[Sero]

Usefulness of Spells (or lack thereof)
Ice Bolt or Ice Blast. They're both on a "global cool down" which means when you use one, you basically use the other. Minus the damage, slowing effect, etc. And the slowing effect itself is quite useless since you have to get pretty close to a monster anyways to kill it. Not to mention the effect is not always a guarantee.

Then don't use it. There's Nova Frost which deals damage 3 (or 4?) times, and also slows mobs down. Not to mention, along with Inferno, IT NEVER MISSES. AND, it has the same CDT with Ice Bolt/Blast.

I really don't understand this argument. Why do you need to use Mind Drain so often anyway if it's only useful for PVP? The reason why it has a longer cooltime is so that it doesn't unbalance PVP... >.> I can't even imagine how I'm supposed to PvP at all if a Mage is Mind Draining me every 10 seconds.....

Now THAT would be WRONG.

Casting Animations
Also, why in the bloody hell does Dispel make me look like some damn fairy? I'm a Mage for Pete's sake! Not a prancing fairy who goes around sprinkling fairy dust on people. Same for Purge. I'm not an Angel of light so why do I get wings when doing this? Makes no sense at all. I liked the old animation of Life Tap where as this new crotch thrust just embarrasses me.

I agree with this. The new animations of most skills [in all classes] are simply f*cked up and crappy. I mean, yeah sure we can cast em while running, but at least bring back the old animations for em? Rather than make us look TERRIBLE and GAY. And I know many others have been complaining since late last year [where they did the animation f*cking up] but eh.

Some of you may or may not agree with me on this (Mages, I mean). I feel that the range of our spells is far too short. I'm not saying we should be able to pick off monsters from halfway across the world (that would be nice though) but a reasonable distance away from them is required. Otherwise we're nothing more than a short ranged Fighter minus the power and defensive capabilities. This would go perfect with Ice Blast (or Ice Bolt) always having a chance of slowing our enemies down. This way, we can attack from a safe distance without the fear of being viciously mauled by something ten times our size.

You have skills that have ranges of 13.5m, the others' ranges are 12m. Well same goes for archers. Even us archers don't complain about our range, even if we are supposedly RANGERS. Imagine Mages casting skills with more range than Archers? Definitely WRONG.

I can rarely find a party for anything I want to do. And more often than not, the party is already full.

It gets worse for us archers. Mages are wanted, way more.

Kiting
Why is it, that only two of our spells allow us to kite? Everyone else can pretty much cast a spell or use a skill while running where as we get Lightning Blast and Lightning Bolt and then we're forced to stand there and get slapped around like a rag doll. Admittedly, kiting is not very effective for anyone but Archers because they can AoE while they run so taking down multiple mobs is fairly for them. I say this because if you kite, there is a GOOD chance you're going to run into a lot more monsters. As a Mage, that means you're boned. Don't just make two of our spells a "cast-on-the-run", make them all that way.

Why would I play an Archer? The only class I enjoy playing is the Mage.

Just put it this way. Archers are more of a kiting class than Mages. I don't think Mages are even build for kiting, at all. If the only class you enjoy playing is the Mage, then deal with not being an Archer, who kites.

Again, realize that this is the "Mage rant" not the "Cleric rant" or "Fighter rant" or "Archer rant".

Yes, surely everyone can tell by the title. But, your ranting about Mages would bring other classes in the rant as well, through comparison mostly. Understand that.

EDIT:

wadda late post D;