only a top 5. My mistake, clearly frost is trash and we should be kissing your ring.

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Looking at the 75th percentile 2 week aggregate and watching where the colored bars dramatically shift based on the 10 decent Frost players who’ve logged Ra-den, huh?

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I think the major problem here is that Frost feels like it should be excelling at this niche, but it really hasn’t been able to all expansion. A big part of that was simply not having opportunities to use Splitting Ice effectively on difficult boss fights. But beyond that, Ignite’s passive cleave has gotten so large it’s managed to eclipse Frost at its supposed role, while also having the added benefit of scaling up with target count better.

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Frost has 66 parses on Raden (in the last two weeks), which is plenty enough to make a simple judgement. To be more precise than “top 5,” it’s currently 4th in the 95th percentile aggregate. Of course, you don’t actually care about this, because you’re a blind cheerleader for your own spec.

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Can you be more clear on what system prevented fire from performing well early in BFA?

Also, please explain why Blaster Master is so much better than Wildfire. Because from what I can see Blaster Master gives you almost 400 Mastery per 480 piece per stack. Which is almost 1200 mastery times 3 Fire Blasts on top of the massive amount of intellect you get from the on-use trinkets and you’re looking at the burst you see, which carries over the course of the fight. However, I would also like to see logs between a Fire Mage not using any BM but having Lucid Major the Wrists, Font, Badge, and a fire Mage using 3xBM, but without the Lucid Major, Wrists, Font, and Badge. So that I may see the huge difference if it’s just the items and not the stats in tandem.

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Early in BFA, Fire was just undertuned. It received multiple % increases to its damage during Uldir. Mechanically it performed fine, Enhanced Pyrotechnics basically ensures that there’s no starvation for Hot Streaks regardless of Crit level.

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Lots of redundancy & bloat in this post. Too many long-winded descriptions of simple ideas. Trying to mimic an almost academic writing style but not bringing in the level of thought & analysis required to justify it.

You exaggerate way too frequently.

Here’s an example: ‘the overall mood that prevailed for a large part of BFA was “I’m here for the int buff”’

Really? The overall mood? For a large part of BFA? How about being there because at least 1 of the 3 Mage specs has consistently been an ~average~ to well above average parsing class for every tier of the expansion, without even considering the utility they provide that isn’t reflected in logs. Ice block. Arcane Int. Double blink while casting. Ranged. Hello?

Would dislike this if I could.

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This is a good summary of many of the thoughts and feelings I’ve had towards the class in BfA also. I picked up BfA after a 10 year break and picked mage because it was the class I was most familiar with from back then. As soon as we started on Uldir I regretted my choice. When we moved on to BoDA later it was depressing to play the class tbh. Lucid and Hyperthread made things much better finally. That being said though, I still don’t like the current state of the mage class as a whole.

I’ll add an additional frustration that I’ve had with fire specifically: lack of scaling. The reason why I find this frustrating is because it reduces the amount of true upgrades you get, which means you end up scrapping or trading a lot of gear instead of wearing it. Crit is, as you’ve mentioned, next to useless. Mastery, at least until this tier, didn’t scale very well at all (from my understanding). That leaves Haste and Versatility, neither of which really seems to synergize well with any of our abilities.

I’m a casual raider who only raids 4 hours a week. Usually we only end up clearing the entire raid a couple of times (though the starting bosses we will kill more). So I like to make the most of the drops I get and trading them away or scrapping them feels really bad when they are sometimes 15ilvls higher, but a downgrade because they have the “wrong” stats because the spec is designed poorly.

Anyway, good post OP.

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I believe the overall idea behind that, which most mages seemed to get, was that yes you could bring mages to raid but generally wouldn’t because other classes just did it better. Also remind me next time to be thrilled when a pure dps class has one of its specs at the average and the others well below. At least right now Fire is at or near the top and tier 1 of specs you’d bring to most fights albeit that’s due to a wholly accidental gimmick players discovered rather than tuning which should boost specs initially underperforming.

As for critiquing someone on their writing and expression style in what is a game forum, seems a bit like you’re taking offense to something that wasn’t offering any. The post didn’t seem condescending and yes it felt large and was often redundant but I believe the OP prefaced that by calling it an overview. Overviews also tend to be tinged by opinion which is completely ok because they are meant to be analyses based on the poster’s POV. Additionally, the OP backed up just about every point he or she made in the following comments.

If anything is an exaggeration it would be your reaction to the post right down to how you ended your comment.

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