I feel that Mage's biggest weakness ties in with Summoner's biggest weakness at the start of the game.
There's little to no consistency or variety.
Say you start as Melee - you have from pretty much pre-ore, boomerangs, swords, shortswords, yo-yos, and that's not including any chest loot.
And if you start with Ranged - you at the very least have bows, and a very consistent way to get throwables from the Merchant or chest/pot loot.
But Mage? Wand of Sparking or you're out of luck and have to go mining, making gem tree farms, and a lot of the staves might be locked behind alternate ores which are challenging to gather at the start. But all of this ignores the fact that Mage, if they don't start with a lucky Wand of Sparking (which can become Wand of Frosting), will not get to play their own class for the first hour of the game if not more.
Of course, the game isn't intended to be played as a pure class, it would still be nice to have the option enabled by patching up gaps in progression.
For pre-hardmore, Mage progression just needs more content before Skeletron and Queen Bee imo.
If you fight Eye of Cthulhu, it drops nothing useful for mages, as mages make nothing useful out of evil ores.
If you fight the world evil boss, they drop nothing class specific for mages, only if you got lucky with their orbs (Crimson Rod/Vilethorn/Band of Starpower), but also the Meteorite gear at the very least.
The first real boss that unlocks something worth your while is Skeletron, which is pretty much towards the end of pre-hardmode, because he unlocks the Water Bolt, Magic Missile, Aqua Scepter, Flamelash, Flower of Fire, and if lucky, Book of Skulls.
You could go for Queen Bee prior to Skeletron, but fighting her with a gem stave is quite a challenge, as the projectiles are fairly slow, and if you don't get a stave with piercing, you'll struggle to deal any damage past the bee swarms.
Seeing gem staves get secondary effects and also be a bit more accessible would be great, imo. Add additional ones for evil ores too.
For example:
Copper/Tin have very fast projectiles
Iron/Lead have high knockback and damage but are slow to shoot
Silver/Tungsten move slowly but pierce more enemies
Gold/Platinum are fast, high damage, pierce, and have larger projectiles
Demonite/Crimtane are Gold/Platinum except they bounce off of walls
Possibly a Hallowed one made from crystal shards?
I feel like this would give more weight to choosing which to farm up at the start, and make them feel more unique, and it'd make them useful for specific things too. Fighting the world evil? Go for Silver/Tungsten to get lots of piercing help with Creepers and Eater segments.
Need to fight Skeletron and land hits consistently? Gold/Platinum.
Struggling to hit Eye of Cthulhu with Wand of Sparking while it's charging? Copper/Tin got your back.
etc
