It feels like Mages as a class is just outdated. Fire & Frost specs feel very similar to how its been for the last decade.
Arcane received a decent overhaul a few expansions ago, receiving a secondary resource, and having to manage mana as well whereas other caster DPS only have to manage a secondary resource (balance druids have astral power, shadow priests have insanity, elemental shaman have maelstrom, warlocks have soul shards, arcane has charges & mana). Frost & Fire however do not have this secondary resource.
Another thing I noticed is that it seems like the class identity of mages has been siphoned to create the evoker class. We’ve all seen how this affected Warlocks (especially demonology) to create Demon Hunters. If you ever did the mage campaign in Legion you’d know just how important dragons are in mage lore. I always thought that many dragons were mages. Look at Kalecgos, look him up on any wow wiki and you’ll see he’s listed as a mage, and will probably have it updated to be an evoker for all we know.
I feel like I’m having second child syndrome here, but have y’all seen some of the evoker class abilities? Those awesome cone abilities. Heck, fire mages literally have an ability called Dragon’s Breath. Blizzard can at least update some of the mage abilities that have cones (cone of cold and dragons’s breath) to be similar.
Just my thoughts. What are yours?
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Evokers have always been another class of mage, if you go by DnD. It’s fine.
From what I’ve seen Evokers didn’t take anything from mage. From the datamined mage stuff, though incomplete, I’m iffy on radiant spark staying and frost still seemingly being tied to IV uptime. Again, it’s incomplete for mage, but evokers didn’t take any flavor from mages since… well they seem to be based off of Evocation wizards (dps) and white mage (healer).
Edit: for dps seems to be mixed Evocation and elementalists. So, in all honesty if we go by DnD standards Blizzard has pretty much introduced THE mage class.
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Also, I will not miss arcane power 
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The way I see it, everything that went into Evokers would have been things that could have gone into Mages instead. Just saying…
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Not really…
A lot of that stuff and how they function would not fit well at all. That’s also pretty much just saying incinerate could have gone to fire. This new class didn’t take anything away from the mage class at all. Warlocks are currently the only class in the game that can claim that.
Nothing was sacrificed to make evokers a thing.
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Aside from using more than one element at once that was removed from mages back in MoP. As it stands, mage players feel like novices when compared to, well, most mages in the lore.
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You’re class got our bloodlust ability. You have no right to talk about class identity being taken.
Great observation. We have it, however we did not take it from you. Last time I checked, Shaman still have Bloodlust.
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And last time I checked nothing was stolen from you. Mages and hunters were given a shaman ability that is a major ability and then whine and complain about youre identity with the new class. Booo hooo get over it
Lol what? What’s next? Are you going to complain that restoration shaman sounds too similar to restoration druid?
Anyways, the focus here is on mages. I could care less about other classes; they have their own forums. Go there if you must.
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Even if blizz didnt sacrifice any mage spells for evoker, ita pretty obvious that they are derivative from the mage class.
But the question is what did mages get? Short of arcanes 1 spell: nothing. At all. No frost issues fixed. No fire rebuild. In fact, the way it sounds is that they are doubling down on the complete garbage ignite playstyle.
So yea, mages definitely lost in this instance.
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Well, Mages did get something:
- Fire Mages got access to guaranteed crit Phoenix Flames again (Alextr. Fury talent), so will be able to use it to enable Hot Streaks outside of Combustion again
- Frost Mages got access to instant cast Flurry with CD and 2 charges, so even if you are not lucky and do not receive Brain Freeze procs, Flurry would just recharge itself and give you access to Winter Chill still =>are less RNG dependant now
- Arcane Mages got instant ToTM with 10s duration baseline, Arcane Power-like ability with baseline 90s CD and a nuke attached to it (but also with horribly long cast time for PVP, Blizzard fix plz)
But I do agree - Mage specs definitely need much more.
I doubt that the new Ignite talents are enough to enable a competitive DoT playstyle for Fire - Ignite would still remain dispellable without any punishment and bad in Mythic+, where packs can die quickly and most of its stored damage will be just wasted.
Water Jet addition for Frost is great (and was even asked for in my thread as well), but Water Ele would still be bad in any AoE situation, so pet based spec possibility for Frost is not developed enough.
Arcane Mage still has no utility / benefits to bring it over Fire with DB or Frost with roots / slows.
In addition - all Mage specs still have zero unbreakable CC. For people who gave MM access to both 5s stun and 5s silence, Blizzard seem strangely hesitant to give some unbreakable CC to Mages as well. If they are tied to the old principle that Mages = no stuns / silences, time to reconsider it - all other classes now have multiple forms of CC, often comparable burst damage like the aforementioned MM Hunter and even more additional healing (like Shadow Priests, who can spec into Renew now), so there is literally no real justification to keep Mage without some unbreakable CC as well. Times have changed.
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I am just saying after you received part of our class fantasy you can not complain. So as stated get over it. But you will never accept it so meh sucks to be you at this point.
- You have to talent into it to get it.
- Yea we get furry charges but it still doesnt fix the massive issues that icy propulsion brings PLUS icy veins is still complete trash. Plus the pet spell is garbo and means nothing.
- Yea arcane got some but the mana issue is still prevelant.
In other words, these were tiny bandaides to huge issues that blizz refuses to acknowledge.
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The class fantasy of being able to manipulate time does fit with Mage lore. Are you also going to also state that Wind Shear is too similar to Counterspell?
What about my first post is so hard to grasp? Let me dive deeper into my rationale:
In Legion, Demon Hunter is the new class. Guess what it revolves around? If you guessed demons, then you’re correct. Guess what other class exists that revolves around demons? Warlocks, the same class that was once able to transform into a literal demon but can no longer do so because that ability was given to Demon Hunters.
In WoW in general, a lot of Dragons we interacted with were Mages. Time manipulation, arcane magic, fire, frost, whatever was centered around Mages. Kalecgos is literally an integral part of the Mage class campaign in Legion. You have others like Chromie as well.
its a no brainer that a dragon-eque race would be mage-like with the Evoker class. I think that class looks awesome but it also makes me feel as if a lot of new stuff going into the Evoker class should also go into all class, not just mages. The new targeting ui (ground targeting shapes/animations) for Evoker should also be a thing for all classes.
Again nothing qas taken from mages and given to evoker class. And mages getting blood lust(which was part of Shamans identity) mages have no right to complain and i was right you would argue about it so my previous statement stays sucks to be you. And lol
Be awesome if mages had a 4th spec water that’d be dope with say like a spell tidal wave conjure a wave of water that does damage and pushes your enemy’s back 50 yards lol.
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so, a resto shaman?
Honestly, sounds like a cool spell for resto.
A lot of the flavor of the time magic spells Evoker got could have been used as mage or arcane specific spells which feels a little bit unfortunate they also took a lot of inspiration from Mistweaver healing kit. Let’s wait and see what Mages actually do get in their trees but yeah, I’m a little bit worried.
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