Wizard duo - leveling help needed.

[fugazi]

Greetings fellow P1999'ers!

I always play with a friend and it so happens we both like the wizard class. We rolled some high elf wizards and ventured forth into Faydwer and just dinged lvl8 which means we finally get some decent nukes! Now my question is, what are some useful methods of killing for a wizard duo, what gear is easy to get while leveling and what places are good in general for wizards.

My EQClassic knowledge is pretty crappy, whereas my Velious knowledge is way better. My friend is a complete noob to the game, so yeah, we're in dire straits here =P

Any help is welcome!
/Pyrrho

[Gandite]

Sup fellow wizard.

First off check out the P1999 wiki and under classes obviously check out wizard. We get a few good quests for classic items. Acumen Mask, Staff of the Wheel, Runescale Cloak, etc. Mystic cloak is also quite good and fairly easy to do.

Until you get your snare spell at 29 if you wish to solo you're stuck with the ol' root and nuke. Simple, semi-effective, but pretty risky. But with two of you it can be much easier. You're both outputting the same damage and you're both capable of rooting when the other has agro. The other thing you can do is forget the root altogher and ping pong mobs. Both of you get a fair amount of distance and pull a mob. Alternate nukes while the mob runs between you guys as each person takes agro.

Once you hit 30 things change up a bit. You get an AE snare spell which is useful, but we don't really get any good quadding spells until Kunark. You can use Column of Lightning but its not great and its not very easy. I've successfully quadded this way and while doable I really do not recommend it. Even with good gear and lots of mana. Its just so damn risky. The other problem for us and quadding is this server in general. Both runspeed and hitboxes are wonky here. There's a reason for it but I don't recall what it is. In short it makes quadkiting very difficult.

In terms of where to level I'll tell you how I did it. I stayed in Crushbone until 12 or 13 and moved to Antonica. Nro derves for a level or two and then Oasis until late teens. At 20 I moved to SK and did aviaks for several levels. Then it was combination of soloing outside paw and grouping in castle MM. That got me to late 20s I think. Next up was unrest basement. Xp in here is MAD. Mobs are paper. I duoed this with a warrior but I could also easily solo down there. Kite the greater darkbones out into the yard for ease and safety. I left Unrest I think around 35 or 36. Around this time you should be able to start getting into lguk/sol A and eventually sol B and that will take you to 50.

edit: jesus that is some kinda wall o' text

[fugazi]

Thanks a ton. I'm used to having to read a lot, so it's okay ;)

I'll start thinking of nice and easy pingpong routines - at 8, you have two nukes that do 30'ish and 50'ish damage, so if one casts A and the other B, it should pingpong. This should work great with melee mobs.

Another thing I'm wondering is how useful the stun DD's are against casters .. can you safely duo a caster? It seems the first one you get comes at lvl20, so that's quite a few levels away, but it helps to plan ahead.

[Rasah]

I played a wizard on Live, and I can't help but think you'll have trouble duoing. Until you get bonds of force, you'll be forced to ping pong the mobs back and forth, or hope root holds while you both nuke. There will be a lot of sitting and medding, which might get boring. Then when you get bonds of force, you are better off quad kiting alone.

So unless your wizard duo can get yourselves into groups consistently, you might want to re-think that duo before you get too far. Just my opinion, of course.

[fugazi]

Hm, ok. I got a 12 enchanter too and she has a 12 necromancer. The enchanter seems good as he can secure single pulls, reduce MR for longer roots, has stuns, mesmerize, a pet, charm and can reduce downtime through clarity. But I just like playing a wizard a bit more :p

edit - I also got a lvl11 bard. I've got no idea if a quad-kiter with nukes would mix well with a running man who takes ages to mow down an enormous amount of mobs though.

[Jaxon]

Wizards are slow at leveling. Compared to dots and pets, dd spells have horrible mana efficiency. You need mana to do damage, and mana takes a long time to regenerate. The best strategy is to find the lowest level mob that will give you exp, and kill that over and over until you level. Lower level mobs generally have fewer hps than higher level mobs. The fewer the hit points, the less damage you have to do to kill it, which means the less mana you have to use to kill it and the faster you can med up and get back to killing the next mob.

I wouldn't place a large emphasis on getting gear. It will give you a bigger mana pool and more latitude to make mistakes, but it won't help you level faster. The best way to get gear is to keep an eye on the EC market and buy cheap upgrades that you can afford. The one important piece of gear for a wizard is the Staff of the Temperate Flux. Aim to get that sometime around level 30.

Always med to full before engaging your target.

Try to target humanoid mobs and avoid animal mobs. Humanoid mobs drop money and weapons, which you'll need to buy spells. Animals drops are mostly worthless.

Don't try to kill anything that cons white, yellow, or red. They'll resist most of your spells, and you'll run out of mana trying to kill them. The safest targets are mobs a few levels below your level.

Your rain spells are much better here than on classic, and can be situationally useful. They'll hit four targets up to three times each. They'll hit the caster too, so be careful. I recommend you play around with them and taking a few deaths to learn how to position the mobs for maximal effect

Avoid caster mobs. They can cast faster than you can stun them. They do loads of damage, your runeshield won't absorb their spells, and you have no way to heal yourself.

Even though most dungeons have caster mobs, it can be worth it to poke around in a dungeon with an experience bonus and look for a good camp spot.

[fugazi]

Hm okay. A clickie to pull with that also lowers their FR/CR - indispensable for quad-kiting I supose.

Even if I can read in between the lines that a mage/whatever would be way faster and easier, I kinda wanna stick to the duo wizard idea. If anything, I'm playing P1999 for a challenge and there simply ain't much of a challenge in a duo of mages right now ;D

Thanks for the tips and I'm getting a feeling that getting some HP/resist gear is also an option. Meditation isn't based on your mana or INT, but on your meditate skill right?

[guineapig]

Here are some tips from experience.

Get yourself a staff of Writhing. I know you can't afford to buy one off a vendor, nor can you kill the mobs in solb to get one for yourself. But if you ask nicely and find the right people at Royals they will give you one. I constantly see them being given to shaman pets so donating to a newb shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

Now keep your dex at around 90 (though 100 is even better). Pull mobs with your best nuke (don't bother to root) and alternate between melee and nukes. The mobs will die fast as the 48 damage proc goes off very often on this staff. What little health you loose per pull will regen at a similar rate to your mana anyway. Did I forget to mention that if your 1HB is maxed you will be landing for a max hit of 18 with that thing (in addition to the procs).

Forget what others have said about root. There are plenty of mobs I have found with low enough resists that I can regularly land 3-4 nukes in a row without root breaking. It doesn't get much simpler than that. On the rare occasion that root does not hold, you have the staff for mana efficient killing.

If you are straight nuking solo, you will average 2 kills per mana pool if your gear is decent. If you are not averaging 2 kills per mana pool then you are wearing too much int gear and not enough mana gear. At lower levels the return on int is not that good yet. Check out jewel-crafted Jade bracers and rings for a good source of hp/mana gear at a good price.

Keep an eye on your AC. If you can get your worn ac to 75 or above you will see a world of different on how many hits you can take. Once you are battling mobs in the mid 30's tanking will no longer be an option but you should be able to find plenty of blue mobs you can tank up to around 34 (making the blue con mobs in their mid-upper 20's). After 34 you will probably have to abandon that strategy.

One of the best items I can recommend for the strategy I have laid out (besides the Staff of Writhing) is a shimmering orb. +15AC and +20HP. This is a highly underrated item that you can get super cheap because most int-casters are wussies.

Finally, when creating spell sets make sure you have one where your nukes are in a row based on damage output and I would say have at least 4 different nukes memmed. When a single nuke takes 35% of a mob's hitpoints away, you don't want to cast that 3 times if you have a lesser nuke that does 30%. Do the math, it will help you big time! 35% +35% +35% = wasted mana. 35% +35% +30% = more efficient.

In summary, the goal at early levels is to try and deal with the greatest drawback to soloing as a wizard which is downtime between kills. The more free damage you can dish out via melee and the least mana you use per kill are extremely important. Only waste mana on root if you are low on hitpoints, otherwise it's mana that you will be sitting an extra 12-18 seconds for to regain. This adds up!

[fugazi]

Awesome, I'll use my monk who's parked in EC to look for one of those. I have a ice crystal staff on my enchanter, that I used to use on my bard. The thing doesn't proc for 48 obviously, but it was very helpful. The staff of writing doesn't proc until lvl28 though, according to Allakhazam - so I'll see about acquiring another ice crystal staff if possible. They seem rather rare .. or people are hording them in banks and ain't showing the love!

I got the luxury that I always have my friend to play with, so I'm sure we can find some neat combo's to get things going a little faster. Right now the biggest timewasters are adds and white/yellow con mobs. The former just require too much mana to take down for the xp they give. Plus they hit more often and for more damage ;x

I assume that lvl8-12 is best spend in Crushbone? I wonder if selling the belts is a good choice to get some easy money, since I guess the xp from the turn in goes down considerably past 8?