I am a class designer, and mage has been my main class since vanilla. While playing SOD from P1-P4 I have noticed that the mage Runes, the direction of the class, and over all class design philosophy has been inconsistent. Here are some interesting elements of why the Mage class is designed differently in SOD than any other class. The intention of this thread is to showcase the design differences.
Class Identity
What is class identity? How do we define it? Before we can define that, we must define what a class is. A class is an avatar of a role. Class identity is best described as your class fantasy in what sets you apart in gameplay, combat and how you perform your abilities as well as distribution of abilities.
In Vanilla WoW, the Mage’s class identity has been a glass canon with some interesting crowd control utility. We were known as the class that has the best AOE. This is no longer the case. This brings me to the AOE section.
AOE
Blizzard and Flamestrike has been replaced in power by Living Bomb, Living Flame and Frozen Orb. Arcane Explosion is still somewhat viable. The mage class AOE ability design direction is about placement of mobs, which is dependent on the tank keeping aggro in a cluster. The design of these abilities have a travel time that diminishes the active duration before it can even deal damage. If a tank pulls out of that cluster and the mobs run wild, our AOE DPS is significantly diminished. As a mage player we are solely dependent on others to have effective AOE damage. Not to mention the lengthy cooldown for Living Flame and Frozen Orb that other classes don’t have to deal with.
I have also learned that Warlocks has a rune that allows their Shadowbolt to split up to 5x. They simply cast Shadowbolt and it splits. In this instance, the Warlock doesn’t have to deal with durational travel time of projectile as it will deal damage no matter what when it interacts with the hitbox. Hunters Explosive Shot is very similar but with only 6sec cooldown.
Up Time
The mages Up Time in combat is by far the worst in game due to mana inefficiency. Our mana pool is eaten up quickly during aoe pulls and single cast. We have to drink more than any other class between encounters which results in more downtime. Sustained damage and burst damage is not balanced as Enhancement Shamans, Locks and Hunters can provide some sustained damage, and their burst comes with critical RNG. I have noticed that Sustained and Burst damage is not designed the same. Burst windows have a longer downtime and can’t be as competitive in dungeon groups for an example, especially with chain pulls. We do have access to Evocation, but with an 8 minute cooldown and we cannot perform damage unless we have Living Flame or SOD rune aoes active on the target.
Strength vs Weakness Balance
Balefire Bolt here is interesting because to my knowledge, its the only rune in game that has a negative status effect (debuff). It further removes the mages mana regeneration by debuffing our spirit, and we only get 10 casts before it kills us. This is actually an interesting strength vs weakness balance, but why does not other classes have the same design direction? Strength vs Weakness balance is actually a step towards correct class balance, not homegenization.
Illusion of Choice
From the very conception of the spec system in Vanilla WoW, it was inherently flawed and automatically creates class imbalances. However, the reason why the initial designers choice that direction was to combat the long LFG hours in EQ, where a class can have multiple roles.
Frost Mage has been taken out of the viable spec in SOD classic and has been replaced by Fire Mage. Frost and Fire should be competitive with each other or the “Elemental” spec of fire/frost. The spec system and talent trees has always been linear, bottlenecked one dimensional gameplay with no real player agency. I found an interesting elemental spec that has been working for me in dungeons, but fire is still superior.
Design Recommendations
I want to preface that there are probably multiple factors a class designer/rune designer has to consider in its conceptual phase that could cause certain things in the design process to not get designed properly.
Class design is a very layered approach with specific rule sets in each layer that is balanced in each layer. Provide a defined structure and then allow players agency within that structure without punishing their agency. Consider how class design is approached with complete gear dependency and how that affects all classes in many avenues of gameplay.
If you decide to have a strength vs weakness balance in some abilities and not others, consider why that is and how it can negatively affect gameplay. Strength vs Weakness balance is a core design choice that should be on the first layers of class design.
I hope you found this interesting.