BEST combination with Taming & Magery?

[[JD]]

Hey Y’all.. please help!

My mage-tamer has been sitting around with 600 skill points trained for quite some time and I never bothered to train the last 100 because too many choices! I’m hoping to get your help. What I’m looking for opinions on is a spec which is:

• 
  [*]Fun Solo
  [*]Able to help friends
  [*]Good at spawns
  [*]Good at peerless
  [*]Good in Doom (although I rarely do Doom any more…)
  [*]Survives in PVP as support or just maybe, able to kill people!

When evaluating a spec please consider how good it is at all these things.

I don’t want to bog you down with details of how I’m going to obtain these specs, so please don’t let the thought of “too many skills on your jewels- it will gimp you” change your opinion of any spec. Leave that part to me – I’m good at item swapping and will do so on things like vet, or will tweak where necessary.

Here’s the specs I’m considering:

Mage/Tamer

Pro: Well rounded and can have 120 resist, interchangeable with Spellweaving spec via soulstone
Cons: None, solid character, but just has only magery abilities

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Eval (94 trained, +26 items)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
100 Vet (74 trained, +26 items)
104 Med
120 Resist

Mage/Weaving/Tamer

Pro: Tons of extra goodies, good for spawn/peerless and even some PVP goodies.
Pro2: EASY to stone off/on 120 resist
Con: Can’t have resist built in, spells like pixie useless for tamer due to limited control slots

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Eval (94 trained, +26 items)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
100 Vet (74 trained, 26 items)
104 Med
120 Weaving

Mage/Mystic/Tamer

Pro: Tons of good stuff and would have RC as backup til I petballed my GD outta the stables. Lots of new AOE spells. Cleansing Winds for pet!
Con: Can’t have resist, slightly less mana regen than if I had meditation

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Eval (94 trained, +26 items)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
84 Vet (54 trained, +26 items)
120 Mystic
120 Focus

Mage/Necro/Tamer

Pro: Super efficient at spawns, but I will RARELY be solo at a spawn
Con: Has low med, can’t have resist, and an easy kill for any PVPer while I’m in wraith mode.
Thoughts: I have tried a necromage tamer with low med before and I wasn’t happy – they aren’t good in chain healing your pet situations and they are too easy to kill in PVP.

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Eval (94 trained, +26 items)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
80 Vet (54 trained, +26 items)
105 Necro
100 SS
59 Med

Mage/Disco Bard/Tamer

Pro: Ability to disco critters is huge.
Con: Can’t have resist OR eval (turns me into pet support only)

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
80 Vet (54 trained, +26 items)
120 Disco
120 Music
98 Med

Stealth/Mage/Tamer

Pro: Cool template for sneaking around and survival. Stealth protector at spawns.
Con: Can’t afford ninjitsu (smoke bomb/speed) or resist

120 Magery (114 trained, +26 jewels, -20 DCI FC1 Channeling mage weapon = 120 mage)
120 Eval (94 trained, +26 items)
120 Taming (89 trained, +31 items)
110 Lore (105 trained, +5 items)
80 Vet (54 trained, +26 items)
79 Med
100 Hiding
75 Stealth (65 trained, +10 items)

I like the Spellweaving spec because it's interchangeable with a 120 resist PVP spec. I also like the Mystic spec because it adds all sorts of great abilities. With RC I might find I don't even want the GD and would stone taming off the toon. Lastly I am curious about Disco mage bard. I kinda don't like the fact I lose Eval and it turns me into a life support system for my pet. But at the same time, if discoing bosses made them easier to kill maybe that's the way to go - thoughts?

Thanks for your evaluation..

 

[Wenchkin]

I'd say go for the stealther. If you need to help someone, you need to stay alive where everyone else might have died If you want to stay alive in all kinds of dangerous places, being able to move under stealth means you shouldn't die unless you screw up. Likewise if you want to "opt out" of a stupid gank fight in fel, stealth off to safety, call your pets and carry on with your business.

The tradeoff is a bit of a loss in power, but that's why you have multiple character slots. I think the tradeoff is more than justified once you take the time to learn how to handle a stealther properly.

I do have ninjitsu that I can soulstone over to my stealther, but haven't bothered with it. Usually I'm using either eval or herding. And the only skill boosting I tend to do is on stealth, usually +10 taking stealth to 70. So if you wanna go the skill items route then the world's your oyster.

My template has trained magery capped at 100 and I don't run with med. I'd like resist and med, but you can live without either. You can still swap skills around with soulstones if you think you need either of those. Remember, when you're stealthing you have a lot less need for resist and med than a char who is more "forced" out in the open. You're not being hit and taking nearly the same amount of damage unless you've chosen to put yourself at risk.

Wenchy

 

[omgmir]

I'd go with weaving but i'm not a fan of relying on items for skills either, and you're building your whole template around that concept.

120 Taming
120 Lore
120 Weaving
120 Magery
120 Med
100 Vet

^ is what i'm doing. I'd like to drop vet as I believe magery and weaving provide plenting of healing.. but the only other thing I would go for would be disco and dropping vet doesn't leave enough room for music/disco.

 

[Viquire]

I'd go with weaving but i'm not a fan of relying on items for skills either, and you're building your whole template around that concept.

120 Taming
120 Lore
120 Weaving
120 Magery
120 Med
100 Vet

^ is what i'm doing. I'd like to drop vet as I believe magery and weaving provide plenting of healing.. but the only other thing I would go for would be disco and dropping vet doesn't leave enough room for music/disco.

Nothing at all wrong with the above, but consider dropping the vet and putting eval in there and lowering lore to 115. Level six focus and gift of renewal, greater heal on pets is AMAZING!
You will also, as I recall, have a better chance of dispelling those very pesky revs.

 

[omgmir]

Nothing at all wrong with the above, but consider dropping the vet and putting eval in there and lowering lore to 115. Level six focus and gift of renewal, greater heal on pets is AMAZING!
You will also, as I recall, have a better chance of dispelling those very pesky revs.

As much as i'd like to drop vet I see even less of a point to taking eval. Between weaving and healing with magery you're going to need all the mana you've got, and with Word of Death and a GD, who really needs the little extra damage from an ebolt or two?

 

[[JD]]

Yeah I'm not a mega fan of all the skills on jewelry either.

I want FC 2, FCR 6 for sure. Cramming that, on top of +30 DCI and the skills on the jewels is gonna hurt. I may have to rely on the vesper shield, arcane shield, inquisitors gloves, or something else to make it happen... still working out the #s

I'm reasonably sure I can attain it with two +26 skills though so I can lower eval to 100 (74+26) and toss one of the +26's.

The vet won't matter since I will just swap jewels in via 1-touch macro to res a pet.

 

[Garm The Green]

Just do a disco bard dude. helps your pet stay alive, helps peeps in your groop. helps the tame go down, helps when you're taming even (a bit).

If you want trammy fame and high end it's either sampires (as you and i well know) or disco bards with greater dragons. I'm making both my tamers (euorpa and drachs) into disco tamers.

that said spellweavin sounds ok for WOD and extra healing - if you can match the mana drain....

Bard is mana free allowing chains of greater heals/cures. You don't need eval on a tamer if you play it right... I'm sure a rune beetle + mare + disco will do plenty of damage...you are not just pet support!

 

[Taylor]

My favorite mage/tamer template is currently as follows:

Necro/Mage/Tamer
120 Magery
120 Spirit Speak
110 Taming
110 Lore
105 Necro
100 Vet
100 Med

Good for spawns, good for Peerless, good for ingredient farming, good for PvP. I wouldn't take him to Twalo or Oaks, but otherwise he's an amazingly versatile character. Very fun.

Suit is pretty basic, with 100 lrc, 40 lmc, 51 dci, 7 mr, 60s resists. Could be made better with some better pieces/imbuing.

Arties
Mark of Travesty (Necro/SS)
RBC
Stitcher's Mittens
Quiver of Infinity
Birds of Brit
Arcane Shield
Crimmy
Orny
Conjurer's Garb

Runic/Imbued
Runic mempo
Runic arms
Runic legs
Imbued ring: 15 taming, 15 mage, 13 dci, 3 fcr
Imbued dagger: -20 SC, 13 dci, 50 hf

 

[Llewen]

I play the first option in the op, but I drop med for 55 chiv (although I still have 20 med - he's an elf). That character is a good all round character and I am able to be effective in just about anything I put my mind to, with the right pets and some experience, including pvp, and farming pets.

If you were human you would have the joat for 20 spellweaving and that would make you very strong indeed in a lot of situations, you just wouldn't be able to farm cu sidhe. I should add though that that template does require a very nice suit to really make it shine. Thankfully that isn't too hard these days with faction arties and imbuing.

 

[omgmir]

I play the first option in the op, but I drop med for 55 chiv (although I still have 20 med - he's an elf).

The first option? You play a mage/tamer with eval and resist but no med? That's like buying a ferrari and only having enough money left for 2 quarts of gas.. and you had the option to get unlimited gas but you chose a free donut instead..

 

[Llewen]

The first option? You play a mage/tamer with eval and resist but no med? That's like buying a ferrari and only having enough money left for 2 quarts of gas.. and you had the option to get unlimited gas but you chose a free donut instead..

I have 11 mr and between that and the 20 med I don't run out of mana very often. It is a weakness though, I'll give you that. It isn't much of a problem in pvp, but it is definitely an issue with high end pvm, I have to be very careful with my mana when I'm in those situations.