Guide For Endgame Int Mages: Global Cooldown Time and Skill Activation Time

[Sheugokin]

Hey guys! This is my first guide so please give me some constructive criticism! Thanks and if this helped, please hit the tnanks button on the lower left of the post!

People have been complaining about "mana shield lag" or heal lag and stuff like that. In my opinion, Global Cooldown is definitely necessary to learn skill in PvP and in a much lesser extent, PvE. That way, "nubs" will not be randomly spamming kills and somehow getting a kill.

I think Mages have the most spells with a skill lag time. Skill lag may be like mana shield, lightning, icestorm, frostbite, heal, drain, and revive. Bird's skill lag spell can be the thorn wall. Being aware of these lag times with help a lot in PvP. For example, if a bird is fighting a mage in endgame, the bird can easily, with swift elite bow set, thron root, blast shot, and hit repulse/blind shot. However to prevent that from happening, one can utilize the skill lag time of mana shield.


This is what I do as an int mage vs. any birds (usually) in respect to the mana shield: I usually buff and then wait for a sec and taunt the birds without getting hit/stunned. Then, I hit mana shield and wait 1 sec and charge at the bird. M.S. has about a 2 sec lag time. So within that 1 sec, the bird would hit its blast into my health pool, but the next attack would hit my mana. Now I can use my mana to shield me from dying as well as nuking it.

Heal's lag time can be used because it requires real skill to heal at the right time especially in CTF. When you get hit you can heal right before the nuke and then pray for the best. Healing just before the nuke will give heal enough time to actually work. You will see your health pool depleting rapidly and then an increase. Same thing with healing tanking characters. You heal right when they are getting hit so that lag time can heal it while it is fighting.

Revive has one of the longest, but in my opinion, the best lag time. This one takes REAL skill. When reviving, you want to revive your teammates into safety. (This is CTF strategy btw.) When they die and in range to a corner of a wall with nothing blocking it (not including any characters), then you go towards the wall. And step out of the corner, hit revive and immediately run back towards the wall. This lag time will transport the character not where you hit it but the position where you revived it 1 sec after you hit it. Also, when you hit revive, you need to make sure that no enemy is trying to nuke you. If they are, try healing right after reviving. Don't worry, this is one of the hardest skills to master.

Frostbite has a lag too. (A very important skill in Arena.) You can hit frostbite and plan your fire to hit combo. Just wait when the skill is 3/4 the way to your enemy and hit fire. Very crucial to hit it at that time because if your enemy is an experienced mage, they will just heal right after it gets 3/4 of its way to them, and remove the frostbite, thus rendering you fire useless as a combo. Same idea with icestorm except make sure you're in range.

At endgame or close to endgame, drain is the most vital, strongest, and most versatile of the 12 skills. Not only does it hit your enemy hard, but it replenishes your health pool. Drain also has a very long lag time. Just make sure when you drain when getting nuked, don't heal to quickly. You need to know all of these lag times. I think drain has a 3 sec lag time, not sure. In arena, if you and your enemy are both late mana shielders, then drain timing combined with heal is important. When they drain and then fire, make sure you heal right after fire goes through, because you know that the lag time is going to be gone, so you need a somewhat full health pool to tank the drain. While you are healing at the right time, get your drain and fire in too. Hopefully your skills reign supreme!

Lightning- not really as crucial but when vsing non-str characters, you want to try to get light in in range. Especially for kiting int mages and birds. For int mages that don't use mana shield immediately, you want to try to make sure to get light in. That lag time will get them because when you hit light and then fire, fire hits first, and then the lag time for lightning finally goes through.

The other skills I really don't think have a significant lag time: firestorm, blessing of vitality, blessing of might, weakness, and nightmare.


From hardest to master to easiest in my opinion:

1. Reviving
2. Mana Shield
3. Heal
4. Drain (Disputable between heal and drain)
5. Frostbite + Firestorm combo
6. Lightning


Sorry if this is too long, but this is just a brief overview!

Thanks and that's all! Plus, if I made any mistakes, please do post and send me the grammatical/content errors.