Celtic Heroes

I've seen a lot of people struggle with mage because they're not using the right build. First let me say that energy shield is the mages healing skill. If you don't carry it, you better invest in a lot of health sigils. I have 3100 health and eshield gives me another 1000. I try to always fight with it on so in theory, I have 4100 health and a 1000 heal.

From what I've learned about fire and ice abilities, the more you have, the less you deal with evades, AND the closer you hit towards your max damage. I've noticed it reduces the damage gap when I use items to buff fire. So you can try to get your max damage up all you want, but fire/ice ability is the key to dps as it reduces evades and helps you hit closer to max. One evade is a huge blow towards dps. Invest in a vendor wand up to adamant. At 120, start working towards Obsidian armour.

Also, the era of mages carring 1/4 vit to focus is over. Split the points. 1 Focus is around .8 firebolt and .86 firestorm, around .25 fire attune. So you're getting 1 damage per focus. Focus only increases your max damage. It does not help help you with evades.
1 vit = 6 health. 200 vit = 1200 health, compare 1200 health vs 200 extra damage. It's a no brainer. Split those points!!

Which class do you want to be? Fire, Ice, hybrid, support? I stress the importance of being able to solo in this game as you wont always be able to find a group and having some defense reduces the burden on your druid. Your druid should be focused on your tank in a decent group. So always try to factor in eshield or invest in a lot of idols.

For Ice
A freeze build I'm working on, lvl 100 example
25 Ice Attune (24points), 21 freeze (20p), 21 eshield (20p), 11 lure of ice (10), 14 ice shard (13), 14 ice blast (13)
Cast Eshield, then lure, then blast, then shard, then freeze, then wait for blast, then shard, then freeze. With this build, you should have no problem soloing or grouping. It should also do very well in PVP. Watch for freeze interupts.

For Fire
Fire build I always recommend, lvl 100 example
25 Fire Attune (24p), 25 fire bolt (24p), 25 firestorm (24p), 11 fire lure (10p), 19 energy shield (18p)

Another fire build I recommend, lvl 100 example
25 Fire attune (24p), 14 fire bolt (13p), 14 firestorm (13p), 11 lure of fire (10p), 21 eshield (20p), 21 cloak of fire (20p)
This build is great for those low on gold and lux items. You can farm a lot easier with this build than the ones I've shown above. Cloak of fire at 20 points is around 200 max damage per hit, usually in the 140-150s. If you get hit 5 times in a fight, that's an extra 700-900 damage with very low energy cost. You can also use fire cloak on the tank to help kill things faster. This makes you more useful when you group with higher level players on bosses and in grinding groups.

You could do something similar with the ice build as the second fire build. You could use either fire bolt or cloak instead of freeze. Cloak would help you be able to farm better as an ice mage. You wont be luring that much when you're farming twisted tunnels or pirates anyways.

But Freeze is worth a try for the ice mage as it allows you to solo things easier than just relying on energy shield.

If you want to be full dps, you better invest in platinum items. It will be expensive but will allow you to maximize your leveling per super knowledge elixir. If you are one of those players, go full dps and burn that platinum. Instead of defense, maximize attune and your primary damage skills, and add incinerate, frost bite, or shard if fire, and fire bolt if ice.

If you can't afford lux, you're not farming enough.

Haste does not increase casting speed....as much as we all wish it would. I also don't see how they would help with interrupts...e-shield helps with that because you can't be interrupted while your shield is up. You're also forgetting that not only do you get the small dmg bonus but you get much needed energy from focus as well. That e-shield takes some energy you know, especially at a 19 skill level that you recommend. I will also tell you from experience that fire cloak does little to nothing on bosses but is a small help on mobs. Also freeze is useless unless you have a lot of sigils and want to regen. Investing in idols is always good as well....but as a mage you're going to want more restos than idols because of your attune cooldown. Cutting your dps in darn near half for 2 minutes can be a game changer.

As a side note I'd like to see some evidence or testing that increasing ice/fire ability actually reduces evades or lowers the damage gap....kind of been mixed opinions on that one.

You are right about the haste not helping. I just tested it.

With enough regen, the difference between between 3000 to 4000 energy doesnt seem that noticeable. I have over 400 energy sigils though.

The extra fire seems to help with evades. After i broke 2,000 fire, I don't have as many evades.

I was using a lvl 60 mage with an ice build and the mage had only 200 ice. I noticed evades decreased as i trained ice and the damage gap decreased as i started hitting closer towards max. Train a new mage up to 60 with fire, switch to ice and check it out. The Abilities do seem to have an impact on evades and damage output..

Regarding cloak of fire, I've seen it hit 80-200 per hit on 6 star bosses. Bosses hit faster so it does more damage over time. If your tank takes 50 hits, that is at least 4,000 damage. I think cloak becomes less useful for grinding as you get past lvl 130, but it is still helpful for farming and lvling lower level clanmates. It is a lot better than incinerate as it doesn't evade and doesnt cost as much to cast. At 40 cloak of fire, cloaks max damage is close to 400 per hit. If you take on average 5-7 hits per fight, the extra damage is useful. I like to let cloak finish off mobs a lot while i start on another.

Good guild.

correction: Cloak of fire has been sort of nerfed down to the point where you should just put those pts somewhere else, and since players and mobs later on tend to spam a lot of skills cloak of fire is kinda useless at those circumstances.

At 20 points in cloak, the 5 star dl boss at wyverns was taking between 50-90 damage per hit. The tank took at least 100 hits. My fire bolts and storm only hit between 700-1000 on these dl bosses 5 and 6 stars. I would say it is very useful for bosses. At 35 points, it might hit over 100 per which is 0ver 10k damage.

Sarcasm included?

with full DL for dps , 2k hp s enough , rest focus
-5,5k firebolt
-6k+ firestorm
- 1800/2k inci

Lvl 167 mage and I have 4k fire bolt and fire storm with 3200 health. 426 focus, 425 vit. There's no way I would go to a DL boss with only 2k hps, the aoe would be one hitters after first idol. Constant death.

200 focus is 200 damage or 1200 health. It's a no brainer. Give me the health.

I will have 5k fire bolt and firestorm at 180 with 50/50 vit focus.

Lvl 167 mage and I have 4k fire bolt and fire storm with 3200 health. 426 focus, 425 vit. There's no way I would go to a DL boss with only 2k hps, the aoe would be one hitters after first idol. Constant death.

200 focus is 200 damage or 1200 health. It's a no brainer. Give me the health.

I will have 5k fire bolt and firestorm at 180 with 50/50 vit focus.

I dont die exept at 180 where i die usually 10 times in the fight i think