I Dont Feel Like Playing My Mage Anymore....

[WarpathEQ]

Mages (and casters in general) always experienced a relative power decline as progression occurs, this is a function of how much more melee classes scale with gear, how trivial old expansions became after acquiring gear from new expansions, and the extended time locked world we live in where people have multiple toons with full BIS items.

There is a difference between nerfing and bug fixes. The DoT change was fixing a bug that was causing DoTs to not do their full damage while rooted without doing a round of combat post root, the fix elminated the need for the mob to engage in combat post root in order to receive full DoT dmg.

Other changes are made to fix exploits in emergent gameplay i.e. the rooting of dragons, the chain summoning pets, or pet tracking to preserve the viable strategies and tactics available to P99 players and align them with the strategies and tactics that were being leveraged in '99-'01.

Part of the beauty of EQ is there is no 1 class that does everything. Its meant to be a world that requires collaboration to achieve bigger outcomes. Mages like every class have their neiches that they can do where others can't...

4x DAs - Can move entire raids through highly contested/difficult zones in a matter of minutes when clearing would take hours
CoTH - Remember when we did the no coth quake? How much more difficulty there is when you don't have a mage as a resource to short cut content and get to outcomes faster
Mod Rods - Can be the difference between winning and losing big time contested mobs (unless you're in the zerg guild that has 2x the required people for the kill).
Epic Pet - Strongest summoned pet in the game by far, capable of doing virtually all 1-50 content on its own with little to no interaction from the player.