Please trade out mass poly for the old school offensive version of alter time. Or deep freeze. I want to be able to use risky spells. Risk wasting alter time as a defensive to reset procs or CDs is so much more fun. Also the mage tree is all defensives. Mages are basically a tank spec at this point. And it isnt fun to play as or play against. Can we please have less passive healing in dragonflight and return to the fun mage used to be in MoP. Im not asking for a carbon copy but the mage class needs to stop being a tank and be a dps, high risk high reward class it used to be. Pleaseeee
1 Like
I support the idea of Mage being turned into high risk high reward and mobile caster again.
However, that would require some changes to the class to make this concept work:
- Rune of Power and Flamecannon need to either be removed or have viable mobile style competitors / adjustments.
Currently, these two effects make Mage the stationary caster akin to Warlocks. If Mages would lose their tankiness and these effects remain their best performing / competitive options, Mages would either die while trying to trade dps with melee enemy inside the Rune to keep its buff (as they would be more squishy than melee and subceptible to kicks) or would need to run out of Rune instantly when melee gap closes to them to survive and lose its damage bonus, so will be in disadvantage either way.
Flamecannon after the nerfs cements the stationary playstyle - if you move even 1 yd at the wrong time, even accidentally, you lose all the stacks.
Solutions:
- Buff Incanter’s Flow to be more competitive with Rune of Power or remove them both and increase base damage of Mage abilities. This would allow to effectively play it as a mobile caster it is supposed to be.
- Revert the duration nerf to Flamecannon (back to 5+ seconds) or make it lose 1 stack every X seconds of moving instead of dropping them all at once - this would make movement with it much less punishing and allow to at least reposition with Blink / Shimmer or via planned movement.
- Mage purge vulnerability needs to be addressed.
Mage is the most purge / dispel punishable class - all of its defensives and some major offensive CDs are dispellable. Now imagine what would happen if Mage would lose some survivability and gain some mobility instead against 3 purge / dispel spam classes that are all mostly ranged - mobility will not help much against them, as they deal ranged damage, but they would still dispel / purge your defensives and kill you even easier than they do now. Lack of Triune Ward in Dragonflight talents only increases this issue.
Solutions:
- Add Triune Ward as a general tree talent back in Dragonflight
- Make some Mage defensives undispellable
- Add unbreakable CC to Mages, so that they can CC and deal damage to purge / dispel spamming targets for some time without risk of getting insta-dispelled of things like Combustion and Arcane Surge.
- Mage’s “run and gun glass cannon” style often does not work in modern World of Warcraft.
The mentioned style worked in Diablo 2, where Sorceress (Mage’s analogue) had spammable Teleport that could be used both to kite melee and dodge ranged attacks. In WoW, ranged attacks cannot miss unless you use a big dodge ability that some melee have, so mobility will not help much against them - no matter how much you kite, while you are in attack range, ranged enemies will hit you.
The mentioned style worked in Diablo 3, where Wizard (Mage’s analogue) had some defensives and immense DPS that allowed to burst even the boss enemy earlier than he would kill you with things like Ray of Frost and Archon. In WoW, Mage has trouble with that in both PVE (big elites usually have around half of HP after your burst and you not always can live till it recharges) and PVP (enemy just uses his defensive / immunity to negate your burst X times).
Glass cannon playstyle in general often does not work in WoW - big elite / boss enemies can be immune to slows and CC, so are quite hard to kite and ranged enemies can ignore your kite attempts in both PVE and PVP, as when you are in range to attack them, they are also usually in range to attack you.
As a result, even if Mage is supposed to become risky and mobile glass cannon caster, it should still keep some healing and defensive tools to play effectively.
Solutions:
- Keep some defensive talents.
- Keep at least some ways of self-healing for Mages.
3 Likes
F#*k. That’s all I can say.
Welcome to world of melee craft.
They make the most stationary spec the top dps in content that you can’t stand still for enough time to get off a full rotation of cds.
Whoever came up with thundering affix should be hit by lightning.
+15 sang, thundering, volcanic-Nokhud Offensive
/puke
2 Likes
Mage = tank = wth you smoking