lemme tell you all about a big fight we had in cazic with 2 troll sk's, 1
monk, 1 ranger, 1 ogre shaman, and me, the lonely little wizard (everybody
was in the lvl 24-26 range, me being right smack dab in the middle at 25)...
don't worry, the moral of the story is at the end if you want to skip the
details :)

monk is pulling (he seems to know the maze the best... and the big fat ugly
trolls and ogres get stuck in the doorway trying to get out.. hehe. anybody
that's been to cazic knows what i'm talking about). monk pulls 4 defenders
and 1 sent (all conned blue except for sent which conned white). monk comes
out, and immediately, the trolls and ranger jump on the sent first (the ogre
shaman DOES NOT engage, as he is our acting healer). i cast tishans clash
(stun) on the sent (great starter spell, as it does a little dmg, and gives
the melee guys a few free licks). by the time the stun wears off, i blast
him (frost shock) once to finish him. the two trolls move to the first
defender, monk and ranger move to the second defender. i stun the
monk/ranger defender, and turn around and blast (frost shock) the trolls
defender (at this point, i'm close to half down on mana). shaman is healing
the guys that need it, as well as the ranger. monk is hurting the worst so i
finish off his defender (one blast of frost shock and he becomes a runner,
so i cast shock of fire to finish him). trolls easily handle their first
defender at about the same time. two defenders left, shaman running oom, as
well as ranger. i have enough for two more blasts and a stun. trolls, monk,
and ranger jump on third defender, while i stun the fourth. then i turn
around and cast dmg on the third defender that is almost dead to finish him
(he went REAL quick with 4 melee and my dmg on him). we then turn to fourth
defender (who is just getting out of his stun), and finish him quickly (i
did not need to cast on the fourth defender, so i ended up having a little
less than a bar of mana left).

end of fight, and everybody gave out a big WHEW! we all congratulated each
other on a terrific battle, and then went to clean our britches out heh.
one of the best we've had, and one of the most "organized" (one death and it
would have been considered a failure). it just worked out that everybody
knew what we were supposed to be doing (no, we didn't plan on pulling 5, but
it just ended up like that, and we had a zone close by, so we knew we could
run if needed). mind you, that at this level, i probably could not have
taken one on my own. i probably would have had a resist or two, or maybe a
spell that did half dmg, or enstill may falter, etc.... Some of you may
say, "well, lets see, 6 of you, five of them, all blue, with one white....
your group could have just individually solo'ed them". NOT! remember, the
whole is greater than the sum of it's parts :)

all dmg tolled, i didn't get touched once (everybody else but the shaman was
less than half health, the shaman was 3/4 health), but i was able to cast at
the beginning (doing 34dmg) as well as keeping the melee guys from being hit
as much (although i do wish the recovery time on tishan was a little
quicker, as i'm really starting to like it). if i ever blasted with my
biggie twice on a baddie, he woulda come after me (unless the second blast
was a finisher of course).

the point of this msg is to show you that 1.) the stun spell we get at 20 is
not very useful when solo'ing, but it sure did come in handy that night, and
2.) i don't care what anybody says, no other spellcasting class could have
replaced me in that particular fight (mainly because of the dmg/mana ratio i
was getting on my dmg spells, as i was casting when the monster was over
half dead, which usually means full dmg), and 3.) you can use your big
spells in a fight (and should as they are normally gonna be your best
dmg/mana ratio spells), and 4.) monsters don't frenzy you if you time your
casts right, and don't get to rapped up in *blasting* the heck out of the
monsters.

if anybody else has any cool or unusual group fights involving us little
'ole wizzies, i'd love to hear them, as I'm still trying to master the art
of grouping without getting hit... it's real tough holding back when you
know you can blast that baddie straight to errr. well, a bad place :) it's
also very embarrassing to start your group tell "oom!!! oom!!!" when there's
still one or two baddies left :(

Sinlaru Ce`alen
Rallos Zek

ps. this fight went real fast, so some of my details may be a little sketchy
:)