Allods Online Kirah Mage Guide

Allods Online Kirah Mage Guide by deaderaco

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Talents
3. Rubies
4. Builds

Introduction

Hi, this is a guide to help you understand the Mage now that the fabled Kirah patch has struck. The mage is a very complicated and exciting class and if you’re looking at this guide to decide if you want to be a mage, you should definitely chose this stealthy and deadly ninja of Allods.

Let’s get right to the meat of this, though! Skills, talents, and what you should spend your goodies on.

Skill Points

This is a common question and a logical place to start. Mages need a balance of statistics. It’s important to get your luck high for critical strikes and better DPS, but you need to measure that against your intelligence, perception and wisdom. Before Kirah, the ‘crit’ mage was a more viable build statistically due to the ruby skills, but now it’s more important to maintain an even balance.

As you level, it’s a wise idea to invest your points into luck. Even after Kirah, luck is a valuable statistic and usually hard to come by, and there are still extensive reasons which include the new rubies to invest in luck.

Use your gear for balance. You should prioritize your stats like so:

1) Intelligence – it’s a linear stat, which always increases dps. Get this one up there.
2) Luck – Generates higher dps via ruby percs and critical strikes.
3) Perception – Too much of this is a waste. Watch your ‘resists’ in your combat log.
4) Wisdom – A mana pool, you just need enough so you’re not constantly out.

Please note with wisdom, this depends on if you’re an ‘elemental wrath’ mage or not, but as for the standard mage wisdom is only important for mana. More on that later.

Talents

Talents are the core of your build. Mages tend to follow elements (fire, ice, or lightning) because of the natural synergy between rubies and talents, but it’s also an option to build hybrid mages which tap into all the elements. The elemental wrath mage is such an example – it uses a skill to burn entropy into a physical dps skill, but it requires entropies of all three elements.

Let’s discuss various talents now. Please note all talent skills and damage are based on a Level 1 character in default starting gear.

Fire Talents

The fire tree is a very high DPS tree that also favors a touch of crowd control. The CC here deals damage and has a side effect of drawing a little too much aggro to get a mage killed, so use carefully.

Fire Arrow

This is a quick to cast, light spell which is fantastic for your main damage output if you’re a fire mage.

Range: 40 Yards
Mana Cost: 20
Cast Time: 1.5s
Damage: 8.4

Meteor

This is a slow but powerful spell that is often used as burst damage, and kept as a precast. Virtually every fire mage, and many Elemental Wrath mages, push this skill up to r3.

It can be upgraded into Blazing Meteor.

Range: 40 Yards
Radius: 10 Yards
Mana Cost: 86
Cast Time: 5s
Damage: 27.9

Wall of Fire

This instant cast skill is fantastic for group fears, however its cooldown leaves something to be desired. Pre-Kirah this talent was much more potent but it’s experienced a nerf recently which makes units immune to successive fears. Despite that, it can help during sticky situations or retreats if you don’t mind the 30/10/5 minute cooldowns. If you’re a fire mage I’d consider this skill.

Range: 40 Yards
Radius: 7.9 Yards
Mana Cost: 39
Cast Time: Instant
Damage: Inflicts 2.8 damage every second for six seconds to all enemies that enter the wall of flame and gives them a fear debuff. When the fear debuff fades, they are given immunity to further fears from the firewall (they can still take damage from it though).
Cooldown: 30 minutes / 10 minutes / 5 minutes (depending on rank)

Conflagrate

This instant cast skill is one of my favorites for both damage and crowd control. It inflicts damage and causes your target to run violently in circles – awesome! With a 1 minute cooldown regardless of rank, it fits perfectly into the spell rotation of a fire mage for additional output. It’s a shame you have to be within 25 meters for it to work. This skill relies on conviction, the higher your conviction is the longer the enemy will be trapped.

Range: 25 Yards
Mana Cost: 53
Cast Time: Instant
Damage: 5.6 damage every second for 4 seconds
Cooldown: 1 minute

Blazing Meteor

This skill is chained, and requires you to upgrade your meteor before you can upgrade here. It also requires you to reach Level 44 and complete a quest in Kirah called “New Opportunities”.

Unfortunately I don’t have any more information yet.

Ice Talents

The Ice Tree is essentially crowd control. You get a lot of useful skills here and there’s no reason for a mage of any build to not spend at least a couple points here.

Ice Flow
This skill hurts the enemy and also gives them a debuff which slows their motion. This debuff stacks and is removed by damage. If the damage that removes it is fire, this will inflict extra damage (so it’s not uncommon to ice flow, then firewall or conflagrate, for easy long-ranged DPS).

Ice Flow is a potent skill and very nice in both PvP and PvE situations. It’s not the damage that makes this skill so useful – it’s the crowd control. Unfortunately it doesn’t last too long and there’s very rarely ice-specced mages, so leveling this skill up isn’t common.

The “Master of Frost” rubies can make this even better by decreasing its cast time by up to 80%.

Range: 40 Yards
Mana Cost: 46
Cast Time: 3s
Damage: 12 damage every second

Icy Grave
A super CC, this will lock the enemy in ice until they take damage or the debuff wears off. It does not work as well on players who are using incense so isn’t really a PvP tool.

This is a fantastic skill. With the Kirah patch, a good thing has become even better – with a ruby buried in the ice tree called “Master of Frost” you can make it possible to remove the cooldowns on this spell once every sixty seconds. You have no idea how many times this will save you from a close call! I recommend rank one for all mages, unless you really don’t need it.

Range: 20 Yards
Mana Cost: 26
Cast Time: 2.5s
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Reflections
Gives you 5/6/7 barriers which have a very high chance to absorb any damage. An AoE skill will remove this, and nature based skills (summoner spells, mainly) will pass right through.

Every mage needs this skill. It protects you from damage for up to seven hits and virtually makes the mage what it is today – a glass cannon with a touch of very nifty armor. The acchilles heel of this armor is obvious – any AoE that hits reflections will cause it to get removed instantly. It has a long cooldown and high mana cost so you’ll still want to protect yourself. Once the barriers are destroyed, mages are soon to follow.

Mana Cost: 79
Cast Time: Instant
Cooldown: 30 seconds

Icy Comet
This interesting skill does damage to all units in a path. Unfortunately, units don’t line up in paths very often, but still if you are going the ice mage path you will want this as your main ‘burst’ damage, as it’s basically the ice equivalent of Meteor. There are often pathing glitches with this skill which allow you to hit enemies on the other side of walls or terrain, because you do not need to actually target the enemy to cast this spell.

This skill can be upgraded to Icy Meteor.

Range: 40 Yards
Mana Cost: 68
Cast Time: 4s
Damage:18.5 to 26.1

Icy Meteor

This skill is chained, and requires you to upgrade your icy comet before you can upgrade here. It also requires you to reach Level 44 and complete a quest in Kirah called “New Opportunities”.

Unfortunately I do not have any more information at this time.

Lightning Talents

The lightning tree is very unique and considerably PvP oriented. Many hybrid specced builds will utilize it as their main source of DPS. Thunderbolt is particularly useful in PvP as it’s the only mana drain skill we’ve got and one of the only ways to take down a full healer.

Shocking Grasp
A melee-range spam spell, perfect for weak enemies.

This instant-cast skill is very critical for high DPS output for a lightning mage. The instant your target gets below 25% you want to be within melee range slamming it with shocking grasps and tempests. Nothing else can compete with the DPS of shocking grasp during this time and because you cannot get interrupted on an insta-cast its value only grows for example on Nogrom in GTower where you are getting stunned frequently. If you’re getting all the Elemental Wrath rubies then leveling this is virtually required. Even if you’re not, this is a nice skill for any hybrid or lightning mage.

Range: 5 Yards
Mana Cost: 13
Cast Time: Instant
Damage: 5.6 damage. Inflicts 100% more damage if the target’s health is below 25%.

Thunderbolt
A ranged, mana draining thunderbolt.

With this rare and powerful mana drain, it’s hard not to love this skill! Great for PvP, this is the best way to drop a healer and does exactly the same damage as Prismatic Lightning in a 1v1 situation. Obviously using it on any mana class is a good idea.

This new patch recently tied in a lot of rubies that augment Thunderbolt. Therefor, it’s almost required that any lightning mage picks this up since it will become the defining burst damage spell, above and beyond Prismatic Lightning. Even if you’re not a lightning mage, this skill is good for PvP as mentioned above.

Range: 40 Yards
Mana Cost: 46
Cast Time: 3s
Damage: 814.9 to 18.6 damage, and drains 25.2 of the target’s mana

Electric Pulse
A channeled spell which deals damage.

This skill has maintained a bad rep throughout its career. Once, long ago in the days of dinosaurs, this had the ability to inflict a stun effect on the target each time it dealt damage. As it stands now the damage output on this is minimal and not worth it when compared to other lightning spells.

It has some rubies, in particular Dynamo, which will make this skill perhaps a better one. Read below on Dynamo for more information. Still I don’t think it’s worth it.

This skill can be upgraded to Thunderhead.

Range: 40 Yards
Mana Cost: 148
Cast Time: 8s
Damage: 3.5 damage per second for 8 seconds
Cooldown: 20s

Prismatic Lightning
A ranged spell that deals chained AoE damage to up to four mobs.

Prismatic Lightning is my personal favorite ‘spam spell’ in the lightning tree. It’s an AoE that only effects up to four enemies (your target and three others), and it deals considerable damage. I like to park myself in melee range right next to the tank, spam this spell, and unleash tempests and shocking grasps when the time is right.

Range: 40 Yards
Radius: 10 Yards
Mana Cost: 43
Cast Time: 3s
Damage: 15.1 to 18.4 damage on up to four enemies

Thunderhead

This skill is chained, and requires you to upgrade your electric pulse before you can upgrade here. It also requires you to reach Level 44 and complete a quest in Kirah called “New Opportunities”.

Unfortunately I do not know more about this skill at this time.

Astral Talents

The astral talents (as I like to think of them) are arguably some of our best defensive skills. If you ever wondered why mages are so hard to kill, the following skills have a little to do with it.

Stone Skin
A defensive spell which provides you with 5/7/10 physical absorbing barriers.

This is an awesome ‘armor’ type skill that makes you the bane of every melee class throughout allods. It’s a must-have and I suggest rank 3 regardless of build or spec, unless you somehow intend on never getting hit… ever. Like reflections, it’s important to keep this spell up at all times. Note that any magical spells will pass right through this.

Mana Cost: 49
Cast Time: Instant
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Damage: Absorbs 16.7 damage per barrier

Dispel
A dispel skill which can remove various buffs and debuffs.

This spell cannot be precasted, but despite this downfall it’s almost required for PvP spec builds to tap into this. It can remove a number of targets buffs, including reflections and elemental shields, perpetual healing, divine foresight and summoner’s blood aegis. It also has application in some PvE scenarios. Not to shabby, eh?

Range: 30 Yards
Mana Cost: 46
Cast Time: 3.5s

Elemental Barriers
Provides you with 3/5/7 defensive barriers which will absorb any magical or astral damage. Does not work on “natural” damage such as summoner dots, but it does work on “acid” spells like their acid bolt.

This is the ‘Stone Skin’ of magic. It will absorb any magical and astral damage and makes us a real threat to otherwise unafraid caster classes. If you intend on engaging in a lot of PvP you will want this, but for PvE it’s not nearly as crucial since most mobs tend to deal physical damage. Rank 1 is recommended and r3 is nice for PvP.

Mana Cost: 49
Cast Time: Instant
Cooldown: 45s
Damage: Absorbs 30.1 magical damage per barrier

Seal Of Health
A group-wide buff which gives 10/20/30% health, mana, and energy to all party members within your radius.

This is a very powerful skill and easily surpasses the old “Clarity” effect. The stats speak for themselves. I’d suggest getting this unless you prefer to use the “Aura of Potency” (which increases DPS) from the rubies instead.

Mana Cost: 169
Cast Time: 3s

Stone Skin2

This skill is chained, and requires you to upgrade your stone skin before you can upgrade here.

Unfortunately I do not have any more information at this time.

Rubies

Rubies fine tune your build, and augment your skills carefully, so it’s important to pick the rubies which work best for you.

Stat-Boosting Rubies
These rubies give 5% to a particular statistic.

These rubies are very important, and most builds try to grab these rubies first and then specialize. You get the option to collect intelligence, luck, perception, and conviction rubies as you expand your tree. Conviction is clearly the least important one and many mages neglect those rubies entirely. However more intelligence, luck, and perception never hurts and basically acts as extra ‘gear’.

Entropy Burning Rubies
These rubies are used to ‘burn entropies’ – those annoying debuffs you get from casting spells that will give you a random (often negative) effect once they reach anything above 5 stacks. Luckily there are decent ways to utilize these entropies to make them worthwhile and even desirable.

Lava Spill – Inflicts damage every two seconds per entropy, consumes fire entropies.
Hypothermia – Freezes the target for 1s per entropy spent, consumes frost entropies. Works wonders with the auto-cast ‘ice quake’ ruby to slow players that are trying to run.
Tempest – Deals damage to all enemies within a five yard radius, consumes lightning entropies.

All of these are useful and if you pick an element you’ll also want to have a way to burn your entropies so don’t forget about these.

Auto-Cast Rubies
These rubies are have a 5% chance per ruby to reduce the cast time of your next elemental spell by 100%.

The best use for these rubies is to spam a weak and fast spell like fire arrow until you get the hourglass buff – then you can launch a meteor without having to waste the six painful seconds casting it.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Endless Flames, Avalanche and Cascade.

A must-have for crit-based mages.

Mana Rubies
These rubies are have a 10% chance per ruby to grant you 5% of your mana on a critical strike of the corresponding element.

If your crits are very high, this ruby is worthwhile and in fact crucial. However it recently suffered a major nerf (from 25% mana to only 5%), and the value is much lower than it used to be.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Burning Desire, Northern Lights and Positive Feedback.

A must-have for crit-based mages.

Elemental DPS Rubies
These rubies give 3% extra damage per ruby for their corresponding element.

This is pretty straightforward: if you’re going to use a certain element for damage, you’ll need these rubies to go with it. Design your build with them as a priority.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Calefaction, Intense Cold and Unstable Energy.

Advantage Rubies
These rubies give 1% extra damage for their corresponding element for each entropy stored.

These rubies are more complex than the ones above. You can get anywhere from 0%-5% damage boost from this. Usually the boost is smaller because, well.. usually we don’t start with entropies. But if you intend on making your damage output as high as possible for a particular element, get these as well and it will definitely help.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Searing Advantage, Frosty Advantage and Thundering Advantage.

Auspices Rubies
These rubies absorb 1% extra damage for their corresponding element for each entropy stored.

Like the last rubies, these ones are dependant on entropy. The more you have, the less damage you take. Really these aren’t that great as I’d rather kill the enemy quicker via other rubies than just drag the fight out.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Fire Auspices, Frost Auspices and Lightning Auspices.

Absorption Rubies
These rubies grant a 5/10% chance to restore 33% of your mana when you take damage from their corresponding element.

They are not very useful unless you plan on using them as a stepping stone to an important ruby, because very few enemies use elemental based attacks aside from other mages. However if you had a $50 bet with your mage buddy that you’d win in PvP against him, this skill would pay off The mana return is substantial.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Flame Absorption, Ice Absorption and Lightning Absorption.

Reset Cooldown Rubies
These rubies grant a 56% chance to reset the cooldowns of fire/ice/lightning when they receive a critical strike from the corresponding element.

Look at it this way: if you pick up “Eruption” and a mage hits you with a critical strike fire spell, you have a 56% chance to reset your cooldowns on firewall and conflagrate. To be quite honest, these are useless talents unless you’re using them as a bridge to something more important, or unless you plan on fighting a lot of mages.

They all act essentially the same but for different elements, and are called Eruption, Ice Age and Lightning Jolt.

Elemental Harmony
This skill consumes lightning and ice entropies and heals you for each entropy spent, and requires that you have at least one of both.

This is the only healing skill that mages get and can be very potent. If you’re designing your build around PvP or you simply can’t keep your health up, this ruby may be for you – and it’s only two rubies away from the common ruby path so the price tag for this amazing talent is minimal.

There are many ways to build the ice and lightning entropies needed but I’ve always found it easiest and cheapest to simply use the ruby skills “Flash” and then use “Ice Quake” (both described further down)

Concrete Mind
Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your barriers by 20/40/60% damage absorption.

This skill essentially increases your stone skin ability and is considered to be a must-have for any mage. This is your survivability and the reason every melee class cries buckets when they see a mage.

Aura of Potency
This aura will decrease your healing done by 50% and give a beneficial group-wide buff each time you cast a spell, which lasts for 10 seconds and which will increase all magical DPS by 15%.

This is your second aura option. Keep in mind that you cannot have two auras (seal of health and this aura of potency) running at the same time.

The healing problem isn’t a big deal for most mages unless you intend on using elemental harmony. This is a complicated buff and hard to understand, but as long as you cast often your group will get the benefits.

This is a good buff and it’s difficult to chose which one you’d prefer between this one and “Seal of Health”. However, it’s almost guaranteed you will get this aura as it’s in the way of virtually every crucial ruby, so at least half the decision is made. Personally I prefer this buff for solo game play, but my allies love the “Seal of Health”.

Mana Shield
This skill grants a 10/20/30% chance to gain a shield of mana when your health drops below 10%. While you’re affected by the shield you will lose 6% of your mana every second, but you’ll be immune to damage. Casting a spell or running out of mana will remove this effect.

In my opinion, the odds on this one are too low. If they were more like 90% chance, then yes I could see picking this ruby up, but otherwise I don’t see the chances of this working out too well and most players tend to agree. However some mages do use this spell and I’ve heard good things (like it helped someone solo oreshek) so it’s personal preference.

Maximize and Minimize
Maximize: Increases a friendly target’s size but decreases their agility by 10%. Increases their Strength and Stamina by 50% of the lost Agility.
Minimize: Decreases a friendly target’s size and decreases their Stamina by 10% and increases their Agility by 10% of their Stamina.

These proportion-bending skills are not only fun, but they serve a purpose. For GTower raids for instance, many melee players will beg mages for maximize because it will make them do more damage. Minimize works better for us casters – agility is often more important than stamina because the less we get hit the less our barriers fall and once they’re down we’re gunna die either way.

Elemental Wrath
Consumes Lightning, Fire, and Frost entropy and deals (very high) damage for each entropy consumed.

This set of three rubies has spawned entire builds, and for good reason. Elemental Wrath can become the hardest hitting spell in the mage world, if it’s set up right. First thing you should know is that you need to have at least one of all three entropies, but the more you have the better. It takes careful management and use of spells to build up entropies. The next thing you should know is that “Elemental Wrath” is the only spell we have which deals physical damage, and as such is the only spell which relies on wisdom for armor penetration. This means higher wisdom means a harder hit. In fact if you have poor wisdom your wrath won’t do very much at all.

Most mages that chose to become elemental wrath mages focus on lightning damage, with ice quake on the side. This is because shocking grasp and ice quake are both instant cast spells which generate entropy rapidly.

Obsidian Mirror
Increases your resistance to frost, fire, and lightning damage by 5%, and grants a 3% chance to inflict damage to an enemy if they attack you.

Not that bad, but not that great either. It’s situational and the DPS is minimal.

Fire Trap
Summons a trap under the caster. When an enemy enters the radius, it will violently explode and deal damage to all enemies in range. Only one trap can be active at a time. Cannot be cast in combat.

This spell is very potent. You basically lay it down before you pull a mob, and you get a free output of damage that’s comparable to meteor. The fact you can’t use it in combat is a bummer but this can still help set you up on tough pulls and big bosses.

Firestarter
Fire arrow and meteor crits will place a dot on the enemy which deals damage every two seconds for ten seconds.

This skill is pretty straightforward and one of the best fire rubies we got this patch. It will basically increase your DPS and I highly suggest picking it up if you’re a fire mage, especially if you have a good luck stat.

Playing with Fire
Fire arrow and meteor non-critical strikes will give you a buff which increases your chance to deal a critical strike by 10%. The effect stacks up to three times. Each critical strike removes three stacks of this buff or applies a negative debuff which decreases your critical chance by 10%.

This ruby is confusing. To simplify things, this ruby is bad if you have high luck but good if your luck is wretched. This ruby would actually be a nerf to anyone with a luck chance above 50%, and anyone with a chance above 40% really won’t notice any big bonuses from this one. I suggest staying away unless your luck is poor and you don’t mind respeccing later.

Seismic Snap
Consumes Lightning and Fire entropy to knock the target down for one second for each point consumed.

The stun on this one is rather pitiful and most mages use it just to get the Searing Advantage on the other side.. I’ve had this ruby for weeks without using it. However if you had a close relationship with a warrior, the knock down would be very potent because warriors obtain bonuses directly tied to that. Timing and teamwork really could make this a powerful ability.. but usually, it’s not that good.

Purge
Consumes Fire and Frost entropy to remove one negative effect from a friendly target.

This is a different version of “Dispel” with slightly less applications as it only works on allies. The main problem I had was determining which buffs are removable as it doesn’t work on everything. More info is required..

Crystal Mirror
Increases your resistance to holy, shadow, and astral damage by 5%, and grants a 3% chance to inflict damage to an enemy if they attack you.

Again not that great, though it can be useful. Really teaches lowbies to mess with you when you’re afking in the arena, though!

Obsidian Comet
Grants your fire arrow a 3.33/6.66/10% chance to reduce the cast time of your next Icy Comet or Icy Meteor by 100%. The effect stacks up to three times. The buff will last 30s, and casting Icy Comet or Icy Meteor will remove one stack.

This is a cool ruby for fire/ice hybrids. The effect works as stated, but the perc is rare. A negative thing about this is that the Obsidian Comet buff only lasts 30 seconds, it’s not permanent like the auto-cast rubies. However this is a good way to increase your damage output if you can afford the rubies.

Amber Comet
Grants your thunderbolt a 6.6/13.33/20% chance (depending on rank) to reduce the cast time of your next Icy Comet or Icy Meteor by 100%. The effect stacks up to three times, and the buff itself lasts for 30s. Timing out will remove all stacks, and casting Icy Comet or Icy Meteor removes one stack.

This is a pretty cool ruby if you’re going thunder mage. Thunderbolt has got a lot of attached rubies, and this is one of them. Unfortunately it may be difficult to fit anything more than rank 1 of this ruby into a lightning build, but for a solid hybrid you may be able to fit rank 2 or 3 in somehow.

Master Of Frost
Reduces the cast time of Icy Grave and Ice Flow by 10%. There is a 10% chance the ice flow effect will not be canceled when the target takes damage. Once in 60 seconds Icy Grave can be cast instantly.

The description on this is misleading. By “Once in 60 seconds Icy Grave can be cast instantly” it means that you will not receive a cooldown once every 60 seconds from casting icy grave. This doesn’t mean you will be able to instantly invoke icy grave without a cast time, but it’s a great crowd control bonus and you can CC up to three units with this.

Ice Quake
Inflicts damage to all enemies within a 10 yard radius.

This is a staple of the mage diet. It has 0 cast time, low mana costs, and generates ice entropy like you wouldn’t believe! Combine that with the fact it’s an AoE, and that it’s so shiny.. well, you get my point. Unfortunately the DPS on this is low unless you spec into an ice mage deliberately, but still this is the best source for frost entropy if you are using elemental wrath or harmony. If you don’t need frost entropy or aren’t designed as an ice mage, skip this.

Snowstorm
Channels a snowstorm at the chosen location for 6 seconds that inflicts damage every two seconds to all enemies that enter the area. Has a 50% chance to reduce their movement speed by 90% for 2 seconds.

If you’re an ice mage, you’ve probably been drooling over this skill for a while now. It’s an interesting snare-type spell that also looks awesome. As long as you keep your distance you can really mess with NPCs and human players alike spamming this one. It doesn’t have a cooldown so in mass PvP this could be fun.

Arctic Shock
Uses frost and lightning force to freeze all enemies within a 10 yard radius, making them unable to move and slowing their casting and attack times. Each entropy spent increases the duration by 1 second.

This is an interesting CC and one of the few AoE crowd controls in the game. It works great as a way to stick players to the ground before you unleash a hard to aim spell like firewall, so it’s not uncommon to see this in a PvP build. If you have the “Flash” and “Ice Quake” rubies I would suggest getting this skill as well for PvP, but the CC is not very long so I can’t find a use for it in PvE.

Icy Coating
Uses fire and lightning force to add 1 layer to the Stone Barrier effect. Stone Barrier must be active for this effect to work.

This is a great skill. The only downside is that you can’t go above your maximum barriers, even if you have enough entropies. For PvP, this skill is really nice as mana and cooldowns really impact our ability to maintain our barriers. In PvE, this skill can get even better as it’ll allow you to tank otherwise impossible mobs.

All around it’s a good skill, but it’s also not the easiest skill to set up. If you have shocking grasp at a decent level, you can spam those and wrap it up with any fire spell, then top your defenses off with this skill .. at least, that’s how I used this skill when I tried PvE tanking. You can keep your stone barriers up forever!

Boiling Plume
Inflicts damage for each frost and fire entropy used.

This is pretty straightforwards. There are very few ways to deal damage using ice entropy, in fact this and elemental wrath are your only two options. So if you plan on becoming an ice mage, or a hybrid ice-fire mage more specifically, then you will want this ruby. Otherwise the DPS output on this is worse than lava spill for consuming fire entropy. In fact, this has the worst damage for entropy consumed of any mage spell, except pure CC skills like Hypo or Arctic Shock!

Amber Mirror
Increases your resistance to poison, disease, and acid spells by 5%, and grants a 3% chance to inflict damage to an enemy if they attack you.

Of the three elements, Amber Mirror may be the most useful. It gives you resistance to the mages greatest weakness – summoners. Still it does not noticeably increase your damage output and there are plenty of better rubies with more applicability.

Displacement
Increases your chance to dodge by 50% your current chance for 18 seconds.

This is a nice skill, but it’s got a very high mana cost and it takes 1.5 seconds to cast. I’ve never been inspired to invest into it for very long, the dodging is good but the mana is simply too important..

Flash
Teleports you 35 yards forward.

This is a fantastic skill. It is very versitile and allows us to kite mobs and other players while also giving us an oppourtunity to stand still and cast our spells. Also, it makes your running from point A to point B go a lot quicker if you’re doing all your travelling on foot.

There are some interesting, potentially useful glitches tied to this skill. When used properly, you can teleport to places mages or players in general aren’t meant to go:

• The doorway of Oreshek – we can teleport through the instance door without going inside! This will let you explore an empty Oreshek. Works in reverse too.
• Yasker Tower ‘instance’ wall – there’s an invisible wall when you are entering Yaskers Tower which is used to determine when to load the inside of the castle, and it can be skipped by teleporting through it. Thus, players can go into an alternate Nezebgrad with no NPCs or players at all. Again, it works both ways, so us league players can go /dance naked in the empty Empire bank without any pesky imps getting in the way of a nice screenshot.
• Trees – if you jump on a tree and press ‘Flash’, you can teleport inside the tree (and get stuck). This seems useless until a summoner is chasing you and you need a quick and unique escape! If only it were more reliable..
• Siveria Ice – try standing on the ice in the river, point towards the shore, and press ‘flash’. You will stay on the plane of ice, but go through the floor. Be careful! You can walk off the newly found cliff.

Sometimes Flash will not teleport you exactly 35 yards. This is because it doesn’t like changing ‘planes’ (the mostly flat 3d objects we travel on), and will stop once the plane intersects with something else (usually).

Anyways I suggest picking this skill up, all mages do and for good reason.

Superconductivity
Your successful Thunderbolt or Prismatic Lightning hits will grant you a Superconductivity effect which stacks up to ten times. A successful Thunderbolt critical strike will remove this effect and deal additional damage for each stack of Superconductivity.

This is a cool skill, and it increases your thunderbolt DPS considerably. It’s basically a way to ‘charge’ your thunderbolt with a lot of extra damage and unleash it when you please. I like this skill and I noticed it works really well in AoE situations – Prismatic Lighting will generate one stack for every enemy it hits so you can get up to four stacks per cast.

Eeke made an interesting post (click here) explaining this skill more in depth. Of important note: you gain two stacks of Superconductivity each time you cast a thunderbolt, as opposed to only one stack per critter with Prismatic Lightning. Also you only need eight stacks for the maxxed Thunderbolt, as casting thunderbolt again will give you an additional two before consuming all ten stacks.

All around a cool and interesting spell and a fun way to increase Thunderbolt’s ‘burst’ damage output.

Thunder Charge
Your Shocking Grasp and Thunderbolt non-critical hits grant you the Thunder Charge effect that stacks. When this effect reaches 8/6/4 (depending on rank), your next Shocking Grasp or Thunderbolt hit will be a critical strike.

Awesome skill, and basically gives you a bare minimum of 12.5% luck assuming you were absolutely always unlucky. Even if your luck is maxxed at 95%, it will increase your luck, so all around this is like a luck ruby for thunder mages. Not too shabby!

Dynamo
Successful Electric Pulse or Thunderhead hits grants a 10/30/50% chance (depending on rank) to reduce the cast time of Thunderbolt or Prismatic Lightning by 5%. This effect stacks up to 20 times. Each cast of Thunderbolt or Prismatic Lightning decreases the stacks by three to seven.

Well, Electric Pulse and it’s bigger brother Thunderhead aren’t that good of spells to begin with. You can get it to stack up to a 100% instant cast spell but really, if you want my opinion this skill isn’t worth it simply because the prerequisite talents are very poor. But if you do get Electric Pulse for some mysterious reason, this skill will make it better.

Builds

This section is incomplete, under construction

I cannot say with any certainty that these builds will be to your liking. Every player has a different build. Every person will have different opinions on what is necessary and what is not. Take everything you read below with a grain of salt, and chose your own path.. I am only here to provide an opinion.

The first thing to understand is which rubies are important. This is rather straightforward: regardless of build, you will need the stat rubies and will probably want to get stone skin rubies as well.

Click for bigger view – This image demonstrates which rubies you should pick up as indicated by the red border. Stone skin is the most flexible ruby, so if you absolutely had to sacrifice a ruby then stone skin is the lesser of the two evils. The image also shows the cheapest build to get these rubies.

Fire Build – Level 20/30/40/46

This build ends up becoming a powerful PvE build and is my personal favorite this patch. Lacking self heals, your survivability in PvP will be questionable but there are a lot of strong CCs that you can unleash to keep enemies at a distance and escape.

Spell Rotation
The spell rotation on this one is pretty fun. You usually begin a fight by precasting meteor. For maximum damage, lay down a fire trap as well, then target the mob and cast fire arrow. Follow fire arrow with that precasted meteor, conflagrate the target, lava spill, and then finish off with more fire arrows. Fire arrow is very powerful in the endgame version of this build – it will generate instant-cast icy comets and meteors so watch your buffs closely to maximize your damage.

In groups, it’s generally the same, except you will end up usually in a fire arrow/lava spill spam rotation. Save your firewall for the end of the fight, so you don’t pull aggro from the tank. AoE pulls will usually require meteors, but be careful – tanks have a hard time with meteor so as a rule of thumb you should wait at least three seconds for the tank to obtain aggro.

Lightning Build – Level 20/30/40/46

This build sacrifices damage output for survivability. Self heals are a great bonus, but they come at a cost – elemental harmony requires ice spells to charge it up and the only spell really fit for the job is ice quake. Fully completed this build does very nicely and is a great alternative to fire if you’re more PvP oriented.

Spell Rotation
You’ll pull your enemy at a distance using prismatic lightning or thunderbolt. Each time you use Prismatic Lightning or non-critical Thunderbolt, the build will give you a buff which increases the potential damage of your next critical thunderbolt, so you can build up damage and unleash it when you please. When your enemy gets close, you should switch to tempest and shocking grasp especially if their health is below 25%. Conflagration and firewall can help as control abilities if you need to slow the enemy down.

The endgame build offers health regeneration and some ice control abilities, making it decent in PvP though the overall output of damage will be less than fire builds.

Ice Build – Level 20/30/40/46

Ice is the true crowd control build. It sacrifices DPS in many ways, but in return has perhaps the best CC in the game. Unfortunately mages aren’t called upon to freeze mobs – usually the only reason anyone asks us to come along is to kill stuff or provide an aura. Therefor ice mages are incredibly rare. Nevertheless they are fun, and the CC abilities of rank 3 icy grave combined with r3 master of frost are impressive – up to four mobs under complete lockdown!

Spell Rotation
Fights will usually begin with an icy comet, followed by an ice flow or snowstorm to slow the target down. Another icy comet, and the mob should already be in your melee range – good time for conflagrate or fire arrow, which will increase the damage of ice flow severely when it burns off the debuff on your target. If the target is still alive, an ice grave can give you enough time to precast icy comet. Hypothermia is also a good stun to burn your entropies, or boiling plume if DPS is what the situation requires. AoE situations call on ice quake, the fastest and best ‘spam’ spell in an ice mages’ arsenal.

The DPS on this build is very low so you’ll find yourself casting icy grave and ice flow often to stall the enemy while you prepare another spell. However the CC abilities in this build are extreme, and it comes with self heals.