I started playing at the end of cataclysm as a paladin, I had no idea what I was doing I was 11 or 12 at the time. After playing with the pally for awhile I saw a class that looked visually amazing to me I loved the spells it casted and it looked cool. I found it that class was the mage so i tried it and fell in love. The mage has been my all time favorite class since then and more recently something has happened and I just cant pin point it. The mage doesnt feel the same anymore and it doesnt feel right. Its to a point where I just dont like it anymore. Does anyone else feel this way and maybe know why?
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GCDs, prunes, etc. I miss Frostfire bolt.
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me too. i miss that and actually using mirror image was something aswell
Up through Cataclysm, the general design of the mage was “huge tool chest full of magical abilities”. Mages had an ability and/or talent for just about any given situation, even if it wasn’t always optimal, which made them interesting to play and very versatile, especially outside of instanced stuff.
MoP started peeling that away a bit by introducing the pigeonholed spec design, making it impossible to hybrid spec and restricting a few abilities to specific trees, but overall mages were still in pretty good shape.
WoD absolutely gutted the mage class. Of all the classes, it was easily one of the hardest hit. Some abilities were removed outright and countless others got locked to a single spec. Mages got downgraded from magical toolchest to magical dollar store screwdriver kit.
Legion patched things up reasonably well with the abilities and talents granted by artifact weapons and legendaries. For the entire stretch between mid and late Legion, all 3 specs were pretty decent.
BfA took our artifacts and legendaries and replaced them with Azerite. A few of the old artifact abilities got rolled into their respective specs, but most didn’t, leaving some specs with gaps.
So here we are today. I still enjoy the class but it’s a bit of a shell of its former self.
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I’m not very happy with BFA. Mages aren’t in a great spot.
But I’m more worried about Shadowlands. Word is all 3 specs are garbage there.
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Not garbage, but they have been nerfed somewhat (Igninte spreading changed to Fireblast, Shimmer getting one charge, Arcane Power changed to a 3 minute cooldown), Frost Bolt still hitting like a wet noodle, etc.). I’ll probably still play mine, but I’m not a fan of some of these changes.
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Same as every other class—blizzard chose to move complexity from class design to encounter design, making pretty much every spec in the game feel obscenely boring to play when you’re not in high keys or heroic+ raids.
Joke’s on blizz bc the vast majority of players never step foot in a high key or a heroic raid, causing them to get bored of the game a week after hitting max level because their vessel into the world feels like CRAP, so they quit right after hitting 120.
The current devs truly have no idea what they’re doing.
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Sad to say but this is the case with most classes. Blizzard has a major problem with class design and they seem to continuously over-correct themselves.
Started off in Classic where classes were designed and balanced around the idea of having major weaknesses and major strengths. Problem was if you were a hybrid class you were mediocre or crap at everything, so why bring a Prot paladin when you can just bring a Prot warrior?
So during Cata they tried to balance all the classes based around “bring the player not the class” but this lead to extreme class homogenization where everyone had the tools to do everything. Every weakness was relieved. You’re a mage and have no way to heal yourself? Your mana AND health now regenerate with evocate. You’re a rogue and you’re weak to melee attacks? Here’s a shield wall!
So now they decide “classes have too many buttons” and have too many ways to counter their weaknesses. In comes the prune. But they don’t stop at just pruning things like evocate heal, or rogues combat readiness. They purge so many damn spells that classes feel like pre-alpha specs for vanilla WoW. They remove things that make the class feel like the class, disc priests lose prayer of mending (still sad about this), paladins lose auras, DKs lose frost/blood/unholy presence, rogues lose poisons, warriors lose stances.
While some of these are coming back it’s simply not enough. Blizzard really screwed up classes and they’re trying to prop them up with these stupid systems on top of systems like legion legendaries, artifact weapons, Azerite traits, etc.
Just give us our damn abilities back and stop trying to force these stupid systems on us that you throw out and re-design every expansion.
/endrant
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Mage doesn’t really play any differently than when I started playing it in WoD.
I think your problem is more in not understanding the current mechanics to make your character strong in this expansion. A lot of people attempt to do hard content with low ilvls and poor setup of things like essences and azerite powers.
Also, too many people jump into playing fire mage thinking it’s ez mode fotm, and when it turns out it requires a lot of mechanical forethought and gearing, suddenly throw their hands up in the air in frustration.
If you want a class that will annihilate even at lower ilvls, you want a havoc dh. Simple, powerful and effective. If you want to learn mage, you are gonna have to invest time and energy into.
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Says the fire mage on top of meters.
Mages can now be define by a 10 seconds burn phase as fire. That is all.
You’re 435 ilvl and have ran virtually zero content so idk how you would ever know what the class actually feels like.
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Fire is tops with the right setups for sure, but he is right about lower ilvls. Without the proper gear/essences/traits/etc, a 450 fire mage is comparable to a 420 havoc in terms of overall damage and survivability.