such a pointless nerf
3 Likes
We have so many other survivability spells. Invis and Alter Time to name a few.
We’re still the strongest spellcaster in terms of survival.
1 Like
Nah I’m with OP this sucks so hard in pvp. Makes it also so much more infuriating to take a bunch of useless talents for Ice Cold in PvE when it’s far less of a quasi immunity without the full heal
2 Likes
It was a pointless nerf. In PvP, doesn’t matter because shattering throw or mass dispel.
It was a great way to solo elites, do solo content, transmog fun, etc.
They should at least bring it up to 60% or leave it at one point for the 40%.
3 Likes
Uhh, no we’re not. We’re literally the weakest. I don’t know how that talking point got started but it’s just that and it’s completely factually incorrect. For one, all other casters have some form of self healing on top of all the other damage reduction or mitigation tools that mages have and for the most part theirs are better.
Now, can a skilled mage still leverage our limited toolkit to stay alive in most circumstances? Sure, but on balance our toolkit is still the weakest among casters and downright pathetic compared to all other DPS, especially melee.
3 Likes
Did… did you just compare survivability to a melee class? Who wears leather and above…?
I’m talking in between spellcasters, m8. You’re all the way in outer space.
Also…
You just shot yourself in the foot. 
Talk to me next time when you find out you can use ice block twice in under a minute with invis and alter time and displacement and mirror image and barriers and all the roots and snares you can ask for.
Gee, I’m sorry priests. Don’t worry though, you have healing.
Mages have excellent point defenses, but are far from being one of the most resilient spellcasters.
If you actually understood their post you’d know they’re not talking about armor mitigation differences (which are minimal on Retail excluding shields).
Melee have the best defensive CDs and passives, as well as higher base movement speed (15-30% permanently), sprints, snares, gap closers, etc. Casters are still stuck at 100% movement speed, have fewer defensives that are almost always inferior, few gap openers (that are entirely countered by melee’s gap closers/permanent passive uncleansable snares), and inferior self-healing, and they’re still stuck in 2004 where they have to stand still and hard-cast everything, but now their casts are weak because it’s all build/spend, and DoTs do no damage. Even Melee kite casters here, it’s truly a joke.
Do yourself a favor and don’t compare melee to casters again.
3 Likes
Did you just not read the rest of my post? Or did you choose to ignore it? There is an entire paragraph before that you conveniently omitted.
Care to tell which part of that is not true or point out a single caster DPS class that has worse defensives than mage? It should be easy for you since you said mages are the best and therefore every other class worse.
I wouldn’t anyway because I clearly stated I’m comparing spellcasters, and vs melee DPS would be completely stupid. Most melee users already have a bulk defense rating in armor. What do we get as clothies? Spells.
Take your rediculous high horse somewhere else. This thread is already going places.
If I understood the notes from the beta correctly, the nerf to cryo-freeze happened because Blizzard wanted to be able to put more healing responsibility on healers instead of DPS and tanks. Most, if not all, classes had one or more defensive / healing abilities nerfed to reduce their overall ability to self-sustain. In our case, Cryo-Freeze was what got hit. That and I think one of the disliked mirror image sub-talents.
It hurts our survivability, yes. But the intention was to make healers more useful. Whether or not they hit that mark is yet to be seen. I’ve felt the nerf pretty hard and it definitely makes me think twice about how much I’m going to pull now.
For the rest of the conversation, I’m not an expert on other casters, but I’m pretty sure mages have some of the best “this guy is about to hit you really hard” defensives in the game (at least in PvE - I can’t comment on PvP). I find that we suffer a lot on rot damage. Once the health is gone, we need to rely on somebody else to bring it back up.
But between Ice Block / Ice Cold, Greater Invis, Alter Time, and our barrier(s), we should be pretty capable of being the last ones standing when an encounter goes south.
And to me, that makes sense thematically. The old “glass cannon” concept is often mentioned in the forums here, and I think our defensive capabilities are a testament to that. Mages are often depicted as being physically weak but mentally strong. We’re really not good at taking a punch, so we’ve figured out 6 different ways to just ignore that punch altogether. The downside is that if someone does punch you in the face, it’s not as easy for us to recover.
We don’t have a lot of “I need to fix this problem” buttons. We have “everyone else is about to have a problem, but not me” buttons.
alter time gets dispelled by any good player and other dps classes still heal for crazy amounts
2 Likes
Mage is the worst solo class. Period.
No pets. No heals. Our main survivability tools being immune to elites, and sitting in an ice block (20 year old spell) while enemy waits to wail on you, is one of the most humiliating experiences a player can endure.
Teleports are fun tho.
1 Like
Don’t you just love doing higher tier delves as a mage and having to eat after every pack?
The melee vs. caster survivability divide is just ridiculous.
Even playing my enhancement vs. ele shaman you can immediately tell enhancement is supremely more survivable because they have actual self healing worth a damn and unlike casters melee don’t feel the hit of low haste nearly as much as casters do.
2 Likes
Wild they still haven’t used one of the (otherwise completely useless) Mirror Image talents to give us a pocket tank for solo content on a shorter cooldown. Soloing anything elite at lower ilvl is such a wild exercise in using lust, alter time, images, blink, block etc, and god help you if your cooldowns aren’t up. Just give me three copies to smack stuff with a staff and not immediately dissipate.
Doesn’t help that mirror images DIE in one hit, unless you use another 3 minute CD to give them a shield. What a joke.