Mage specialization

[Daldaen]

If you are soloing, I'd say it's worth the money to burn a ruby because you will likely be using chain pets to do so. Pet summons are basically 200 mana per cast and being properly specialized will save you 20 mana per cast, roughly 2-3 med ticks at these lower levels, and depending on the camp you may need 2-3 casts per mob.

If you're grouping, it doesn't matter because individual contributions in a full group are really inconsequential in the success of the group. The game is easy enough, especially when leveling up that just auto attacking will win the day in a full group.

But to elaborate more fully on why Conjuration over Evocation... On raids and in higher end groups magicians primary role is mod rod production and Call of the Hero (for either pulling or mobilizing). The later being an extremely expensive spell. Being able to reduce the mana cost on both of those roles is very helpful. Beyond this, magician nukes are woefully underpowered in this era of the game, and stay that way until PoP (and by this point EQ Devs were smart enough to make the level 65 nukes Conjuration). Most every mob at the higher end will have a decent resist rate on your spells which require you stand in AE sight to cast.

As I mentioned earlier, the only time I would rationalize going Evocation is around level 51/52 when doing Chardok AE groups to get another Scintillation cast out of your mana bar. Which is definitely the best mode of leveling. Doing Sebilis and Velketors is cool for about 2-3 sessions at a few different camps. After that it's mind numbingly boring.