The truth about mages

[Raugnaut]

They're not, they're by far the worst class for all solo content. The only class with zero selfheals. Mages are a group-only class.

Ice Barrier is (currently) the equivalent of a 25% health shield on a 25 second CD, or ~1% hp shielded per second, akin to Warlock's talent. Hunters are currently the class with shit self-healing - 30% self heal on a 2 minute CD is pretty much the only thing they have now.

[Konteil]

They're not, they're by far the worst class for all solo content. The only class with zero selfheals. Mages are a group-only class.

not true at all frost mage is wonderful for solo. use your pet and manage you mana well adn you never even get hit. like as not that is why no self heals. and you get some relief from evo so you have that going for you...which is nice.

[Raugnaut]

If you took fire in there and picked up the feathers that make you fly, you could build up the rings buffs which in turn would give 100% crit (and haste too?) and in turn give enormous Ignites, which in turn could make a mage almost single-handingly down Alysrazor in hard mode

Razor gives you 75% crit, and the haste buff stacks ~250% or so.

[Deleted]

not true at all frost mage is wonderful for solo. use your pet and manage you mana well adn you never even get hit. Like as not that is why no self heals.

Use your pet and manage mana? As frost? What?!?
Frost if by far the worst spec for solo old raids for one single reason - not enough burst. Pet can't tank. You can't heal pet neither since WoD. You can't slow bosses nor root them.
You never even get hit? Your face will be smashed tbh.

and you get some relief from evo so you have that going for you...which is nice.

Evo what? Frost mages do not have Evo since WoD and the heal component is removed also in WoD.


Really what? Is it because of the bad English or what?

[Sarkol]

Soloing old raids is absolutely irrelevant to any discussion. It's a bonus that certain classes can do better or worse depending on which you are. There should never be any balancing for that type of content, personal toolkit wise. Mages have good open world survivability. They have enough tools to never be caught, and blow up tons of mobs. They're tougher to level etc than other classes in that you can't face tank mobs 100% of the time, but that's the point of a Mage.

As a Fire Mage i'll have double Blink, Frost Nova, Dragon's Breath, Polymorph, Invisibility, Ice Barrier, Ice Block, Talent Blast Wave plus Ice Ward/Ring of Frost... We have a fuck ton of escapes/damage avoidance, that if use correctly, will make you untouchable most of the time.

I won't list the other specs, but frost has similar, with more freezes and slow, and Arcane has probably the best mobility of any class in the game with 4 Blinks etc.. Mages are fine for solo play out in the world, which is what the discussion is about.

[Deleted]

Mages sucked the big one in Vanilla and TBC. Rolling ignites were ok in just a raid and if you were lucky to have the twin trinkets you had at least a kill every 3 minutes in PVP and if you were skilled enough there were some areas where AOE grinding was half viable.

Otherwise they sucked at soloing,sucked at levelling and sucked at PVP. I still remember the horrors of beast mastery pets and fel hunters soloing mages.

It's just a pity they wiped the old forums because then you would see what I mean.

[BiggestNoob]

They're not, they're by far the worst class for all solo content. The only class with zero selfheals. Mages are a group-only class.

Fire is actually great at soloing atm.

[Aquamonkey]

Mages sucked the big one in Vanilla and TBC. Rolling ignites were ok in just a raid and if you were lucky to have the twin trinkets you had at least a kill every 3 minutes in PVP and if you were skilled enough there were some areas where AOE grinding was half viable.

Otherwise they sucked at soloing,sucked at levelling and sucked at PVP. I still remember the horrors of beast mastery pets and fel hunters soloing mages.

It's just a pity they wiped the old forums because then you would see what I mean.

Mages were a lot better after 1.11. AoE grinding was very viable. Permasheep was ridiculous before they added reduced PvP duration and DR. Of course things will look bad if you cherry-pick the instances of certain classes countering mages. Hunters were broken just by the fact that they could start casting aimed shot without dropping shadowmeld. Warlocks killed everyone with dots almost never breaking fear.

[Gilgondorin]

They're not, they're by far the worst class for all solo content. The only class with zero selfheals. Mages are a group-only class.

To be fair mages do have the cold snap talent which allows them to heal for 3% (I think) every sec til Iceblock is over.

[Wenoxar]

@Gilgondorin, nah that's puzzi mode since you cannot attack while in ice block. True power lies in 15% / 6 seconds (20% / 6 seconds with relic) heal when using blink. Combine it with legendary chest which gives you 20% HP shield and you're unkillable. Pretty solid

[Sylvaeres]

Rubbish. Not only does Fire actually have a heal, but i'm talking running around the world. Pretty sure Mages don't struggle while questing, and pulling reasonable amounts of mobs. Also every spec can talent for heals with Iceblock with 2 charges, Arcane and Frost have bigger shields as well. All this is moot, though, because mages are about mobility and escape, which they are the masters of.

No mage in his right mind is takin Cold Snap, unless to cheese a fight mechanic. Shimmer is the only talent on that line to take. Also, as fire, blink gives a heal

[Deleted]

Mages were a lot better after 1.11. AoE grinding was very viable. Permasheep was ridiculous before they added reduced PvP duration and DR. Of course things will look bad if you cherry-pick the instances of certain classes countering mages. Hunters were broken just by the fact that they could start casting aimed shot without dropping shadowmeld. Warlocks killed everyone with dots almost never breaking fear.

Cherry picking my ass,AOE wasn't as great as made out to be and other classes could do it as well. In PVP everyone went for the mage because it was known as an easy kill. Hunters shots outranged mages apart from talented fireball and unlike most other classes mages ranged attacks made it very obvious where you were and IIRC dots prevented you from eating.

TBC made things worse apart from being needed for sheeping in dungeons. I found some archived threads from back then that should give you an idea on mages thoughts on the matter.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071102...sid=1&pageNo=1

and the infamous finger thread when numerous well thought posts went ignored.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080729...03072770&sid=1

[Aquamonkey]

Cherry picking my ass,AOE wasn't as great as made out to be and other classes could do it as well. In PVP everyone went for the mage because it was known as an easy kill. Hunters shots outranged mages apart from talented fireball and unlike most other classes mages ranged attacks made it very obvious where you were and IIRC dots prevented you from eating.

TBC made things worse apart from being needed for sheeping in dungeons. I found some archived threads from back then that should give you an idea on mages thoughts on the matter.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071102...sid=1&pageNo=1

and the infamous finger thread when numerous well thought posts went ignored.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080729...03072770&sid=1

Scorch didn't leave any indication of where you were. AoE was fine after 1.11. I played a mage to Warlord rank in Vanilla and did just fine. With a pocket disc priest, could wreck an entire spawn wave. Shatter combo and kiting were ridiculous.

[Deleted]

Mages sucked the big one in Vanilla and TBC. Rolling ignites were ok in just a raid and if you were lucky to have the twin trinkets you had at least a kill every 3 minutes in PVP and if you were skilled enough there were some areas where AOE grinding was half viable.


Otherwise they sucked at soloing,sucked at levelling and sucked at PVP. I still remember the horrors of beast mastery pets and fel hunters soloing mages.

It's just a pity they wiped the old forums because then you would see what I mean.

I completely disagree with the pvp part, especially when you mention having the same gear i had (rank 13+aq40 twins staff)
I remember sitting at 4850 ish hp unbuffed and literally being overpowered in pvp with an elemental fire/frost 30/21 spec (blastwave, fireblast, coc benefitting from the shatter talents meant 6-7 gcds to melt any non tank character. PoM was simply an inferior 3 mins 1 trick pony talent, unless you raided in which case it meant faster water conjuring
SL/SL warlocks were only a problem till you got the zulgurub trinket (which lowered a lot their resistance, - 20 iirc) and you could 100-0 a warrior with rank 1 frostbolt (it procced frostbite, remember?)
as for soloing, go watch some FaxMonkey videos, very few other classes could do that
I still have some yt videos with duels and bgs against rank 13-14 geared people if you need proof how OP mages were in pvp vanilla, pm me otherwise search for saerdna 2 in youtube for another example

pve we were gods as well after mc, rolling ignites in aq40/bwl fire vulnerable mobs meant you needed to change your pants very often

[Deleted]

All those suggestions point to mage not being that great back then.

Avoiding your main spells.
Having to recruit a personal healer.
Having to top out gear to stand a chance.

Other classes plain had it better in a number of ways, even hybrids who then got properly buffed in TBC so it was like they had 2 classes for the grind of 1.

[Aquamonkey]

All those suggestions point to mage not being that great back then.

Avoiding your main spells.
Having to recruit a personal healer.
Having to top out gear to stand a chance.

Other classes plain had it better in a number of ways, even hybrids who then got properly buffed in TBC so it was like they had 2 classes for the grind of 1.

Using Scorch was just to hide my location. It wasn't a primary spell, that was usually Frostbolt. Rank 1 Frostbolt was just to do a fast snare, also not primary cast.

Didn't need a personal healer, that was just for fun to wreck an entire spawn wave of multiple people. So you're saying that just because a Mage couldn't solo 5+ people they're broken?

Good job flipping "overpowered" into "stand a chance."

[Wenoxar]

The truth about mages has been finally solved.

Apparently mages aren't always #1 class in the game.

It has been easily proved in Emerald Nightmare and Trial of Valor and seems like it's getting worse in 7.1.5

Puzzle solved.