The Magician's Tower

So, I recently killed AoW with a 71 mage and 70 necro duo (with mercs). It was a fun event, but I became once again familiar with the concept of resists. I made a necro for a range dps that for the most part avoids resist issues. However, during AoW, I virtually couldn't get necro spell to land, and those spells that were able to land were resisted more than half the time anyway.

Not having resist adjustment on the mage's spells, the mage casting-wise was equally useless. Basically two pets killed the named.

This disheartens me greatly. I want to be able to do things while playing. If I'm playing a caster, I don't want to afk and let my pets kill the mob. I want to assist the pet. I want to cast smurf. If I just wanted to afk, I would have made a warrior or monk, or bow ranger.

I plan on playing a duo, and I originally wanted it to be a mage/necro, but after this disheartening kill, I'm wondering if I want to continue playing these characters, or if I want to make something else. Should I hold out? At 75...80...85...are there equal resist problems? (granted AoW is lvl 60 content, he is lvl 70) Certain mobs do have certain resists, especially back in the day. Epic mobs. Or zonewide, like PoFire. But, as a caster and when I needed to cast spells the most, during an event like fighting AoW--and I CAN'T use spells--then what was the point of being a caster in the first place?

My question is, as a person that hasn't really played the game post OoW, how often do casters encounter super resist mobs? Did EQ stop with that silliness? I don't want to prepare myself for a challenging named fight, just to have every smurf spell resisted and then be at the mercy of pet dps, otherwise I'd just have made a shaman/sk.

In ordinary grouping (which includes regular named mobs), resists are not generally a big issue, lead with malo(whatever) and you'll see some resists, but not enough to make you want to bite your pet's head off. There will be some that will be more resistant than others, but that uncertainty merely adds interest to the kill. Whatever else he was back in the day, AoW WAS a raid mob, and a smurf tough one. I don't really have an opportunity to raid anymore, so someone else will have to speak to raid resists in current content.

There are a handful of mobs that are either particularly spell or fire spell resistant. But, they are so few, I would think you would be very happy with a mage/necro combo. I can't remember the last time I had any real problem with resists in the group or raid game.

I don't remember when this starts in the spell line up, but, even on spell resistant mobs, mages can use a servant pet along with various short term damage shields on their tank(pet or otherwise), that still gives the mage decent dps.

Even of the couple of resistant mobs I can think of, there is equivalent loot elsewhere, that gives you the option to not worry about ever having to kill that resistant mob. Maybe for the necro epic, is the only time you might HAVE to kill a certain mob, necros use their epic, mages really don't.

Raid mobs will have a higher resists than a group mob and that's why you debuff each mob to it's fullest with the different classes. I don't think you will have as big of an issue as AoW but you will have more resists than in the group game without all of the debuff classes. Between mage and necro you can debuff them pretty well if you get the right tools.