Mage Solo Post XP Nerf Tips..

[moniker]

Ahoy,

I recently rolled a mage for the first time and am in the 30's. Has anyone still leveling come up with a decent solution to dealing greater that 50% damage to a mob without getting squished or being incredibly mana inefficient? I don't see much discussion on new solo techniques since this was patched.

[Arillious]

Ahoy,

I recently rolled a mage for the first time and am in the 30's. Has anyone still leveling come up with a decent solution to dealing greater that 50% damage to a mob without getting squished or being incredibly mana inefficient? I don't see much discussion on new solo techniques since this was patched.

Get in a group so the pet nerf doesnt apply.

Or find a static 6 minute spawn that you can sit/go afk at and just use pet and nukes to blast it down quick. By the time it respawns 6 mins later you have fm and are able to repeat. Not best solution ever but viable.

[Caridry]

Or find a static 6 minute spawn that you can sit/go afk at and just use pet and nukes to blast it down quick. By the time it respawns 6 mins later you have fm and are able to repeat. Not best solution ever but viable.

http://wiki.project1999.org/index.php/6-Minute_Bard_Diet

[moniker]

If using the earth pet to root + nuke, is there any difference in chance to break root in using a fire or magic based DD?

[mwatt]

When not charming I do something with my Chanter that might sorta work for you. This technique requires open spaces and JBoots however.

1. Pull with best nuke from max distance.
2. Immediately run until enough distance to get off another nuke.
3. Cause pet to engage.
4. Root mob (you'd have to use Earth and pray I guess).
5. Med
6. Nuke again until you are sure you have done more than 50 percent. Because you saw how much damage your first 2 nukes did, you have some idea of how much more to nuke. probably once or twice more.

This is not particularly mana efficient, but it is the best I could come up with.

[houwser]

Not sure if this works or not...

But when I solo with my mage, I will let my pet bring the mob to like 5%, then cast reclaim energy on pet to kill it. Then I finish the mob off with whatever nuke does the 5% dmg.

My theory was that this should work because of how charming works. When I charm two mobs, I will invis to break charm and finish the ex-charmed pet 1st, then the 2nd one for full exp on both. If I kill them in reverse order, I gimp my exp on one of the mobs, because the one that did dmg. is still alive.

So I think it might work the same way with mage, if you dismiss/reclaim pet, it wipes the dmg list for that source, and you are then 100% of the damage of the 5% left.

[DOPE]

Bump for great interest!

[Travint]

If you put a 'shield of fire' on your earth pet, does that damage count towards your own damage, the pet's damage, or is it not counted at all, and you simply have to do 50% or more of the remaining damage?

[formallydickman]

Not sure if this works or not...

But when I solo with my mage, I will let my pet bring the mob to like 5%, then cast reclaim energy on pet to kill it. Then I finish the mob off with whatever nuke does the 5% dmg.

My theory was that this should work because of how charming works. When I charm two mobs, I will invis to break charm and finish the ex-charmed pet 1st, then the 2nd one for full exp on both. If I kill them in reverse order, I gimp my exp on one of the mobs, because the one that did dmg. is still alive.

So I think it might work the same way with mage, if you dismiss/reclaim pet, it wipes the dmg list for that source, and you are then 100% of the damage of the 5% left.

This does indeed work and I have been resorting to that on my mage in his 40's.

If you put a 'shield of fire' on your earth pet, does that damage count towards your own damage, the pet's damage, or is it not counted at all, and you simply have to do 50% or more of the remaining damage?

I've tried this out on my druid and mage and it would appear as though the damage from a DS counts toward no ones damage.

[Advisor]

Doesn't this get changed during velious?

[Travint]

I've tried this out on my druid and mage and it would appear as though the damage from a DS counts toward no ones damage.

So if a mob has 500 HP, and through the course of the fight, the DS does 100 damage, then I only have to do 201 damage to the pet's 199 to not suffer the penalty?

[formallydickman]

So if a mob has 500 HP, and through the course of the fight, the DS does 100 damage, then I only have to do 201 damage to the pet's 199 to not suffer the penalty?

That is correct as far as I can tell.

[fischsemmel]

This is not particularly mana efficient, but it is the best I could come up with.

Nothing is mana efficient for mages, except for letting your pet do most of the work and then earning xp as fast as a solo rogue.

[bman8810]

This works very well, granted it isn't as good as 1 damage was but whatever. As a note, if the mob has 2 hp left and you do 1 damage to it and then your pet hits for 2 damage you will NOT get experience (at least from what I have seen). As such, make sure to do more than the max damage your pet can dish out in one nuke/hit.

[Naerron]

did u not read my guide almost identical to the title of this thread? It's a solid method from low lvl till 60. Most skilled mages i know did this even before the nerf. I know i did it when i was lvling to 50 pre kunark and was like the 5th mage on server to hit 50 with fairly low play time because i was in school and had a job then.

[Excellio]

I think this is ridiculous. Mages really rely on their pets to solo. That's like giving a Warrior an xp penalty for using a weapon. I guess it's probably true to the original game, but it seems like something that should've been fixed. Otherwise, the mage isn't really a viable solo class at all, I guess.

[bman8810]

Pet chaining is by far the most efficient way to level. Mages still solo fine, especially at higher levels (this really only hurts the lowbies and charmers).

[Calais]

A good technique for lowbies is to ensure you have a strong pet and a decent amount of mana and then attack a mob, get it to 5-10% health, and let it run off. Rinse repeat another few times, ensuring they all stay under 20% or they'll run back at you. Then when you have 3-4 low health mobs wandering around, you reclaim elements on your pet, and with a few quick nukes you have your kills, without having to recast a pet every time.

Just gets you more bang for your buck for pet mana, and means you're taking down four blues or whites for full xp in between each med (~5 mins).

[BarackObooma]

My mage is my alt but I've played him quite a bit lately and got him to 52 using the below strategy.

#1 get jboots. Before anything else. This will save you countless deaths. Camp them, buy the MQ, whatever, do it before anything else.

The Dreadlands outside Karnors can take you from about 29 to 52 pretty fast even with no dungeon bonus. I went from 47 Saturday morning to 51 Sunday night (and yes I slept). I recommend levitating on top of KC and binding there. If you need to go afk or med, you won't come back to a dead char.

Use your fire pet. You save mana from having to DS. Do not buff him, don't summon or give swords, it's a waste of time/money/mana. Make sure you've done the torch quest.

Mem your highest nuke, a mid level nuke and your level 1 nuke.

Pull with your level 1 nuke. Send your pet after the mob, since it's a level 1 nuke it won't take much for your pet to get aggro. If the mob still comes after you, run around in a circle just out of mob's melee range. Once your pet hits hit once or twice, he'll get on him.

Let your pet do all the damage. Sit and med. Know your mob though. If you know your pet can get the mob down to where he'll start to walk away when they get low, you can sit closer. If you know he can't, sit much farther away.

For mobs that one pet won't finish off like Ravishing Drolvargs (they have twice as many hitpoints as the rest of the mobs in the zone), I'll have my pet on one end of the north or east wall and I'll run to the other end of the wall. This will give you plenty of time to recast a pet when/if he dies. Since you haven't done more than your original 5 pt level 1 DD, your 2nd pet will be able to grab the mob really quickly.

For spiders, I'll pull and once the pet is on him, I'll cast nullify magic to strip their sow & damage shield (many are druid). When you pull them they usually try dotting you with stinging swarm and the fire based dot. Since you'll be sitting most of the time, it's usually not a big deal. You can avoid spiders if you want, most people do. If you hunt in burning woods, many of the sarnaks have sow so it's good to keep a nullify/cancel magic spell up in case something goes wrong you can outrun them.

When the mob starts walking away, you can time it and reclaim your pet (preferably using your torch) when he gets as close to 0% without dying. You'll get good once you know the mobs. You can work on your 1h or 2h blunt also if you want. If it's like 2% or less, I'll usually melee it down. If it's under 10% I'll use my medium nuke. If it's about 15% I'll go ahead and use my big nuke.

Repeat as much as you want because you'll be full mana pretty much the whole time so there is never any downtime. This was the biggest shock for me since my main is a Wizard who quads a round and sits afk for 10 minutes and repeats.

I also powerlevel friends this way. Get the mob to where it walks, kill the pet and whoever does the most damage after that gets the experience. Good experience for level 20+ melee with little to no danger of dying.

If you have a burnt wood staff (mana free 333 dmg nuke), you can kill your pet as soon as the mob flees and use that once to take out the mob.

There is an old wayback machine site that's been linked before Graff? that showed how many hitpoints each mob has.

[alcoma23]

Forgive me for sounding ignorant here, but I don't understand the penalty. If I let my pet do most of the damage to a mob (which is what I have been doing) I lose out on exp that "goes to my pet?"

Never played a pet class on live, so I'm not sure what the nerf does.

[AenarieFenninRo]

the basics of the nerf are this...

If you are soloing and do less than 50% damage to the mob, then your pet gets 70% exp, and you get 30% exp

If you do more than 50% of the damage to the mob, then you get 100% exp.

If you are grouped, none of this applies.

Thus, what people do... is have pet do like 90% of the damage, then kill their own pet, thus all that damage was done by a "non-entity" and you doing the last 10% of the damage means you get 100% exp every time.

If you resummon a pet to do the last 10%, then all the previous 90% damage done by the pet will apply toward the new pet.

I have been trying to test various grouping scenarios, and I think that grouping even works when group mate is outside of zone, but its hard to tell when you're only getting slivers of exp per mob at the higher levels anyway. It would be nice if a lower level mage could test this since the exp gained is much more significant, and easier to validate.

[alcoma23]

I never played a pet class on live, but at levels 8-11 as of right now. I'm getting roughly 1% exp per kill (I'm hunting near the minotaur caves in Steamfont, if the level of the mobs matter.) I tried killing my pet once the mob started to flee and didn't notice much of a difference, but I wasn't exactly paying attention. I'll see what I can come up with now that I have a better idea of what the pet nerf is.

[feste]

Holy crap only 30 percent xp? I just got back after a year and was wondering what was going on lol. So what you are saying is I have to kill 3 mobs now to equal one mob before? Was it like this on live? As a Necro I should just probably root/dot.

[erog84]

Holy crap only 30 percent xp? I just got back after a year and was wondering what was going on lol. So what you are saying is I have to kill 3 mobs now to equal one mob before? Was it like this on live? As a Necro I should just probably root/dot.

The higher you get on a necro, the easier it is to out dmg pet for extended periods of time. Lower level you end up burning alot of mana to make sure you out damage pet, or you can do like I do. This is also why you see necros at lower lvl duo'ing or grouping ALOT more than they used to (same with mages).


On my 35 necro I will darkness, fear(remember dots do full dmg when feared, but only around 66% dmg when snared coming towards you), dot it up, at 80% ill let my pet join in, then when it starts running, I call my pet off and let dots finish out. I dot it up just enough that dots will usually wear about the time it dies, or shortly before.

[feste]

totally. thats what I started doing. I was practicing on hill giants and it turns out that dooming + boil blood + scourge is 100 hp over half damage. pulling the pet off at the end till the dots wear off is the key.
this link here that I found on morsakin's post shows the hp for all the mobs.http://web.archive.org/web/20021129210131/http://www.geocities.com/ficticiousname9/
After some looking its not that big of a pain to out damage the pet.

[kingsBlend]

do you have to be in the same zone as your group for the xp penalty to go away?

[feste]

I dunno about that would be cool if you didn't have to be.

[themessy]

What he meant about it not mattering if you are in a group is because your pet will never out damage the group...

On to another matter:

I am leveling a necro (played a bard first but couldnt find a group and i am new to the server) and I can have my pet on the mob till it hits about 75%, I cast ONE single poison bolt and the mob runs to me. I have been tanking everything and its stupid, what is the point of having a pet if they dont generate agro? I have also been having a hell of a time trying to find a group at lower levels (around level 10 now). I cant out damage my pet unless I dump a full bar of mana into it...

[Palemoon]

What is the deal with pets taking xp if you are grouped but let the pet do 100 percent of the damage? does he steel xp then?

[Xxia]

I know we're all here for the "classic" Everquest experience, but the developers have the benefit of learning from the game's initial mistakes and shortcomings. I think penalizing mages for using their most mana-efficient dmg ability is silly. Make us do at least 1 dmg so you know we (probably) aren't afk, and after that I don't see why something that is such a huge part of our class and solo ability would penalize us SO heavily.

Having started the EQ experience again here on Project 1999, I've realized there are parts of the game I really missed, and parts of the game that made it what it was even if we don't love them, and then there's things like this which are penalizing us just for the sake of penalizing us.

[Xen]

Was this ever live during original classic/kunark/luclin?

[Sethius]

I know we're all here for the "classic" Everquest experience, but the developers have the benefit of learning from the game's initial mistakes and shortcomings. I think penalizing mages for using their most mana-efficient dmg ability is silly. Make us do at least 1 dmg so you know we (probably) aren't afk, and after that I don't see why something that is such a huge part of our class and solo ability would penalize us SO heavily.

Having started the EQ experience again here on Project 1999, I've realized there are parts of the game I really missed, and parts of the game that made it what it was even if we don't love them, and then there's things like this which are penalizing us just for the sake of penalizing us.

I don't think the developers are interested in improving on what EQ used to be, or making it better in any way. I think they want to re-create it exactly as it was for better or worse (or as close as possible within reason). They are not trying to learn from the game's old mistakes, because in part many of those "mistakes" are what gave this game the character that it had.

The mage exp nerf is annoying, especially for my lvl 44 mage who now has to completely revise his approach to leveling. It annoys me a lot when I am playing him. But, on the flipside, mages might be slightly more inclined to group now (I know I am) to avoid the penalty (thus adding to the pool of people grouping) or alternatively play a more group friendly class which also adds to the pool of people grouping. Imo, less people soloing and more grouping makes this server a funner place overall, so sometimes nerfs can have a silver lining.

[Romantic]

man i love spending 45 minutes and countless reagents summoning my pet over and over and over again until i get one that's max level

[Vyal]

Pets never took that much xp on live. I am not sure where they got this info from.
It really does kill the mage class on this server for solo'n and mages are just about the beast soloing class there ever was so go figure.
The best advice I can tell anyone is use the earth pet since it does the least dmg and roots. Test your pets before you use them (this is important) figure out what your pets max dmg for it's level can be. For instance the 51 earth pet has a max hit of 58 and dd root of 55 I keep summoning until I get this pet because it's roots almost always stick and hold longer then weaker version. So I can nuke my target down without pulling it. Make sure you have c or c2 and go as fast as ya can.
Anyways I hope they fix this because its not correct.

[Clark]

Professional Mages carry 250-400 malachite so you can reclaim pets with mage focus item and 1 shot nuke the mob for full xp. When you run out of loot room, destroy stacks of malachite as needed.

[Estu]

Pets never took that much xp on live. I am not sure where they got this info from.
It really does kill the mage class on this server for solo'n and mages are just about the beast soloing class there ever was so go figure.
The best advice I can tell anyone is use the earth pet since it does the least dmg and roots. Test your pets before you use them (this is important) figure out what your pets max dmg for it's level can be. For instance the 51 earth pet has a max hit of 58 and dd root of 55 I keep summoning until I get this pet because it's roots almost always stick and hold longer then weaker version. So I can nuke my target down without pulling it. Make sure you have c or c2 and go as fast as ya can.
Anyways I hope they fix this because its not correct.

Yeah, they totally instituted this change for no reason whatsoever. The server staff just love changing things completely arbitrarily and claiming that's how it was in classic. If you're so sure it never existed, try doing some research on it. Look up classic-era patch notes.

[Vyal]

Not saying pets didn't effect XP, it's just your pet didn't take all the XP per kill going solo. I don't need to look up patch notes to know I played from beta till now. It's like someone else said this was probably only done to force mages to group on p99.
Focused 54 + pets can take a mob to half life before I can get my 7second nuke off and because of that I don't get any xp? You really think live was ever like that...

[Writ3r]

no this was never in effect in classic or live, they only did it on here like a bunch of nubs. They want to take compass and other things out to remain classic however nerf classes as they see fit to mess with the balance of the game which is UNclassic.

[Cippofra]

Supposedly the reason was because of people that would go afk while their pet kills. However the old rule was 1 point of damage = 100% exp. Which obviously means you can't just kill while afk. So the solution is to simply make images take 3x as long to level. And make it impossible for young images with no money to level at all

[Estu]

Not saying pets didn't effect XP, it's just your pet didn't take all the XP per kill going solo. I don't need to look up patch notes to know I played from beta till now. It's like someone else said this was probably only done to force mages to group on p99.
Focused 54 + pets can take a mob to half life before I can get my 7second nuke off and because of that I don't get any xp? You really think live was ever like that...

no this was never in effect in classic or live, they only did it on here like a bunch of nubs. They want to take compass and other things out to remain classic however nerf classes as they see fit to mess with the balance of the game which is UNclassic.

Supposedly the reason was because of people that would go afk while their pet kills. However the old rule was 1 point of damage = 100% exp. Which obviously means you can't just kill while afk. So the solution is to simply make images take 3x as long to level. And make it impossible for young images with no money to level at all

If you guys do some digging in the forums around when this nerf was implemented (something like a year ago), you'll see that the reason it was implemented is because it was in classic. I believe evidence was posted for it as well. I don't know why people are so quick to rewrite history and assume that the staff have a vendetta against them.

Furthermore, Cippofra, your post is completely ridiculous. Leveling takes at most twice as long for a mage, since pets take 50% exp if they do more than 50% damage. Secondly, young mages can still buy the stacks of malachite required to reclaim energy if they're smart about what they kill. You can sell bone chips to necromancers for 5-10pp a stack to fund your malachites, and high quality bear skins for 10-20pp each to tailors. Even if you don't do this, in the teen levels you end up getting enough money anyway just from killing stuff normally. Ignoring the reclaim energy trick altogether, a mage leveling at half the normal speed is still a mage leveling quickly compared to most other classes in the game. Or you can just find a group and bypass the issue entirely.

[Vyal]

Like I said they did take XP in classic but nowhere near this much also in classic you didn't need to nuke a mob like a wizard in order to get XP. If I wanted to play a wizard I would go play a wizard and forever be OOM but I play a mage so I don't have to. Love the server can't complain to much but fyi this mechanic is bugged or INCORRECT.

[Estu]

Like I said they did take XP in classic but nowhere near this much also in classic you didn't need to nuke a mob like a wizard in order to get XP. If I wanted to play a wizard I would go play a wizard and forever be OOM but I play a mage so I don't have to. Love the server can't complain to much but fyi this mechanic is bugged or INCORRECT.

Here is what happens when you take five seconds to Google it:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=960

In the old scheme, if a pet did more than half of the damage to a monster, it took half the experience reward.

[Vyal]

...

[Wonka11]

My mage is my alt but I've played him quite a bit lately and got him to 52 using the below strategy.

#1 get jboots. Before anything else. This will save you countless deaths. Camp them, buy the MQ, whatever, do it before anything else.

The Dreadlands outside Karnors can take you from about 29 to 52 pretty fast even with no dungeon bonus. I went from 47 Saturday morning to 51 Sunday night (and yes I slept). I recommend levitating on top of KC and binding there. If you need to go afk or med, you won't come back to a dead char.

Use your fire pet. You save mana from having to DS. Do not buff him, don't summon or give swords, it's a waste of time/money/mana. Make sure you've done the torch quest.

Mem your highest nuke, a mid level nuke and your level 1 nuke.

Pull with your level 1 nuke. Send your pet after the mob, since it's a level 1 nuke it won't take much for your pet to get aggro. If the mob still comes after you, run around in a circle just out of mob's melee range. Once your pet hits hit once or twice, he'll get on him.

Let your pet do all the damage. Sit and med. Know your mob though. If you know your pet can get the mob down to where he'll start to walk away when they get low, you can sit closer. If you know he can't, sit much farther away.

For mobs that one pet won't finish off like Ravishing Drolvargs (they have twice as many hitpoints as the rest of the mobs in the zone), I'll have my pet on one end of the north or east wall and I'll run to the other end of the wall. This will give you plenty of time to recast a pet when/if he dies. Since you haven't done more than your original 5 pt level 1 DD, your 2nd pet will be able to grab the mob really quickly.

For spiders, I'll pull and once the pet is on him, I'll cast nullify magic to strip their sow & damage shield (many are druid). When you pull them they usually try dotting you with stinging swarm and the fire based dot. Since you'll be sitting most of the time, it's usually not a big deal. You can avoid spiders if you want, most people do. If you hunt in burning woods, many of the sarnaks have sow so it's good to keep a nullify/cancel magic spell up in case something goes wrong you can outrun them.

When the mob starts walking away, you can time it and reclaim your pet (preferably using your torch) when he gets as close to 0% without dying. You'll get good once you know the mobs. You can work on your 1h or 2h blunt also if you want. If it's like 2% or less, I'll usually melee it down. If it's under 10% I'll use my medium nuke. If it's about 15% I'll go ahead and use my big nuke.

Repeat as much as you want because you'll be full mana pretty much the whole time so there is never any downtime. This was the biggest shock for me since my main is a Wizard who quads a round and sits afk for 10 minutes and repeats.

I also powerlevel friends this way. Get the mob to where it walks, kill the pet and whoever does the most damage after that gets the experience. Good experience for level 20+ melee with little to no danger of dying.

If you have a burnt wood staff (mana free 333 dmg nuke), you can kill your pet as soon as the mob flees and use that once to take out the mob.

There is an old wayback machine site that's been linked before Graff? that showed how many hitpoints each mob has.

Do you just carry a crap load of reagents on you then to compensate for this?

[Estu]

Do you just carry a crap load of reagents on you then to compensate for this?

Yeah, it's good to carry a backpack full of malachites for this. Doable since malachites are cheap.

[Wonka11]

What would you suggest at lower levels then, 4-12, on out dpsing the Fire Pet's Damage. Right now on Whites and Blues, the Fire Pet does such strong melee damage that it is often hard to even compete with his damage. His regular melee attacks are hitting for 8-16 while my nukes only hit for 13 points of damage.

He kills things so quickly that even if I start a reclaim at 50% of the mob's health, he usually kills it outright before it finishes.

[isoka]

either duo with another lowbie to remove pet xp penalty, or if you want to solo, reclaim / pet go away him when mob is low life. This will make all previous pet dmg done poof and doing the final dmg will grant you all the xp.

[Estu]

What would you suggest at lower levels then, 4-12, on out dpsing the Fire Pet's Damage. Right now on Whites and Blues, the Fire Pet does such strong melee damage that it is often hard to even compete with his damage. His regular melee attacks are hitting for 8-16 while my nukes only hit for 13 points of damage.

He kills things so quickly that even if I start a reclaim at 50% of the mob's health, he usually kills it outright before it finishes.

This is easily avoided. Wait until the monster is running. Then back off your pet so it's no longer attacking. Then reclaim energy. Finally, melee or nuke the monster to kill it.

[Wonka11]

Okay will do, bigger question, at what level can I start out damaging my pet persay, and not reclaim him if I don't wish to; or will I always have to reclaim my pet to get full xp?

Do Necromancers have to go through all this red tape as well with reclaiming pets for xp?

[Slave]

Okay will do, bigger question, at what level can I start out damaging my pet persay, and not reclaim him if I don't wish to; or will I always have to reclaim my pet to get full xp?

You will always have to reclaim your pet to get full xp while soloing.

Do Necromancers have to go through all this red tape as well with reclaiming pets for xp?

Necromancers have many more options for exp due to their comparatively awesome CC and utility, but their summoning is for shit compared to mages. Their pets cost bone chips, a ton of mana, and a lot of time to cast, for a generally inferior pet. Mage pets only cost malachite, 200-400 mana, and always 10 seconds of casting for what is the best dedicated pet in the game.

[Wonka11]

Good points, good points. Just to make sure, the penalty is 50% exp or 75% exp hit when the pet does the majority of damage?

[Estu]

Good points, good points. Just to make sure, the penalty is 50% exp or 75% exp hit when the pet does the majority of damage?

50%

[Wonka11]

Estu; thank you for being patient and answering all my questions and not being condescending or rude. I truly value your participation and your responses have helped me greatly.

Sincerely, thank you.

[Slave]

50%

Yeah I really have no idea where other people come up with the stupid numbers they do. Your pet steals 50% exp if it does more damage than you while soloing.

[Estu]

Yeah I really have no idea where other people come up with the stupid numbers they do. Your pet steals 50% exp if it does more damage than you while soloing.

I'm not sure, but I think the 75% number comes from the fact that this server used to have it that you'd get full EXP unless your pet literally did all the damage to the mob, in which case it would take 75%. I don't remember if that was the exact number it took, though. Maybe it only took 50% even then.

Estu; thank you for being patient and answering all my questions and not being condescending or rude. I truly value your participation and your responses have helped me greatly.

Sincerely, thank you.

NP, dude