The current state of Mages on project 99?
 

I have been doing some searches about mages on project 99. I am unclear as to weather the pet Agro issues have ever been addressed, and if while in a group your group must out damage your pet to not lose 50% xp to your pet? Also if your in a group does the group have to outdamage all the pets or just out damage the one that did the most damage?

Basicly , what is the current state of the mage class, and is it still a powerhouse solo, or a slowly leveling / grouping class? Would/will I be unsummoning my pet every fight solo , Is a necromancer a better bet these days? Thank you for any information, most of the stuff I found was a year or two old.

Pet aggro is still difficult.

If you group, pet EXP penalty doesn't come into effect.

Best way to get around EXP penalty solo is to reclaim when mob is almost dead and nuke it.

Necros are better soloers, as they've always (?) been.

If you want to solo, you will be chain summoning pets. Reclaim pet for mana return once the mob is down to < 10%, then nuke the mob to get full experience. Buy lots of malachite

IMO: A class that was often a dubious choice in the classic era, particularly L51+, with few or no compelling reasons to invite in a group, that is even worse on P1999 with bugged pet aggro.

Edit: Although not personally tested on p1999, here is how it went on live back then. In a group a pet could take a "share" of xp, if it did over 50% of the total damage. So say you duo with a cleric, and the pet does 75% of the damage, than it would count as an additional group member, and it will take 33% of the damage. If you duo with a mage, both pet do 35% of the damage each, and the remaing 30% is done by the mages: then the pets will take no xp at all, since none of them did over 50% of the total damage.

So there are certain group situations in which a pet can take xp, but they should be rare.

Mages are a rock solid choice for DPS in a group, Iumuno.

In a group mages still rock for sustained and burst dps. Solo mages are in a rough spot here. For full exp like everyone said you have to reclaim pet and nuke which is usually fine outdoors but not ideal indoors (I still do it indoors with more risk). I love doing duos or trios with pet tanking but here it only works if someone just keeps the mob rooted all the time because when anyone else even sneezes at the mob they'll pull aggro. You can still solo well with chain petting but the crappy aggro makes the class even more 1-dimensional. I pull seafuries with a 5 damage level 1 nuke and the 49 fire pet often takes 2 combat rounds to grab aggro (and thats with standing, not sitting). If they'd fix the pet casting frequency that might help some. Enchanters are really the best 'pet class' here.

Well that is kind of sad, I really liked mages on live many years ago. Is pet agro on the radar for being fixed or is that how its going to stay? Any kind of official response on it?
I can handle the way xp works, but with agro broken too it might make it frustating to level. I really like mages, and especially old model pets, so I may just stick it out and see what I can do. I would love to be able to use my weapon summoning spells and whatnot at higher levels and have my pet use them, but it seems like that will be a rarity here :(

How does one correspond with the people who make the decisions here, is there a forum to try to bring attention to this or seek a response?

There is a bug forum. The way to use it is to find evidence of pet aggro having worked differently back in classic-era EverQuest, then submit a bug report.

And probably the best until the early 50s, at least untwinked. Back then on live though, they started to fall off the chart in the mid 50s and were definitely obsolete compared to melees by the late 50s.

EQ should only have ogre warriors, high elf clerics, high elf enchanters, and iksar monks