Casual Dreams

Hi, Emph! Been playing a Mage as my main on here for 3+ years =). Most of what you added is spot on, although a Mage handles the PoTime swarms pretty well with the PBAoE spell "Winds of the Desert". You should also farm PoWater and keep a stock of Coral Hilted Tulwars in your bank. It's the best pet weapon for clearing to Phase 4, then dismiss it and switch back to your main setup for the gods (I have mine dual wield a Time Lapse weapon and a Summoned: Burning Shank from the Blazing Stone of Demise that drops off Blazemaster Arnab)

Combat Agility and Combat Stability should be the first AAs you get, since that'll help you push the spell through 20 mobs beating on you. Yep, those are tanking AAs, because once you're in PoP gear, your pet should no longer be tanking for you since your HP will far surpass it. Use the water pet so it can backstab and turn its Taunt off. For most boss fights, I use my pet as main damage source while I tank, heal myself, and get in whatever spells I can. My rotation is Sun Storm, Maelstrom of Thunder, Winds of the Desert (3 or more targets only), and Burning Sand. The longer/bigger nukes get interrupted too much, don't even bother buying them. In planar gear, you should also be resisting about 90% of the damage from the rain spells, so it's worth it for the huge DPS increase.

Mages are great against most of the custom bosses, but it's always a risk management game of "should I try to get that spell off, or CHeal myself", and it's something you get better at as you practice. Only things I can't solo with the mage are Fabled ToV (have to have my Warrior/Ranger box for that) and Death Reaper.

Thanks for all the advices . Farming tulwar is a pain though lol. I got one on first kill for my ranger alt, but tried to farm some today, 15+ minutes to reach the room, 60 minutes to wait respawn and 2 maces to show for it. Might use poison wind censors, faster to get and can dual wield them I think. I ve been mostly using air pet (for single targets like fabled trak or Althea, he tanks well and it's by far the best taunter, so I can chain cast nukes without aggroing and being annoyed by interrupts), but I will definitely try water pet for fights with many adds like PoT.

Concerning the AAs, the one that adds avoidance (combat agility I think?) is obviously very helpful to prevent ionterrupts, but the other one increases the AC cap, reducing damage a little. Does that actually help with interrupts? Wasn't sure wether the amount of damage that hits you has an impact on interrupts. I thought it was just the sheer number of hits received (and obviously the fact of being bashed/kiicked/stunnned and being moved by push backs).

Concerning AAs, after pet affinity I actually started wih the pet flurry AA and then the crit chance for my nukes (spell fury?) to speed up boss kills a bit (and having killed Althea yesterday I definitely didn"t regret the spell fury, landed a ton of crits), but CA is obviously on my list of priorities. Just not sure if CS would be as useful.

For nukes I was using sunstorm/maelstrom/Talon (ot burning sands if really too interupted or to finish low helath mobs/runners). Definitely going to try winds of desert, though. Sunstorm is nice but maelstrom really gets resisted too often without some winds of tashania. I am resisting sunstorm 100% with 500ish FR.

Also a little trick to shorten many dungeon runs (works for any caster class actually). You can pull most named to zone with amuler of Xzul. I just killed Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar with my lvl 24 ench from velketor's zone in with it. Amazing for PLing till lvl 50 too (although not as fast as en AE proc weapon, it s still more comfortable, as you don't have to tun around doing large pulls, and don't have to worry abour resists from mobs too high lvl). For mage you need pet suspend AA to bring back pet once the named is pulled.

Combat stability (and other damage mitigation) means you're going to push more spells through while tanking because you don't have to CH as often =). HP/AC is good for all classes here.

I haven't tried the pet suspend AA since it seemed bugged a couple years ago. Poru has since updated the EQEmu baseline so it may be working now. Just use caution if you've given it raid gear =).

Another thing to help with swarms, get in on a Sleeper kill or search the vendors people sell to for a Marked Glowing Staff. It procs the Enchanter PBAoE stun (unlimited targets) and goes a long way to firing off Winds of the Desert against dozens of mobs.

Ah neat advice, thanks

Completed the whole PoT without any difficulty with mage, this time. 50 more AAs and better gear helped. I went for Quick Damage AA in priority as it stacks with gear casting time reduction, it really helps a lot.

Concerning suspended minion AA it works fine as long as you don't zone or camp with the pet suspended (in which case he's lost, but I think live servers had the same issue). That allows me for instance to pull Regrua Overlord's room to zone in in 2 minutes with the amulet, with sometimes one or 2 triloun or turtle adds. I even pulled guardian of coirnav and then the 3 lieutenants to zone, but many of the minions weren't coming and sending the amulet pet there was taking more time so couldn't spawn Coirnav in time