Are Mages OP? At max ilvl.

[Fenryn]

that's still rng. Don't look at top parses, looking at the median for long kills have rogues, ferals, hunters pretty clearly above mages on average, and dk's, arms warr, enh shaman and aff warlock around the same or maybe even a little higher overall average for all bosses also. For all of those mage top parses there are just as many bottom parses for mythic kills (from when PoF went on doomfire spirit, etc).

Even if you look at parses at lower percentiles, mages are top by a fair margin and this lead only increases as you go to higher percentiles: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=50&boss=1799

Purely dps wise, mages are the best class in the game. They just suck at priority target damage but thats what you bring other classes for.
If a mage consistently gets beaten by other classes on dps and blames RNG every time, chances are that person just isn't a very good mage.

[Incredimage]

Even if you look at parses at lower percentiles, mages are top by a fair margin and this lead only increases as you go to higher percentiles: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=50&boss=1799

Purely dps wise, mages are the best class in the game. They just suck at priority target damage but thats what you bring other classes for.
If a mage consistently gets beaten by other classes on dps and blames RNG every time, chances are that person just isn't a very good mage.

This is only natural. As has been stated previously Mages are the top burst class in the game and shorter fights play to that strength, even at lower brackets. The ring also plays into this as Mages scaled the hardest of any class with it.

Mages are definitely the best class when it comes to pure DPS at this point but only if you don't factor in AoE and priority target damage which is important on progression and even farm for some fights. If your raid comp allows for your Mages to just tunnel the boss then you're probably already killing Archimonde because that kind of priority target damage is all you really need to kill him along with some general awareness.

[Deleted]

Looking at logs and log statistics that are effected by the groups that have 18 mages and 1 tank is irrelevant to guilds that actually want to down something they haven't downed before. It's not even restricted to those groups. It's also similar in logs with regular setups but insane ilevels and general performance.

If you want to see what someone actually in progress should care about, search for logs that last much longer than usual.

Then you'll see some classes shine because they can deal better on sustained dps than a gimmick-trinket fire mage.

[Fenryn]

Looking at logs and log statistics that are effected by the groups that have 18 mages and 1 tank is irrelevant to guilds that actually want to down something they haven't downed before. It's not even restricted to those groups. It's also similar in logs with regular setups but insane ilevels and general performance.

If you want to see what someone actually in progress should care about, search for logs that last much longer than usual.

Then you'll see some classes shine because they can deal better on sustained dps than a gimmick-trinket fire mage.

Looking at statistics for 50th percentile logs will not show you any logs with crazy speed kills, since mages in there would be getting much higher percentiles than that. It's stupid to say the only reason mages get high dps is speed kills, mages are simply the strongest pure dps class right now no matter if its ''sustained'' over a longer period or a short fight. They simply burst high enough to carry their dps over untill the next ring.

Honestly, good mages should always be top or nearly top dps. The only thing they suffer on is possibly priority target damage and mass aoe as said before. Even so, mages can still do respectable add damage as long as they swap which most of them seem to dislike ''What if doom nova procs on the add!''.
Add to all this that mages can cheese many mechanics, as said before, and it makes mages an excellent class to have for both progress and farm.

[fiestatastic]

I'm not sure how you are sorting the stats Fenryn, but when I sort the stats on what would be average progression kills, arms warrior, feral and balance, and sub rogue are clearly the top, with arcane, enh shaman, aff warlock, mm hunter, and uh dk on the next tier all about even with each other. From having multiple characters that I've raided with, in guild groups and pugs those statistics fairly accurately represent what I've seen in raids on average.

Which is upper but is certainly not op. I am arguing with you for the sake of those mages that get called out in pugs for not beating me when I'm on my hunter, or warlock, and the warriors, druids, rogues, and occasional dk. They aren't bad at mage for not clearly topping meters. Mages are of course not bad at all either, they're really good, but not mega op like some people have come to expect.

[Incredimage]

I'm not sure how you are sorting the stats Fenryn, but when I sort the stats on what would be average progression kills, arms warrior, feral and balance, and sub rogue are clearly the top, with arcane, enh shaman, aff warlock, mm hunter, and uh dk on the next tier all about even with each other. From having multiple characters that I've raided with, in guild groups and pugs those statistics fairly accurately represent what I've seen in raids on average.

Which is upper but is certainly not op. I am arguing with you for the sake of those mages that get called out in pugs for not beating me when I'm on my hunter, or warlock, and the warriors, druids, rogues, and occasional dk. They aren't bad at mage for not clearly topping meters. Mages are of course not bad at all either, they're really good, but not mega op like some people have come to expect.

If a mage is going to top the meters in middling gear there have to be no adds or great luck and if there are no adds he has to tunnel like nobody's business.

[Deleted]

Looking at statistics for 50th percentile logs will not show you any logs with crazy speed kills, since mages in there would be getting much higher percentiles than that.

I didn't tell you to look at lower percentiles but at longer fight durations. Then you'll see how Arcane Mages start struggling sustaining very high performance (because it's one of the hardest specs in the game to play optimally on high movement), fire mages can't easily manage their gimmicky-trinket they often use (because it can't stop proccing when the ring is delayed) and frost mage is as always a good but averagely good dps (because it has no drawbacks in high movement and delays but Blizzard penalizes it with average dps for it). Percentiles are tainted lately anyway since an Arcane Mage will never compete with the groups of 18 mages.

[Frost1129]

We're pretty strong ya. OP with good RNG, sure.

[Deiae]

If a mage is going to top the meters in middling gear there have to be no adds or great luck and if there are no adds he has to tunnel like nobody's business.

Ofcouse you will tunnel as an arcane mage - as should some other specs. It would be a disservice to your raidteam if you would not. Why would you risk a mark of doom proc on a short lived add? You can generate alot of extra dps - if somewhat inconsistent when it will be - if you get to do your thing. There are alot of specs that have alot less to gain by tunneling and lesser drawbacks if any for switching. Hello mm hunter, hello boomkin etc. Specs - not only arcane - have to be played to their strengths. As long as everyone on your team understands why you do that and someone else has to do something else - like focus pooling and switching harder - that is fine. As a team you generate a better outcome this way.

[Incredimage]

Ofcouse you will tunnel as an arcane mage - as should some other specs. It would be a disservice to your raidteam if you would not. Why would you risk a mark of doom proc on a short lived add? You can generate alot of extra dps - if somewhat inconsistent when it will be - if you get to do your thing. There are alot of specs that have alot less to gain by tunneling and lesser drawbacks if any for switching. Hello mm hunter, hello boomkin etc. Specs - not only arcane - have to be played to their strengths. As long as everyone on your team understands why you do that and someone else has to do something else - like focus pooling and switching harder - that is fine. As a team you generate a better outcome this way.

That's just not how it worked in progression. I suppose with max ring and reliable teammates you can do that but if you have those things then you probably aren't doing progression anymore because your entire raid team is good enough to have people not worry about adds and tunnel the boss. Unless you're dying to mechanics there isn't really anything more important than adds.

I can say from the perspective or a player that has been farming HFC every week that I still need to switch to adds a lot of the time. It's a little different because I'm playing Fire about 99.8% of the time but even as Arcane I swap to adds on Gorefiend w/ the Slow glyph, I swap to Infernals/Deathcallers on Archi, and I swap to the big adds on Tyrant. The only time I wouldn't swap because of Doom Nova is in periods of Mass AoE. Arcane isn't really good at that anyways outside of Supernova and Doom Nova.

[Ipsissimus]

I too would like to affirm that in reality, any self respecting Mage sure as fuck swaps to whatever needs to be swapped to, even more so during progression. Prophecy of Fear doesn't excuse you from doing so, nor would I expect any raid leader to accept "b-but, what if my trinket procs on the add? how can I rank??" as a valid reason.

[Deleted]

On this subject, it's by definition wrong when you do whatever you want without consent from your team. If you think the priorities they've given you are wrong, tell them. In practice, some bosses require switching more than total DPS but in some cases it might be best to leave people do the max they can after adhering to some general guidelines of priority if they can pick and choose.

[Rinoa]

I do think that Mages are overpowered in high-end raids. I don't think we are overpowered in any other raids, even in good gear. We do have very strong DPS across the board, but the difference between Mages and everyone else is only very large at the top end. Below that the differences are much smaller, and the strength of a Mage does not typically involve killing high priority targets, but rather doing extremely high damage to high health targets. You can tailor your damage a bit towards high priority targets of course, but we'll never have the add killing power of Hunters or Destruction Warlocks for example. I think that balances out things in terms of who deals the most immediately useful damage at that level.

Now, that being said, we do have a hell of a lot of utility. In my raid, for example, we cannot get enough mages. Nearly everyone has a Mage or Rogue alt because those are the strongest two DPS classes right now. I think the data we have at our disposal clearly show that as long as lower health adds aren't an issue, Mages are incredibly powerful.

In terms of the top parses, of course Mages are dominating. We have one of the two most burst heavy specs in Arcane, the other being Sublety, - not counting fire here since it takes a bit longer to deal its damage - and out of those two Arcane is the one that benefits the most from the ring as it loads all of its burst into windows that happen every 2 minutes rather than Sublety who has two damage peaks. One large every 2 minutes as well as a smaller one every minute in between. In addition to that, Arcane is also the most RNG heavy spec in the history of the game, meaning the top end parses will be outrageous. This is especially true when fights like Iron Reaver literally end as the first ring explodes, which is the typically highest DPS peak of any single target fight, or in the case of others like Kormrok and Zakuun which end shortly thereafter. We are kings of overall damage right now.

[Deleted]

It might sound important to those guilds but after archimonde mythic is down, it's really not important what's going on in a guild in terms of balance. Even between those guilds, they mainly care who did what first, not who farms faster waiting for Legion. To put it simply, the encounters are broken when you get in with 750 ilevel and a tailor made setup that not even Method could pull off in progression.

[Rinoa]

I agree, progression balance is top priority in my mind. This time around Mages were very good on progression, but not in any way overpowered. It is no coincidence that most top guilds wanted as many Warriors, Death Knights and Hunters they could get their hands on, particularly pre-nerf Warriors and Death Knights as they were crazy damage dealers. Hunters are magnificent at add control, which is highly important in HFC on progression. They are perhaps the single most useful class in that regard.

[Reforge]

Well said, Rinoa.

[Deleted]

Yes they are.

Frost DK's were doing top damage for the first 2 days of the patch then got hit with ~20% nerfs to Howling Blast, Obliterate and Frost Strike (the main rotation) then had trinkets like Empty Drinking Horn and Discordant Chorus nerfed by 50%.



Mages and Rogues have been outliers for months and remain untouched.

I saw they are re-balancing secondary stats and had a bit of hope it'd bring the outliers in to line but it's Blizzard so I doubt it.


Trinkets like Prophecy of Fear and Soul Kappa are unhealthy for balance and shouldn't exist.

I agree, progression balance is top priority in my mind. This time around Mages were very good on progression, but not in any way overpowered. It is no coincidence that most top guilds wanted as many Warriors, Death Knights and Hunters they could get their hands on, particularly pre-nerf Warriors and Death Knights as they were crazy damage dealers. Hunters are magnificent at add control, which is highly important in HFC on progression. They are perhaps the single most useful class in that regard.

There's only two reasons a Death Knight is so wanted.

Gorefiend's Grasp and Mythic Gorefiend.

[SLSAMG]

Delete PoF from game files and you receive "middle of the pack" dps class called Mage.If it wasn't for that RNG shitfest abomination you were not gonna see many mages at all in the tops of Warcraftlogs. Warlocks and Rogues, even Hunters, were gonna shit on us this whole tier. Oh wait. They actually do in a normal raid environment - no cheesing, proper target switching(no tunneling the boss), everybody pushing their numbers, executing somewhat normal tactics etc.
Yes mages are top tier, but not that OP as they were in the end of SoO or ICC.

Wasn't this always the case though? Dragonspine trophy dropped from an entry raid and it ended up being BiS for rogues right up until SWP. Remember UVoLS for demo locks during MoP? Talk about a game breaking trinket... (I miss snap shotting) The only difference was that UVoLS ended up getting nerfed because everyone and their mother would be stacking demo locks for SoO progression. PoF, while powerful - is definitely not game breaking. Every class/spec has their niche at some point.


Regarding the OP's question, every class is OP at max Ilvl...

[Kapadons]

Wasn't this always the case though? Dragonspine trophy dropped from an entry raid and it ended up being BiS for rogues right up until SWP. Remeber UVoLS for demo locks during MoP? Talk about a game breaking trinket... (I miss snap shotting) The only difference was that UVoLS ended up getting nerfed because everyone and their mother would be stacking demo locks for SoO progression. PoF, while powerful - is definitely not game breaking. Every class/spec has their niche at some point.


Regarding the OP's question, every class is OP at max Ilvl...

PoF is a piece of shit trinket designed by a team of drooling orangutans. Been playing a long time and I'm having a hard time remembering a trinket I have hated more.

[Deleted]

I agree, progression balance is top priority in my mind. This time around Mages were very good on progression, but not in any way overpowered. It is no coincidence that most top guilds wanted as many Warriors, Death Knights and Hunters they could get their hands on, particularly pre-nerf Warriors and Death Knights as they were crazy damage dealers. Hunters are magnificent at add control, which is highly important in HFC on progression. They are perhaps the single most useful class in that regard.

Paragon in progress went from 2 warlocks and 2 mages to 1 warlock and 3 mages thooo.... 3 warriors from start to finish