Mage epic --- game changing?
 

Does the epic pet for the mage (post-nerf of course) change the gameplay or solo ability of the mage to any significant degree? Hoping to get the opinions of some epic mages. I doubt I'll ever get one but just curious. Does it allow you to dungeon crawl solo in seb for example? Just wondering how tanky it is

The short answer is yes - it's game changing. It opens some doors and it generally kills faster and is stronger than the other pets. The longer answer is that it's complicated. The main advantage the epic pet has is that it's always the same level when you summon it, removing the randomness. I haven't parsed any data but I believe that a focused air pet actually tanks more effectively because it's a monk class versus the warrior class of the epic. When I first got epic I was kinda disappointed in how fast he loses health compared to the air which I used 100% of the time solo.

That being said, epic still has more hit points, higher level, and stronger DS and effects. It's more often the better DPS option than the other pets and tankier. Not being able to reclaim it is sad, but being able to 'store' a charge on a fresh orb summon is pretty amazing for difficult fights or for raiding. If all you're doing is planning on soloing I don't know if it's really worth it? The focused air pet is incredible for this already, but it doesn't kill as quickly.

I'm curious what other folks think about this question or what they've used the pet that they couldn't before. Personally I have used it to farm greens faster (duh!) kill the named wyverns in skyshrine, I've had it tank difficult mobs with a healer, duoed Tserrina with a wizard, kill the named wurms in GD. I know I could solo some named in chardok but haven't had time to try.

Absolutely not. Mages suck at soloing anything remotely worthwhile because they still don't have root, slow, etc.

All the epic does is allow a mage to farm just a little bit tougher (albeit still easy) mass amounts of mobs. Will it feel great when you first get it? Sure, the fashion alone is pretty baller. Soon thereafter you'll come to the realization it hasn't made your character that much stronger.

Unfortunately mages are best leveled to 55 and used as COTH bots.

Whats an earth staff sell for these days? 1 million plat? I'd much rather have a million to spend on other classes and have a stable of well geared chars to actually be useful on.

The real mage epic spell summons raiders, not elementals!

It will help you farm the 700p you need for a wc cap when you need to swap to a useful class

Unfortunately the cost of an Earth Staff is simply too great for it to offset the gains you receive. Obviously if you want the Mage Epic for fashion or fun that trumps everything. This is a game after all. But you won't suddenly be able to kill significantly harder mobs.

Allishia gave me some DPS data on the Epic pet (post nerf). It does 80-90 DPS in terms of melee damage + procs, and the damage shield is doing around 30 DPS. So when the epic pet is tanking you're getting around 120 DPS, not including nukes.

Those are pretty good numbers, a Rogue with Epic and a second good weapon is doing around 133 DPS with backstabs on Sebilis mobs. The main problem Mages have is no CC of any kind. You may be able to do some harder mobs if you have bags of root nets and give your epic pet a swarmcaller, but you are going to be sinking a lot of time and plat into keeping those items on your character, ready for the next target.

Imagine putting a swarmcaller on a mage pet.

Just play an enchanter.

We use to do it to slow vulak faster, but thats pretty niche

No it's not a gamechanger unless your game is farming green cons or duoing with it as your tank.

Higher DS, more hps, stun proc, higher melee hits. A pretty no-brainer for that stuff. It seems to always come out the same level hitting for 67's too where the water pet can take half a dozen summons or so to get a 60'hitter. The earth pet is quite durable, non-focused hits for 60 tops and bashes, and is the only one with a root proc that lands on all sorts of stuff. So in short our pets are great and one is simply the best all-around performer.

I don't have the mage epic but a lot of my guildies do have it. I have done a LOT of parsing with the focused water pet. I'll usually bring the mage instead of my ranger just out of curiosity to small group kills. Fay, Uulump, Lhranc, Miragul, Xenvorash, etc. With proper positioning for backstabs the water does about 10% more on red cons that won't get hit with the pet's spell damage. I expect on on stuff that the spells land on it's closer to equal (I can't see other spell dmg parses). With horrid positioning, the epic pulls ahead because it's not reliant on backstabs.

Compared to players, on stuff like Vindi, it falls mid-tier for DPS; out of say 30 people meleeing it's often in the low teens. That's more a testament to how bad most melees parse though than how good a water pet is. I spent a couple of hours in seb and my water pet was trading coin flips with our 57 rogue on who was doing more DPS, and that was without a proper tank knowing where to aim a mob. It was doing consistently about twice the dps of our 55 ranger.

If you see the mage as a +1 DPS and are ignoring COTH, Mala/sini, nukes, and the DS it's still a great class. The pet on normal grind stuff performs far better than the average melee and never pulls aggro. On red cons like Vindi, it still holds up ok (and again never pulls aggro). What not having the epic does cost you is a ton of stats and the annoyance of having to recycle pets for a "good one" when you need to help out.

Would I love the epic? Sure, hell yea. I might end up with an earth staff someday if the stars align. I don't personally feel I'm lacking anything though. Put velocity on the water pet and get good at changing its position and quickly re-attacking. Just pretend you arent a warmbody rogue and even a filthy casual mage can keep up.

Yeah generally speaking putting a swarmcaller on a summoned pet isn't worth the cost, with the exception of Vulak as Ripqozko points out.

The biggest benefit you get from Mage Epic is the ability to corpse free pets. If you had like 30 corpses in a single zone, a Bio Orb, Swarmcaller, and root nets, you could probably do some solo artist stuff. That would mostly be for fun though, I doubt you would make the plat back hehe, unless you got a really nice item from one of the mobs.