Magician Help

[Leoden]

A while back myself and 2 other friends started on p99 clr/war/ench, we all made it to 30ish, but our play times never really line up and I was the war...

I thought I would try my hand at something that was a easier for soloing and a bit more group friendly at lower levels. After lots of reading I picked a magician.

Here is what I have gathered so far leveling to 12 and reading. Could anyone confirm just to make sure I am not missing something.

1.Duo if you can pet exp penalty is horrible if you don't do 51% dmg. (group bypasses 51% dmg requirement)
2. When solo, chain pets until mob is running, reclaim elements, and melee/nuke it to death. (avoids pet exp penalty)

Recasting pets doesn't seem very efficient, but if I can't out dps my pet, experience is only 25%.

Any help would be appreciated.

[mr_jon3s]

If you were the 30 enc in the trio go stick with that. If you werent its not to late reroll into a necro or enchanter. What you discribed is how you play a mage the whole game solo. Thats it till you get 55+ and then all you get to do is CoH and summon mod rods on raids.

[Victorio]

Yes you're stuck with 50% xp if pet steals kill. At your level the recalling of pets isn't that efficient yet. I suggest alternating kills... Let him have one and then nuke the next one a lot. Best thing you can do, if possible, is duo with another mage or a necro, though.

[Rampage]

Not really worth chaining pets in my experience. Just keep making pets till its max level pet, then use that to level with. I alwats preferred fire pet at low levels due to the dmg shield eating mobs up.

[Honest]

Remember that damage shields are neutral damage. Sometimes you only need to nuke twice to get full exp.

[Beldon]

Since you have a 30 Warrior I would use him to farm Najena for A Torch for the Torch of Alna Quest. This will make your fire pet much better for soloing. Just summon until you get a highest level pet and eat the xp penalty because your pet will mow through the mobs.

[Velerin]

At low levels I found chaining wasn't as efficient. Summon until you get a max level pet, if somewhere like WC with lots of high levels around ask if they can buff up your pet and go to town. Suck up the 50% exp and let your pet do his thing. Even if you can't get buffs, a max level pet vs. a lower level one will make a big difference.
Early on pet mana cost is very high proportionately to your mana. You will notice in late 20s/early 30s pet mana cost relative to total mana starts to drop. That's when pet chaining becomes very efficient.

And yes, get those focus items ASAP, most important item you can have 1-50.

[Donruss]

+1 on the torch of alna. I can help, but will not be on until this weekend.

I have found my heal to be way more effective than chain summoning. In fact, if you can time it right, you can keep your pet healed for almost no mana. As soon as the meditate tick happens, stand up and cast heal, sit immediately after. You should be able to get both med ticks with a heal in the middle. So before level 20, I agree with everyone so far, max level pet, torch in the offhand and get it buffed if possible. Especially with this healing trick, worth it to have pet kill lots of mobs vs re summoning and getting 100% on each mob.

Honest brings up a good point. See how much real dmg the pet is doing (melle dmg + prob dmg) you may not have to do very much dmg to get 100% sometimes. It would be nice to know what that number will be roughly, so you don't blow more mana nuking than necessary. I rarely nuke though, just rock that heal trick and enjoy the fast kill rate.

[Leoden]

Thanks so much for the feedback.

I will be looking into that torch, didn't even know it existed. I found a bard to duo with over the weekend which got me about 2 levels, much faster than soloing or large groups in oasis.

Glad to hear chaining is for higher levels, it definitely didn't feel right at this level.

[Donruss]

What lvl are you now? My friend and I are going to run into najeena to play our lvl20 alts this weekend. Would love to have you along. You could probably loot all of the focus items if you roll with us =)

Did you look at the mage focus item quests on the wiki yet? The broom/torch/shovel/stein can all drop where we will be hunting. You need a rare gem for each one. And a set of toe's fire/ice/hill Giants/ cyclopse. And some other random thing for each. I would get fire first, but all 4 when you can. These quests are super fun.