Heroic Thok...Where the mages at?

[haxedagain]

Anyone else find it interesting that across 9 heroic 25 kills of Thok, 225 players, that there have been only 2 mages? Less than 1%?

Didn't this happen with ToT progression as well? Mages scale pretty well, so once fully geared, mages are great, so great they get nerfed and are thus rendered useless during progression, when class actually matters.

I think blizzard needs to redesign mages so that this is no longer a problem.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm not a heroic raider but any shape but shouldn't we at least wait a bit since right now Garrosh isn't close to being touched yet. I would say wait awhile before saying Mages are bad albeit they do need some redesigns or what not.

[Haxlax]

You had to create a new account to post this topic?

Don't worry, mages are always OP.


Anyway, it's because of movement probably. Hunters, Ele Shamans and Warlocks can all move and DPS (Warlocks not quite as good but still!).

[Deleted]

Thst is becouse the mecanic of the boss as mage relly on casting on that boss you get to a point you cant cast ANITHYNG so yeah thats the main reason xD thok is a really mele boss

[Mirri]

Err have you seen mages in other kill videos of other bosses or have you just randomly decided to jump to a conclusion based on 1 boss for a extremely tiny sample size of 9 kills and conclude that Mages need changes to not be benched during progression ??

[Nemesiz]

I'm pretty sure Thok's Deafening Screech interrupts spellcasts, so I guess it could be because Arcane Mages has fewer instants unlike Locks, SP's? Pure speculations now ^_^

But yeah, hunters are especially awesome on that fight due to being mobile ranged and the fact that we cannot be interrupted by Thok.

Usually in the 10 man HC progress guild that I am a part of, our mage is on top on most fights. So I wouldn't call mages bad by any means.

[Haywire5714]

I'm actually surprised that warlocks do really good on that fight despite being a caster. Why are warlocks so strong on every boss ugh

[Frozendekay]

I'm actually surprised that warlocks do really good on that fight despite being a caster. Why are warlocks so strong on every boss ugh

Going demon on thok allows them to just spam instants for the majority of the deafening screech spam.

[haxedagain]

Actually if you look at all the previous fights, mages are pretty underused in progression in general. Most fights have just one mage.

I'm a DK, we're pretty underused too, but I rerolled from mage in WoTLK so there's always a soft spot in my heart for poor mages. =)

Mages always do good at DPS at end of tier, so blizzard always nerfs, so mages never good during progression. The exception first tier of this expansion. Historically, in the cutting edge guilds, warlocks are used for progression, and mages are not.

[Xomniuri]

With the raid encounters we are seeing in SoO, strong multi dot and cleave classes as well as high movement classes are excelling in progression content.

Mage however are none of these things, arcane mages seem to be having the best luck on encounters with multiple mobs, where as fire seems to be keep up with the pack on single target fights.

When it comes to gearing a mage can't swap between these 2 specs and be 100% as effective as another class.

I'm not saying mages are really shit on a dummy we perform quite well, but in current tier encounters they would likely be left on the bench

If they hadn't completely raped frost dps and actually fixed their scaling issues, this might have been a different story. But even if they were to fix frosts dps, the damage has been done most mages have converted to fire or arcane and gear will be wasted if they were to switch back, and once mages hit about 565 ilvl fire and arcane really start to excel

[Correlia]

At the start of the fight Deafening Screech goes off every 15 or so seconds and the time between gets shorter and shorter to a point where you can only use instant cast abilities due to Thok casting Deafening Screech once a second. So seeing how a class that relies on having to cast and doesn't have a Dot that deals a lot of dmg compared to boomies/locks/SPs they aren't worth bringing for Thok.

[haxedagain]

If they hadn't completely raped frost dps and actually fixed their scaling issues, this might have been a different story. But even if they were to fix frosts dps, the damage has been done most mages have converted to fire or arcane and gear will be wasted if they were to switch back, and once mages hit about 565 ilvl fire and arcane really start to excel

This is kind of my point. I don't think mages are UP. I think that mage design is poor because blizzard has to nerf at end of every tier, just so mages can be best at end of next tier. (Which, I'm sure after all fights are on farm and gear is to be had, mages will be the best again.) The concern I'm addressing is that there's a pattern that is rendering mages to be ineffective during heroic progression, unless guild takes long enough to gear up before doing fights.

[Zeelot]

At the start of the fight Deafening Screech goes off every 15 or so seconds and the time between gets shorter and shorter to a point where you can only use instant cast abilities due to Thok casting Deafening Screech once a second.

Exactly this, one of the key mechanics of the fight on heroic is to last as long as possible during the screech phases, where he will interrupt casters about every 1 second, making mages pretty useless, has nothing to do on how mages scale or anything.

[Valanna]

DPS wise, mages can pull their weight. We take a quite big hit from the screech, but you can fit in a scorch between casts no matter how high the stacks. Couple with IB, bomb and instant pyros and it ain't all that bad. The main problem is that the healing is so heavy, you'd rather bring a class with a raid CD and a little less dps such as a shadow priest. All other DPS classes without proper raid CDs perform higher dps than mages, but that doesn't mean mages do shit dps on the fight.

ETA: I was in for two tries when we had an AFK of a shaman tonight. I finished 8th total and 4th on bat damage as fire.

[haxedagain]

Warlocks have not endured such hardships. =)
Many good mages have rerolled.

[Libertarian]

I think part of it boils down to two things: 1) Thok is very unfriendly to casters and 2) Why play a mage, when warlocks do everything better? We have pretty much done every single boss with 2 warlocks instead of 1 mage 1 warlock this time around because warlocks just do it better.

[taishar68]

You're basing the demise of a class based on 9 kills? The absolute tiniest fraction of the playerbase is on this fight, and you think it is the bell weather for an entire class. Wow.

[Deleted]

Warlocks have not endured such hardships. =)
Many good mages have rerolled.

One single mage from method rerolled at the start of 5.2.
The sky is falling and mages are being mass abandoned.

Mages are not "bad" in the beginning of every tier, they are "bad" at the beginning of an expansion. We're way past that point.

The only reason that mages are not being taken for Thok, is that the game is balanced outside of that one fight. Mages just don't excel at dps while moving, or casting instant or really fast casts like on Thok.

I get the fact you may be concerned about raid raid spot on Thok if you are a bad player or in a very, very high end guild; but seriously we don't need a thread for this. Quit the over-exaggeration.

[Vargur]

I think part of it boils down to two things: 1) Thok is very unfriendly to casters and 2) Why play a mage, when warlocks do everything better? We have pretty much done every single boss with 2 warlocks instead of 1 mage 1 warlock this time around because warlocks just do it better.

Well yeah, they REALLY went all out overboard with warlocks this expansion, starting even before that, with the complete redesign. And then superior in numbers to all other casters (only mage competing) in every regard. We should all just reroll warlocks from our casters.

[Woobels]

Mages complaining about being too weak, oh boy.

Try being a hunter if your so worried about getting sat on progression.