[bullsaxe]

PvM mages aren't really at par unless they are roaming around in a map where they know the dangers, which is usually the case but the basis of my argument is that if you have a mage vs meele go into a unknown area, let's say a RD and see who survives longer I would argue that meele would more often have much stronger survivability:
(In case of human)
-Resist pots
-Natural high health pool
-Naturally high AC and resists from equips
-Resist scrolls
-Being able to dish out high amounts of damage to almost every monster
While mages can only be effective against monsters who they aren't weak against, lets say get a fire mage against a fire shogh and the mage is trumped while the meele can cut it down by just drinking a pot.

Now they both have to fight against what they can damage like I understand not all meele's can fight a diamond golem or similiar but most high tier or late game monsters have naturally a higher resistance to mages than they do too meele.

Some people say that because mages don't have a naturally high health pool and can't sustain as much damage they have escapes built into their class choice, such as teleport or escape hole, but teleport can easily get you into a worse situation and hole is an item and everyone benefits from it, even meele. Mages also have the highest disadvantage when it comes to random summon traps because if you step on one of those babies without having a tremendously high ac, like from full plat, you'll get devoured by mono's or ghasts or what have you.

Also PvP is not even comparable since mages have to burst, hope they don't get caught, and hope they don't have sustain, which most do, all while having their damage trumped by 300 gold or a resist pot, while conversely for mages to trump their damage it's a lot more gold intensive.

That's been my experience in the game anyway, my highest character was a 24 human archmage. I've also had the benefit of experiencing a 22 naga and 20 rakasha and I remember the overall experience to be a lot safer and slower with mages and a lot more dangerous and faster with meele.