1 Month until return to game:)

[blackmist03]

Well , I know I don't want 3 casters, because if it came down to dead pets and my toons tanking, they would splat awfully fast. Now, the bard is an interesting idea, but I don't think he would be a replacement for a shaman. The shaman has all of their utility buffs, and they have some wicked DPS on top of them, and healing,slows,debuffs. The bard can do all of their stuff, but it ends up being mediocre,and i woudl just be doubleing up on the pulling thing with a bard. Now, Sk, mage,Shm, and if i wanted a 4th, i have an 80 druid,with 1500 or so aa, and an 85 rogue with 250 aa (got deployed before i could get him more).

Maybe I should just use sk, shm and rogue for awhile, then when they get good enough,make a mage on another account.

[Piemastaj]

That probably wont be a bad setup Blackmist. Pretty much as long as you beef that SK up with HP/AC gear you should be fine with any setup you choose. However, I think mage will be the fastest to level up with how strong their pets are at low levels. The only bottleneck I see is around lvl 55 to around 65 (However that was like 6ish years ago when it sucked, and pets got a boost now so it might not be so bad). Then at 70 mages get Raging servant which is a heavy DPs pet.

[nylrem]

An EM 5 air pet (few days at most to get focus) with 500 AA tanks better than a SK in all tier 6/7 gear, mediocre AC augs, with 1k AA. It will EASILY take you 5x the amount of time to gear/xp a SK in good enough gear/AA to tank even UF trash than even 2 magicians.

But as I always say, the point of a GAME is to have fun at it, if having fun is gearing a melee toon for you, then do it

Nylrem of test

[blackmist03]

what is EM 5 air pet,and what focus are you talking about?? I have never had a mage over lvl 17... still very low on knowledge about them, besides send pet, make boom, coth people, thats about it. I am trying to learn as much as possible before I come back and actually make one. So, are mages actually THAT powerful of a solo class? Are mages actually a GOOD asset to have in a group? Are mages actually good or great dps? How do mages compare to necros? How manyAA does it take before a mage is good dps? Just a few questions, I'm sure I sound like a little kid in a candy store in this forum, but you guys really know your stuff.

[Eanelder]

EM#, refers to the pet focus you have. The better the pet focus the more hp / damage the pet gets /is able to dish out.

They've become alot more accessible recently take a look at lucy to see which might be available to you:
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/stacking.htm ... ource=Live" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (ignore everything past the first grouping)

With the right gear Mages are a nice balance of power and utility and play well either solo, with groups or raids.

[blackmist03]

I really wish I could go to that site, but I cannot, because I am in afghanistan and behind a military firewall. BLAH. lol.

So from what you guys are saying, if I get 500AA into all pet AA, and get a good pet focus (still not sure what a pet focus is or how to get one), I should be pretty set at least until my sk gets decent.

Then after pet gets all uberfired, I can start concentrating on my mage nukes.

[bobipet]

well i play SHM (main) /MAGE as combo and it rock.
once aa's for pet into the tanking ability, pet tank very well .
for me i would go for another caster 2nd mage , or druid for the snare component.i can pull anything with shm pulling + coh,just need a little practice.....would be even easier with snare pull + coh...
1~casters group = u got a solid tank with mage pet (specially if u have minion 8 focus ),tower raid 1st kill = minion 7.
2~with caster's u don't need to always have to position the melee to attack the mob. (when i was boxing monk / shm ),many times i had the oor message even if i was rigth at the mob to attack
3~2mages + shm combo imo would get you 2 solid pet tank ,great dps,and mage pets only need to have aa's to be efficient tank VS melee's armors,weapons,aa's.
4~with a shaman plus mercs cleric,you got all the buffing you need for the tanking area (unity / gala /ect ).
5~u can always heal with shm to help both mercs if u encounter hard to kill nameds in UF also if needed

anyway you are the one playing the toons,so go with what you like the most
ps: if u thinking to go to the higher zones later like UF tasks / nameds with a melee, you better have a melee with solid armors, plus some tower gears or UF group gears,and a lot of aa's ,if not u will be disapointed with them.
area like cooling chambers nameds (from the group task tanise ) ask around what it take to be efficient at tanking them.

any melee toons will get agro over pets also,so if u use a bard only for the pulling and can't melee / tank with him at higher level (uf zones ) well imo it's a waste.

[blackmist03]

Hmm, that is definitely tempting now that I am thinking more of it... 3 casters does seem to be popular. mage shaman and druid, or mage shaman wizard or mage shaman and enchanter... hmm

I just have to be sure that the mage pets are going to be able to tank some higher end mobs. What about Shaman, Mage necro? that could be interesting. that would alleviate the need to worrya bout 1 toon, since I can FD the necro, and I could also FD pull. HMM, something to think about. Then I would have a mage and necro pet to tank.. question though, which is better... mage pet or necro pet?

[Jedis]

Personally I would probably go mage/druid/ench...

This is what I use. I just got Underfoot, so am not too sure how they fair there yet... but I could do anything in SoD, including T5 named, and Korafax group missions with this trio (with mercs, obviously - 2 clerics, 1 tank). It's an all around winning combo. Druid is easily controlled with hotkeys for nuking/heals. Chanter is a bit more button mashing for tash/slow/mez.

Really, you can't go wrong with them.

[Piemastaj]

Mage pet trumps necro pet in I think every area. A really good setup would be mage, wiz, nec. Back in SoD I could molo most of any named I wanted w/o breaking a sweat (granted I was semi-raid geared but not fully). So, the mage pet can tank perfectly fine at those levels with just 1 merc healing and no slows. If you throw in slows and 3 mercs healing you should tear some stuff up with an all caster group. The only issue I would have with an all caster group is now you have gear competition b/t all 3 of your toons. Oh yeah, the only reason why I put necro in there is so you would have a puller, otherwise necros really dont shine in the group game because it takes them awhile to get their DoTs rolling to put out some DMG.

I am not 100% for sure because I never counted how many AA you would need to effectively tank with your pet, but I would imagine it would be closer to 1k-1500 AAs to be setup as a mage tanking with your pet. Not to mention some of your first spells you need are Aegis of Kildrukaun and Grounded Stance, those two things help your pet tank really well by limiting the hits your pet takes, and the dmg the pet gets done to it per hit.