In an elite map the only job of a mage is mob control. As far as bosses go the amount of damage contributed to a boss is far less than a rogue and of the three classes even with shield the first to die is the mage. So that being said a pve build even in elite is effective
I have done a few runs with shield vs lifegiver and in all honesty I save far more money with life than shield. The simple reason is in elite the simlplest of mobs with one or two hits will reduce your Hp to 40% easily. You are going to pot anyway regardless of shield or having lifegiver but the idea behind it is the first contact with a mob especially ranged will reduce your hp before you freeze or stun or root them. For that part life giver along with its mana replenish is the most useful. It not hard to lose 100 pots in 3-5 elite runs and get nothing for it especially if your war does not have aggro. In fact if your going to farm then it involves a heck of a lot of runs before you are lucky and get something worth selling to make up for the losses incurred from potting all the time. Its also impossible to expect your party to heal as often as you lose Hp. Elite grimnr, innanesh, frostir, shields make very little difference like maybe if your Hp is high enough your shield is broken and by the time the cool down is over your dead in the next 2-3 crits they throw. Apart from hp potting mana is another pain
I run with
-charged Fireball 5/5 (People avoid scorch but it reduces enemy hit chance by 25% all the time means increases my dodge and increase my survivability)
-Ice 4/5 (leave out arctic shatter cause in most cases mobs are dead rooted or frozen long before arctic shatter does anything)
-Clock 4/5 (I leave out time bomb because it does less damage than a charged fireball or Ice and is just a waste of a point because clock cool down is fast enough to recast.)
- Lifegiver 2/5 with mana replenish (everything else is a waste)
Passives - Damage, agility, Knowledge, might all 5/5
Next when expansion comes I'll add it to Crit/shield as in all honesty increasing armor will not increase survivability as you just never have enough. I have avoided crit because if you have over 20% already your going to see a lot of crits in your 3 DoT skills above Which will be as good as 1 lightening. For lightening to land the elusive 1.3 k crit is as rare as a locked crate so dont bother depending on that as Ice will do just as much damage with additional helpful skills like freeze and slow and has DoT.
I play on a tablet and running more than 4 skills is a pain to change unless you know how the map is and you need more defense and add shield.
The idea behind the build is that I stun the mob I throw clock, they they come together get rooted and then I freeze the rangers so that I have immobilzed the mob and I can kill them at leisure. Freeze does a better job than stun when activated because it lasts longer. Stun is more consistent though. So shield is useless to me as I try to shutdown the mob from attacking and kill them before they recover.
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