Since there's not much activity in the mage forum, and that's what I'm planning to play in EQC, I'd like to start a thread about mages cons and pros. I never played a mage, mostly because I don't like playing alts too much, so that's mostly coming from an outside point of view.

Pros:
- Good DPS, I mean really good. Back in classic I think that casters were a bit over melee classes DPS wise. With pet and good nukes I don't think any group wouldn't like a mage as DPS.
- Good soloing, if you can't find a group you can at least solo blues.
- (One of) the best class to farm greenies (or were they grey?), the pet will kill low level mobs very fast and non stop. Fast for faction or tradeskill items.
- Call of the hero, didn't need it all that often, but when you did it could really help greatly your raid/group when you are deep in a dungeon and want to grab more members.
- Great epic.

Cons:
- Robe caster = low HP and low AC = fast death sometimes.
- No "cool" ability like feign death, SOW, ports, rez, sneak+hide, track, clarity,..., except for call of the hero but you can't even use it for yourself.
- Kinda one sided as DPS, not much utility (well a few like enduring breath but nothing great I think) except maybe for mod rods, no crowd control (not even root), nothing to save your group except killing as fast as possible.
- Very hard epic.

What's your thoughts? More cons/pros? Let's keep this forum alive

I played mage to 60. Pet damage in classic is nuts, it was actually nerfed a couple times.

The fact that they are a robe wearer doesn't really matter, once you get aggro balancing figured out, your pet will keep aggro at all times. (Just don't nuke like a mad man...)

+ DPS is on par with Wizard with pet damage if I recall.
+ Earth pet makes a great off-tank
+ Summon magic weapons for Ghouls, Wisps, and any other creature requiring a magic weapon to kill. Magic weapons are not in abundance in classic era.

+ I'm sure it will be fixed but the Summon Bane effect on sword of runes worked on everything when equipped on your pet. 2x Sword of runes was insane for your pet. That was a very classic bug but if they keep it in, that is fine with me. lol

I loved my Mage and will be playing it again as my first character.

Hrmm, pros and cons..

Pro
-Raid Utility. DPS, water stones, mod rods, summoned gear, CoTH
-DPS. It was insane. I remember drooling over my buddies DPS as I attempted to solo way lower lvl frogs in Seb (as a ranger, lol).
-Pets. Need a quick diversion, need just 5s to run, Jabern will handle it!
-Summoned magic weapons for low levels.
-PET PULLING!


Cons
-Research. You're shit out of luck for the majority of your pets past lvl 24 if you don't research, or have a fellow magician research for you. (psst.. The Mage Guild.. I plan on focusing on research. )
-Pets. They cause just about as much trouble as they prevent. If you're not a good magician you can quickly find your pet wiping the group.
-NO ROOT! NO SNARE! NO STUN! NO CC! (other than pets)
-Lowest AC for caster class?
-Extremely hard epic.
-Reagents (pearls and malachite)
-The most TERRIBLE LVL 1-4 EVER! (no pets!)
-Spells cost a ton of money, you'll find yourself being able to afford 1-2 pets, maybe one buff, and 1 nuke per spell cycle until you come into your own.


There are way more for both lists. But that is all that comes to mind at the moment. Regardless, magicians, despite their strength, must be played correctly to be a viable class. The worse part is that learning curve where you learn threat management, pet control, situational DPS, and when to start running.

Awww I LOVED the sword of runes bug from classic! I really hope they keep it in, as it was not fixed until sometime in Luclin I think, or maybe PoP since they added the new weapons then. I played a magician as my main from about my second day of EQ until I retired (see sig), and there's no way I couldn't play one again in classic.

I think magicians were better overall DPS than any other class (not counting charmed pets) until late in Velious when monks and rogues started getting insane weapons. Our nukes weren't that much worse than a wizard, and the pet is always doing pretty decent damage. Wizards do 0 dps when they're out of mana!

Our biggest weakness was probably the lack of any defensive utility other than the pets. As jiffy mentioned - no root/snare/mez/etc. We had to rely on the pet for our entire defensive capacity, which pretty much limited us to one or two mobs at a time. Also, we had no innate mana regen ability other than mod rods, which were only good when summoned ahead of time (200 mana to summon, only gave back 150). I remember this being kind of a big deal, as I was a frequent poster on the old magician forums.

The epic was both a pro and a con. It was arguably the hardest one to get, but was also one of the best (cleric epic is probably the best, since it's irreplaceable, but I'd put ours at #2). That pet was just so insanely bad ass. If you had it, you were unquestionably the highest DPS class, and probably one of the highest dps people on the server period.

I really thought mages in general were underrated back in classic, in the minds of the community. Not many people really knew how to play them well - it was easy to just do the basics and get by, but if you could master the pets and all the things they could do, you could really be great. This of course was stifled by raid and group leaders who would often insist on us not using a pet. This seriously pissed me off, and once I got into a raiding guild I refused to obey these orders . I eventually became the raid leader of my guild and while I was the only mage in the guild for a long time, whenever we did recruit new mages I would REQUIRE that they use pets on raids and learn how to use them. A mage without his pet is just a gimp wizard!

Hard Epic is for you negative? I dont think so. How i allways say "Der Weg ist das Ziel" (The journey is the reward.).

I count this Point as a PRO for Mages!

In the end, you have plenty of time to finish the epic, so the amount of time it takes is negligable. It's really more important if the epic is useful throughout time--and that answer is most certainly yes for the mage =D

TBH I won't spend 5 hours a day on EQC so it will most likely be very hard for me to finish it, it is very time consuming. The good thing is most of it can be traded/MQed.

Only counting this as a con because many Magicians will never see the epic. Many more will see it... after Velious is released.

if you want your epic, youll get it. i know, it will cost alot of time, raids, kills, cola, beer and junkfood, but when you finish it, you can be proud of it.

i remember when i finished my epic... man, i was feeling godlike, hehe.


/cheers

I've never got my epic for my enchanter, was only missing 1 part (shissar) when I left during Luclin. Was very frustrating, I was not in a big guild and having shissar up + not camped + enough people to kill it never happened

I'm afraid this could happen again.

I guess you're right Lyrina. Even if I didn't have the force to raid PoSky, I could still farm a few million platinum and buy a crown. Then spend another million for a MQ of the staff from PoH. The rest is probably doable with a group of magicians.

I bet we could do a Sky farm raid with 20 magicians + cleric / shm / enc / necro, and make it to isle 7 in day. I don't know if we'll have that kind of magician firepower, but 20 mages with air pets would make for some seriously insane DPS. I'm betting we could take down that queen bixie with that many magicians pretty fast. She only could have had 32k HPs tops... lava bolt x 20 = 16k damage

Once you have a Necro camped out up there you've got a bridge to farm crowns.

Tiiden, I like the way you think! 16k damage in one go is pretty incredible. If we had enough determined magicians we'd make short work of any raid target.

lol.. hell yeah!

this sounds like a nifty plan

i remember the crown drops being pretty rare my few times there. with 20+ magicians that'd take a while to get them.

Ya, but once you're up there, it's just a matter of time. Back when I played I remember the epics coming out - I constantly worked on it whenever the opportunity arose, but didn't finish it until shortly after PoP release. It always just felt hopeless that I would ever get the crown, because it was so impossibly difficult to get to Isle 7. Once you have a bridge set up to isle 7 you just have to wait your turn, which makes all the difference.

Plus, while the crowns are rare and sometimes you won't get any on a full clearing, I've heard of up to 6 crowns dropping at once before! So they can drop a lot. You just have to get lucky, or wait. And it's actually not that hard to do that island. You only need 1-2 groups to clear it down to the Sphinxes, and in the time it takes to clear the drakes you ought to be able to get another group to do the sphinxes also. The hardest part is getting up there - the amount of time it actually takes to do 1->7 plus the difficulty of the bixie on isle 6.

In the case of The Mages Guild, the PoSKY is not the limit!
We only need competent Magicians. Join on up folks.

Reading all of this is torture!

Count me in and my air pet is ALL yours!

-Vaiel Dark Elf Mage

I'll do whatever I can to aid the magicians of this server in obtaining their epics. And then after, you can send out your pet army to assist me in getting mine.

Just make sure you take me along when you go to Sky... I've never, in 10 years of playing, been able to go past Isle 5.
That and there's lots of awesome SK stuff in Sky, including the Blade of Abrogation...

I foresee plenty of trips to PoSky. Which I'm excited about, because I freaking love that zone.



/sigh. I'm so close to giving in and buying a iMac. I want to play now.

What exactly is hard about the mage epic? Is it waiting for a mob to spawn for hours or just hard raids?

Lots of very rare mobs & drops. Off the top of my head:

Hard mobs + Rare drops:
Innorruk/Magi/Revs: Earth Mastery Staff
Island 7: Crown of Elemental Mastery
Neh'Ashirr: Torch
Undertow: Wand

Rare mobs:
Quillmane: Cloak

Rare Drops:
Fire elemental thingy in SolB

+ Tons of running around.

Is a raid needed for most parts of it?

Most of it, yes.

Pretty much all the "hard" mobs I listed require a raid.