Mage TroubleFollow

I DIDN'T SAY THIS, SOME GUY ON THE WOW FORUMS DID

Q u o t e:

"Why am I, a warlock, better than a mage? It doesn't make sense to me. I didn't sign up to be the big nuker, I didn't sign up to be #1 DPS, I didn't sign up to be a PVP god, I signed up to be a raider with dps below others while offering viable utility. I will offer, from my point of view (Warlock in a high end raiding guild), what I honestly feel is wrong with the mage class.

1. Obviously: DPS.

I don't understand why I can outdps Mages. Let's see what I have. I have, as an affliction warlock, 5 DoT's that I can apply, and when I am done, I can starting casting shadowbolts. These Shadowbolts hit for just as much as a fireball if you're fire, or a frostbolt if you're frost. So, obviously, considering all a mage is doing is spamming these, I will do more DPS as my dot's are ticking for well over 1000 if all of them tick.

Oh and you can't forget our new AOE. Seed of corruption that with my +shadow damage explodes for 1700ish and can crit for over 3k.

What sense does this make. The mage is the glass cannon, the insane DPS that trades survivability for DPS. But wait, your DPS isn't as high as a warlocks, who's survivability is exponentially better than yours. Which takes us into our next topic.

2. Survivability.

First of all, at level 70, it is rare to find a mage with over 7,000 Hp. This is due to the absolutely horrid mage itemization which is consistently wasting points with spirit and other equally worthless stats. Stamina is important to every class. Compare this to warlocks, who get their +damage coupled with a load of stamina. You say "Alright, but you're a warlock, you're supposed to have high stamina, you always have.", Well, you're right. We always have. But only recently has there been such an extreme gap between the two classes as far as their total viability in raids, and in PVP.

Survivability skills, warlocks get: Deathcoil, AOE fear (instant, if you're afflic), fear (50% interruptions with our amazingly itemized pvp gear), and if you're so inclined to include it, a healthstone that, coupled with fel armor, can heal you for over 4k. Oh that reminds me, Fel armor, untalented 20% extra healing from everything, including potions, healthstones, heals, siphon life, drain life, the works.

What do mages get? They get a polymorph that instantly heals their target, frost nova that is (A) Dispellable, (B) Easily Breakable, (C) Vanishable, escape artistable, cloak of shadows, the works. Not to mention the plethora of trinkets that get you out of it. And to top it all off, it doesnt even last long even when it doesn't break. Oh, and they have blink. Blink puts some distance between you and your enemy, or closes it. Rogues? Deadly throw, sprint, run away and stealth again, plethora of counter moves. Warriors? Intercept, which I believe is on the exact same cooldown. Nifty, huh.

So effectively, warlocks are better in 1. DPS, 2. Survivability, and my next point. Utility.

So on top of all of this there's the neat things that each class can do to make themselves more important to a group, or even solo.

Warlocks:

Felhunter that can dispell and counterspell, Imp that talented gives almost 1000 HP to the party,
healthstones that talented heal for 2496 and crit for 4500, a soulstone that allows for a second life,
Curses that amplify the damage of others(and their own), a curse that increases casting time by 60%, a talent that reduces physical damage done (works on bosses) by 5%, a curse that reduces armor, a curse that reduces attack power, a succubus that can charm, a banish that works on demon's and elementals (oh so rare in outlands?), enslave demon to sometimes rip a mob out of a pull or even simplify a boss fight (maulgar anyone?), detect magic to see invis'd mages, and the incredibly useless underwater breathing. Oh, and of course, fear can be a utility spell as it's incredibly useful in many end game encounters (Magtheridon's). Oh, and the talents Nether protection (30% chance to become immune to fire when hit with fire, or likewise with shadow), and of course soul link. Eye of kilrogg is nifty for scouting.

Look at that list. That is one hell of a list. I'm probably forgetting some, too.

Mages:
Decurse. Arcane Intellect. Sheep humanoids. Make food and water. Frost nova for add control. Frost is sometimes decent for kiting. Spellsteal is good for some encounters+pvp. Invisibility. Uhhh.......
I'm really reaching here....ummm....slow fall? Detect magic I suppose....I don't play a mage, so I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but nothing big I'm sure.


Sustainability:

Warlocks:

Life tap talented with my shadow damage does 1500ish damage to me while restoring over 2k mana. I could life tap twice, 3 times and be up 50% of my mana pool, and be healed with a single HoT, a bandage, or a healthstone that I always have handy. I have never. EVER. popped a mana potion on a boss fight. I have Dark pact, which allows me to steal mana from my pet, which is always the imp who is phase shifted and cannot die, I might add. I have a paladin put blessing of wisdom on my pet which works to it's fullest, and since my imp never cast's he is always regenning at the wicked fast speeds that pet's always regen mana at. Life tapping is almost never used when you have this skill, you are completely and totally self sustainable while only slightly lowering your DPS for the global cooldown when you click the skill. There is no other cooldown, it's not a cast, it's not a channel, it's an instant mana battery that is always there. Always. I didn't drink, or eat, a single time leveling from 60-70, nor do I even now. life tap is quickly healed by siphon life, and a death coil heals for 1000+

Mages: Mana gems. The talent that gives you a percent of your mana back when you resist a spell. Potions. Evocation on an 8 minute timer. Who wins?



So, basically what's going on is that you have a class that is inferior to the other in every single conceivable way other than one. Burst DPS. I'll agree with that, but how much burst are you going to do in arena when you are stunlocked, hit insanely hard with your miniscule hp? Not much. Why? Because you'll be dead. Meanwhile I'll be taking the hits, hitting my instant AOE fear that will give my healers time to hit me, I'll deathcoil the melee off of me, hit the priest with a curse of tongues for insanely annoying cast times, all the while getting healed for 26% more than a mage ge'ts healed for, even though I have, generally speaking, 2-3k more HP than mages.

The problems with this are absolute mind boggling. How is this justifiable? And even with this, they are NERFING mages still? Hypothermia? What? If I was a mage, I'd reroll a warlock, but thankfully I don't, I just really, really feel like you are consistently, at least for a little while now, getting the short end of the stick. You have bad survivability, comparably subpar DPS, small amounts of utility, mediocre sustainability, and terrible itemization.


Sucks to be a mage, Blizzard, sucks to be a mage."
I DIDN'T SAY THIS, SOME GUY ON THE WOW FORUMS DID
and i agree with most of it too =P

Edited, May 2nd 2007 5:42pm by pooooooooooooop

I'm glad you cut and pasted that response pooooooooooooop, after reading through people's responses to how "overpowered" mages are, I was getting angrier and angrier as I read on. I love the mage class, I have almost always picked the mage type class in any type of RPG I have ever played. I recently hit 70 ( my first ) with my mage so I could do PvP and raiding mostly. Now I feel I have made a terrible mistake putting all the time and effort into being a mage. I have recently started a warlock now level 38 and find the class offers more for a cloth wearer than a mage cloth wearer. Having a pet that can seduce, silence, sacrifice, and tank/DPS for certain situations makes all the difference.

I don't know how many of you have mages or are willing actually get them up to 70 but it does not get any easier against any class past 60. I get more heals/help playing my warlock in a BG than I have ever have with my mage. I could be running around with 2 pally's and a priest as a mage and not even get heal/cleanse even when I have 2-3 targets that are headed straight for me. People are going to play how they are going to play, I have never once told anyone they weren't doing what they should be doing whether it be healing/cleansing/DPS etc.

All I am to other party members is a food/drink vendor that can sheep and stop whatever I want. The fact is sheeping puts you in some real crappy range, heals target, easily breakable from any damage and usually breaks within 7-8 seconds anyway. All the time where I have a hunter using Scatter Shot, Silencing shot, DPS DPS, while the whole time I am watching my Health go down so I can maybe get a Fireblast off before I die and hope it crits so I can at least proc Ignite.

Rogues on the other hand now have CloS at 66, 90% resist for 5 seconds. The 90% does not bother me, thats fine, they need that for survivability being so far away from the rest of there teammates. It's the fact thats it's on a one minute CD, doesn't cost energy, and instantly removes all existing harmful spell effects, and they can still stun lock/attack at will! Are you serious? What the hell was blizzard thinking? Even if you can wait out the 5 seconds and do some damage they can just laugh it off by vanishing, rinse, repeat. If I switched back to being frost which I will not because of the upcoming nerf, they are making it so you can't Ice Block, Cold Snap, Ice Block. So basically being in the surviving tree of the talents you can't outlast the rogue who can resist, attack, and vanish.

This is the first time in 7-8 months of playing that I actually get angry while playing. I'm trying to shrug off the displeasure I have had with my mage recently and am focusing on my warlock now. In the 30-39 level bracket for BG's I am usually in the top 3 for damage done, and thats impressive at level 34-36. I actually have the Stamina to survive, have better tricks in my bag to keep myself alive and help others. Warlocks of all classes should have no problems fighting a mage nor should they complain about them. If a fire mage blow's all his and trinkets and CD's good for him, he's as good as dead seconds later anyway. Next time you see him Death Coil, Fear, CoA, Corruption, Siphon Life, UA, Immolate. The mage is going down either way even if he trinkets out of the Fear. Even if he resists the fear, Amp Curse, CoEx run away laughing.

All and all I'm not posting to get people angry, I love the warlock class and wish I had rolled one a lot earlier than I had.

Oh, this is fun! I have a 70 mage and a 34 lock. I love them both, and... honestly, I rolled my lock to figure out why I was getting killed by them all the time and how to counter some of their stuff. I am one of the *OMGWTFBBQPWN* POM-> Pyro mages that will roast you up for 5K ... drum roll please.... ONCE every 3 minutes (and only on a *really* good crit..my average damage with POM Pyro is closer to 3K). True, I get Arcane Power for 15 seconds, but if I try to cast another Pyro (and it crits), that's 6 seconds of casting time that I have to stand very still (gee, don't you have a pet or something that bites me/spell locks me?). During that time, you have DOT'ed me 3 times and feared me. Assuming I have my anti-fear trinket, I pop you a few more times with Arcane Explosion or fireblast, and get feared again for my trouble? Deathcoiled (horror, not fear, so no trinket help there, and it was on cooldown anyways).... mage dies.

I find that if I am playing against a 'decent' lock, I will get totally roasted 1V1. I think mages are a good *support* role, but not great 1v1 vs locks. Hunters (especially BM hunters) probably give locks the worst time, IMHO).



This makes me laugh.... "I didn't say I got killed by them. Just mentioned that they were a bit overpowered"... what defines overpowered? If we can get your health down to 30% before we die? And remember... these special mage tricks are on a 3 minute timer *and* we have to get a *top* crit to see something like this. How often do I crit for 5K (plus 2K in dots)? Well, more often than not, I get a whopping 1.8K normal hit off that POM Pyro, then the lock is annoyed and I get feared and dotted... end of story.

Not complaining as a mage, I like the amount of damage I do, but what self respecting lock has less than 7K health at 70? You don't get one-shotted unless you're going up against some unbelievably geared out mage (I'm in all blues with +550 spell damage).

As a lock, I hate frost mages *much* more than the POM Pyro mage because once the POM pyro is out, I get to do all kinds of things to them, but frost mages can ice block out of dots and spawn a water elemental to help damage me, then ice block again with another elemental...oops, sorry that would be before this patch. Now they can only ice block once and they get hypothermia. So, frost mages as well as fire mages/POM Pyro mages should be on the 'farm' list for a warlock.

Now, if you want to nerf mages even more.... just take away all spells except for conjure food/water and portals with the occasional int buff. Oh... ice lance on frozen targets (getting back to the OPs original message) breaks the frost novas so now you will only get critted once, not even once if someone is beating on you as their crit will break the frost nova, so ice lance will hit for all of 300 damage... (was that a flea that bit me?).

What is interesting is that mages used to OWN warriors in PVP, but now some of them have 18K health.... try killing that with broken frost novas, diminishing returns from frost nova/ frostbite. Geez!

Huh? Okay... so deathcoil has a cooldown (my lock is not high enough level to have this yet, so I have no experience with it). But I don't understand how that makes my POM discussion invalid. All I'm saying is that a mage can only do 1 POM Pyro every 3 minutes, and locks have tons of anti-caster/anti-player tools to take care of all the rest (e.g. fear has no cooldown and does not heal the target back to full health and dots don't break it (usually)). Not saying that it is good or bad, but warlocks should pwn mages, contrary to the other opinions in this thread about mages being overpowered.

Don't get me wrong... I love playing my lock and enjoy it immensely. I have learned a few things about how warlocks work by leveling mine up, which is a good thing. At least when I get feared/dotted to death by a lock, I know why. :-)

First of all, the post you quoted was written by me and I apologize for the lack of a word in that sentence. In my haste I didn't include "constantly". As you can see from my rather poor math, Pyroblast would chop off half my health, even if my math was off by a few thousand points.

Sure, you'd blow some 3-minute cooldowns, but I blow a 3-minute cooldown every fight. Death Coil. Unless I'm Demonology spec'd in which case I most likely blow a soul shard or two and a 15-minute cooldown to get a new demon.

I've seen Pyroblast crit for 6500. Add 40% from Ignite to that. That's 9100 damage in one crit. PoM gives a second Pyroblast in case the first one missed or didn't crit. Add Ice Lance, Fire Blast, Blastwave, Cone of Cold and Arcane Blast to the list of instant cast spells. If you can't kill someone with two Pyroblasts, one Ice Lance, one Fire Blast, one Blast Wave, one Cone of Cold, one Arcane Blast and perhaps a second Ice Lance just for the heck of it, then I suggest you get some better gear.

Edited, May 4th 2007 1:24am by Mazra

I know that they "can", but alot of mages don't (in personal 1vs1 fights I've had) not to mention that I just spam it and forget about COA. As long as they keep "zapping it" I keep putting it on. Ties them up, worrying about it. IDK its always been the tactic that I've used and I've never lost to a mage yet. At least not one that didn't have the jump on me. Plus I'm sure that I haven't come across a mage player who is "really" good yet.


Dark

I love the way all you 'Locks in this thread assume all Mages have all those Arcane talents, all the nice Fire talents, and Frost talents down to Ice Block. Boy, those Mages with their 100 talent points are really tough to beat, eh? Eh?

Whereas any 'Lock can sick a Felhound on Mages, or chain-fear them, DoT them to hell and back, etc. Still though, buff 'Locks. It's high time they had their 100 talent points just like Mages. Lord knows any time a 'Lock even starts to worry about another class there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over at Blizzard R&D.