Word of warning, Empyre. The post 50 fire pets may be useful in some situations, but I mostly lowered my head in mourning and said goodbye to Sparky.
Now for the question at hand, pros and cons of playing a magician.
Enchanters and wizards have lines of spells to keep the mobs off them while they take their time killing them. Magicians are more of a "burn it down a.s.a.p." caster. The only thing standing between us and an angry mob is our pet. The pet heals help in lower levels. Once you hit PoP and beyond the mobs hit too hard for the pet heals to be relied on.
Some things I like about being a magician:
I can summon all manner of goodies, from really useful to downright silly (beer & fireworks). The summoned phantom armor can be given to pets to increase their AC. It's also fun to stop by a newbie garden and supply sets of armor to non twinked newbies. The summoned focus items serve casters quite nicely until they acquire armor with focus effects.
We're fairly gear independent. Even naked, as long as we can grab a few malachites, we can still deal out quite a bit of damage. This is true of most pure casters.
Up to PoP levels, we're very effective soloers. There are magicians around who manage to solo past 50, but to me, the risk just doesn't outweigh the rewards. Can't find a group, or just don't want the hassle, find a nice little spot and let the killing begin. The first time you solo a giant is a happy moment.
We can't buff, rez, summon corpses or transport others. Your play time is largely your own with very few /tell requests. I like helping people, but I want to do it on my schedule.
If you want to excel at tradeskills, a pure caster is a great choice. Because of our high intelligence, we skill up much faster than a melee or hybrid in most tradeskills. Fast skill ups = money and time saved.
Those are some of the pros. Here are some of the cons:
We get the same line of anti summoned spells as druids. The problem is that there are less and less "summoned" mobs in the game as time goes on (none reported so far in GoD). Why, when there are certainly no shortage of animal and undead mobs for other classes to excel against? This is a bone of contention for many magicians.
No way to root, snare or mem blur mobs when things are going badly. The best escape route we have is to hope our pet stays alive long enough for us to get off "gate" (which I don't usually have memmed when I fight.)
We have no damage absorption line of spells. Wizards and enchanters do, and they're quite handy. This means you'll either be a smart caster and not pull aggro, or you'll be a dead caster. It's a fine line to walk, which I think magicians do very well.
Magician spell research can be a nightmare and expensive to learn. With the advent of the bazaar you can get to level 65 and never learn spell research. I started playing before then and had little alternative. I have to say I'm proud of having this skill maxxed. I was too stubborn to stop once I'd put so much time into it.
Our pets have not scaled up with the mobs we face in higher levels. This makes soloing at high levels difficult, at best. I essentially gave up soloing for experience in my low 50s. Grouping has been a lot of fun for me, but it was a big change, which is very frustrating to many magicians.
People blame pets for all manner of things (breaking mez, pushing mobs, getting aggroed.) The fact is, our pets can't break mez anymore, and unless it's fighting near a mob near another that will assist it, they don't get aggro. Pets will push the mobs to some extent, but not more than melee players do. Careful positioning of your pet can actually help mitigate melee push. You may have to educate others about your pets.
This is not really a "con" but an fyi. Poor pet control ticks people off (and rightly so). Learn every pet command and when and how to use them. A magician who consistantly shows little regard for pet control gives us all a bad reputation. It also gets our pets banned from some hunts when it's really not necessary. All the other classes must be able to trust us to keep our pets under control at all times. After all, it's what we do!
This isn't an all inclusive list of the pros and cons of being a magician, but hopefully it will give you an idea of some of the perks and challenges of the class.
This class, like most, could stand some attention from the devs. Even so, I've tried every class in the game and keep coming back to my magician. She's simply the most fun to me.
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