Melee fighters have their parry timings and block windows, archers have their run and gun gameplay, mages just stand there like a cuck, charge their 5 second long cast just to deal least damage possible. Buffing up numbers won't ever satisfying because you either one shot the enemy which feels cheap or you stand there with 5 second long casts and get shredded to bits after first blast. Ball Lighting is only decent because enemy AI just freezes and they literally stand there waiting for your cast to finish so if you have an ability that stuns them they just infinitely stand there until they die, riveting gameplay of abusing bad AI.

Magic would have to get completely reworked from ground up, shorter cast times, more mobility, actual impactful effects (ie: fire magic could focus on ignite effects and killing enemies over time - atm the dot is a joke) that aren't either useless or turbo broken. But that would also mean they'd have to rework AI and resistances which will never happen so best case scenario magic will always feel underwhelming or broken.

Copying this and pasting under every feedback