Please critique my really old mage

[sniperspet]

I'm returning to UO after not playing in many years.

My mage always gets his ass kicked, no matter who i'm fighting. It could be because I just suck, or maybe I could customize this character to work better for me. I've never been very good at PvP but I still enjoy doing it lol - Maybe one day I'll actually win

Stats:
STR 100
DEX 30
INT 125

skills:
Wrestling - 102 (110 cap)
Inscription - 95
Eval Int - 104 (105 cap)
Magery - 104 (110 cap)
Meditation - 100
Resist - 83
Poisoning - 73

I have no special items to increase hit chance or anything for this character. I don't use inscription, so I could probably drop that. I'm not sure how useful poisoning is anymore. I think I can only cast a level 3 poison.

There are some newer skills that I see such as necromancy and ninjitsu. I'm not sure if it would be worth my while to learn one of these. I would really appreciate anyone willing to point me in the right direction here. I'm lost.

 

[icm420]

Well as far as your template it's fine, but with mages you really need to finish out your skills and that would explain why you are getting beat up. 95 inscription for example only adds 5% sdi instead of 10% at 100 skill. Magery + poisoning has to = 200 for deadly poison fields, if you are going to use poisoning you really should get that done also. Resist spell at 83 is pretty much useless also, at gm you will be better off but obviously 120 is best. For pvp 120 wrestling is important.

Your template is solid, to raise your skill lower your meditation. However if you want to change, mysticism is very forgiving of mistakes, it has a lot of power and the best heal in the game. Also since it uses focus as the "eval" you can get pretty awesome mana regen, or fit in another skill in place of meditation.

Do you know about mage weapons? A new thing is to use a -20 magery skill weapon in place of a weapon skill. You take a -20 hit to magery, but you use items to negate that penalty. This gives you a "free" weapon skill as long as that weapon is in your hand. The downside is that if you get disarmed you will be defenseless.

 

[sniperspet]

Thank you so much for this critique - I had no idea that Inscription did anything special other than allow me to make scrolls which I don't do anymore. I'll keep it, and raise it as you suggested.

I'll also work on the other skills such as Poisoning and resist and drop Meditation down a little bit in order to raise some of them past 100

I'll also research what you were talking about with a mage weapon, or a -20 magery weapon. I've seen those weapons on monsters and just thought it was something a mage would want to avoid lol

 

[icm420]

Thank you so much for this critique - I had no idea that Inscription did anything special other than allow me to make scrolls which I don't do anymore. I'll keep it, and raise it as you suggested.

I'll also work on the other skills such as Poisoning and resist and drop Meditation down a little bit in order to raise some of them past 100

I'll also research what you were talking about with a mage weapon, or a -20 magery weapon. I've seen those weapons on monsters and just thought it was something a mage would want to avoid lol

Remember that right now there is the 'focused' casting sets, so if you stick with the nox scribe you will have the 30 spell damage increase cap for pvp, mix in scribe and your at 40 sdi in pvp. At 150 intel I hit around 47 on flamestrikes. Poisoning is very strong right now, they nerfed cure potions, so this template is the "in" thing right now. I wouldn't suggest getting a mage weapon for a nox scribe, something like a mystic mage or a necro mage would benefit from it. I remember seeing a great post explaining mage weapons, I think it was on uo forums, but it's been a long time so I am not sure. UO guide is also a great resource for information. Good Luck.

 

[sniperspet]

Thanks! I'm going raise Poisoning the last couple of points to 80, along with Inscription. I'll also raise Wrestling and Eval a little, and of course Magery to 120. So at the end, I'll give the following a try:

120 - Magery
110 - Eval
110 - Wrestling
100 - Meditation
100 - Inscription
100 - Resist
80 - Poisoning

I found an easy way yesterday to raise Resist from the 50 on one of my characters to 100 within a couple of hours. I'll do the same with this character once it's not 'RED' - I don't know how I ever accumulated 8 long term murder counts, I really can't kill anyone lol

I've gone ahead and raised Inscription, Magery, and Poisoning a decent amount since posting this so it shouldn't be long now. Thanks again for all of the advice!