>>96487520 (OP)
>cherrypicking
It's too easy for them. They have hundreds of years to leisurely study and practice magic.
A human has, what, 70 years tops? Time pressure inherently creates a lot of incentive to push the envelope and get as strong as possible as quickly as possible. I wouldn't even consider cracking open a cursed grimoire if I had 200 years to learn fireball.
That said, the average human wizard is some lame and gay nerd ass oldfag. You take the top 0.1% of elf wizards and they're as cool as the human counterparts.