Onelove True, they have said that in the past, particularly Nick in the before times, but ever since the deep dive (which didn't say anything to that end I noticed) they seem to have stopped pushing that. Or at least, I haven't found any dev quotes saying that's still the plan, even on the restricted access channel on Discord, despite how often they are asked about it. The class designer for them hasn't brought them up a single time since June, and basically the only thing I could squeeze out of any dev was a brief acknowledgement that they know Wizard players are one of the least happy with their rework (and that dev has nothing to do with Wizard balancing so doesn't mean alll that much). Combine that with what's going into other reworks and I'm not convinced Wizards = top tier damage is still the plan.
If you can point me to a more recent dev statement that Wizards are still intended to be "S-tier" damage (or however they are referring to it now), I'd love to be wrong on this.
Consider my Spellblade example. Wizards and Spellblades can both warp, root, knockback, stun with electric, and do an extremely brief snare. And Gate, though only at level 50 for the Spellblade. Meanwhile the Wizard can (eventually) teleport, evac, send others to bind point, invis, bind people, generate a light source, purge enemy buffs, bind vision, and recharge items. That's not a ton of utility by any means (nothing compared to an Enchanter or Druid really), but it's more than a Spellblade has. The only thing Spellblades can do that Wizard's can't is wear 1 higher tier of armor - everything else in both kits is just different flavors of dealing damage.
Now right now Spellblades are doing great damage and seem largely happy with their rework besides complaints about aura dancing being tedious and a bit glitchy (though they are still far less popular than Wizards on the beta server despite that). But imagine after the balance pass if Wizards had noticeably better damage output than Spellblades. How is that fair? Just because long ago Nick said Wizard should be a higher tier damage than Spellblades, should that always be true even if it means Spellblades have both less utility and less damage? I mean, at least before they could off-tank, but that was removed.
That leaves the devs with 3 choices after the reworks are done - decide it's okay if some classes are just better in pretty much every way than others, allow Spellblades to have more sustained DPS than Wizards to make up for them not having anything else to offer, or shift around utility (reduce what extra stuff Wizards can do or increase what Spellblades can do) so Wizards can fairly maintain top spot as in Nick's original vision.
Given how long these reworks are taking, and how much easier it is to move damage/mana numbers around compared to abilities, I think it's reasonable to assume they'll decide maintaining Wizards as top tier - simply because it was the plan long ago by a booted dev - isn't the most important consideration any more.
So I've come to accept that Wizards may not be top tier damage output in the end after all, and focus on what what else they offer and push for them to at least be good enough damage that they will be appreciated in groups looking for a DPS role. Unfortunately, for now it seems they don't even have that, and the silence about it is definitely disheartening, but we'll have to hold out hope for this balance pass I guess.
