New Mage, should I continue or pick another class?

[starkind]

One of the reasons I like mage, cleric, wizard, rogue, warrior, paladin. Is that these classes aren't very complicated.

Mage, wizard, and cleric all basically can just nuke stuff and afk. Especially with an instant clicky and nuke in the top slot this gets even easier. Fights are pretty short and you can kill a lot of decent mobs. So you don't have to have a really intense attention span or click a lot of buttons and rely on mechanics or resistances and chance too much. It's easy to reliably kill a "light" or low blue with these three classes and then forget you where ever logged in.

Necro, shaman, ench, bard are all way more powerful, they also generally require a lot more effort, work, gear, spells.

If you're a dedicated solo artist mage is definitely not really strong. Maybe even weaker than a wizard.

Druids can nuke/afk too. Just being a tree hugger/wolf isn't my idea of super amazing.

Mages can level fast, faster than wizards pre 39 ish if you pick the right mobs/camps and play to their strengths. Especially ungeared.

If a wizard can get good gear and twink items tho like clicky DDs and good +mana they will dominate leveling. Even charming is terrible compared to a solid quad/quintuple. And yes, I was killing 5x mobs at once easily. By 55 you can pretty much root/nuke to finish any incidental adds, extras even if oom because of good mana regen.

Now a lot of people don't base class power off of "oh, I'm naked and lazy".

They want to solo epic MQ drops or something weird in dragon necropolis or munch fungitunics all day. Or have some list of items they are going to farm. So they pic enchanters praying to waste as little time as possible instead of just enjoying their mains.

[branamil]

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

1.) The epic is basically unattainable for most people because of the Earth staff. I almost had my Wiz epic back in the day, and I also had a Rogue and Paladin with their epics. I don't mind doing the work for an epic, but if it's something that pretty much isn't going to happen, that's a huge bummer. I'll never be a gigantic raider that plays for years and attends every single raid to be able to earn the DKP/guild credit and trust while also waiting in line for the drop, so it basically takes it off the table for me. I could let this go, but...

You will most likely never get the Earth staff. There are raiders who have been playing for years who still can't get one. They might have saved up all their DKP but then it's so rare, it drops when they aren't on that raid.

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

2.) Pet aggro dumping upon death is busted. This is a nail in the coffin for the class for me, especially since it seems like its been months now without the problem even being acknowledged. Does this not basically destroy a Mages ability to solo anything level appropriate at anything other than low levels?

Yes. It's really sad that level 60 mages have trouble killing camps that a level 45 enchanter could do.

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

I do plan on doing a lot of grouping, but I also really want to be able to dungeon dive and solo some camps at mid/high levels. Given the aggro problem, combined with the other concerns, should I just call it quits now and roll another class?

Sadly yes. Maybe you could powerlevel your mage with a real class if you still want one at some point. Mages are super weak in Velious, and it's fixed somewhat in Luclin and PoP, but of course those will never happen on this server.

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

Do the devs on here have a history of ignoring stuff for a while, not even acknowledging it and then out of nowhere patching it?

Yes they do. The p99 devs seem to have an aura of silence that leads you to believe they don't care about the server anymore. They just trickle out small but meaningless changes like restocking baker's muffins while ignoring major non-classic problems.

[Vermineux]

Just as a quick update, I ended up going with a Necromancer. It has been pretty fun, and I've managed to fully gear myself and bank 2500p up until 34 so far. I did level a Magician till 18, and the total lack of CC besides the Earth pet, and the pet dumping its aggro onto me after it dies was just too frustrating - this is all as someone that has to solo 98% of the time. If I had a duo partner, or grouped more often than not I think I would have still enjoyed the Mage. The power of and options that a Necro has are just too much vis a vis what a Mage can do, imo.

[Zenren]

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

Just as a quick update, I ended up going with a Necromancer. It has been pretty fun, and I've managed to fully gear myself and bank 2500p up until 34 so far. I did level a Magician till 18, and the total lack of CC besides the Earth pet, and the pet dumping its aggro onto me after it dies was just too frustrating - this is all as someone that has to solo 98% of the time. If I had a duo partner, or grouped more often than not I think I would have still enjoyed the Mage. The power of and options that a Necro has are just too much vis a vis what a Mage can do, imo.

Someday I hope they fix mages. I think a lot of people will say "they're still a strong class" and maybe that's so, but they're not as fun to play as other classes now and other classes certainly solo much easier, Wizard included... let that sink in. Wizard soloes easier than Magician. Only in the imagined world of Project 1999 Blue.

[unsunghero]

Necro master class, Iksar master race. An unbeatable combo

[Tann]

Wouldn't mage pets dumping threat on death be a positive thing for aggro kiting? Long as the mage has jboots or sow pots and using the pet sow spell expedience.

I would imagine you could kill anything that doesn't summon given you have enough threat that it ignores the pet entirely.

[ReoDobbs]

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

Wouldn't mage pets dumping threat on death be a positive thing for aggro kiting? Long as the mage has jboots or sow pots and using the pet sow spell expedience.

I would imagine you could kill anything that doesn't summon given you have enough threat that it ignores the pet entirely.

A mage doesn't have a snare, if you dismissed a pet you're also not going to have time to cast experience. You can still only pull singles. Before your level 55+ water pet why would you want to aggro kite even if you could?

[loramin]

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

A mage doesn't have a snare, if you dismissed a pet you're also not going to have time to cast experience. You can still only pull singles. Before your level 55+ water pet why would you want to aggro kite even if you could?

When doing Spirocs in TD I would sometimes mis-time my pet kills, and wind up with no pet and an angry half-dead bird man trying to kill me. With jboots and enough time running (basically to the other end of the island) I would have enough time to make a new pet, allowing me to kill said angry bird man. I've also done similar things in places like GD, with frost giants.

Did it take forever, and was it dumb? Yes and yes. But mages have very limited tools available, so you do what you have to.

But back to your original point ... no, I never deliberately agro kited either.

[Tann]

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

A mage doesn't have a snare, if you dismissed a pet you're also not going to have time to cast experience. You can still only pull singles. Before your level 55+ water pet why would you want to aggro kite even if you could?

Unless I'm grossly overexaggerating the usefulness of aggro kiting, why wouldn't you want to?

Seems like free exp almost, you run around in a circle singing sea shanties like a bard, pet isn't getting hit, so if you did burn any mana on summoning the pet, or casting expedience, you get a bunch back when you reclaim.

I'm for sure probably misunderstanding just how much aggro you get from pet death, didn't the threat always poof into the ether realm and as long as you didn't do any damage directly a new pet could pick it right back up? Nowadays is all that threat transferred to you? I remember the bug post about this but couldn't replicate the issue with my wee 29 mage.

[Jimjam]

Not having the problem on a 29 mage?

Could be something to do with the ‘never forget’ coding for 35+ NPCs, where they won’t completely forget about a FD player until the mob is back relaxing at it’s spawn point.