Im going for a pyromage aoe build, and my skills are currently fire bolt, gas blast, and ring of fire. I keep shadow lightning on my right button, but i have tried out crispy critters and think its better, what do you guys think? It gets resisted much much less, has a 1 second cooldown and is AOE, which is good for farming. With eq bonus it can do more damage than lighning and with no cooldown does a lot more AOE damage close range. What do you guys think?

Well, its not technically an AoE spell...

But CC does a buttload of damage and is better to "clear a line" to escape a mob, kite, and then "turn and burn" (you like that term..I know you do..I better trademark it quick! )

Shadow lightning is the good ol' standby, and much more generally useful imo. It hits more targets, uses less mana to do so, and if youre looking for efficiency (i.e. killing the most targets over the shortest amount of time over the largest area) then Shad Lightning is it. Plus, SL hits targets all around you, further back in ranks, etc.

Secretly though...I'm more of a CC guy myself too Most of the time its like using a hammer to squash an ant in regular mobs - and who doesnt think thats fun?

I love crispy critters, I have it on my right click and it rocks. I tend to get swarmed even with chill bill by my side and it works great against most mobs, I use fire bolt for longer range stuff still. I have ice and shadow as standbys against fire resistant critters.

Personal preference for me is CC. Just seems to have more impact for me, even if not mana-efficient.

Ever since Crispy Critters came out, I've ditched Shadow Bolt + Lightning for Fire Bolt + Crispy Critters as my primary damage spells for PvE.

So far it really looks like CC is the clear favorite!

CC can also hurt in PvP but most mages don't risk going that close to use CC

It's also pointless. Crispy Critters does sad amounts of damage for an overpriced amount of mana. It's only efficient for large concentrated groups, which doesn't happen in PvP.

Shadow Lightning all the way.
As you level up, this becomes
one very powerful skill.

I'm going to say: both.

The way I do it, and the way I see AOE mages as most effective, is with ALL AOE spells and using both CC and SL.

Here's my setup:

Left click - Crispy Critters
1 -Ring of Fire
2-8, buffs, passives, BSOL, Gas Blast,
Right Click - Shadow Lightning

IMO, you don't need a skill that hits one mob at a time (fire bolt). A round of shadow lightning, Ring of Fire, Gas Blast, and with spamming CC, you shouldn't have many more mobs left to kill. CC is the perfect range if you wan't to kill ranged monsters too. It soaks up your mana at times, true, but if you have a constant stack of mana pots and grab a lot of groups at once, CC is well worth the drain. AOE mages tend to use a lot of mana pots anyway.

I just respeced to AoE mage for the xp gain, and, now that you mention it, I think I'll switch out my bolt for SL. I kept the bolt so I wouldn't have to wait for RoF, for example, to recharge, but I think you're right about SL.

I tried the full AoE build when Crispy Critters first came out, and personally I find it "over-saturated". The thing is, Shadow Lightning and Crispy Critters have "overlapping roles": they're both fast cooldown AoEs, and usually it is a choice between using one or the other.

The idea is to use CC while SL is in cooldown, but SL's cooldown is so quick that most of the time you're forced to choose between the two instead of having them complement each other, and CC is so effective often you will not be using SL until most of the monsters are dead and the remaining ones spread out: which you can finish better with a spammable Bolt Spell, or even continue using CC (which can function as a low damage, short ranged, high mana cost bolt spell... though of course, a real bolt spell is still better).

I find it better to use one of the fast cooldown AoEs and its corresponding elemental bolt: use the bolt for attacking while the monsters are advancing, the AoE for the main battle, and bolts to clean up survivors. There is not much point to use two fast AoEs.

IMO, using CC/SL with a bolt spell is like having a rocket launcher and a machine gun, and using CC and SL together is like having two rocket launchers (if you want to be nitty picky, one is loaded and one isn't to start with), but you can only fire one of them at a time: almost exactly the same as just having one rocket launcher, but without the machine gun. It's like having both Ice Shards and Shadow Bolt on: pointless.

Another reason to not use both SL and CC together is elemental splitting. With a fast AoE and a bolt, you can focus your equipment on giving a single elemental bonus, maximising your damage. If you use two fast AoEs with different elements, you are effectively splitting the damage you do into two categories, meaning you'll have to either focus on one element and impair the other, or split your bonuses and wield both at less-than-optimum power.

Well said, but I've been playing today with both (splitting bonuses between fire/shadow), and the mass murdering is keeping pace quite well. I can't say for sure that's it's any faster, but it's definitely not any slower.

Once the 'supermob' loses about half it's ranks, CC, it seems, is less effective because the casters and rangers are spread around. I can hit many of them at once with improved shadow lightening until GB and RoF recharge.

I can definitely say that leveling my second character has been much less tedious since I respeced from fighter to AoE!

The reason why I find Shadow Lightning to be ineffective as a "cleaning up spell" is because its range is extremely limited, and its cooldown means it is not spammable. Also, if you click on a monster before SL's fully recovered (sometimes even after it's recovered, for some reason), you will run madly towards the monster to whack it with your staff/wand; and that wastes time. IMO, Shadow Bolt does the job best with its homing ability, and Fire Bolt's speed and range is decent at cleaning out stragglers too.

To each his own, good sir. Just because you don't find the combination effective doesn't mean it isn't. Everyone has their way of playing, and I can flip this conversation around and bring up points that would say bolt spells are slow and less-useful than another AOE spell in it's place. But, here goes my strategy.

From levels 55-100, 12k-15k XP per hour was the average XP I was pulling in from Balzack's Burrow. When pleveling at level 100, people were amazed at how fast I was cleaning up the place. I gave my exact skill bar setup to various people, and they have complimented me and keep telling me how "easy" it is to use, and how effective it is.

Here's what I do, when I pull in some groups of mobs. Pull group, pull group pull group, pull group, do this 5 more times..ok, backtrack a little, go into a CORNER (So you do not have your back to any of the mobs) and do a Ring of Fire. Spam CC until most of the mobs in front of you are dead. Right click to do shadow lightning on the remaining. The Shadow Lightning has a perfect range agreement with CC, which means, when I right click on a mob and run up to it until the distance for Shadow Lightning, that's just the perfect distance to finish em off with 1 or two clicks of CC (if there's still any left). Before the CC I would do another RoF or GB just to make sure. RoF is a pretty good area spell in that it throws fireballs out in a circle and the fireballs hit the ranged monsters. Usually the only ones left after the first RoF, first spammage of CC and first right-click of SL, are the ranged mobs that are a bit too far away. So the SL gets me close enough to them, I click once or twice to char-broil the rest of the ranged mobs, and while the one-or-two-clicks of CC is going to the ranged mobs, I can already start to attack any other mobs left, usually SL is already charged by then

All in all, I find the combination very effective and i've even had experienced AOE mages come up to me asking how I level so fast. Well, there you have it. Follow that formula to some degree. If you run a place on normal , gather 5-9 groups up, you will find that my strategy works very well. The CC kills all of the ones that can attack you from close, and SL and one or two clicks of CC will finish the rest.

NOTE: after writing all this, I noticed nobody ever specified which difficulty these tactics would be most useful. I'm talking about normal difficulty xp-gain-only. If you're on a higher difficulty looking for more loot, then the situation is completely different as far as spells go.

I never said it is not effective. I stated explicitly it was my personal opinion. It may be that the AoE build is faster, and it was merely my frustration at how "inflexible" it is (IMO, of course) that made me refrain from using it.

The way you use the AoE build is more or less how I attempt to use it (it is the only way, I might even say...). My problem is that you barely ever use Shadow Lightning: probably two or three shots near the end of the battle as you have outlined, and still using Crispy Critters as the main damage dealer even then due to Shadow Lightning's lack of spammability.

Basically, I find that Shadow Lightning plays very little part in battles as its overshadowed by CC: you could rely on RoF, GB and CC throughout the entire battle, the only part SL contributes to is the finisher; which even then it only has a support role with the other AoEs and CC being your main arsenal. So in this case, SL basically fills the role of Bolt spells in a general, single element Mage build: for the cleaning up process.

Therefore, the "tie-breaker" between single element Mage builds and the full AoE build is mainly between SL and a bolt spell: which one is better for cleaning up scattered monsters? While SL is an AoE spell, it is not very spammable, and its AoE effect is dependent on how close the monsters are together (which might or might not be a problem, depending on your position). It's damage, while good, is unstable and sometimes it can do very little damage: which happens very often as it attacks multiple monsters.

Bolt spells can only affect single targets, and damage depends on what kind of bolts you use: Shadow Bolt is IMO superior to SL in range (barely) and stable damage, with the ability to home in to targets (SL more or less does it too, in a way); but it is a different element to CC, the main AoE. Fire Bolt's damage is probably about the same as SL, and is fast and long ranged (meaning it can take out escaping ranged mobs easily). It might be on equal grounds: my personal opinion is that bolt spells are better, but at this point it is mostly speculation; so I cannot say with certainty that it is. It is merely my preference.

Also, an AoE Mage lacks range. One advantage of bolt-users is that they can pick a few monsters off a group before they get close enough to start bringing out the big guns. An AoE Mage is much more lacking in that area (again, probably not much of a problem, especially with huge groups of monsters where taking out single targets at the beginning means little).

And, since the subject was on leveling, I would expect difficulty settings to be on Normal, since using any other difficulty would be making things unnecessarily complicated for yourself.

Just as a final thought. On Normal, monsters have low HP and die quite easily. I often find that they're mostly dead after a serving of RoF, GB, and a healthy dose of CC: SL is not needed at all during the main action (but we already agreed on that). You don't need that many big guns. The straggling injured can be dispatched with a single bolt each, usually: SL supposedly does it faster for being an AoE spell, but while it can kill loads of mobs in one hit, it sometimes barely depletes any HP at all... you often find say three dead and the rest barely touched by the spell (Improved Shadow Lightning helps of course, but sometimes not by much, especially when monsters aren't clustered together). This applies also to some bolt spells (fire bolt springs to mind), but the problem is less in bolts because they're spammable, while SL is not, which can be frustrating.

DISCLAIMER: The above is my PERSONAL opinion only. I do not seek to impose it on anyone, only to voice my PERSONAL opinion on the matter.

In my experience, CC hits 1 or 2 targets with the bulk of the damage, and a few others will take some heat. Improved shadow lightening, in a tight crowd, will definitely hit more targets, but I went back to all fire (plus GB) just to concentrate my spell boost.

shadow lighting but only if i hav shadow bonuses