Most people are referring to the magician "solo" ability when they talk about the mage class (and pets) changing.
You can still solo to 55 easily fighting 40s, but finding old world level 45ish mobs with low health is hard or flat out impossible 55+ for most, and kunark 45+ mobs are far tankier than mages and their pets, and they dish out far more damage more quickly. Which is why enchanters dominated Kunark for however many years of Kunark blue99 went through, their "pet" DPS and health scaled with the content because they use charm, and mages just don't have a full toolkit in any one pet until the epic, and even then you're doing a 2 pull at most and blowing one of them up.
The Sebilis entrance is where you'll see many epiced mages wondering why they didn't roll necro or enchanter, because you need your epic and root nets to 100% get past see invis frogs - while shamans, necros, druids, enchanters, even wizards, can handle the same entrance break with ease.
49 pets VS 57-60 pets is another thing, mages are used to getting 4 pet options per spell level, and EQ Devs decided to underwhelm them with useless fire pets and no new meat & potatoes pet for handling harder mobs until 57, then their objectively best tanking earth pet at 51 is situationally worse against casters for pet chaining due to higher mana cost and near equal health to 49 focused pets. So 55-57 if you're hardcore dedicated to solo feels like dragging your sanity over razor wire, and if anyone believes differently please share your leveling spots.
That said 49-55 is a breeze against low hp classic mobs that come single or in pairs, use Focused earth pets on casters and focused fire pets on melee and chain pets, maybe pick up a burnt wood staff or whatever for extra lazy grinding, watch out for the odd 2khp buffed NPCs that are undercons compared to their neighbors, and then invest in Vitamin D because you won't be seeing any of the camps it's easy to level in unless you're a vampire or Euroscum or a pity case with Enchanter / Necro friends.
|