Mage Build R26

With the current release is it viable to have a magic user build? In the past it felt like I needed to have a character with plate armor in order to survive. This of course made casting most spells impractical.

What would be a good mage build that can solo level and handle most content?

Thanks,
Chief

 

THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION

I haven't tested it against melee or archery, so I have only a cursory idea, but my earth/water/sun build is at least a little on the weak side. Focus doesn't drain quite as fast as the warnings laid out, thank god, but to really lay down damage I have to be lucky with the criticals.

 

I personal experience, found magic to be pretty strong this release.

 

My Water/Air mage is doing great. Shield of Ice and Shield of Air work much better (but drain your focus fast). The staff works now (imbued with the school of choice) so no need to use a melee weapon unless you want to be a tank mage. Also, can imbue your chest piece with 10 attune.

No combos for Water and Air so I went back to my static deck.

 

I played with pretty much every school in a single (random) deck willy nilly and it was (from my perspective) more effective than a sword-n-board plate wearer in PvE.

 

My fire/death with polearms in leather works great for me. I live life on the edge.

 

In SOTA, I see no need or reason to want to go pure mage or pure melee or pure ranged. The skill system is one that allows you to easily play a hybrid and cover all the bases. There really isn't much of an advantage to going "pure" anything because learning other skills doesn't have any real negative effect on everything else.

The only negative is that if you spread yourself too thin, you level up everything slower than concentrating on one thing (or a few things) at a time. But leveling up a melee weapon while you are leveling up your magic attacks doesn't make your magic any worse than if you just used the magic.

Why do you all keep looking for the "pure mage"? Wouldn't you rather concentrate most of your efforts into a certain spell school or two, and also take up a melee weapon as alternate/additional damage as well? That way, if you get into trouble and run out of focus, you always have auto attack and a nice weapon to rely on until your focus regens. In fact, using a weapon in conjunction with magic can make you an even more efficient mage because you will use less focus to kill a mob when adding weapon attacks to the mix.

The ability to be diverse and multi-class is a benefit. Take advantage of it and you will find you are a much stronger avatar!

 

I'm enjoying my pure mage the release. I am nearly GM ice arrow and ice fist. The slow is incredible. Couple that with air magic and many stuns, my mage can actually fight quite well from a range.

I don't like to use a melee weapon with my mage, which is why I was thrilled to see a viable staff come into play. My mage is feeble and he shouldn't be able to hit hard with a weapon.

I guess we all have our own playstyles tho. I enjoy being pure. I have other characters to be tanky

 

Any chance you could either post a screenshot, or transcribe the effects from your most effective/highest level spells? (ice arrow, ice fist, more)

 

Here are my stats:
Acrobatics 100 (62.5 Armor Movement Effects; 6.3 damage resistance)
Ice Arrow 97 (13-65 water damage; -62.2% move rate for 22 seconds)
Ice Fist 93 (13-64 water damage; -62.2% move rate for 18 seconds)
Water Attunement 53 (+53 water attunement)
Icy Breath 36 (+22.5% cold effects)
Discharge 77 (13-37 air damage; 72.6% chance to stun for 6 seconds)
Air Attunement 41 (+41 air attunement)
Lightning 65 (17-57 air damage; 38.8% chance to stun for 5.6 seconds)
Rapid Discharge 36 (23.9% air stun effectiveness)

Still working on Chain lighting and the air and water shields. They don't need to be as high. They do drain focus like a sieve but I have over 500 focus so it's not usually an issue and it saves my behind sometimes

I also have 56 heightened awareness and 55 Train Intellegence: 38 int total. A bit of dex and 35 str locked.

It won't go this fast when the 4x multiplier is gone but this is a good place to be for handing 4 and 5 skull areas with a pure mage. I have imbued my epic cloth with fustian straps to increase focus and carapacian for spell crit. Love the armor and weapon enhancements too for bonus water attune. Can't test the air attune since the gems are not located yet. I'm keeping my eye open for them tho

Those are my basic skills...Here is a screenshot

 

Holy balls. 62% snare for 22 seconds!? Yowza. The long duration stuns are amazing too.

Thanks very much for posting those, Lord Baldrith. I really wish we had skill 100's to compare for all skills to know if it's worth investing in them.

 

Well being a pure mage has it's benefits...At the same time, I can get my butt handed to me in a big quantity. My slows are great against 1 or two mobs...but not big groups. Some creatures like Archers don't seem to be effected by slowing as much. Other creatures like wolves go pretty much frozen. I love it

I thank @Chris for the great new options for pure mages and hope that we will have combos that are good for all mixing and matching of magic schools.

 

Using wands and staves reduces the odds of consuming spell reagents.

Why do we have to cast magic at all? Because the game allows us to? Pssh!

Why are some people obsessed about making the most optimal character possible? Over the years, I've learned that the most interesting characters to play are the ones that have flaws as it opens up scenarios for team play and can also be pretty hilarious in PvP.

The "advantage" of going pure anything is that (obviously) some of us enjoy it.

 

By the way, I didn't mean to sound condescending to anyone who wanted to build a pure mage in my post above. If you plan to do that for RP reasons or a character theme, etc... then I completely understand why you would want to. I just think that adding a weapon shouldn't detract from your attempt to build a mage character.

However, Gix did bring up a good point about wands/staves reducing the odds of consuming reagents and to add to that, I believe they are supposed to have focus enhancements at some point too. So they may be viable options in lieu of wielding a weapon in the near future.

But I still think that training at least one weapon skill is a good idea, especially early on when armor and hp's are weak and you will get many up-close encounters with mobs. If/When they ever add specific weapon trees for staves/wands where you can specialize one of them to really help magic use, my opinion may change drastically though.

 

For sure, especially if you want to focus on the fire skill line.

 

I think there is little choice but to train in another weapon.. and I leveled my bludgeon innate up for the staff.. too bad its not worth whacking things with it!

 

If you leveled up your bludgeon innate why not go for normal bludgeon weapons?
It's one built i been pondering using bludgeon weapon for debuffing opponent (i.e stunning or reducing its damage)

 

Ive been thinkjing about a Hybrid but i have my doubts about the stats!!! And the armor.... Wont cloth make Focus regen faster???

I wanta hybrid archer but i have no idea what to do!!!!

 

went truth. havn't used a weapon in hand yet, still fairly low level for lack of much time, but it is still fairly survivable to run through the 3-5 skull choke points to get where you need to go. i plan on getting a wand or stave soonish to see what the difference is on survivability.

i'm surprised a couple of the dead elf corpses don't have staves or wands with them.. there are more than enogh arrows there.

 

If you return to that same scene after completing the beginning tutorial, you'll run into some live mages and can help yourself that way.