The Spirit Realm

I love that board for Mage info. Anyone know what happened to it? Gone offline?

Not sure what happened but I have heard its been down for a while now.

Aye, seems like it's been down at least a month or two now. I have a mage that just dinged 70 yesterday that I'm levelling up with Jara. That site was pretty useful for lots of info, was organized well, and had some pretty good regular posters. I can't wait for it to get back up now that I'm back into the game, lots of mage info I'd like to get back at --

1) what are the different pet foci and where do you get them
2) the tables and charts showing all things PET
3) which AAs to get in which order
4) random magey stuff (why does Summon Lava Orb have classes on it, but it's no drop; how is it that I never heard of Companion of Necessity, which is a mage's only form of CC besides pet off-tanking)
5) mage quests and must-have items or spells

I thought long and hard on which class to level up with the way I play Jara. Zach's roles were gonna be pet gear and panther targets, multiple damage shields on Jara, COH for pulling, bigger blasts, etc. All made much easier now with cleric mercs for both of them, full grp feeling handling multiples and burning down singles.

(On a side note, it's interesting how much the pets can be boosted with mage/shammy buffs/auras:

Champion
slot 4: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 10%
Mammoth
slot 7: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 7%
Rathe's Strength Effect (mage aura)
slot 7: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 10%
Elemental Fury
slot 2: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 5%
Fateseer's Boon
slot 11: Increase Chance to Critical Hit by 50% with All Skills

So, altho Mammoth and Rathe's won't stack, shammies boost damage mod by 17% total while mages do 15% for their pets. With Champ, mage pets can be boosted 22%. Of course, mages also have other tools for boosting their own pets. And shammies have the Panther line... if only Pet Affinity allowed Cougar on swarm pets, hehe. Guess I should dig out that old hotkey for cycling thru swarm pets and casting panther on the first 2 or 3...

Hope tower will come back up.

Some random infos for the meantime:

1) what are the different pet foci and where do you get them

The drop from ashengate would be: Magmaraug's Burning Essence :: Required level of 73.
Focus: Ritual Summoning:: will improve pets from lvl 61 to level 85
This camp can be a pain, for my mage I went there multiple days to get it has beenn more than 30 ours camping.

best starter for petfocus is POK: the new defiant vendor also has a Petfocus earring for a view plat.
Elegant Summoner's Earring : Focus: Servant of Chaos; required lvl 70
Will improve pets from lvl 66 to level 85
this is the first focus good for pets upto lvl 85
This focus is better than the focus form Ashengate.

Next I would suggest SOF DSH the task-guy in tower will sell you the beza-earring when you once a while do some of his tasks (Energized Wire Coil::Required level of 75. Focus: Spire Servant). Some of those a running tasks an can be done in less than 30 minutes solo, if you can come online and you know you wont have much time, those are nice. IF you collect those taskrewards and claim them when next time lesson running, the gain in AA is not bad.

You may can skip that also, as already with Voidb-Access zeb will offer you same pet-focus: Minor Dyadic Quartzite, Focus: Spire Servant

From there start SOD-progression and update petfocus with the augments from zeb.


Form Lucy you can get the order of pet-focus quality:
...
Enhanced Minion II Pet Power Increase(60)
Enhanced Minion I Pet Power Increase(55)
Servitor of Scale Pet Power Increase(50)
Spire Servant Pet Power Increase(45)
Servant of Chaos Pet Power Increase(40)
Minion of Discord Pet Power Increase(35)
Ritual Summoning Pet Power Increase(30)
...

the numbers of: Pet Power Increase(xx) are just to give the system an order to know which focus to use when you wear more than 1 at same time and don't have a direct meaning apart to set the order. The higher the number the better, but its not like Ritual Summoning will make your pet do 30% more damage.
The biggest step is to get any focus. From non to any the step is huge. From there you just pass step by step.


Most important Spells:
Rathe's Strength: once you have it you should never let it fade up to lvl 85 and beyond. Researchable now, get a copy in bazaar. NB: Buggy, recast after every zoning. You see the spell on you pet but noone gains the power unless its recast after zoning.
Raging Servant: at lvl 70 and from there on every 5 levels. those are powerfull, if Rathe Strength is on your pet, the RS will gain power from it also, as all the swarmpets. (researchable as well).
Those Servants last 18 seconds and deal allot of damage in this time. Apart from that, if your pet is tanking, the RS will take the aggro saving your real pet from further damage.

Airpet: best all purpose pet. the stun helps to reduce inc. damage to the pet itself and any other tank. Only if you are going to tank stun-immune mobs earthpet should be the favor.
Firepet: best dps pet unless you could invest alot of AAs to power up the waterpet.

Best lvls to gain AAs if you want to stop leveling on the road, are always the first of the next expansion. 76, 81 ... You get the Airpet and the new Bolt. As already statet the 76 Aripet is a big upgrade from any before. Its much more that just the standard n% from 71 to 76. So I agree at this stage go to atleast lvl 76.

Rathe's Str is useful for boosting the swarmpets around your main guy.

http://www.eqsummoners.com/eq1index.html has some older info still up

mage friend almost exclusively uses air pet. There are a couple exceptions tho. Range fights out comes ole flamey. And if grouped with other mages or in areas where multipulls or unstunnable nasty hitters are more common he will use rocky while other mages use air pet for stuns. Earth pet has a significant mitigation and HP advantage over air but Airs stuns and higher avoidance make it the perferred tank on stunnable single content.(the stuns don't help on add so earth pet's extra mitigation really shows here).

EDIT: If I recall correctly both the Elegant Summoner's Earring and Energized wire coil from Fenden have the same focus Spire Servant so no need to upgrade to the DSH earring from elegant unless the stats are significantly better.

For some reason they decided you have to be 5 levels over the required level to see the armor on the PoK merchant IIRC.

Someone has put together a new Magician's Tower forum. Not a lot of activity on it yet but maybe that will change.