Mage without a pet ??? (Light armor!)

Glorious_Platypus · August 15

So I'm playing my wonderful little mage woodelf dude. Sorcorer actually, I guess, technically. But he's a mage. And ... kinda getting tired of the whole pet thing. It takes up a spot on my action bar and I just don't like that, it shouldn't, let me have my 5th button. Jeewiz. Mr. Cleanfear, I love you, but the games actions bars are like trying to live off of one tiny morsel of stale bread per day, it just isn't enough.

Just kinda wondering about the viability, if anyone's tried it. Would I have to convert to stamina or health / heavier armor? But he's supposed to be a mage so... light armor is what he uses. There are Rooting spells in the toolkit but they are pretty ineffective and if I get rid of my Cleanfear just to HAVE to put a root then the change is pointless and I'd rather just keep the dinosaur.

AcadianPaladin · August 15

My mages are pretty happy using a tank companion to hold foes and let the mage concentrate on her damage. There are a couple tricks I've learned with tank companions to make sure they don't don't die. First, keep an eye on their health and heal them as needed. Secondly, I like using either the companion medium armor skill 'Vanish' or Mirri's class skill 'Twilight Mantle'. Either skill lets them briefly disappear and heal. I prefer Mirri's skill for two reasons: First, it lets her wear all heavy armor instead of needing to wear 5 pieces of medium and, secondly, the disappear is briefer and almost never long enough for the boss to process her absence, decide I'm a better target and target me - so I rarely have to change my full damage rotation.

Another very different approach is to use subclassing. If your sorcerer grabs Aedric Spear from the Templar class you have a nice set of passives and spear shards provides a nice area immobilize. Alternatively, if you grab the Warden's Animal Companions skill line you can slot the bear in your ultimate slot. I much prefer sacrificing my ultimate for a summon (instead of one of my five active skill slots) and the bear seems more durable than the clannfear.

My sorceress mage actually does all of that. Mirri the tank, Bear summon and Spear shards immobilization - she almost never gets attacked. Drawback is that she actually uses zero sorceress skills.