I’m not sure what the objective here is for mage healing, but it doesn’t feel like a healing class. While I like the concept, it simply costs waaay to much mana and has too many conditions for throughput.
Mage Healing Wishlist:
Reduce the mana cost of Regeneration. As it stands right now, it simply chunks way too much mana to simply apply the beacon.
To add to the above, arcane blast should probably be a base spell. This is the bread and butter of your healing spec and is absolutely required. It would be like “Heal” being a rune for priests. Replace it with something else, anything else. This would open up the OPTION to use rewind time. Right now that isn’t an option at all because you must have Arcane Blast to even function as a mage healer.
Increase the range of Mass Regeneration. 15 yards is too short. You’re essentially forcing other people to play around the mage for position to even receive heals. This is not a factor for any other healing class right now. 30 yards would at least allow it to be functional in raids and group settings.
That’s it! I don’t think anyone is going to come out here and say how fluid and amazing mage healing is. And if anyone truly thinks that, please teach me your ways, because I find it clunky and kind of awful. I have successfully completed several runs with it, but the limitations are glaring and generally “unfun”.
It’s honestly criminal that they buffed wild growth and circle to 40 yards just before release and left mass regen at 15.
Mage healing feels like garbage in raids.
We also have no reasonable spot healing because we have to spend an absurd amount of mana to beacon someone on a heal that does less healing than the mana cost directly since they balance everything around beacon. Then AB takes 2.5 seconds to cast.
I’ve played every healing spec in the game over the years and this feels like the absolute worst to play outside of AoEing in dungeons with living flame.
They gave mages a half-assed healing spec, to keep them quiet about the fact they were given crappy dps and pvp skills to match what the other classes get.
Mage is very weak in 1) healing, 2) dpsing, and 3) pvp. About the ONLY thing they are currently good at is AoE farming at lower level than they were previously able to, thanks for Living Flame + Regeneration… which can get resisted, causing you to die.
It should have been my first clue at level 2 when mages get ice lance first and priest’s get penance first that mage was a very poorly designed class in SoD.
AE healing is terrible now, but it’s still viable when using living flame. Wouldn’t be surprised if they nerf that next though and just leave mages in the dirt for 2 months.
I also think that atonement copy/paste doesn’t even really satisfy the time magic theme. I think they should add some new runes outside of the temporal beacon system that are actually more time magic themed. I think some buffs/support stuff would also fit this theme.
Examples:
Sudden Reversal (a time based PW:S idea with a short cooldown): For the next 10 seconds any damage the target receives instead heals them, up to a maximum of X total. I’d put this up against rewind time maybe as a nice option that doesn’t involve temporal beacon.
Temporal Acceleration: (maybe an instant cast HoT alternative to regen with no beacon) Accelerate time for the target increasing movement, casting and melee speed by 10% and causing them to gain increased recovery speed gaining X health per second. (optionally could make this last longer but say it can only be active on one target at a time)
Temporal Rift (mass regen alternative): maybe a larger healing rain/efflo style ground effect that also speeds up allies while they’re standing in it
Shifting Sands: The Sands of Time gather around your target increasing their movement speed by 10% and healing them for X per second. Sands of Time jumps to another target within 40 yards at random intervals, preferring injured targets.
Temporal Anomaly: 3-5m CD up to 10 party or raid members within 40 yards swap places with a random ally (could use blink animation) and gain a shield for X, lasts 20 seconds. This would probably annoy people but it’d be kind of amusing and thematic! You could also make it ignore the swap in raids for whoever currently has aggro to make it less awful for tanks.
Anyway, zero chance they’ll design and add new runes in phase 1 probably but I’ll throw it out there as an idea of how arcane mage healing could have been instead of a poor atonement clone.
Also, if we consider something like Warlock’s meta rune and how it changes multiple abilities (and other tank runes), it probably would have made more sense for healing mages to get a role defining rune that altered the functionality of multiple existing abilities as well so their kit wasn’t so empty. Things like letting AM target allies and heal them as I’ve seen others mention could have been options.
IE: ONE healing rune could have done something like:
transform AM so it can target allies and heal
fireball transforms into reintegration so you have a res
remove curse can now also remove magic
transform dampen magic or amplify magic into a more useful buff
My idea for a better Mage rune would be a 2-3min CD ability that reverses the mana loss of your next Mana Shield. So instead of losing 2.0 mana per absorb amount, you gain 2.0 mana per absorb amount.
With the changes to survivability all the other classes got, including many forms of healing themselves, mage can barely kill anything without going OOM. Going OOM was already a problem even before all the new changes, but now the mana problem has gotten much worse.
The rune I mention would help with this problem mages have, and is engaging enough to be fun and not overpowered.
I don’t need to play mage to see how strong they still are. They were always an A rank in these low level brackets of PvP, and still are. They were always a class that rewarded very high skill in PvE no matter the level, and they still are.
I’m sorry that playing without the entire level 60+ toolkit revealed how poor you are at judging the class.
Oh, it’s that simple huh? Then you should go tell that to the best mages (like xaryu and ziqo) who’ve all voiced their opinions on mage pvp so far, who happen to disagree with you.
You, who knows so much about a class you don’t even play.
And all those twink mages in the 10-19 and 20-29 pvp brackets over the last 20 years must have surely been so much more successful and popular over the last 20 years!
Sarcasm aside, not only have you clearly never played a mage, you also have no idea about pvp and bg’s pre-60 either. Ignoramus is what you are.
I play mage and they feel less consistent but still one of the strongest classes, I’m hoping the higher levels evens out some of their problems. Mainly that arcane blast has the same cast time as frostbolt but does 250% of the damage of frostbolt. Arcane blast is carrying me right now.
Your main job in pvp is to polymorph and frostnova 3+ people. When you get an opener you can go nuts, I haven’t played fire and I know frost is probably poor and unviable at this level but I have still basically globaled flag carriers when I chain crit.
Burnout means mages probably have the highest overall crit chance of any class, rogue specials being the exception. Overall I think mages are in a good place.
On topic: I have lost most interest in trying to heal, the setup is difficult and unreliable. On some fights in BFD I might take regen and living flame. Kelris has huge arcane resistance so I use living flame and regen + burnout to help out healers.
Mages healing should be made all aoe or all single heals IMO, right now regen on the tank + AB spam feels like the only viable way to heal, that is mostly because AB does 220 damage for 33 mana on the first cast, then something like 85 mana for the next, then im scorching twice while I wait for the mana cost to drop.