Mage research
 

Why do I never see words for mages drop but everywhere I look there's tons of Necro words?

I feel the same way. Although I do think which words drop where is based on which zone is which? It's possible that necro words drop more commonly in zones popular for me and you to hang out in and mage words drop more commonly in other zones, but I haven't seen a guide on specific drop locations anywhere.

classism

Mage words are the least dropped of all the casters. I know this for a fact and I've been saying it for years. I encourage you to go vendor diving in hopes people have sold them to a npc.

Probably part of the reason is that mage research uses other components in addition to words (Breath of Ro, Tears of Prexus, Wing of Xegony, Gloves of Rallos Zek, Ice of Velious, Jade Shard, etc etc etc). I bet that Mage words and these other components put together drop at least as often as other classes' words.

IMO if you feel like research is something you want to do, just use training points and pay the cash to level up research as a mage. Doing the old fashioned way is way too much of a PITA. On my necro I always kept words and skilled up research by doing combines etc. On mage, I tried it for a few levels and then just said F it.

By the time I'd get the right components and words and then paid the $ to buy the previous level pet spells that are included in the combine I was at the next spell circle and didn't need it anymore.

It seems to me like it's always tough for whatever class I'm looking for but it does seem like mages get the shortest end of the multi-ended stick. Merchant diving is my preferred method for dealing with this but it works a lot better a day or two after a server reset.

I vote you skip research and use vendor pets. sucks when its fire only but when you get to 50+ the pet spells are super common. it is really not worth the heartache trying to get all the pets at every level.

And if it makes you feel any better, 99% of the necro words on vendors are trash/common, rare ones are all taken quick or people hold onto them because its not 2000 anymore

I guess everyone approaches this differently. For me, the satisfaction of having the right pet for a job outweighs the hassles of finding those pages.

Spend ur training points on research. Go dumpster dive