Bard epic? All those epics do is save mana, they don't provide any thing to the class it can't already do. Torpor is more important to a shaman than epic is.

I clarified solo/individual.

Bard epic is without a doubt one of the best... But only in a raid format because of what the singing mod provides. It's some convenience for a solo bard but beyond that it's nothing groundbreaking letting them do things they cannot otherwise solo.

And those are very subjective terms. Even so, the epics you list are nothing more than conveniences as well, like I said. They simply save mana. Compared to a pet unobtainable anywhere else, or a modifier unobtainable anywhere else, those provide significantly more solo/individual benefit.

So I got curious about this and looked into it:

Gonarer -vs- The Statue of Rallos Zek: -- DMG: 21359 -- DPS: 66

Hit: 10087
Slice: 6496
Backstab: 4252
Bash: 346
Kick: 178

Non-crit rate: 100%
Attempts: 1068
Hits: 593
Missed: 474
Accuracy: 55.6%
Avg Hit: 36
Max hit: 195

It seems I got trolled! The 60 Water pet was merged with a 59 Necro pet (slices and bash/kicks) who had the same name.

Real DPS:

Gonarer -vs- The Statue of Rallos Zek: -- DMG: 14339 -- DPS: 44.5

Dropping the pet the 9th behind many Rogues and Monks.

So adding in the mage nukes I would assume that puts them on par or perhaps even ahead of rogs/mnks if they don't go oom before fight ends? I never knew mages did that much dmg. Pretty impressive really.

Mage nukes essentially dont happen though since everything is pretty much resisted on raids.

That's not true in Velious. We did a Vindi with more clerics than I know what to do with and I landed every 1020 nuke I cast. Same for Velk and Wuoshi.

I've compared parse on pets to our top rogue dps then overlaid my nuke dps. Mages win hands down.

That was even with a CoTH after the first 4 nukes to wipe my aggro. With 3.3k mana, bard mana and all the Velious mind buffs, mages can sustain mod rods and still top the dps charts.

epic mage pet can easily out dps most monks atm

Mages are great DPS and only get stronger with more expansions. During PoP days mages were top DPS when you combined pet and nukes.

They were good dps, but they certainly were not top. Wizards and Rogues ruled PoP.

Edit: I guess we should clarify situations, on raid targets Wizards and Rogues ruled.