Sure Mr. Lovell is supposed to be trained in the mystical arts but lets face it. If he was any good, he wouldn't have been stuck as the foreman of a dig.
On the other hand we have Lars Heyton, famous caster dude with his bodyguard Amalgam. They should be a dream team of combat.
I hit level 8 on my eleventh life (bard) and got stoned. To get to eight I soloed the first quests on hard for speed. Hooked up with friends after Korthos and ran elite from there on. After getting stoned, I decided to go back to Korthos to clean up the favor. A guildie of mine came along. We had the agenda of running all of Korthos in one hour.
We get to the quest Redemption, tear through it, get to the end in about a minute. I toss out a couple smoky balls (dancing balls with mind fog... yeah, not necessary, but I try to stay in the habit). The Sahuagin begin jumping out of the water and immediately start doing a jig. We dispatch them as they come. A few waves later Amalgam starts dancing, "wha?". Then we were outside the quest. We had failed. Mr. Heyton had died. After we cleared the tears of laughter from our eyes, we started discussing "how" he could have possibly bit the dust.
After much debate, we decided, with all the excitement, the old sot had a heart attack. We re-ran the quest, I kept an eye on his ticker, gave him a few chest pumps to keep him going, and we completed. Hope he isn't planning on fighting anything big, like a dragon. If he does, I'll tell him to run, it'll keep him alive and be good for his heart.