Hear me out lvl 50+ mages, please

[kc0716]

Well I still couldnt decide on a good group pvp'er, but by reading around I've chosen mages for the job. Before I really get into the world of mages, I want to know what in stores for me before I step in.

1. The low solo capacity of mages. I believe that there are classes that kills fast but has long downtime and others have normal killing time with normal downtime. Mages belong to "kill faster but longer downtime" class. Now does this REALLY hurt the mage's solo'ing capacity? Won't the faster killing time make mages only a slight less efficient grinder?

2. In group pvp, priests and mages are usually primary targets right? Well is this really a problem? I'm thinking I have enough crowd control power that if things don't seem safe for me, I'll get the hell outta there with poly / CoC and etc.

3. Melee class gets better and better post-lvl 60 due to getting better items that allows more Def / Hp / Crit rate / DPS and etc. But mages and priests, the cloth casters seem to only benefit a little from decent gears to uber gears post-60. Mid gears gives lets say about 40 int total. Uber instance gears give 60 int total ( I'm just throwing numbers out for the sake of argument) Not much gain compared to getting 45 dps sword instead of 35 dps. Is this a big problem with the class?

4. Professions. I see a lot of mages going for enchanting/tailoring , or skinning/tailoring. It almost seems like tailoring is THE profession to choose for mages? How would Tailoring/Skinning compare to Tailoring/Enchanting in terms of money? I might go skinning/mining till I can afford lvl 40 mount, and go tailoring/enchanting.

Thanks for the help in advance!

[Afgar]

Mages don't benefit as much from gear as say warriors do because mages don't rely on gear nearly as much.

That is to say a decced out warrior can just as easily lose to a mage in decent gear (I think mages are pretty strong vs. warriors).

As far as tradeskills go your class really doesn't matter. If you're on a PvP server I'd recommend alch or engineering since thosse are the most useful to PvP. All other tradeskill items can be bought. If you want to just make money, take up 2 gathering skills. I'd recommend skinning and mining because they are useful for a multiple professions. I haven't heard of many people making lots of money off one of the actual crafting skills.

[Sapphire]

1. I don't know where you heard this low solo capacity thing. The only place mages have real issues with downtime are in instance situations. We also are the best AOE class.

2. Sure mages and priests are targets. It's because we're so powerful. In group PVP if you're not willing to die on the field you are probably not aiding the group that much. In any case, I went frost/arcane because I wanted an effective build for group PVP situations. I get killed far less now that if a rogue pops up I can chain Ice Block > Cold Snap > Ice Block, and pretty soon throw Ice Barrier in there. It allows me to stay in the fray while my group/raidmates destroy my attacker. I'd go for PoM if I wanted to optimize for soloing.

3. Casters can improve their crit rate and mana pool/spirit with gear too. We're just not completely gimped without it, like with a warrior. Also if melee classes cant touch us, their gear doesn't mean squat.

4. I think tailoring sucks personally unless you are an enchanter. Even then I'd take mining/enchanting over tailoring/enchanting any day. That way you can sell cloth, metals, and gems for a good profit and just buy stuff to disenchant. I personally went herbalism/alchemy because it added the most utility to my guild.

What you don't mention here is that mages are highly sought after for instances, especially at the higher levels for quickly AOEing groups of nonelites mixed with elites. The only real downsides for me have been people bugging me for food/water/portals, and then not even buffing me (what's up with that?).