Mages: The Untapped Most Powerful Class in WoW? But Not So Much In Lore?

[mrlowrider]

Khadgar could have literally teleported behind Grom in WoD and blew his head off. So ya they get nerfed in lore

[omeomorfismo]

Warriors, hunters and presumably rogues are buffed.

rogue and hunter are a fuck ton nerfed. presumibly they should more or less one shot people, but for gameplay reasons they couldnt...

[matrix123mko]

rogue and hunter are a fuck ton nerfed. presumibly they should more or less one shot people, but for gameplay reasons they couldnt...

Mages could make an invisible force field around them if they expect some assasins and snipers. Mages should also be able to burn entire galleons. However, at more unfriendly circumstances, they should be able to freeze multiple heavy armored soldiers.

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Khadgar could have literally teleported behind Grom in WoD and blew his head off. So ya they get nerfed in lore

I think there is an option to prevent teleportation. I imagine magic as something akin of hacking where you have to shatter the defenses first.

[omeomorfismo]

Mages could make an invisible force field around them if they expect some assasins and snipers. Mages should also be able to burn entire galleons. However, at more unfriendly circumstances, they should be able to freeze multiple heavy armored soldiers.

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I think there is an option to prevent teleportation. I imagine magic as something akin of hacking where you have to shatter the defenses first.

are you suggesting that mages could realistically summon a permanent shield? because not even kadghar, living on a draeonor's ley line could do this and was literally oneshotted by a young garona knowing to be a target of her.

[Kyphael]

Um, Medivh, one of the most powerful mortals to ever walk Azeroth was a mage. In fact, you can count on one hand mortals stronger than Medivh on Azeroth. I can only think of Azshara, really. Medivh is likely stronger than Malfurion.

[Alanar]

For gameplay reasons you can understand why mages have all the powers they do. But there is still so much about mages that have been missed out of forgotten in lore that seems to make them less powerful than they should be.

For starters we can assume mages are a grand term of a mix of classes that exist in warcraft lore, like sorcerer, sorceress', conjurers, wizards, hedge mages and of course mages. LEst we not forget all the 'mancer' classes, Aquamancers and tidesages.

But there are many abilities and spells you don't see in WoW either for gameplay reasons or because they clash with other classes.

In Warcraft 1 for instance mages could not only cast fireballs and Blizzard and water elementals, but they could also summon scorpions
In Warcraft 2 you pretty much see the WoW version of Mages we see today, with their abilities to cast, slow, polymorph, invisibility and fireball, but they also uses a basic lighting attack which is now commonly seen in shamans spell set in WoW. And then there's flame Shield a spell we haven't yet seen in WoW but kind of works like immolation aura.
In Warcraft 3 we had two mage type of units, the sorceress and the Archmage. The sorceress worked very similar to the Warcraft 2 mage unit, casting polymorph, slow and invisibility. The Archmage on the other hand also worked very similar to the mage class in Warcrat 2. Aside from two spells like Brilliance Aura and Mass Teleport (which could just be a portal spell)

Outside of games, in books we have had Rhonin a guy who could very well communicate with animals and also form a raptor army (see Night of the Dragon). A comment alot of people joked about at the time but there's no reason why that could not happen, after all in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans Conjurers even summoned scorpions to help fight beside them, so you could also say Mages have some druidic abilities too.

This leads well into Medivh speaking of druidic abilities who was able to turn into a crow/raven an ability shared by druids in some way.

Mages have such a wide skill set I can see why Blizzard neutered them,

I think there's no reason mages cannot summon fire elementals, summon, commune or turn into animals, use lighting spells, or cast lightening storms.

And we havent even got into the topic of Blood Mages, which is a while new different type of mage as well. In todays WoW we have flamestrike a blood mage ability from Warcraft 3. And while our artefact weapon Felo'melorn in Legion did bring in Blood Mage abilities and appearances (which was awesome by the way), even going as far as to hint at the Phoenix ability with Phoenix Flames it just adds more fuel to a class that seems like is way more powerful
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It seems mages are probably one of the most powerful classes in game, or at least should be, but it's mostly due to the fact that they are actually 10 classes in one.

I am not sure if there is a discussion here, but is this something you agree with, especially as this is certainly something we can argue about with other classes like Hunters, Shamans, and especially Druids who seen to share every druid school in game.

I bolded the part where I feel is room for exploration,that said blood mage is such a vague thing still and besides it does have more in common with a destruction warlock,kael'thas at the sunwell raid was defo a destruction lock,but that said I was one of those people that thought the verdant spheres from the glyph should have been given to the fire mage. The blood mage we know from warcraft is just kael'thas, with hes verdant spheres(lock thing since mists?) and some generic fire stuff, flame strike etc. The blood mage we see is that and being a hero of the Blood elves.

I quickly read it through again, but sorry you said it yourself.. mages are not druids or shamans. The summoning scorpion could be interesting.. , but still it doesn't quite fit. Why would you summon a scorpion when you can unleash freaking arcane storms.. oo wait we can't Arcane storm channeld (insert super awesome spelleffect) cracks the floor, 10 sec cooldown. Yes give!

[Combatbutler]

are you suggesting that mages could realistically summon a permanent shield? because not even kadghar, living on a draeonor's ley line could do this and was literally oneshotted by a young garona knowing to be a target of her.

A few of them can shield entire cities pretty much indefinitely

[omeomorfismo]

A few of them can shield entire cities pretty much indefinitely

yes, using titan blood, artifacts, runes and rituals
not walking aroud living a normal life :|

[Combatbutler]

yes, using titan blood, artifacts, runes and rituals
not walking aroud living a normal life :|

So you are saying a mage preparing tools to use doesn't count? Meaning rogues and warriors aren't allowed to use the equivalent of such tools like, daggers and swords?

[omeomorfismo]

So you are saying a mage preparing tools to use doesn't count? Meaning rogues and warriors aren't allowed to use the equivalent of such tools like, daggers and swords?

im saying that lorewise casting a perpetual and impenetrable field of force around himself would be so expensive and demanding that no mage that have to do something usefull could do it.

[Combatbutler]

im saying that lorewise casting a perpetual and impenetrable field of force around himself would be so expensive and demanding that no mage that have to do something of usefull could do it.

Two arch mages shielded the entirety of dalaran for quite some time, with a nigh impenetrable shield.

[omeomorfismo]

Two arch mages shielded the entirety of dalaran for quite some time, with a nigh impenetrable shield.

i dont know how much canon it is, but disguised demons entered the city all the exp.
anyway the focusing iris empowered dalaran, the artifact of the magic's aspect...
if some mage want to use it to cast 24h the shield on himself fine, but its a gigantic waste worth of a rogue's threat.

[Combatbutler]

i dont know how much canon it is, but disguised demons entered the city all the exp.
anyway the focusing iris empowered dalaran, the artifact of the magic's aspect...
if some mage want to use it to cast 24h the shield on himself fine, but its a gigantic waste worth of a rogue's threat.

Demons entered the city all exp. because no shield was up, it usually comes down to the rule of cool and the narrative blizz is pushing. But ultimately nothing within the boundaries of the lore framework blizz created makes it impossible for a mage to create a nigh impenetrable shield around themselves. Whether they created a trinket that does it for them, which would be the equivalent of a dagger or poison for a rogue. A tool they created to help them.