I mean numerically of course, not every Mage is on the forums therefore it is fewer than the number of Mages. However, on the issue of balance and the “majority” I would argue that the majority are in fact those who are sitting around the 55% percentile parses (higher than 50% to account for deaths due to unforeseen circumstances). I can guarantee you that Blizzard is not balancing around these players, or even the 80% percentile. In the case of Mages specifically - ROP, the Arcane shenangians and to a degree Fire’s combustion phases are absolutely balanced around the 99% percentile parsers which is possibly why there have been so many complaints from the ‘average’ (not bad) players.
At the end of the day, there may be some “l2p” issues but not everyone can play at the level of these top 1%, and while I would never say that the game needs to be balanced around the bottom 20% of players, there’s that massive gap between 20% and 99% who are not happy with the state of the game, and I guarantee that regardless of the reasoning behind it, ROP is a part of that either directly or indirectly. Sadly, these forums seem to be the only place ROP can be discussed without it devolving into a “git gud bruh” (which this thread has almost achieved) or being asked nicely by the mods to stop posting about it.
If ROP isn’t being deleted, then move it to the spec trees and allow IF to be somewhat competitive. This means those who dislike ROP for whatever reason don’t feel forced to take it, and it means the sweaties can run ROP for the extra 5% dps it provides over IF. Problem solved, and no more silly multi-quote fights on forums.