[Mage] Nightmares about the direction of the class.

[munchkin]

Hello,

8 year veteran since Vanilla. Played a warlock until first tier of BC, quit for 3 months, came back, rolled mage. Ill just be blunt and to the point here. Even though I have a lot invested in my toon, I don't really enjoy it as much anymore. The direction, the feel, the homogenization, and the lack of specific identity compared to other classes.

I have a lock (lvl 43) that I've been eyeing lately. I really wish I didn't have these thoughts/feelings, but my Warlock appeals to me more each day. My question to the mage community is: have you ever felt like this before? And if so, how did you shake it off and continue playing your mage?

I'm in a dark place right now (no pun intended), and I don't like it; but I'm not sure what to do from here.

[Valyk]

You should play whatever is fun to you.

The game is going to change around you, there's no way to prevent the changes, and there's no reason to feel like you're betraying anything by saying "this class isn't fun to me right now" and switching to a different class / spec / role / etc.

[Deleted]

have you ever felt like this before?

I still love mage. But just like you I am deeply worried about the direction the class is taking. My main was rogue during wotlk, during cata I was more unsubbed than subbed and after coming back at the end of 5.2 I felt like rogue lost his "touch", to me it seemed they totally lost control over this class and it was just going to get worse (mop proved me right), so I went for a mage.
To me it feels like that the same thing that happened to the rogue class is now happening to the mage class: devs lost control on it while driving between pvp/pve, plus some developing mistakes not tied to pve/pvp, hopefully the crash willl be followed by a swift redesign of some of our talents and mop concepts.

[nimryas]

To me its the lack of good/fun/pleasuring tier 6 talents & the fact that mages have been pretty much the same since wotlk? Meanwhile alot of classes have gotten big time changes which made (for example locks). To me it seems blizzard hasnt put in much thought about the mage class and they're only trying to keep us satisfied on the short term with stupid fixes, I don't think they're planning for big mage changes any time soon. I still like my mage enough to keep playing, but it is way less fun then it used to be!

[mipper]

I feel your pain -- with the changes I've been wandering around wow classless for a while. I kept trying to enjoy mage but I don't like the awkward lvl 90 talents and i'm not a huge fan of alter time either.

Anywho -- working on leveling a shadow priest and balance druid, I find both much more fun - it may be the first time ever in wow that i change mains. I'd say take a new class for a spin.

[Bopcommander]

I'll be an 8 year vet next month, and I've played my mage through it all. Yes things get dark, but I still enjoy playing my mage. I enjoy the play style. Even though right now, our lvl 90 talents are making it hard. That's why I have alts that I play with in our 2nd or 3rd runs. Getting 1.8m crits on Elegon even though are rare, make me wanting to come back for more. I wouldn't see that on another toon.

My mage will always be my main.

[Matronmalise]

My tactic has always been the same, level what ever is fun and keeps your attention and interest. I have 5 90's since early in the expansion, and have three more i am working on slowly. If a class gets nerfed and gets more interesting I play that, if one gets a huge buff i play that until it gets boring again. Learning as many classes and playing them well is a challenge in itself. The luxury is that at any time i can swap toons and keep playing, I actually am activley participating in MOP with 4 of the 5 90's however two of them i am playing brand new specs, Feral and Retribution, never played in those specs before this expansion and i love the fact that it is not automatic for me. constantly changing key binds and mixing up the priority lists. if you feel that the mage is heading down a path you dont like stop playing that says a whole lot more to Blizz than anything else you can imagine, Canceling your account takes you out of the customer mix, making it an ineffective method of action, Stopping play, and moving to something else lowering the population of active class types tells them a ton. Try your lock, i love mine, so much fun, and Green fire coming soon, Try a melee or a healer or a tank a hybrind and do them all. Most of all Have fun.

[announced]

the lock lvl 90 talents arent great either tbh.. i play both a mage and lock.. i feel like the lock is nice only cause of gateway being such a kickass spell for raids and healthstones are nice.. the rest is really meh.. im more of a mage person anyway.. even though blizz has its head up its ass about nerfing fire and nerfing arcane to the ground i still wish to play a mage hoping one day they'll get better.

[bobcageon]

level 90 talents on a lock are much more simplified than for mage. the last tier for mage is a mess. i've seen some mages do well with incanter's in pve raids, but i'm certainly not that guy. it comes down to invocation, and the change is coming. it is simply impractical to have a 5-6 sec cast for this buff. all the problems with mage this tier (aside from rng & not being able to get decent simc stat weights) for me are right here. the bomb aspect is not too bad, but throttling off inferno blast's spread to only 1 target is turning the class into the worst aoe class around. basically your mage will be a straight shooter or spam arc blast till everyone is forced to mute game sounds completely.

i can compare my priest, lock and hunter with mage & I can say that for me, all 3 are more consistent BUT mage is the most fun. something about the rotation and hitting that big ignite tick makes it all worth it. and lets face it, nothing touches blink. i havent been playing a mage for long, going on 1.5 yrs, but i have taken more criticism (rightfully so at times) for bad rng and dps flux than for any other toon, and it really sux. but the only thing that would discourage me to abandon the class is being forced to play arc.

THAT is the one and only pure hell.

[spaace]

Nothing is really wrong with mages. Everything is just out of whack because of the huge scaling numbers.

We're in better shape then early tbc.

[Deleted]

the lock lvl 90 talents arent great either tbh.

How? Kil'Jaeden's Cunning is the most powerful t6 talent around, imo. Mannoroth's Fury is very useful. Mage t6 talents are "pick your poison".

[shaft4783]

Rune of power for arcane is a fantastic talent. It's the ultimate talent for that particular spec. If you know the fight and place your runes wisely, you'll get constant mana regen and damage boost. It's not a flashy attack, but it's incredibly beneficial. If they wanted to remove the cast time I wouldn't argue but whatever.

Only thing that'd make we want to give up arcane is if they removed missiles.

[Deleted]

Mage t6 talents are "pick your poison".

That's the best way to describe it for me as well. They seem like some ideas the devs were playing around with for the arcane spec and decided they didn't know what way to go so made us chose and also let them be available for fire/frost. Oh and with available I mean mandatory since they are too huge of a dps boost to ever ignore.
The other talents just feel like they picked stuff up out of all specs and made every spec lose its personal goodies. Scorch available as "choice" for frost/arcane? Oh hold on, let me use a frost bomb as fire. Just doesn't make sense or feel right to me. I love the new talent system on almost all my characters, but what it has done to mages I just really don't like. Before when I wanted to play any of the 3 specs, that were the type of spells I would be using. Apart from flame orb perhaps in arcane, which already had me slightly annoyed that they didn't make it an arcane orb like in the old frost spec, but oh well.
Alter time I'm a bit two-sided around. I quite liked the idea as a pvp-spell, or mostly utility in pve, just not as mandatory part of dps rotation.

[bobcageon]

alter time is just a nuke in pve ... its a snapshot of where u were EITHER 6 sec's previously, or the next key press. The confusion I think, is when ppl try to use it to extend spells for 6 more seconds. Just use it to stack pom & pyroblast! procs to set up a big ignite as suggested in the guide here and be done with it. I take the Occam's razor approach to it as far as pve is concerned.

and I agree with build your best frostfirearc mage clusterfak of crap they dished on us. it's just ridiculous and the dev's deserve the heat they get for the mess they have made.

[Sealed]

Occam's razor

You don't seem very familiar with the actual meaning of those words. Also, I don't get why you'd have to choose between duplicating PoM/Pyro and extending your buffs. What about both ?

[Deleted]

You don't seem very familiar with the actual meaning of those words. Also, I don't get why you'd have to choose between duplicating PoM/Pyro and extending your buffs. What about both ?

If you want to generate an high combustion you will need to not extend alter time in order to spam pyros in a tight window of time.