I post it here, because it's a question I'm curious about and am actively seeking a satisfactory answer, in contrast to exclaiming or complaining.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been telling my trainees that the basic duty of a DPS is two-fold:
In my humble opinion, the two parts of the duty are equally important. A dead DPS = 0 DPS, regardless of how much he did when he was alive or how much he could potentially do if he were kept alive. Of course, in some fights, one part is more of a bottleneck than the other. However, "tank & spank" is extincting since Tier 14, and in Tier 16, even the fights designated to be "gear check" or "DPS race", such as Norushen or Spoils, have some elements that require every DPS to be accountable for his own survival. Although I haven't got a beta key, my educated guess is that the trend will continue and be pushed to a higher level in Tier 17.To hurt the mobs while not hurting oneself
I have posted my share of Recount capture and DPS analysis, but as a guild recruiter, instead of some numbers on Recount, what I cherish more is the survivability resulting from a combination of situational awareness, familiarity to mechanism and knowledge of one's defensive/mobility abilities that does not contribute to one's short-term DPS. The knowledge that maximizes one's DPS on a wooden dummy, such as rotation, DPCT of spells and gear selection can be learned from an abundance of online guides, and from my humble experience, familiarizing on a few sets of rotations is sufficient for a great variety of encounters. Surviving a boss fight, however, requires a case-by-case planning, and the alertness, the reflexes involved, needs a much longer time to accumulate.
The reason why I choose Mage as my main is not quite about the damage (in which case I would likely roll a lock), but the excellent survivability, mobility, CC capacity it provides. Every time I browse my WoL archive, what makes me smile the most is not how high I am on the damage ranking, but how low I am on the "# of death" ranking thanks to Tier 2 talent, Ice Block and Cauterize, how little damage I take from bad on the ground and AoE thanks to Ice Floes, G Inv and double Blink, and how much I contributed to adds control thanks to WE Freeze, Frost Nova, RoF and Deep Freeze.
Today, I took a bit of time browsing through the Q&A board of AT.com. Somewhat to my disappointment, almost every single post I read is either about rotation or about gear. Few people ask questions such as:
- When do I pop my Temporal Shield during Heroic Sha of Pride encounter?
- What do I do when I'm assigned to clear puddles on the other side of the Immerseus room?
- How should I arrange the Sha Bolt void zones inside my little RoP so that I don't have to move a lot?
- What do I do when I'm fixated by IJ laser/Siegecrafter laser/Thok?
- How do I optimally restrict the mobility of Nazgrim's soldiers if I sacrifice my damage dealing capacity?
- Can I hold Mark of Anguish for longer than the duration of my Ice Block if necessary?
- How do I tank the small add spawned from Empowered Whirling Corruption?
- Could you please check my log and see if I've taken damage that's avoidable or could've been mitigated better?
I've tried to come up with a few explanations to this phenomenon, only to reject each of them.
"Most questioners are at a level where DPS improving is of utmost importance." No, because I've read the Armory of some questioners, and many are already at a stage (judging from ilvl and progression) that individual survival is the bottle neck. Besides, users of AT.com consists of all kinds of levels, I doubt there's not a single one among them for whom survival and mobile is the major concern.
"CC is the job for other classes, and keeping the mage alive is (and should naturally be) taken care of by the healers. Our value for a raid lies in and only in our DPS, and the true jeopardization of the benefit of the team is to let us be distracted from maximizing DPS." I can't imagine what kind of a raid team that is, but I've seen countless pugs and guild groups, and I haven't enjoyed the luxury of treating the raid boss as a wooden dummy even once.
"Surviving is actually easier than doing maximal DPS." From my humble experience of weeks of Heroic T16 progression, I beg to differ.
"How a mage should survive boss mechanism has been recorded in great detail online." I haven't seen nearly as much survival guide as DPS guide online, except one on the IV.com forum. Feel free to provide further links, though.
Hence, I'm putting this question forward: Why are questioners on AT.com generally indifferent to the survival, CC and raid utility aspects of being a good mage?
EDIT: added other obligations of mage to the last question.