I really don't consider aoe or cc being all that key for the class remaining in demands for raids. Honestly seed, soul shatter, lifetap is amazing for aoe. CC how many times is sheep useful as opposed to banish/fear for bosses? Beyond that we're one of the lowest pure dps classes with the lowest raid utility and our damage is limited by mana. Honestyly locks could/should do less dps and would still be raid viable due to wanting 3 curses and other advantages, but it's more then just locks. I don't think guilds have phased out mages, but you can tell most are moving towards raiding with 1-2 mages and picking up 3-4 of other classes.

Allanonn, you are undead. Gnomes are for snacking not for slaving. ummm.....nothing like a nice gnome kabob and a cold beer on a hot summer day.


edited to avoid making a completely useless post.

As for the usefulness of mages I wonder how much of it is due to Blizzard seeing what some mages can accomplish with a perfectly stacked group and then not realizing that other classes (warlocks in particular) can do so much more with the same stacking.

It's like Blizzard has this nice image in their mind of how every class will function in every situation and then people come along and figure out how to make a certain class do 1000x better and then they are scrambling to get it back under control.

The 6% bonus on warlock T6 is like that. They got 6% because Blizzard figured on them still using DoTs and other spells alongside the main nukes so the bonus is bigger to attempt to equalize it with the 5% on mage T6 where they are basically just spamming a single spell. Guess they didn't realize that the locks could spam that single spell just as well as the mages and do even more dps in the process.

Regarding Arcane Explosion with the new cap: we might be the kings of aoe damage, but in my experience so far it isn't that noticable yet. At the moment in the raid dungeon where I aoe the most, Hyjal, I still can't afford to chaincast Arcane Explosion without going oom before the wave is finished on the waves when both potion and gem are still on cooldown while having a Shadow Priest, but I'm using Molten Armor though. So I'm still resorting to the use of Flamestrike, and I find it's a bit easier on the healers on the waves with the multiple Abomination auras to use Flamestrike from a distance.

First, let me begin by saying I did not check the referenced link. However, despise this, I am somewhat confident that the data presented is skewed because such is the nature of anything that attempts to make an average out of mage wws results.

For starters, there is only one real dps spec for warlocks, namely destro (either fire or shadow, both of which have the same amount of points in both trees). This means a consistency of results. Mages, on the contrary, spec many different spec, none of which will be perfectly suited for all fights (ie: one spec might be best for boss x but fail to boss y). This already should be enough to skew the results in such a way that you need to drill down further for proper comparison.

After that, you have to keep in mind that mage playstyle, while simple in essence, is quite hard to master. I believe this is quite easily shown in wws. You will notice a rather large discrepancy across mage dps, be it across guilds, or inter-guild. I don't think anyone can argue that a shadow destro lock is hard to play from the perspective of 'you only have trinkets/bloodlust/drums/destro pot as cooldowns'. But whatever way you do your cooldowns you don't need to pay as much attention to how you stack them because even a non-stacking scenario will give nearly the same result as a stacked one (because said cooldowns don't impact enough the results).

And last but not least, mage dps depends upon warlocks. We can't compete without COS or COE (or both). Some mages in those parses probably don't get COE. This will also drag down the numbers.

So here is what I am saying. The spread of mage specs will lead to an inconsistency of results (or if you prefer, drag our average down). Also, having a more challenging playstyle can only lead to worse numbers and a wider discrepancy of results across mages. I don't really expect any mage to have a perfect play with any kind of regularity, if even to get there once.

While this is tangential, I believe this is not where the problem lies. There is a great disconnect between Blizzard and its raiding customer base. Itemisation is just one of those examples. Also, the fact that the point of professions is to have an edge with a best-in-slot, but then, what's the point if the patterns doesn't drop? Also, I know Gurgthock was telling us an anecdote yesterday in gchat that during blizzcon he had some developers ask him if we still ran SSC and TK. Gurgthock replied 'no, but we still run Gruul', to which the developers did not understand (sadly, I might add). Now all of this leads me to the next point. Class balancing. I think class balancing is ultimately done for PVP purpose, and whichever way it affects PVE will not cull out a class from being used (...). Not that I believe this is the proper way to do things, but I believe that is the undergoing mentality done for it. If IV is OP in PVP, and they decide to remove it, I am pretty sure they will not look - at all - at the impact of doing so in PVE, because in the grand scheme of things mages will still be able to do the baseline expected dps for all bosses on which the bosses are tweaked upon. Remember for a long time fireball and frostbolt had the 10% coefficient tax, and IV did not exist. I am pretty sure they could put us back in time to that same sorry state - and hey, it would all make sense in the greater scheme of things - I mean, mages will be able to reach the baseline 10.5million / 6min / 15.5 dps class =~ 1882 dps, so hey, they could redo the 10% coefficient nerf and remove IV.

So yeah, if Blizzard would do something significant to reach across its PVE user base, then maybe something will happen. I know blizzcast is not that. Not even close, particularly given that they can't even tell exclusives in those because gamer's guide and whatnot pay a premium to get to tell the exclusives themselves to increase their sales. What we need is quite simply open discussion on that regard; having employees directly dedicated to the cause.

In any case, putting all that aside, as I pointed out a long time ago mages suffer most from lack of raid synergy. Is it normal that warlocks increase the dps of the entirety of the raid dps (and if they have 4+ they get to use COD which is like a personal 8-9% dps increase), yet pay no drawback in terms of their personal dps ? I understand that warlocks are not hybrids like shamans or shadow priests are. But they do give a very significant raid dps boost just like hybrids. Maybe the underlying goal was to make hybrids have less personal dps, and to counter-balance this they would increase the dps of others. But then, warlocks are not hybrids, and that somehow avoided them that tax. I am not saying it makes sense, but it does feel very very inconsistent with how hybrids work. Somewhat funny to say given that I remember the long winded argument Blizzard gave us a while ago about how they wanted as much 'consistency' as possible and that was why they put CS on the GCD (I think that was the nerf that came with it, I don't recall exactly). But nevertheless, maybe just maybe if mages had just as much dps raid synergies as warlocks do we could equally compete on DMs? Maybe we will even dodge the hybrid tax just like warlocks.

Interesting read. A couple of side points I'd like to add and maybe get a response on:

1) Raid Synergy and Group composition: As you said, mages suffer the most from lack of correct group composition and raid synergy, yet if we were to balance mages around NOT having a Shadowpriest / Shaman / Curse of Elements, would we then be "Overpowered" or would we be "Balanced?" Do you think that if our Ignite added some sort of Increased overall Raid Crit% or some other sort of synergy that Blizzard would then Nerf our DPS and apply what would fall right into the double standard that they currently have set with Warlocks and ISB? I ask this because, like the original poster you responded to, I'm interested in figuring out what the "solution" is.

2) Sample sizes, difficulty of play, management of cooldowns: Do you think that other classes suffer as much from these aspects as mages? Have you ever had a Parse where your Crit % was 5-6% lower than your Characters actual base Crit %? Does this happen with other classes like Warlocks, Druids, or Melee classes? Is there a way that we, as mages, can avoid having small sample parse sizes where our numbers do not match up with what our actual stats are? From a difficulty of play aspect, do you think that this should serve as a 'reason' for the wide range of DPS values amoung mages? Do other classes suffer from the same issues where 'lack of knowledge' or 'difficulty of play' will result in such a wide spread of DPS values across characters of equal gear? Do you think that sometimes the sample size also will have an effect on this overall DPS value? How much do you think Management of Cooldowns should affect one classes overall 'generalized' DPS? Should there be a 5-600 DPS difference between one person who manages them correctly and one who does not? Is this an issue that is shared with other classes in a Raid (cooldown stacking) or is this a mage specific item because of IV / Combustion / Molten Fury?


Thanks in advance for your response

This is easily the worst way to do aoe. Here are some funfacts

1- don't flamestrike if your previous flamestrike dot is still up.
2- don't flamestrike if the mobs will die before the flamestrike dot has run its full course (ie: particularly bad to do when youre low on mana since it implies mobs are equally low on hp).
3- don't flamestrike if mobs are not within the area of flamestrike, or might move out of it.
4- don't flamestrike if you have any chance of reaching the flamestrike aoe cap.
5- generally flamestriking is a bad idea. The only case I ever flamestrike is when I get to do combustion->flamestrike->blastwave. In other words, combustion is good for aoe, flamestrike is quite questionable.
6- arcane explosion is always the best aoe for 10+ targets, with the only exception of combusted blastwave, because crits can bypass the AOE cap, and combusted blastwave is pretty much 100% crit. With this said, I don't recall exactly the crit aoe cap, but if I recall correctly you can bypass said cap with crits, although I decidedly remember my blastwave crits being somehow limited by some cap.

You can't. You have to balance mages with the full arsenal or debuffs that are commonplace, for the simple reason that if you don't do that, then rogues will easily have 4k dps.
There are many possible solution to the lack of raid synergies. I don't think tackling stuff after ignite is the proper fix. The proper fix is to have all classes having abilities that boost other raid member's dps be counter-balanced by a lowered personal dps, just like hybrids seem to be hinting us. You can't penalise COS shadow increase (since that's arguably mostly a personal DPS boost in the first place), but the fact that COS affects also arcane spells, which warlocks don't cast, is quite indicative that they do offer raid synergies with no penalties whereas arguably they should, again, as hinted per shamans/priests/druids/pally dps. What you want is remove stupid abilities that depend upon the number of warlocks available in a raid, like COD. Either remove it, or make it commonplace. Personally, here is what I would recommend, which I am sure both mages and warlocks would love to see.

1- Remove COS and COE. Entirely. Gone.
2- Change COD significantly. COD increases all magical dmg received by the debuffed target by 10%. Remove the 1-min cooldown. Make it still hit for a large chunk, but arguably (and probably) should lower the dmg done. This would help a lot the really aching affliction locks because they could cast amplify curse/COD instead of just 13% COS like they do right now. Make malediction affect COD (both tick and 10%->13%). Ideally make it scale for a buttload more for affliction warlocks, possibly even considering 300% efficiency on amplify curse when done on curse of doom. (and no, destro/amplify curse would not exist even so, no need to worry). It would still not work on PVP.

If you do something like that, first you get a consistency of results from warlocks no matter how many you put in a raid. It might be OP for now, but keep in mind that I would expect with such a change to lower the COD dmg done, but all warlocks would get to use it. If you don't want it to tick for threat reasons, then refresh it - it has no cooldowns. Then again, you could try and patch up the lacking affliction dps. And hey - you would also give 'malediction' to non-COS users. How about that.

That wouldn't address the mage raid synergy, but again, mage raid synergy is clunkier to do because there are many raid specs. It couldn't be done on ignite alone because that itself doesn't makes much sense. It would have to work with frost and arcane too.
Yes, hunters pay a lot from difficulty of play. Hunter dps is all over the place across guilds. It varies a lot more than mage dps does. A mage proper play is just exemplified by the fact that our 'cooldowns' (and I consider molten fury a cooldown) have a huge DPS impact. Plus - they stack. Our cooldown stacking is just much more apparent because our cooldowns boost our dps more, which is why theres a greater discrepancy across mage dps despise simple mechanics and ease of play. If other classes have cooldowns that equally increase their own dps by large amounts, they should get somewhat similar results. Other than that, your other questions are too vague to really get any answer out of them.

I like that idea a lot and to expand upon it and the idea of aggro limitation being a reason to refresh it instead of allowing it to tick off a way that you could use that to really increase Affliction's lagging dps would be to add additional aggro reduction to CoD associated with either Malediction or Unstable Affliction. UA being preferable since the removal penalty is strictly a PvP effect they could give it a PvE side where it would also decrease the threat of all DoTs spells applied by the warlock by 20% while active, opening the door for them to be able to apply CoD on everything in PvE without any aggro issues provided they kept UA on the target at the same time.

Well, as I see it atleast, when comparing warlocks and mages RNG just plays such a different role in the outcome of both classes.

Mage dps is all about controlling cooldowns and stacking them together, this is what you can improve the most as a mage, so if you get lucky streaks at your cooldowns you do alot better, but if you get unlucky you will most certainly be very depressed at the results. It pains me we didn't get WWS of the Brutallus kill where I did 2400 dps with 4 resists and entirely expected crit rates, it's anecdoctal since I don't have it documented so I'll have to ask you to trust me on it. 4 resists are quite unlikely as I'm hit capped, but they happened at the beginning and not when I had my cooldowns stacked, and most of my crits where nicely timed and I had a nice spree of crits sub 20% with everything stacked.

The point I bring that up is all the IF's that have to allign in the right way for mage dps to really shine, and they are all out of our hands. IF you crit during cooldowns with expected crit % and stack your cooldowns properly you will be able to do some amazing stuff. IF you get strings of crits during the <20% period you get to do some crazy shit like 11k ignites. We rely on those things to fall into place properly to do good dps (or ofcourse we can just throw 3 heroisms to us and do well regardless of play)

Compare this to warlock dps, IF crits land during ISB you'll get better numbers, and this is the only IF more or less - that IF is entirely out the question when your warlocks spec Fire anyway. I'm not really trying to dumb down warlocks, but their dps is just a much more steady and less reliant on RNG to do well. This will ofcourse mean that overall, almost regardless of gear, warlocks look better as their "optimal" play is pretty much guaranteed to be met each try (yes they can have shit RNG too and have bad tries and everything else that can go wrong).

First, thank you to all the mages that come to this forum and put in the time and effort to understand the class and help each other. It has been, and continues to be a wonderful resource.

How the mage class stacks up against the other classes has been an issue that I have been thinking on for some time. There is no question that other classes give or garner more from raid synergies more then the mage class in its current incarnation. The suggestion from Manly would be a step in the right direction but I have started to wonder if there is a deeper issue involved.

One of the things that skews the perception of the mage class is how differently it operates at different levels of progression. While part of this is spec differences I think there is a play style difference that is making it more difficult to see clearly. I have started to think after watching this class and others since opening day that the gap between good DPS and great DPS is much wider for the mage class then any other. While this may be only my perception it does seem that if I want to be competitive to other classes in DPS I have to hit everything just perfectly and hope that I don’t get a bad RNG string. Other classes appear to be able to have a less then perfect performance and not pay as much of a price.

There is no question that the mage class can compete with other classes at the top level as there are plenty of WWS examples out there to show this. My point being that the skill to operate at this level appears to be much higher for mages then some other classes given a similar level of play time, gear, and knowledge.

Given the current AoE discussion in this thread it could serve as an example. Hyjal packs are a pretty good barometer of the two main AoE classes and how they perform. In this scenario a Lock can alt-tab spam and take a nap and still have some very nice output with little concern for mana or CDs. A mage on the other hand will need to crank out everything he has while keeping a close eye on CDs to stay anywhere in the vicinity of the Lock output let alone exceed it.

Mage utility is a lot more gimicky than lock utility.

Banish is the demon version of sheep. So, how much utility the two classes contribute in terms of CC depends solely on the type of setting and dungeon that Blizzard puts in the game. An all demon dungeon would see lock utility go up, and an all humanoid dungeon will see mage utility go up.

Counterspell is especially gimicky. Only encounters that are designed specifically to require CS will need mages. And rogues and shammys can interrupt as well. So its not even unique to mage.

Same for decurse. And mages aren't the only classes that can decurse.

On the other hand. A lock's utility benefits in the most obvious way. It increases raid DPS. COE, COS both increase raid DPS, including the locks own DPS. So, there is a clear benefit that is not gimicky. it is used every single fight unlike stuff like CC or interupts.

Same for lock healthstones. Everyone takes a healthstone. Simply because it is a constant assurance of a additional health potion on a different cooldown timer. You can have 3 locks, with different versions of healthstones, so you still get utility.

Mages give the same AI buff to everyone, and the same free mana biscuits, which can all be done with just one mage. You don't get any additional utility for adding a mage. While you do when you add a lock.

And SS. Its a uniquely lock utility.

So, at the end of the day. Warlock utility is just so much more useful and commonly used than mage utility is. Mage utility is too gimmicky and dependent on dungeon design. Nothing to CS, spellsteal, or sheep. And mage utility plummets. Take the next expansion. Naxx will be a raid dungeon. And I bet the lich king's dungeon will also be filled with undead. Undead can't be sheeped. So, mage utility won't be anything to shout about in such settings.

And mage AOE isn't really that much superior to lock AOE. Seed is quite competitive even to AE spam from an arcane mage in most situations and beats all other mage AOE quite handily. Plus it is far safer to cast seed from afar than it is to go up close to AE. But mages are forced to do so because this is their best AOE. Oddly enough. Mage AOE is good because of its snare aspects and because it helps to trigger seed. So, its the utility aspect of mage AOE that is good. Not so much that we are kings of AOE.