I'll just copy this over from what I wrote on the Magician page:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Wiki
Target-Based Area of Effect
Mages have two types of target-based AoE fire spells: "columns" and "rains". Both are limited to 4 "hits" which includes the target (this is in contrast to the player-based AoE spells, which have a max of 25 hits). Unfortunately, from classic until about three months into Velious, if your pet is within the AoE it will "use up" one of those hits (it will not do any damage, but it will count against the number of enemies that can be affected). Without any in-class snare, the use of these types of spells is already quite limited, but rain spells have several quirks that make them even worse than you might think at first glance. First off, your pet eating one of the hits every wave (and only being allowed to hit 4 things, total) means that you will only ever hit your target mob twice if doesn't move. The work-around for this is understanding that the AoE is centered on where the mob was when it was first cast (it doesn't follow the mob around). Because of this, if you can move the mob after the first wave such that your pet is out of the AoE, but the mob is still in, it will take the remaining two hits (the mob and your pet taking the first two). That said, there are two other drawbacks to using rains compared to other types of damage spells: they have an innate 20% resist chance, and they can never kill a mob (if the mob is below 10% health and/or it would land the killing blow, it is automatically resisted). Both of these things were around until well after the P99 timeline and so they will always be in effect here.
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Underlined the parts relevant to Wizards.
The good news is that even with 1 resist, they are still better DPM than a comparable DD spell*.
*This statement is comparing Magician rains to DDs and may or may not actually reflect what is true for Wizards, though I suspect a similar relationship, which is why I brought it up.