I think summon spells and defensive spells will be the way of the future.
The balance of fire/water mages can be tipped by adding new monsters, the blood imp (that's what they were called, right?) being a rudimentary example - something very fast that can bypass the safety afforded by ball spells, but that can be dealt with in other ways, like making an earth wall to stall it or paralyzing it. Maybe a new monster could be added that has extreme, glimpse-like sight range and extreme speed, but not with extreme damage, that would pester mages and be able to hunt them down outside of ball spell range, but be weak to...I don't know... mind or air spells for example, promoting the use of the elemental shield spells.
Summons are another area - they draw aggro, which should definitely be something that a solo mage should consider instead relying on the passive and safe gameplay afforded by the range of ball spells.
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