Firstly I was excited to main a mage healer, yet are already being discriminated and not invited to raids, and it’s completely valid. I can’t tell if blizzard added mage healing as a meme spec or were actually being serious about mages being able to pull their weight, though it’s obvious what it’s turned into.
Mana issues: Every time we heal we have to beacon targets, this alone will set you back roughly 10% of your mana pool for one target, or 15% for a party target (and its only 15s for some reason). The beacon falls off before you can even get a few casts off and are forced to reapply beacons - before you know it you’re oom and the encounter has only just started. And don’t even get me started on mobs resisting my spells, oops sorry tank I couldn’t heal you because my arcane blast resisted twice in a row, and i was forced to reapply a beacon before trying again, then you died and i went oom!
Okay so you’re being creative and making mages deal damage to heal people (uses even more mana), but then you limit our beacon healing to arcane spells only and then nerf arcane explosion.
Why are ALL my healing spells beacon reliant and mana heavy? Reapplying beacon is FAR too costly but literally essential. Unlike other healing classes I can’t even down rank my spells to save mana like every other class.
You could literally make our new beacon applying spells free mana and we’re still a joke. Letting us drink in combat and we’re still weak. You make shaman tanks, warlock tanks and other classes new roles so good, yet you make mage heal a literal meme and nothing more than a solo heal to aoe farm mobs by face tanking.
inb4 next phases will fix this. If this the path of mage healing is all heavy mana beacons that fall off after 15s we will always be a meme.
Mage can heal dungeons just fine. Now it seems the raid requires healing on almost retail levels for the last 2 bosses, and it seems ONLY priest is viable to heal it, so I don’t think its just mages getting the shaft for healing.
I can easily see it being a good choice to take a mage healer who dpses for the first 5 bosses, and then heals while dpsing for the last phase on Kelris, and can spot heal for the last boss as well, giving decent valuable dps while easing the strain on the 2 normal healers making the last 2 bosses much easier. I’m sure most groups would rather just take another hunter or warrior though.
Was in a BFD with a priest healer, and a mage healer the other day, and the priest healer might as well have been solo healing. The warlock did more healing than the mage, it was embarassing. At the time, I chocked it up to the mage being bad/stupid.
Yeah I don’t really know where they want these new roles to fall on the viability spectrum.
Seems like Shaman and Pally tank are the only real good ones I could see being played in actual raids later.
Meta Lock and Mage Healer seem fine for easy 5mans,
Rogue tank looks like when you would have a guy trying to Shaman tank your dungeon in 2019 classic or TBC. Just miserable and not any fun the rest of the group.
No panic heal ability is also something seriously lacking on mage. If someone is taking unexpected heavy damage or needs a fast top-up, all mages can do is regen beacon, cancel the worthless initial channelled heal then attempt to cast a 2.5s arcane explosion and pray it doesn’t resist or that the target doesnt die within that ~4s thanks to gcds.
Meanwhile all other healing classes have panic abilities such as bubbles, natures swiftnesses etc. Once again gimped by beacon mechanics.
To be honest I don’t think think vanilla was the best version of the same to have SoD. Given the fact we have level breaks. Resists, Mana issues, energy issues, and all sorts of things seem to have caused issues with any of the actual new play styles and only the older meme ones get any use once it is decided that Lock Tanks, Rogue Tanks, and Mage Healers are nothing more than memes.
Even if they get more runes to support them later on it won’t matter. Especially for Warlock tanks when They can’t tank the end-level raids. gl to my fellow warlock tanks when we get to MC, BWL, and Ony.
They need to just scrap the mage healing idea. It will never work
Turn it into a different form of utility, perhaps the mage reduces their damage by 25% but gives a shield on the 3 lowest health members of the party/raid for 15% dmg dealt.
It has to be a big damage dealt reduction or the absorbs would get too OP
Maybe mage is supposed to be healer support? focus on arcane dps but then for a boss that needs extra heals, mage switches to regen runes and helps heal?
I mean… decent idea? i guess? but support doesnt work in this game… proven time and time again… people just want the highest dps… meaning the class would never be taken or needed… when a frost mage would do multiple times their dps
Nah, if mages were meant to be a support they’d have given them buffs rather than a bad atonement copy/paste.
It would have made sense to give them haste buffs and movement speed buffs as a time-based magic spec, but that’s not what they are.
You can tell from the original values from the Blizzcon reveal they were meant to be main healers, then they panic nerfed the upfront healing of both runes just before release and increased the mana cost substantially. Regen at that time cost 153 mana and did 485 healing. It now costs 50+ more mana and does less than half the healing it originally did. They also buffed CoH and WG to 40 yards from 15 just before release, but left mass regen at 15. They were terrified of beacons potential if it was up on too many targets at once so they made their mana situation impossible and left their range pathetic so it requires high coordination to even use mass regen.
What did you expect mages to be on the healing meters with priest while simultaneously doing the amount of damage that the priests are healing for?
At best you were looking at middle of the pack in both healing/dps. And if youn add up total numbers on heals and dps and that would be a larger numerical value then any one persons dps or a healers healing.
Blizzard to make a fun and strong healer not a garbage spec that is only good for AoEing dungeons and bad anywhere you can’t living flame multiple targets.
It’s especially hilarious how bad mass regen is given it’s up against living flame.
Dont clip one part of one of my sentences and use it out of context.
What are you the MSM?
Anyway it said what did you expect to be on the meters with priest healers?