How can anyone understand this wall of text?
You have not played at high level on your mage , you avg around 12/13 key mark and the highest you done this season is 21not on you mage which is avg for an easy season.
I do not agree fully with the OP but she has some good points , were as you are just rambling along trying to make her look bad.
Atleast when you make a post make it with paragraphs and grammar thanks.
Arcane is the hardest spec of the 3 yes.
Yeah well⌠this is not specific to Mages to be honest. When I play with my warrior in lower keys everyone screws up.
Including me. Especially me. Because im really bad at dpsing in general⌠
Thatâs true, but what we usually see with them itâs like another levelâŚgood entertainment though.
If you didnât really see good mages, I think they were bad. For you itâs a bit easier, you have bl, so there is already something that make mages not so attractive for a key. Maybe you donât have much experience with them and have some PTSD from mages that didnât use defensives so you try to avoid them, which is understandable 
Ah, I meant it terms of defensives, not sure tho.
Btw, that breath doesnât even know that her âaverageâ destro is doing like 90k overall with 4 tier 
Its pretty simple: WL are one of the tankiest classes, because they have a lot of passives and most of them are also insane.
10% Stam bonus, 5% health bonus, an absorb that goes up to 15% of your health, 10%dmg spread over 5 sec, 3 % reduction, 10 % dmg transfer to your demon and a bit of heal by your absorb. + you get the healing if others use their healthstones.
Thats an insane amount of passive tankiness.
Mages dont have that. They have an insane amount of CDs.
The better your group plays the easier is it to predict dmg and therefore the better active defensives become.
Unlikely, because of:
A short CD shield to puffer, with barrier. (I cant remember if it was 25 or 30 secs)
an immunity or 70% Dmg reduction on 4 mins.
60% DR on 2 mins with creater invis.
20%DR on 2 mins with Mirrir images
A 1 minute CD on a health reset (If you know what you are doing its an LoH)
Specspecific Deff: Double Block, Cauterize, Big DR on barrier
they have insane mobility
Sorry but if the group and the mage are good, you never run out of defensives.
It ofc requires way more skill to survive compared to a warlock. But Mages are one of the tankiest classes in the game for predictable dmg. They are allmost immortal in that regard.
That being said, mages lack passive DRs (like many classes) which is why they feel worse for healers as soon lots of random hits come in. But than again, here you have lots of classes that dont have much passive DR either and lack the defensive kit a mage has.
I allready go on a certain amount of vers + get as much as avoidance as I can get.
Problem is, unlike Resto, Shaman DPS (I am ele) cant affort going too much into versa, due to the stat-prios (ergo, losing lots of dmg). I go as much into it as I think I can handle.
Avoidance is sadly fairly limited outside Enchantments
And Armor while being good to have is hardly that good in M+ since most (90%) of all dmg you take is magic dmg anyway
Ele is just sqishy.
I am also not a big fan of argueing we can go versa, when other classes can do that too and have more overall tankyness. (Especially when versa is not one of your best stats)
And yet it is a Provable FACT that people use these people as the standard for the Meta comps and that trickles down to the 20s to the 17s even sometimes as low as the 10s.
Because mage was OP AS HELL last season and you want to have Different specs be strong each season you do not want 1 class to be op all the time that is called bad balance.
It is REALLY funny how you defended last season with but but only the top people are able to use it even though it was trickeling down below even 16s last season.
Now that you do not have the excuse of fire mage needing a lot of mobs (because the so called op specs now require the exact same thing) you SUDDENLY are but but look at those other things.
You claimed mage was not strong last season yet when other specs are in the same situation (requiring pulls around them getting buffs from others and so on) you are asking for nerfs to those specs.
You want your class to be op not strong like it was before the buffs where other specs was close enough.
In raiding Fire and Frost was ONLY bad for the top 0.1 to 1% of the playerbase before this buff.
In m+ both Fire and Frost was strong enough to be used at Any content level.
Every single spec in the game can be played at a 25 and has been played at a 25.
When classes has more then 1 dps spec often this means that you have 1 on top and the rest looks way worse then the actual performance of the spec are you should understand this already though.
When you look at popularity webpages like that you will not see the actual powerlevel of a spec you are seeing what people chooses to play it often is power related but not always.
Hunter is a great example of this, this expansion Survival has been the top performer in M+ in season 1 and 2 of dragonflight yet you do not see this on the rankings because most hunters do not play that spec.
In the top end mythic + people are talking about removing the Aug from the group they are mostly using it for the defensive value of the squishy person the damage they bring is lower than a 3rd damage dealer.
It is VERY VERY clear you have not been playing out of meta classes in a long time.
Meta has been a MASSIVE problem in dragonflight.
Playing something not meta and trying to pug is a real pain because of the massive amount of meta slaves around.
Meta has only become more of a problem each season from Legion.
When you play specs that has not been meta for a long time you really feel this when you pug.
Thatâs just simply not true. For example at the start of Legion, frost mage was the worst dps spec in the game by a large margin.
Because Fire was stronger.
There was a whole thing about people putting artifact power into the wrong spec at the start of legion.
Fire was literally one of the strongest specs at the start of legion.
And when nighthold came out Frost was the strongest mage spec
Only for groups who donât know what theyâre doing and/or are exclusive. Just make your own, thereâll be a literal ton of people eager to join it and youâll do just fine.
I donât view balance as a historical thing where classes take turns to be OP. Stupid concept, really.
I literally didnât. Quote it.
Iâve already addressed the rest of your points.
In S1 mage was definitely not the meta, nor is it the meta in PvP at all. So⌠yeah. EXODIA was a massive problem and it had a mage, itâs true. But thatâs not âa very long timeâ, that lasted 3 months.
I did not know that. Then yes makes sense.
Speaking of tankines, it is slightly unfair that some classes stack vers as a DPS stat and get a bonus DR from it, while others donât.
And its difficult to balance out. Blizz got themselves in a pickle there with vers DR.
Yes please ! Delete that abomination of a spek already. Sick and tired of Aug and their BS.
Every spec that has been âreworkedâ ended up in lauch doing massively better than everyone else.
However, to the credit of Blizz, the success of S1 balance, and the direction S3 is taking balance wise (they took a VK now, so lets see what they do when blizz gets back to work) I will say the following:
They hotfix stuff really fast and donât leave it there for months and months like they did in BFA and SL. S1 near perfect balance is proof of that.
Exodia however⌠that happened because they had the MDI right after 10.1.7, and their brand new poster boy Aug. They did not have the balls to change things when required ASAP. Especially Aug.
And when they did, it was too late. Nobody could surpass Exodia. Everyone quit or rerolled.
This. So much this. And it happens mid-season, too. And it most certainly happened to mages as well. I suddenly had another 6 keybinds and went from pretty mediocre to omfgwtfbbq. It was utterly crazy, and we got deservedly nerfed.
I donât like this whole thing. They need to stop doing that. Release classes in a well tested and fun state instead of just shuffling them all around like a bunch of lunatics. Feels like playing an alpha version of the game. The patchnotes are the size of a small novel, too.
when they rework locks theyâre gonna be OP as well and that has nothing to do with mage tuning, or ele shaman not having enough defensives is also unrelated to mage tuning . thatâs what iâm saying
No big deal.
Enhc wants Haste/Mastery.
Ele wants Haste/Mastery (for fire builds) or Haste/Crit (for lightning build)
The set bonus makes us go into the fire build.
Funny enough is, that while we dont want to go too much into versa, we still have to invest into it to not die. We try to go to 15-20% versa, the higher you play the more versa. That being said this is nowhere near the amount of versa classes get, which is around 30-35%.
I think versa is a rather good stat since it can help with survival issues. (Since blizzard dont fix them)
It for sure becomes a problem when it becomes the best stat for DPS classes. But tbh I see it more of a scaling problem of said classes.
Having versa as your best stat usually means your other stats scale rather badly.
Versa is incredibly expensive if you just want the DMG component.
How do we see if something is OP? By comparing things.
So yes, the reason why mages are strong is because their kit overall is strong.
Strong utility, Strong Deff, Strong Dmg
Ele is
Strong utility, bad deff, mediocre dmg.
If we dont want to remove utility or/and defensives from classes/specs, we have to look at the dmg tuning. This is called having trade-offs. Classes shouldnt have everything. Strengths AND Weaknesses give classes flavour and allowes for choices.
If a class has high dmg and high defenses it is allready strong in M+ by default, the utility than just becomes a bonus and fully breaks the class.
Because mages are just like DH and Aug kek
But rarely anyone talk about it, yet people will never stop talking about DH and Aug.
10 years ago? Ok.
My Bad, was talking about DF basically. Or this whole yearâŚ
Yep, or specs. Demo is the only lock who benefits from versatility
Oh yeah, then Iâm fine with destro being bad for like 1.5 year. Itâs totally fine with me. âAlways look on the bright side of lifeâ 
Everybody currently talks about DH and Aug because theyâre the classes that are actually breaking everything. Look at the representation graphs, even at your husbandâs +26âs. Mages and warlocks are doing about the same there, but DH and Aug are way out of line.
I donât know why youâre so obsessed with the top 200 runs. I genuinely have no idea.
Mages and demo warlock are the most represented casters, so yep.
Of course you have no idea what Iâm talking about, since you play mage, you are basically as welcome to the pugs as evoker or dh.
Are you spying on my husband? He is doing 27s now nice he has two fans already on this forum
I got a full set of Ele gear. Good to know that I did the right thing by having haste/mastery. I use it for the Rezan strat in tyranical which I like to do.
Its not technically required for 25s, but its just so much fun. The idea is to dash to rezan with BL at the start of the dungeon with 4 dps. Then I port out and respec to healer.
And while other people do way more than me, I can do 130k-140k dps in ST. Im just bad at DPSing. But even a half-ased dps rotation does 3x more than healer DPS in ST.
100%. Even for healers. Its RShaman Mastery is just lame. Really lame. Going for verse is something I do reluctantly to be honest.
If they just added ANY mechanic to heal wile DPSing haste might even be worth it. But NOâŚ
To be honest, utility needs to be streamlined. Its just giving people a bad time with the Meta, and blizz an impossible task to balance.
Its not just damage. Its that, survivability, utility, CDs, the dungeon comp, and the dungeon itself⌠all those factors are so complex its a miracle blizz manages to keep things from exploding.
with that said:
I totally disagree with this âtradeoffsâ idea. NO. A healer is a healer, a DPS is a DPS, and Tank is a Tank. We each have a job to do, and every roll must be capable of executing that job.
Its the only way to slow down, or reduce the Meta FOTM pressure.
So DPS (A) has to do the same DPS as (B) in an ideal world. That is the basic premise.
Then comes survi and utility. Which should be nerfed to increase homogenization when it gets out of hand. Like MD and Soothe from priest was.
And class âidentityâ should stick to HOW the dps is done (for example: afli == dots, demo == pets, destro == bolts). Not on utility.
No, you literally wrote it 5000 times already.
Of course I do, donât be ridiculous. Iâve played feral druid in M+ a lot as well. And frankly, it was different, but I always got a good group in the end anyway, or I created my own. I also see feral druids in my groups with some regularity today, and they are by no means good.
demolocks are stronger and comparisons & logs support me on this
Demolocks are stronger than fire mage? Kek
Ishayo, try to que anything as a feral and then try on mage. (Yes ofc you can pug your own key only, but there is a huge advantage to be able to get in keys and doing the keys you need).