Looking at notes since pre-patch of Dragonflight it’s apparent that mage hasn’t gotten much tuning or changes over the last few months. I’m here to argue that the opposite should be true. The class tree isn’t poorly designed (even if the talent choices are quite obvious and mage players tend to choose cookie cutter builds at a rate that surpasses even other roles). I play frost and dabble in the other two sub-specializations. When it comes to frost, sadly the more watered down your talent choices are, the better you play, and not because the more challenging options are more difficult to pull off and have a higher skill floor, but simply because they are significantly inferior talents. Take Glacial Spike for example.
Such a cool idea, to add a massive burst that you build up to using your icicles. It adds a whole new dynamic to the rotation. The catch is that ice lance no longer launches icicles? Ice lance launching icicles is where most mage damage comes from and mechanically its design is smooth as butter, even if it’s overly simplistic. You’d have to be insane to play with Glacial Spike. Believe me, I tried playing with it for a long time just to have a more interesting rotation, and it wasn’t worth it. Water elemental is the same. Way too many talents augment frost-bolt’s damage, and none of those talents affect the water elemental’s damage. You’d have to be crazy to not pick lonely winter. It’s not even an option unless you’re trolling. Almost none of the talents are options, more-so with mage than any other class. We also need tuning of numbers. In Mythic+ we’re subpar. We’re a pure DPS class. Back in my day pure classes brought more damage to the table instead of more utility and survival through self healing.
Please Blizzard, show some love for mages. They’re my favorite class and if you fix these issues I will main the class in DF. If not, I have other 70’s I can play, but I’d prefer it be baby blue.