Ok.. my comments.

I don't think that we should necessarily know when a root spell is running
out. Although it is our spell and we may know everything about it, we do
not know everything about the monster we are casting it on. We don't know
what kind of resistances he has, we don't know how much willpower or mental
strength he has, etc. Because of this, I think it makes sense that we not
know exactly how long it will last.

Some notes on Shadow step and Fade: 1. Fade sucks. I can only hope that
others have had better luck with it than I, but Fade has never put me more
than 5 feet from where I was when casted in combat. Casted out of combat it
usually takes me a good distance, but in combat it has never been useful.
Shadow step is a lot better. It takes you a much farther distance and seems
to work in combat better as well. I have found (can anyone confirm this)
that fade and shadow step *usually* will teleport you more or less in the
direction that you are facing, but will sometimes be to one side or the
other. I have almost never seen a time when they will teleport you behind
where you already are. I keep shadow step and gate memorized right next to
each other most of the time, but in a dungeon shadow step loses its
usefullness and i will replace it with something else.

O'keils radiation does pretty much suck. I don't understand why it was
given to us because we don't (to my knowledge) get any other damage shields,
so it is not like a series of spells or anything like it should be. I still
use it a little at level 10 (and I think it does 3 damage now, not 2) to
help our tank out a little, but I think by level 12 or 16 it will be out of
my repertoire.

I wish we did get more buffs for groups (that are in line with the wizard
theme), such as raising magic resistance or a better damage shield (I
remember some MUDs that had a sweet high level wiz spell called fireshield
that would do THE AMOUNT of damage inflicted on the player back to the mob
with each hit. Probably a bit overpowered for EQ though :)

Anyway.. these are my thoughts.

-Solric