Necromancers Versus Magicians As Soloers

[Tallenn]

People seem to be talking about a couple of different things.

All in all, the necromancer is a far more flexible and powerful class (really, than ANYONE else). If you die soloing a necro, you either had a client crash, or you're not paying attention. For a mage, if things go bad, it's gate or die- that's IT. A necro can often turn a bad situation into a huge experience gain, and can wait until the last moment to decide it's not worth it, and get a free "do-over".

However, in terms of pure speed of killing mobs solo, or even in a group, unless the group is killing reds (so they take long enough to kill for the necros DOTs to be worth casting), there's no contest, and it's complete because of the mage's pet.

Watch the two classes soloing some time. A mage pet will take considerable hits, while all the mage has to do is heal it, which they seem able to do with no problem. I've even heard many mages complain that they have to hit the mob with a low-level nuke in order not to lose most of the experience, because it's faster and more efficient to just let the pet kill the mob while mage heals it. A necro on the other hand has to make sure the pet doesn't take much damage, because it will go down like a cheerleader on prom night. The necro has heals, but it's just not efficient. Also, until level 34, that mana conversion isn't really all that, trust me. Mage pet DS + heals is just much more efficient than necro DoTs + weak pet (which is really just another DoT).

But again, if things take a bad turn, the mage will probably die; the necro almost certainly won't.