How well can a Wizard level? / AE ?

Im wondering how well a Wizard can level solo and how many/if he gets any AE spells? Im trying to decide between making a Wizard or a Warlock, I think I would like a Wizard more but I hear its very hard to level because theres so much down time on it.

Any Wizards that read this, how well do you level solo? Is there much downtime? What class's do you do best with when duo-leveling?

Thanks for info!!!

Soloing a mage is about root and nuke. Once the root breaks the mob better dies fast. If he dies before he can hit you, then there is not much downtime. If he hits you, then you have to wait till your health is back. Distance is mages friend, narrow places not so much. Adds are a pain.

Anything that can heal helps the mage. Tanks and scouts aren that gerat to duo, because the mage tanks the stuff anyways I duo leveled from 70 to 80 with an Illu-warlock duo and it was awesome fun. Dual rooting, a illu pet and emergency mezz on adds helped us to level through RoK with only a few wipes like 4 or 5 times. Warlock is insane with TC

I have both a Wiz and a 'lock; which I am a pretty much solo leveler, then group and raid once max level.
Both sorcs solo very well indeed. I seldom bother to even root single mobs; use your stun or knockdown followed by the big blast and you should have no problems melting the mob before it can touch you.
For Heroics; definitely need to root, but still quite doable. The other day I soloed an 87^^ on my 82 'lock.
As to wizard AE's; they aren't the efficient AE mob melter that warlocks are, but can be more than competent in a room full of mobs.
To be good at any class it's the same answer... practice practice practice.

They both get single and AoE root, so it helps a lot. One issue I noticed with a warlock however is that they have more DoT spells, which can have a higher chance of breaking your root, whereas a wizard burn things faster with higher damage single target spells (although this can be taken care of for the warlock by obtaining their mythical, which can toggle to turn your aoes into higher damage single-target spells). AoE-wise, a warlock is a powerhouse and will have an easier time topping the dps charts than a wizard. Wizards have around 4 aoe spells, but they don't cause the same type of mayhem as a 'lock.

I'm typically a solo-leveller also, and have played a bruiser since EQ2 launched for the most part.
I had an alt wizard that I decided to level up, as my guild felt more dps from me would benefit raids more than my moderate bruiser dps and the one buff I could give on raids. Since I already had the wizard started, I went with it.
I will say that, when compared to a bruiser, for soloing it's a bit more challenging. Well, honestly..anything besides a bruiser is more challenging to solo. What others have said is definitely true; rooting and nuking is the way to go. The range on wizard aoe's isn't very large, so to aoe groups of mobs you need to be uncomfortably close sometimes. Aoe's are best used when you're in a group/raid rather than soloing, as you'll get chewed up very fast since you can't take hits.
So, from my perspective, wizards aren't difficult to solo with, but there is a bit of challenge involved sometimes. I can kill things a lot faster on my wizard than on my bruiser, but my bruiser can take a LOT more hits than my squishy wizard. Wizards get invis and an evac, but I've still died a lot more on my wizard than my bruiser.
I have to say I have a lot of fun on my wizard... it's awesome to be able to one-shot greens and blues from a distance!

I've recently been in Thundering Steppes. I've had huge fun AoE-ing the gnoll encounters there on my wiz Ok so they are green encounters with double or triple down arrows - but I can take them all down in a cold shield > Chilling wind > storm of lightning > firestorm (sorry if I got the names wrong :/ ) combo..
I'm not normally an AoE-er in my games but it's fantastic to see a group of 8-10 gnolls drop in a circle around me lol

Wizards have the easier time soloing, due to a few more tricks at their disposal (snares, etc) and the fact that their dps style is very root-friendly if done correctly.

Warlocks should parse higher than a wizard if there is multiple waves of adds, or a giant group at once. Wizard ae's arent slouch's however, any lock I know would kill for Fission or Firestorm. The fact that all Wiz AE's are target capped to 8 or less however gives a good lock the edge usually on the huge fights.

That being said tho, you should never accept the defeat, and always make a good lock bust his balls to outparse you as a wiz.

Alright so it seems like most people are saying the downtime is from getting hit and having to regen HP. What about if you dont get hit though, or have an out of group healer just healing you after each fight. What is the down time when it comes to mana? How many mobs @ same level do you think a wiz can kill before having to sit down for (how long does it even take to regen a full mana bar?) mana.

Again, I'm a noobish wizard with only 140 AA so far (a combo of pl'ing and questing about a month ago). I'm 89 now, but my gear is pretty bad since I've done no raids with this wizard.
My solo downtime is almost always from gaining back health or dying. Spells refresh fast enough between kills that I rarely have downtime due to mana, unless I'm able to root-nuke-repeat mobs nonstop. Even then, downtime in this game is so minimal that it's really not an issue.
If I'm in a group, it's different. My dps is often affected in a group by two things: I usually group with a guildie is constantly pulling mobs and moving (as in, constantly keeping a group of mobs agro'd, rather than killing a group or set of groups and then moving on), so this means my aoe's aren't as effective and I have power issues unless there's good regen in our group. I told the guildie tank just last night he's a wizard's nightmare just to the constant moving around bit. So, even though downtime to get my mana back... or a less frenzied pace... would be great, that downtime would be very short.
If you had a healer type to follow you about as you solo'd, it would be helpful...but just know that wizards and squishies in general go down FAST. It's like you're an ant on a sidewalk, and some kid just figured out how fun it is to squish you.

AS a solo Wizard, my issue is, whats zones do I go to as a solo Wizard?
Please attach some good solid solo type zones for Wizard lvl 80. I will mentor down as well, so what do you
suggest?
Like I said I have no idea whats zones to enter to do solo work.
Please help?
Thank you
Emoiki

Ziabis wrote:

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Soloing_Timeline