janus hope is my martyr mage. she is a real challenge to play since she is a "pure" mage (meaning she uses magic to kill) with no war magic.
she is next on my list to get to 50th. at 50th she will be able to spec magic defense. this would put her at being spec'd creature magic, life magic, mana conversion, and magic defense. i am not sure that is even possible, tho i figure that if a character can spec creature, life, and war (known as the CLaW mage) then a creature, life, and manaC mage can spec magicD as well (a template i like to call the G-CLaM). she also has lore, which i thought about specializing, and that may come in time :-)
the problem with her is that she is tricked out to be a support mage. she is everyone's best friend when group hunting or questing, but hunting her solo is difficult. she has to choose her enemies carefully. so far, her hunting ground has been the gredaline consulate. i am getting pretty tired of this place, since it was naihanchi's old hunting ground, and i would imagine will be kablammus's as well. i decided to try hunting her out in the open near qalabar since there are lots of undead there, which mages do well with.
well, she did ok against the level 60 stuff, but not so well against the 70+ stuff. part of the problem is her, part of the problem is me. i haven't played her in a while, i have been focusing on my melees and my hybrids, so my chain casting skills are not quite leet enough to play her with real effectiveness, and i have lost touch with some of the issues she faces when soloing.
her problem is that magic yield is not enough to knock the higher level monsters down to her level. she can't really afford for her hecatombs to be resisted, since her main attack hurts her as well as the monster. the yield problem i have solved by adding bafflement and feeblemind to the debuff lineup. this helps to knock their magic resistance down more than yeild alone, though getting all 3 landed on a stubborn monster can be particularly time consuming. she has the skill to cast level 6 buffs, but i am short of cash and scrolls to outfit her. once she is on 6's, her all around skills will go up, lessening the chance of enemies resisting her.
also, she has to get close to stuff in order to drain it, and she takes a long time to kill creatures, which means she ends up standing in the spawn, constantly fighting. she is fighting undead and shadows, who drain a lot. it's sad to say, but getting drained hurts her. it's sad because she uses all of her fluids to kill stuff, so when the enemy steals them with drains, it diminishes her effectiveness. ironically, she relies on drains to kill you would think that she would know how to resist them, and yet she doesn't.
that is where my problem comes in. her tactics in the open man she ends up tanking a few monsters on their spawn. not exactly helathy if you can't kill quickly enough to top off before the next spawn. she needs to go into every fight with her fluids maxed, and start the fight from a safe distance. i am not patient enough to top off between fights (a by product of playing melees) even when i do have time. i have also stopped carrying potions and stuff on her, stamina, health, and mana, a sort of "emergency reserve" for when the fluids get low and draining isn't possible. with the addition of potions to her arsenal should lessen the death from blowing all 3 tanks (health, stamina and mana).
so, with changes in strategy and loadout, and the much needed addition of patience and better buffs, janus's slow road to 50th will hopefully be a bit smoother.