Mage PvP is tragic

This is the worst iteration of mage pvp I have ever seen (played wow on and off since vanilla).

Mages burst is too predictable and requires hard casts.

Mages are squishier than most classes.

Mages consistent dmg is terrible when focused, and when not focused is still far behind other casters who can straight hard carry.

The cc changes to 6 seconds only hurt sheep, it doesn’t feel worth pushing in for a cast in this meta.

The only time mages shine is with a sub rogue that is overtuned and hard carries. But so do many other classes.

Mages are insanely underrepresented on the ladder because they feel awful to play.

Where are the mage pvp changes?!

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Not that I disagree with anything there, but this sentence stands out to me. And this isn’t just a mage thing, but a caster thing:

What was the point at which casters all collectively decided that it was OK to frown upon hard casting in PvP?

Like, this is weird to me. Not the frowning, but the whole being OK with this position. It’s weird to me that people clamor for “make my class 100% mobile with instants and procs so I never have to hard cast”, rather than clamoring for greatly reducing the availability and number of interrupts of any kind.

It’s weird. Y’all weird.

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I think there is an issue with pve and pvp with needing to be stationary and hard cast. I am pro-non stationary casts. Not anti casting but I want to move. There was a time in which this was doable with mechanics. All the classes didn’t have all the gap closers and mechanics didn’t require constant micro movements. Melee classes can have almost 100% uptime on damage and abilities while having responses to mechanics and cc. Ranged on the other hand (unless gimmickly talented) have to handle all the greater complexity of hardcasting all the while in order to have the same level of effect (or dmg done) have to never stop casting.
It would make sense if the casting resulted in higher damage to offset, but that isn’t the case. Just an increase in difficulty.
I am not saying that played to its fullest a caster cant be good in pvp, but as someone who plays all the classes, the skill floor for ranged is much, much higher.

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It’s when melee classes got crazy mobility and every class got an interrupt

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personally, id rather see more “castable while moving” abilities over just straight up instant casts for a lot of casters rn

I think that’s the point.

Why ask for spammy casting when you can ask to have that stuff toned back a bit?

People have been saying that for ages. It hasn’t happened. What has happened is turning specs like Destro into mostly instant casts.

I main hunter and i also play DH and Mage is prob one of the more difficult specs i have ever played in solo shuffle. So many keybinds and difficult CC/Burst. Its one of those specs you need to be a full time professional mage gamer in order to do well on. Not casual friendly on any specs.

Also solo shuffle is mostly just melee cleave at the average level which is awful for mages.

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One thing I don’t understand is mage DPS. Even in solo shuffle games I win (3-3, 4-2, 5-1, etc.), I am always the lowest damage. Even when I get most of the KBs I am still lowest damage. Outside of burst windows, mage damage feels really low. I just had a game with a shadowpriest who did literally 4x as much damage as me in a round of solo shuffle that went on for a few minutes. Is there not anyway to increase our sustained damage without breaking anything else? I am not good at the game, and its even tougher when I have to choose between (1) damage (2) CC or (3) not dying when getting trained. It’s very difficult to do any more than one of those 3 things at once. Do other classes have such high sustained damage because they lack sheep? It’s the only thing I can think of. I’d frankly rather not have sheep if it meant I could do damage and not die at the same time. Maybe this is just a frost mage problem and fire would solve it. Another pain point is when my other teammate is getting trained, and I also have to CC DPS just to keep them alive thru the burst. Every second I’m trying to keep this alive is another drop in consistent damage. I feel like half my games are (1) burst (2) hope it blew defensive cooldowns (3) try to stay alive until CDs are back; repeat. All while managing CC and interrupts.

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Can someone provide advice on how to kite Havoc and how to deal with two melee training me?

At 1700 I feel that I can barely cast. Fighting two melee feels awful (DK and DH are the worst). The only melee that I feel I can kite properly is Ret.

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I’ve been playing mage off and on since wotlk doing almost exclusively pvp now I’m no gladiator but in my experience that’s just what games look like sheeping the dps can be more important than just dealing damage and often I’m last in the dps meter even with winning matches

Ironic that the vast majority of comps had a mage in the last two arena cups… These forums never cease to amaze.

Honestly I just think alter shouldn’t be purgeable. Any time there’s another mage you’re just degenerately spellstealing each other which feels massively stupid. Also would be great if we could just normalize armor types at this point - MM hunters can just completely chunk you with no counterplay unless you’re in range to DB/blastwave.