Looking for a mage class with variety and utility - is illusionist it?

[Dragonlor]

<DIV> <DIV>I am pretty new to EQ2 and I am looking for a good mage class that offers variety and utility (I am hoping this will keep things interesting over the long haul).  I want to stay away from a class that has only one way to kill and hits the same one or two buttons continuously in combat.  I would like to be able to solo and  still offer something to a group.  Anyway, I have searched the boards and found a few posts pertaining to this topic but not many.  I wish I had the time to try out all the classes for myself and see which one worked for me, but I have very little time to do this with work, family, and real life commitments.  Any help would be appreciated.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Here is a rack and stack according to utility I found in another post.  Was this ever and is this still true?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <P>For utility:</P> <P>1)  Illusionist</P> <P>2)  Coercer</P> <P>3)  Wizard</P> <P>4)  Conjurer</P> <P>5)  Necromancer</P> <P>6)  Warlock</P> <P> </P> <P>Thanks!!</P></DIV></DIV>

[ryuk]

Personally i say coercer and illusionist should be switched around.. why?  Becuase coercer had about 4-5 different indirect high damage spells while being able to use charm and a turncoat to help in a battle. and i do play a lv 51 Illusionist and a lv 31 coercer so i hope i know what im talking about. so if you love util.. go coercer.

[Impetus]

I think I would put necro and conjuror 3rd and 4th, in front of wizards.Anyway, the main (some would say only) problems with enchanters are on raids, so if you're not going to be raiding much now or anytime soon, an enchanter would be a fine choice (hopefully we'll be fixed by the time you're up at those levels).The pet really does help with soloing, we're pretty good at that. We can do very good things in groups with mezzes and stuns and dps, and can shift between damage dealing and damage prevention. That's a strength of our class.The damage prevention parts are great in a small group, or a "sub-optimal" group that is missing a true healer or a true tank. I wish there was a greater need for our damage prevention abilities in a large group, but c'est la vie.

[Fizwi]

Impetus has the right of it as far as the list goes, in my opinion.As far as variety...yep, we do damage in a variety of fashions, from nuke to dot to pet to dumbfire pet to proc buffs...you get the idea.  There's also a lot of variety in playstyle, depending on your group makeup.  As was pointed out above, we have the ability to swing from a solid damage dealer to a solid damage reducer on the fly.  We're not top-tier DPS;  I usually am the equal of my group's well-equipped berserker against even con ^^^s, but way ahead on groups thanks to color shower, our excellent AE.  We're also not a healer, butI have on occasion "main healed" in a trio fighting high green heroics (troub + zerker + me in stun/stifle mode).  Mana regen via breeze, mana cloak, and savante is sought after, as are our single-target buffs.Soloing is not the fastest way to get xp but it is still very viable and actually pretty easy, given our pet's new abilities and our own ways of coping with surprises.Raiding is the real killjoy here.  Basically, no raids make use of our stuns, stifles and power drains.  As far as mez goes, some raid encounters *could* use it, except it's almost always better to not use it.  Also our highest DPS spell requires us to be grouped with a meleer, and also requires us to retarget every 17 seconds.  Talk about annoying.  But people do love that power regen...Anyway, I'd say I'm 90% satisfied with where my chanter is at this point (although I only raid about 10% of the time, so take that into account!).<div></div>