Do you feel gimped in the open world when it comes to soloing? Being the only class with no self heal at all do you have any regrets choosing mage?
I’m thinking of maining my mage for SL but I don’t want to feel gimped compared to say a warrior or druid.
I’ve mained a mage for a long time. Until you have a reasonably high Ilvl the open world can be dangerous. Especially for arcane, which is what I always play. It’s not overly hard but you really can’t handle more than 2 mobs at a time until you get gear.
If you go frost the open world is much easier.
When I level tanks the open world is pretty much a face roll from the beginning.
Have to say mage is my favorite class
I do like the mage but I’m afraid I’d get frustrated that I couldn’t be as good as most other classes when it comes to soloing.
Mages should be tailor and enchanting, use that first aid when they sheep/frost nova mobs.
Fite me.
I’ve never felt gimped on my mage, but only because I had first aid and potions from my alchemy. I kind of shelved her this expansion for my shaman. In Legion my two main focused toons were DK and mage :c
I don’t have any issues soloing on my mage at all, but that character is also my raid main.
You have tools to kite almost anything forever–especially if you roll frost.
Basically… once you get yourself geared up you can nuke almost everything before it is a problem and kite what you can’t.
Always carry abyssal healing pots, btw.
Leveling and gearing my mage was pretty challenging, but i have fun with it now, i still have some troubles but i usually just invis and eat conjured foods and rethink my strategy lol
Yea mage is pretty much the only class left in the entire game that will give you a “classic” experience in “retail”. That is, the open world being dangerous, having to use strategy and cc etc. All the other classes seem to have tank pets, self heals or some sort of “I win” button.
See this warlock. Once upon a time, I rolled mage. I rerolled. I grew tired of putting in twice the effort to kite and dance around to achieve the same results I could get on any other class, in open world, by just face rolling the keyboard. Don’t get me wrong, with effort I could due about 95% of stuff solo. But it just got to be not worth the effort, and corpse running if something unexpected happened or you zigged when you should have zagged.
Once they get some gear they can literally nuke the open world. You’ll never even take damage as everything dies before it can get to you.
Literally the only time you could have a problem as a mage in solo world content would be really high hp bosses that cannot be slowed or cced, bosses can be soloed by classes with pets or ones with consistent self heals, like child of rezan at the start of BfA due to its immunity to slows, high damage and limited room wouldnt be something you could solo like a warlock for example.
Everything else dies easily since they get slowed or your dps is more than enough to kill them fast enough, though you probably need to be careful of positioning since you sometimes need to blink and kite and that can be an issue like the first days of legion at suramar elite area xD
I use arcane for rp/open world soloing
Fire for some special instances locations (like Northrend or when mobs are too strong)
Frost for dungeons ( frost proved to be most effective for me)
Self healing is not a problem. I always buy potions from the AH and I can always conjure mana food
Mages are actually pretty good at soloing. As pointed out by others, as a mage you kill things quickly enough that most solo stuff is very easy. Even without good gear or skill, as a frost mage, I can avoid the bad guys easily enough to complete almost all solo stuff without issue.
Ooops. Should have posted this as a mage and not a warlock. 
*Absolutely not!
*The mage class is without a doubt squishy. It takes a bit of time to figure out staying alive is totally possible with some thought and good use of defensive abilities. If your not comfortable stunning, frost nova, blinking around then it might not be for you. It took me years of puttering around to finally “get it”. If your more comfortable face tanking mobs, do not roll a mage. Group content it’s fine but for solo you have to keep yourself alive. I look at it as a mini game and it’s not boring.
edit: I did not cover all the things to stay alive or defensive abilities.
No tbh ranged is a significant advantage I hope they actually give melee more ways to handle our obnoxious kiting potential.
While not my main for a long time, I have always played a mage. Got three of them on the go these days. And yeah, sometimes it’s a bit of a bummer. The squishiness is a pain of course. Though it does make for some extremely exciting moments. And these days it feels like all the specs have some ramp up time for their damage. So even though we’re supposed to be a glass cannon it often feels like I kill slower than any of my melee characters. They’re tougher but also get to just jump straight in a wreck shop.
Ice block and invincibility saves you from imminent death
Spellsteal is so funny sometimes i feel like a druid whenever i inflict nature damage, shaman when I turn into a wolf, or a priest whenever I have holy barrier healing me
I haven’t found much I can’t solo on my Mages but some stuff has been quite the challenge. However a Mages kiting toolkit is quite good and if you make full use of it you should be able to handle most anything. If there is anything I can’t deal with I start a group in GF’er and it usually doesn’t take long to have others join.
I will say kiting in Naz was a nightmare. All kiting does is get you 3 more mobs.