That blizzard is completely happy with the state of mages? We have 0 communication on potential changes while also receiving no changes. Needs to the top 3 fire azerite with 0 compensation while they claim this was to fix the imbalance you have igneous potential, flash freeze, equipoise, chorus of insanity all topping by +400 with the craziest being igneous potential +1500 compared to others.
Frost benefit is the control it’s damage is meh, arcanes damage is cheesed and boring as hell, Fire is just gutted like a mother.
It just seems like it’s going nowhere and not changing. So I will just stick with my assumption that blizzard is okay with mages as they are.
I’m no world beater, but i do manage one or two 90+ parses (for my gear level bracket) on farm bosses in my weekly Heroic raid. And I can tell when I do it too, because it just feels good. Like, everything comes together: mechanics left me alone, I got my procs, I nailed my rotation/CDs, etc.
But when I check the logs, I’m getting stomped by other ranged classes that parsed green on that fight. I’m busting my butt, working overtime, just to get that same butt handed to me in the meters by my teammates.
I’m brought for my buff, mage table, and a few mechanics. We are recruiting ranged because we are melee-heavy, but we aren’t looking for another mage. That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of the class.
Long cast times + movement-heavy fights + RNG-based procs for majority of damage + burst damage windows + squishy (no damage when dead) is a bad combo in modern raids.
I only log into the mage now on raid nights.
I do the fun stuff on the DH.
Bosses that matter? You mean like progression bosses where classes with low mobility, no DoTs, and long cast times are punished even more while learning the fights?
For raids, the best mage spec is low-middle of the pack and the other two specs are tanked.
I enjoy doing damage and being rewarded wuth big numbers when I do it well. Isn’t that the point of damage dealers?
Progression at any level requires DPS. It sucks when that DPS just isn’t there.
In as much as we’re doing about as well as we did in Legion as far as where we sit compared to other dps (middle of the pack and lower if not the bottom) then I’d say Blizzard is happy with mages.
As much as I am disappointed in the spot Mages are in general. I’m still kept on my raid team, and they let me switch between frost and fire all I want because I still do my job and do good dps. We’re not super hardcore but we’re 6/9M atm, with a 21% pull on Mekka.
I don’t think the problem is we are unplayable. It’s the state of mage as a whole.
My raid doesn’t want me to switch. I can do frost and fire with great parses and we are easily AOTC. It’s just unrewarding as hell.
Just as an example, we had me and a guildy on fire so I switched to frost. Now we have frost and fire. Still I feel like we don’t need both of us and that we are bringing down the raid (not to the point that we can’t clear) as far as ease of raiding goes.
I understand how I am very helpful on stormwall and can cheese opulence dps. He understands how his execute is helpful on Janna, but is the helpfulness outweighing being at the bottom of the charts by a good margin? I don’t think so.
It is just my opinion in the end, we all still make it work. Just annoying to see hard work go completely unrewarded from a personal level, in the end they are just numbers on a chart but god damn if I play well I want to see myself up there.
I think the whole situation is beyond blizzard really. Going off blanket 50% nerfs/buffs for every class and every trait its safe to say they aren’t in a mood to break everything down and sort it out.
Blizzard is trying to ride out this expansion with ductape and glue holding every class together.
I picked BfA up after a 10 year break (I dabbled a bit in WoD and Legion during the free play weeks) and since mages were always one of the strongest classes before I quit I figured they would be strong again. Needless to say I am quite disappointed.
If I had known mage was going to play out like this I would have used my 110 boost for a new Horde main instead of an Alliance alt. Oh well. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and buy another one anyway.
It’s really difficult to find motivation to log in and actually progress this character because I know the rewards just aren’t going to be there.
I guess I’ll wait until 8.2 hits the PTR and things start getting discovered and datamined, but I think I will be putting most of my play time into leveling a new main instead of bothering to progress this character anymore this expansion.
I mean thats just not true. Wow log statistics show mages to be bottom tier struggle bus while the other pure dps classes are well represented at the top of the charts. It is fine to bring one mage for the int buff but after that you could have brought another warlock instead for equal or better utility and a truckload more damage.
From a frost perspective… The long cast times is a big part of it; makes some bosses on M+ completely miserable (i.e. to the point where it is not fun) and tyrannical makes it worse. Frost bolt also needs a serious buff. Places with stacked small numbers of adds like Tol’Dagor are fun as frost I guess.
This character is my main (mage is main alt) and yeah… no comparison. I used to main a lock and still play it as I guess third alt. If you ever want a “bad-proof” caster just roll lock.
Mages received almost nothing new this expansion and patches in terms of class changes. The only reasonable assumption is that Blizzard is completely happy with mages as they are.
![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
