Any point in playing a mage to level 60 if I'm not going to raid with it?

[Vexenu]

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

My biggest concern was the usefulness of mages in a raid, particularly if multiple mages are around, and the utter buttclenching difficulty of their epic.

I do eventually want to raid one of these days and it seems like a raid wouldn't be hindered by stacking multiple wizards as opposed to having multiple mages. xD

Wizards are a great raiding class through the entirety of the P1999 timeline. Their nuking falls off a bit in Velious, but they gain massive utility and quality of life with their Translocates. A geared out 60 Epic Wiz with a Rend Robe is one of the most enviable toons in classic EQ: unparalleled burst damage on big targets, respectable sustained DPS with the clickie robe and the best ports in the game. Huge asset to any guild.

[tadkins]

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

Wizards are a great raiding class through the entirety of the P1999 timeline. Their nuking falls off a bit in Velious, but they gain massive utility and quality of life with their Translocates. A geared out 60 Epic Wiz with a Rend Robe is one of the most enviable toons in classic EQ: unparalleled burst damage on big targets, respectable sustained DPS with the clickie robe and the best ports in the game. Huge asset to any guild.

I appreciate that. Thank you. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Knowing all of what awaits later on will help keep me going with my wizard who is level 18 right now.

[Duik]

Limited raids on live here. Tried both Naggy and Vox. War wife and me wiz were on dialup and we just stood there, ate AOE's and went LD. Had friend with mage so saw jack shit. Good times. Then later same friend had Sk in hate raid, was told in no uncertain terms Kabobtic was unwelcome, but i suppose sk pet is lower lvl again. Recall necs and mages had pets but i didnt really take much notice cuz busy shitting self trying to learn where to stand and check the joint out at same time. Pets in Kedge for Phinny was the done thing. But us dumbarse An Sli Amach guild tried him once with one mage, rng, dru, war, rog clr. Um dru (me) was a drowner death trying to cast EB on another char. Lmao or cry dont recall...
Dont recall any particular hate towards pets in my limited raids. Couple only just before velious dropped on live.

[derpcake2]

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

Gonna be long but some background is necessary as to why people use to flip out and probably still do when mages bring pets to raids.

Mage pets were used as main tanks during raids at one time. This pissed off actual tanks as their usefulness was basically very weak dps. The Sony dev's heard the complaints about how mage pets could hold aggro better than warriors so the mechanic was changed so mobs will attack any player over a pet.

So now all pets were relegated to dps and actual tanks were once again tanking mobs for raids. The holy trinity became one playstyle but a different style of playing also evolved; pet groups. As long as a pet group had some sort of healer the group would be very effective. My wife and I regularly played in these groups. Her first main was a druid but she also had a shaman and chanter. I mained a mage but also dabbled in necromancy. Most of our friends also played pet classes. All pet owners kept stacks of reagents to make new pets so if one died; meh. Any sort of healer could easily top off a caster if they got hit a few times.

However the same can't be said regarding a warrior/paladin/sk. The group game was very broken in this regard. Imagine a group of level 45-50 people in Skyfire armed with a druid or shaman that has greater healing. However there were also many tanks that asked to group with us; often we'd say yes. When a tank was invited of course things slowed way down due to game mechanics. Keep in mind at this stage in the game a lot of the general mechanics were still being figured out by the players; many tanks opted for max HP in lieu of AC. This is fine if the group has a CH cleric but sucks major monkeynuts for other healers. So once again tanks were pissed due to a lot of them either not getting groups or getting groups but abysmal xp rates. Many pet groups would of course opt for efficiency over all other aspects of the game in the race to 50/60/65/etc. which of course led to tanks getting pissed. This continued until druids and shaman were given better heals.

The raid game had other problems with pets. A lot of pet owners had very poor pet control. Pets also pushed mobs until Depths of Darkhollow was released. By now many people in the game had developed a pretty anti-pet stance. I first started raiding when Planes of Power was released. Our guild leader hated pets. One of our raid leaders openly bashed pet classes; other raid leader didn't bash us but didn't allow pets on raids. I moved to a different guild that allowed pets on raids but the membership would constantly use /gu as a "those dam pets are pushing the mob all over". One raid in particular pets were blamed for wiping the raid (claims he was pushed too far) when Fenin Ro was almost dead. I and all other pet classes decided to not summon pets for one week. You can probably guess that mobs were still pushed around but despite no pets out at the raid. Yet we were still blamed for mobs getting pushed.

Fast forward to today. A lot of the old animosity towards pets has simply been carried from one EQ generation to another. The Five Monkey Experiment comes to mind when thinking about this.

The above is simply my experience. I've raided everything from classic through Depths of Darkhollow then off and on through Call of the Forsaken when I finally came to p99. The above has been pretty consistent from Saryrn, Rodcet Nife, Bristlebane and Fironia Via servers.

Sounds like you raided with a bunch of muppets.

All you really need is a /pet get lost key and to watch where your pet is positioned / going. When any doubt, kill the pet.

[Snaggles]

Originally Posted by derpcake2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sounds like you raided with a bunch of muppets.

All you really need is a /pet get lost key and to watch where your pet is positioned / going. When any doubt, kill the pet.

There are cases where pets make sense and ones that don’t. Even if you can get a pet up and safety positioned you miss out on med ticks for rods, risk death and not being able to coth more people, etc.

As a mage seeing a pet in ToV is aggravating. They put out approximately half a knight’s dps on those raids. Just sit there, make rods and coth rogues. Queue up the YouTube. You don’t have to use all your classes tricks all the time if you have the maturity to pump the brakes.