what game?
FFXIV black mage is pretty good. You shift between frost and fire spells, it has a satisfying tool kit and if played well you will too the dps meters (BLM is the “selfish” caster meaning instead of group utility you are DESIGNED to deal more damage).
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FFXIV like Wattz said is good, but you have zero mobility, if you dont like RoP you won’t like Black MAge also haha
Diablo 2 and 4 have a nice concept of a mage. Black Desert is nice too. Lost Ark mage is fun.
Lots of options out there, I would avoid only Guild Wars, New World and Skyrim, all those have bad mage concepts, worse than wow.
I would argue Guild Wars 1-2 have both a good mage gameplay with the elementalist, if you want a more action-oriented mage and if you like the concept of a mageblade.
Else for good mage gameplay:
- Outward - An indie game that made the methodical gameplay and component management done right.
- Magicka 1-2 - If you havent played this game, i recommend you to try it, especially in couch-coop with friends, there is nothing serious in this game, but the spell casting system is awesome and it’s so fun to play with friend with friendly fire activated.
- Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s gate 3 - If you like turn based games, the environmental and magic combo systems of those two Larian games made magic be very dynamic and fun to play with. Plus these are 2 excellent RPG’s.
- Fable Anniversary - The remake of an old game that made magic right.
- DDO (Dungeon and Dragon Online) - It’s hard to recommend DDO today, but appart from Wow, i think this game as the single best mage gameplay of all MMO i’ve played. But it’s a 2006 MMO (more of a dungeon crawler group-based, tbf).
I liked the old summoner from FF14, but no other class gave me the same feeling of being a mage, without being a boring turret. Since the rework, i could not find any class that made me want to continue this game.
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Dear Blizzard,
You have a class underperforming, so much so that in your own forums there is a post talking about what other company will provide the game play your customer base is looking for. Please do anything for mage
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you can always play red mage instead. Jumping everywhere, slashing with rapier between still epic looking casts. And you can res people in combat
Not this one, that’s for sure. But bitterness aside this is a great question for players weary of the mess WoW has made of Mages.
Unfortunately, in terms of MMOs things aren’t looking great. All the big name ones have major issues either with the specific gameplay of the mage archetype or the general feel of the game.
I’ve tried to get used to the Eastern style games but I just can’t get past the cultural differences that inevitably make it into the games. The ridiculous races that look like tiny children with bunny ears and fox tails. The oversexualized female models with the skimpy outfits. The arbitrary gender based class restrictions (only males can be warriors and only females can be mages sort of thing). It’s just too rigid and immersion breaking for me. Which is really unfortunate because if you can get past that, abilities in general and magic specifically look stunning and are typically accompanied by solid gameplay as well. To one extent or another FF14, Guild Wars, Black Desert, Lost Ark and others like them all fall in that category for me.
Meanwhile on the Western side of things it’s all WoW clones or games that have struggled to retain a solid subscription base and have resorted to micro transactions to a truly disgusting level that make the game purposely annoying to play without a subscription while at the same time don’t produce enough content to warrant one. Elder Scrolls Online and SW:TOR are the most prominent in that category. Again, really unfortunate because both games have stellar storylines and decent gameplay though their visuals are somewhat lacking because no money has been put into the games to update them to modern standards.
I also want to give Warhammer Age of Reckoning an honorable mention because it was an amazing game but the studio behind it completely failed to live up to the massive expectations that came with that IP. Though the official servers shut down years ago there is a private server run by the community that preserves the game faithfully to this day and improves upon it regularly but it’s a passion project and there are no actual resources going into development or updating the game so aside from the nostalgia factor for those who used to play it, there’s not much to keep new players engaged.
On the A-RPG side there’s Diablo and all of its clones with Path of Exile standing head and shoulder above the rest. Obviously magic and flashy abilities in A-RPGs look fantastic but personally I’ve never found the games otherwise engaging enough to get me to play them regularly.
Then you’ve got games like Elden Ring and Hogwarts: Legacy which are hands down some of the best games I’ve ever played in well over 20 years of gaming. I truly believe games like that are the future of gaming but as great as they are the replay-ability just isn’t there.
I am really hoping against hope that Riot will pull a miracle when they finally drop their LoL based MMO and somehow revive the genre but who know when or if that will happen.
So yeah, things are pretty bleak right now. Looking forward to reading more suggestions by others.
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The problem I find is that there are 2 camps:
- The non-moving - stuck to the ground caster
- The always moving - too fast for eyes to follow - enjoy the blurriness caster
I find neither of them particularly fun.
I used to like the planted caster, when being planted meant you were going to deal serious damage. But WoW in particular has turned the game into an always keep moving game similar to that of an ARPG - but not nearly as fast (but fast enough to be annoying).
And when you DO have time to plant and cast, your damage is pathetic. Where as FF14, at least BLM does crank.
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Guild Wars 2: Elementalists and Mesmers. thank me later
Not a video game, but DnD has great Magic users with a lot of variety. Wizards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Bards, Druids. You can tailor them to how you want it, including tanky life-steal warlocks. Hell with dual-speccing you can even play a shockadin, holy support lock, elemental spec, cc/control spec… whatever floats your boat really.
For video games, aside from those mentioned already and the general mmo/arpg/jrpg suggestions if you’re looking for something different I’ve been playing a lot of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands recently. It is a FPS but my Spellshot/Graveborn no longer needs a gun and just runs around with spells and wrecks.
Tbh I came back to wow this year after playing a few other games (Hogwarts for one) because I missed how playing a wizard feels in this game. Obviously everyone else here hates wow mage so idk, but it’s one of the best imo. Mostly because wow’s combat in general still stands out as one of the best in the genre, probably less to do with any mage specifics
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I still miss my Spellslinger from WildStar.
Other than that, I miss my Black Mage from Final Fantasy XIV sometimes. I really liked their big fire damage with ice being mana preservation and lightning being about damage over time. I like World of Warcraft more as a game though and didn’t make it much further than actually becoming a Black Mage on my cat girl.
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Dragon Age.
I’mma charg’n up my staff!
I just miss Wildstar in general, and I’m still salty about how much potential was wasted. It looked great, played reasonably well, had really fun dungeons and mechanics, the best housing system in any game, and the devs openly encouraged addons rather than baseline UI. It had telegraphed/empowered abilities 10 years before Evokers.
It’s just a shame it was so amazingly unfriendly towards casuals, had huge in-game gatekeeping issues, and was aimed solely at players who could sink 40 hours a week into it. It didn’t help that the devs made it public knowledge how much they despised players who weren’t playing it as a full-time job, and that the game could never decide if it wanted to be cartoony, funny or dark.
Come to think of it, almost every MMO released in the last 10 years has been a bit like that… so much potential, so much bleh. I’ll learn my lesson one day…
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Guild Wars 2 = Awesome Spellcadting classes
Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are amazing for both fire type spellcasting as well as magic type damage casting.
Your only MMO alternative is Wrath Classic, where arcane and fire are both fun as hell and do sick dps, and will continue to be good until ICC, when fire will outshine everything.