Mage thinking of returning to Wow

[ZaiMage]

So i'll give a bit of background, then I'll gripe, then I'll ask my question.

First of all I have played WoW off and on for years since 2005 or 2006. Loved vanilla, obviously. The game was still good through Lich King. I kept coming back after WOTLK to scratch the itch and was satisfied mostly and usually I would grow tired of the rudeness and anger of other players and that would drive me to quit. Plus I was more casual, I didn't have a ton of time to commit to a raid schedule or Arena schedule. I'm used to being good at things outside of the game and being mediocre in WoW with such harsh criticism is pretty annoying.

My most recent stint was prior to and then a few weeks after Legion was released. I had a few decent epics, I got lucky with a couple titanforged (not sure if thats what they are called but it was the highest quality item you could get from the world bosses) world drops. I was playing Mage. At the time, it was widely accepted that Fire was the best DPS spec, although I dabbled in all three just to see what was going on. I was trying to optimize my gear for my spec (cant remember what the important stats at the time were, maybe crit, haste, and mastery... this isn't really about that.) However, If I performed my rotation absolutely perfectly, with maybe 2-3% error here and there, I would peak my burst at around 150k then my stream of DPS would lessen to around 90-100k. Meanwhile DH, arms warriors and whoever else are sucking their thumbs mashing buttons dealing steady streams of 200k plus. Shitting all over me about my DPS being bad. I knew it wasn't my fault but most other classes didn't understand. One time I was grouped with another mage, same spec, similarly geared and his DPS was the exact same as mine throughout the whole instance and everyone else was miles beyond us. It reassured my that it was indeed just a mage problem. Other mage players tried to reassure me that my damage would scale with better gear down the road. I was already getting pretty fed up with the imbalance, and my life outside of wow was great. I didn't need to listen to a bunch of people talking down to me over a game flaw. Especially the people playing demon hunters. Mage is my favorite class to play in WoW, by far, so I didn't really want to swap just to avoid the hate.

If you want to view my gear search the Armory for Zai of dethecus, horde pandaren mage

This was my gear only a few weeks after legion was released

Now to my question: Has this been fixed? If I come back will I struggle to keep up with other classes, with comparable gear scores?

[Zenfoldor]

<3

Fire is very competitive. It has been throughout the course of the expansion, with the primary low point being the end of ToV thru most of NH(the primary reason fire was perceived as gimp during NH was because there was a bug in frost called the double IL and it raised frost dps significantly compared to fire). Fire has always done relatively good dps in mythic+ and 5 man groups primarily because of ignite, the DB helm, and Living Bomb or Flame Patch.

Your demon hunter example is poor, because at the beginning of the xpak demon hunters had major burst aoe in dungeons or raids, but once you scaled that up their godlike aoe would teeter off rather quickly.

I've played fire for the entire xpak, and I've dabbled in frost in the newest raid.

Fire has never been in a better spot, imho. t21 is looking to be monstrous for fire, and it looks like we may come full circle. That may change, however, but currently in mythic Fire is the best mage spec, and mage is a solid dps class.

I'd consider myself the average mage. At 926 ilvl I do about 1.10m(1.2m sim) single target as frost, and about 1.05m(1.15 sim) single target as fire assuming I get good procs, and fire generally scales better after 2 ads. In heroic, I go fire about half the time. The two specs are surprisingly close together. There is no dps problem with the mage class numerically(and the perceived Fire "problem" early in the xpak was not all it was made out to be, but that's another story).

The difficulty with the mage class(and it's more of a game problem in general) is that legendaries are hard to get and required to do dps on par with other characters(most of whom have said legendaries).

That said, argus introduced invasions and I believe they grant a high drop rate.

As a normal mage, I have all Fire legendaries, all cross class legendaries and 1 frost legendary(comet storm helm).

Because of this, my frost is still a bit gimp. If I had the bracers I could wear certain gear(2pt19) that would greatly improve my parses/ilvl and actually lower my ilvl to make those parses seem even better. Even with frost, legendary is important.

So to answer your question, there are some great catchup mechanics out right now, and your first two legos drop very quickly, if you get lucky you could have basically 925+ ilvl and BIS legos going into next tier, but more likely you will need to farm legos for several weeks/months to get up to par. AP is a non-issue and the only real grind now is gear and Legendary items.

There isn't a better time to be back, and mage is one of the best/my favorite classes, so I would say jump on in. The old raid is winding down, catchup for the next raid just released(basically gear like mine for free, just questing) so now is the time if you are gonna try. A month or two and you may be playing catchup until next xpak.

edited: forgot to mention, you will also be getting a 3rd "free" legendary ring after you beat the final boss in the new raid, which I believe may have been an effort to reduce the impact of the other two legendary slots. updated for correction from below poster: And the ring is not free, we will not be able to wear past the limit of 2 legs. It was a bug that has been fixed.

[Specialka]

If you check logs, in ST Frost is rather competitive for now, while Fire or Arcane are quite good in AoE, but none of those specs are the "Top" DPS one.

And the ring is not free, we will not be able to wear past the limit of 2 legs. It was a bug that has been fixed.

[nerfproof]

Honestly, if people you've never met before and prob will never meet in your life bothered you that much that you stepped away from the game then maybe coming back isn't for you. I see it all the time in wow and it's something that unfortunetly will never go away. Also depending on where your gear is at currently, I can't seem to find you on the armory atm, your dps is going to be behind almost everyone until you get better gear. DH are always going to talk trash because they are the hero class on this xpac. It was no different with DK's in WotLK or even monks in MoP. If you come back just expect that 1, your never going to be top dps if there is a geared arms war in your run - 2, that there are always going to be assholes in this game who love trying to make people feel bad and - 3, mages are in a pretty good place right now. We are towards the top on almost all fights, geared is easier for us than some other classes and right now everything but arcane is fun to play. So if you come back then welcome back but dont expect a different game.

[ZaiMage]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'm a med student now so my play would be casual. I understand that I wouldn't be competitive in raids until I put a few days /played once i got back. It would be nice to hang in smaller dungeons in the beginning. I probably wont come back just yet, given the advice.

Just to defend myself for a sec: I thought my DH hunter reference was decent, but it wasn't just DH, it was all classes. You said yourself that DH had godlike AOE in the beginning stages of legion dungeons and raids. I know, at the time, it was accepted that arms warriors were stupidly overpowered, as well. When I quit, the highest ilvl toons were probably 870's, so it really was in the beginning stages of Legion. I was 825 ilvl, compared to other classes with comparable ilvl, my dps was trash. Other mages confirmed this at the time. I've always been casual, so I'm a bit behind the curve always. I'm sure there aren't a lot of casual WoW players who populate this forum.

Honestly, if people you've never met before and prob will never meet in your life bothered you that much that you stepped away from the game then maybe coming back isn't for you... ...So if you come back then welcome back but dont expect a different game.

I've never understood this criticism. Obviously, getting hurt feelings has nothing to do with how well you know the person insulting you. It has more to do with your own insecurities. If someone says something that strikes at an insecurity, it doesn't matter how well you know the bully. Again, I'm no stranger to WoW. I played through BC and have been coming back off-and-on since. I know how people are in game. Not expecting a different game, just expecting to compete with other DPS classes at the same ilvl which wasn't happening for mages in the beginning. Thanks for your 3 points. I'll probably hang back for now.

[Pawstruck]

If you're in med school, you should probably study and find more virtuous ways of relaxation than this game.

[AHappyPlushToy]

If you're in med school, you should probably study and find more virtuous ways of relaxation than this game.

LOL agreed, school is far more important, but if you are going to play a mage regardless, frost is an easy one to pickup and is very powerful,

[Kelathos]

The launch of Legion indeed saw the struggle to hold 100k and then climb to 200k. Except for a select group of melee who could burst cleave in dungeons.

Rest assured, Mages are perfectly fine. I switched to my Mage in January, and it took about 2 months to gear up so I was no longer being carried, and another two until I was competitive for top DPS. I am a Heroic raider in a casual guild.

If you want to play WoW I HIGHLY recommend finding a class and spec you enjoy playing. Find some friends or a guild to spend time with. Then worry about the numbers later.

[Droptoss]

If you want to enjoy this game you really need to stop worrying about the number balancing, especially if you are playing casually. Yes during the very start of legion mages struggled but it solved itself really quickly. Fire mages needed to stack crit which takes some time but once we got 50%~+ crit we were one of the top dps classes. The bigger problem was the RNG nature of legendaries which could boost your dps by 10%~.