Magician, pure and lonely. Is this viable?

I was thinking of creating a 2nd character focused on magic but first I would like to have your advice, please.

I usually play alone, I don't usually get into groups and I don't play PVP.
To play solo, is a pure magician viable, without combat skills?
If so, which school of magic would be more suitable, or what combination of schools, considering the creature that can be summoned with each of them?
If not, what combat skills would be advisable?
Does the haste of the light armor branch affect magic at all?

 

Pure spellcaster is mostly viable, but, you can encounter some issues, such as Shadow Creatures who are immune to magic.

For the most part though, you'll be fine. The most obvious choice here is Fire Magic. Fire magic is such a destructive force, as it should be, and should not be ignored if you decide to go the pure mage path. Life, sun, moon, water and air magic can all help quite a bit, Life for its healing, Sun for its intelligence buff, Moon for its hard hitting spells, water and air for their crowd control.

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What creatures of the shadows are those? I would like to know to stay away from them

 

Right now, they're only in Spindelskog.

Here's what the shadow spiders look like:

 

There are so many possibilities this will be a fun thread to watch

Like @Violet Ronso mentioned, there are some things you just shouldn't try to do just like there are certain areas other playstyles shouldn't do. I personally try to adapt to the challenge and come up with approaches outside of my base playstyle with varying success. Challenge is what makes it fun

Magic is very powerful even without specialization but you will need to get skills pretty high in the tree in order to have success against more powerful critters. I am primarily melee but after seeing Robert Berathian use an air mage, I wanted to have a little fun and try it out. Even not specialized, I used that air mage build to go all the way to the Ulfheim dragon solo.

I have always had fire mage capabilities for the AOE but I don't think many would argue that a spec fire mage can kill most anything in the game (except the aforementioned shadow critters). I also enjoy meteor shower from Moon but really only use when the situation calls for it.

One thing that I do that I don't see a lot of is use shields with magic. Being a tank, defense always comes first even in non-tank builds so with most magic builds I have there is a heavy focus on survivability to the detriment of DPS. I have never enjoyed the all-offense "kill them before they kill you" type of speed play.

I think if you do want some physical damage capability go with Archery as a complement to magic. I do though have some bludgeon skills incorporated with my magic decks since wands/staffs are bludgeon.

So, I'm a little all over the place but here we go:

1) I think I would recommend Fire, Air, and Moon as your DPS and Life for healing. Pull beneficial skills from other trees that fit situations.

2) The right equipment and buffs (ie food, pots, etc) go a long ways. Be sure to complement your magic and don't be afraid to try other things as you work out your playstyle (ie shields) even if it isn't always the "norm". Find what is fun for you.

3) Don't fit a round peg into a square hole. If the situation doesn't fit a build, rethink the approach and tweak or rearrange skills to fit the situation. So many times I have seen players become super frustrated bashing a deck build against a PvE wall just to have the same result.

Last little thing, a good companion can help in many ways. Summons have different features but also don't count out Taming as well. You also mentioned you are not much for group play, but if you ever feel like doing something non-XP grinding don't hesitate to reach out. I regularly hunt PvE critters that I have not experienced before. Planning, gearing up, locating, slaying. There are so many things in this game that are either forgotten or aren't visited much. My most recent targets were the spider king Xoach Trohop and Ras'al'horag. I would love to have you along in some of my adventures

 

Also recommend the Earth Elemental as a summons to have out to help you. At around 80+ level they should be a helpful and useful creature to assist you.

 

Thank you all very much, I am already building my magician on paper.
But after reading you, I'm thinking that maybe I don't make it so pure.
How about a mixture of fire magic with fire elemental, mace (wand), shield and some life magic to heal me? With this combination, is it still okay to wear cloth and what are the statistics in order of importance?

 

fire magic and life spec or fire magic heavy armor spec are really good for pve.

 

Huh, for some reason, I had written a big message but I either forgot to hit send or something...

In terms of going pure mage, it really depends on your deffinition. Here are a few things I HIGHLY recommend :

1. Wands/Staff : This increases your spellcasting immensely, by raising you attunement a lot (wands can grant around 42 attunement at the later stages), reducing your fizzle chance, and granting you other small benefits. Greagoirs suggestion on training the bludgeon trees passive is a great one, because you can get 25 "free" Strength which grants you more health, all because you are holding your wand.

2. Shield : This will increase your survivability you won't believe it. Bolster balance will help reduce Critical damage received, while Deflect will allow you to block spells and arrows.

3. Dexterity : One of your main sources of survivability in cloth armor will be dodge, so you want to dodge as often as possible. Get your dex up a bit, you wont regret it.

4. Healing : Healing should be done through Life magic if you want to play pure mage. Life spec will increase your healing so much you'll miss it if you ever try something else.


You do not need to use an elemental, unless you want to, they just act as a slight bonus in terms of damage and sometimes they end up tanking just a little!

For stats on your armor, it highly depends.

You want :

Int, for spell crit chance and spell damage.
Dex, for dodge chance
Strength, for Health
(on the armor) Dodge & Evasion power to increase your survivability
Attunement on any pieces accepting it (Gems and jewels for jewelry, chest piece and held items, and there is an enchantement once your wands are gemmed for even more attunement).
Health if everything else fails.


I personally rank Dex higher than Strength for this kind of build, others have another way of thinking, but for me, the more I dodge, the more I survive, so Dex is important. It's still important to have a big enough Health pool to actually survive the incoming hits, but once you find the sweet spot, dump everything else into Dex.

Int is super good, but attunement plays a much bigger role. think of int as a jack-of-all-trades stat for spellcasters, increasing every single spells viability, but for that reason, it's impact is much lower than attunement. Someone with 300 attunement and 200 int will do much more damage with fire than someone with 200 attunement and 300 int, but the 2nd person will have stronger spells in the other schools (all though not by much).

 

the forum database crashed last night and some posts were lost

 

or.... you could try Death / Sun
Mind you well powerful as it is, only the living dies by my hand and weaker undead.

Death is really really powerful for solo as long as you stick to all things living. you get heavy dps along with life steals back for your heals. there are many ways to play it from extreme dps, to play it safe with strong pet, to chaos speed caster who is always on the brink of death... my style which is risky but the rewards are great.

other things like obsidian creatures which are magic immune a little also cause caster issues beyond the shadow ones.

pretty much any combo of caster has pros/cons but all are doable in some fashion. I recommend sun always with any magic school just because int is one of the more important things to a caster for dmg that and the spec allows much later down the road for you to get 20%+ crit chance bonus which along with the right gear can get you 80% chance to crit... imagine those numbers

Fire is for sure a big one to consider though, even I tested it and was like wow at 120+ skills it starts to get really mean damage and can out do most over all group dmg when played right.

if you are looking for gear to play with be sure to stop at Silverdale Market. its end game gear at affordable prices. if you can't find what you seek let me know and we will try to get what you need in stock.