Low end mage pet question
 

Heya gang!

I played a mage sparingly back in the day....I think I got into the 40s with that one. I have a terrible case of ALT-itis and I hop around a lot.

Anyhow, back then, the water pet was generally accepted as your best soloing pet if you didn't need the root of the earth pet.

Now, in the limited time I've been back, I'm seeing a lot of fire pets out instead of waters. I understand the built-in DS is nice...but is it really THAT big a deal, especially at lower levels? (I just hit 16, btw)

I remember back then, the relative fragility of the fire pet relegated it to specific trash cleanup duty or (due to the inherent rests) MTing only very specific targets.

Is that somehow different now?

Thanks for the wisdom up front, guys!

Cast fire pet, send on mob, sit down. Once pet hits 15-20% start casting a new pet. Right before the cast goes off, hit go away pet. Send pet. Rinse and repeat.

Boring ass class. But once you start to raid you will actually get to coth people!

Fire pets DS is a pretty big deal even at low levels, at least twice as good as one you can cast yourself. Its fragile for sure but you will chew through mobs incredibly quickly compared to using a water/earth/air pet.

You won't need to chain cast till the 40's or so, before that just reclaim when mob is 5% ish hp and finish off with a low lvl nuke. Or be social and duo/group with water pet.

Hmmm.

Does the damage the first pet did get counted towards the '% of damage needed for XP' calculation?

I wouldn't think so, since there is no pet...? Similar to how you get "solo exp" for killing things when your group dies and you finish it off... That's my understanding, anyways.

You're correct, RDawg. Once a pet is gone (dead or reclaimed), you'll receive full exp when you finish off the mob.

When I played, it was mainly as a solo mage. Didn't start using earth pet consistently until 46 or 49, I believe. Fire when I had the spell, water otherwise.

My Mage is 25 now...
I use the Fire pet for solo and it works out fine. The DS is great and does not count towards the damage the pet does. This is null for me as I let the pet do the work and take the 50% xp hit.
I suggest getting the focus item Torch of Alna.
After I got this, the fire pet eats through Blues!!! More than it already did.

I usually jump between Water and Air for groups. Water is great DPS but the stun the Air pet has is nice too.

How do you guys afford pet chaining? I mean, even at 16, pet summons cost regents. I can't afford to be dropping a plat every couple kills for fresh pets, I'd be broke before my next level

I mean, if you have a higher level main I guess it isn't an issue. How the hell is someone supposed to do this if the mage is the main and you're a new non-twink?

At 25 I still don't chain cast....I can understand at 40+. Which is when most people start doing....

Reagents are cheap and killing a handful of mobs will easily afford you a whole bag of malachite.

As an example when I leveled my mage from 18-24 in OT I was vendoring about 30-50pp worth of junk an hour. IIRC a full 8 slot bag of malachite is like 10pp, which would last a couple days.