Sonica's Detailed Mage Guide (Possibly Too Detailed.)

I've taken it upon myself to create detailed guides for each class and their respective sub-roles. Starting with Mage.
IF YOU WANT TO SKIP STRAIGHT TO BUILDS, GO TO THE 2ND POST.

About the Author:
I'm Sonica. 23 years old, Prior U.S. Army soldier, now I'm a civillian. I've been playing MMO's for about 12 years and am vastly experienced in maximizing efficiency in builds and theorycrafting. My guide writing experience comes from writing countless High ELO League of Legends guides. My MMO experience includes: Runescape, Legend of Ares, Yulgang, Knight Online, FlyFF, Maplestory, Dragon Nest, Rakion, Skyforge, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Firefall, Elder Scrolls Online, Hearthstone, Magic the Gathering Online, Rubies of Eventide, Dota, Dota 2, and Heroes of the Storm.

About the Class:
Mage is in my opinion the most versatile class in Toram. Capable of fulfilling a Pure DPS Burst role, Offensive Support, and Full Support. Mages can probably tank as well but let's be honest, that would be incredibly inefficient.

Pros:
Capable of HUGE burst numbers.
Some of the coolest looking gear and skills.
Very Versatile.
Mages are ALWAYS welcome in farm parties.
Mages are the best at "compression farming" more on that later.
Best AOE in the game.

Cons:
Can be somewhat boring at times.
Somewhat gear dependent.
Not an easy class with Flinch/Interrupts.
Magic Crystal Armor looks like ass on a male avatar.
Magic Crystal Armor is expensive as hell and a rare drop. (I've killed crystal almost 500 times with 1 drop)

Stats:
STR: Increases ATK by 3 per point. Useless.
INT: Increases MATK by 4 and MDEF by 1 per point. Your MAIN stat.
VIT: Increases HP by .5 and DEF by 1 per point. Useless.
AGI: Increases Dodge by 1 per point. Useless.
DEX: Increases Cast Speed by 3 per point. Not worth it.

A note on combos:
I personally don't use combos on my mage. I feel that mages have enough issues with mana control and flinches without standing still for 10+ seconds chaining 3 casts. If you want to be my guest, but it's not my cup of tea.

A note on cast speed: After some testing I've deduced that 1000 cast speed cuts about 1 second off a spell cast. Let that sink in, 1 second. Meaningless in the long run. Video evidence from Tammy Chou on youtube. Long story short, never put points in DEX or use Libra.


Mage Skills: Level 1

Single Target:
Magic Arrows:
Single target DPS spell split into multiple strikes. Increasing the skill level increases the amount of Arrows and overall damage.
Solid Single Target DPS and very mana efficient.
Rating: 9/10

Magic Lance: (Requires Level 5 Magic Arrows.)
Single target Burst Damage spell in one strike. Increasing the skill level increases the Damage. Has a chance to break on successful cast.
High Burst Damage , but a long cast. Wouldn't recommend maxing.
Rating: 4/10

AOE Or Multiple Target:

Magic Wall: (Requires Level 5 Magic Arrows)
Creates 2 rings at the feet of the caster knocking back and damaging enemies that come in range. The large ring is just an animation. The inner ring is where the actual hitbox for the skill is. Through a lot of testing I have confirmed that Magic tools almost triple the hitbox size of the skill. Making it much more efficient than when used with a staff. Your Bread and Butter AoE Skill. Max this asap unless you're playing a support class.
Rating: 10/10

Mage Skills: Level 2

Single Target:

Magic Lances: (Requires Level 5 Magic Javelin)
Single Target DPS split into multiple strikes like Magic Arrows. Leveling the skill increases number of Lances and overall Skill Damage.
Decent DPS but the damage seems very unstable. I personally prefer Magic Arrows.
Rating: 6/10

AOE:

Magic Blast:
Causes a wide explosion upon the target and surrounding enemies. Damage increases as skill level increases.
HUGE damage. I've seen 12-14k hits come from it. Unfortunately the skill is very hindered by its massive cast time. Max it if you'd like.
Rating: 8/10

Passive/Buff Skills:

Magic Mastery:
Increases ATK and MATK with Staves and Magic Tools.
After seeing a lot of controversy on this skill in the forums I decided to test it.
Starting with 57 MATK at level 1 I put 10 points into this skill to max it. With 10 points, my MATK jumped to 70... A whopping 13 points for 10 skill points. For those of you unfamiliar with stat point growth, 1 PT of INT = 4 MATK. So for 10 skill points... you get 3.25 intellect. Not worth it. Especially since this skill doesn't build into any advanced skills. It seems good when you glance at it, but it's a noob trap IMO. Over the next few days I'll test 2 mages, 1 with Mastery 1 without, to see if the benefit is player level based, but as it stands...
Rating: 1/10

Mana Charge:
After a brief cast, restores 210-300 Mana depending on level. Each level increases the mana gained by 10. So with a base of 200, putting 1 point into it brings it to 210. Levelling the skill also decreases the cast time.
Decent skill, but I personally leave it at level 5. With the proper gear you'll have enough mana to make due.
Rating: 7/10

Chain Cast: (Level 2 Skill, Requires Level 30 and level 5 Mana Charge)
Increases cast speed of any spell after Magic Arrows.
Seems rather situational. With what I've seen after testing cast speed I personally think the stat in general is a noob trap. 1000 cast speed seems to cut about 1 second off a spell cast, which in the grand scheme of things is rather meaningless.
Rating:1/10

Survival Skill Tree:

Play Dead: Reduces time spent dead. Never, ever put points into something that requires you to be dead to be of use.
EXP Gain UP: Increases exp gain by 1% per level. Not worth it putting points into it.
Drop Rate UP: Increases drop rate by 1% per lv. Could possible work on a rice farmer mage but very situational.
Safe Rest: Increases Out of Combat HP regen. 5 points in it to get HP Boost, nothing more.
HP Boost: Increases HP by apx. 100 pts per level. I reccomend 5 points in this skill to enable you to take a few boss hits if you aren't paying attention and draw aggro. 10 points seems excessive.
Fighter's High: Regen HP during combat by a miniscule amount, only decent on melee's.
Short Rest: Increases Out of Combat Mana Regen. MP Charge makes this pointless.
MP Boost: Increases Max MP, I haven't ever skilled this so I don't know the exact amount. You'll have plenty of MP from gear so I think this skill is useless.
Sober Analysis: Increases in combat Mana Regen by a small amount. Again Mana Charge makes this useless.

Priest Skill Tree:

Bless: Applies a Heal over Time to the entire Party. Good skill for support types.
Holy Fist: Physical Skill, worthless for mages,
Gloria: DEF and MDEF Boost for the entire Party. Increases block% for shield users. AMAZING, max it if support build.
Holy Light: Nuke that ignores part of the enemy's Def. Haven't tested it. Seeing as 5 points in Fist are needed to get it, I'm thinking it's not worth it.

Support Skill Tree: (Obviously for support spec only)

First Aid: Useless, ignore it.
Mini Heal: Restores a small amount of HP, reduces revive time if KO'd. 5-10 points.
Recovery: Removes 1 status effect from the target. Put 1 point in it to remove Ignite from tanks.
Life Recovery: AoE Heal over Time. Decent skill, 5 points. Ends if you take damage. Reduces your own DEF for the duration.
Bravery Aura: AoE Aura that Increases Attack of all party members. Ends if you take damage. Reduces your own Accuracy for the duration. Great skill, 5-10 points.
Mana Recharge: Aura increases Mana Regen for the party. Reduces your ATK for the duration, and ends upon taking damage.
Magic Barrier: Create an Area that increases DEF. Reduces your Dodge, ends upon taking damage.

 

To cut down the wall of text, Builds and Gear will be here.

Builds:

"Big Numbers"
DPS BURST MAGE.
With this spec you have 1 job, and 1 job only. Kill things.

PROS:
Big Numbers.
Very satisfying to top damage every boss fight.

CONS:
Low utility
Requires excellent positioning for maximum DPS.
May get rejected by some parties looking for breaks due to massive kill potential.

Stat Distribution:
Pure INT. That is all.

Skill Distribution (My personal Build, feel free to change it to fit your needs)
Magic Arrows: 10
Magic Javelin: 5
Magic Wall: 10
Magic Lance: 5
Magic Blast: 5
MP Charge: 5

(OPTIONAL if you aren't comfortable in your kiting/positioning)
Safe Rest: 5
HP Boost: 5

I'm saving my remaining points for the next level cap/skill release.

Optimal Gear:
Water Staff>Irogeon (If AoE farming)
Irogeon (if not on main hand)
Crystal Earring
Magic Crystal Armor
Sophys Talisman



"I'm Helping"
Hybrid Mage (Support/DPS)
A more flexible and versatile build that sacrifices some damage output for more overall utility. Retains farming ability.

Stat Distribution:
Pure INT. Again.

PROS:
Great utility through support skills.
Can be a backup DPS if needed.

CONS:
Lower Damage output than the Burst Spec.
Supports aren't fully necessary on most bosses at the moment, but can still be useful.

Skill Distribution:
Magic Arrows: 5
Magic Wall: 5
MP Charge: 5
Mini Heal: 5
Recovery: 1
Life Recovery: 5
Brave Aura: 5
Bless: 5
Gloria: 10

Save the Rest.

Optimal Gear:
Same as DPS Burst Mage.
Possibly use Aristocrat Ring for supporting.

EXPERIMENTAL/THEORYCRAFT BUILDS:


"Carry Me Please"
Full Support Mage

CAUTION: This Build sucks in the current state of the game. It takes so much time to make for minimal reward. This is speculation of course since I haven't actually tried it, but from what I've seen it's awkward. You'll need dozens of Small Article Stacks, be useless for most current bosses, and be unable to farm/level solo. Try at your own risk. Another option would be to max a random character then use a stat/skill reset. Still completely sub-optimal.

Stat Distribution:
FULL AGILITY.
I know what you're thinking "But Sonica, you said AGI was useless!?!?" You're right. I did. Plot twist.
Full agility will give you maximum evasion paired with the 5% bonus from Magic Crystal Armor, you will very rarely lose your Auras to damage. You'll hit like a wet noodle though.

Skill Distribution:
Magic Arrow: 1 (0 if you have friends willing to let you leech to 20 for S.Art quest. Or if you're an asshole, join a gob farm party with your main, then switch classes and run around making it look like you're farming.)
MP Charge: 5
Bless: 10
Gloria: 10
Mini Heal: 10
Recovery: 1
Life Recovery: 5
Brave Aura: 10

Save remaining points.

Ideal Gear:
Water Staff
Irogeon
Magic Crystal Armor
Cyrstal Earrings
Magician Ring (You do no damage so the -25% is meaningless



"You can never have too much Spina"
The Rice Farmer Mage (UPDATED)

Rice farming is a reference to a tactic from DoTA/League of Legends involving doing absolutely nothing but farming.
This build is designed to emulate that.

Stat Distribution:
INT: 50
LUK: Everything Else.

Skill Distribution:
Magic Arrow: 5
Magic Wall: 10
Mana Charge: 5
Bless: 10
Gloria: 10
EXP: 10 (Optional, tried it due to excess points)
Drop Rate UP: 10. (Tooltip Says no limit but skill maxes out at 10)

I built a support Farmer Mage to try. End result? 4 small art stacks/hr, Magic wall kills goblins in 2 hits with Irogeon, 1 with Water Staff. I actually recommend this build if you're considering it.

GEAR:
Same as Burst/Hybrid.

A NOTE ON MAGIC MASTERY
So I spent an hour levelling 2 mages from 1-30 with identical gear. One with Magic Mastery, one without. End result?

With Magic Mastery: 416 MATK
Without: 399 MATK.

With this result I can only theorize that every 6-7 levels Magic Mastery gains 1 point of MATK in strength, as I've already established that at level 10 it contributes 13 points of MATK. More testing needed but at this point it seems like it COULD be viable on a pure Damage Mage. Hybrid can't spare 10 points on such a trivial amount of damage.

Verdict: Not really worth it, maybe on Burst Mage.

 

Reserved for future game updates.

 

Thanks for your time and efforted. As to 'too detailed', not sure that is even possible at this point in the game.

You may wish to distinguish between DPS and burst. 1 point of mana recharge allows your rice farmer to spam wall- combo wall, charge (swift). Rice farmer can also sub tech and blacksmith/alchemy trees for thoughs with no desire to build 40 lvls stat free.

Thanks. See you at the next update. Till then you seem to got it all covered. Great job!

 

Ah yeah I forgot Mana Recharge. I'll fix that shortly.

 

A NOTE ON MAGIC MASTERY- That is a sad little number and even if level based, seems too little a return. At level 50 I think that figures to ~450 to 500 additional damage on an 17500 Magic: Blast (If I am wildly wrong, well, I don't write guides for a reason). Now you can spend 2 hours on Magic Up and Concentrate!

I bet it helps more with physical attacks. JOKE! Save your venom. Thx

Hate mages, but do so love to fly.

 

And to be honest, I'm starting to think the other weapon masteries may be equally as useless. Magic Mastery just has the double whammy of not progressing into another skill.

 

A NOTE ON MAGIC UP- Level 30, 96 int. MATK without 460. With 467. Had an hour to kill.

You say double whammy, I say 5 points you don't have to spend progressing a skill tree. Half full. If anyone benifits from weapon mastery, it is likely knuckler users and their ridonkulous ASPD. And no one should begrudge knuckle users a bump in DPS (at least not for an update or three)

 

Thanks I'll put that in next update.
I spent 2 hours testing a Priest/Farmer build and I'll put that all in tomorrow.

 

Detailed...sure I guess...
But I disagree on some stuff.
Holy Fist actually is one of the few attacks to consider both matk and atk,since it's a physical light element skill.
Holy Light however...not so op as you described it to be. You can say what you want but it's definitely NOT a nuke lol.At least it ignores part of the target's defence when determining the damage.
Also if you worry about the physical aspect of Holy Fist use Magic Mastery. Not so much of a double whammy now is it?

I tested this out on a support-burst mage hybrid (lvl 42),and it works just as well as any pure burst mage.
Though Magic Up (Self explanatory ; boosts matk) might be better in the long run... (Battle skill)

 

Hm. I never said Holy Light was OP. Unfortunately I haven't tested the Damage sides of the priest ladder so that was speculation. I'm in the process. And well, we tested both Magic Up and Magic Mastery, and both seem to be kind of useless in terms of stat growth.

 

Any way back on topic. I wander how exactly magic mastery effect magic. As in I bet it's percentage based so yes right now our low levels we don't see it much but come level 170 that 10 points will be a big deal.

Question is if it's percentage based how much. Best way to find out id say is to get a mage to level 40ish uneiup all items right stats. Put armor on right stats. Level by one then right stats for no euips and euips.

Do that all the way till it's level ten. Then with some math we can figure out if it's increasing by maybe .5% each time.

 

Even still, % based skills tend to be "noob traps" in MMOs. Looks great on paper, but when actually tested are rather sub-par.

For example in Skyforge PvP which is still in beta I see a lot of people people stacking %damage boosts. Getting like 500+50 damage onto their skills. I run flat damage boosts and get 500+250 damage onto my skills.

It could be worth it in the future, maybe. But I feel that in the current state, with the fact that it doesn't progress into another skill, 10 points is a waste.

 

Yes I can see what you mean, that makes sense. And any way even if in the future it gets better, it's not technically needed now so you could use points later on it. To bad I just made a new mage to fix stats and maxed that out. All ready 44 don't feel like re making XD.

 

I'm not saying that anyone who uses the skill is bad or anything. I'm just saying that in the current patch, the skill is rather inefficient and could be used elsewhere for the time bejng. For all I know in a few releases it could be god-tier.

 

Yup exactly what I mean. For now we could use points in some thing else and in future use on skill when it becomes more effective.

We will have to wait and see what the devs do. Hopeful they keep updating and don't abandon their game. It's good so far with very little glitches and still basically beta.

 

Can you do a guide similar to this for warriors?

 

I enjoyed this guide very much and appreciate your hard work and dedication, keep it up and I look forward to future updates

 

Yeah that's next on the agenda. I'll start it tonight.

 

Mages have probably the highest damage in the game but seriously, it takes a long time to charge a lot of it's spells. The other classes have instantaneous skills that apply debuffs more. I think speed is a bit more important than just doing high damage. I usually find myself tanking with this class because it does so much damage. I'm not sure if it's the damage or something else but the boss always seem to attack the glowing person that can't move that much. Find myself dying a lot too. It always ends up having me running for my life before I can cast more spells