Magic Missile or Cone of Cold? (in General)

When setting up a Tank Mage team, what spell would be better for the Mage? This is assuming there is no CoBF and that the minion is equipped with a ToJ. If there is any further information needed to make this determination, please ask!!

Thanks!!

i've been wondering the same thing. i also have a tank and a mage. right now i'm still using fb. i think coc will be better when my pr is higher.

Remember that CoC doesn't work in ranged. Very powerful in melee though!

...or should I not bother with a mage and just have an enchanter? Perhaps one with AMF only?

I dunno EEMT, is probably my favorite generic set-up

This is assuming that the character has ONLY a Tank and a Mage or a Tank and an Enchanter.

I ran a ET group in CB1 I thought it was pretty successful. Seemed to work best with big AMF and GA. The two together are more effective than just the AMF alone. I believe that I even trained HP on the enchanter. In CB1 I ruined people with that strat, especially at the lower ranks where there alot of pure magic groups.

If you wanna try something new, I've been curious what a ET group might be like with GA and DM. Anyway, I think ET is a perfectly good alternative to the TM setup.

It depends: Are you putting the mage in front as a meat sheild, or are you putting it behind the tank? (The first option makes more sense than it seems because tanks scale to do so much more damage than magicians, and you can put a ToJ on the mage to nerf ranged attacks on your Tank.) If in front, fireball. If behind, your choice--it depends on whether or not you want ranged damage (MM) or higher spread damage (COC).

How long does your magician survive? It normally takes two rounds of melee for the COC to make back the damage MM does during range. Watch some play by plays. If you don't have a magician yet, see how long your tank survives.

Do you use (or plan to use) DM? DM makes spread damage more effective (by nulifying AS and increasing your chance of one hit kills).

I'd give it CoC.

Make the tank a nice big heavy AC archer, then CoC on the second minion for melee.

The two things I'd like to point out with this are:
1, CoC is going to need a lot of EXP in it, you want your big gun for melee to be hitting hard, yet you'll also need the HP to survive long enough to deal some real damage. AC is never easy to get on a mage so how about sacrificing a ToA for the tank and putting a ToE on the mage? As one of Sutekh's threads in CB1 pointed out, ST is weighted heavily towards the low end so it's not like losing ToA will hurt you too much. DX, well it's a heavy tank anyway.
2, AMF, AMF, AMF. How many ways of lowering damage are there that can get so big damage reduction with so little cost? If you do use this strat, I'd put AMF on the mage, not much that can beat a big CoC that lasts 10 rounds of melee these days ;)