I get mages have been getting A LOT of hate lately, mainly because of the BFA and M+ scene… But fire was never broken in CN and I do not enjoy being the bottom percentile with all specs in a raid group…
I would rather spend my time playing games I contribute to.
Are we going to get fixed?
Well Blizzard has a track record of going overboard with the nerfs this is nothing new I am afraid. At the same time once they do a tuning pass, usually in between major patches, that’s it for the remainder of the patch because they “don’t want to interfere with the meta” as if they didn’t just shake it to its core. 
In short, I don’t think any of the mage specs are getting touched until 9.2 or just before. Even though all three are currently at the bottom of the charts for mythic SoD.
All mage specs are on the lower end of the spectrum in mythic SoD, and that’s quite a shame. They do sim relatively well but the sim is done is full 252+ BiS/near BiS gear with maxed on conduits, etc.
In the grand scheme of a guild trying to progress relatively efficiently in mythic SoD right now, there’s really no reason to bring more than 1 mage on any fight with the possible exception of something like KT or The Nine.
I figured. /shrug. League is free and I don’t have to deal with Blizzard’s crap inability to do basic math.
I have done the first three fights on mythic. Tarragrue is whatever, Nine is okay, but the Eye is just feels terrible as arcane. You only get one arcane charge shooting orb at the boss since it won’t hit stopping at the edge of the platform and totm splash damage and arcane barrage cleave doesn’t hit the chain add from what I noticed. Plus the strat we were using of switching to the other add using the chains during transition because of the stacks instead of burning it down didn’t help at all.
I talked to another arcane mage in a mythic raiding guild from my time on Stormrage and he actually got benched on progression for that fight. He is a better raider than me but he reassured me I wasn’t the only one having initial problems on that fight. I struggled on some encounters too on heroic but the more reps you do and refarm kills each week it you get more comfortable since you are more familiar with the timings for the mechanics.
I am surprised fire is doing the most so far. Is it cause you can just play it the same from 9.0 in 9.1 and have instant results with the spec having a higher floor as opposed to arcane which has a higher ceiling?
Yeap, that fight is screwed for Arcane. Frost fares better there because you can cleave the add while it’s still in the air pulling people
The biggest difference between Fire and Arcane is that Fire’s burst is guaranteed to go off, whereas Arcane needs to find openings to make sure its burst actually does go off. Depending on the fight mechanics timings, this will delay Arcane’s burst or sometimes prevent it altogether. This is a unique quality Fire has among casters.
Other specs have their niches for sure (e.g., Frost cleave/funnel), but Fire is consistent and doesn’t suffer as much from movement. I’ve thought about swapping back to Frost (was Frost until around this time last tier) but honestly Fire just feels like it’s the spec most suited to realistic raid environments. Reliable burst, can cast while moving, good boss damage, has execute and full mobility during said execute, an immune and cheat death (two if NF), etc.
Our raid group had 3 mages and 1 Warlock so I opted to switch out to my lock. Not even bothering to raid on my mage anymore.
Got my KSM on him though. At least in keys who can feel like you’re pulling your weight lol.
I was progging mythic Soulrender last night and there were pulls where I legit felt like I was PUMPING. Only to look at the DPS meters and see that I am second or third from the bottom… I get some class needs to be at the bottom, but just feels bad being a pure DPS class and only being a vending machine that makes people 5% smarter.
Hey literally same! Only im also on chain group one and it interupts sustaining my initial icy veins and gimps me going forward. I miss fire. Arcane plays like some kind of dog class with a clunky burst window. I cant wait to finish the tier so i can just go nf fire for keys. God blizz balancing team is trash.
10/10 can relate. I also got an insane streak of procs on Mythic The 9. Every Orb was giving an insane # of FoF procs, plus I got 3 back to back IVs. And that helped me barely crack the top 5, lol
OMFG I feel the same way…it’s like puliing teeth trying to get ONE purple log this tier, it’s so annoying…
EDIT this shouldn’t be
Nakkita - Stormrage - Warcraft Logs
Purple/Orange parses on Heroic are very easy, but that doesn’t take from the fact that your teammates would likely out DPS you while doing worse for their ilvl or getting a worse percentile than you.
The only fight I can reliably top DPS on while having a respectable percentile at the same time is KT. I can sometimes compete on other fights fairly well but when it comes to the execute phase I can’t do anything no matter how flawlessly I play.
Just tell your raid leader that and if they are good they will shift you to a chain where your main cd isnt running.
That’s not likely to happen. There’s a reason raid leaders put Mages in the first chain group and that’s because our DPS is on the low end so if someone’s major DPS cds have to get interrupted it’s better for the raid as a whole for that to be the lower end folks. 
This is no reflection on Mages, it’s just a really poorly tuned fight in general and especially for casters. That’s why it’s so frustrating because you can do exceptionally well and consistently parse purple or even orange but still be at the bottom simply because your class isn’t tuned right or doesn’t have the toolkit necessary to adapt to the challenges of a certain fight. This used to be easy to address when you could just switch specs mid raid when the situation called for it but they killed that in Legion and buried it for good in SL.
I’m just an average heroic player, who’s basically past her prime pretty much…even still purple parses used to come easy for me but I dunno this tier it’s not happening lol…my guess? I think there’s way more people playing frost this tier and for me it just makes it harder to parse…
It’s because you’re not running unholy 3 set.
I am during raid, not when I do pluses lol…i have no excuse hehe
Honestly I haven’t had much problem doing a lot of damage on my mage, the main thing is if you have an unholy set. A trash class with it will beat a good class without it. I think mages are pretty decent this tier, just not op.
Hunters got buffed and we took their place at the bottom. Blizzard just doesn’t know how to balance their game. They are too busy creating a toxic work environment and trying to cover it up.