Glass cannon is dead for raids, we are essentially an intellect buff now

[cockaroo]

Pretty much every class can already do what we can do better. Not sure why there is so much disparity between us and warlocks, even on 2 targets, these other classes can do it better than us. Just not sure why Blizz thinks it's a good idea to have so much damage disparity between classes. I wish they would give frost a boost and rework fire so it is fun and viable again. We need to get more representation on the mage side of things. I had to re-roll this tier to warlock because of the poor damage. I would rather play mage. Hopefully they will do something soon, but it doesn't look likely.

[Tyrilion]

Frost mages utility is far different from warlocks, No other class can keep a constant aoe slow up, nor can they completely negate a mechanic using ice block. every class has there uses and frost mage has good dps too so i dont see your issue

[MrExcelion]

Speaking strictly for Frost Mythic raiding and not m+ or pvp:

Yeah, Destro and Demo with Explosive Potential are in another dimension of DPS for raiding right now (or SP). Another general issue is the skew towards multidotting this tier, and none of the 3 mage specs have that capability.

Multidotting aside, one problem with Frost is it has a 3 minute CD (a relatively weak one at that), so on fights like Mythic Ghuun, Mythic Mekkatorque, and Mythic Jaina you end up just going Fire because you get 2 CDs in the last phase instead of 1. Freezing Veins is no longer a thing.

Another problem Frost has is you lose 5k DPS by being within 10 yards of your target, as you can't shatter Glacial. On several of these fights you're stacking in melee. This wasn't a problem last tier because we took Thermal Void, but now that we actually take Glacial, many people still don't know this exists. Before anyone posts that you can work around it, yeah you can sometimes can, but not always.

Fire and Arcane have their own sets of issues in terms of gameplay/dps figures in raiding right now, but yeah. So far hasn't been a great xpac for Mage raiding.

No spec balancing was done after mythic week either, or trinkets for that matter. Don't know what's going on. Isn't normal.

With that said...because of the AI buff, you'll always bring one or two, but yeah, beyond that, can just bring more locks or SPs. Immunes could have been an angle they take but it doesn't help on any of the later mythic fights. They went out of their way with Mekka to prevent any kind of cheesing (gigavolt radiation pool dot can't be blocked). With mythic Jaina, the fight is tuned high enough that you ignore the elemental and burn it before any non-tank gets frozen. I will say that Fire's damage on last phase Mekka and Jaina is good though because of the 2x Combust and Searing Touch, so there's that. Really weak earlier on though and bringing more SP means more Mass Dispels and Leap of Faithes.

Were kind of in that same boat as hunters right now.

[cockaroo]

frost mage has good dps too so i dont see your issue

I wish I could have some of what you're smoking.

[Tock20]

Now you know how the rest of us feel when it's mages are always on top. I agree, it sucks that there is a big difference between the top 25% of classes to the rest, but I don't see that changing. Either reroll, or stick to your guns and do less.

[Nitros14]

Now you know how the rest of us feel when it's mages are always on top. I agree, it sucks that there is a big difference between the top 25% of classes to the rest, but I don't see that changing. Either reroll, or stick to your guns and do less.

When were mages always on top? WoD?

[Nitros14]

Frost was super-strong when I last played it in Nighthold after you learned to do that sneaky double Ice Lance properly and use Shimmer as well. I remember fighting it off with Affli and we were always close, but when I got decent RNG and didn't fuck up my 2xIL I ruled a lot of encounters from a decent margin.

Fire was also great in EN for a while if you had the proper legendaries, which I obviously didn't.

But yes, neither of these compared to the Arcane in HFC, which was godly wetdreams.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../11#dataset=90
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...t=90&boss=1866

Warlock crapped on frost mage in Nighthold. Especially on the important fights at the end of the instance.

To be fair Warlock also crapped on everyone else. Warlocks have been the chosen ones for the last two expansions.

[MrExcelion]

Frost was legit in NH when people figured out the double lance stand in melee thing (which worked on Augur and Guldan quite nicely). Had top boss damage by far on P1 Guldan to make that push before the Fel Lord

Like another poster said, Legion was some dark times before that point, really needed the Fire bracers. It wasn't until later that people discovered how good Glacial Spike was with no legos (needed some ilvl too though), you could even run shimmer + ice floes back then. I was miserable at the start of Legion for a couple months since I got Sephuz + Norg on multiple mages but Glacial saved me

Mage was also meh at the start of ToT, but they got buffed after a couple of weeks. And also the first tier of Cata when Fire was running out of mana and you didn't have Sinestra's Shard of Woe for arcane yet (and they buffed arcane I believe at some point). But yeah, generally, Mage has had one of the best track records in terms of being viable. We have 3 DPS specs, so usually one turns out really well. Not the case for raiding this xpac. There's been better options (other than Arcane on Fetid early on because the adds were so overtuned)

[lockybalboa]

Fire is complete shit right now, not sure wtf are our class devs doing. Item and stat scaling for fire is absolutely atrocious.

[Sariengrey]

mages are in a sorry state right now and can't compete. Contribute? yes, hope of being at the top of the meters(top3) not even close on 90 %of the current encounters. Why play or bring a mage? bad balancing on blizz's part or bad encounter design that too heavily favors certain types of classes(dotters) its crap imo

[RedTGP]

How do the rest of you deal with the low DPS of mages on a recurring basis? The first xpac this happened I was like well its a one time thing. Now I regularly see mages on the lower side. (3 out of 4 xpacs). Per warcraft logs statistics (which I cant link)

We are 3 of the bottom 7 specs in game ;( With tons of work and better gear I can hit middle dps in the raid but usually boomkin, spriest, locks all destroy me. I am usually VERY competitive but when I see other classes/specs 5k+ ahead of the MAX TOP DPS we can do and I realize with amazing work and perfect skill I have a chance at middle of the pack at best my interest in raiding goes waaaaaaaay down. Am I missing something?

[Pigglix]

What i do is:

I try to be competitive with myself, first and foremost. If i did whatever, going to use numbers pulled out of my ass just for the sake of the example

If i did 10k on boss X in the first week, then on the second week i'll try to do better than that.

Then the second thing i do is try to be better of my fellow mage of the same spec

3rd things is againt the mage in general

then i start to "worry" about the other classes, to see if i can beat them too.

But one thing that i've learned is: I dont care if the dude or dudette did 10k+ more dps than me or if i am the last dps on the metters, as long the damage done to boss dont get higher than 3% diference between me and the person on top. If i keep that threshold. then i'll be in peace with myself and the class/spec im playing

Like, Dude did 10k dps on the boss and was responsible for 5% of the damage on the boss health. I did 5k dps and i was responsible for 3% of the damage on the boss health.

Well, that's a diference i can live with it, even if the diference was 5k dps, but that's just me /shrug.

[Tycruise]

Fire is complete shit right now, not sure wtf are our class devs doing. Item and stat scaling for fire is absolutely atrocious.

Completely agree, I hate playing frost and arcane even more, but I've finally caved and started playing frost. I've played and excelled at fire throughout most of the game, even when other specs at times were on top, but compared to the other mage specs it's in the crapper, and compared to other casters (locks, spriests, boomkins, shamans, etc) mages are in the crapper. I'm the only mage in my guild and other than somewhat decent dps, I'm only an AI buffer.

[mrgreenthump]

Like, Dude did 10k dps on the boss and was responsible for 5% of the damage on the boss health. I did 5k dps and i was responsible for 3% of the damage on the boss health.

Well, that's a diference i can live with it, even if the diference was 5k dps, but that's just me /shrug.

So you can live with 50% less damage on the boss? And as we are Mages, probably less damage on everything else too. I don't think even I'd play a mage if my damage was 50% less than top on boss(and there were no other prio targets), afterall we don't really have the toolkit to be good at anything else and for almost every fight in the game boss damage is the most important thing.

[SinR]

Pretty much every class can already do what we can do better.

Welcome to being an Elemental Shaman

[exochaft]

It's not as dire as one would think, although warlocks and priests are an pretty big outlier in many cases. I typically play boomie, and if you look at just the statistic bars, it's look like boomies dominate frost mages hugging the bottom... but that's not necessarily representative of reality. If you go through the logs, frost mages actually have a higher DPS potential than boomies on most fights. I'd argue that it's just easier to do well as a boomie than a frost mage, especially when it comes to the 'accepted' methods of doing encounters. If one has the correct gear and skill in combination with a strat that enables a frost mage to do well, they will perform very well... just not as good as warlocks and shadow priests.

[Nitros14]

It's not as dire as one would think, although warlocks and priests are an pretty big outlier in many cases. I typically play boomie, and if you look at just the statistic bars, it's look like boomies dominate frost mages hugging the bottom... but that's not necessarily representative of reality. If you go through the logs, frost mages actually have a higher DPS potential than boomies on most fights. I'd argue that it's just easier to do well as a boomie than a frost mage, especially when it comes to the 'accepted' methods of doing encounters. If one has the correct gear and skill in combination with a strat that enables a frost mage to do well, they will perform very well... just not as good as warlocks and shadow priests.

I mean yeah, arcane is a great spec if you design your strategy and comp around an arcane mage and do the fight inefficiently.

But there's no reason to do that if you can take a warlock or shadow priest.

[halfawake]

It's not as dire as one would think, although warlocks and priests are an pretty big outlier in many cases. I typically play boomie, and if you look at just the statistic bars, it's look like boomies dominate frost mages hugging the bottom... but that's not necessarily representative of reality. If you go through the logs, frost mages actually have a higher DPS potential than boomies on most fights. I'd argue that it's just easier to do well as a boomie than a frost mage, especially when it comes to the 'accepted' methods of doing encounters. If one has the correct gear and skill in combination with a strat that enables a frost mage to do well, they will perform very well... just not as good as warlocks and shadow priests.

And that's the thing, no one is gonna modify their strat to satisfy the needs of the mage when you have to jump through so many hoops to do so. My guild already has trouble on some fights, I fill in utility roles for the most part. It's not fair of me to ask 19 other people to do something just for me when someone else can do it better with a different class. The wildfire nerf made no sense for fire when other specs have just as bad of outliers as far as azerite goes. They just want everyone playing frost because that's what they've been pushing on mage since WoD. I'm not saying frost was amazing in WoD but that's when they started making efforts to make it a pve spec. It's the spec they've put most time into since then, it's the spec the devs know. Before that it was all fire and arcane for raiding and quite frankly I miss those times.

They've put a lot of utility into frost while arcane and fire (and a lot of other class specs) are kinda dead in that sense. Stripped of options and creativity the specs are former shells of themselves and of course they aren't gonna see play with extremely niche areas in which they excel and no general purpose utility like frost has. In a raid, most of frosts utility is useless but you have people that aren't going to be respeccing their azerite all the time and you get more people playing frost because of it. It's a symptom of Blizzard trying to reduce dev time and increase play time for us. Locking us into one spec at a time and not really giving attention to specs that don't receive massive outcries from the community. If we wanna see fire and arcane pulled up to the level of attention that frost has been receiving we're probably gonna have to get vocal. Look at shadow, look at elemental, communities were vocal and they finally received changes. Blizzard doesn't care about this unless they have to. Arcane was just as unfinished as those specs, fire is still as bare bones as those specs... It feels bad to see specs in this state. Frost is the only fully fleshed mage spec but it fills it's own little niche of burst aoe, cleave dps and it has its own problems that make it boring as hell in a raid setting. How hard would it have been to give fire phoenix flames baseline while putting another talent like cinderstorm in its place (or an actual phoenix that I have wanted since WotLK that you could dps into or something and revive it). Or maybe large dragon's breath like the legendary, what was the reason for removing 50% slow from flamestrike? Or the ignite slow? Fire and arcane were afterthoughts and frost has always bored me. We're not going to see any changes to this balance until we demand it. Fire needs slows or SOMETHING in the utility department. The mobile execute isn't really group utility. Arcane has single target damage but not even topping single target overall with the the most stringent requirements for doing so.

TLDR Other classes and specs have received the most dev time while mages are pushed into frost with fire and arcane being afterthoughts. This won't change until we are more vocal about it.

[Fenryn]

Welcome to being an Elemental Shaman

Except that Elemental is actually one of the top dps specs right now. Granted, rarely happens and they are usually pretty garbage though.

I'm pretty disappointed in class design for all mage specs in BFA. Besides the fact that none of the specs are performing that great, the actual gameplay honestly just feels like such a downgrade compared to previous expansions it's sad.

[Socialhealer]

Except that Elemental is actually one of the top dps specs right now. Granted, rarely happens and they are usually pretty garbage though.

I'm pretty disappointed in class design for all mage specs in BFA. Besides the fact that none of the specs are performing that great, the actual gameplay honestly just feels like such a downgrade compared to previous expansions it's sad.

yeah but dat AI buff means bring at least 1 mage! when shamans are junk never bring any 1-0 to mages :P