How to spec your mage

[Mr.Wallace]

As a mage noob I talked to a lot of mages in game about their build and opinions. And I heard a lot of opinions.

Now that my farming mage reached the destination level 52 I wanted to check stats and spells of the most common specs I heard about.
As gear I used the Cyber sets because I’m stingy and also because I think similar sets are a good way to compare builds. I tried an one hand and a two hand set for each build.

I know it would be better with a level 55+ and Mega/Fury/Raid, of course feel free to add!

I made the following builds (To check out the gear, read the AO3 drops thread):

Pure Int
All stat points into Int. 1H set obviously is laser wand and doll, 2H is staff.

Hybrid Dexchantress
161 stat points into Dex, rest Int. 161 is the requirement to wear level 51 gear. 1H set is talon and wing, 2H is gun.

Hybrid Pally
161 Str, rest Int. 1H sword and kite shield, 2H ugly green plasma sword

Dual Dexchantress
132 Int and 132 Dex. 1H is wand and doll, 2H is gun. That seems to be a common mob clearing and boss setup.

Dual Pally
132 Int and 131 Str. 1H is sword and kite, 2H is staff. This is my most used build btw. :-)

Dual Dex Pally
129 Dex and 129 Str. 1H is sword and kite, 2H is gun. Very unconventional, the intelligence free mage...

And now the ugly table with stats and spells. Click for bigger picture. I checked level 6 heal, firestorm (as an aoe spell) and frostbite (as a single target spell).



I think, at this level, with this gear, you should at least keep half of the stat points for Int. Losing more Int sacrifices too much spell damage for not much gain in your stats. Especially the last build felt very weak when I did test runs.

Some thoughts
- Dual Pally seems to be the mediocrity build. Nothing really good, nothing really bad
- The Dual Dexchantress’ single target spell has more damage than the Full Int’s, who knew!
- Dual Dexchantress comes pretty close to Full Int at the aoe damage spell
- If you see your mage role in healing, you have to go for the max Int, big difference there
- I see no reason for a Dex Pally, maybe pvp?

As soon as gathered enough nice level 51 drops, I will start experimenting with them. I’m sure some cons can be eliminated with a good gear combination.

My conclusion
The first choice should always be to go full Int. The aoe damage and heal is just superior. And only if you want more single target damage than mage gear can give you, make a Dual Dexchantress. And only if you play so tanky that you die with the highest armor and dodge int gear, go Dual Pally.
But don’t forget, losing 20 dmg on a spell may sound ok, but think about casting that spell in a 10 mob group. Then you lose 200 dmg...

But mind: I really am a mage noob. So experienced mages: Please comment and add!