I have a level 89 magician that I am trying to get to 100, and I wanted to know what the best way to do this would be. I have my J5 mercenary, about 800 AA's, and a pet focus item that is about to stop working. At 89, I can usually get the 85 HZ quest done in OBF, but I have trouble getting a group to do the 90 HZ quests. I also have a question about beaming. This is kind of new to me, so I wonder if anyone could offer some pointers about where a good place to start would be, and what I should invest in for AA's to get started at this.
your low on AA's. is my suggestion. http://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/index.php leveling guild post has a link for good places based upon lvls http://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3995 http://eqaasearch.org/aainfo_search.asp?search_fd4=<=89&search_fd12=Magician Pet AA's, spell dps
My suggestion would be to de-level (make some pp by having a necro sacrifice you even) until the level where you get your next air pet after whatever EM focus ear you are using (I would assume this is shards of jungle sentinel or chipped shards?)... So, you would de-level to 81 most likely. Then grind the top 3 HZ tasks you can for xp. at even only 40% to AA xp, you should get 30AA per quest completion. Then just grind in the highest HZ that you can handle that you can quickly kill mobs. At 81, you want at least 2,500 to 3,000 AA. Invest them in your pet's tanking abilities first: Companion's Agility, Elemental Agility, Elemental Durability, Companion's Durability, Fortify Companion Then your personal DPS: Spell Casting Fury, Fury of Magic, Destructive Fury, Quick Damage, plus many activated DPS AA Then pet DPS: Companion & Elemental Alacrity, Fury, Frenzied Burnout, etc All the while picking up the 'nice' utility AA. Essentially, if you want to be very successful solo magician, you need to max all the mentioned ones, plus the nice utility ones, before moving past level 81. Then, keep each tier of these maxed before you level up again. At 85, get the Whisper-steel loop(EM8), drops off Breath of Ryken in Argath, or can find in bazaar possibly. You should have at least 3,500 to 4,000 AA before you hit level 90, then continue to get all your passive pet tanking and personal DPS AA available, at each level, before moving on to the next higher level. Without doing so, your pet will not be able to tank the mobs, and you will not have the DPS to effectively kill the mobs. NPCs, and especially named mobs, have a very sharp curve with how much damage they put out and how much hp they have once you get past HoT expansion.
I would not delevel. As a level 100 mage with 4k AA i have pet defense and offense maxed, personal dps maxed, most utility for COF expansion...... I am working on stuff like personal defense and stats at 4k aa. Also, AA slows down alot the more you get. If you de level to 81 you lose the opportunity to do the two level 90 quests. Mage need lower aa then most classes as we are very strong with pet focus. I would get level 91 at get your new pet. Goto Valley or Old Bloodfields and max your pet defense aa, then personal dps. Then pet offensive. I would then get around 1.5aa for lvl 91, 2k aa for level 96. Then goto 100 and aa up! Hope this helps and Good luck to you!
Deleveling is rarely a viable option. If you have any aa lines with a current rank above your level, you lose every rank of that aa. Not to mention any possible gear loss.
Thank you for all the advice so far. I don't think I will de-level. I have read that beza/zeka are the places to go throughout the 80's, so I am trying that, but they are all light blue from what I have found. Does anyone know what a great pet focus would be. I have, I think, the chipped shards of dread that stops working here in a few yellows. Thank you again for your input. Additionally, I have also looked in to beam kiting, and I have seen it done, but I also saw the mage die alot. Is there an item or anything that gives you a way of snaring them. My alt is a druid and without snare, I don't see how beam kiting would work well.
Twitching Snood Black Vertebrae They both have enhanced minion XII, both are in the bazaar and work all the way to 100. I bought the former in the bazaar for 15k for an alt. Before the 91 pet I worked alot in Hills of Shade. You can even do Loping planes near the zone to HOS if you can't handle that, but you should be able to handle HOS. Work light blues fast pace until you get the air pet at 91.
Cendar is right, Loo kinto getting yourself a Good pet focus. then I would suggest doing the hotzone quests Go to Franklin Teek in Plane of knowledge by the Guild Lobby doors say level 80 say level 85 say level 90 say alternate Go to each of those zones. at level 89, you should be able to solo the 80 - 65 hotzone quests (With a merc, its referred to as "Molo" on the boards." level 90 and the alternate one in Valley should prove to be a bit of a challenge solo, however, not impossible. You can find people doing these quests almost at any hour of the day. In addition, You can do the quest line to get the Tier five mercenary in Korsican Warrens if you havent done so already. Link to that can be found --- >http://rasper.samanna.net/SoD/KW_Quests.html This will improve your Healer mercenary to a point where he will be able to Heal your pet at a more proficient rate. As always. If you have further questions ;tell bristle.dandin or you can send me a message here on the forums. Good luck!
At 89 I was mostly grinding it out in the grounds, although that probably wasn't optimal (was hunting for gear at the same time). If you want to get your AA up quick I'd reccomend the various potion quests in House, given by researcher breoro. You can preloot the components, and at your level of aa they should give around 30 or so aa when you turn in all 4. so get a couple stacks of each quest item and just make sure to turn them in once or twice a day for a steady stream of aa. That will get you to 1500 or so AA in no time.
I really suspect that many people posting here did not really play a magician at lower AA count or are not remembering just how tough it was, and I'm fairly sure they didn't attempt to in HoT or higher zones with only an EM5 pet focus. As you have already observed, moloing in HoT+ zones as a 89 magician, with only EM5 and 800 AA, is pretty much not going to happen. Definitely won't be effective. Simply put, anything more than 1 mob at a time, and you won't be able to handle it and even single pulled trash mobs are going to be a challenge. Since it's very common to get more than 1 mob at a time and magicians, and especially lower AA ones, have pretty much zero utility to be able to deal with multiple mob pulls, you will not be able to effectively do anything at all in HoT or further zones just molo. I doubt you could complete the quests Piestro suggested without dying a fairly significant amount of time or doing a ton of waiting for companion of necessity/host of elements to repop to split mobs. The reason I suggested de-leveling is because it opens up much more possibilities to gain decent AA when moloing. At 81, zeka or even katta (clocworks, elementals, and dervishes all count as summoned) would net you very good AA still, and they all have low hp and low dps output, so very fast kills, or number of kills per hour. At 89+ those mobs do not give near the same AA xp, and the dps output and hp of mobs started drastically rising after TBS. Without grouping, to get from 89 to 92 by yourself, to be able to use a T1 RoF pet focus, is going to be a very long process. If that is your plan, I would strongly suggest trying to find an xp group you could join. All too often people complain about how powerful magician pets are, etc. The problem is, they ALWAYS are referring to a very good pet focus with max pet tanking AA. The difference between your low EM focus, low AA 89 earth pet and a max AA, EM 12 earth pet (which still can barely handle 2 T4 HoT trash mobs at once, molo) is tremendously different.
Also to address your beaming question. I get the feeling you are only making a magician because it's possible to do this right now (all of us realize it's probably going to get nerfed sooner than later, myself, I'd prefer it be sooner than later) and that you think it's able to be easily done solo... Generally, it's done with 2 people. A 'rabbit' gathers up the mobs (usually a knight, with good AE agro, but can be others with AE spells, also please do this only in instance zones, because it can lag out zones, and at least if you do it in instances it won't bother others) then AE agros them and continuously runs them in circles 'through' the magician. The magician pops silent casting and all burn AA, then beams the mobs as they come at him, then usually again as they are running away chasing the rabbit. After a few laps, the mobs are dead. Then you get to wait on silent casting and burn stuff to repop... heh
I made my mage in early 2000, and when I came back he was one of three toons that I missed playing. I like the beam pulls, and I have to admit, I was hoping it would be a way to make some quick AA's to catch up. I am not going to de-level because i think with help on dailies, I can probably catch up to where I need to be without sacrificing 8 levels. I appreciate everyone's help. So, I have purchased the twitching snood and I am dumping every AA I can in to the various pet AA's. What are the essential AA's to get at 90. I think I am close to maxing them out for my level. Is there a checklist of what I should have at 90 for my pet aa's anywhere?
a bit late but if you have rof or cof you might want to try the weak con beetles and neyas in shards landing
