Sterny’s Completely Useless Guide to Playing A Mage
Throughout my extensive, if haphazard, career in MMORPGs I’ve developed a play-style – perhaps, may I dare to say it, even a philosophy of online life – which has helped me through the vagaries of playing a pure ranged DPS class. These rules are generic enough to be relevant to any MMORPG – be you a Blaster in City of Heroes or a Bright Wizard in Warhammer. Share and enjoy!
1 ) You will die. Die die die. You will spend more time waiting for resurrection or returning to your bind-spot than you will surviving a fight. You will miss xp on boss kills. You will miss out on rolling for loot because you accidentally released instead of waiting for a rez. You will die two feet away from a clickable quest objective. Get used to it. If you do not have the patience to spend a lot of time running back to wherever or waiting for your overworked healer to get to you, play something durable like a rogue.
2 ) Never blame your healer(s) for the aforementioned deaths. I swear, if I ever hear one more DPS caster blaming a healer for their deaths I will by the Seven Dead Gods hunt that person down and rip out their lungs with a plastic spork. You are like a butterfly in a forest fire – one hit will kill you. Your healers have only so much mana to keep you alive, you numbskull, and they also have to watch everyone else. It’s not the healer’s fault you died, it’s yours for picking a class with no hit points or defense. If you want consistent healing, play a healer so you can sit there in boss fights and make sure that at least your precious little behind survives long enough to be the last one killed because you’ve spent all of your mana keeping yourself alive and not the tanks or DPS.
3 ) You will be nerfed. Everyone on the other side will claim you are overpowered because once – just once – your six-spell combo chain worked before lag, another player, or random interruption broke it and you did a thousand gazillion damage to a tank (a quick aside to my good friends who play tanks – stop whining about dying once and a while, you over-armored pansies.) Oh, and your own side is worse, trust me – you’ll come out on top of whatever damage meter someone uses and they’ll bitch up one side and down the other that a class DESIGNED FOR DPS out-damaged their protection- or defense-specialized tank. You’ll absolutely fall in love with a particular spec because you get to drop the Fire of the Gods down on the enemy’s head and they’ll chop your DPS in half because of the Legion of Whiners spam-flooded the CSRs’ mailboxes. If you can’t face that prospect, play something which never gets nerfed, like the previously-mentioned defense-specialized tank.
4 ) Everyone will tell you the spell line you’ve chosen to specialize in “sucks.” You’ll hear this from everyone, that is, except other DPS casters. Rogues, priests, tanks, even passing NPCs will tell you how much of an idiot you are to have chosen to specialize in Neutron Nuclear Basket Weaving instead of Freezy-Soft AOE Goo Projection. Ignore them. Actually, from time to time, /ignore them. Are they currently playing the class? No, they aren't, are they. Chances are they’ve either: a) played your class to level 10 and quit after finding out how bitter the taste of face-planting into the dust is every five minutes, or b) read a forum post once and therefore have a PhD in Telling Everyone Else How To Play.
5 ) On the topic of forum posts – read them only if you want your blood pressure to rise to aneurysm-provoking levels. This applies generally to any class, by the way, because a brief acquaintance with the forums will inform you of two things: a) your class is overpowered and/or sucks because it’s wimpy (often simultaneously) and b) anyone who plays your class is an idiot and doing it wrong. So, read the forums only to get clues for quests and to post screenshots of your most amusing death.
6 ) Remember this mantra: First Dead, Last Rezzed. Face it, you’re not essential for most fights. The tanks and healers are key for group survivability, but the only purpose you serve is to make the fight a bit shorter. Just bring along some crochet, a paint-by-numbers page, or a good novel to read while you’re waiting for a rez. You aren’t the One Blessed Child of Eternity, you’re a DPS caster. The healer will get to you when he or she gets to you.
7 ) Control your aggro. For pity’s sake, if you cast on the MegaUltraBoss before the tank has even wafted his axe gently in the boss’s direction you’re an idiot. Wait for the tank to bop the bad guy a few times – you can watch the enemy’s hit points and wait for them to dip a bit before unloading. The good tanks will even announce “go to it, blow ‘em up” and THEN you can let loose with your Nuclear Basket Weaving Annihilation Dragon Star Burst attack (yes, I know it sounds Anime, but have you seen some of the things the designers call most caster attacks?) Refer back to 1 and 2, above – if you mess up or the cards are stacked against you and you die, SHUT UP AND LIE THERE WITHOUT COMPLAINING. You’re blasting away at the bad guys and turning them into ashen bloody husks of painfully-writhing flesh, in case you hadn’t noticed, so it just might happen that once and a while they might get annoyed at you and decide to stomp you flat.
8 ) You may have heard of the term “glass cannon” – i.e. you deal a lot of damage but are fragile. Forget the “cannon” part – you’re glass. Do not be deluded by the massive world-shattering damage you do to inanimate objects and computer-controlled idiot monsters. The first PvP opponent you play will be a) more often than not – but not always – smarter than the computer; b) have resists which reduce your 2000-point Ball of Flaming Phlegm attack to 50 points; and c) for some reason decide that what he’d really like with his fava beans and light Chianti is a side of Sliced Mage Tartar and ignore everyone else to chop you up. Just go into PvP combat with the conviction that you’ll be dead within seconds and just blast away like there’s no tomorrow. Remember Hudson from Aliens – the “Game Over” guy? His death scene consists of him standing his ground against hopeless odds, blasting away with his auto-rifle. That’s you, seconds away from death, but snarling out a last defiant quip before planning your run back from the rez point.
So, to sum up – play a DPS caster if you don’t mind dying and like to get a few blasts in before you die. Remember to thank your healers for even bothering to waste a few heals on you, you mana sink, and remember; you may not be able to heal, or survive damage, but you can always have the best-dressed corpse on the battlefield.
Throughout my extensive, if haphazard, career in MMORPGs I’ve developed a play-style – perhaps, may I dare to say it, even a philosophy of online life – which has helped me through the vagaries of playing a pure ranged DPS class. These rules are generic enough to be relevant to any MMORPG – be you a Blaster in City of Heroes or a Bright Wizard in Warhammer. Share and enjoy!
1 ) You will die. Die die die. You will spend more time waiting for resurrection or returning to your bind-spot than you will surviving a fight. You will miss xp on boss kills. You will miss out on rolling for loot because you accidentally released instead of waiting for a rez. You will die two feet away from a clickable quest objective. Get used to it. If you do not have the patience to spend a lot of time running back to wherever or waiting for your overworked healer to get to you, play something durable like a rogue.
2 ) Never blame your healer(s) for the aforementioned deaths. I swear, if I ever hear one more DPS caster blaming a healer for their deaths I will by the Seven Dead Gods hunt that person down and rip out their lungs with a plastic spork. You are like a butterfly in a forest fire – one hit will kill you. Your healers have only so much mana to keep you alive, you numbskull, and they also have to watch everyone else. It’s not the healer’s fault you died, it’s yours for picking a class with no hit points or defense. If you want consistent healing, play a healer so you can sit there in boss fights and make sure that at least your precious little behind survives long enough to be the last one killed because you’ve spent all of your mana keeping yourself alive and not the tanks or DPS.
3 ) You will be nerfed. Everyone on the other side will claim you are overpowered because once – just once – your six-spell combo chain worked before lag, another player, or random interruption broke it and you did a thousand gazillion damage to a tank (a quick aside to my good friends who play tanks – stop whining about dying once and a while, you over-armored pansies.) Oh, and your own side is worse, trust me – you’ll come out on top of whatever damage meter someone uses and they’ll bitch up one side and down the other that a class DESIGNED FOR DPS out-damaged their protection- or defense-specialized tank. You’ll absolutely fall in love with a particular spec because you get to drop the Fire of the Gods down on the enemy’s head and they’ll chop your DPS in half because of the Legion of Whiners spam-flooded the CSRs’ mailboxes. If you can’t face that prospect, play something which never gets nerfed, like the previously-mentioned defense-specialized tank.
4 ) Everyone will tell you the spell line you’ve chosen to specialize in “sucks.” You’ll hear this from everyone, that is, except other DPS casters. Rogues, priests, tanks, even passing NPCs will tell you how much of an idiot you are to have chosen to specialize in Neutron Nuclear Basket Weaving instead of Freezy-Soft AOE Goo Projection. Ignore them. Actually, from time to time, /ignore them. Are they currently playing the class? No, they aren't, are they. Chances are they’ve either: a) played your class to level 10 and quit after finding out how bitter the taste of face-planting into the dust is every five minutes, or b) read a forum post once and therefore have a PhD in Telling Everyone Else How To Play.
5 ) On the topic of forum posts – read them only if you want your blood pressure to rise to aneurysm-provoking levels. This applies generally to any class, by the way, because a brief acquaintance with the forums will inform you of two things: a) your class is overpowered and/or sucks because it’s wimpy (often simultaneously) and b) anyone who plays your class is an idiot and doing it wrong. So, read the forums only to get clues for quests and to post screenshots of your most amusing death.
6 ) Remember this mantra: First Dead, Last Rezzed. Face it, you’re not essential for most fights. The tanks and healers are key for group survivability, but the only purpose you serve is to make the fight a bit shorter. Just bring along some crochet, a paint-by-numbers page, or a good novel to read while you’re waiting for a rez. You aren’t the One Blessed Child of Eternity, you’re a DPS caster. The healer will get to you when he or she gets to you.
7 ) Control your aggro. For pity’s sake, if you cast on the MegaUltraBoss before the tank has even wafted his axe gently in the boss’s direction you’re an idiot. Wait for the tank to bop the bad guy a few times – you can watch the enemy’s hit points and wait for them to dip a bit before unloading. The good tanks will even announce “go to it, blow ‘em up” and THEN you can let loose with your Nuclear Basket Weaving Annihilation Dragon Star Burst attack (yes, I know it sounds Anime, but have you seen some of the things the designers call most caster attacks?) Refer back to 1 and 2, above – if you mess up or the cards are stacked against you and you die, SHUT UP AND LIE THERE WITHOUT COMPLAINING. You’re blasting away at the bad guys and turning them into ashen bloody husks of painfully-writhing flesh, in case you hadn’t noticed, so it just might happen that once and a while they might get annoyed at you and decide to stomp you flat.
8 ) You may have heard of the term “glass cannon” – i.e. you deal a lot of damage but are fragile. Forget the “cannon” part – you’re glass. Do not be deluded by the massive world-shattering damage you do to inanimate objects and computer-controlled idiot monsters. The first PvP opponent you play will be a) more often than not – but not always – smarter than the computer; b) have resists which reduce your 2000-point Ball of Flaming Phlegm attack to 50 points; and c) for some reason decide that what he’d really like with his fava beans and light Chianti is a side of Sliced Mage Tartar and ignore everyone else to chop you up. Just go into PvP combat with the conviction that you’ll be dead within seconds and just blast away like there’s no tomorrow. Remember Hudson from Aliens – the “Game Over” guy? His death scene consists of him standing his ground against hopeless odds, blasting away with his auto-rifle. That’s you, seconds away from death, but snarling out a last defiant quip before planning your run back from the rez point.
So, to sum up – play a DPS caster if you don’t mind dying and like to get a few blasts in before you die. Remember to thank your healers for even bothering to waste a few heals on you, you mana sink, and remember; you may not be able to heal, or survive damage, but you can always have the best-dressed corpse on the battlefield.
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