No Utility/Raid CD, Hurts 10man position?

[Omgponies]

25H spec score - mages top.
25N spec score - mages top.
10H spec score - mages top.
10N spec score - mages top.

hi, I'm going to post parses from a class that relies on RNG, and only post the top 100, which is when you crit proportionately more than you should, and thus your damage is much higher than it should be. Then claim thats the proof mages are amazing, and need no other support,


Oh look, lets go to overall, instead of top 100
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...14/30/default/
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...14/30/default/

OMG mages arent on the top, what is this madness

Oh right..move on troll

[Pua]

Linking top 100 to show that fire mages are on top? Do you know how a fire mages works?

Yes.

The bigger question here is do you?

hi, I'm going to post parses from a class that relies on RNG, and only post the top 100, which is when you crit proportionately more than you should, and thus your damage is much higher than it should be. Then claim thats the proof mages are amazing, and need no other support

I think a reality check is in order here.

The only time a player won't come to a raid because of his class is in the min/max guilds; for everyone else, you bring the best and most reliable player. In which case, your position will never be under threat so it's less relevant than at the cutting edge.

At the cutting edge, mages are the best DPS class in the game - but you seem to want Blizzard to buff you, again, because you're not capable of getting the most out of the class.

I see your problem, now. You've obviously gotten used to being buffed when you can't do something for yourself (a mage player hallmark) and are confused when Blizzard don't just buff you off the bat to accommodate.

Don't worry, there are more mage buffs in 5.4. It's cool. You can be bad, and still dominate.

Oh look, lets go to overall, instead of top 100
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...14/30/default/
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...14/30/default/

Out of the ranged classes, you're beaten only by warlocks in 25-man, you're top on 10-man, and you think that's bad?

Go play a hunter. Or a Shadow priest. Or an Elemental shaman. Once you've done so, tell me how bad you've got it.

Oh right..move on troll

I'm sorry you find the truth difficult enough to only allow you to dismiss what you don't like. But all in all, it seems you want utility that guarantees you a raid spot because your own ability as a player won't.

If you want to discuss that, you'll have me - I've no experience of it at all.

Fairy laughter.

All I'm saying.

[Polarthief]

25H spec score - mages top.
25N spec score - mages top.
10H spec score - mages top.
10N spec score - mages top.

Get a grip of yourself. I'm not the one being ignorant, it's a fact that mages are the best DPS class in the game. Yes, that's right, FACT.

Everyone, I'd like to bring your attention to this... ... ... Lol.



Like seriously, Zell? Do you not fucking know how Fire works? Do some research before acting like you know everything, and yes, you're being EXTREMELY ignorant.



(If you seriously don't know, Fire's top IS ALWAYS going to be #1 because it's pure luck, duh. The people who get that "holy fuck I crit everything" luck are destined to be #1. If a Top Fire parse loses to anything, then Fire's damage range is too low)

[Deleted]

The link of dream paragon raid composition is quite interesting: it really show that their mage have to use his Warlock alt on fight that need the utility (Animus, Primordius).
On 25HM, Wraith show no mage on Megaera and Primordius and only 1 on a lot of fight.
No mage en 25 is even more problematic than no mage in 10.

But like Blizzard has say, it's because Warlock add to much utility ...

[Pyromelter]

funnily enough, when classes get stacked for an encounter, mages are always among the classes present because Blizzard is terrified of ever making them bad for some reason. Hell, Ghostcrawler buffed them during 5.2 because (and I quote) "they weren't where we wanted them to be".

This is simply not true on a historical basis. Including in MoP, where one of the world's most famous mages switched to warlock.

The only fight(s) I remember mages being stacked for was Spine of Deathwing and Madness, and that's because arcane was extremely broken with burst to kill adds that needed to be killed asap.

Once fights are a little better well-known, then mages are great at helping bosses die faster.

And GC buffed them in 5.2 because mage dps was awful, along with having poor raid utility.

Personal utility =|= raid utility.

Let's go through a list real quick of dps specs:

Warlocks - lock candy (this is a massive, massive bonus in 10man). Demo Locks can also temporarily tank if a tank goes down.
Spriest - VE
Mage - Bloodlust
Druid - Tranq (plus temporary tanking like warlock listing above)
Monk - Zen Meditation, Chi Wave
Rogue - Smoke Bomb (20% redux), Tricks
Shaman - AG, bloodlust
Hunter - fills in missing raidbuff.
Paladin - Devo
Warrior - Banner
Death Knight - very weak Anti-Magic Zone (DK dps from what I hear are in the same boat as mages - good personals poor raid utility).

The point of the OP is that many many other classes have some sort of defensive raid utility, whereas mages' raid utility is completely offensive (Arcane Brilliance, Time Warp). Even warrior dps, traditionally a role that is just "bash em up with no utility" - now has a lot more utility thanks to their banners.

As I understand it, this is the same situation Death Knight dps is in, no real good defensive raid utility, and I don't really play a hunter, but hunters have that too, so you have 3 of 8 classes that don't bring any significant damage reducing/raid healing cooldown. Frankly I'd prefer it if blizzard actually removed the raid CD's from the other classes, but they should even it out by giving mages, hunters and dk's some kind of defensive raid utility if they are going to keep the other raid utilities in the game.

[Pua]

Like seriously, Zell? Do you not fucking know how Fire works? Do some research before acting like you know everything, and yes, you're being EXTREMELY ignorant.

(If you seriously don't know, Fire's top IS ALWAYS going to be #1 because it's pure luck, duh. The people who get that "holy fuck I crit everything" luck are destined to be #1. If a Top Fire parse loses to anything, then Fire's damage range is too low)

Ah, I see. "Pure luck" suddenly equates to "always number 1". I always thought it equated to "sometimes number 1" given the random nature of luck, but apparantly luck now means consistency?

Gotcha.

Also, without the best "OMG CRIT" gear, we're still seeing mages dominating ranged DPS as highlighted by another poster who thought (laughably) that they were somehow disproving me.

I'm sorry, but...

But like Blizzard has say, it's because Warlock add to much utility ...

I think there's definitely something in this. Warlock utility isn't just varied, it's also very powerful and can have a game-changing impact on an encounter.

Three free health potions per encounter is extraordinarly powerful on its own, never mind the rest of the utility a warlock brings.

That said... I'm glad this is the direction the developers are going. They "hybrid tax" used to be paid via the utility that hybrids brought, but that utility was in their ability to do something other than damage. It makes more sense (to me, at least) that pure DPS classes should have the better utility for exactly that reason.

Then you run into rogues, of course.

If you want to talk about a lack of utility causing a problem with raid spots, go play a rogue. Once more, however, their DPS is invariably peerless in order to account for their lack of utility.

[Deleted]

Mages don't need a raid cd when they can bring other things which are very important for 10 man raiding.

You have one of the best overall DPS spec; fire.
You have the best burst DPS spec; arcane , when you are progressing and ur raid doesn't have the gear yet this spec helps a million.

You have two really good solo soaking cds: iceblock and cauterize/greater invisibility

And then, there is blink, ice barrier and even blazing speed, helping a ton with ur own survability.

But then again it is all about how you play and if u are willing to use all ur tools which sadly not every mage is.

[Pua]

As I understand it, this is the same situation Death Knight dps is in, no real good defensive raid utility, and I don't really play a hunter, but hunters have that too, so you have 3 of 8 classes that don't bring any significant damage reducing/raid healing cooldown. Frankly I'd prefer it if blizzard actually removed the raid CD's from the other classes, but they should even it out by giving mages, hunters and dk's some kind of defensive raid utility if they are going to keep the other raid utilities in the game.

I honestly think this "utility" has gotten out of hand.

Warriors have Skull Banner for offensive work, but then they also have two defensive cooldowns in Demoralizing Banner and Rallying Cry. It's needless. Hell, Holy paladins are running around with Devotion Aura which doesn't work on most of the big hitters in tier 15 because it does nothing for physical damage. When they bring that fact up, they're invariably told "BoP rofl" as if that somehow makes up for a pretty glaring weakness. On the other hand, shammies are running around with Healing Tide and Spirit Link totems, yet we see crying because they don't do the HPS other classes do. This might shock you, but I recently started a thread arguing that warriors need work to clean them up and remove some of the action bar bloat and all I got was "yeah, that's retarded, we don't need nerfs".

The problem is that everyone wants everything, and it's making a mess of the game. That's why I'm in this thread; if you have great personal utility (mages do), great damage (mages do) and the best offensive raid cooldown in the game (mages do) arguing that you also need great defensive utility is basically asking to be the best class, bar none.

I'm sorry, but no. This is the thinking that's homogenized classes to silly degrees, and caused unfortunate consequences when encounter mechanics can be trivialized in some way that was wholly unintended. If you want this defensive utility that you're arguing you somehow need (haha), then you're going to have to lose something powerful as a result.

What's it going to be?

[Gilian]

Aren't they top dps (single target at least during T14)? If you get utility then why would you bring a shadow priest with shit dps?

[Deleted]

@zellviren
I'm sorry but some of your argument are flawed :
Time Warp is a relatively common CD, and they will add Drums in 5.4

We are more or less "best DPS" but if it was by 5% or 10%, I will have agree with this but it's more around 1% if not less. And it's only true in BiS gear.
GC always told about the bias with raidbot because it select te best of the best. Fire is a good example for this.
Due to it's RNG, you can do very very good with a lot of luck or very very poorly with some bad luck.

And finally, We did most of the mage want?
It's not a powerful raid CD, it's just some raid-wide utility that make them feeling useful.
This is why most of the proposition are about Mana gem, Refreshment table and so on.

[Pandacally]

I honestly think this "utility" has gotten out of hand.

Warriors have Skull Banner for offensive work, but then they also have two defensive cooldowns in Demoralizing Banner and Rallying Cry. It's needless. Hell, Holy paladins are running around with Devotion Aura which doesn't work on most of the big hitters in tier 15 because it does nothing for physical damage. When they bring that fact up, they're invariably told "BoP rofl" as if that somehow makes up for a pretty glaring weakness. On the other hand, shammies are running around with Healing Tide and Spirit Link totems, yet we see crying because they don't do the HPS other classes do. This might shock you, but I recently started a thread arguing that warriors need work to clean them up and remove some of the action bar bloat and all I got was "yeah, that's retarded, we don't need nerfs".

The problem is that everyone wants everything, and it's making a mess of the game. That's why I'm in this thread; if you have great personal utility (mages do), great damage (mages do) and the best offensive raid cooldown in the game (mages do) arguing that you also need great defensive utility is basically asking to be the best class, bar none.

I'm sorry, but no. This is the thinking that's homogenized classes to silly degrees, and caused unfortunate consequences when encounter mechanics can be trivialized in some way that was wholly unintended. If you want this defensive utility that you're arguing you somehow need (haha), then you're going to have to lose something powerful as a result.

What's it going to be?

I agree with you on that behalf, that there is way too much shit in the game. I wouldn't mind if they take things away from the mage, when they also do for other classes. In ToT progression, you kind of needed tank pala, heal pala, disc priest, lock and hunter. Then ofc a second tank (druid/war) and maybe a 3rd healer, and you have 7/10 spots filled in your raid. The 8 spot is almost exclusively boomkin. The 9th is the 3rd healer/dd, meaning a shaman or shadow for most guilds, and than there is 1 spot left, for either a rogue, dk, mage, ret, arms, monk (2nd lock/boomkin) or whatever. If you make other classes less mandatory, the rest will also have it easier.
I think a good change is the abolishment of passive dmg reduction (shadow form/owlkin form/lock armor), it evens the field out more. Ofc for pvp, I wouldn't wanna be a owl/shadow/lock now, but that is another story.
I also think that playing melee should not be so punishing on some encounters, its not only harder for melees but also for ranged, because so many shitz mechnics target only ranged players, and when you have more melees, the fewer dd/healer have to handle way more shit/movement, reducing their performance as well.
In this perspective, I think 25m is way more balanced than 10m, because if you always have kind of balanced setup for all classes, than they only need to tune the numbers so that noone is overpowerd/underpowered. In 10m, many encounters rely on having the right set of classes, and if you are not lucky to belong to them, you have to fight for the last 2 spots in your raid with 6 other classes

[Pyromelter]

I honestly think this "utility" has gotten out of hand.

...

The problem is that everyone wants everything, and it's making a mess of the game.

What's it going to be?

I agree it's gotten out of hand. I don't think everyone wants everything - we just want an equal shot, and some classes having much more raid defensive utility puts them at an advantageous position.

What's it going to be? Who knows how blizz thinks. I think they gave locks lots of toys in MoP because it's the least played class in the game, and prior to mop it was for good reason.

[Deleted]

Mages are in the raid for high damage, and good personal utility in form of both survivability and offense. Our spot is pretty secure in 10 man raiding.

Dat.

I'd actually like some utility like a defensive raid cd (see Smoke Bomb) or sth like that, which will make me feel even more valuable in my group. But I think we are fine, stop whining for once.

[Hasufer]

Sry on forehand for expressing myself very clearly, and not very friendly on this matter, but this is just, meh.
First off, I dont understand what ppl are whining about, or why this threat was even made. If u can't keep a raid-spot in a 10man guild (or 25man, tho that should be even easier) because of a reason being "you dont bring anything raid utility/cd", your simply just not playing your mage good enough. period. If u play your mage to it's full potential, you will always be ahead/on top on the meters while bringing more than excellent survivability. Not to forget burst/add-burst/soaking/kiting and other possibilities, u name it. (dont forget even the raw dps itself, makes any given encounter shorter, thus ignoring a potential raid-wiping boss ability, or healers oom'ing towards the end)
Player > raid cd/utility anyday, that simple really, and especially in a 10man guild. Healers alone (combined with tanks) should have enough CD's to manage what u need during an encounter. W/e dps brings, is just to be considered a bonus, thus not needed, but ofc handy.
Again players > raid cd's - if your healers/tanks and dps, master what they must, mages dont need to ALSO bring a raid-cd to get a spot, worse BS iv'e heard in a long time. If I didn't know better, I would believe these statements came from very bad, casual players, who are beaten by stuff they shoudnt't, thus wanting more mage buff's just to keep up, or staying in a setup in their respective guild. It's just.. sad..

Still, don't get me wrong. Noone would mind having that ekstra posibility to help out your guild/raid, but demanding it, or believing it should be mandatory/needed to get a spot, just made me lol.

[Deleted]

Mages don't need to be buffed in utility so that they are even with warlocks. Warlocks need to be nerfed. No, you don't NEED a mage as you would need a warlock. This is a good thing. Mages arguably bring less raid utility (read: raid cooldown) than boomkins and spriests, but they bring better personal utility (personal cd like a boomkin and twice as much immunity/dispersion as spriest) and better dps.

What the hell is up with mages feeling the need to be buffed all the time?
All the whine we heard in the first week of ToT. "Mages are getting benched... ah blah blah blah trash..."
The ONLY thing mages needed in order to become balanced was a minor buff to bombs. Seriously... quit exaggering.

EDIT: You won't need the extra raid cooldowns if you play your mage as you should and do more dps than the alternatives.

[Pyromelter]

If u can't keep a raid-spot in a 10man guild (or 25man, tho that should be even easier) because of a reason being "you dont bring anything raid utility/cd", your simply just not playing your mage good enough. period. If u play your mage to it's full potential, you will always be ahead/on top on the meters while bringing more than excellent survivability. Not to forget burst/add-burst/soaking/kiting and other possibilities, u name it. (dont forget even the raw dps itself, makes any given encounter shorter, thus ignoring a potential raid-wiping boss ability, or healers oom'ing towards the end)
Player > raid cd/utility anyday, that simple really, and especially in a 10man guild. Healers alone (combined with tanks) should have enough CD's to manage what u need during an encounter. W/e dps brings, is just to be considered a bonus, thus not needed, but ofc handy.
Again players > raid cd's - if your healers/tanks and dps, master what they must, mages dont need to ALSO bring a raid-cd to get a spot, worse BS iv'e heard in a long time. If I didn't know better, I would believe these statements came from very bad, casual players, who are beaten by stuff they shoudnt't, thus wanting more mage buff's just to keep up, or staying in a setup in their respective guild. It's just.. sad..

Still, don't get me wrong. Noone would mind having that ekstra posibility to help out your guild/raid, but demanding it, or believing it should be mandatory/needed to get a spot, just made me lol.

This is simply not true. Certain heroic strategies demand specific classes in specific roles, like paladin tanks solo tanking durumu. The raid team I'm on is currently 4/13 heroic, and the MT switched halfway through progression from warrior to paladin, specifically for that reason. That's not even a "competitive" raid but here we have someone class switching just for more utility.

The very public knowledge of Blatty switching from his mage to warlock is also very well-known as well.

There is also a long history of class stacking due to certain raid utility, and paladins once again are in that class stacking mode. If you want to "lol" at competitive raiders bringing up legitimate concerns, then you aren't raiding competitively.

No one is saying a good mage deserves to be left off a raid team. What they are saying is that if player skill is equal, almost every other class brings something to the table much more than mages.

You wanna say this:

If u play your mage to it's full potential, you will always be ahead/on top on the meters while bringing more than excellent survivability. Not to forget burst/add-burst/soaking/kiting and other possibilities, u name it. (dont forget even the raw dps itself, makes any given encounter shorter, thus ignoring a potential raid-wiping boss ability, or healers oom'ing towards the end)

I will say, if I play my mage to the full potential, and there are 7 other dps playing their classes to their full potential, my personal dps won't help that much more versus their raid cooldowns. And you want to talk about burst, add burst, soaking, kiting - that's nothing special. The only real kiting that has to be done in the current tier is on one fight, and most people specifically take a monk for that fight (Tortos). And there are other classes with much better add burst than mages without having long cooldowns - hunters, death knights, warlocks. Sure, a mage with his frozen orb or combustion set up will be right there, but he won't be right there for every add phase.

Mage raw dps is not that much significantly better than other classes. If you think that's the case, then you are either way outgearing the people you play with, or the people playing those other classes are not getting anywhere near their full potential. Let's not forget - mages also don't have an execute rotation. You can't look at raidbots and extrapolate that, because of the personal delta of fire mage dps, it's going to skew the top parses higher. Not to mention, fire mage scales arguably better than any spec in the game - meaning that once everything is on farm, yeah mages get crazy high dps. Progression is a whole different story though, where every Vampiric Embrace and Smoke Bomb allows your raid team to live past the next phase to push a little closer to a kill.

Sure, bring the player - as long as that player is playing the right class. I don't think anyone is saying mages aren't useful, they are saying that other classes bring more to the table.

- - - Updated - - -

What the hell is up with mages feeling the need to be buffed all the time?
All the whine we heard in the first week of ToT. "Mages are getting benched... ah blah blah blah trash..."
The ONLY thing mages needed in order to become balanced was a minor buff to bombs. Seriously... quit exaggering.

Arguably the world's #1 PvE mage switched to warlock. Also, there is a difference between pointing out the usefulness of a class, versus exaggerating and whining. No one is saying we need a dps buff. People are just advocating for an evening out of raid utility. I don't quite understand the venom towards people who enjoy their class who see an imbalance in their class versus other classes...

[Deleted]

TBH I get kinda pissed how everyone says we have good defensive survivability. Our best is avoiding a short duration of damage (e.g., very large hits). For stuff that is weakish AoEs (or even strong ones) that occur over a duration (Lightning Storm, Rockfall, Rampage, Quills, all the random shit that goes on during Primordius, Fist Smash, TC shit [like Day Phase], or Lei Shen transitioning to another platform), we're pretty defenseless and take more damage than any other class with our low HP pools and Armor.

I think you're underestimating the strengths of our 2nd talent tier. Sure, we don't have spammable damage reduction like a rogue, or the high health pools / damage reduction of a warlock but we're still more than viable.

When i look at some of the examples that you mention i think hey, we're perfect for that! I'd bet my right nut you're not using your class to the fullest, because i genuinely don't think we have anything to whine about when it comes to survivability. You can precast icebarrier on things like lightning storm, rockfall, lei shen transitions and "tc shit". (think you mean the meteorites couple with the shadow balls from the hidden adds)" giving you 300-400k (depending on spellpower at the time it was cast) damage in absorbs within a very brief period of time. Temporal shield is up for every single quills / fist smashes etc, and is getting a buff in next patch. Next patch will be even crazier, relatively, since our casting counterparts are all going to be taking even more damage, making you even more viable.

So getting back on topic, from reading your posts, it seems like you'd rather play a warlock and are looking for an excuse to justify your transition. Go ahead, but i just don't think it's fair to justify it by saying mages aren't viable or even extremely good in the 10 man raiding scene. There's alot of stuff you can do to survive, managing your int procs and shields being one of the most effective in my experience and as such i don't really think we're bad at all.

[mrgreenthump]

Mages don't need to be buffed in utility so that they are even with warlocks. Warlocks need to be nerfed. No, you don't NEED a mage as you would need a warlock. This is a good thing. Mages arguably bring less raid utility (read: raid cooldown) than boomkins and spriests, but they bring better personal utility (personal cd like a boomkin and twice as much immunity/dispersion as spriest) and better dps.

What the hell is up with mages feeling the need to be buffed all the time?
All the whine we heard in the first week of ToT. "Mages are getting benched... ah blah blah blah trash..."
The ONLY thing mages needed in order to become balanced was a minor buff to bombs. Seriously... quit exaggering.

EDIT: You won't need the extra raid cooldowns if you play your mage as you should and do more dps than the alternatives.

No mages might not need utility in a way that other classes do.. but the issues in 5.2 were real, and they still are. But those issues are being adressed in 5.4 by blizzard removing passive reductions from all ranged and adding a damage reduction to TS. Which will make mages much more viable during progress as we won't be the guy that has to be overhealed in order to stay alive anymore. As what comes to bombs getting buffed, it really had no impact at all on mages getting benched or not. Mages got benched due us bringing nothing to the raid, doing mediocre dps, and dying to raid AoE that nobody else would. A really good player could still cut it as a mage.. you just did much better job playing an alt warlock than a mage.

But really that was 5.2, and 5.4 is looking nothing like that. Our real problems got adressed, sure we didn't get any raid wide utility, but at least we wont insta die anymore to AoE. We don't know dps balance for 5.4 yet, but my guess is that there will be at least 1 spec that works.

[Deleted]

So you are telling me you judge the state of mage by looking at Blatty and what he's doing? Don't get me wrong, he's probably for real the best mage out there but hey... this guy plays HC progression in the 2nd week of the patch!! And if Warlock is/was OP at that point ofc they are going to reroll.... don't forget that guilds that are in the top 5 of the world sacrifice players and classes for the sake of fastest progress possible. Thats totally irrelevant - comparing Blatty with the rest, and thinking that what he does is always the right way. If you are bad and can't utilize your class to it's very maximum it's most likely your own fault, cuz I'm seeing mage potential and burst and dmg and whatsoever in 10m hc guild right now. And benching? What? Unless you are playing in one of those so-called top-guilds and assuming you are a really good player there's no way you are gonna be "benched".

Overexaggerating at its best in this thread lol.

[Deleted]

The very public knowledge of Blatty switching from his mage to warlock is also very well-known as well.

So, Method have one of their three Mages switch and suddenly the Mage class is doomed? Please, get a grip.
Both Vykina and Kuznam showed perfectly that Mages were fine after the bomb fixes, and both were taken to nearly all progression (if not all progression) fights.
One player switching doesn't mean a class is in a terrible state for Progression raiding. While I have utmost respect for Blatty's ability to play his Mage, please, control yourself. He doesn't rule the Mage community.

OT:

While there is plenty of over-exaggeration in this thread, Raid Utility is not the same as personal utility. I think the point where people are getting lost is that in 10M personal utility is actually just as important as raid utility because there's less people to have CDs for, therefore bringing good personal utility is considered strong.

However, in 25M it's near completely different. Personal utility is valued less apart from on certain fights (Lei Shen HC and Ra-den being perhaps the only real examples this tier, and both for completely different reasons) because there are plenty of classes that have personal utility.
You can speak all you want about Mages having CDs, but without Passive Damage reduction (10% on Fel Armor for Warlocks, 20% on Shadowform for Shadowpriests) we are still the squishiest caster DPS. You then take into account Warlocks can quite easily have 200K more health than a Mage on top of the passive damage reduction and then look at the fact Warlocks have insane personal survivability through Glyph of Healthstone, T1 talents etc. etc. and it begins to show differences, especially as Warlocks bring healthstones/portals to raids AND comparable damage.

Mages, unlike Warlocks, can get 100-0'd by someone else's mistake in 25M. On Lei Shen HC progress I had a healthpool of 550K fully buffed with NO passive reduction whatsoever. If someone else makes a mistake (ie standing too close to me w/ Ball lightning) and I can't react fast enough to pop Ice Barrier (bearing in mind GInvis is likely on CD from transition phase and Ice block should be saved) I will die. It's not just a case of "Oh you should have blocked" like everyone thinks - if I block to prevent death from someone else's mistake and I get Static Shock people will wonder why I can't block and the argument just goes around in circles.
Mages are brought to raids almost entirely because of their damage in 25M. Sure, we don't have issues being towards the top end of the meters, but if there are fights where a Warlock will outperform a Mage - why bring a Mage? Can bring a bloody Resto Shaman to compensate for TW loss and gain SLT and HTT as pretty major Raid CDs while having a Warlock instead will be easier on healers and they're doing the same/better damage.

I had little/no issues keeping my raid spot for the entirety of progression this tier and, while there is a lot of over-exaggeration in this thread, the idea of Mages being able to bring a little more to raids (I think mrgreenthump mentioned something about a raid-wide Temporal Shield or something, which would be really cool IMO) would certainly not go amiss.