What separates good vs bad mages 51+
 

I see a ton of lazy and shitty mages so here are some of my thoughts having played one...

1) Know what kind of pet to use in situations including group vs raid vs solo. I use earth or water when soloing...depending on how hard the mobs hit. I use Air on caster heavy camps. Water about 90% on raids. I see way too many people using the wrong pets in the wrong situations and not maximizing the mage's potential...

2) Know how to position your water pet so it can backstab...don't be bad...you move your body or /pet guard so that your pet is doing the additional DPS! Anytime i see any pet, especially the rogue water pets not behind the mob i /facepalm hard.

3) Did you know that you can use AE spells on single pulls...they are more efficient if each round hits...so know which mobs have high resists...

4) Did you know that you can single pull? Use root nets liberally...they're cheap as fuck to recharge! Root nets+CoTH= single pull...try it!

5) Chaining pets still works...sorta...but really it works...so don't waste your mana healing your pet...just time the recast and /pet goaway at the right time and you will be more successful. Malachites are retarded cheap...Chain pet=Pet CH.

6) Do try using the clicky burnt wood staff...time it right so you don't draw aggro...but really the cast time is so long that u can click it in the beginning and be fine...just be positioned right so that you can actually land it. Even I manage to miss a bolt about 25% of the time...

7) Manage your mana...this is why you try to use the bolt clicky as often as possible...in my opinion, I usually keep at least enough to resummon a pet as an emergency escape! I might solo with a water pet, but if for some stupid reason i'm getting low on mana and the situation gets shaky like repops or me being dumb with respawn timers and getting adds, I'll budget my mana in such a way in which I know i have enough for an earth pet and gate. In this case, I'll cast earth pet and /pet goaway and pray it roots one mob and and i can quickly /pet back and /pet attack 2nd and/or 3rd mob. You should have time and the hp to do this...nothing sucks more than the cast gate with 2-3 mobs laughing at your channeling.

8) I personally don't use a lot of pet weapons...but when I'm duoing, I'll throw in snare or stun weapons...but I chain pets alot, so I don't really feel like it's the best use of my plat to throw them away like this...

I'll have more as i think of it! Mages can seem like a one-dimensional class, but they're a ton of fun if you use everything that's available to you!

Are you talking about rain spells? I don't play a mage, but I've found these spells to be completely useless on a wizard. The resists on these spells are just too high. Guildie hit 55 and wanted to test the new rain spell...it got resisted first time they cast it...on an asp in WC. Plus I've heard that pet aggro here is slightly broken, so I would think that it would be too easy to pull a mob off with 1 wave and thus have it be out of range for the other waves.

I'm speaking about mage...but yes they do get resisted...it really just depends on the mob we're dealing with...I specifically don't use rain spells on mobs i know have high resists. Even then I play risk with the RNG, and if the rain spell lands twice out of potentially three, then it's already more efficient than DD's.

It requires a bit more awareness of your situation. The other thing to note, is that if the mob is a harder mob, i'll toss in a malo-line debuff in the beginning...which is a nice mana investment on mobs with higher HPs.

Rain spells are awesome in theory. Their usefulness on P99 is pretty limited currently.

Wizards, Druids, Mages all have these spells and they were all more highly resisted than other spells on live, but the level of resists on P99 is stupidly higher. Hopefully P99 will adjust the resists to these spells in velious like they did on live.

Even with the higher resists they have some uses. But if there are summoned pets in the rain area forget it, the spell is broken and "hits" them (not doing damage) reducing the number of waves/mobs that are hit.

i agree with resists being pretty fucked up, however over the course of soloing i've seen them land 2x out of 3x more than just once, which to me is worth it. For example if i'm soloing a dog guardian in KC with a stupid amount of HP I'll toss in a malo, and most of the time my rain spell will land 2/3 times.

Also yes aggro is fucked up as well...but it requires a bit more planning and not being a total retard.

Too many mages out there /sit, /petattack, /afk. also try to bolt DD from stupid far away when we all know that closer works more often.

going along with pet turning, really the puller/tank in a group should be pre-turning and positioning the mobs so that the pet can easily run up to the mob and start hitting from behind without the pet class having to deal with turning the pet around. this is a good conversation to have with the puller/group members to make sure everyone is on the right page, but a good tank will already be taking care of this for you.

the reason why there are so few mages (and few wiz also, really the int-caster-bastard-cousins) and out of those few most of them are "bad" is because its definitely a skill class. it takes skill to go to dangerous places and be effective/stay alive and it also takes skill to find and utilize the strengths of the class.

there have been official counts done, but when im online i often /who all (class) count and take random tallies of the classes logged. really the top 4 least played are (in no specific order) mage, pal, wiz, ran. most of the time i see less wiz than mage, and many times there are more pal/ran than there are wiz/mage. without doubt mage and wiz are the least-played magic using classes.

^ agreed.

A good mage is incredibly useful to a group...a shitty mage should just delete his toon.

Not the same can be said about some of the classes u mentioned sadly...even a good ranger, from a min/max point of view, is still shitty...in my opinion...

How well they hand out mod rods, food, and drink.
How well they are at using Call of the Hero.
How well they position their pet.
How well they assist on the correct target.
They use the right god damn pet/s.
They never pull unwanted aggro.

Great post. I've always loved mages and think they are a really fun class if played right. The lousy pet aggro and need to kill pet for full exp soloing kinda sucks here but I still get around it. We can get a lot of versatility out of our pets. I always hate when people lump all the "pet classes" together as one. Mages are the only class that must have their pet out to be effective at all (solo). Can't wait till 55 for CoH and Sirocco.

also mages get great debuff spells and their elemental nukes are good as well. muzzle of mardu and summoned pet weaps are also great for other party members! =)

the difference between mage and other pet classes is that they cannot charm anything, so they are their own league in that respect. their summoned pets need to be tough because they can't charm a strong mob like enc, nec, and dru can.

in a group, water pet, debuffs, and nukes are great - also muzzles and pet weaps if there are other people with pets