Magician Class Guide (Classic - Prophecy of Ro)

This guide will cover the Magician Class from Classic EQ all the way until the end of Prophecy of Ro. I consider Prophecy of Ro to be the end of the Classic era of EQ and from this expansion onward things start to change a lot in how EQ fundamentally plays. Magicians are a class that I have a lot of experience on during this era of EQ as well as in future eras.

As the class name suggests, as a Mage you specialize in summoning things. That includes things like Food, Water, Throwing Weapons, Bags, Pet Armor, other players and of course what you're most known for, Pets. Mage Pets are very strong and you can summon four different types (Fire, Water, Air & Earth). Each pet will have their own strengths and weaknesses - for example Earth is your most tanky pet with Air being the least tanky. Air will do more DPS than earth though since it has Backstab - Earth also comes with a Root.

Most people choose the Mage class since they get a pet and that provides you with much more solo potential than classes without pets. This comes with one major draw back during this era of EQ, Mitigation of the Mighty (MotM). This buff is something that all raid targets have and it prevents your pets from being able to tank since it gives you all of the threat that they generate. We will discuss this more in the How to Play section.

One thing to note is MotM is only an issue on raids, you will not encounter any group or solo content with this buff. Some of you will have no interest in raiding which means MotM won't be an issue. In addition to getting a great pet, Mages also get powerful DD spells which do almost as much as a Wizard's spells.

 

Important Stats & Focus Effects

Attributes are the best way to increase your character's strength until you start maxing them out with buffs and gear in Luclin. Mages will want to focus mostly on Intelligence until you get it to max, this will give you the most Mana. After that you'll probably want to get Stamina next and a tiny bit of Strength so you can actually hold your gear and loots. Investing in 100% Weight Reduction bags will be important too.

Once you max out your Int the only way for you to get stronger will be getting more Mana on your gear and Mana Regen. If you're someone who likes to solo (or you find yourself pulling agro a lot) you may want to get some AC and HP too, this will allow you to take a few more hits.

Intelligence: Increases how much Mana you have; the amount of Mana you get per 1 Int scales as you level up.

Stamina: Gives you HP.

Agility: Increases AC.

Strength: Increases your weight and will let you carry more. Only matters until you get Weight Reduction Bags.

Once PoP is released you'll start to notice Heroic Stats on some pieces of gear. Hstats will provide you similar benefits as the regular stat but without you having to worry about the original stat caps. During this era of the game you'll want to focus primarily on Heroic Intelligence since that will give you more Mana and Mana Regen.

In this era of the game I don't think you can reach the soft cap for Heroic Int. Just incase I am wrong, you'll want your secondary Heroic Stats to be Heroic Stamina and Heroic Agility, both of these will give you a nice survivability boost. The only way you can increase your raid potential is with HInt, but as I said before, that is limited.

Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.

Heroic Intelligence (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max MP Regen Cap for Int Casters. You'll want to focus on this until you reach the soft cap then switch to survivability HStats.

Heroic Agility (AC/Mitigation): HAgility increases your mitigation mod2s, your AC, Dodge, Block, Parry and many other important mitigation skills. It also increases your Endurance, Endurance Regen and the potential Endurance Regen cap that you can reach. Not as important for a Cleric though.

Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.

Important Focus Effects

You can start using Focus Effects in Luclin, there are a few important ones for you and they're the best while leveling up. At level 60 you should keep in mind that you'll have to sacrifice using Tower Gear to use many of these Focus items. This is a pretty big trade off and may not be worth it for some foci. Ultimately, it's your choice. Once Omens of War is released it becomes much easier to get the Foci you want on the gear that's best.

***Mana Preservation: Reduces the amount of Mana consumed with each cast.

***Pet Focus: Using this focus will buff the level of your pet, improving all of their stats. This focus is typically found on earrings but it can be on other pieces during these early eras too.

**Extended Range: Increases the range of your spells.

**Spell Haste: Reduces the cast time of your spells (makes your spells cast faster).

**Improved Damage: Increases the damage your DD spells do. This is very important if you plan to deal direct damage (with nukes).

**Extended Enhancement: Increases the duration of your buffs.

*Improved Dodge: Chance to Dodge is increased by a moderate amount. Pretty much gives you a bit more survivability.

*Improved Parry/Block: Chance to Parry and Block is increased by a moderate amount. More survivability.

*Reagent Conservation: Decreases the chance of a reagent being consumed. It saves money since some of our useful spells do have reagents.

 

Important Spells, Skills & AAs

As a Magician I would recommend you specialize in Evocation spells since that is your primary form of damage. You could also do Conjuration since half of your nukes use that (as do all summoning spells) but I don't really recommend that; the nukes that use Conjuration aren't ones we typically use.

Like I mentioned earlier, Mages are the king of summoning spells. You're able to conjure up almost anything you want - don't get any inappropriate ideas though because the only living things you can make are tiny elementals that specialize in violence. Aside from summoning spells you will also get a minor amount of utility along with decent DD spells.

In this era what I recommend is for you to use your 3 highest DPS spells when you're doing your DPS rotation. Normally what we do in future expansions as a Mage is use our two best Spear spells (one from the current expansion and one from the previous expansion). Looking at the spell list for this era, the only spear you get is Spear of Ro. There are other spells like it as you level up to 70 but they aren't named Spear. Due to this, I would just recommend you use your 3 best nukes.

Starting in DoDh you will get Raging Servant too. I'm not sure if this sucks in DoDh or not, but this line of spells eventually becomes a core part of your rotation. Another line of spells I feel worth pointing out is your Rain spell line. Much like many of the other spell lines, the name doesn't remain consistent until later in the game. In this early era they're called rains but also get unique names like Sirocco, Maelstrom of Electricity and Star Scream.

Rains are a weird line of spells because they have a tendency to become very over powered during some expansions. One such example of this is during Secrets of Faydwer where Mages will top the parses by using their rains. From my understanding the main reason that Rain spells do well (sometimes) is because of how much they benefit from the Spell Damage secondary stat. Each Rain will hit the target 3 times, this means that your Spell Damage is applied to each hit.

To be honest, I am not entirely sure why the rains are amazing during some expansions and not others. I first learned about how great they were during Call of the Forsaken (CoTF); all of the mages in my guild switched to rains and started doing way more DPS. When I asked the best mage why, the explanation he gave me is the same one I provided above.

Below you will find a brief list of your most important spells, basically anything not talked about above will be mentioned below.

Shielding: All Int casters get a self shielding line that stacks with most other buffs. Use yours! Shield of the Arcane is the PoP version, Mystic Shield is the OoW Version and there are many prior to this.

Mage Pets: Your greatest asset as a Mage is your pet. As a Magician you will get four different types of pets, Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Each of them comes with their own unique benefit and drawback which I will talk about in the section below. As a pet master, you will also get utility spells designed specifically for them like Pet Runes, Pet Heals and Pet Haste.

Call of the Hero: You first get this spell during Kunark, it's called Call of the Hero (CoTH for short). Eventually you will get an AA that does the same thing so you don't have to memorize the spell. Many years later during the Call of the Forsaken expansion you'll get an upgraded version of CoTH which works on the entire group. This is called Call of the Heroes and it's amazing.

Damage Shields: As I previously mentioned, mages get very powerful damage shields - your only DS rival is a Druid. This is one of those spells you should always keep up on your group (especially the tank).

Modulation Rod: Mages get their first mod rod spell in Kunark, it's called Modulating Rod. You will eventually get an AA version of this spell which will replace this version. From then on you'll want to always use the AA version... Much later on in the game you will start to get Mod Rod spells again, this will summon a self only Mod Rod which you can use in conjunction with the AoE one that you summon.

Mala/Malosini: Really the only debuff that Mages get that's worth using is Mala/Malosini. It's very useful against targets that have high resists since it will help both you and all of your comrades land spells.

Rathe's Strength: Starting in Prophecy of Ro most classes get an aura spell that stacks with basically everything else in the game. Mages get an Aura called Rathe's Strength which increases the damage of their pets and other pets in the aura by 10%. You get an "upgraded" version of this in Underfoot called Arcane Distillect but I believe Rathe's Strength is the better choice due to how it works. Double check me, but I used Rathe's Strength over this one.

AAs

Like with all of my other class guides, I am going to cover the clicky AAs that you get on a Mage and not the passives. Starting in Luclin you get Elemental Form and Turn Summoned; both are kind of trashy. Elemental Form is something you'll use during this era often but eventually this AA has stacking issues with some other buffs. Turn Summoned is garbage and something I never use. If you want to keep it on your bars in the off chance you fight a summoned creature - have at it.

Next up, we have MGB, Mend Companion and Spell Casting Subtletly. All three of these are useful, MGB will let you buff an entire raid with 1 group buff, Mend Companion is a powerful pet heal and Spell Casting Subtletly will reduce your threat when blowing up targets. Last but not least you also have Companion's Fury which is probably the most useful AA in Luclin. Use this AA when fighting nameds or bosses, it will increase your pets damage.

Once PoP hits you'll get access to 3 mediocre AAs - Host of the Elements and Servant of Ro are both swarm pets. You will use both of these AAs when fighting nameds or bosses but you shouldn't expect them to dramatically boost your DPS. We also get Companion's Suspension which is garbage during this entire era. This AA doesn't get better until much later when you get the higher ranks since they reduce the draw backs and even then it still kinda sucks.

Gates of Discord adds Companion's Shielding which is ok at best. It will make your pet shield you from incoming melee damage and leash back to you. This isn't something I ever used when playing my mage. During Omens of War you'll get Heart of Froststone and Heart of Skyfire, one of them decreases your threat and the other absorbs damage. You'll probably find yourself using Skyfire (threat reduction) more often.

Last but not least, you'll get Silent Casting in DoDh. This is another AA that reduces your threat from casting spells, you'll also be using this one very often. In the future Silent Casting will become a part of your burn rotation along with Improved Twincast and many others.

 

 

How to Play: Magician Basics

Playing a Mage is actually very easy. When you are soloing you will let your pet do 99% of the tanking. You get heals and runes that work on your pet, this will help you keep the little guy alive when he is tanking for you. During the early eras you'll also want to give your pet some gear, you can summon pet gear and weapons which you then can give to him like he is an NPC.

Giving a pet armor and weapons does help but it becomes very tedious very fast. This is typically why I never do it, thankfully the devs realize that most people are lazy and eventually your pet will be summoned with a full set of armor. You can still summon weapons for him though.

When joining a group your role will only slightly change. You will give your group the little bit of support you provide (Damage Shield, Mod Rod) and then you attack mobs just like normal. When they pull a mob you send in your pet and cast Malosini just like you do when solo. After the tank(pet) builds some initial agro you can start tossing your nukes at it. Like I said, it's more or less the same thing you do while solo.

One of the only things you may want to change while grouping is the type of pet that you use. Each Mage pet comes with different strengths and weaknesses - I will list of all them below.

Water: Balanced pet; second best pet/most commonly used one. Has a Water DD proc and can also backstab.
Earth: The best tank pet, also can root enemies.
Air: Second best pet typically, can stun enemies.
Fire: Your worst pet, it comes with a built in Damage Shield but it's a major glass cannon.

Normally while you're leveling up you'll want to use whatever the highest level pet is for the time. Once you reach max level you'll want to start being more selective when it comes to picking a pet. I personally only ever use Water or Earth and it depends on if the mobs I am fighting run and whether or not I have a Snare.

If I need Snare I will use Earth, otherwise I find myself pretty much always using Water. Now that we've gotten pets out of the way, let's go over how to properly play a Mage. We talked about this a lot in the previous section so I will be repeating some of that information again here.

Playing solo and in a group for a Mage isn't much different. You will be doing more or less the same rotation and using the same spells. Typically the first thing you'll be doing is summoning a pet and buffing it up with Burnout, Runes and anything else that you get. After that you'll use your Damage Shield and Mod Rods (if you're solo you'll be the only one to benefit, otherwise your entire group will). If you're playing in an early era you'll need to buff your pet individually with Damage Shield since group buffs won't apply to him until later.

After you finish buffing all that's left is to do DPS. Each time your group (or you) pulls you'll want to send in your pet and cast Malo; wait a little bit until threat is established then start nuking your target. That's really all there is to playing a Mage! Depending on the era of the game you're in the main rotation that you cycle through changes.

In the early eras you'll typically be cycling through your top 3 highest damage nukes. Once you get a Swarm pet spell that doesn't suck you'll be using that in your rotation too. On live servers, the main reasons swarm pets do good damage is because they benefit from all of your pet AAs. I am not sure when/during which expansion they become good on the TLPs.

 

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