The predominance of mage (fire mage) is due in part to their insanely good CC toolkit. They can do insane burst damage in a 2 second combust window that is more frequent that your healer’s trinket, and keep someone CC’d (usually the healer) for an absurd portion of the game. They have polymorph on top of ring, DB, and frost nova. That CC toolkit is better than many classes without even including polymorph.
I would go as far to say that it is the most broken non-covenant ability in the game. No cooldown at all, can be spammed infinitely taking someone out of the game for 8 seconds, 5 seconds, 3 seconds. Slightly less with Sephuz/racials, but that’s not making any difference in the current burst meta. The mage can then do it again 18 seconds later. The healer can barely play. The healer can line some polys, but between needing to heal your team and the mage’s mobility, there is not really any way to avoid it.
It’s simply too good compared to other classes CC’s. Either give every class a polymorph variant, or nerf the mage’s. If people are too worried about PvP becoming a PvE rotation fest, lean towards the former; but, if damage is going to stay as bursty as it is, then having excess CC also becomes a problem. A tough balance no doubt.
Some combination of changes need to be made to polymorph, being either (or all): the time polymorph and it’s 2 DR’s last needs to be substantially reduced, it needs a cooldown, and/or the DR needs to be substantially increased.
Having a skilled fire mage against many comps is a guaranteed win, even moreso if they’re not playing Hpally, who gets a second trinket from divine shield and can be a game changer for the second combust go. There are more problems than than just polymorph in the current meta, and I’m not trying to say this is the only problem, but it seems to be one of the bigger current imbalances in the game.
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Lmao the problem with mages isn’t polymorph you silly goose
polymorph should be gutted.
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Why don’t you like not being able to play after 10 minute ques?
Polymorph isn’t being touched. They removed deep freeze and blazing speed just to keep it intact.
Cauterize is more autistic than polymorph. This thread is based cringe.
To stay alive mages get -
Barrier
Triune ward
Alter time
Iceblock(includes an extra full hp bar btw) (which can then usually reapply triune here)
Cauterize (basically a 100% cheat death that gives them long duration rocket boots to fully reposition
Seed (free auto res)
Magefood in arenas
Am I missing one? Maybe a base heal?
And this man is complaining about polymorph.
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Too long to read to support polymorph nerf… Even though i hate it.
Don’t disagree that mage toolkit is much better than most classes for the reasons you pointed out. Really no disagreement at all. That’s why I said polymorph is only part of the issue. I can’t talk about all of the SL problems in one thread, due to both the character limit and no one will read the war and peace.
It really isn’t tho. Mages have had polymorph since classic. Poly is the last thing I would nerf on mages atm.
True, but all of the other changes necessarily affect the skills that have been in the game since classic. Because it was balanced then doesn’t mean it’s balanced now with all of the new skills, talents, and other changes.
Do you play a healer? If not, you’re probably less concerned with polymorph but it should drive any healer bonkers when they load into a fire mage. Which right now is a pretty high chance.
Mage is a perfect example of how every class in this is a screwed up version of what it use to be.
Any weakness a class had was removed by giving them abilities to do things that don’t fit their role.
I used to love playing my mage. I don’t even know what that class is anymore.
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lol, you people coming in here asking for nerfs to mage cc. Mages are a cc class, get used to it bud.
cc class doesnt mean they should also be the 1 shot class for 10 seconds every 2 minutes.
LOL, for real though…
You used to have one health bar as a mage, and you had to make it count.
You had to either kill or CC your way out of something, or escape and go eat to recover.
Now you have 4-5 different ways to bring your health back to full while you jump around spamming instant cast spells taking tank amounts damage.
Class is a joke now.
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I wouldn’t mind it as much if it wasn’t on that shimmer blink poly thing… Makes it incredibly hard to counter sometimes, esp since fire mages are so insanely powerful.
If mages were squishy like they were designed to, I wouldn’t mind mages.
But they made them tankier and tankier every expansion.