A Guide to Mages comment thread

[Ruvanal]

Apologies for the derail, but I have to ask:  How are you doing this?  It seems to me like the direction a mob fless in is mostly random - while fleeing away from you is fairly common, I've had mobs run in other directions, or even straight past/through me, nearly as often.  :(
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In my experience, if there is clearly a direction away from me (take into account that some of the time exact position is not accurate do to positional desync with the server; see rogue grumbles concerning things like 'target not in front of you' etc.), I have found that about 75% of the time the flee direction is in the 90 degree cone centered on that line away from me. So while there is some uncertainty about the direction it is rather controllable. It is better than when I watch some mage just stand still the entire fight having a mob come straight in at them then end up turning to flee such that they are heading almost straight back toward where there are the most other mobs of their type. Effectively that player just set themselves up to be sure that have a fleeing mob go backa and get more help since has effectively been herded back into its own troops. This can also be very critcal when you are stuck in a postion where you end up with 2 or more mobs on you and the stuttering from the attacks of the untargetted mob may disrupt you long enough to let one slip away before you could nail it. I would rather know that it is not like to bring in an add in that case than to have to worry if I can make it through potentially more adds that it bring into the already messy fray.

Skandranon:

In general, such repositioning seems to me to imply placing myself between the mob I'm attacking and its social friends in order to drive it to an empty spot. Which is fine, except for the part where I have to get closer to the group of mobs that I desperately don't want to activate. Safety, for me, is finishing with Cone of Cold, Fireblast, and Scorch if necessary, since I can guarantee that they won't run far simply by not using wands.

Since I generally try to pull the mobs from the outer limit of my Frostbolt range and not my near the aggro range to the mob, I generally have plenty of room to move closer to the main pack without drawing any of the others onto me from aggro. I can also do the postioning often to have the mob go to one of the sides that do not have mobs in it too, so there is not always a need to get much closer to the main pack and still herd a fleeing mob away from the main group. I had also found there was not much point in running far from a target that is held in a Frost Nova as it was more likely that I would blunder into other mobs any way.

I also usually do finish most fleeing mobs with Fireblasts, Improved Arcane Explosion or other instant/fast cast spells also. But I know I want my wand skill to keep up with other weapon skills rather than have it fall into to the situation that several of you take as an automatic situation for how the wands are going to operate (lots fo resists or low damage partial resists). So I do look for opportunities to get a few shots off here or there so that the skill can keep pace so that I can avoid needing to do some sort of gruelling run just to get the skill back up to where it should be. Also if you check out, a lot of the better wands they have cast time of 1.5 seconds or less and can actually end up delivering that quick last bit of damage needed to finish a fleeing mob before it gets far. It just means that you need to already have your skill up so you do not face masses of resists.

To me keeping the wand skill up starting early in my mages life just gives me more options on what to effectively do in various situations.