A Guide to Mages comment thread

[Skandranon]

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.

Not quite so sure of that. I've gained a skillup off of a "resist"; in fact, off an entire chain of resists with nary a hit to be seen. Just like other classes can skillup off misses: when my paladin started learning swords, she hit air on her first fifteen or so swings and got a skill point on each one.

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.

Wands are very difficult to start early: it's possible to go quite a number of levels without seeing one. My mage in beta and my current one in release didn't see one until the Spark of the People's Militia quest reward, at around 17 or so. The lowest level wand I've seen requires level 7, so the only way to start early is to twink one - putting the burden of skilling up wands on a baby mage at a level where they are extremely ill-equipped to do so.

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.
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I've never seen that rate of skilling up. This is how I work on wands, too, but only infrequently as there are many times when I am soloing in mob-infested areas.