Mages used to be a masterclass at survival. We had lots of utility and personal defensives that provided us agency over our own survival.
Not anymore.
I understand that the vast majority of the community hates mages strictly because we used to be a powerhouse, that said I fail to comprehend why that warranted such a massive gutting of our class.
After getting 3k iO in the first 7-8 days of the season, I have been farming 10-11’s for a few weeks trying to complete my gear because I push higher. The amount of times I have needed an external from a ret paladin, healer or any other hybrid in order to survive is unreal.
Ice cold is relatively worthless as it only lasts 6 seconds and only provides 70% DR… With the damage being so spikey, you’re basically forced to use it once you’re already below 50%, which at that point DR doesn’t do much.
Between that and barrier, that’s basically all we have. 30sec CD on a barrier that only does 1/2 your HP is pretty garbage in itself. When you factor in the relatively long cooldown… It’s just silly.
I understand mages are not hybrids, but at the same time we used to have LOTS of defensives to compensate for the inability to ‘heal’ ourselves.
Like at least turn Frost Conditioning in to a one talent point ice block heal for 75% of our HP while also making Ice Cold last for 10s. Ice Cold is one of our end talent nodes and it basically turns Ice Block in to garbage. Like Divine Shield used to reduce Paladin damage / healing by 50%, you removed that and didn’t even make Paladins talent it… So why do mages get shafted WHILE spending a talent?
Further to, mirror image needs it’s DR back. We also need blast wave back.
At the end of the day, we have SO MANY dead talents in our class talent tree while all of our end-tier talents are just absolute garbage.
your right, you really start to feel it once you hit the 14+ brackets. I’m aiming for 3400 since that seems like a reasonable goal, and hopefully the turbo boost gives us the bump we need to reach it in the survivability aspect.
I understand your point, it’s the same concept as using it in PVP. You have to premeditate the damage.
The major issue with it is that, sometimes snapping back lands you in a puddle and it does more harm than good.
Further to, it’s really only an acceptable CD if you’re in voice with your healer. If you have it rolling and your healer pops a CD to save you when they didn’t need to… it sets your entire party back.
Edit: I generally do pop it say during the fire wave phase of the dragonhawk in Windrunner, I let my health get low as you should… Healer pops a nature’s switness on me or cocoon even… This is in a 12+. I used to have a WA that said to party / raid / instance that I had alter time running and to not heal me… Can’t do that anymore.
Being frost is the only way to have a reasonable number of defensives now and we have to trade our defensive for an immunity; not a great choice especially in PvP or specific raid mechanics.
I really want to do a break down with all of mages defensives/talent tree, but doing solo prey on my mage is awful. There’s some situations when I can control my agro/pulls and I have to watch my mage die. (I carry 2 different types of potions, use barrier, mirror images, invis, and literally every other tool on my kit.) But if my stuff is on CD, and I get ambushed, it’s almost guaranteed I will die. I’m considering race swapping so I can at least have a racial heal. Even with 30%+ magic damage reduction, and 12 second blinks, I’m not able to avoid getting punched, and magic damage still melts me.
I once made a thread on reddit about mage survivability being terrible. Got responses by a supposed mage player saying it is just a user error and they have absolutely no issue handling damage or otherwise as a mage. People jumped in to upvote them.
I feel like I’m spending way more GCDs on survival in M+ than should be normal. On almost every pull I’m cycling through Frost Barrier, Blink, Invis, Ice Cold, basically everything. Pots are used on cooldown, Images are on cooldown (and honestly I can’t even tell how much they’re helping), and I’m throwing in Alter Time whenever I expect incoming damage, though I’ll admit there’s room to optimize that as I’ve screwed myself a few times.
Despite all of that, healers still seem to struggle to keep me alive, even when mechanics are handled correctly. I spend too much time micromanaging my health bar and wondering if the healer has me rather than on interrupts and uptime.
On paper, these defensives look solid, but in practice something feels off. The higher the key level, the more noticeable it becomes. Losing 10+ seconds of DPS uptime just to stay alive every pull isn’t engaging gameplay. It feels like I’m constantly fighting to not die rather than actually contributing.
A lot of it is the dots - you could race swap, or bring an Aug for 100% of your runs - but then it’s our dps that eventually falls behind, so why bring a mage that we have to baby-sit that brings arguably average dps at best.
Survive? Homie you’re a mage. Blizz played FFXIV and decided you needed to be a Blackmage, but with zero of the damage or gameplay mechanics. You don’t get to survive.
You can even check the WoW reddit currently. There is another post up about Mage survivability, and even with comments agreeing, it is being downvoted to nothing.
Playerbase doesnt want Mage to have more defensives.
Particularly bleed effects and that isn’t even a function of being a mage but rather a cloth armor class. Bleeds in general are incredibly lethal and frankly overtuned for something you can’t effectively mitigate against. It’s a flaw in the game’s design more than anything else.
