In my experience with tactics mages, you have to run faction to get it to work. I've run several variations, but the main piece for one is a spirit of the totem in my opinion, the 20 stat along with 15 hci is huge. If you chug then you can get the stats to work more in your favor, 50 enhance pots is a +31 str and agility, which when combined with 20 str off your hat adds in 82 stat points helping to boost the dex up a lot for faster swings/better hits and possibly max block (depending on how you do it). However you do it tho there will be a weakness, and I always feel no resist on a mage is horrible. One mana vampire and your in rough shape, also spell plauge is scaled vs resist, so not having it will make pixie plaugers really tough.
My favorite one was a scribe macer mage, I was blue and human so I could use some chiv without skill points (remove curse). Basically tho it was a combo killer, curse/explode/flamestrike/ai. If it hit it would usually kill someone, if it missed you had to try again. I think mace is the way to go for "hybrid" templates because of its higher damage (easier to hit 35s on ai's) and its slower swing speed can be used to your advantage (cast inbetween hits). Besides what is nastier then a war axe?
I tried all this pre imbue and before mystic was out, so the suits people ran were not perfect. I think that imbue helps templates like this out more, it is easier to get armor pieces that have huge stat increases and such, but at the same time not many people will die from an explode/fs combo anymore.
A parry tactics mage I don't think is viable, you either can't chug or you have no resist or no med both of which are very hard to not have. I would look more at a necro parry warrior for a hybrid caster/meelee since you can use 4/6 chiv to heal better w/ a shield. If you do the evader, you will survive a few ganks perhaps, but if you get disarmed it will be very tough to live, and in my experience there is a lot of disarm archers running around who are designed to kill evaders and mages w/ mage weapons.
I think bloodoath beats evade in most cases.
For a parry mage I like to run anat/eval and parry, then run the open hand w/ a shield to counter most disarming templates and to help block the archers. This leaves the offense weaker, so I like to try to fight scribe onto my parry mage templates. To do this requires a lot of skill increases, but it is doable, and of course 50 ep.
However you do a tactics mage you will have a weakness, so depending on the shard you play on, you can design the template to have a weakness that is least likely to be discovered. Some shards are heavy on mystic mages, so no resist would be bad, and evade would be very helpful. Some shards are dexxer heavy and that means you need parry or a non disarmable approach to mage play. Tank Mages got hurt badly by the tactics patch, and that is why you see so many mages running mage weapons now. If you find a successful one tho please let us know, I always love to smash **** with a war axe while slinging spells around.
