[Mage] I don't be a huge whiner but... raid utility?

[Shangalar]

Last warning: this thread will be forcefully closed if anyone fails to uphold honor as Garrosh did.

[Polarthief]

Last warning: this thread will be forcefully closed if anyone fails to uphold honor as Garrosh did.

You mean not at all? Garrosh was the most dishonorable douche ever.

I'm not even gonna honor this with a full reply because it's off topic :P - Shang

BUT IT'S TRUUUUUUE

[grimsanta]

It seems what people are forgetting here is that Blizzard tends to balance survivability against raid utility. Being able to keep yourself alive at most times is a huge boon to the raid. I'm not saying that Blizzard has accomplished this for every class, but I think that's what they lean towards when they don't give a class a huge amount of raid utility.

[Vyadore]

innervate is trash, stampeding roar and typhoon are situational, everybody has a battle rez.

Everyone except...FREAKING Shadow Priests who are umm.....PRIESTS and should be able to RESURRECT.

Seriously though....using Warlocks as a reason to get more stuff for your class is not going to work on Blizzard. Blizzard will likely nerf Warlocks to be more in line with other classes before upgrading other classes.

[Kenbud]

The Mage hate in this thread is amazing, it feeds my Icelances. Mages need more raid utility plain and simple, that or a more dps to to make up for the fact we have none. That goes for all classes that are lacking utility. The Hybrid Tax had it right but i would like to see ~15% instead of instead of the ~5% it was. You either get a ton of utility at the cost of ~15% dps of a shit ton of dps the expense of utility, this would pave the way for much more class distinction.

First change: Temporal Shield should raid wide, increased to 40% with a 1 min CD.

[Anzen]

I don't think other classes lacking the utility, and output a Warlock has is a relative class issue, Blizzard have already stated it's a Warlock issue.

Mages aren't the only class getting smashed up and down the meters by anyone with a purple nameplate.

[Deleted]

I don't see why every class needs a raid cooldown, being different is why this game is fun, otherwise just make 5 classes: A tank, A healer, A melee dps, A caster dps & Hunter.

Blizzard said that 20% of all spells will be removed in the next expansion, hopefully at least of raid cooldowns are in this list!

[Tehterokkar]

The Mage hate in this thread is amazing, it feeds my Icelances. Mages need more raid utility plain and simple, that or a more dps to to make up for the fact we have none. That goes for all classes that are lacking utility. The Hybrid Tax had it right but i would like to see ~15% instead of instead of the ~5% it was. You either get a ton of utility at the cost of ~15% dps of a shit ton of dps the expense of utility, this would pave the way for much more class distinction.

First change: Temporal Shield should raid wide, increased to 40% with a 1 min CD.

Rogues aren't hybrid but bring Smoke bomb, incredible survivability and good Cleave/AoE as Combat. Specs like Windwalker don't bring any raid-wide utility, but have amazing AoE, self CDs and movement.

[Kenbud]

Rogues aren't hybrid but bring Smoke bomb, incredible survivability and good Cleave/AoE as Combat. Specs like Windwalker don't bring any raid-wide utility, but have amazing AoE, self CDs and movement.

Rogues arent hybrids?!?! Read my post, im suggesting a hybrids tax like situation but larger penalties and more clear cut distinctions.

[Anzen]

Rogues arent hybrids?!?! Read my post, im suggesting a hybrids tax like situation but larger penalties and more clear cut distinctions.

Would make cutting edge raiding more of a bundle of laughs than it already is.

Group 1: Tanks & Healers
Group 2: Mages
Group 3: Mages
Group 4: Warlocks
Group 5: Warlocks

[Deleted]

Iceblock is the worst immunity CD currently because you can't move or cast. Warlock Bubble does the same, has shorter CD and you can move+cast.
Time Warp isn't a real factor. BM Hunter and Shamans can do it too... and there are even Drums EVERYBODY can use and its really only slightly worse.
5% Crit Buff is quite nice at least when raiding 10mans.

Our CC-Talents are quite bad for PVE... Frostjaws instantly breaks on DMG and isn't even a real interrupt. Ring of Frost bugs a lot, is only useful on some fights (Siegecrafter if you do mines... but you dont want to do mines^^). The third one is shitty too

Change Frostjaws to replace Deep Freeze and it lets you use Deep Freeze with a 6sec Stun without having to Nova the target first... but with a short casttime.
Ring of Frost should just be a AoE-Stun like Shadowfurys.
The Frostnova-thingy should just be a ranged-Frostnova.

Also finally give mages Manastones for everyone. 20% Mana on use, shared CD with Healthstone et voila you have some really nice unique raid utility.

Iceblock should be off-GCD.

Change Flameglow to something useful like a simple passive that reduces Magic DMG taken by 15%.

[Polarthief]

Would make cutting edge raiding more of a bundle of laughs than it already is.

Group 1: Tanks & Healers
Group 2: Mages
Group 3: Mages
Group 4: Warlocks
Group 5: Warlocks

Actually, it'd be this:

Group 1: Tanks & Healers
Group 2: Rest of Healers, Elemental Shaman, Mage
Group 3: Warlocks
Group 4: Warlocks
Group 5: Warlocks

Gotta have the Ele Shaman for raid haste for the Warlocks and a Mage for Crit buff

[Deleted]

Iceblock is the worst immunity CD currently because you can't move or cast. Warlock Bubble does the same, has shorter CD and you can move+cast.
Time Warp isn't a real factor. BM Hunter and Shamans can do it too... and there are even Drums EVERYBODY can use and its really only slightly worse.
5% Crit Buff is quite nice at least when raiding 10mans.

Our CC-Talents are quite bad for PVE... Frostjaws instantly breaks on DMG and isn't even a real interrupt. Ring of Frost bugs a lot, is only useful on some fights (Siegecrafter if you do mines... but you dont want to do mines^^). The third one is shitty too

Change Frostjaws to replace Deep Freeze and it lets you use Deep Freeze with a 6sec Stun without having to Nova the target first... but with a short casttime.
Ring of Frost should just be a AoE-Stun like Shadowfurys.
The Frostnova-thingy should just be a ranged-Frostnova.

Also finally give mages Manastones for everyone. 20% Mana on use, shared CD with Healthstone et voila you have some really nice unique raid utility.

Iceblock should be off-GCD.

Change Flameglow to something useful like a simple passive that reduces Magic DMG taken by 15%.

You appear to be confusing personal utility over raid utility.

Personal utility for a mage is strong, arguably too strong, which is the reason they will not be given raid wide buffs unless other classes get changed.
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Ill address some other points i saw earlier in this thread, since people seem to have warlock envy.
Health stones on anyone but the warlock is nothing more then a standard health pot, ground breaking i know.

The gateway i see getting pulled up a lot, on my warlock in hc's i think i use it on garrosh phase 1 in the whole SoO, its simply not needed. Any fight it might be remotely useful the distance is so glitchy it despawns in under 1 minuet. In ToT it was only used on Iron Qon. Clearly an extremely useful raid CD that should be used the second your 1 minuet long debuff that prevents you from using it again, wears off. No wait im confusing it with Time warp, my bad.

Summons? really summons are getting pulled up for raid utility? Should portals be in the same boat? out of combat abilities for raid utility? really....

Soul stones, ill give you that, its the only thing i use in terms of raid utility. That said the cast time is so slow unless our feral druids, DK's, resto druids, and holy paladins(sym) are 10,000 yards away i never finish the cast and have in fact wasted my own time.
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Try to think about what you consider good raid utility, Movement speed, damage reduction, Haste. Thats at least what i would pick, now out of those 3 what suits a mage? the stuff that makes you walk faster, a raid wide protection spell or something that up's your damage to silly heights?
Exactly and mages have it.
Any gaps in between are filled in by a mages personal CD's for protection/movement.

[Kenbud]

Would make cutting edge raiding more of a bundle of laughs than it already is.

Group 1: Tanks & Healers
Group 2: Mages
Group 3: Mages
Group 4: Warlocks
Group 5: Warlocks

This makes zero sense. Different classes bringing different CDs doesn't change.

- - - Updated - - -

You appear to be confusing personal utility over raid utility.

Personal utility for a mage is strong, arguably too strong

This coming from a warlock?

[Deleted]

This coming from a warlock?

I agree, but this thread isnt about warlocks is it. But the comparisons between the 2 are out of control.

Warlocks are meant to be a tanky caster and their personal CD's reflect that, and i think the draw back/cost should be greater to use them. For example i use Sacrificial pact the shield is 200-300k with a pet. If i dont have a pet i can bump it up to 800k+ but at the cost of my own hp, seems a fair trade off (and a shit ton of health increasing buffs). And alot of the personal CD's locks have will kill them if they are not careful, that is the cost. We only have the 1 CD that reduces damage that doesnt have a hp cost attached to it.

But again im getting off topic into warlocks and off topic more into personal utility, which ultimately this thread is not about.

[Nebs]

I do have to agree that it is quite discouraging to feel completely useless in terms of planning out which raid CDs to use during a particular fight. Personally I was disappointed to see the 3% raid-wide damage buff gone in MoP. I never inquired about their reasoning behind it, but I suppose they felt it made mages too mandatory. I don't find that argument particularly compelling. Couldn't the same be said about a lot of the other buffs/debuffs? No +magic/physical damage taken? Less raid DPS. No spell haste? Less raid DPS/HPS for classes relying on haste breakpoints. An obvious counter-argument is that most of those buffs/debuffs can be provided by different classes, but with the new Mythic raiding structure in WoD, I don't think it would be asking too much to give some incentive to bringing at least one mage.

I think the following would be reasonable changes/additions to help mage raid utility.

1. 5% magic damage taken, either a separate ability or incorporated into one of our main spells. As it stands, only 3 classes are able to provide this debuff: warlocks, rogues and hunters. Contrastingly, the physical damage taken debuff is provided by 4 classes: ret paladins, hunters and DPS DKs and warriors. Giving mages a 5% magic damage taken seems very logical.

2. Spell haste. If we compare spell haste with melee/ranged haste, we see that the latter can be provided by 6 different specs, while the former is only provided by 3. I'm not including hunters and their pets in this analysis as they are able to provide both.

3. Raid-wide mana gems. This conjure ability has become virtually useless in MoP, especially for frost and fire mages. I really don't buy Ghostcrawler's argument that they're hesitant to do this because it gives healers more to worry about in terms of mana management. Clicking a button every 2 or 3 minutes does not seem like an overly burdensome restriction to impose on healers. In fact, I would argue that the majority of healers would welcome another ability to restore mana. Someone in this thread has stated that this would make mages 'mandatory', but couldn't the same be said about Warlocks and healthstones? I suppose the counterargument to this would be that it affects how Blizzard tunes encounters for healers. I would say that the ability to regenerate a small portion of mana is not anything that will be game-breaking in terms of tuning encounters. Once again, there should be some incentive to bring a mage to the raid.

I also like the idea that someone brought up of a raid-wide temporal shield. 40% on a 1 minute CD is ridiculously overpowered, but with the proper numbers, I think it would be an excellent addition. Of course, they would need make it base-line and remove it from the talent tree as it would pretty much be mandatory for that tier.

[Mirishka]

Shouldn't we mages have some raid utility? I mean if we compare us to warlocks (which we have to since we are the cool flasy cloth spellweavers) we don't have a shit! I mean warlocks have sick damage, well on par with us if it's not fire and brimstone (?) time, they have curse of the elements and 5% magic damage is HUGE on a boss, they have healthstones which doesn't share any pot cd's, they have crazy survivability and they can revive fallen raid members! How is this not overpowered?! And on top of that they get a huge revamp and an awesome green fire questline. Now lets have a look at us, we have: Timewarp. Yep, that's it. We're not even close to warlock survivability and raid utility, I mean seriously how can it be like this?! Blizzard seriously needs to adress this issue because there is no damn reason at all today to bring a mage over a warlock, in any scenario (Except hero, but in a 20M mythic raid you're bound to have a shammy or hunter pet).

Okay so that became a bit more whiny than I expected but really, this issue needs to be fixed !
Your thoughts?
Edit: No, I don't wanna roll a warlock I wanna play a mage and have some advantage over warlocks.

//Angry and sad mage

What you don't realize is this.

The problem is not that mages aren't good enough.

The problem is that warlocks are too good. They bring too much, Blizzard themselves admit this and say that's getting addressed in WoD.

[Invictus9001]

Everyone except...FREAKING Shadow Priests who are umm.....PRIESTS and should be able to RESURRECT.

Priests can resurrect; they just cannot battle res (bRes). Shaman has a self-res in the form of Reincarnation.. but no bRes. Paladins can resurrect, and cast 'Hand of' spells of various forms, but no bRes either. Those classes really, really, should have been given battle res capabilities. Blizzard needs to make that happen. Pronto.

To the OP's original post: My thoughts on mage rad utility? The biggest utility we had was CC.. the good old Polymorph. Moon marker = sheep.. and yet thanks to people trying to chainpull and AOE-down Cata heroics (which actually tried to reintroduce needing to use CC) the overall need for CC got shot in the face and buried next to Hoffa. It's f*cking sad really, given that I honestly liked the need for some coordination and control, rather than blindly having to spam ice lance because tanks would chainpull/drag half a dungeon all over creation before stopping at a random point, at which I could only hope to Blizzard/Flamestrike, given using a standard cast would take too damn long.

Blizzard needs to bring back the need for CC. I'm not saying make every pull a military exercise in strategy/counter-strategy.. but FFS make it so there's some need for it in PVE. As it is, the only time CC even gets used is.. in BGs/other PVP venues.

[Deleted]

I don't know about you guys but I haven't encountered a raid where mages were unwanted. They have great mobility and dmg, in cata they could be used for kiting on Nef and maybe beth and magmaw. I play a warlock and I take dmg over my gateway and brez or whatever crap you bring up. I play 25 man raids and it might be different for 10 man but as long as you have enough raid cds to survive you bring as much dmg as possible.

Warlocks are a bit strong but they aren't that far ahead of mages unless you really cheese it out. I'd gladly give up hs, magic debuff, brez and gateway (which despawns really easily) to continue being a top 3 dps class

[MrExcelion]

Healthstones are really good right now, and I wouldn't be opposed to a hybrid mana gem + health item mages and locks could drop

Alternatively, I've made other suggestions like having a real 70% slow (like Affliction locks), a knockback again, or our burst AOE damage could be stronger than the rest. Such effects would be baked into current spells to counter ability bloat (Cone of Cold, Blast Wave which replaces Flamestrike, etc)