Get me up to speed...

[Arterian]

So a little background - I'm a necro, currently 87. I have been in and out of the game over the past few years and I'm generally baffled about the way of the magician. I group with and see mages all over the place, and I'm usually pretty confused about their play style. I see lots of pets, servants, swarms, etc etc.

I figured I would come directly to the source on this one:

Can anyone run me down what you guys actually do? What I'm seeing when all the mage pets fly out, or that guy with the wings (Ruinous servant?)etc

Also, maybe a bit of information on your pet tanking abilities, why I only see air pets, never fire, earth or water. The different types of buffs your pets get and how they are used?

This might be a lot to ask, but I'm curious!

[Danille]

Presently mages are behind wizzys in burst dps and behind necros in sustained, but that is only because necro swift dots were nerfed. We actually needed the developers to leave necro dps alone, and just give us a smal boost.

We basically do the same thing that you guys do, but with 1/2 the utilility. Can't slow anything, not even elementals/constructs; can't FD/have very limited escape tools at our disposal; recently we had a slight improvement in our mana regen utility, but it is severly limited.

We have one thing going for us, our pets are stronger than other pet classes which helps the solo player. The drawback is that pets can't tank in a melee group and in the raiding game the benefits that a strong pet brings does not make up DPS wise, (the only thing raid leaders really care about from a dps class) for other Magician shortcomings.

[Voragath]

You don't see Fire because he is weak and the only thing that benefits him buffwise atm for dmg is Frenzied Burnout. You should see the other 3 often: Water in a group with a real tank for dps; air for when you need slows/off tank or when you need a decent tank and the mobs are 90 or less; earth pet for when you are pet tanking and need something stout but no so concerned with pet dps but the drawback is that his aggro is terrible.

You'll typically see a group mage casting spear, RS ("pet with wings"), sometimes host (small elementals), sometimes servant of ro (wizzy dragon pet), bolt and fickle. In a raid you will see spear, RS, bolt, and clash at a minimum.

There's tons of other stuff too: clicking Force of Elements during global cooldown, clicking the ice nuke we summon during global cooldowns, there's aegis of kildrukaun aa and spell, frenzied burnout, etc.

Aegis of kildrukaun blocks a limited number of incoming spells/hits. Iceflame is a light DS that will proc a rune that operates like kildrukaun. Burnout is our haste buff for pet (has some other mods but they are small). Host in the Shell is a mitigation (best for nameds). Frenzied Burnout is the uber pet aa that boosts their damage. First spire is an aa that increases crit damage (used in tandem with twincast, usually). Fortify companion is used when nameds appear as well (it's like Brell's).

There are lots of aa's to hit and various combos/situations to use them in. You will just have to play around with them to see what works for your situation.

[Arterian]

Great information guys. I know your pets are typically significantly stronger than necro pets. How would you rank tanking/dps ability of a mage pet vs necro at 90? Assuming both have a good focus, EM8+. I haven't really had a chance to see a mage solo some of the HoT T2 or T3-T4 content with a pet so I dont' have a great frame of reference for how well your pets stand up to that type of abuse.

[svenalo]

EM8+ air pet which a reasonable set of aa's and a merc healing can take trash anywhere in HoT, and even some named in T4. It's just not an efficient way to xp.

[Tweelis]

Also keep in mind the air pet can't stun any yellow or red con mobs. With that in mind the earth pet is substantially better at tanking than the air pet in those situations. As for places for a mage to get xp, there's far better places than HoT if you're looking for a solo grind spot.