Um, what?
For those that don’t want to click the link, mage is bottom healer on average when talking all bosses.
Not even close. Cleared 7/7 last lockout, one shot everything with a mage and a priest healer. The mage way out healed the priest too
Oh whoops, I meant doubling the damage of all the other healers. 
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Ok lol, that makes a lot more sense.
You can’t bubble the tank because it’s an instant threat drop. And you don’t have NS yet. You clearly don’t heal.
Ironically, retail proved that support doesn’t work in the game for the opposite reason: they’re too good
People defending mage design are still confused and think the two things they’re good at make the spec overall amazing when it sucks outside of those two conditions. The problem is you are not always in those two conditions and it feels clunky and bad to play in other circumstances.
The suggestions being made are to make mage feel better all around so they’re not a 2-trick pony.
Also improving the mana situation is just a universal request from most mana users currently, though mages have some of the highest potential to go OOM fastest given the mana cost of most of their arcane spells.
This is classic. Not every healer should be able to do everything. They should fill niches. Shaman is awful at single target healing and their strength comes from raid healing. As it should be
Sounds like a shame for resto shaman at 25 since they don’t have chain heal yet. At least healing rain isn’t as expensive as mass regen I guess?
I feel like their original Blizzcon design didn’t make them the best at everything but would have made them more well-rounded compared to the launch design that leaned entirely into beacon healing at the sacrifice of all other healing they had before they nerfed the Blizzcon versions of their runes.
It is. I was a resto shaman main from MC through SWP. I knew they’d be awful this bracket, so I’m waiting until the next level bracket to play one
I tanked my shaman to 25, but looking at the runes and reading how things work, it seems like DWing rockbiter and using shamanistic rage might be better for resto even than their healing runes since it’s 800+ mana just from DW rockbiter alone on a 1m CD. I’d try it on my 25 shaman if we had dual spec.
The only immediate fixes the spec need is to have Mass Regeneration chain up to 40-50 yards and then to fix the bugs with the Regeneration spells not consuming either the AB debuff or Clearcasting buff.
Otherwise I promise you most people are just playing the build incorrectly. Even with the proposed buff, Mass Regeneration is a niche spell that you want to be using when you will be healing at least three people. Ideally when they will benefit from both the direct heal and follow-Beacon healing. It’s not a primary healing method. Arcane is also not a spot healer. It is a tank healer with the ability to counter significant party-wide damage. Your healing partners need to be defaulted to raid/spot healing and assisting you with tank healing as needed, while you do the reverse.
Also yes, the build is highly dependent on being proactive instead of reactive. It is the most difficult healer to play perfectly, but not because the core design is flawed. The build is actually absurdly broken in its current iteration; it’s just not broken in a way where it has no weaknesses and is braindead to pilot.
And just to be clear, I enjoy the build so much that I’m about to hit 25 on my second mage because I wanted to swap servers and fell in love with the spec after swapping to it around 20-21 on my first mage. I am talking from the perspective of as much of a main as you can be of the build right now.