This is wrong direction for balance. If we think damage is too high is not because magic weapons are too powerful but:
- People get used to Resilient perk from faction armours which was bugged and reducing all damage not critical, this get fix so all damage feels higher.
- Onyx gem meta, every one slotting physical damage reduction instead balance between physical and magical.
That is/was meta until last patch, same time some of magic skills get fixed and finally hitting targets.
Now nerfing fire / ice skills should fix problem of tunnel vision of players ?? They can easily have 15% of more elemental resistances but chose to have none.
But over all there is not enough options with resistances. Why not just:
Introduce series of new perks for armour with various damage source reductions. Instead nerfing damage just add something to counter it.
Adding smaller % perks with fire/ice or elemental and various psychical absorptions to be chose from to armour would allow players to build their armour in more balanced way.
So if any one want go full psychical reduction sure good for him but will become weak against magic damage (like is now in he’s onyx only gems slotted armour) , others would want be magic immune fine but will suffer in close melee combat or 50/50 for balance.
Right now fire / ice damage is high because players chose not to slot elemental resists but psychical only.
Other changes:
Ice gauntlet root - sure CD is good as this was just silly … same time just cant wait for similar CD on stuns preventing players to be stun lock - killed by melee.
Fireball - no critical - why? It feels like "we want more variety in skill’s used by fire staff users, so we boost a bit not popular ones but just in case is not enough to encourage you to switch we also killed one of your core abilities so you just can forget it and use … flamethrower?
FB is fine leave it how it is, because beside of that we have just trash skills to use or not reliable ones / hard to land hit like pillar. While melee have strong dps output, lots CC, and many mobility skills to pick from.
Incarnate and Flame thrower - still rubbish, if you want this skills to be used add debuffs to them like weakness or healing reduction or some CC. Damage is not enough as is not all about damage when we picking up skills.
Not mention there is 2 play style for mages one is distance caster with Pillar, FB, and Meteor Shower or mobility by Burnot and there is … not popular close combat mage. While meta build getting nerfed optional build is still bad
But over all, before any balance changes - 1st fix all bugs to existing skills and perks.