A Guide to Mages comment thread

[Ruvanal]

Try leveling up the resist stick as a mage.  Unless you're constantly in parties who don't mind you spewing resists and piddly damage at mobs, wands are very much garbage for mages.
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I must stongly disagree with this. I have not had any major problems in leveling up Littledude's wand skill. Most of the skill up has been done while soloing, not when in parties.

If your wand skill is too much below the mob_level*5 point then you sill usually end up getting lots of resists and no skill ups when using the wand. The game is taking into acount your chance of actually doing damage when awarding the skill ups. It actually works more like the fishing skill in that if the target mob is too high compared to the skill then it will substitute in a failure message (Resists) without telling you that the target is effectively beyond your skill to hurt.

Many players make the mistake of starting this weapon skill up late and then give up after only short amount of effort in trying to raise the skill. I have been able to keep the skill up at a reasonable level just by using the wand when a mob is starting to run that will not go and draw more mobs in when it runs around. This usually gives me from 1 to 4 shots at the mob and about every 1.5 shots on average give me a skill up when fighting mobs of +/-4 levels of my own. Also the DPS of my current wand (not the best posible for my level) is about half that of using Scorch. A decent comprimise to use when low on mana and needing to keep an out on adds to be sheeped or using Fire Blast to stop a fleeing mob an in instance situation.