by BLA1NE Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:37 pm
You have 3 rings--that's one too many! Bellowing Dragoncrest = must. I'm not a fan of the Dusk Crown Ring; 1.5x spell casts is not worth 1/2 your HP. Not a fan of the Ninja Flip ring for a Mage either. What you want is the fast roll. Its animation is shorter, which is necessary when baiting opponents into attacking, rolling back and casting. The rings I like for my pure mages are Bellowing Dragoncrest and Ring of Favor and Protection (more on that below).
Also, PvP is SL120, not 125! It's a minor difference, and no one will know unless they see your stats, but it's an honor rule thing.
Now, the most important things for a pure Mage are Att and Int. Everything else is actually practically irrelevant. SL120 gives you a lot of levels to work with, so I like to go all the way to 50 Att and get myself the max number of slots (10). That sounds like a lot, but once you start filling them you'll realize you can fill them quickly. As for Int, it depends on which catalyst and spells you plan on using. If you want to use White Dragon Breath, you'll need 50. Personally, I don't like the spell though, so I cap my Int at 45 and use Logan's catalyst. If you want to use Logan's and not White Dragon's Breath, do not go above 45 Int. If you want to use the Tin Crystallization Catalyst, you can go to 50, but absolutely no higher. Helpful tip to decide on which catalyst to use: if you're going full-Sorcerer, with 10 slots, you can afford to halve your number of castings, so you can use TCC; if you plan on mixing up some pyro spells with your sorcery ones (I always do) then I recommend using Logan's.
So, thus far, you have 50 Att and either 45 or 50 Int. The rest is entirely up to you.
End: Mages don't need stamina at all. With the base End, you have enough stamina to roll 3 times in a row--more than you should ever need in a duel. Only thing I raise End for, is to increase my equip weight. And that's why I like to equip the Ring of FaP--with your low End, it'll raise your stamina and equip weight (and Vit too, which is always nice!). Like I said, you want the fast roll, so you'll need to be below 25% equip weight. That said, you don't need to get within melee range of your enemies so you shouldn't need anything more than light armor and no poise. My mage, fully equipped, never weighs more than 15 lbs, so with the Ring of FaP you shouldn't need more than 10-15 End.
Res: Never raise End...
Str and Dex: As a pure caster, a melee weapon should be an absolute last resort--you shouldn't ever need to use it, actually. So I like to equip a Chaos Knife as backup to pull off a quick backstab should I need it, but beyond that you shouldn't rely on a melee weapon. You don't have to go with the Knife though! I just like it because getting a critical hit will keep you out of real melee combat, where you're extremely vulnerable as a Mage. Whatever weapon you choose (make sure it's light, though), I like to raise Str and Dex just enough to meet its equip requirements. It's true that Dex will speed up your casting speed, but it's a small fraction of a second and you need 45 Dex to get the best benefit out of it. That's a lot of stat points for a build that doesn't use melee weapons... Instead, I prefer to spend those points into:
Vit: after Att and Int, I consider this the only other worthwhile stat for a mage. I like to just dump whatever remaining points I have into Vit. It's pretty useless to go above 50 Vit, though, so if you're getting around 45-50 Vit you can spend a few more points into End to free up some more equip weight.
Beyond stats, you need spells! I recommend you keep going through NG+s to get multiples of your spells. I like to go to at least NG++ with my Mages, to get 3 x Crystal Soul Spear. Once you have those, you'll have collected as many Homing Crystal Soul Masses and 6 x Soul Spears along the way. For PvE, 1 HCSM, 3 CSS, and 6 SS will tear through anything! And if you attune that for PvP, you can use the TCC and have a good number of castings, each one being a near fatal hit.
In each playthrough, I recommend you get every spell from each of these NPCs:
- Rickert (the magic blacksmith)
- Griggs (x2: before rescuing Logan, and after Logan's gone to the Archives)
- Laurentinus
- Logan (x2: after rescuing from Sen's, after rescuing from the Archives)
- Quelana
And at least once, get all of Dusk's spells.
So... those are my recommendations!
Last edited by BLA1NE on Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
