Hello,
I didn’t play mage in shadowlands, but i want play them in dragonflight.
i mainly pvp, but i am seeing that mage have almost no defensives in dragonflight, they will lose the 3 barrier, that was really helpful to avoid dispells.
someone please can confirm how will be the mage defensively ?
( fire and frost)
I have no idea how you can look at mage trees and think “yea this looks squishy”
well instead of the triple barrier that helped a lot ( including to get dispelled)
i see only 1 barrier.
Mages are even more tanky in Dragonflight…which is not what any mage wants.
We want to be squishier and have damage talents instead of tank talents.
i am definitely missing something here, what are the tanky talents ?
If you compare SL Mage and DF Mage:
As a result, Mage loses both a decent amount of survivability and its only dispel protection, but keeps all the Shadowlands clunkiness and necessity to stand still (as Rune of Power and Flamecannon are still there).
They need to either compensate the nerfs or add mobility / unbreakable CC to fill the gap, as well as return Triune Ward if they want Mages to be at least viable in PVP, especially Frost and Arcane Mages. Without TW, any purge / dispel user will be able to quickly remove Combustion / Arcane Surge and most of Mage defensives, making them redundant both offensively and defensively.
Here’s how to PvP as a mage: Reroll a warlock.
pssst… little thing called RMP, been at or near the top all expansion. You’re welcome.
Do you mean that comp that requires 20 addons to play and the awful fire mage gameplay? Yeah. No, thank you.
Well, that’s one way to say you don’t know how to pvp. Not the typical approach, but certainly one way.
Winter’s Protection, tempest barrier, cryofreeze, arcane warding, diverted energy, accumulative shielding, reabsorption all give insane self healing. Master of Time and Temporal Velocity all help us run around waiting for others to take a game action since mage has nearly 0 autonomy in arena but at least they aren’t straight up boring self healing and require the player to pilot their character to be effective.
well as return Triune Ward if they want Mages to be at least viable in PVP
No. No they don’t. This crutch does not need to return and mage’s do not need f***** tank talents. That is what warlocks are they are the tanky caster.
Being locked into one comp isn’t exactly being in a good place. Sure RMP has been meta ever since arena’s inception, but what if people want to play with friends that play other classes? Regardless, that isn’t all of PvP.
I for example enjoy RBGs way more than arena and Mages have been terrible in there for a long time. If you want to play caster in RBGs you either go Affliction or Balance.
Mages do need some form of dispel protection, otherwise everything they have will be snap dispelled by purge / dispel spammers in PVP, including Combustion and Arcane Surge that drains all your mana. Triune Ward is suggested mainly for that, but I would not mind any other decent alternatives.
[Triune Ward] is actually a decent talent if tuned properly. What can’t happen is how it was like at the beginning of Shadowlands or how it is now, so either busted levels of tankiness or completely useless.
If [Blazing Barrier] is given a decent effect instead of an extremely inconsequential “damage reflect”, we could have it as good alternative where we’d get the magic damage and magic effect reduction, on-hit slow and something else in case a meaningful change happens to [Blazing Barrier] like mentioned previously.
No shot that arcane surge remains dispelable come DF that it is now is 100% blizzard forgetting to implement that aspect of arcane power back into surge. Combustion should be vulnerable to dispel given how bonkers it is. Fire already gets to avoid the major weakness ranged dps has of cast times, the trade off is that combustion gets dispelled.
Blizzard wrote that while they made some spells / effects undispellable now, they might reconsider that in Dragonflight, so no guarantees.
For Combustion, while it should be dispellable, it should not be dispellable in 1-2 GCDs. Tradeoff for Combustion is Fire Mages dealing abysmal damage outside of it, not possibility to remove it with finger snap. That is also why I suggest Triune Ward - it provides some protection for both Combustion and dispellable defensives, but does not make them undispellable, it just reduces the chance that they would be the first buff to get dispelled.
Fire does abysmal damage outside of bust because its profile, like arcane and frost, is warped by rop. Busts tradeoff is if you cant cross cc you get owned. Frankly, bust should get pvp modifieried into irrelevance leaving tempered flames as the default for fire simply because being nearly able to 100-0 someone without casting as a mage shouldnt ever happen.
Triune has way too many consequences it brings with it. Let it stay in the shadowlands and god willing all these self heal conduits with it
Not only - both Arcane and Frost deal much more sustained damage, even though they all 3 play with RoP.
How about 1v1 situations, where you can’t cross CC, as you don’t have any unbreakable CC? And many Fire Mages want to play not only with cross CC comps in arenas.
Tempered Flames is an interesting alternative and I agree that it should be viable, but Combustion playstyle should remain competitive as well. For that, it does need some kind of dispel protection and Triune is a decent variant. This dispel protection would be useful for all 3 specs, as most Mage defensives are (mass) dispellable.
Triune Ward can have little to no consequences. For example, if Blizzard immediately brings the latest nerfed version that has shields with 35-40% value, it would not even make the Mage much tankier (5-20% bonus to total shield value) and it would be mainly a dispel protection tool.