I played all of Vanilla and dont remember mages being so wanted/OP

Is this code different or what? I never remember mages being needed so much, and doing so much single target/aoe damage.

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Most people didn’t discover how OP mages were until later in vanilla.

By then people were pretty set in playing the classes they had already worked on.

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Mage was always good but people didn’t consider frost nova + blizzard aoe farm for gold like they do now.

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It’s the same as it ever was.
What you’re seeing now if the maifestation of over a decade of player knowledge. We all walked into Vanilla not really knowing anything and most of us were chained to our mains.

I started as a nelf priest in Vanilla and I came to realize the power of mages mid-way through BWL. I began working on an alt mage and managed to get him up to speed before AQ40 launched. Once AQ40 hit, I main swapped to the mage and never looked back.

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Warriors were also overlooked until exposed. People didn’t understand potential at the time at least not to the degree they do now.

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This was fairly common in Vanilla actually, atleast on Silvermoon. I mained a hunter, but I had a 60 mage alt for AOE farms. I used to farm the humans in plague lands and the gators in ZG and such. I think very few people did AOE leveling… but at 60 farming was very much a big deal.

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it’s because mob health is nerfed, so their already strong AoE is now just OP

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I do , having at least 7 or 8 mages was a minimum in my guild back then

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Mages got a huge buff in 1.11 if I remember correctly. Even before then the top players were posting videos of crazy AoE farm runs.

There was one in particular of a Mage farming Bijou’s in ZG off the Crocs and Tigers at the beginning of the instance that I loved. There was another mage named Faxmonkey who had great early videos of him solo’ing Elite packs.

It just wasn’t that common until TBC. Speaking of which if they ever do a TBC Classic this will all come crashing down for Mages.

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They are up there in dps with rogues and warriors. Their ability to make water, buff intellect and open portals is a plus.

Mages were always OP I still remember the first time I got one shot by a three minute mage.

Mages make water, everybody likes water. I played mage in vanilla. Can’t tell you how many dungeons I got invited to specifically cuz I could make water lol.

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Someone was saying when the game was released there were no +spell damage items in the game, it was added only later which significantly increased all the caster’s damage. Mages which were always good, got even more buffed by it and since Classic is based on a late patch from 2006, it came with +damage items so Mages are even stronger from the get-go.

I played pretty much the second half of Vanilla on a mage, and while it was a rare occasion to see aoe in a dungeon for me, there was plenty of blizzard farming going on until I finally dropped all the Frost crutches and went the real op spec fire.

They’re wanted till raiding when all they bring is DPS and no utility beyond AI.

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AQ40 catch up gear spell damage items in dungeons phase1 is why.

I mained a war in vanilla, can confirm mages are absolutely OP

Yes I charged the mage, there is no way he can get awa… oh he used Ice Nova.
That’s okay, I’ll just use my intercept and… damn, he blinked.
Fine, I’ll just slowly walk up to him even though my speed is halved by Frost Bolt. I’ve almost got hi… and I’m a sheep. And he just bandaged back to full.
o_O

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They did just not near as many

Is this due maybe to Joker’d’s run to 60 getting mages lots of cred?