This will be broken into two sections Healing build and caster tips
Wartune Mage Healing Build Guide by Nazgul
Hello everyone! My gaming name is Nazgul and I play on server 14. I have tons of guild mates and people in world chat constantly asking me about mage advice so I thought to write a post for mages! This is not the only way to build mages but in my opinion this seems to be the most viable as you go deeper into the game.
Mages
Class Overview Mages have some of the best versatility in the game. They can be pure glass cannon crit mages or they can still dish out heavy damage as well as heal and take hits. My guide will focus on the later, which I like to refer to as a tank mage. Mages start to excel around the 40s and 50s as they have a nice balance between mid to late game to keep them competitive throughout the game play.
Pros: *High Magic Defense-Mages get a passive ability that increases magic defense by 20% so there is no need to worry about going against other mages! *Healing Abilities-Other classes may have healing abilities, but there is no healing ability as strong as the mages. Mages also get a passive that increases healing by 8%. *Area of Effect (AOE)-Mages also have the most potent AOE abilities in the game and this is our comfort zone for damage. Mages come in, AOE nuke and let their heavy single target damage friends do the rest! *Catacombs Survivability-Catacombs is a labrynth that pits you against foes that get tougher the deeper you go into the floors. Mages have some of the faster clearing times in here because of their strong AOE and just as strong for survival as they can also self heal and stay alive longer.
Cons: *Low Physical Defense-Mages do not gain a boost to physical defense like the knights and archers leaving them vulnerable to physical attacks if not careful. *Low Health Points-Mages do not gain a boost to health either like the knights do. Balancing out a mage’s defenses and health play a crucial role. *Weak Single Target Damage-While we excel at the AOE damage, we lack in the single target damage. We do have a few abilities, but those should be reserved for PVE situations as PVP you will rarely get a chance to build enough rage. *Slow Rage Buildup-Mages will gain 8 rage per attack which is fairly lower than the other classes.
Skill Set Up
Lightning Bolt- Core damage ability. This ability grants 6 rage when attacking and should be used early and often for rage generation. Level this up early and often. Rain of Fire-This is the center piece of your AOE damage. level it up at each possible moment. You will notice a huge damage increase between level 3 and level 4. Heart Element-One of the first key passive abilities you get. Make it a priority to maximize these 2 skill points first to gain additional 2 rage per attack. Mana Master-Another key early passive. in conjunction with Heart Element, Mana master should be prioritized to be maximized early to boost magic attack by 15%. Restoration-This skill will be your best friend in arenas and catacomb runs. this is your main healing spell and 2 points should be taken early to gain the 10% damage reduction bonus and maxed at a point you feel the need to upgrade. Healing Empowerment-This is the passive that will increase your magic defense by 20% and healing by 8% at max level and should be prioritized to be maxed out around mid game. Castinador-this passive allows us to go down the bottom line in the tree and should only be taken 1 point into. At level 1, you gain a 6% chance to reduce the next abilities rage by 20 points. Level 2 is a minimal gain at 8% and why no other points are needed here. Meteoric Destroyer-This ability ranks among Rain of Fire for key AOE damage. It is weak at first but picks up strength into the later levels as it gains a 25% damage boost and 35% chance to deal an additional 800 damage. This ability should be started to level up in the 40s but take priority abilities like Rank 5 of rain of fire and rank 5 of Lightning bolt first. Delphic Thunder Frenzy-This ability is purely for PVE runs as you will hardly get the rage build up needed to get a cast off in PVP (especially with the knight’s intercept ability). Take a point here as an option however I would hold off till later on in the game. Thunderer-Is a great single target damage ability that also gives a 50% chance to slow casting times by 100% (does not work on world boss). The lower rage cost compared to Delphic Thunder allows for it to be a possibility in PVP, however the rage would be better spent on healing and AOE abilities. Take a point early here but like Delphic Thunder Frenzy, I would recommend holding off till later on in the game. Suntoria-This is a nice ability for your tanky friends as it allows your team to regenerate % of their HP at the start of their attack. Take a point here mid game and finish later on. Purification-This is mostly a filler ability to be able to move down the tree however the ability to remove 3 debuffs for everyone in the team will play a nice role in specific boss fighting. Take a point here later on and max later on. Blessed Light-The big AOE heal of the game that can really make the difference between winning and losing vs group arena and multiplayer boss fights. This ability heals everyone for a substantial amount of health and boosts everyone’s rage by 10. This ability should be gained in late game play as it will be your heavy rage support ability that requires a fair amount of rage. Take a point here after getting a point in suntoria and purification and then will be able to get the final point after suntoria and purification are maxed.
Gems
Priority Gems
Magic Attack Physical Defense health
Optional Gems
Critical Magic Defense Charisma-please note that if you chose to use these that it should be taken later on in the game to help with troop health points.
Gemming a mage properly is half the battle to winning. If you are willing to cash and buy sockets, it is recommended that you gem 1 magic attack 1 physical defense and 1 health into each equipment item. The magic attack will help boost your damage and healing power, the physical defense will help to close the gap on mage’s naturally weaker physical defense. This also applies to the health gems as well. For those of you who want to play without spending cash, the balancing task will be tricky but still possible. Make sure to prioritize your magic attack gems, put 1 health into each trinket slot and 1 physical defense into each ring slot (you do not have to how ever I find this easier to keep track of). As you get different sets of gear, you will vary in how many slots the items have (though usually it’s 1). They also give you 6 socketing tools (9 if you are VIP) and those should be saved for your level 35 PVP set at least.
Refining This also plays another key part to your gearing and can really help you make up some health and defenses or boost your attack. If you plan to buy balens to help with gear, locking desirable stats before refining will help you custom pick stats to keep and which to roll the dice on. Honestly, I would not advise doing this unless you are willing to spend a lot of balens as the random generation of stats can lead to using a significant amount. When it comes to finding the right stat, it really depends on how you want to play. I took stat groups that give health and or endurance (both health), magic attack, magic and or physical defense, and possibly critical. My gear does have some critical refined into it however, it is not something to prioritize over health, attack, or defenses and should only be taken as a bonus as long as the other priorities are met.
Gearing The part everyone loves! Gearing is a simple but complex part of the game. For those of you who can spend the time doing arenas and battle grounds, you should buy the insignia PVP gear, and skip on the PVE gear. The PVE gear will be hard to gather up for and would be recommended for those who are of different time zones and miss out on PVP events, willing to spend balens to build gear (will be very hard without it), and or those who do not care for the PVP scene. If you go toe to toe between the 2 gear sets, (as I have many times on my server) the PVP gear will win out in duels and arenas to those in full PVE gear for the fact that the PVP gear gives a -1000 Magic Defense mitigation and 30 starting rage. For your rings and trinkets, if you have not bought 5 dollars of balens for the 2 yellow trinket items, it is recommended that you use your crypt tokens that are acquired from catacomb runs to purchase rings and trinkets starting at the level 30 set and up.
Astrals
Main Astrals
Magic Attack Magic Defense Physical Defense
Optional Astrals
Critical Health Disable Critical for flat damage boost
Astrals are a bit hard to pick out what is the best options for. This is where the customization of the builds can greatly vary especially since it is dependent on whether or not you can even find what you are looking for. I have told everyone that asked me on the server, your core astrals should be attack and both defenses. Again you are a mage and your job is to deal damage so you always want to increase damage when possible. You may be wondering that if mages have such a low health why not grab a health astral? like any game that involves tanking and defenses, your health point value will always be greater when you have defenses to back it up. If you were to have significant health with low defenses, it will do you no better and you may even die faster. Having higher defenses with low Health really helps you be that super hard mage tank. Instead of getting hit for 3000 or 4000 you are looking of seeing a max of 2000 and change with the average being in the low 1000s range. For the optional astrals, that is where you can play around with your build. Some mages prefer the higher crit rate for the critical heals and damage while others may prefer the health and flat based damage for a guaranteed damage increase. You can also grab flat damage reduction and health too. In the end it is up to you to decide if you want to go more tanky, more bursty, more sustained, each having their pros and cons but all very viable and very strong.
And now for the caster tips section
Wartune Mage Tips and Tricks by talonsnow
Hello, my in game name is Witch and one of the best mages in server 4.
Here are just a few tips I have regarding mages during my play time experience.
as far as skills take everything until lvl 24 then only put into the following:
1 into each of the following: lightning bolt, rain of fire, heart elemental, mana master, restoration, castinator, and healing empowerment, delphic frenzy and thunderer.
Then you want to work on maxing heart elemental and mana master. These are huge advantage passives.
leave delphic frenzy at 1 as it is not worth any more invested for it’s rage consumption. You only got the 1 cause you want to get thunderer to lvl 2 asap for it’s importance in world boss.
you want to max healing empowerment, primarily for the +20% magic def boost. that requires lvl 2 restoration.
then you want to get to lvl 4 lightning bolt and lvl 4 rain of fire. This is where it makes a huge jump in dmg on your rain of fire which is your most important skill in pvp fights in 1v1 duel, group arena, and battlegrounds.
Why not more healing skills? I added more healing at the cost of not taking thunderer or delphic on my lvl 40 mage. This was a mistake in retrospect. I thought it would help more in battlegrounds and catacombs, but it had unforeseen consequences. First, your better off just attacking damage wise then doing suntoria until late game where your health will make the 5-6% health gain worth it. In catacombs where I thought it would help the most, it made it much worse short term as well. Now is my troops keep getting healed some they are surviving more which is what I had wanted, but the unintended side effect was that all my heals were hitting them instead of me. This would bring my health very low by the time they died and I did not have enough time to recover before I then too died.
In retrospect you want your troops to stay alive a while doing damage, but you really want them to die off around mid fight allowing you to heal yourself then back to full and then get to attack twice p/round with a skill and auto attack which you can’t do while your troops are alive either. This also generates more rage quickly allowing you to keep healing yourself when the timer is back up every time. By adding thunderer it also takes down the bosses much faster as well as slowing there casting timers.
Yet the real good reason for going thunderer 2 is the world boss. You are able to keep the same chain going but replacing 1 lightning bolt with 1 lvl 2 thunderer every time you can (which becomes quite a lot) and increasing your damage and net gains tremendously.
How to do the world boss: your normal chain is: mash lightning bolt at loading screen so it will go off at start. Then watch your troops attack then the boss attack. Then right when your character starting animation for auto attack hit lightning bolt again so you perform both an auto attack and lightning bolt in a row. Then watch troops attack and right when the boss attacks hit your lightning bolt in the middle of it’s attack animation. Then watch as your character does an auto attack and a lighting bolt attack.
You just add another auto attack + lightning bolt for every round your able to survive.
(Once you have 50 rage saved up) Mash thunderer at loading screen and do the qte sequence for 25% extra dmg once you can see screen. Because of longer cast time you will watch your troops attack, then your skill go off. But it will go off before the boss attacks. so once the boss attacks, again hit lightning bolt once your character starts his/her animation and your back in your normal chain again.
Because of castinator (and the set bonus from catacombs for chance at less rage cost as well) you can start doing back to back thunderers having over 50 rage in the next boss fight after you just used it in the previous one.
Other tips: your rain of fire at lvl 4 is better than your lightning bolt at lvl 4 on single enemies. your rain of fire is doing 134% + 25%qte for about 159% dmg. Your lightning bolt is only doing 108% + 75dmg. This means if rain of fire is up use it, even on single targets. This is why it’s such a bread and butter skill.
In team arena, get that 35pvp set asap. It helps us mages the most out of all classes. Not only is mdef the lowest on most other players already compared to pdef, but it allows for a nice chain of rain of fire – lightning bolt – rain of fire in the first 3 rounds of a group fight. sometimes you will be able to get it all off without waiting if the skills used in first 2 rounds are sort of slow. Other times you may have to wait 1-3 seconds before getting that 2rd rain of fire off in 3rd round, but the combo of 2 rain of fires in 3 rounds is devastating in pvp group fights.
Be sure to use your restoration heal during battlegrounds to keep your health up and win many more fights than you would have otherwise for more honor.
Personally I went the non-crit route and just did matk, pdef and health. I was able to hit extremely hard still and very tanky. I used the +%dmg , no crit chance astral as well. Just depended on my +20% mdef passive from healing empowerment, + the mdef from all my int stat increases. If really needed more mdef I just switched in my mdef astral for my health or pdef one on selective boss fights in cata or mage duels.