Help with Mage sustain early

[Bonfyre]

Now that I've hit level 20 there are A LOT of creatures that hit heavy AoE damage. I'm wanting to level up with my girlfriend who plays a Knight tanking for me, however, I constantly get dropped by AoE or a single mob that she cannot taunt off me. I have unlocked the Mana Shield ability and that seemed to help a lot until I realized that buying 100 potions from the vendor would cost me 12,000gp (I cannot afford that).

All other classes seem to be able to sustain in combat using either bandages and some other form of recovery which is very cheap when starting off. Now, in my case (unless I'm missing something) I have to use Mana Shield 24/7 during my grind to avoid literally being one shot with my 430 hp. My suggestion would be to maybe add a "bandage" like mana regeneration item that Mages can use when starting the game and don't have a lot of gold pieces. Making the Mage similar to the other classes who all seem to get relatively cheap HP sustain.

Another idea might be to give Mages a new ability or abilities that can be casted to protect certain amounts of damage for X amount of time. Then this ability could be balanced for PVP by simply adjusting the PVP absorption values vs the PvE absorption values?

Please let me know if there is anything I have missed, but all the guides have suggested that Mage is really expensive and unsustainable on its own. This inevitably means I need to re-roll from my many hours of playtime on the Mage, since I just can't play with my girlfriend in the zones we want to explore and quest.

Thanks for taking the time to read through my suggestion, look forward to hearing any feedback!

[Bonfyre]

Someone has informed me that you can attain mana potions from the dailies, so I will test that out for a bit. It does seem a little rough that my points will only go towards potions and not other things, but perhaps that is fine?

[guils111]

Someone has informed me that you can attain mana potions from the dailies, so I will test that out for a bit. It does seem a little rough that my points will only go towards potions and not other things, but perhaps that is fine?

I agree that mage isn't sustainable and that it is a problem. Getting your potions from dailies doesn't sound like a good option though. You need potions to do those quests, as they are usually a little above your level. Put that with the removal of fast travel for free players and it becomes pretty hard to get potions this way. I started the game as a mage and have managed to keeping leveling only because friends are giving me money, as I have been losing gold every hunt due to the loot not covering the cost of potions. I hope they balance this and make the mage more sustainable.