Positives of an I/L?

I guess the positives are that its your story and you can play how you want too. Other than that, there aren't any. Mages aren't made to boss. They lvl like no other, but are the weakest bossers. Your I/L will be exactly like your bishop excepting no heal, no invincible, no door, no holy symbol, no res, no holy shield. I mean, the reality is AM's get the short end of the stick anyway you look at it.

How do you know you won't like an attacker class? I have a lvl 152 Bishop and 160 Bow Master. Once you get a high powered attacker, bossing becomes "fun". I killed pap in under four minutes the other day on my BM. I have duo'ed zak before, simply because everyone else died, but I did it.

You can simply hate attacking classes because they do more dmg to a single target than your bishop, or you can just join the crowd and make one yourself. Every class has its own benefits.

One last note. If you made the strongest I/L mage in all of Maple you would still be "just a mage." I mean seriously, they are the pariah of pq's. If a party needs a mage, they will look for a bishop.

I really think Maple should do something about making F/P and I/L have a stronger singe target attack skill, as it is right now they are getting shafted from every direction. Bishops beat them in every conceivable way, and attacking classes beat them in every area thats left.

[COLOR="Teal"]We just spam CL and summon ifrit at HT. It's pretty boring. If we tried to use blizzard it'd probably dc people. You have to be more careful during runs because we're dependent on mp, not hp, so having bishops heal won't do anything.

As for CL not being weak, it is. CL is made to be a mob skill, not a single target skill. Of course it' used as our dps, but paralyze is stronger at HT. The only time CL comes in handly is during the body, hitting an arm or leg can link to the wings and other arm/tail, but I can't see that far so I'm not sure exactly how far it goes.

And yes, game is I/L biased lol. Give f/p fire weak guardians and give us...ice neutral?

Nevertheless I still love my I/L, so your call.[/COLOR]

Honestly, with 7 bil you're better off making a physical attacking class. Even if you become the godliest Arch Mage in Maple, you'll still barely be stronger than a Dark Knight without Berserk.

If you're making an Arch Mage to boss...then lol. I don't know where you got the idea that Arch Mages are bossers, because they're not. If you like killing area bosses then go for it. You're still not going to get invited to HT, Zak, or even CWKPQ unless you're good friends with the runners. Even then, you'll be more of a liability than an asset. Bishops are better than Arch Mages in every way that matters. It's sad, but true. Hopefully the KMS balancing patch II has better things in store for Arch Mages.

I/Ls are fun... for training. Bossing, you're never going to excel in, no matter how godly your gear is. Make a corsair or something, with 7m you're going to get a REALLY good gun, because they're so cheap anyways. Plus they have a boat and the can fly.

Your last statement was completely unnecessary.

I never said Elquines was strong. If anything, Elquines and Ifrit are helpful in the lower 4th job for their extra DPS, but they rapidly become among the most useless skills in the Arch Mage's skillset in the higher levels. Also, I never said Paralyze was strong either. I merely said that CL is weaker than Paralyze on single target and weaker than Fire and Ice Demon on 4+ targets. I'm sure you're already aware of this. However, to put things into a better perspective, imagine this: Rick, a 14x average shadower was able to deal double the DPS I could (level 164) on Scarlion+Targa, despite me spamming meteor on them.

I'm quite amused that you don't wish to train with your best mobbing skill in a gold mine. By choosing to use seal and CL to train, you'd be cutting your experience twofold; you'd train even slower than a Shadower does. Logic says: you kill twice as fast, so you'd gain time ores twice as fast, so you'd not only earn the money you used on potions back, you'd make profit. Wasting time using meager skills just so you can save that MP is useless.

Anywhoo, we're derailing the topic.

I'd be using the other skills because training with just blizzard is boring. I have fun training with seal and CL. And on smaller mobs, like the ones that usually form in oblivion 4, I'd probably be better off with CL anyways, since 8 hitting a small mob with CL is faster than 2 hitting it. And as I said before, if I happen upon a large mob, I would use blizzard, but that rarely happens at ToT. Then again, you probably have more experience in ToT than I do and know how often large mobs occur; however, from what I've seen they don't happen often.

And one reason to make a mage is because skills are constantly changing. Pretty much every set of rebalancing in KMS mages get changed. I'm guessing in either june, july, or if we're lucky april or may we'll get the next update here in GMS. In an interview, KMS claimed they were considering changing the magic formula. If they do, it could potentially mean the end of mage's disadvantages when it comes to onyx apples, and perhaps even in bossing DPS in general. However, if mages get decent bossing DPS I do think we should also train a bit slower, eg. a cooldown time on ultimates.

and perhaps even in bossing DPS in general. However, if mages get decent bossing DPS I do think we should also train a bit slower, eg. a cooldown time on ultimates.

Then every class would be the same?

Then every class would be the same?

No, not the same. All the other classes train around the same speed and do about the same damage, but they're different. I just want smaller differences between magic and physical classes. Right now AMs train twice as fast as any class, but do the least single target damage by far. There should be differences in training speeds and bossing damage, but not nearly as extreme as they are now.

Skills aren't constantly changing. It's only changed twice. Both times, skills were changed because they needed to be up to par with their "Legend" counterparts. The third time was to change the skills so they're more balanced with each other among adventurers. I doubt they'll be changing again. Also, it's not just the magician class getting the changes.

Despite what you may think, using an ultimate at Time Temple isn't 'boring'. You still have to move around to get to the mobs. It's the same thing as using CL and seal because you're just using the same skills over and over again anyways. That's what grinding in Maple is. Also, you still need to use ID and CL to finish spare monsters at Time Temple when you're blizzard training, because the map is so spread out. It's just a lot faster using blizzard as your primary attack because you're killing more monsters at the same time.

Finally, you a class to play a class. You don't play a class so that the gamewriters can cater the class to your liking.

Skills aren't constantly changing. It's only changed twice. Both times, skills were changed because they needed to be up to par with their "Legend" counterparts. The third time was to change the skills so they're more balanced with each other among adventurers. I doubt they'll be changing again. Also, it's not just the magician class getting the changes.

Despite what you may think, using an ultimate at Time Temple isn't 'boring'. You still have to move around to get to the mobs. It's the same thing as using CL and seal because you're just using the same skills over and over again anyways. That's what grinding in Maple is. Also, you still need to use ID and CL to finish spare monsters at Time Temple when you're blizzard training, because the map is so spread out. It's just a lot faster using blizzard as your primary attack because you're killing more monsters at the same time.

Finally, you a class to play a class. You don't play a class so that the gamewriters can cater the class to your liking.

Ok, mages constantly changing was an overstatement. I'm just hoping they'll get changed again. While I liked the changes in the last class update, it really wasn't enough to balance mages. One problem is how much more 1 WA is worth at high levels compared to 1 MA. Before items would give 1 WA to 1 MA, and they've gotten a bit better and made it 2 MA to 1 WA, but those items are still so much more beneficial to physical classes than mages. If KMS is really trying to fix mages, they need to do so at the root of them problem: the formua. I don't know if KMS will update mages again, but I don't see how they would update any class besides buccs and not the most broken classes.