Let me start by saying I am not big on the raid scene and prefer PvE.
I enjoy grinding quests, dailies, and such to collect necessary items, reps and fun tools.
But gosh if I am not exhausted of barely surviving a small pack of fleshlings, while seeing deathknights, demonhunters and more gathering mobs in an area and nuking them down in swarms.
I even try to do Visions solo and I can barely do 2 bosses in the time-limit because, as a demonhunter player stated on their tutorial, I cant “gather all the mobs in the area, lead them to a location and nuke them”.
I like the theme of a Mage, I like the story of it, but I am so tired of being this squishy.
Am I doing something wrong? Am I suppose to be having such a hard time clearing dailies, quests and visions in comparison to demonhunters, deathknights, monks, etc?
Should I just give up on cloth-based classes for PvE?
I generally enjoy fire’s theme and abilities. Frost is great for CC, only issue with it is that it becomes difficult to take on bosses that are immune to CC.
watching that video above, that mage player seems immensely decked out, and that is only from what I can see from the abilities they are using.
They are using frost which is a good idea for safety for squishy classes admittedly.
Edit: Additionally while watching that video, I saw that player even got into some close situations, with their health getting low several times.
Try the frozen orb build for mage. Lends itself well to dungeons, dailies and visions, mass pulls effectively. Plays like frost should.
Problem isn’t cloth, it’s this botch job of class design. Arcane and fire are effectively two-minute wonders. Fine for raids, sucks for dailies. Kiting properly as frost or Arcane will make you untouchable.
First, as a mage you are indeed squishy. This is the trade off for being able to vomit piles of DPS at range. You survive by a combination of CC, High DPS and being nimble; blink will help to keep you from being swarmed.
With that having been said, Visions can be grouped for. I would advise finding a tank or a healer that will be ecstatic to have you helping to push damage out that they simply can’t and ensure the vision is completed in a timely fashion.
I’d keep at it. The Visions will get easier as you go along.
Consider this:
There are people who have been progging it from the low 400’s.
I think at your ilvl you’ll be alright. You’ll still make some kind of progression even if you fail (you further research, especially if you’ve got treasure).
Frost is fantastic. You’ve got more buttons to push than Fire, but the thrill of kiting and that delicious CC is a helluva lot of fun. They’re also great in M+
It is quite good. Admittedly the one thing fire lacks is CC. Though fire can dish out a lot of damage…you’re usually hoping you can kill it before it kills you…
I mostly just love the theme of a fire mage on a bloodelf from my WC3 days, but I can clearly see it just doesnt seem to be right for what i’m trying to do.
Which would have been fine if I have time. In fact I prefer it. But vision is somewhat a timed encounter. And being a caster also mean you need to stop actually do damage.
And I know that arcane could spam the arcane explosion similar to being a melee. Though I have doubt that’ll work on solo masks run. So, I think I’ll stick with fire and get the combustion timing down. Since I predicted the elites will be bigger problem then.
But seem like casters are having handicapped in this content. And I prefer we not have vision.io.
The good news is you probably have a year to build up an alt lol
There was some good advice in this thread though so hopefully you can figure out how to not get devoured in open world and make your mage work for you.
You may be doing something wrong, but mostly with Horrific Visions, they are not designed or tuned properly for casters. Push back, cc, lockouts, no way you can turret the damage that your weakness is built around being able to do.
Melee=solo roflstomp them.
Caster=find a group or wait on cloak/memento progression/gear to nerf them for you.
