"Do not tank".
Meaning - if you cast damage spells on a mob while it is in melee range you are doing something wrong. You could as well play a warrior and forget to equip your armor.
Now, it's not that a mob will kill you in 1-2 hits - at the start. But at lvl 100 it does exactly this, so you might as well get used not to let a mob get into melee range early. Besides, you have much less downtime that way since you only rarely need your hp selfheal.
What is this thing I'm holding in my hand?
The start
If you plan to start as a mage I very strongly recommend taking 3 mage packages. Even if you want to do crafting and/or foraging. You will need acid 1 and fear 1, which you get with them - and buying those costs 100 SP. Exactly as much as the foraging and crafting starts cost.
So, even if you want to use those from the start, just buy them with your first magic SP (or fight SP, which was I was doing), which you will get around 10 times as fast as you would if you used only 1 package.
First thing you should do is to edit your spells (rightclick on spell symbol in action bar). Spells have a effect, which is payed by credits - sap (sap you loose when casting), hp (HP you loose while casting), range (reduces max spell range) and time (increases casting time).
Out of those, use range only moderatly and time not at all. Time credits are completely useless - tinker with them and you will see that the increased casting time (and resulting reduction of the damage you deal over time) is in no propotion to the very small amount of the total spell credits time credits give you.
Make those changes in your initial spells:
Acid 1: remove the range credit and increase the sap credit to 3 to compensate (a good spell range later are 40-45 meters, but having the full 50m will make your life easier at the start)
Fear1: remove the time credit and increase range to 3 to compensate
Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the staff.
Combat
Now it's time to bash some yubo heads in (figurativly speaking, of cource, mages are not brutes like fighters).
Target a yubo near you, cast fear, then cast acid 2 times, cast fear again, and so on.
This way you can kill mobs fighters at your lvl won't even think about (assuming they are not immune to fear, that is - beware of gingos). The danger here is that if you fail to cast a fear or the mob resists it he will jump into your face instead of running away. A failsave for those situations would be a good idea.
Which are enchantments. Rightclick on your fear spell, crystallize it, rightclick on the result in your inventory and your staff has a fear spell on it. Now you "only" need to save 40-50 SP so you can learn "create sap crystal", which you need to charge your staff so you can use the enchantment.
When you use the enchantment it will drain charge from the staff AND from your sap pool (and/or HP, if you used those bricks). The advantage of it is that it will never fail to cast the spell (mob can still resist, though) and that it will be cast in 1 second.
Note - there is currently (STILL - it is at least 1 month old) a bug - unless you craft something after you quartered or foraged mats sap crystals and crystallized spells won't appear in your inventory. So, until that is fixed in a year or so don't get the create sap crystal spell unless you can craft.
When you are fighting this way don't trust the visual display too much - it is often lagged when a mob is running towards you. It may be closer as you think...
Later, from lvl 20, I construct my damage spells usually so that they have a range of 40-45 m and use mainly sap credits, a minor range and a minor hp credit (hp credit because you are always regenerating HP, wether or not you get hit. If you do not drain them regulary you are wasting a recource). My fear has usually ranges of 25-35m, since I only use it when the mob is close to me.
---
Update: I switched to use only the fear enchantment and never cast it normally. Fear 1 does still work just fine with lvl 90 Mobs and a good staff can hold charges for 70-80 spells, which is suffecient for a hunting trip.
---
I just bought this new spell and all I got was this stupid animation
What to learn..and what not
Generally: never buy the premade spells once you are past lvl 20 (below lvl 20 you cannot avoid it). In each premade spell is a time credit, which you will never use and which will cost you 5 SP (unless you bought it already with another spell). Also, you don't really need the HP credits you buy with the premade healing magic spells. Therefore, always buy the upgrades and the scredit bricks you actually need on their own.
Elemental Magic
These are spells which directly damage your target. There are two kinds of damage spells - "(instant) damage" and "damage over time". Once you cast a normal "damage" spell you are done and can cast something else. The "damage over time" spells are "link spells". Once you cast them you form a link with your target. While the link is active the target is effected by the spell, the link brakes if you move, start another action, the mob resists it or your sap runs dry.
Which happens rather fast with link spells. The spell costs (aka HP & sap credits) you assign to them are only the costs for the casting which establishes the link, after this they drain your sap pool. Alltogether those spells are rather useless, since they seem to deal less damage over time then you deal with the normal damage spells and need more sap
---
Update/correction: While the do less damage, DoTs do not need more sap than nukes. With the right setup (time credits are actually useful here) they can be cast with not much more than the sap regenaration rate. So if you are in a party without a sap healer and you run dry repetantly they could be a good idea.
Note, though, that on the Advanced test server their damage is currently reduced, and the nukle damage has been increased there. If those changes will be seen in the game in 1-2 weeks as well isn't sure, but consider yourself warned.
---
- acid, cold & rot damage
All good spells, although you'll be using acid the most time, since most of your enemys get full damage from it, especially mammals. Most insets have resitances or immunities from acid, but get full damage from cold. Rot is used mainly against plants and therefore a rather useless damagegroup, since those are not good mage-targets.
- fire, poison, lightning, shockwave
You get acess to those groups at lvl 125. Those work a little bit different (unless they changed it during focus beta) - each of these spell groups is area-based. Fire does 100% damage to all mobs in the fyros area and nothing to all mobs in zorai, mantis and tryker lands. Poison does 100% damage to all mobs in the mantis area and nothing...you get the meaning, right? Lightning is zorai and shockwave Tryker.
Update/correction: Currently it seems all of these spells work everywhere. Every race can learn each of these spells, btw, you just need to visit the right trainers 8meaning lightning can only be learned from zorai trainers). So just choose the one you think which looks best.
Offensive Affliction
All spells here are link spells. If you do not maintain the link they last around 3 secs.
- slow attack rate & slow movement. Er.. I know I am repeating myself, but...useless. I would be very pleased if someone could explain to me why in gods name you would use "slow movement" when you can simply STOP movement with root or would use "slow attack rate" when you could simply STOP attack rate (and movement) with stun.
- Blind. Not used it myself so far, but from the info I got so far it seems it stops the target from attacking. Also rumored to erase its aggro. Any confirmations here would be appreciated.
---
Update: Blind is currently overpowered spell #1. Blinded mobs cannot attack, move and recieve full damage from all attacks on them. Expect it to be nerfed in the near future. Use it as long as it lasts or refuse to use this maior imbalance, your choice.
---
- Madness. Used it myself...unfortunatly. This is the only spell outside elemental magic which causes damage. It basically causes to mob to attack itself. Sometimes. Rarely. I tried it only two times so far, but the results were so devastating that I stopped using it.
Madness 3 vs vulgar izam: 500 sap drained, izam caused himself 25% damage (around 150 damage total I think), caused me around 500 damage.
Madness 3 vs viligant Ragus (<- lvl 14!): 30 seconds used, ragus didn't attacked himself once.
If someone used this on the later high-damage mobs more sucessfully...tell me.
- Root. Stops the target from moving, but not from attacking (should something be in range). Good for groups of ranged fighters or if you want to park a mob while the rest of the party finishes another. Usefull.
---
Update: Attacking a rooted target in melee seems to increase the chance the root is canceled.
---
Healing Magic
Heal life/life gift, sap gift, stamina gift. Their use should be self-explanatory. Note that all "gift" spells use HP credits, which isn't very usefu...er...effective since mages do not have very much of those. You can change them to Spa credits easily, of cource. Also note that sap gift (if used with sap credits) heals a lot more sap than it needs to cast (especially with a good staff). Meaning 2 mages using sap gift can keep themselves at full sap indefinatly.
Get all those spells, groups will thank you for it.
Defensive Affliction
Again, all spells here are link spells.
- Fear. Causes the mob to flee from you. It is more usefull than blind, root, stun or sleep if you only use the initial 3 sec duration. Those spells only stop the target, which with fear it has to run back at you, giving you twice the time to cast damage spells on it.
Note that a damaged mob can bring friends with him if he runs close to them under the fear effect. Note, too, that this is NOT the cause with undamaged mobs. With fear you can literary go into a mob swarm, fear a mob in it and then walking towards your honeymoon suite with that mob (and only that mob) following you. Don't walk too early, though, because it won't follow you if you are outside it's visual range (100m I think). Sleep and Stun could have the same effect, haven't tested it with them (feedback appreciated).
- Stun. Stops the mob from moving or attacking. Has a high resist rate, so it can require several casts until it gets finally stunned. Can be attacked without breaking the stun.
- Sleep. Same as above, exept that attacking it will wake it.
Neutral Spells
All groups have the HP and Sap auras and the Sap crystal spell. Never used the auras, some people like them, though. Do what you want.
---
Update...something which I completely forgot
Special Spell Bricks
These a spell bricks which do not appear in premade spells. You can learn them on their own and add them to your spells, though.
- Area of Effect
At lvl 50 you can learn 3 AoE spell bricks you can add to your elemental nukes and healing spells. You cannot use them with link spells.
Those are: Bomb, Richochet & Spray. Their info says that they should only effect up to 2 targets (at the first lvl), but it is wrong. Tests with Bomb 1 did hit up to 6 targets. Either the brick is bugged or the brick info is outdated, no idea.
Bomb effects all targets within a certain distance of the target you cast it on, it does 70% of the usual spell power to all targets. Quite usefull, especially for healing a group.
Richochet starts with 70% max power, too, and bounces from target to target (it can only bounce to a target once, you cannot let it bounce between two targets there & back repetantly). Sadly, the bounce range is pretty small. Also, it gets less powerful with each bounce. Altogether bomb is here the better option.
Spray is effecting a cone-shaped area in front of you. It has, at least according to the brick info, no power reduction. So, in a very organized party it could be a better brick as bomb. But only if all members are careful where to move. Still, alltogether bomb seems to be a better option, because it's more flexible.
So, in short, get bomb, especially as healer. Unless your group is often dealing with multiple mobs a nuker doesn't needs it.
- Vampirism
Can be learned at healing magic lvl 65 and is useless exept in bomb-nukes. You add it to a nuke spell (doesn't works with DoTs) and it heals yourself by 78 hp should you make at least as much damage.
Sounds usefull - the problem is that it costs 65 credits. A -65 credit HP or sap brick costs 78 HP/sap, so basically you are only changing sap to HP in a 1:1 ratio if you use it.
The only situation where it's usefull is if combined with a AoE nuke because you get hp from all mobs which get damage.
(Thanks to Tause, Enlil and PeteJ for providing some info here)
----
Stat Boosts
Always try to get all sap (max and regeneration) upgrades, as well as the best sapheal. Since mages do not exactly drown in unneeded SP I strongly recommend not to waste magic SP of hp upgrades - buy them with a secondary skill, like fighting or foraging.
You look terrific in this puke-green skirt, darling!
Equipment
- Staffs
The mage staffs (or gloves, if that wasn't a 1-shot idea and they'll actually change them to that) are the main bottleneck for a mage. Unlike fighters we cannot use highlvl abilities with lowlvl weapons.
You need a staff with a spell lvl at least as high as the spell you want to cast. Note that a spell you get with lvl 30 counts as lvl 40 spell, the one you get with 40 as lvl 50 spell, etc (don't ask me why). Otherwise, if the spell lvl is higher than staff lvl it isn't giving boni to that spell.
If you have a good staff you will deal a lot more damage with a lowlvl spell than with a highlvl spell without a staff. For example, acid 4 with a q40 yubo eyes staff deals 189 damage. Acid 7 (which you get at lvl 70, 40 lvls after you get acid 4) deals 189 damage without a staff. And you will still do more damage over time with acid 4 & the staff, since it is boosting your casting speed, too.
Highest priority as mage should therefore always be to search for that mats for your next staff, or for someone which is selling you an already made one.
Sadly, there are no harvested mats with good boni to elemental damage (all have only average, exept sha amber, which has a casting time bonus, but a damage malus - which in the end makes it again average with a higher sapusage). The best mob dropped foci with elemental boni I know of are fine yubo eyes and fine capryni eyes, both wich give +47% speed, +87% damage.
If you want to get similar boosts with harvested mats you need at least excellent qual.
The overall damage over time a staffboosted spell compared to a normal casted one can be easily calculated by (1 + speed bonus) * (1 + damage bonus) with 100% = 1.
With the yubo or capryni staffs this would be, for example, 1.47 * 1.87 -> 2.75. With a staff out of choice hash amber (+60%, +60%) this is 1.6 * 1.6 -> 2.56.
The grip and shaft "should" not effect the spell boosts, but they do. NO idea why. It seems it has nothing to do with the mats used per se, but by the quality of the mats. When I use only choice mats for shaft and grip a hash amber staff (+100% healing speed) gives only 90%, a yubo staff gives +80% damage instead of +87%. Luckily this can be seen in the preview.
- Armor and Jewels
The sole viable armor option for mages is light armor. Don't even think about using medium or heavy - their action malus will have very negative effects on all aspects of a spell (red numbers in spell details).
The protection factor of light is pretty much nonexistant. Because of this there is no real need to get highqual mats for it - when a mob is dealing 200 damage hits it doesn't really matter if you resist 10 or 20 damage from it. The (IMO) only reason for a mage to get light armor at all (apart from the look) is to have 5 additional hardpoints for a stat bonus.
---
Update/correction
While The actual max protection is still pretty insignificant having a high dodge bonus *does* help, especially if you use enchantments. Because using those does not count as spellcasting. So you can fear a mob who is in melee with you and still have a chance to dodge his attack.
---
Stat boni of armor and jewels should be either sap or hp (doh!). I myself prefer sap, because it reduces your downtime, but HP might be a good idea if you are dying too often (although being more cautious in combat and/or using an enchantment as backup might be more effective than having HP-boosts).
-------------
Okay, thats about all I can think of. Any suggestions are always welcome.
For the devs - my current "make those spells something other than Black Holes for SP" aka FIX THEM! list
- all offensive affliction spells exept root need a powerup and blind a powerdown
