Mage and healing

Classes Mage
1

I just noticed, which is funny after all these years, but mages are the only class with no type of SELF healing skill at all.

Every other class has “something”, not Always special of really helpful but something that allows them to self heal.

Warlocks - hp stones and/or things like drain life / sacrifice demon.
Huntar… hunter - 30% heal (and the CD can be sped up with the right talents…)
Warrior - bloodlust? thing which can be further improved.
Rogue - potion 30% hp back with short CD and/or leech poison, if they even need it as i noticed in the BfA content they are extremely OP.

Druid - yeh.
Shaman - not super wowie but they can definitely self heal in all specs.
Death Knight - death coil mostly, not wowie but if careful its doable, generally its “okay” i noticed as i try to level up.

Paladins - pfhahaha… yeh, can they even die?
Did i forget a class? actually have trouble… oh yeh priests, the forgotten child.

Soooo… yeh mages… nothing, zip, nada.

Its not 2004 to i dont know, 2015? anymore.
Mages are no longer glass cannons, their dps is higher in some cases and talent picking helps, but overall? Mostly just glass now.

And i notice its a real pain to level up. (leveling up 2 mages atm, one Horde the other Alliance)

As a frost mage i feel like commiting suicide, but generally its the “easiest”.

As an archane mage… its not bad! but that shield is stupid, doesnt help at all, few hits and its gone also the actual gameplay mechanics are just really bad at the moment.

Fire mage? Well actually that one i’d say is a glass cannon and the shield does help cause it does damage on melee, plus you can spec to gain shield with blink.

But its again kind of mindnumbing and all three specs could really use some type of self heal.

Am i wrong? Am i just burned out (no pun intended) leveling up mages and whatnot?
As sometimes the leveling process can kinda get to you if you know what i mean.

2 Likes
2

3x quick thinking trait which heals you with every instant cast.

You can get one from pvp head and one from shoulder world quest (alliance can get one also from pvp shoulder) or lfr shoulder and one chest that is called blood drenched robe from underrot which has the trait.

The trait heal is very decent, in pve i can get up to 28k heals per instant cast that deals damage if crit and 14k heal non crit.

Pvp i get around 7k heals per instant cast and 10k if crit.

You can just spam like arcane explosion and it heals you, even if it is not hitting the opponent and heals like the same amount as i mentioned above.

Same with barrage, icelance and fireblast.

3

I dont pvp, and no other class has to do that to get some type of healing.

Beyond that i’ve got no clue what you mean with “trait”, that sounds like a pvp spec thing.

2 Likes
4

Azerite armor traits.

Couple ways to heal with them, or absorb dmg. [Resounding Protection], [Self Reliance], [Eldritch Warding], [Cauterizing Blink], [Quick Thinking]

I think Mage needs more absorb abilities, not healing ones. Temporal Shield is great (only usable in pvp/warmode) and also fun to use. It would be nice to have something similar for pve. Maybe they could redesign our shields, making them absorb far more dmg but with a longer cd. Or they could give us Alter Time back.

I just don’t get excited for generic healing abilities. They don’t fit the Mage class. Avoiding/absorbing dmg is what I want to be able to do.

Edit. But about the leveling; Are you using heirlooms? Personally I never had problems with leveling Mages. Just make good use of Sheep when you overpull, kite mobs, etc.

5

But we have strong renewable shields.

Arcane even have a talent to remove cooldown of their shield. Totally useless if taking damage and want to keep mana but still

6

It’s only really strong for arcane. Frost and fire…hardly worth anything. Feels like it anyway, arcane can take a lot of damage where as fire/frost shields drop almost instantly.

7

They all have the same absorb but arcane also reduces magic dmg, frost slows melee against you and fire does small dmg to melee attacking you.

8

The shield can be pretty strong if you stack the defensive azerite trait that buffs it.

9

Couldn’t disagree more on this, we have Frost Barrier and Ice Block, plus azerite traits as previously mentioned, both of the former can be doubled up with Cold Snap if really required. I think the main problem with the class at the moment is too much spell locking, it’s not that your shields and heals aren’t effective, it’s that the other classes ability to constantly perform spell lockouts puts you in a position where you just have to stand there and get pummelled. My personal view is that spell lockouts should be halved for casters, the game is quite melee biased at the moment, coughs demon hunters / rogues. I don’t see them being locked out of abilities, yet they have many abilities to simply get straight back on top of us…

10

Thanks for this topic which highlights just fine the ridiculous course the game has taken these please years.

Instead of making healers out of mages, remove some other classes’ self healing…

11

i would agree that mages do have decent survivability, but no HEALS, just ways to prevent/avoid damage.
The spell lock thing i do agree with, it feels like casters are being punished even in pve because interrupts is a good way to make a healers life harder, but where are all the disarms? does disarm even exist in the game anymore?
even knockbacks punish casters more than melee.

1 Like
12

Absorbs are (in essence) heals, they are one and the same thing, I.e. a period of damage mitigation, which is why I made the point. In addition to this, giving mages heals in addition to the azerite traits and the absorbs verges on turning them into a semi healer class, which isn’t true to the original class spec (magical barriers to defend).

The classes that lack damage mitigation make up for it with some form of contextualised one shot heal ability, I.e. hunters, which is fine.

I think there are a couple of more appropriate underlying mechanisms that need balanced, one being the ‘live forever’ nature of some other classes, whilst at the same time being able to spell lock and produce huge damage output, this would give us enough of an ‘encounter time’ within which to be relevant before the situation turns into a 3 v 1.

The other is the sheer numbers game imbalance of melee classes. Interrupting/ spell locking was a default game mechanism at a time when death knights, monks and demon hunters were not in the game - the increasing prevalence of these classes in battlegrounds over the vanilla caster classes (e,g. mages) means you stand a much greater chance of getting some form of interruption, if not multiple interruptions while getting ganged.

In summary, Blizzard think they need to keep the mechanism for Arena and 1 v 1, but in doing so, leaves us open to being steamrolled in bg’s. I can’t see why this can’t be mitigated somehow. If we can’t move out of situations to survive or mitigate damage then we become ineffective.

13

I’m not disagreeing with you, but its at this point easier to advocate some changes purely for the mage class, then to advocate for changes to all other classes so to speak.

And well i guess you could Always check out classic WoW if you are now so displeased with how its all turned out after x years.
Not meant as an agressive response by the way.

14

i wouldnt call something that can be dispelled a “heal”, but w/e.

15

Are we playing the same game? I’m a melee and i’m levelling up a mage because boda is caster paradise.

16

For the duration of the shield, I’d say that it carries out it’s intended purpose. The shield is usually destroyed before it is dispelled, which is why I classed it as such. Perhaps if you feel that it is dispelled too often, advocating a PVP talent(s) to place a HoT on you to the value of the dispelled shield, or it causing the equivalent amount of damage (remaining shield absorption) to the enemy would be a suggestion - this would be in keeping with the class mechanics?

17

If you are referring specifically to paladins as your melee class (I note, you only mention one class, not multiple melee classes, more importantly the ‘newer’ melee classes) I would not use this as a basis to judge casters. From what I have observed, paladins have been just as neglected as mages, they are built on outdated concepts and mechanics.

18

Disagree, our Barriers are extremely potent because they are absorbs and not heals.

I do miss the pre-nerf Cauterizing Blink from Legion though, 30% of max HP HoT over 6 seconds for every Shimmer? Not broken at all lol.

19

I also have a dk and a war and they have the same issues. Frost dk is just useless in boda, war is in a little better place.
It’s not they are negleted, it’s just that bfa has been built around heavy movement capabilities or being ranged and those classes just aren’t on that.

20

You have identified the key issue for sure, bfa is built around the movement mechanics and there are classes that just excel at this. I’d actually say warriors are in as bad a place as your paladin, possibly because it’s one of the few classes I know I can have a fair fight with, who knows?.. However, with your death knight, at least you can mitigate ‘mover’ classes.

Anyway, my point as a mage is that these movement heavy and sheer number of melee classes in battlegrounds now outweigh mages, to the point where you actually struggle to make a meaningful contribution to a group fight without being spell locked the entire time.