I just started playing and chose a mage. I am now level 9 and am running into conflicts choosing what spells to train. As I do not have anything to compare to, I am wondering, does choosing which skill books to buy limit or change what I'll be able to do later on?

It appears money is the only limit to which of the vendor skills you can buy, unfortunately that itself is very limiting. I have been selling just about everything I find yet I have enough for only one new skill, so I have to choose to go to rank 2 of fire/shadow lightning, get an elemental resist spell, or try something new. I ended up buying the ice bolt and am now trying to get a rank2 for shadow lightning or fireball.

Are the elemental resist spells necessary for later mobs?

I appreciate any tips

Money is the only factor that limits your ability to get skills, other than the level req. You can even buy skills from other class trainers, this is even recommended.

Now, as to what mage skills to get, you can focus on Fire/SL and Ice bolt all accross your teens. Those are your best friends, Fire Bolt is to a mage what a BFG is to a ranger and a Big Two Handed is to a fighter. Followed closely by Shadow Lighting (endearingly SL). The choice between the two could be a matter of taste.

I highly recommend Ice Bolt for the slow factor, as you level you'll notice you can dispatch lots of mobs before they even reach you by slowing them down.

Ring of Fire is another good one. Get it as soon as you can afford it.

As to the resistances, I'd say you can skip those until much, much higher levels. My level 28 mage doesnt have any resistances and I've done just fine.

You should try to have one of the energy damage buffs (Pyromania, et al.) by level 15 or something... When you get to Sissirat.

In regards to skills from the other trainers: Stomp from the fighter and Acidic Blight from the Ranger are favorites. Highly recommended.

I personally recommend Butcher from the fighter OR Fear of Gosh, they can come in handy when you want to get that Big Boss off your back for a bit and deal with the lesser mobs.

These are all suggestions though, nothing's written in stone.

HTH,
biterman.

I have SL on my left button and FB (Fire Bolt) on my right button. I use FB to "get their attention" and to kill as many enemies at range as I can. I then use SL for close-in fighting as it affects multiple enemies.

I put the majority of skill points into Intellect and that seems to work just fine.

As for other skills, I use Ring of Fire quite a bit.

Don't forget your buffs!

Here's a pic of my 'Mage' powers I'm currently using.. but I do have more in my 'spell book'.

Linky

I suggest getting fire (my 'R') or lightning (my '1') to lvl 2 ASAP.
The poison aura (my '3') is really good dmg, I got it ASAP too. (from the 'ranger' trainer)
Retribution (my '4') rocks, auto dmg return, again I suggest this ASAP. (from the 'fighter' trainer)
The AoE fire (my 'L') is good. (fire appears to be the highest dmg for 'mages' in an 'overall' manner)
Then I got shadow bolt (my '2'), and shadow mastery (my '5') because I just didn't want to be a 'fire' mage (even though fire seems to be the highest dmg maker).
Shadow seems to be in the middle.
Ice seems to be the weakest, and thats sad, cause I wanted to be an 'ice mage' at first.

I've been playing this setup for 3 lvls now.
Hope this helps someone, and if I make changes, I'll repost them.

I have ice shards in my spell book, but I took it out of the tray, I didn't see the dmg output as worth the slot, but I'll check it again more closely.

The listed damage is per shard (you fire 3 shards/cast) per enemy hit, a target can be hit by more than one shard from the same cast if it is close enough.

And doesn't it(ice) slow the mob too?

I've found Retribution (self-buff) works rather nicely against meleers...dread generals, dead fodders, and the like. Only drawback is that it takes 200 seconds (3+ minutes) to regenerate.

I use a mix of fire and ice so far primarily fire since it's the highest dps and ice just to slow mobs down before they get to me occasionally like start off with a ice bolt or two then while they're running slow nail them with fire it also comes in handy having ice bolt ready to kite in certain spots and get a couple pot shots in or retreat to heal up a bit I haven't really used lightening much at all ring of fire is nice though. I'd suggest get fire ball best you can then snag pyromania or ring of fire your choice I went with pyro first personally since ring of fire is more of a limited use spell being that it's aoe and mages shouldn't be in close combat if they can help it anyways. As for the resists up to level 15 I haven't seen a reason to get them. I don't really see money as problem it's easy enough to come by for me so far I can't get every spell, but I can easily afford the fire spells and that's good enough plus some of the ice ones. I actually have the money saved for my next rank fire spells before I reach the level to buy them yet at this point. Try not to rely on buying potions a lot if you can is my advice since they can get expensive if your chug em left and right.

I'm 19 now and so far I think my favorite spell is shadow lightning. Maybe it is just cause it looks so cool, but it seems to do some really good damage too. I can tear through big groups pretty easy by starting with a bunch of fireballs, when they get close a shadow lightinng, ring of fire, the aoe stomp thing from the warriors, then another shadow lightning. By that time its usually just mopping up any that are still alive and I didnt really take much damage.

I have rank 1 ice bolt and mostly just use it when there are some heavy dmg melee guys to slow them down and mix it with fireball to get the dmg in. I haven't tried ice shards or shadow bolts yet, I might cause they look neat, though all the upgrades are making me broke

I like this beginning build idea. To be honest, I was underwhelmed by ice bolt. I fling it 1st, then fireball then SL the hell out of them. Picking up Stomp tonight.

Thanks!

I picked up Shadow Bolt last night and found it to be fairly effective on advancing mobs.. I keep it on my L button. If stuff gets too close (I get surrounded) I hit Acidic Blight (from Ranger) to lower their defense then Gaseous Blast? (poison aura from Ranger), Ring of Fire then Shadow Lightning. This will kill most of the stuff around me. I use SL and Fire Blast (on my R button) to clean up. If it looks like it might be particularly difficult I'll hit Retribution before Acidic Blast.

I just wish there were a couple more slots so I could have a spell or two handy that I don't use that often, like ice bolt or a resistance or mastery spell.

I just hit 20 and am still playing around to see what works best.

Why you use Acidic Blight? if you don't use a weapon you don't need it. Use Unnerving shout or Righteous Stomp it's better for a mage.

I haven't tried Shout, but I like Acidic Blight much more than Stomp.

But I don't get why you lower their defense. You use a weapon to attack them? I don't think lower their def add dmgs.

Thanks for making me check it out... man was I over thinking it.
In the first few lvls, I did swing my staff some, and would see 'miss'. I assumed any attack would have a chance of miss. I see now spells don't.
I just assumed that thier (defense) 'miss' or 'dodge' could be countered by (accuracy) 'to-hit buff' or 'defense debuff'...I'm going to blame CoH/V on that thought.
It works that I just remade my Mage; I won't choose it now.
I will miss the black cloud, and turning them that purple colour.

Acidic Blight-

"Reduces Defense Rating by X % on all enemies within X meters for X seconds."

That's the description given in game for this skill. If you played pen and paper rpgs it's the classic idea of "Armor Class". I believe that for both player character and mob the Defense Rating number is part of the damage calculation. Both weapons and spells do damage over a possible range. A decrease in Defense Rating or "debuff" gives players a higher chance to hit at the top end of our damage range.

Of course I only have anecdotal evidence that this is the case. It's the way it seems to work for me. I'll test it out if people really want something conclusive.

I am finding the chained combo of Acidic Blight/Ring of Fire/Shadow Lightning and some nimble footwork to be pretty effective at the moment. But since I've got zillions of gold maybe I'll just buy up Shout and Stomp and give them a try too.



Edited by Mama_Anarchia (02/20/07 02:44 PM)

Although I understand your thought processes mama - I havent tried Blight myself, so its all guess work - I would go with Iba's assumption that lowered defence will only effect physical attack damage.

Id love it if you could test this for some conclusive info.

Id also love it if our damage increasing buffs were swapped out for some resistance curses instead. The increase in damage is neglible compared to other classes (have you seen what the fighter dmg buffs give??) and it would just be fun to be able to strip a mob of fire resistence just before letting loose with our fire bolts.

As for my skills; I play with a Fighter and use an ice (on faster mobs) or fire bolt to pull then run quite a way behind him to avoid getting mobbed. I use the "go to" command to get in the middle then use Ring of Fire. Back out and then wear them down further with lightning. Stomp for emergencies. Poison and Shadow resist so I can get the ranged attackers on me while he deals with the melee.

Ice Bolt is also handy for slowing mobs when they try to get away from my fighter friend but I may swap it out for a Poison AoE as that sounds decent and would follow up the Ring of Fire nicely.

poison AoE is unbeliveably better than Ring of fire because it can affect more than 4-5 monsters at a time. with the boost from int it recieves its your main damage besides lighting.

Ring of fire is just a little extra to help.

oh and as of the .49 patch bolt skills are what you DON'T want to be using..

I use firebolt just to bring them in then I use gaseous cloud and then ring of fire and lightning..then repeat. Works great. I was thinkin of gettin somethin else to go in while waiting for the cool down from ring of fire and gaseous cloud...maybe the stomp thingy? I don't really wanna use that fear of gosh thingy..because it seems if they run off then I won't be able to hit them all with my gaseous cloud..and i've found the closer they are to you..the more likely you will hit more with your ring of fire before it spreads too wide.

I agree Sinister. I want to keep them all in close for my AoE's.

I'm currently lvl 26 and I cannot say enough good about Pyromania ! With the 100 extra damage per second fire damage on my Ring of Fire, then the SL and poisonous gas, they go down much faster. It's great for Boss fights. If I'm farming, I'll run to town and sell while I wait for cooldown.

I've never really used gaseous cloud. I'll have to try that.

I've been an SL/FB person since day 1.