Mage Balance Suggestions

So mages have been hurting for a while now and I wanted to express my concerns and ideas as to why they need some love thrown their way and how one could do it.

First off, a brief breakdown on the archtypes as to what it looks like their function is suppose to be.

Warrior- Tank.
Depending on the class they have the best armor, best sword, most hp, and a variety of skills that focus on defending or shutting down your opponent so you can kill them. All in all, I would say these are the most closely designed to minecraft's combat classes and are very powerful.

Rogue - Melee or Ranged DPS (damage per second).
Depending on your class, you will focus on one of several classes in a rather diverse selection of skills. You could be melee dps, ranged dps, or even support. Your abilities focus on improving your stealth, agility, and dps output. You can't take as big of a beating compared to warriors, but you aren't very far behind.

Mage - Ranged DPS or Support.
Depending on your class you are, basically, ranged dps or support. You can do quite the wide variety of abilities from healing and reviving your allies to casting down fire, ice, and lightning upon them. You're inability to take damage is only equal to your ability to deliver damage. In an ideal situation, your heal or damage should surpass that of any other archtype.

In many games, mages are considered 'glass cannons.' They cannot take a hit, but they are a terribly destructive force. Often they out-dps all other classes- at least when there is someone else to soak up the damage for them so they can concentrate on killing. But do the mages of Minescape meet that description? No. Here's why:

• Mages can cast one, maybe two spells and be out of mana before resorting to a stone sword or even their fists while other classes have access to superior weapons.
  
• Mages are true to the 'glass' portion of a 'glass cannon.' They have the fewest hitpoints and the worst armor.
  
• The damage from their spells are equal to but one hit of a weapon from other classes.
  
• It is far harder to hit their targets with spells than it is with a sword or a bow and arrow.
  
• While Mages do get some interesting spells to support them, many other classes share those abilities, taking away their chance to get one leg up on the others.

So they are glass, but no cannons. What adjustments could be made to help balance them out?

• Survivability? No. Mages aren't meant to take a hit. Sure, it would be nice if they could, but then they would just become close clones to warriors if we improved their armor, hp, or provided them with more defensive skills.
  
• Mana cost? Yes. Mages are suppose to (at least imho) outdps other classes. That is what their large sacrifice in defense is suppose to trade in for. And one of the requirements of pumping out spells is having the mana to do it.
  
• Cooldown times? Yes, we actually want to -increase- these if we lower mana cost. Why? Because we can't have icebolt machine guns. Cav tried to keep all of the abilities for all archtypes similar in the name of balance, but mages rely too heavily on their mana bar in order for this to be a fair method. Mages can simply keep a number of spells ready to cast rather than relying on just one in return for these adjustments.
  
• A basic magic attack? An idea that dionnsai proposed recently. Instead of adjusting spells across the board. Give the mage class a basic attack that does dps around that of an iron sword with a low cost and cooldown. It has to be able to be cast repeatedly in order to be worthwhile, at least as fast as a bow could manage. Why as strong as am iron sword? Because with their other skills, their dps -should- be surpassing all others, aka a diamond sword + skills.
  
• Replenish. It's a skill that literally refills your mana bar. Why do mages not have this? It would be a major step in balancing to take this from classes like mercenary and give to the mage and make it a 40-something spell for them.

In the end, please increase the mage dps capabilities. I'd also be interested in seeing what other balance ideas people have, so please post!

this would be helpful, as i will be choosing the mage tree when i get on the server.

Don't worry, I haven't ignored this post.
I've been severely editing Mages while I'm working on the updates as part of a balance ^.^
Fireball will essentially serve as your "Basic" spell, with Icebolt going to Gelumancers with a far lower Mana cost and cooldown.
Fireball as well will have lower Mana cost and cooldown.

Telekinetics are suffering further during the update so I might change them around a bit, turning them into a more combat-related class.

We'll have to see how that works before I reveal anything, though.

Is it possible for you to enchant melees in some way for a few mage classes? Just like the spellknight classes, maybe have a mage that becomes more of a magic brawler?

oooOOooo maybe have like a SummonSword spell that summons a sword for a short amount of time. or something. or for tier 4 or 5 add a spell that allows you to access your chests, ofc this will cost a lot of mana and will have a long cooldown time. oh and yes, i think you should give the Glecumancer more combat spells, as you get very little when you choose him. and it would be very cool if you went on a quest and at the end a npc gives you a book, you right click it, the book disappears, then in your chat it says "you have learned skillnamehere!"