Why the inferiority complex about Mage?

[Volitar]

Fire is good at everything and has no downsides. Who gives a fuck about rankings. #1's are all ludicrously cheesed at this point.

These aren't single parses from a single person they take data from every kill for that spec. Mages playing at a 95 percentile are the 9th best overall DPS.

[Deleted]

I agree with you that fire is less impacted by any kind of trade-off, but I am getting seriously pissed about ppl whining about fire mages being OP (especially 99% of the warlock forum which is full of clueless ppl saying their class is the worst ever). Also, PERSONALLY, i would prefer to be a class that can top EVERY fight if you are willing to switch specs over a class thats mediocre and doesn't to bad but not great on every fight.

Lets look at 75th percentile warcraftlogs for mythic bosses
Nythendra: Demo>fire>frost
Ilgynoth: affliction>destruction>arcane
Elerethe: Fire>affliction>arcane
Ursoc: Demo>fire>arcane
Dragons: Affliction>fire>destro
Cenarius: Alffiction>demo>destruction (hello mages?)
Xavius: Fire>affliction>destruction

TOV heroic:
Odyn: Destruction>Affl>demo (hello mages??)
Guarm: Demo>Frost>fire
Helya: Arcane>Fire>Affl

Seems warlocks are WAY better off tbh...

Lets look at 90th percentile for EN mythic
Nythendra: Demo>fire>arcane
Ilgynoth: affliction>arcane>destruction
Elerethe: Fire>affliction>arcane
Ursoc: Demo>fire>arcane
Dragons: Affliction (TOP OF ALL)>fire>destro
Cenarius: Affliction>demo>destruction (hello mages again?)
Xavius: Frost>fire>affliction

TOV heroic 90th:
Odyn: Destruction>Affl>demo (hello mages?)
Guarm: Demo>Fire>arcane
Helya: Arcane>Affliction>fire


I would gladly have some 'weaknesses' and beat warlocks on nearly every fight if I played two specs. The whole advantage of being a pure dps class is so you can switch specs to shore up weaknesses of one spec over the other. Also, it's hard to argue fire has no weaknesses when it is below ALL warlock specs on 3 fights...

Also, when looking at overall performance over all fights its:

Afflic>fire>arcane~demo for mythic EN
Afflic>arcane>destruction~fire for ToV heroic


Taking into account that there are more parses available for fire mages than all 3 warlock specs combined, this paints a very bleak picture.
Due to warlock balancing being all over the place compared to mage balancing, its also reasonable to expect mages to have better spec specific legendaries than warlocks.

Edit: I'm not saying mages are in a bad state compared to all classes, I think we are in a very good state actually. But, it is clearly hilariously stupid to call mages OP...
It is also absolutely ridiculous that (atleast from my personal experience) there are more people whining about mages being OP than freaking shadow priests

There is much more in Legion then just Raids , for example Mythic+ , Where Most People gear and Play most of the day and Thats Where Mages Are pures Borken and OP as FK , Where as classes like lock and spriest cant mostly compare , Overall the Mages Class is just high Tier and priest for example Not just because of a simple Fact that Mages excell at mostly everything , solo Content mythic + and there raiding is also average to good , so in Marks IT Would ne like a 1- which Maybe hunters Can reach but on Other Class

[Volitar]

Completely agree. Spriests in Raids are a worthy competitor in dps but in dungeons, lol, try and keep up with us Mages.

In low level mythics Shadow doesn't stand a chance but in high level ones where stuff isn't just instantly deleted Shadow isn't as bad as people think.

[GT4]

First true single target boss this tier: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ty=4&boss=1962

Hunter (and Shaman, which are very underrepresented, under tuned, and pretty much broken bad) seems to be the only ranged class that is truly behind mage.

Do you consider balance druid "top tier ranged DPS for single target" as well?

Weak on target switching fights as well. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ty=4&boss=1958

The only commonly used spec Fire is above right now is MM hunter.

The only reason people still think Fire is OP is because of M Xavius. On the hardest fight of the expansion so far (M Cenarius) they are pretty bottom barrel level DPS.

Average single target
Bad target switching.
Bad at non-stacked multi dotting.
Above average cleave.
Great AoE

Not sure what you're smoking but looking at Guarm, fire mage is still above all three hunter specs, above elemental shaman, above 2/3 warlock specs. Demonology, the turret warlock spec, is even and actually behind for the top parse despite having two OP legendaries compared to Mages having one. The exact same as for Demonology is also true for Balance.

That means fire is pretty much #2 range DPS (after shadow) for the fight without legendaries and tied for #2 with BiS legendaries.

Then you're talking about target switching fights and link Odyn which is just as much of a multi-dotting paradise as it is a target switching fight. For actual "target switching fights", fire can range anywhere from very good to very bad depending on the circumstances. If the focus target spawns (or moves) close to the boss and ignite can jump over, fire is completely fine.

[Zenny]

Fire being 11th/12th in single target despite being the 2nd/3rd best caster spec doesn't make Fire too strong, it just means most ranged specs are under tuned.

[Irian]

Because among casters, fire mages stand out as the only one with a toolkit that allows them to do everything well.

People mention affliction warlocks, but affliction suffers at bursty 5-man content and also has a horrendous gearing up process that leaves it unpopular. Shadow priests are amazing yet have the same issue and in fact only ever really become good for M+ at the much higher levels. Elemental shaman have solid cleave/AoE damage but their single target is poor at best.
People see fire mages crapping out 800k-1m burst on trash packs, with insane opener DPS, they're great at short duration fights, they have great mobility, a very desired raid cooldown (keep in mind, almost all buffs are gone from the game now so bloodlust is more unique than ever) and even their single target is solid, and they're fairly easy to play, and it's no wonder most people think fire mages are godly. You have to see things through the perspective of the average player, who mostly does dungeons with the occasional heroic raid and likely averages around 850-860 ilvl, not the mythic raiders.

[Xires]

Because Blizzard devs really do play mages and mages always do well or excel at just about everything. They're Blizzard's golden child and the favoritism is painfully obvious.

I remember when people like you claimed that ghostcrawler mained a Mage and it turns out he mained a Holy Priest. Mages are typically solid- they are NOT always the best as we have seen from this very x-pac. They are good, they are reliable, and in average guilds with below average to average players they will look like kings. Put them in a guild group where people know how to maximize their class potential and you see that Mage is good and solid but NOT the best. Right now Spriests are amazing amongst others.

- - - Updated - - -

Because among casters, fire mages stand out as the only one with a toolkit that allows them to do everything well.

People mention affliction warlocks, but affliction suffers at bursty 5-man content and also has a horrendous gearing up process that leaves it unpopular. Shadow priests are amazing yet have the same issue and in fact only ever really become good for M+ at the much higher levels. Elemental shaman have solid cleave/AoE damage but their single target is poor at best.
People see fire mages crapping out 800k-1m burst on trash packs, with insane opener DPS, they're great at short duration fights, they have great mobility, a very desired raid cooldown (keep in mind, almost all buffs are gone from the game now so bloodlust is more unique than ever) and even their single target is solid, and they're fairly easy to play, and it's no wonder most people think fire mages are godly. You have to see things through the perspective of the average player, who mostly does dungeons with the occasional heroic raid and likely averages around 850-860 ilvl, not the mythic raiders.

So because the average player sucks and doesn't know how to play their class properly...we should nerf Mages? I don't think so. Their is a reason blizzard looks at the top players to see what is going on because the average wow player has NO CLUE what they are doing. So we get people like you that say we should look at how below average to very below average players are playing and go from there and THAT will cause nothing but problems.

- - - Updated - - -

Fire is good at everything and has no downsides. Who gives a fuck about rankings. #1's are all ludicrously cheesed at this point.

Thank god you aren't on the blizzard staff because I'm laughing at you right now. "Lets not base our opinion on the best players that can show how the class compares and base it on people that don't really know what they are doing and go from there!"

- - - Updated - - -

They've never had a bad tier

Highmaul- we were so undertuned blizzard gave us 25% buffs for many of our spells. On burst phases we'd climb to the middle of the pack and afterwards fall right back down to the bottom. Just because a class hasn't had a lot of bad tiers doesn't mean it is "OP". Mages are pure damage and 100% squishy. They have their strengths and weaknesses. Nothing but average to below average players on here complaining about them, sorry.

- - - Updated - - -

Mage might not be the best right now, but I'm sure they'll be top 5 with one spec, probably with tier gear.

Every expansions, or tier of raiding mage is a safe bet to be a top dps spec, no matter what. Meanwhile you get other classes who can be shit an entire tier or be forced into playing a single spec, demo lock for example. And it's not like you can just swap specs now. You need your 3 relics and artifact power.

The issue isn't just that some specs aren't as good as mage, it's that mage has NEVER had a bad time, they are ALWAYS viable, hell even if you ran frost, you just got some giant ass buffs while other under performing specs sit in the dirt.

If you run Frost in mythic then you are playing wrong. They buffed frost because it was just so terrible. Even after the buffs fire still destroys it.

[Dakhath]

They've never had a bad tier

I'm not a mage, but Mages were sat in Sunwell almost universally. Saw this on the front page and it made me laugh because I remember my friend getting so mad during progression. Time to heroic leap out of this class forum!

[Xires]

I love how OP cherrypicks the percentiles and then takes the manual average instead of the aggregate value on warcraftlogs just to skew the numbers towards their argument.

If you realistically look at mythic fights and compare fire mages to other range DPS:
Nythendra second after SP if you exclude mind control damage, otherwise arguably first.
Il'gynoth depends on your strategy and setup but best reliable heart DPS and probably 2nd best for outside after MM (high AoE burst for 8 stack bloods, decent burst for tentacles).
Elerethe second after SP.
Ursoc second after SP.
Dragons is hard to say because some specs excel at boss DPS (SP / destruction), some excel at lethon shade DPS (affliction / elemental / MM) whereas fire is decent at former and pretty good at latter. Definitely top 4 though.
Cenarius is hard to tell because of different strategies and most DoT classes padding on drakes.
Xavius once again has a lot of padding in P3 (for mages as well this time) but given the nature of the fight, fire mage should be #2 after SP for boss + add damage.

In the end, once Blizzard fixes S2M abuse cases (which they suggested they'd do in 7.1.5), fire is going to be the strongest range DPS spec overall again. Comparing to melee DPS makes no sense because you cannot raid mythic with only melees so you won't be competing with them for spots in most cases.

1. Nyth- so if you exclude a main ability by Spriest then Mages are the best...makes sense. /rolls eyes
2. the eye- so under good conditions fire COULD be first...great argument.
3. Elerethe-Second....not first. So not OP. You are losing your argument.
4. Ursoc - second again...beating yourself up at this point
5. Dragons - "Hard to say" <---need I say more?
6. Cenarias- "Hard to tell"
7. Xavius - #2 again.

Sounds like SP's are OP. Yet we are talking about mages?

- - - Updated - - -

Trye another class and you will understand why other people QQ about mages!!

Only below average players QQ about Mages. If you wanna really QQ then look at SP's.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually using your brain is more than welcome. Fire Mage is absolutely best at ranged dps. Use warcraftlogs.com as you wish, but don't forget that mathematics and statistics aren't considered hard because it's anecdotal. Reading those logs is not just looking at nice bars.
Go check on priorities! What needs to be done, and who is good at it?

Besides numbers (which fire is really great, no ranged beats them), consider the following:
-Nyhtendra and getting out with rot easily? Grouping up easily? No mage can miss these.
-Ursoc, almost the same, got out of position and you can relocate yourself when needed.
-Elerethe, same
-on Dragons, standing in flowers, killing shades, or even going to portals and murder the add with cds
-Cenarius, you can easily dodge brambles, saving lot of mana for your healers. DPS is good as always.
-Xavius cannot be considered a hard boss, but a mage can easily exploit the dream mechanic, adds come in a pack of 3? Go and blast them away. No real contest.

Just a few examples, and I know a few other specs can capable of some of it, but a fire mage can do mechanics easily AND do top-tier dps on all priority targets, be it the brain on ilgynoth, just boss damage or whatever you want. You cannot name a single weakness, and that's why Fire Mage is the best all-around ranged spec.

You're terrible.

1. No class should have problems moving out of bad things.
2. Other classes can relocate themselves quickly as well- this is NOT just a Mage thing.
3. Spider boss- out of position? What position? Dont stand infront of the boss and don't stand in bad shit /the end
4. Dragons...never seen any guild so far send down Mages to the portal.
5. Cenarius- Everybody can easily dodge brambel...that's called "situational awareness". DPS is good but not the best.
7. Xavius is easy on heroic and below- you aren't even raiding mythic so once again below average player making a below average and non-founded complaint. Also SP's still dominate and it is purely RNG with the dream.

You possibly have the weakest argument I have seen and infact it worked against you as you proved yourself wrong with every opinion peace you made while at the same time telling the OP that he should IGNORE the boards, ignore the math, and ignore the facts because it doesn't fit your narrative. Sounds very familiar....

- - - Updated - - -

They're #1 for AoE. They're top tier range DPS for single target. They're top tier range DPS for cleave. They have the best mobility of all range DPS. They can cheese mechanics with ice block.

If SPs didn't have S2M in its current state (which is likely to be changed in 7.1.5), fire mages would be the uncontested winner when it comes to range DPS even after just having been nerfed.

- - - Updated - - -



Balance was strong throughout all of Cataclysm. Ironically, having said that, they were horrible for arguably the hardest fight in Cata (spine of deathwing) so ultimately you were still better off with a mage overall.

They can cheese mechanics with their IB that has a 5 min CD which means "once per fight"?
Other classes have the same ability only better.
They are NOT top tier DPS as SP's destroy them.

[ssviolett]

Because among casters, fire mages stand out as the only one with a toolkit that allows them to do everything well.

People mention affliction warlocks, but affliction suffers at bursty 5-man content and also has a horrendous gearing up process that leaves it unpopular. Shadow priests are amazing yet have the same issue and in fact only ever really become good for M+ at the much higher levels. Elemental shaman have solid cleave/AoE damage but their single target is poor at best.
People see fire mages crapping out 800k-1m burst on trash packs, with insane opener DPS, they're great at short duration fights, they have great mobility, a very desired raid cooldown (keep in mind, almost all buffs are gone from the game now so bloodlust is more unique than ever) and even their single target is solid, and they're fairly easy to play, and it's no wonder most people think fire mages are godly. You have to see things through the perspective of the average player, who mostly does dungeons with the occasional heroic raid and likely averages around 850-860 ilvl, not the mythic raiders.

Bullshit, seriously.
Hunter can pop like 1m+ dps just hitting one button - Barrage, DHs just hit several buttons - Charge! +1m dps, Blade Dance! - 1m dps, Eye Beam! +1m dps, while mages have to push their CDs like mad, outside CD's we enjoy 200-300k dps. So mages are great?
Our AoE toolkit is only fine when 870+ ilvl, 900+ ilvl of weapon, best legendaries and a lot of gems.
And you trink raid leader will bring low performing mage due to Heroism? Don't think so.
On every single encounter in EN we get overdpsed by warlocks, priests, dh's, warriors, rogues, just check the logs. So where are we great? Times of 1-button-arcane mages topping the meters are kinda in the past, dude.

[GT4]

@Xires: Your sole argument is "SPs are OP so mages cannot be top tier" which is nonsensical. SPs are the outlier and will eventually be addressed. They're also single target and council experts which means you'd still want to take mages and hunters (of which mages have less weaknesses) for fights where you need some AoE such as Helya.

[Deleted]

Imo, there are two things about mages that makes people think of them as really strong:

- We're constantly quite good. We haven't had a bad tier in ages (Sunwell being the last i can remember). If we start out as bad, we get buffed accordingly. The same isn't true for many other dps specs (for example ret, WW, ele). And in all that time we were being quite good, we had a few godlike tiers in there - for example DS as fire mage on almost all bosses, with arcane as an incredibly good alternative for something like Spine.

- We're getting really high quality of life changes and bugfixes. That sounds a bit mushy, so here's what I mean: Can you imagine, if during our DPS cds (IV, Combustion, AP) every single damage proc, be it from trinkets or pots or other sources, is reduced by 50%? Or, for its previous iteration, everytime we have a Blizzard active or Living Bomb on more than 1 target, every single damage proc is reduced by 50%? Seems like a big bug, that would get fixed quite fast. It's in for my main (WW) for a few years now, and in Legion we got the first tweet about it: It's not a bug, it's a feature. Things like that don't happen on a mage. And it honestly would put me off from there, searching for another 1st twink.


@Re1ax: To take the statistics you posted, 95percentile on a boss-per-boss basis, let's compare our classes. First number is WW, second is fire. (Sidenote: I'm not a fan of really high percentiles, as I think it should be balanced for the average raider. I just take it for the sake of argument as they were posted in the OP.)

Nythendra: 348k vs 375k,  fire > ww by ~8%.  All 3 mage specs are higher.
Ilgynoth:  350k vs 320k,  ww > fire by ~9%.  WW is higher than all 3 mage specs.
Elerethe:  342k vs 371k,  fire > ww by ~8%.  2 mage specs are higher than ww.
Ursoc:     419k vs 432k,  fire > ww by ~3%.  2 mages specs higher than ww.
Dragons:   380k vs 480k,  fire > ww by ~26%. All 3 mage specs are higher.
Cenarius:  434k vs 423k,  ww > fire by ~3%.  2 mage specs are higher.
Xavius:    468k vs 582k,  fire > ww by ~24%. All 3 mage specs are higher.

As you see, you beat us on 5/7 bosses, though only on 2 bosses the difference is big (Xavius and Dragons). Only on one single boss WW is better than all mage specs (Ilgynoth). So, seeing those numbers, you may see how those people are a bit envious about your damage numbers. Still, WWs generally think it's one of our stronger tiers. Which it is, we're viable on most bosses.

[e] for better formatting to make it easier to read.

[Irian]

So because the average player sucks and doesn't know how to play their class properly...we should nerf Mages? I don't think so. Their is a reason blizzard looks at the top players to see what is going on because the average wow player has NO CLUE what they are doing. So we get people like you that say we should look at how below average to very below average players are playing and go from there and THAT will cause nothing but problems.

When the hell did I ever say in that post anything about nerfing mages? Defensive much? Not even the OP's post said anything about nerfing them. I'm saying why people understandably think they're OP.

If anything I think other casters need retuning to be made more well-rounded. Not homogenized, but not so extreme, and having a class that sucks until 870 ilvl isn't really okay either.

You need to stop being so hypersensitive about your class on a video game.

Bullshit, seriously.
Hunter can pop like 1m+ dps just hitting one button - Barrage, DHs just hit several buttons - Charge! +1m dps, Blade Dance! - 1m dps, Eye Beam! +1m dps, while mages have to push their CDs like mad, outside CD's we enjoy 200-300k dps. So mages are great?
Our AoE toolkit is only fine when 870+ ilvl, 900+ ilvl of weapon, best legendaries and a lot of gems.
And you trink raid leader will bring low performing mage due to Heroism? Don't think so.
On every single encounter in EN we get overdpsed by warlocks, priests, dh's, warriors, rogues, just check the logs. So where are we great? Times of 1-button-arcane mages topping the meters are kinda in the past, dude.

DHs have a pretty huge gap in their ST because of their strong AoE, so much so that many DHs find a pretty big issue with it. They're also a melee class, which naturally makes them at a disadvantage when it comes to stuff like M+. Hunters suffer from pretty mediocre ST as well, which was exactly my point to begin with. And for the point of bloodlust/heroism, I was talking mostly dungeons.

Since I never said anything about nerfing mages, I can only assume you guys are trying to deny that mages are doing well and that's just downright denial and a bad case of the "grass is greener" syndrome. M+ is a blessing to fire, frost and arcane are both in the upper tiers of ST and combined with good DPS, good mobility and ice block that can cheat mechanics mages are still easily the best RDPS overall.

[munkeyinorbit]

They've never had a bad tier

They were terrible in 4 5 6 except for bugs every now and then. Some fights they were needed to spell steal but dps wise they were shit. Why bring a mage when a warlock did it better was the mantra. Better to just have a mage at the raid instance entrance so we could get the buff at the door.

[Xuvial]

Another thing that gives people an illusion of Mages' overall strength is their PvP performance as Frost.

Throughout all PvP tiers Frostmages haven't exactly RULED at same levels as Rogues have (I will always see Rogues as the eternal god-tier PvP class), but I don't think there has ever been a tier where frostmages have flat-out sucked. Simply due to how much insane crowd-control they brought, they where always either strong or viable enough as a pure CC-bot + being very difficult to pin-down. Also the age-old arena comp "RMP" (rogue/mage/priest) has been incredibly viable pretty much since arena PvP became a thing. Of course that comp always took a high amount of skill to pull off compared to the countless mongoloid "hurr durr bloodlust + cleave" melee setups (the original Beast-cleave comes to mind) that came and went.

Frostmages' worst point was at the same time as T6 (what was that, Season 3?), when warlocks + resto druids ruled almost all aspects of arena and there was nothing frostmages could do against those classes. But still, RMP continued to be viable in 3v3 during that time and even in 2v2 rogue+mage could get to decent ratings.

[Deleted]

I'm not a mage, but Mages were sat in Sunwell almost universally. Saw this on the front page and it made me laugh because I remember my friend getting so mad during progression. Time to heroic leap out of this class forum!

This is true, the one time in the existence of the game was during the sunwell when warlocks were OP as hell.

[Deleted]

Because among casters, fire mages stand out as the only one with a toolkit that allows them to do everything well.

People mention affliction warlocks, but affliction suffers at bursty 5-man content and also has a horrendous gearing up process that leaves it unpopular. Shadow priests are amazing yet have the same issue and in fact only ever really become good for M+ at the much higher levels. Elemental shaman have solid cleave/AoE damage but their single target is poor at best.
People see fire mages crapping out 800k-1m burst on trash packs, with insane opener DPS, they're great at short duration fights, they have great mobility, a very desired raid cooldown (keep in mind, almost all buffs are gone from the game now so bloodlust is more unique than ever) and even their single target is solid, and they're fairly easy to play, and it's no wonder most people think fire mages are godly. You have to see things through the perspective of the average player, who mostly does dungeons with the occasional heroic raid and likely averages around 850-860 ilvl, not the mythic raiders.

I somewhat dispute the good at everything. Although i thought it as well cracks are showing. It's mainly on single target.
What i disagree on is bloodlust with raiding. It doesn't stack and the same classes still have it (unknown if hunters pet can but would be rare anyway). Also leatherworking drums but people arnt going for drums, i wonder if drums work in m+.
And that's where bloodlust does become important dungeons. With another class with 2 specs it becomes rarer to get a mage or shaman and you really want to have one of those.

[Ooshraxa]

BM Hunter pets can Bloodlust, and drums work just fine in M+. They're 5% less than lust though.

[Deleted]

Also leatherworking drums but people arnt going for drums, i wonder if drums work in m+.

Yes, they do. Though, as you said, people usually don't go for them: They're 5% weaker, and the BL providers are among the strongest specs (healer and dd) for m+ anyway.

[Xequecal]

I'm not a mage, but Mages were sat in Sunwell almost universally. Saw this on the front page and it made me laugh because I remember my friend getting so mad during progression. Time to heroic leap out of this class forum!

The optimal Sunwell raid was 2 tanks, 5 Resto Shaman, 3 Shadow Priests, 3 wildcard classes to pick up all the unique stackable buffs, and 12 Warlocks. A lot of classes got sat in Sunwell.