Has Mage gameplay deteriorated since TBC/Wrath?

[Hotmail]

Mages used to be all about being a glass cannon and a team player. When you stacked those Scorches on the boss you weren't just doing it for yourself - you were doing it for everyone else that could do Fire damage.

Then you had to do your research and figure out if the bosses did any Fire or Frost damage that you could block with your trusty Wards. Not to mention, failing to keep tabs on your sheep target could mean an instant wipe and a very angry raid leader.

Nowadays Mages are tankier than Death Knights with the Legendary Neck and all you really have to do in the way of a rotation is to keep track of selfish procs. Other players don't even hit you up for Portals or Food anymore, which ruined the social aspect of the class. We even had an awesome unique buff for a while in the form of Focus Magic but unique buffs were given to those dastardly Paladins instead (who have been OP for roughly 5 expacs out of 7).

Mana management has become trivial - gone are the days of popping Mana Shield to survive lethal damage, ensuring that you lived until your next Evocate and could finish off those last few % on the boss while the rest of the raid was mostly dead and staring at their Release Spirit button.

And who doesn't remember their first Shatter Combo in PvP? The little fizzle as you threw a perfectly-timed Ice Lance for 40% of someone's health and caused them to make an account on Arena Junkies just to complain about class balance...

Those were the days.

[Atherius]

I really don't see the point of this thread. You could make the same arguement for every single class...
Mages are still a teamplayer because of time warp. In fact, the only other "teamplayers" in the game are locks because of healthstones and ret paladins with blessing as well as shamans for heroism.

No, mages aren't tankier than dk's because most mages don't have the neck legendary. And people are still asking me for food and sometimes portals, so there goes that arguement.

Mana management is the key to arcane mages, but I guess they don't count? And spellsteal also drains your mana really fast, but that's about it.

The days you are talking about are over, but those were not the days for me..