You all bring up good points and far too many for me to list them all individually and come up with a counter for each...so instead I'm going to re-emphasize a couple of things I said in my original post.
I would argue that pure mage dueling is still a great barometer to judge whether or not someone is also good on the field.
I feel this is indisputable based off my personal experience and the people I have fought with over the years. I don't know the people that you guys dealt with on a regular basis, but the people I have fought along with throughout the years (including today) usually translate to great field fighters as well as great @ pure mage duels. I said it's a great barometer to judge whether or not someone is good on the field. I didn't say it's the end-all be-all reason why someone is good on the field.
All of your particular examples are fine and it's likely the case for THEM, but in MY experience (and I have too many people to list to even begin pointing out every specific person) good dueling usually translates to great field fighting based on everything I listed in my original post. You can't teach idiots how to evolve into a viable mage/dueler. They have to be at least SEMI-intelligent, which is why you now see a vast majority of people play gimps. They dumb down their characters, want justification for a quick/easy kill, and to be quite honest are terrible on a mage (again, see my original post as to why).
I understand why pure mage is continually bashed on and not appreciated because people are a) disenchanted by the rinse/repeat aspect of it; b) NOBODY does it anymore, which in turn it doesn't receive the respect it once did; and c) they are barely any pvpers out there nowadays that have the drive/ambition to want to succeed at pure mage dueling, which is a biproduct of everything else listed above.
Again, I'm not talking up dueling as the greatest thing ever and is the deciding end-all be-all factor to determine who you are as a pvper. It seems like you're all assuming I use dueling as the only barometer to determine if someone is a good field fighter. That's NOT the case. Of COURSE there's going to be exceptions. To totally and utterly dismiss dueling as a complete non-factor though I will say again isn't a fair statement. People are so put off by dueling now it's astounding and will take every opportunity to take a shot at it, but I suppose it's fair since dueling has never been in as bad of a state as it is now (and will never get better).
However, I've played this game for too long, been dueling for too long, field fighting for too long to dismiss my personal experiences and intuition to simply dismiss dueling as a complete non-factor in today's pvp scene. It's a futile argument I know. It's obviously not the popular sentiment, but I will argue until the bitter end - not here of course, I broke my no posting on stratics rule, but this is it...probably - that dueling still has a claim to relevancy (not absolute) and being a good dueler CAN and DOES translate onto the field as well.
On a lighter note, pure mage duel to determine who's right and who's wrong?
snap:
