Wonder what you guys think is a god mage partner? A buddy is playing a mage and I want to be able to be helpful to him while leveling! Maybe a tank? Or a shammy? Kinda leading towards pally for shield and heals
Shaman, Druid, Cleric, Enchanter You ideally want heals, buffs for your mage and pet, slow is good too. Keep in mind pets even mage pets are made of paper in classic through velious, part of the TLP nerfage because of Magefire. Yet Enchanters and Monks continue to be broken for some reason. They do better with slow and some hitpoint/ac buffs, I also recommend banded armor once you are at the point you can afford it. Either take up smithing yourself or get a guild smith to make it for you. Back on Coirnav I had a guildie that would make me sets of banded (one bracer as pet will only wear one) for about 40pp per set, I'd pay him for a bunch at a time and he'd parcel em to me to be collected as needed. Pet gets quite a bit tankier
Shaman is good with all classes, once everything is slowed Bard is good with all classes, So Bard+mage works for outdoors/indoors, as bards can snare/fear and pacify pull If you only stay outdoors, Necro is good for snare/fear, but also somewhat decent indoors with good root/small heals + feign death pulls If you prefer brute force, you can do mage+mage and ping pong your aggro Cleric is always a safe option, as they can pacify pull, keep you healed and rez if you die if everything is single pullable, i don't think you can beat shaman+mage though
If you're talking about duoing and just want to kill blues fast, probably another mage. A lot of the efficiency comes from how fast the pets can regen between fights so duoing with a tank really wouldn't be that great, you just want stuff to die faster with all the damage being absorbed by the pet. If you want to duo tougher stuff, then probably a cleric so you can hp buff and heal the pet while it tanks, but druid or shaman also works. If you mean for playing together with him in a full group, then maybe an enchanter since the two classes sort of compliment each other (enchanter can clarity and tash, mage can help with your charmed pet through malo, summoned gear, and pet offtanking on charm breaks if needed), but pretty much anything works in that context.
Met a guy that boxed mage mage, he used banded on both his pets which is where I got the idea from, he would join groups and take 2 x dps spots and basically tank as well, both pets had taunt on and if one got to half health he would hit stop on that pet until it regened back to full, often while still tanking.
Yeah, if you're comparing to an early game warrior wearing banded, a mage pet wearing banded isn't going to be much worse damage mitigation but it'll be much better at holding threat. At least through lguk it works fine, probably want a real tank for zones like the Hole/Seb/Chardok. Not sure about Velious since I never had to exp that expansion on Mangler, but epic pet tanking GE groups in Luclin was better than most player tanks with the thing's threat generation and the fact that stuff in GE doesn't hit very hard in the first place.
If you are wanting strictly duos, id say shaman, cleric, druid, in that order. As others have said tho, mage/mage works really well, 3 mages can take down Brother Z in rathe mtns for monk epic by use of chain summoning pets. Mage/chanter also works well.
Consider your focus too - do you guy want to group a lot or try to duo as much as possible? For just a duo, Shaman, Cleric, Enchanter, Mage are probably best overall. Necro would be a solid choice too - just leave pet taunt off and kite stuff, but then necro would kind of pigeon hole you into kiting - like it or not, lol. I have a cleric, shaman, or enchanter I can box with my Mage. I find the enchanter to be best for me boxing. The haste, mana regen, crowd control, and slows are an exceptional help and a good enchanter can pull in many situations. Enchanter would also open you up to finding groups super easy; as would Cleric, Shaman, and Paladin too. I rarely wait for a group on my enchanter and when I form a group, people usually jump on an enchanter asking them if they want a group - as they would a cleric too. If you are going to group a lot, that would open up many options. Although Mage/Mage might make finding a group a bit tedious sometimes. If a group needs two DPS, it would be no issue. Personally, I wouldn't go mage/mage unless you plan on mostly duo-ing content. Which really isn't going to give you the best experience overall in the game. At least in my opinion, a solid group is great fun and great XP. Also consider - lack of a tank can be a problem for a lot of content - so a Pally is a solid choice too. The heals and buffs will help. You'll probably see a lot more tanks early on, than later in the game. Well.. I think what it is - is that a good tank is a real time investment, being gear dependent. So once many of them level up their tank they will keep on with doing the best content they can. Which might make lower levels seem a bit tight on tanks as the server matures and people roll up 'for fun' alts... because the 'alt' tanks later on will be so twinked, that a group isn't really needed for sometime and/or they level so fast that they aren't around LFG a lot. I twinked a ranger out and with a Shaman, I was able to easily duo with the Shaman right up to level 60. Even doing content in "the hole" that was yellow and sometimes red with the Ranger/Shaman box duo. One last thing to think about - a lot of healers are 'boxes' now. Healer mains are much desired in guilds and groups. So a Cleric/Mage would make a good combo. Cleric can single pull many places with pacify, the HP buffs are more than awesome for the pet, and well - rez
I love anything that can snare and/or root since this is the price a Magician pays for having a strong pet. Consider a Ranger too. Not as nice as a Shaman or Druid or ???, just really dovetails in nicely with a Magician. I have never regretted pairing a Magician with a Ranger. For the first 20 levels the Magician can summon melee weapons so you can tackle magic invulnerable targets like ghouls and wisps. From level 20 up, the Magician can summon magical arrows which provide a huge advantage for the Ranger. Ranger gets spells like Stinging Swarm and SoW which work well and can boost the DPS/damage mitigation with Mage pet with spells like Riftwind's Protection. You also get all the little pluses like Ranger forage and tracking, critical for things like the Magician Epic. It stays good with Magician summoned items like Quiver of Marr and Ranger Headshot when you get into the 50s.
