Why are mages not more popular?

[Izmael]

Mage gets a little more interesting when epic'd. You can duo some fun stuff with a cleric (WW dragons...). But, honestly, even that gets boring quickly in my experience.

The class is just way too one-dimensional and straightforward. But man was it good for farming a truck load of beads and alliance necks. After these two camps got nerfed, I pretty much shelved the mage and played classes that have actually useful spells.

[Nexii]

Mage are severely underrated even on endgame boss encounters. Your epic pet will be 45-60 DPS, which is less than a rogue but still respectable. Somewhere around an average geared ranger/monk/warrior. Depends some on the boss.

The thing is though they are worth about 1 cleric each on top of their DPS by making mod rods. They're very efficient at ~180 mage mana to give 150 to a cleric. Yes while you need X clerics to CH fast enough for a given encounter, time to OOM is what ultimately matters.

[bomaroast]

Positioning pets is a tanks duty.

[Bummey]

classic eq raiding was poorly designed in many respects

[Nagoya]

do you think they were really designed, and not just happy accidents?

[jolanar]

Mages and wizards share too much design space for both/either of them to be that powerful. You could combine them into one class and remove a couple of key spells like root/snare spells and you'd be good to go honestly.

[BarnabusCollins]

need mages for coth for raids.

[Troxx]

Originally Posted by NecroP99 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think Mage DPS is similar to the "knight problem" in that in group content they are fine and maybe even superior to their raid counterparts, but on raid mobs the pets are severely under leveled and do not hit as hard and miss a lot and regular melee start mauling them on DPS meters. Fighting a level 49 frog in Seb and a level 63 dragon are different, especially when your pet maxes out at like 48 or whatever and melee players will be level 60

So to answer your question its all about 'raid scene' and mages are not optimal in that environment.

I agree with you on leveling groups, Jibaber will consistently out DPS almost ever melee and that's not considering my 800 damage nukes I am blasting, but the level difference of raid targets is the great equalizer and the further you climb to 60 the worse your pet to level ratio will be.

Not sure if I am explaining myself correctly, hope this is clear

TLDR - Mage pets cap out at too low a level to be effective against dragons - Epic pet is probably the exception?

Fair statement. I figured as much.

What about the reports of epic mage pet parsing as high as endgame velious monks? Or is this a problem because many high end encounters have aoes that knock the pets out of the fight or having pets up cause problems with adds?

[Bummey]

Originally Posted by Fifield [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

2-3 mages can make or break an engage like Tunare or AoW. We finish tunare with 70-80% mana on our clerics because while we are prepping for tunare. Mages are dropping hundreds of rods.

Same with AoW, i've finished an AoW fight with 60% mana because of beautiful mages.

Mages are vital to success on p99 for some encounters, dont count them out!

You're not wrong. Same goes for necros. Their mana abilities (rods, twitch) are absolutely vital to raid performance and longevity. And it's boring as sin. That's exactly why they're not more popular. It's a thankless and tedious job. All the tools at your disposal and you're relegated to the role of glorified vending machine.

Don't get me wrong. I love this game. We wouldn't be here if we didn't, right? But Verant kinda fucked casters when it comes to raiding roles and duties.