Returning player, only played with plain bland mage. What new skills should I add to my template?

[Jammonk]

Greetings!

I have only played with a base of evaluating intelligence and magery. I have never messed with spellweaving or necromancy or mysticism. I'll share my current skills below

100 eval int.
100 magery
100 meditation
100 magery
100 inscription (not sure why, maybe it boosted magery)
80 resist spells
80 hiding (I figured that might get a chuckle out of you all, yeah no idea why 8 gave hiding so hight on a mage)

Str 83
Dex 23
Int128 I do eventually plan on getting An Ultimate Scroll of Power to add +25 to my max stats.

My goal is to have fun with PvM, not interested in PvP. I also want to explore some of these new skills. Any ideas as to what I should add and take away from my skills

Some background on my other characters. I also have a disco tamer with basic magery and a sampire. Also currently making an ABC archer.

Thanks!

 

[Ang7]

necro + spirit speak will let you do some cool things like corpse skin and then cast fire spells for huge damage and leech back mana

spellweaving and mysticism would also be cool things to add to a pvm caster

 

[ultima2005]

If running a pure mage, few templates beat this.
120 magery
120 eval
120 mysticism
120 focus
120 spellweaving
120 med

Use SW mastery for a baseline level 3 arcane. Use RC as a tank, get into reaper form, and blast away until the target is low on health, then kill it Word of Death. With this template, you have access to all damage types and incredible support spells (Gift of life, gift of renewal, cleansing winds, etc.). The downside is you really need 120 Mystic, Focus, and SW to make it work.

You can also mix and match with your other skills. Replace Mysticim/Focus with Music/Disco and use SW’s Summon Reaper as a tank. Of course, mage tamers are also quite powerful.

Inscription does increase the power of your magery spells. If you can fit some skills on jewels, this template is incredibly high damaging:

120 magery
120 eval
120 med
120 sw
120 spirit speak
100 inscription
60 necro

60 necro allows you 100% corpse skin (fire reduction) and wraith form (mana leaching). The SS increases the duration of the corpse skin and amount of mana leached from damage. Use summon reaper as a tank, corpse skin the target, and blast away with fireballs and flamestrikes. You likely don’t even need 120 med since you’ll be leaching so much mana, but it never hurts to have because flamestrikes are expensive.

I’d also try incorporating necro on your tamer. One of my favorite templates is this:

120 Taming
120 Lore
110 Magery (100% flamestrikes)
120 Eval
120 med
120 SS
100 Necro (for 100% wither)

It’s tight, but I’m able to squeeze all of it in through jewels while still having a lot of SDI. I use a pre-patch Magery master nightmare. I can run consume damage and leach back enough to keep up a consistent stream of fireballs. Fun and high damaging.

 

[Merlin]

My main character is a Mystic Mage Spellweaver and I run the following skills:

- 120 Mysticism
- 090 Focus
- 100 Magery
- 120 Eval Intel
- 120 Spellweaving
- 090 Resist Spells
- 080 Meditation

I use a Crystalline ring in my build which adds +20 Magery and +20 Focus. Mystic Memento talisman for another +10 Focus. This brings those skills to 120. I run two different suits with this build - one which uses any items that include Spell Damage Increase - and another which is a little more defensive and has higher mana regeneration, elemental eaters and max hit points. I generally only switch to the SDI suit when a boss is falling below 30% life to nuke them with Word of Death. I use the Spellweaving mastery. This build is well-rounded and capable of participating in just about any type of PVM content in a meaningful way, whether doing top damage, acting as a healer or assisting with crowd control.

With all the various SDI items combined with SDI enhancing spells from Spellweaving, SDI foods like grapes of wrath and fish pies, you can have 260+ SDI and be able to spam WoD quickly for 1000+ damage. Add in slayer books, and you can fight just about anything. Combine that with an Eater suit that has lots of regen and great healing spells from all three magic skill lines, you have great defensive capabilities.

I also run a very similar build that swaps Mysticism/Focus for Necromancy/Spirit Speak. I would imagine you can do something similar with Hiding/Stealth if that's important to your build's intention.

Have fun and good luck!