I've not yet done peerless (returning player - been playing 2 yrs on this acct) but can't you just cast Fireball or EB to get the looting rights as a mage, rather than resort to having to use a melee wep?
I tried that - went TEN peerless in a row with no rights, and said to hell with it. Most people, when hunting peerless as a group, will break the party at some point, so that each person gets their own instanced corpse (so that if a high-value item like a crimson drops, it's random luck, not who has the fastest looting ability, as to who gets it)
And, it wasn't a melee weapon. A bow is a ranged weapon. So, I could sit back, fire off arrows faster than my 2/6 casting (with my normal equipment, not my jewelry for bow use) was letting me, and doing 25+ points per hit. All while saving my mana for my 30-mana (gotta love 40% LMC) Earth eles, which do about 15-20 points per hit as well, as well as the occasional Dispel against revenants (God, does Melisande seem to spam that spell).
All casting EBs, fireballs, etc. was doing was draining my mana pool with no appreciable effect. Of course, my mage weapon bow of choice has Hit mana leech AND hit Fireball on it. Even with GM med, 110 mana, 40% LMC and 6 mana regen, I was ending up with an empty mana pool, within a minute, and after that I was lucky to get off a third of the spells I do normally, leading to the utter lack of damage for determining looting rights.
One would be nuts to go into melee against Parox, Grizzle, Travesty or Melisande (and it's not too healthy vs. the Effusion, either), unless you're playing one of those sampire gimplates.
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