General

@Mesmus: There has been one, as of the RED update. F/P is currently the best bossing mage in the game.

Why is it all of a sudden people are interested in the explorer mages? No revamp as far as I am aware of...

Meanwhile Bishop is forgived in this thread XD.

Among the 2 (i own the 3 mages and if you saw who i main is bishop), F/P seems to have a better bossing potential than I/L.

If I were to give a short resumed oppinion, it would go like this:

F/P: Pretty good, their dmg is high even at lower levels, the only drawback is the DoT feature which spammy players don't seem fitting, also for the fact that you need to maneuver/stack DoT's and make a decent strategy at bossing to make this class a boss god (that or get ultra funded to hit caps with Paralyze).

I/L: Pretty cool, CL is somewhat good (not as good as lumi's reflection but well) and FO is pretty fun to look at, their unique system does helps when bossing although they have less bossing potential than F/P mages, funding one is a challenge if you ask me.

I think that's all

I made a f/p and really loved the skills. The only drawback that I could see is that we need to set up poison mist often and that every 4th job skill except Paralyze has a cooldown (about 10 secs for most). I had heard a lot of good things about i/l and switched over at 106. I was disappointed with the skills so I'm switching back this week; I say disappointed, but I was really missing the laid-back and fun feeling of f/p. I'll be making an i/l to help a rl friend who's looking to get back into the game as a cleric and then switch to an i/l, because I really do think the skills are nice.

Overall, i/l is more elegant and f/p is more carefree when attacking. I didn't mention damage at all because the deciding factor for me is the fun play style.

@JVIaplevoyager: ...I was asking a rhetorical question. I know you don't use Freezing Step that way. Poison Mist is used similarly; just cast it in one or two spots and then keep it there--it's just supposed to help keep our Drain stacks up.

[quote=DemoDango]@strenling: You never have to set up poison mists when training, though...Paralyze does the job perfectly well. Do you have to throw frozen ground everywhere before you can do anything on I/L? >:[

F/P uses ALL of their DoT spells until epic funding renders it unnecessary. It's high-maintenance, but the higher bossing damage makes up for it. Never a dull moment, I must say.[/quote]

Frozen ground from teleport is only a bonus for freeze counters when training, it's useless to teleport pointlessly around the map just to make the ground frozen. Besides, that effect only lasts a few seconds. I/L training consists of using glacial chain when needed to make a nice mob, throw a frozen orb to bring up the freeze counters and use CL until the mob is down. Throw in the occasional blizzard and lightning orb and thats pretty much it.

@strenling: You never have to set up poison mists when training, though...Paralyze does the job perfectly well. Do you have to throw frozen ground everywhere before you can do anything on I/L? >:[

F/P uses ALL of their DoT spells until epic funding renders it unnecessary. It's high-maintenance, but the higher bossing damage makes up for it. Never a dull moment, I must say.

I won't go into details, but from my experience, this is what I think:

Bossing: FP is much better, flame haze + no cooldown mist eruption + DoT stack explains it all. I/L's dmg is decent on bosses, but nowhere near as good as FP.

Training: I would say I/L because of the longer tele range, CL's range, using frozen orb on 1 platform while cleaning out another plat is useful. There's also lightning orb which is great mobbing at places like golems.

Enjoyment: For me I/L because I've played it for years and I prefer the look of the skills. I also enjoy using CL + frozen orb which is fun. The things that I like about FP more is the dmg and inferno aura which is way cooler and better than ice aura.

I tried both at high levels (198-199), and overall I enjoyed Ice Lightning more. It's got better training (For the most part, since you don't have to constantly set up poison mists and whatnot), but Fire Poison's got better damage for, say, bossing. However, it's much more involved, having to make sure you've got your 5 DoT stacks to optimize damage, along with the poison + mist eruption combos.
Ice Lightning's a nice class that you can decide to get involved in to make it a little more fun, and I overall just enjoy the flashiness and range that it has.