Raid after raid, CE after CE, expansion after expansion, I played mages in this game. I have been through times when mages were OP and times where mages were bad.
But this is next level. I personally hate the new Arcane, so I do not plan on playing that spec. Lots of people do. This should be no problem though, as we have 3 specs. I’m not claiming they should all be just as good, but you can expect a 5% difference between them and you can take that upon yourself for not playing the “best spec”.
However, the state of Fire and Frost right now is something that has never happened in this game for 16 years of play. I have never seen a weaker balance team than this. There was never a point in time when the discrepancies between are specs were like this.
And no, the buffs won’t help. Frost translates into 6% buff which is just laughable, and Fire does indeed give 12% buff, but the state of the Fire mage now is dreadful. We would require buffs of 15% for Frost and 25% for Fire to be MIDDLE OF THE PACK, not good.
All in all, the game in unplayable right now for a Frost / Fire mage. The current balance team is a shame to this game.
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I second that. Playing mostly mage since day 1. Last few xpacs were difficult for at least 1 or 2 specs. But this xpac … oh boy, omfg!
To people at Blizzard - my kids could balance the game better. Wait. Probably monkey could do. No, really.
It’s a spit in face to paying customer.
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Agree. Playing since end of vanilla, always mained a mage. Almost gave up trying to get my fire mage to 70. Hits like a wet lettuice and has no defenses to speak of. In fact I respecced him at 68 I was so frustrated but a bug stopped my flying bar appearing, so had to put him back to fire. Arcane has so many things to watch and choose between in the rotation it’s not fun for me and I hate doing half a job with a spec.
I wouldn’t quit over it though. Try a demo lock, I levelled an alt I had as I was so fed up with the mage specs and he turned out great. They’re much better to play than they used to be and do top level damage. That’s my main this xpac so far unless things change.
I switched back to my rogue. Way bigger damage that is achieved with much less effort and much better survivability.
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Thata the same situation as in sl but top apec is juat not your preffered. It was fire at s1 and arc/frost were bad. Arcane now is even more broken in raids than fire in sl. Its a but hipocritical since if top spec was fire instead of arcane now ppl wouldnt be reacting such hard. But difference between sl and df is that now they are making changes every week. Changes are not such good sometimes… But they are being done. And they will continue. I think that all 3 specs of mage will be in good condition soon. I have also some hopes because I see pretty big reworks for start of expansions such as dru, monk, pala changes. Removal of dt is also bad for hunters but it means that you can hope for removal of RoP. According to current condition of specs and bad talent trees mages can have some kinda rework, too. I hope they will get.
Feeling the same sadly. I don’t love arcane and don’t want to shove down fire playstyle on my throat. Frost is unbearably undertuned and and I’m not even sure the 10~% buff coming next week is going to be enough at all. Will help but it won’t slingshot to anywhere near competitive level. They really need to give mage design to someone else because the person helming the project clearly don’t play mage at all.
I used to be a CE raider for several expansions with world 10-15 kills and ranks but gone casual last couple expansions. Been saying for weeks and for months on beta forums that mage is not good and need attention but it was ignored.
Of course it wont. But in several weeks I hope they will make it good. At least they see problem.
They don’t see the problem. The specs have playstyle issues not just tuning. (frost has tuning mostly its playstyle is alright). Not best or anything but in line with other classes but the damage is lacking big time.
All they see is logs and no one playing anything but arcane so they buff other specs and sadly you play arcane or you will just get kicked after 2 pulls because fire and frost is doing no damage at the moment. No one from competitive standpoint runs fire/frost mage so blizzard don’t really have “real” data.
Hipothetically speaking: The buff on wednesday will not change anything so then what? They buff it again a week later by 10%? We have to wait 7 days again for the changes to go live? They don’t know what they are doing really.
Shadowlands season 3 was almost the same, but with fire being the best, and arcane being bottom
I just came here to see if I was the only one who was thinking that Mage just plain sucks now and it seems I am not the only one.
I am parking him in Orgrimmar till Blizzard sort them out and will not renew my sub next month and take a six month break as it seems this expansion was released too early like everything else nowadays. Hopefully by then the game will have been straightened out and balanced fairly but until then they will lose money, not much but if there are others thinking the same it will show hopefully.
Gives me time to check out the next gen update on The Witcher 3 
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I dont think its a case DF launched too early. Its just the typical WoW thing.
Blizzard make one of 3 speccs strong and call it a day for the season, its been inbuilt in WoWs philosphy since day 1 really.
Once theyve got one of its speccs in a good place they dont concern with trying to balance the other 2.
It was as blizzard said, 38 speccs is too many speccs to balance in their eyes
I’m sorry how Fire, Frost mage is doing. I’ve also been playing fire mage for several years now and I’m not even thinking about changing in the slightest.
I don’t need a fire mage to be top DPS, but to not be an anchor for my group of friends in m+.
I’m not currently following fire mage in the raid. Because I needed to take a break from mythic raiding, but from what I read, fire is even worse in raid than in m+… I don’t understand it.
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Most mages that claim they need buffs or are unhappy in these forums are hardstuck Frost players, unwilling (or unable) to try something new.
I myself enjoy playing Fire a great deal, am trying to make Arcane work with iffy results. I would love for Fire to be near the middle off the pack, Arcane is just an up and down rollercoaster experience…
Well, I dont enjoy playing fire or arcane so I play frost only. I never expect frost to be top, it really shouldnt be, but being 30% below top dps is historical. Its clear that they havent listened to feedback or spent much time testing the specs. Every season I get my curve and finish my 20 keys across the board, but this is the first time ever in the history of the game where I doubt it will be possible, since the disparity is so great now that you cant skill yourself out of the subpar tuning. This state should have never made it to live, but now were here and I see no alternative than to unsub, if they dont fix this mess.
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Same here, both 3 specs are competitive and fun to play
I have tested today the fire mage in m+ after the second buff and we still need 20% buff to be “playable” in m+. The burst it’s not high to compensate the downtime dps we have out of combustion, without counting that we lose SKB bonus very often if we dont speak with the tank. I have a Rogue and Mage and there is a huge difference in overall. Still not playable in m+ for me at this moment.
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This is true. I have been running today m+ as Fire. Still need 20% buff to compete with other dps.
Man I get that no data is like live data and it takes a lil bit for things to be balanced but waiting 3 weeks for a buff that is so meaningless we’re still bottom of the barrel is soooooooo disheartening. Especially because I just know we won’t get a hotfix in a few days to get us in a playable state. This will just be 2 or 3 months of entirely cancerous balancing.
I mean it’s entirely terribly bad. Some runs I feel like I must have obviously missed a key talent in my build because I just didn’t play so bad that I do less DPS than people did at the end of Shadowlands.
And it took them THREE WEEKS to come up with tuning changes that change absolutely nothing. I’m just at a loss for words. What a glaring incompetence. What a horrible foreshadowing.
Now it’s gonna be holidays for at least 2 weeks so expect another tuning pass sometime in the first half of January.
F you Blizzard
1 Like