Is the (Shadow)Priest the better Mage in WOW?

[Skandranon]

Plenty. Extended rebuffable CC, AoE, Ranged DPS, Buffs that extends battle, snares, immobilizers, ability to keep enemy busy.

Of these, only the first item is something unique to mages or done primarily well by mages. Everything else is done better by someone else, and so doesn't belong in this kind of list. Paladins add some "damage" to a group, too, but you don't add paladins for damage because it's not a role they're good at. Yes, mages add DPS, but we're fifth on the list. If I want ranged DPS, I'll go find a hunter, who comes with his own off-tank and has far superior aggro control.

The last four things you listed are basically the same thing. We have one root: Frost Nova, which has better than a 50% chance to break on the first point of damage inflicted to it, and which is on a 25-second cooldown. Non-frost mages don't get snares without driving their DPS into the dirt. Extending battle and keeping enemies busy...not sure where you're going with that, aside from frantic kiting, which can be done by a number of classes and has extraordinarily limited application.

PvE, all most hold back, or use alternate skills (not damage) if they want to play teamwork. Rogues won't be using combo points for damage until finishing... they'll be kicks, cheap shots, eye gouge, kidney shots, crippling poisons, etc.

Excellent point! Let's look at what alternate skills mages can employ.

Polymorph. Counterspell.

Wow, that was long.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Running battles are among the most important ones. Yes there are pawns which hold the line, but enemies move. When (not if) there are stray enemies which will chase your healer, or caster, you must do make a kiting skirmish. I've seen mages dance around skeletons, bugs, rats, ogres, lizards, and keep their attention while the rest of the ranged attacks pound on the enemy. In addition, that zap zap zap power is just what's needed to eliminate any non-boss mob fast enough to get 'out of combat' to drink again.

In my experience, the worst thing to do in the case of a breakout is to start kiting. You bring it back to the tank, who takes the aggro back and ends the breakout. If you're getting mass breakouts, you need to find a better tank. Going kiting when things go wrong is a surefire recipe to making sure other things go wrong.

I don't doubt that you've seen mages dancing around, but I do argue that it was in no way an advantage or better than just standing still. You cannot avoid getting hit by movement - mobs are just as fast as you are.

As for your second point about burst damage - yes, it's perfectly useful when the enemy's already been worn down to 5% health and I want to start drinking a couple seconds earlier. Excuse me if I'm not overly enthused.

Only if? That's a matter of when. Body pulls happen. Bugs spawn. Rats spawn. Skeletons spawn. They don't always go for the Baron, they go for the healers in back too.

And how does escaping help this situation at all? The responsibility of the mage in the three latter situations is to go there and AE, which is 1) moving there 2) stopping near them 3) AEing. As for the first, fleeing like a madman is far less preferable than bringing it to the tank.

In any case, if the party sets up properly, even if they go for the healer, your AE will catch them and bring them in. There's a spot you can place yourself for maximum effectiveness in this regard, which moves depending on how the party's set up. But it's there.

I'm completely jealous of the zap zap zap of running AE while I have to run to position, hestitate to check if I can attack it all, spend oodles of mana and health to potentially finish off the skeletons while mainly just getting myself killed. I'd much rather zap zap zap, frost, steal aggro, blink, zap zap some more after gaining range advantage, all the while running with minor speed increase enchant on my boots.

Are you still talking about the Rivendare encounter? After four shots of IAE (that's three seconds of Hellfire) all the skeletons are dead. You don't need to frost nova, blink, run in circles. Mages who do that aren't doing their job. Even granted that mages are better in this one encounter, which I don't necessarily agree with...one encounter out of the whole game is a pretty poor record.

Ha! No one wants more than one warlock in their party here (unless they're nuts or a very organised 40 man raid).

I agree that this is true, but only because most people underestimate warlocks. I personally can't see a reason to include more than one mage in a raid.

I think you underestimate the value of that poly ranged long duration CC in PvE. There's only one place warlocks get to use their primary CC (fear) consistently in instances, and that's by General Drakkar's bodyguards.

I don't underestimate polymorph's value at all. I don't agree, however, that its usefulness somehow makes up for the fact that the mage basically can't do anything else well. The comparison, by the way isn't poly vs. fear, but poly vs. fear/seduce/banish/enslave. You can't use them all the time, but mages have literally nothing else.

Do rogues get to sap all the time? No. Priest MC? No. Hunter Freeze Trap? No. Druid sleep beast? Do I try to use it all in Dire Maul north if I have a party, or making a party? YES! How important is that Poly of yours? Extreme. Useable on so many targets...

If I can poly it, chances are it can be sapped and MCed, too. The only difference between poly, sap and MC is that poly hits beasts as well as humanoids. You know how many elite beasts there are in the four endgame instances and Dire Maul?

One.

The spiders in LBRS are it. That's "so many targets" compared to sap and MC?

You underestimate your mage and its place in party's Skan. There's this and many other synergistic tricks to combine skills and own PvE. Poly/Doom is just the freshest to come to mind.
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I think you overestimate mages, Drasca, because you play the single most powerful PvE class in the game. You have a multiplicity of capabilities, and, despite the problems, a number of situations in which they can be applied. Mages have poly, counterspell, and many damage spells with poor DPS. I don't think you can fully understand how limited mage capabilities are. Your earlier post showed me just how many things warlocks can do: I didn't know you could also dispel magic by way of your felhunter. Even your suggested Poly/doom combo is only interesting because of CoD: sap and freeze trap work just as well. Without the warlock the mage's contribution is minimal.

While I was leveling my paladin to 60, I played in quite a few 5-man instance parties that didn't include a mage. I have seen firsthand how *not* having a mage makes very little difference. It boiled down to one less humanoid CCed. You need a whole class for...that?