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Pure Mage (GM Magery/Myst/SpellWeaving - which spells from each school do you use the most?

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
Current build:
100 Magery
100 Eval
100 Mysticism
100 Focus
100 Spellweaving
100 Meditation
120 skill I'm mulling over -

Fighting overland mobs right now (Oni Point on Homare) - so I use:

Rising Colossus - getting a lot of fizzes so likely going to work on 100+ scrolls once I get the $$

Once the RC engages I'll start hitting the mob with Plague (Myst) followed by E-bolt (Magery) or Bombard (Myst) - toss in an occasional Flamestrike depending on resists - then use Word of Death from Spellweaving. And heal myself with Cleansing Winds or Greater Heal...

Sound about right or am I missing a combo that would work. So many spells to choose from :)

Any advice is appreciated!
 

Malee

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Your build atm is what I am except I'm at 120 in all of them. I would take them all to 120 instead of adding another skill at 120. Not fizzling any magery skill is sooo worth it. You will still sometimes fail at mystic and spellweaving spells since it is a 99% chance even at 120. (I can go for days without a fail then fail at rc's 10 times in a row.) 120 eval will boost the damage you deal with magery spells and help summons last longer - focus works the same with mystic. You will want med at 120 also to help with mana regen. You can never have enough mana regen.

With magery you pretty much use fireballs, ebolts, and flamestrikes. If you're not hiding, poison works well also. I also like chain lightening and meteor swarm. If you need or want to be mounted, 2 ev's still work well enough. With mobs that dispel easily, 2 earth ellys work better. Don't forget greater cure - sometimes cleansing winds does not cure the higher poisons.
With Mysticism, if you are on foot you can use stone form in order to never be poisoned. (Works great at EM events, medusa and proxy.) Hail Storm is good also - it deals cold damage. If you can remember to use the healing stone (I never do.), it is very handy in a pinch.
Spellweaving is great. You will want this one at 120 for the boost in word of death damage and in duration of gift of life. Also use the mastery three with for this one as you can get a level 6 arcane focus with just one other spellweaver and again for the spell power and duration boost. The summon reaper mastery spell is a nice aoe summons. Always remember to cast Gift of Life which is the greatest spell ever. If you are running thru dungeons or areas heavy with mobs, use gift of renewal (regens health) and attunement (absorbs damage). Reaper Form is good for boss fights to get that extra sdi in for word of death. Arcane Empowerment also gives an sdi boost and a healing spells boost. Wildfire and Essence of Wind (cold damage) are good aoe spells.

If you do not have a spellweaving mastery yet use the magery one until you get the spellweaving mastery. The magery mastery spell, Death Ray, is decent but it gets interrupted extremely easy and drains your mana quickly. Ethereal Burst is handy in a pinch but has a loooooooooooooong cool down timer. The mystic mastery spells are completely worthless - don't even bother with getting the mastery.

Hope this helps some. :)
 

Lord GOD(GOD)

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Current build:
100 Magery
100 Eval
100 Mysticism
100 Focus
100 Spellweaving
100 Meditation
120 skill I'm mulling over -

Fighting overland mobs right now (Oni Point on Homare) - so I use:

Rising Colossus - getting a lot of fizzes so likely going to work on 100+ scrolls once I get the $$

Once the RC engages I'll start hitting the mob with Plague (Myst) followed by E-bolt (Magery) or Bombard (Myst) - toss in an occasional Flamestrike depending on resists - then use Word of Death from Spellweaving. And heal myself with Cleansing Winds or Greater Heal...

Sound about right or am I missing a combo that would work. So many spells to choose from :)

Any advice is appreciated!
Pure generally means 'one school of magic'.

You are missing how this works.

Take your example monster - Oni - they are vulnerable to Demon Slayer, so you should be holding a Demon Slayer spellbook.

There is no SDI cap for PvM so you can overload this to your hearts content.

Next it's resists are highest in physical/fire/poison and lowest in cold/energy. You can have one Colossus doing physical damage, or two Energy Vortex's doing energy damage, I'm assuming your SDI is fairly low if you're relying on summons for distraction as normally it isn't needed to kill an Oni with spells.

All schools of magic (despite it not being explicitly stated in their respective books) have their spells in circles, the circle essentially means the cast time (longer = more chance of being interrupted, unless you are playing in Protection, in which case you should just use the highest damage spell for the monsters weakest resist), mana cost and damage of that spell. For example Meteor Swarm/Chain Lightning are both 7th circle, they have the same cast time, mana cost and damage, the only difference is that one hits fire resist and the other hits energy resist, so if the target has weaker energy than fire resist then that spell will do more damage.

Mysticism has the high damage 7th circle spell Hailstorm - cold damage - which Oni are weakest against. Mindblast is also cold damage and casts faster than Energy Bolt/Bombard as it is a lower circle, Bombard is a physical damage version of Energy Bolt so not particularly useful against a monster with high physical resist. (Bombard also has the potential to briefly paralyse a target, however, this is calculated against the targets resisting spells and is unlikely to be useful against anything worth fighting.)

Unless you have 4/6 casting Word of Death is a very slow cast and with more SDI and the right spell choices you could most likely out damage it with normal spells in the same time frame.

Spellweaving and Mysticism are heavily defensive skills that add little to fast combo kills for overland monsters that generally die in 2-3 hits anyway.

Compare this to a Necro/Mage attacking the same monster:
In Wraith Form - so you are never out of mana as you leech it all back.
Corpse Skin - lower it's fire/poison by 15 (it puts phys/cold up 10, but this is still better overall than the Mystic attacking due to the spells you can use)
Flame Strike/Evil Omen combo - cast this way around, the Omen casts fast enough to land before the damage from the FS, and boosts it's damage by 25%
Omen off of Chain Lightning also - giving you high damage coverage of the main weaknesses monsters have.
Fast casting spells to finish red lined targets - Pain Spike/Wither
Apart from Wither the above can be done with 60 Necro/60 Spirit Speak - giving you spare points to strengthen the character in other areas.

Your current template lacks any synergy of skills, as in they don't compliment each other well for any particular purpose, and are very much playing a jack of all trades master of none type of template. Hybrids are fun but try restricting it to two schools of magic and making the character stronger overall. For example, you could drop the Spellweaving and add Inscription - this would give you more spell damage with your Magery spells and some innate Casting Focus (5 iirc) to prevent you getting interrupted as much. Or you could drop Mysticism/Focus and pick up a Bard skill, Provoke monsters to fight each other, or Discord to drop their resists and skills these also come with powerful Masteries, the Discord offensive Masteries can even be set to attack the resist of your choice. Or if not a Bard skill you could fit Taming in there. Or warrior skills.

Mysticism doesn't really offer a lot for the amount of skill points it requires. It's best spells are:
Enchant - on very specific dexxer builds
Stone Form - defensive - works best on a dexxer
Cleansing Wind - defensive - slow cast time
Healing Stone - defensive - very good! Like carrying Greater Heal potions and 50 EP
Spell Trigger - imo best used for an emergency Cleansing Wind
Hail Storm - offensive - cold damage version of any 7th circle spell
...Rising Colossus - offensive - slow, takes all slots, physical damage, less coverage than two summons

All of the other Mysticism spells are pretty useless as they are either void damage (hit a random resist) or are less favourable damage type versions of spells you already have with a more complete magic school. For example, Eagle Strike, why would you want an energy damage version of Fireball if you can already cast Lightning/Energy Bolt to cover that damage type.
 

Malee

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Your current template lacks any synergy of skills, as in they don't compliment each other well for any particular purpose, and are very much playing a jack of all trades master of none type of template. Hybrids are fun but try restricting it to two schools of magic and making the character stronger overall. For example, you could drop the Spellweaving and add Inscription - this would give you more spell damage with your Magery spells and some innate Casting Focus (5 iirc) to prevent you getting interrupted as much.
I've used this template for at least three years now. It's my favorite toon. If you enjoy using magic, I wouldn't change it - just work toward those 120 scrolls. Maybe in pvp dropping spellweaving for inscription would make sense but not in pvm. If you use the protection spell, no need for casting focus. The 10 sdi from inscription is not worth losing the ability to cast gift of life and word of death. Word of death may not be needed for ettins and ogres but definitely useful at em events and for bosses.
 

Lord GOD(GOD)

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
I've used this template for at least three years now. It's my favorite toon. If you enjoy using magic, I wouldn't change it - just work toward those 120 scrolls. Maybe in pvp dropping spellweaving for inscription would make sense but not in pvm. If you use the protection spell, no need for casting focus. The 10 sdi from inscription is not worth losing the ability to cast gift of life and word of death. Word of death may not be needed for ettins and ogres but definitely useful at em events and for bosses.
It doesn't matter how long you've played it if it's not effective. If you're playing in Prot/Stone Form with Gift of Life, Attunement, Renewal, Mana Shield and Colossus just to take out an Oni then you're playing defensively to an insane amount rather than just killing the things. What's your goal to stand there getting dumped on by AI or kill and loot things?
 

Malee

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
For me, it's very effective and I didn't say I was fighting only onis with all that. The OP is fighting onis and his skills are only gm so he probably does need all that. Once he gets scrolls and levels to 120 he can fight harder creatures and survive. He is also probably still building a good suit and a library of slayer spellbooks. If he is having fun with this skill set let him, I have fun with mine and can do any pvm content in game with it because it is effective. His original question was not how to change this skill set but how can he play this skill set more effectively.
 

Lord GOD(GOD)

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
It's the same skill regardless of who uses it there's nothing unique about the skill on your character to improve the effectiveness of what spells are available.

I didn't say anything about you fighting Oni's, I was speaking to the OP, though for some reason you decided to make a ridiculous comparison of using WOD on Ettins, when we were talking about Oni. It's still counter productive to use it on those but I digress.

His question wasn't how to play this effectively. He asked if he was missing something to do with combos - to which the answer is yes - as he is throwing three schools of magic at targets with no (apparent) understanding of how the spells of any of those schools work.

Telling someone that throwing physical damage attacks at a monster with high physical resist is being effective is (obviously) not as effective as using the right damage types, and the right damage types are more easily enhanced with other skills than those mentioned.

Failing to address the spells used and just get 120s is not good advice.
 

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
I believe the reality is that fighting more challenging monsters you're looking at GM+ skills with Slayer books - and while I do understand how resists work, I believe you're absolutely correct, having three disparate schools of magic don't make a tremendous amount of sense. I think I'd have been better served with say a 120 Magery/Eval/Inscription/Wrestling/Eval/Resist with Magery mastery - pretty sure I'll be focusing on that rather than thinking the diversity will net me unique results.
 

Lord GOD(GOD)

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
If you 120 eval, which you would obviously want to for spell damage, you could use 100 anatomy instead of 120 wrestling and have the same defence. This would give you spare points, which combined with some skill items will let you have another skill on there at a good level. Poisoning is a good option and as little as 60 to 80 will work.
 

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
Pure generally means 'one school of magic'.

You are missing how this works.

Take your example monster - Oni - they are vulnerable to Demon Slayer, so you should be holding a Demon Slayer spellbook.

There is no SDI cap for PvM so you can overload this to your hearts content.

Next it's resists are highest in physical/fire/poison and lowest in cold/energy. You can have one Colossus doing physical damage, or two Energy Vortex's doing energy damage, I'm assuming your SDI is fairly low if you're relying on summons for distraction as normally it isn't needed to kill an Oni with spells.

All schools of magic (despite it not being explicitly stated in their respective books) have their spells in circles, the circle essentially means the cast time (longer = more chance of being interrupted, unless you are playing in Protection, in which case you should just use the highest damage spell for the monsters weakest resist), mana cost and damage of that spell. For example Meteor Swarm/Chain Lightning are both 7th circle, they have the same cast time, mana cost and damage, the only difference is that one hits fire resist and the other hits energy resist, so if the target has weaker energy than fire resist then that spell will do more damage.

Mysticism has the high damage 7th circle spell Hailstorm - cold damage - which Oni are weakest against. Mindblast is also cold damage and casts faster than Energy Bolt/Bombard as it is a lower circle, Bombard is a physical damage version of Energy Bolt so not particularly useful against a monster with high physical resist. (Bombard also has the potential to briefly paralyse a target, however, this is calculated against the targets resisting spells and is unlikely to be useful against anything worth fighting.)

Unless you have 4/6 casting Word of Death is a very slow cast and with more SDI and the right spell choices you could most likely out damage it with normal spells in the same time frame.

Spellweaving and Mysticism are heavily defensive skills that add little to fast combo kills for overland monsters that generally die in 2-3 hits anyway.

Compare this to a Necro/Mage attacking the same monster:
In Wraith Form - so you are never out of mana as you leech it all back.
Corpse Skin - lower it's fire/poison by 15 (it puts phys/cold up 10, but this is still better overall than the Mystic attacking due to the spells you can use)
Flame Strike/Evil Omen combo - cast this way around, the Omen casts fast enough to land before the damage from the FS, and boosts it's damage by 25%
Omen off of Chain Lightning also - giving you high damage coverage of the main weaknesses monsters have.
Fast casting spells to finish red lined targets - Pain Spike/Wither
Apart from Wither the above can be done with 60 Necro/60 Spirit Speak - giving you spare points to strengthen the character in other areas.

Your current template lacks any synergy of skills, as in they don't compliment each other well for any particular purpose, and are very much playing a jack of all trades master of none type of template. Hybrids are fun but try restricting it to two schools of magic and making the character stronger overall. For example, you could drop the Spellweaving and add Inscription - this would give you more spell damage with your Magery spells and some innate Casting Focus (5 iirc) to prevent you getting interrupted as much. Or you could drop Mysticism/Focus and pick up a Bard skill, Provoke monsters to fight each other, or Discord to drop their resists and skills these also come with powerful Masteries, the Discord offensive Masteries can even be set to attack the resist of your choice. Or if not a Bard skill you could fit Taming in there. Or warrior skills.

Mysticism doesn't really offer a lot for the amount of skill points it requires. It's best spells are:
Enchant - on very specific dexxer builds
Stone Form - defensive - works best on a dexxer
Cleansing Wind - defensive - slow cast time
Healing Stone - defensive - very good! Like carrying Greater Heal potions and 50 EP
Spell Trigger - imo best used for an emergency Cleansing Wind
Hail Storm - offensive - cold damage version of any 7th circle spell
...Rising Colossus - offensive - slow, takes all slots, physical damage, less coverage than two summons

All of the other Mysticism spells are pretty useless as they are either void damage (hit a random resist) or are less favourable damage type versions of spells you already have with a more complete magic school. For example, Eagle Strike, why would you want an energy damage version of Fireball if you can already cast Lightning/Energy Bolt to cover that damage type.
What would you aim for from your suit for SDI? RIght now I have 13 (100 LRC 39 LMC 1FCR/2FC) - thinking for it to be viable I need SDI to be significantly higher. I'm going to offload Mysticism and Spellweaving and go with Necromage - still working on what my final form will look like (I have GM necro stoned from my Sampire I converted to ABC)... any help is appreciated!
 

Lord GOD(GOD)

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Ideally your suit should have 70/75/70/70/75, 100 lrc, 40 lmc, at least 80 sdi, 45 dci, 2/6 as a minimum.

When you play in Wraith Form it will raise your phys by 15, so you can go in and out of prot (minus 14-15 phys depending on race, less with gm inscription) when needed, and -5 to fire and energy, that way keeping you at all 70s. You can also overshoot fire and poison to counter corpse skin if your suit allows.

I'd recommend building your suit around the following artys (VvV versions where possible, you can buy 4 just for joining): crystalline ring, protector of the battle mage, kasa of the rajin, hephastus, don't rely on book mods as you'll be swapping those anyway for slavers when appropriate, enchanted kelp legs, inquisitors resolution, a 1/3 bracelet with 18 sdi, there's a cloak with 3 or 5, and a robe with 3. Then there's talisman, I can't remember what sdi they have, necromancers phylectory, or mana phase orb... (on phone so can't check easily).

The main thing is that your suit is solid overall, there are more sdi pieces you can use but you wont be able to cap everything else you need.

When not using a mage weapon or slayer you can use an invasion spellbook which have up to 50 sdi. The best book will be slayer scrappers if they have a slayer.

Most of those pieces aren't very expensive or difficult to get. So if you have room on the suit also try to get 25 hp and up to 25 str (In multiples of 2).

If you can I would also stone on taming and bond a pair of bake kitsunes. You can control them with a dark wolf. They have fantastic resists and a combined 800 mana to dump.
 

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
Ideally your suit should have 70/75/70/70/75, 100 lrc, 40 lmc, at least 80 sdi, 45 dci, 2/6 as a minimum.

When you play in Wraith Form it will raise your phys by 15, so you can go in and out of prot (minus 14-15 phys depending on race, less with gm inscription) when needed, and -5 to fire and energy, that way keeping you at all 70s. You can also overshoot fire and poison to counter corpse skin if your suit allows.

I'd recommend building your suit around the following artys (VvV versions where possible, you can buy 4 just for joining): crystalline ring, protector of the battle mage, kasa of the rajin, hephastus, don't rely on book mods as you'll be swapping those anyway for slavers when appropriate, enchanted kelp legs, inquisitors resolution, a 1/3 bracelet with 18 sdi, there's a cloak with 3 or 5, and a robe with 3. Then there's talisman, I can't remember what sdi they have, necromancers phylectory, or mana phase orb... (on phone so can't check easily).

The main thing is that your suit is solid overall, there are more sdi pieces you can use but you wont be able to cap everything else you need.

When not using a mage weapon or slayer you can use an invasion spellbook which have up to 50 sdi. The best book will be slayer scrappers if they have a slayer.

Most of those pieces aren't very expensive or difficult to get. So if you have room on the suit also try to get 25 hp and up to 25 str (In multiples of 2).

If you can I would also stone on taming and bond a pair of bake kitsunes. You can control them with a dark wolf. They have fantastic resists and a combined 800 mana to dump.
2/6 FCR I'm assuming... or is it 2/6 for FC and FCR both?
 

Innoxicated

Journeyman
2 FC / 6 FCR is as was previously stated what you should shoot for, however spellweaving can benefit from the full 4/6 (4 faster cast) even with skill in magery. This is nice for looong, slooow SW spells, but can be tight to fit in when so many other things will give you a bigger bang for the buck.

Another option, if playing EC, is have a set of alternate jewels/spellbook/shield/weapon (and macro to equip them) to get you to 4/6 only when it's time to pop off some WoD!
 
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Cork

Sage
Professional
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
I run this build on my mage (all 120 skills) with a 70's/75 resist suit, 100 lrc, 40 lmc 4fc/6fcr 160 spell damage increase, 30 mana regen, 210 mana. It's a lot of fun. I have 120 necromancy and spirit speak on a soulstone that I sometimes swap out with the mysticism and focus. It's just a sit back and nuke the crap out of things build.
 
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