I play PVE almost exclusively, and have done for about 16 years. I’m the most indecisive person you’ll likely ever meet. And once again having trouble deciding between mage or Paladin.
My pros and cons of each:
Mage
I like mages primarily because of literature (Raistlin Majere from Dragonlance).
Magic is dynamic and fun
I like how they delve into the secrets of the universe (like how quantum physicists do in our time)
Cons:
I don’t like how you have to put forth a lot of effort just to get roughly the same survivability as a Pally
Paladin
I’m not religious, but I like angels in fantasy. The Paladin reminds me of an angel.
I quite like my transmog (remove the spaces because I can’t post links): https:// i2.paste.pics / e18f41a06af483ee0811ae13d9b5a5fa.png
The survivability is excellent
Cons:
Sometimes they feel too easy (though after a hard day’s work that is sometimes ideal to blow off steam)
For those that have played both, what do you think?
I primary play my mage as Frost for leveling, and Protection on my pally (I assume most would do ret).
I should also note, how the heck do you get used to not having portals? I tend to transmog often, so I want to portal to Stormwind often. Then of course I want to do class quests. So I want to quick travel there. Then if I’m doing quests in multiple zones, I’ll want to quick travel to those places.
To be honest paladin is deceptively easy, it’s easy when your just strolling around. Yet hard when you min max it given how much you revolve around your holy power. I personally like my paladin as to me it’s not too complicated, and yet it does take some skill to play properly as you have to make on the fly decisions a lot of the time in how you spend your holy power, especially as holy and prot. Which can decide whether you, or another person live in an encounter or not.
I’m not biased or anything but as the superior class Paladins are ideal for solo content. Apart from additional armor due to heavy armor we also have excellent healing options no matter what spec you play. Our damage is more than enough to burn down anything in the open world with a faster ramp up than mage, just pop wings, seraphim and final reckoning(if talented), and go to town.
To add to it all, plate armor is by far the best looking armor type.
I personally don’t think frost mage survivability is that bad. 2 ice blocks that completely negate everything, mobs are perma slowed, and altered time is one of the sickest abilities in the game. It’s basically a mobility and a full heal spell on a 1 minute CD. (just make sure you use a cancelaura altered time macro)
It’s not horrible, but you do need to be mindful of what you pull, how large of packs you run into, and do you have enough room to kite. With my paladin, I just run in, aggro everything, and kill them all, ending the fight with around 85% health left.
I main a pally with a mage on the side to mix it up when I get bored.
Class fantasy -
Same as you, I like the wizard/holy warrior trope but between the two, holy warrior for me is more appealing.
Play style -
As you said, you’re pretty much choosing between portals and self heals haha. I found self heals to be more useful.
The Pally rotation can feel a bit routine over a long period of time, that’s when I’ll switch to my mage or other alts for a bit until I start missing my Pally again.
Overall I choose Pally for their playstyle and class fantasy.
What level are we talking about here?
Casual LFR/Normal & occasional heroic run?
Low level keys? Perhaps a KSM?
Or are we talking about pushing it to 25’s in keys and being on a prog mythic raid team going 4 nights a week?
There is a difference.
Yes, there are pros & cons to both classes/roles.
Mages are mages. Glass cannons. Pew pew pew. I can tell you right now, it’s not easy to be a GOOD mage. Especially Frost mage. Heck. I couldn’t figure it out myself, and I got 4 toons at all 20’s (and up) in keys. (tank/healer/melee/range classes)
Paladins is a very broad topic.
Do you wanna play ret solo, but heal in raids and tank in M+? Or be all Ret?
Are you willing to go out of the way and learn tank routes of M+? Or be a healer in keys and strive to be good enough to keep everyone alive on some MAJOR eff-ups by the team?
I’d gladly deep dive for you if you provide me with some info on that.
I mean yeah it’s not hard to do that, and honestly I guess the pitfall to paladin is you can be holy power starved at some points. Which is what I’m trying to get at is sometimes you have to choose between using WoG or using SotR to keep yourself alive. As you can either use a CD if your sheild is going to fall off if your low health, which still may not be enough to survive. With the latter being using a sheild and hoping you have enough time to survive the next hit. What kills me in keys is just pugs being pugs with lack of CC and add control. Like I still feel the past n from when bolster was live a week or two ago in DoS and they let bolstered scribe casts go off. Which of course killed me as each scribe was hitting for 30k. With another example being the dog bleeds in HoA given you can’t tank it with armor, which you kite. I find it to be more complicated for holy paladin as at some points you will dump your power into sheilds to cycle it, and that can cause problems sometimes. As I’ve had it to where I dumped my holy power, and then someone just get absolutely smacked and some AoE is about to go out and I can’t generate enough HP to cast a WoG ebfore they’ll die. Which forces out LotM and puts me on danger as well. It all goes hand in hand and is sometimes a second by second play on how you generate and spend your holy power. Given you have to spend at least one to three GCD’s to cast a spender, and that can be the difference between you or someone dying with how the game works when you get to high keys.
Mage because you would never experience a moment in time where you would not have any valuable spec for whatever you choose to do. It’s basically also a free raid and dungeon spot.
