Looks like my message was not clear. To clarify: I said “Everything for a mage is trivial or impossible(requires a tank)”. Good mages can trivially kill anything except for mobs that require tanks (world bosses, winter-cave event boss[basically a world boss] etc).
My point was that solo content that say a ranger can do on their own, is extremely boring/trivial for mages because that mob will be dead in seconds. A mob that would be difficult for mages in a straight up brawl kind of fight would be impossible for say, a solo ranger. I want difficult solo fights as a mage but with mobs that simply just run straight at you & have no mechanic besides meleeing you or the occasional ability, they just die easily. I’m not even asking for balance necessarily in that regard, I just mean that there is no rewarding content (like low-end group content - because that is basically the level required to challenge mages) that a top tier mage could push themselves to do solo. Loot-wise there also isn’t even really point in farming solo lol. I need fun, or meaningful loot, ideally both. Not including shard 1’s because you have to swap to tank for bosses & the rewards aren’t good it’s more of a meme. For rewards you’re better off using a grinder & farming weak mobs.
When talking about lack of defensive/kiting/cc abilities, you need to think deeper into MMO’s and compare them to Orbus. https://youtu.be/7CX9wFvBIwY?t=376 for example. Also consider classes like scoundrel who have basically an RNG slow and can teleport away from mobs that sprint at you despite your own low-movement speed (& have a charge interrupt which is good but basic a.f). Or shamans who get a frost & a stun totem they would be spamming for damage(tho prob not even have the frost equipped w/o a reason) rather than CC & probably don’t need to or won’t waste a slot on something like a hex totem (same situation). I’m saying Orbus mobs [a] don’t really require these mechanics in the overworld anymore to defeat (Frost 3 / Pushback / fireball / icelance / affliction farming in Preborn was atleast a thing & could result in some close calls, although the combat was still also simple) and [b] there isn’t enough of it in Orbus for mobs or for some of the player classes. Warriors in the overworld can shield bash, can cleave, but never need to hamstring & run to let a buff wear off a mob or something, and so-on (and honestly running from a buff would be boring, melee isn’t really made to “kite” as squishy ranged classes are). Good mechanics about danger, trying to control a fight, movement, situational awareness, while maintaining DPS, lead to more engaging fights than pure DPS races. The WoW frost-farming example I posted is not the best example of this but it’s to give an example of a normally difficult task that is winnable from CC (and furthermore: a more interesting frost specialization but I digress lol).
In many MMO’s I have played, farming has never been the same for classes, some were comparable in strength but offered different gameplay, general feeling of safety, etc. Some have always been better than others in terms of raw $$ farming. However there was often movement with buffs/patches that would spice things up & even give incentive to have multiple characters(classes) or at the least, specializations. Some classes would farm a certain set of high-end mobs in popular spots because they can, and other people would farm less rewarding but still highly rewarding mobs in other spots, or groups of mobs(yet frequently dangerous to do so) but not singular high-end mobs. Or in other cases, some classes are good at farming a particular mob where other were not, and this could include special mob loot and so-on giving that class a niche value for a particular market. If a player wanted to farm higher end stuff, they would just roll a character better at farming high end stuff(like a summoner of sorts typically). Being a powerful mage is obviously more challenging/different & not something you just level up and adjust into.