Mage/Wizard/Enchanters an question for you!Follow

Well hope this little post helps you out. I play a High Elf Enchanter. Playing an Enchanter can be frustrationg and very rewarding at the same time. Be prepared to die a lot. Enchanters come with a full ******** Arguably the worst when it comes to pure caster DD, we have other benefits. As a Enchanter you control the battle field, along with agro. Next to clerics probably one of the most sought after toons for grouping. With mind buffs second to none and being able to max out a tanks atk speed. You are very in demand. A smart Enchanter can solo carefully, but it is not your strong point for xp.

Pros: Good in grps, Mind buffs, Good debuffs, Perfect for Jewelcrafting, Crowd Control

Cons: Pet is not commandable, very low hp, weak DD and DoT, Slow exp

Lordbasic
58th Level Enchanter

OK, they covered chanters pretty well. As for mage's and wizzys... Mages are stupid rediculous soloer's and have a multitude of pets, all with different abilities. Wizards, of coruse, are famous for unleashing ungodly amounts of damage in one spell. Oddly enough, a mage can flat out damage a wizzy as far as DPS goes. Mage nukes + mage pet > Wizzy nukes.

Of course, wizzys can port, mages cannot. Wizzy gets snare too, very helpful at higher lvls when attempting to solo.

Mage vs Wizard has always been a toss-up. They are both equaly dominant, but each has their own situational role. Need the whole raid CoTH'ed?? Mage. Need whole raid evaced?? Wizzy.

Both very fun classes to play IMO.

Hope this helps

Mage perspective...

During your early levels the mage pet is incredible. Make a fire pet, buy some summond armor/weapons (https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=3044 , https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=3042 , https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=1685 , https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=2534 ) from a higher level mage and your jaw will drop at the unholy wrath your pet will unleash. Imagine your a level 12 magician with a pet that has an inate damage shield of 14, has summoned armor with AC76, has nearly 800hp and hits for 18 points of damage.

Downside early on is most people don't know what you and your pet are capable of so expect to do a fair amount of soloing. While messing around on my SK in Paludal Caverns the group I was in had a spot open. A mage came along and asked if he could join us. The entire group except for me didn't want the mage because "they don't do enough damage". It took awhile to enlighten them but there's a fairly large contingent of twits out there with that mindset. Also, it's very easy to overnuke so until you learn aggro control/management you will go splat.

Mage pets are all situational. They vary level by level and even vary based on what you're going to be doing during a particular time. For example, if you go to Echo Caverns the fire pet is a killer. Mobs in there hit very fast but not hard. The fire pet's inate damage shield will chew them up. However, in The Deep your firepet will be little more than a speed bump the mob must go over on his way to squishing you. In that situation an earth pet would be best imo due to its high hp pool. An air pet would also be good due to it's tanking ability. These two examples don't even begin to scratch the surface when talking about pets and situation.

A lot of people have no idea what a mage can summon. There's people in my guild that still get surprised when I present them with some summoned trinket. http://forum.magecompendium.com/viewtopic.php?t=3768

Mage nukes vary from level to level. At times we're pretty close to wizards in nuking ability. Other times we fall pitifully behind wizards, necro's, druids (yes, druids out nuke us sometimes) and enchanters. Overall from 1-50 we're comfortably in the #2 spot most of the time.

Word of warning. If you decide to visit http://forum.magecompendium.com you'll see a lot of crying and whinning. Some of it's warranted but there's a handful of people in there that think mages need to be #1 in all catagories. As for a source of information it's probably one of the best class based communities out there.

Hope this helps a bit.

I've been playing EQ for 2 months and I'm currently a 54 wiz.
Things I like:
I can travel around pretty easily. I can bind myself. I can gate.
I can solo stuff that doesn't summon, especially in open areas. It's nice if I have to camp something or for waiting for groups. I can invis myself and invis to undead myself.
It is *very* easy to play a wizard in groups. Just sit and watch and pop up to throw a nuke once in a while. Sometimes I do other stuff like snaring or rooting and I usually stun casters. I think other classes that have to do pulling and crowd control have harder jobs.
I like the big nukes.

Things I don't like:
I don't think I'm one of the most popular group classes. I envy clerics and chanters for that.
I have to be very careful in dungeons. It is hard to solo in close quarters. I can't single pull. Even green stuff can be a problem. I'm used to being able to wipe out entire dungeons solo in Asheron's Call as a wizard and here I have to tiptoe around.
I can't buff my alts to help them level faster even if they were on a second account.
I don't like not being able to track. Sure I can solo the mob I'm looking for if I can find it...
Being able to evac a group is nice. You can be the hero once in a while.

I think when I learn to quad kite that might make it more fun when I'm not in groups. Single kiting or rooting and nuking uses up too much mana and I have too much down time so it's no fun. I think if I learn more about my personal area of affect stuns/nukes I might be able to better deal with adds in dungeons.

I envy chanters all the money they make with c3 buffs. I get the occasional donation for a translocate, but they are few and far between.

If I had it to do over, I'd make my first toon a chanter or a cleric for the easy grouping and for the ability to make money from c3 if I was the chanter and so I could twink some alts on a second account easier. A wizard would be a good toon to have later on, after a person already had a popular group toon.

Word of warning, Empyre. The post 50 fire pets may be useful in some situations, but I mostly lowered my head in mourning and said goodbye to Sparky.

Now for the question at hand, pros and cons of playing a magician.

Enchanters and wizards have lines of spells to keep the mobs off them while they take their time killing them. Magicians are more of a "burn it down a.s.a.p." caster. The only thing standing between us and an angry mob is our pet. The pet heals help in lower levels. Once you hit PoP and beyond the mobs hit too hard for the pet heals to be relied on.

Some things I like about being a magician:

I can summon all manner of goodies, from really useful to downright silly (beer & fireworks). The summoned phantom armor can be given to pets to increase their AC. It's also fun to stop by a newbie garden and supply sets of armor to non twinked newbies.

The summoned focus items serve casters quite nicely until they acquire armor with focus effects.

We're fairly gear independent. Even naked, as long as we can grab a few malachites, we can still deal out quite a bit of damage. This is true of most pure casters.

Up to PoP levels, we're very effective soloers. There are magicians around who manage to solo past 50, but to me, the risk just doesn't outweigh the rewards. Can't find a group, or just don't want the hassle, find a nice little spot and let the killing begin. The first time you solo a giant is a happy moment.

We can't buff, rez, summon corpses or transport others. Your play time is largely your own with very few /tell requests. I like helping people, but I want to do it on my schedule.

If you want to excel at tradeskills, a pure caster is a great choice. Because of our high intelligence, we skill up much faster than a melee or hybrid in most tradeskills. Fast skill ups = money and time saved.

Those are some of the pros. Here are some of the cons:

We get the same line of anti summoned spells as druids. The problem is that there are less and less "summoned" mobs in the game as time goes on (none reported so far in GoD). Why, when there are certainly no shortage of animal and undead mobs for other classes to excel against? This is a bone of contention for many magicians.

No way to root, snare or mem blur mobs when things are going badly. The best escape route we have is to hope our pet stays alive long enough for us to get off "gate" (which I don't usually have memmed when I fight.)

We have no damage absorption line of spells. Wizards and enchanters do, and they're quite handy. This means you'll either be a smart caster and not pull aggro, or you'll be a dead caster. It's a fine line to walk, which I think magicians do very well.

Magician spell research can be a nightmare and expensive to learn. With the advent of the bazaar you can get to level 65 and never learn spell research. I started playing before then and had little alternative. I have to say I'm proud of having this skill maxxed. I was too stubborn to stop once I'd put so much time into it.

Our pets have not scaled up with the mobs we face in higher levels. This makes soloing at high levels difficult, at best. I essentially gave up soloing for experience in my low 50s. Grouping has been a lot of fun for me, but it was a big change, which is very frustrating to many magicians.

People blame pets for all manner of things (breaking mez, pushing mobs, getting aggroed.) The fact is, our pets can't break mez anymore, and unless it's fighting near a mob near another that will assist it, they don't get aggro. Pets will push the mobs to some extent, but not more than melee players do. Careful positioning of your pet can actually help mitigate melee push. You may have to educate others about your pets.

This is not really a "con" but an fyi. Poor pet control ticks people off (and rightly so). Learn every pet command and when and how to use them. A magician who consistantly shows little regard for pet control gives us all a bad reputation. It also gets our pets banned from some hunts when it's really not necessary. All the other classes must be able to trust us to keep our pets under control at all times. After all, it's what we do!

This isn't an all inclusive list of the pros and cons of being a magician, but hopefully it will give you an idea of some of the perks and challenges of the class.

This class, like most, could stand some attention from the devs. Even so, I've tried every class in the game and keep coming back to my magician. She's simply the most fun to me.

join us.... join us...

Lord Xythex, is that mask ur talking about the fine cut,diamond inlaid mask? The one where u run to droga's? It is a very easy quest and if u send me a email at iplaeq2much@aol.com ( if u havent finished it already) and i will tell u step by step how to get there. If u can get a tracker to go with u and can afford invis potions it can be done at level 1. I did on my chanter and mage.

I have a lvl 65 wizzy,and I really enjoy playing him. As several others have noted, we are damage dealers and porters. Although Mages theoretically out damage us (and this has been argued over and over), keep in mind that pretty much ALL our mana goes to nuking things. Not only that, but we have an awesome choice of nukes that allow us to damage mobs with high resists and stun caster mobs who are about to dot a fellow PC or heal themselves.

A well played Wizzard with even an average amount of AAs can be pretty awesome to play. And, if you do a decent job keeping argo off yourself, managing your mana, and knowing what your spells can do and using them in key situation... you will have no problem getting groups.

Of the three, the Wizzard is probably the easiest to play, as long as you are disciplined (Don't over nuke).

Hope this helps. Feel free to send me a tell in game if you have any further questions...