[1.2.279] Skill tables of all changed skills

This arguement is getting a bit old.

Everyone can train and level. Noone is excluded from this aspect of the game. When it comes to bossing though, mages get tossed aside. What is the point of grinding all the way to 120 when all you get to do is grind faster, pay insane pot costs and still get shafted from boss runs. Isn't the entire appeal of an MMORPG to train and level your character in order to take down epic bosses with friends? Training and leveling, only to be able to train and level faster in the end is just...work :|. And dont give me that pomegranate about how if you make high leveled friends and join a good guild, joining boss runs becomes less difficult. It shouldn't be this hard for any mage to get into a decent run, and when i boss i want to be an asset, not a liability.
Besides, Nexon has never come out and said that mages are meant to only be fast trainers, and nowhere in grendels text does it say "alright before you make a mage, you should know that youll have no significant skill in your first job.And second job? both your mob and single target attacks are gonna suck compard to every other class. Think that you'll get stronger attacks in your third job? think again! And don't even consider yourself a likely candidate for a boss run. But hey, stick with it long enough and you get to level faster then the others with your ultimate! Then you can help the same poeple that are going to exclude you from boss runs, level just as fast as you would!!"
I know they fixed the leeching issue, but from a mages perspective all that has really done is gotten rid of the only notable thing we were useful for. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Nexon really meant for mages to be great trainers and terrible bossers,but think of this scenario:
Bob and Ted both started playing MS on the same day. Bob makes a hero and Ted makes an arch mage. After 200 hours of pure grind, Ted's archmage is now lvl 170 while Bob only got his Hero to 140. Both have invested the same amount of time and effort into the game, but Bob's hero is a lot more capable within the game, despite the level gap. Why is that so?
Yeah i get that it that a 140 hero =/ a 140 archmage in terms of DPS, but shouldn't it start to balance out at the higher levels?

Here's hoping for some better rebalancing :]

This.

While I agree with you, Sarah, that it would appear Nexon originally intended ArchMages to be a training/mobbing god class, they haven't, like Cheesecake said, come right out and said those were their intentions. If anything recent evidence points to the contrary: ArchMages have just received a single target DPS boost, the Evan class was clearly not designed around mobbing in your terms since their ultimate has a cooldown, and, as you keep saying, the magic damage formula will be changed, which can be logically assumed for the better, but most prominently seen in single target attacks because, let's face it, ultimates can already hit the damage cap easily. In other words, we've gone from what you said (and makes plenty of sense) of ArchMages initially meant to be a training class or a mobbing class that Nexon apparently crossed their fingers over and hoped they'd play out with some usefulness, but clearly times have changed, and that's something you can't ignore. Nexon said in their December interview that ArchMages and even the magic damage formula itself needed looking at, which obviously is the result of such changes to single target base attacks and the central evidence behind the thought that the formula will be changed. The fact that this is the case with ArchMages (they realize something's amiss) and that with their Legend Magician they designed a character that can contribute both single target DPS and party skills to boss runs can only prove they recognize the issues at hand and are (hopefully) working on creative and efficient ways to resolve them.

I'm not saying Nexon won't buff up our mobbing abilities to truly seal our fates as mobbing classes. In fact, I'd like that more than ever, as I personally believe ArchMages should be the god mobbing class of the game and that's that. However, the exception is that with such changes comes new content, exactly along the lines of what Sarah listed: a boss that actually requires high elemental mob damage to be successful, or to give better drops. If such content is not released, then I continue arguing for changes that would make ArchMages more viable on boss runs. The bottom line is that we should be useful in something other than training, and it takes either new content or skill overhauls to accomplish this.