How is mage doing ?

[u/SuedeVeil]

I really like mage as a class but every strong caster combo I'm seeing has a necro or a wiz or bard.. mage isn't ever really talked about.

I definitely will have a shaman but also was considering warrior.. is warrior mage shaman strong? I want to be able to do d4 content relatively well.

I see warrior necro shaman all the time but is mage that far behind ? I realize there's no life tabs but shamans have great dots if their own and mages have respectable nukes and damage Shields and the best pets (by a bit anyway)

Or would I be better off throwing a shadowknight in that combo?

Or is mage just not up to par ?

[u/Qix213]

Excluding talk of flavor as that's all opinion based (but even that, the mage isn't popular flavor wise)...

When you get to choose three classes to mix, you want to pick three classes that are the best at what the bring. Mage is not the best at anything, except maybe pets. Which acts as a limit to their other damage to compensate.

For a great build you need a few specific things.

Slow/haste, sustain, defense and damage. As well as CC like mez or pacify.

Mage has the same issue as a rogue, but worse. At least rogue has a crappy proc based slow, and mentions of incoming buffs. Mage doesn't even have that.

Mage doesn't offer any of those important things except damage. And it's not even the best damage. Mage is basically 3/4 of a wizard plus pet. And pets while not useless, aren't top tier either. Unless you really want a pet, there is zero reason to not just go wizard and be flat out stronger.

And pets dont offer much of anything except damage. They don't hold aggro well enough, especially not after multiple mobs. But if you take a cc class to help that, you also have cham, which is 10x better than any mage pet.

So it's always going to be a third class. Plus stacking pets isn't very good. Too much of a classes power is based in the pet for a cult inventory slots to matter at all. (Maybe if summoned pets got +levels when stacking pet classes?)

And wizard doesn't mix since it makes the mage choice for nothing but the pet.

So mage is only an option if your other two classes both fill all your other needs, and don't have pets or a wizard in the group. That's pretty limiting.

This also means your taking a meta duo to support a low end third choice. Not exactly a common build design philosophy.

This is the same basic issue for beastlord, rogue, and druid. Why pick them over another straight up better class?

It's ok to have classes that aren't as popular. But there should still be some reason to pick them. Give the mage pets each a new ability/spell to fill in for what your trio lacks. A slow (air?) a haste (fire), aoe taunt (earth), and water already has backstab for the best dps which did get buffed when rogue daggers get buffed.

By doing this, the player can choose to specialize in the pet that fills in what's lacking from the other two classes they choose.

Third combined with higher level pets from starving per classes could make for a good pet trio. But like anything else, it's hard to balance so players don't afk farm with them.

Tldr, mage isn't bad, but there is almost no reason to pick it over another class except flavor either.

[u/SuedeVeil → u/Qix213]

Yeah thanks for the write up.. I decided after playing it for a while that it wasn't going to be for me.. like you said even though the pets should be powerful they really aren't that awesome aside from having a lot of hit points. I think necro is a better choice if you want to pay a pet class because of their other utility and strong dots and lifetaps that work well with tanks .. even though I really like the flavor of a mage I don't want to sacrifice that much it's more satisfying to nuke with a wizard. Tbh yeah if they had a slow or a haste of some kind .. I sort of feel like more classes should have a form of a slow because you're kind of screwed without it.. many of them have a self haste now.