Hmm... Is this true? (in General)

<Nerevas> the only way to make a mage good enough is to stay 1 minion for a long time and buy 3 small minions - which I don't like doing



Is that true? If so... It raises a number of questions. Can you really say mages are cheap if you have to spend 40 mil + buying minions just to be good?

Does this come about because there is no ToA equivalent to a mage? A ToA team can put a ToA on and give a minion many millions of extra exp... But mages don't have this?

Discuss.

what exactly are we trying to make a mage "good enough" for?

Tattoo of Mage. :)

Competition at the higher rungs of the game I imagine?

Show me a successful tank at the top on a 4 minion team, that was 4 minions from the start. Tanks are in the same boat as mages in that regard. Experience dilution hurts all strats. I know, since the Space Knights was 4 minions from the get go, and my tank, well, sucked to say the least. Things got better when I put a ToA on, but the underlying problems were still there.

NWO does a nice job at being a mage as does Oxcha. Both were 4 minions from the start.

the "good enough" in the quote was meant as "good enough to beat ranger" or basically all of the top tank teams.

One can always dream :)

i will beat ranger one day i know it....

Oh sorry, i was dreaming...what'd i miss?

I remember that it was always recommended to grow a single minion and add minions later when building a four minion team. That way most of the xp in the team is focused in the damage dealer.


It might also be of interest to you that your team started off as a single minion a long way back, a single FB/Fire familiar mage. The original owner, a NUB sold up at the end of his bonus and sold the char, which then was transformed to a four minion team.

;)

Yes,

Mantra, a multi, made this from a NUB. Mantra bought minions 2-4 before I bought the character at about 1.6M MPR.

However, there are examples of good mage teams doing very well at the top starting from 4 minions.

With the advent of the NS, it makes it easier for a 4 minion mage team.

Familiars are the "tattoo of mage".

Heh, I forgot about Koy; I was talking about Oduten.

That focused XP in the damage dealer that comes about is pretty much the most powerful thing in the game. Even the ToA doesn't allow for that kind of focus; I've run two four minion teams from scratch with a ToA, and they worked really well, but the tanks weren't anywhere as big as they could have been, had I started single minion.

If you do 4-minion from the start, and you make good use of a ROE, you can still have the XP focus, and save yourself a TON of money when buying minions.

That said, you can be single minion ROE from the beginning, too, and when you buy minions, you get to buy as much XP as possible during the only 3 times that buying XP is actually allowed.

I know all about my character's interesting past, hehehe ^.^