Looking for the best mage template?

Jena · Post by **Jena** » Thu May 29, 2003 5:35 pm

Im gonna reroll one of my little characters and I guess Ill finally make a mage. Ive played ac for 4 years but yet to play a mage. Anyone know of a good template to make?

PS. Cult if you see this im gonna put her under your Loner guy.

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Thu May 29, 2003 6:48 pm

All of the following is my opinion and, as such, isn't worth a single pryeal

but here are my thoughts from reading and playing around with a few mage characters.

Part of your decision depends on whether you will use buff bots, or a buff buddy, to help give you that "little extra."

Borg's template was, I think
Strength: 40
Endurance: 60
Coord: 10
Quickness: 20
Focus: 100
Self: 100

Your mage's starting template isn't critical like it used to be, since you can redistribute attributes now.

Focus: 100

Self: 100

Coordination: Coord is of absolutely no use to a little mage. Later maybe, if you choose to take melee defense but you can redistribute points into coord then if you really feel the need.

Strength: Strength is important, sort of. It isn't nearly as important as it used to be when you had to carry a mage shop's worth of components around with you. Tapers are heavy, but manageable.

Quickness: Quickness will help you get places a little faster, and run away from monsters and hopefully not die. You want a painful experience? Try an overburdened mage with a quickness of 10.

Folks might argue on this one some, depending on their mindset. Is it better to run away and stay alive, or is a lot of health better so you can duke it out with a critter? You probably won't have both. I think I remember reading somewhere that the ingame animations need a quick of something like 70 in order for your character to be able to move as fast as the animation sequences, but I could be completely off on that.

Endurance: Endurance = Health = a bigger stamina pool to do transfers from. For PK, I would think you will want all of the health you can get. Endurance is going to come at the cost of quickness or strength though.

I think I started Borg out with 60 Endurance I think and 40 Strength, not knowing exactly how strong he needed to be. After some painful and slow fighting, I raised his quickness up to the point where he was okay. I've been transferring strength over into endurance lately so I can take more of a beating. His 10 extra quickness have long since been moved to strength. If I were to re-roll him, I would start him with probably 10 strength and depend more on a buffbot to give him some muscles.

Phade · Post by **Phade** » Thu May 29, 2003 6:55 pm

Easiest one to level is probably an old style OG

Spec Critter and Life, train Mana c and maybe item if you have the space.. then run InstaOG

or you could just spec life for now and train critter, item and war then get mana c later..

stats that work well are 50/60 str/end and 100 focus/self

Sassy · Post by **Sassy** » Thu May 29, 2003 7:00 pm

I have a level 27 mage that has the things Phade said. She has life spec'd with creature, item, war and mana C trained. She's a blast to play now that her skills are getting up there. I would suggest a tad bit of powerleveling to deal with some of the early frustrations

.

LitlPrincess · Post by **LitlPrincess** » Thu May 29, 2003 7:19 pm

I have a 4 school no spec. Shes about to see some use in the weeks to come.

Phred · Post by **Phred** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:24 pm

Ok.. here is my current mage template that I advise for everyon becuase of a couple things... (which I'll explain after I tell you what the temp is)

50
50
15
15
100
100

Train War, Life, Critter, Item, Mana C
At 25 (I think you have enough skill creds to do this at 25) Spec War
At 35 if you run skill credit or 40 if you dotn Spec Critter
At 75 if you run skill credit or 80 if you dont spec Life

Reasoning: at the lower levels you will most likeley be pwoerleveld or use a buff bot so you really only need to worry abotu your offensive skill
Once you reach the mid levels you will want to start buffign yourself, spec critter makes that alot easier... it also makeis it so you can magic yeild almsot anythgin you hunt, allowign for a lower life skill to suffice and ensureign that all of you spells after the yeild will land
At the higher levels is where a BM truley comes into power as very little will resist enough to warrent a yeild..though keeping critter speced for a while can be very useful (just look at Pipi the shadow mage or myself)

Basically you start off with a fully mobile template, it grows into its own power and rather quickly (level 40) can utterly dominate the feild around it without any help at all.

Jena · Post by **Jena** » Fri May 30, 2003 4:54 am

Wow Thanks for all the info everyone.

Im off to go delete a char so i can get a slot to make one hehe. Thanks again

Dave_Mustaine · Post by **Dave_Mustaine** » Fri May 30, 2003 6:39 am

I like what Phred said about starting no-spec, and speccing skills later in life. That just makes the most sense to me, because it frees you up from being tied to a program like InstaOg.

Khaz-Modaan · Post by **Khaz-Modaan** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:20 am

It definitely lends your character to be more productive right off the bat - I would go with the no spec, and spec as you go on down the line, just like it was said above:

War, then either Creature or Life magic. Depending on whether or not you want to pk, you might want to consider taking Magic Defense specialized, but that will come after -everything- else.

Pipi · Post by **Pipi** » Fri May 30, 2003 5:24 pm

Mages suck.

Mickie · Post by **Mickie** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:35 pm

I wanna suggest something along the same lines.
50-50-15-15-100-100
Spec war.
Train manaC, MagicD, life, Item, and when you have enought credits critter.
As you progress, spec life at the first available opportunity.

Start your char in Holtburg by the redspire portal. Hunt the bandits and water golems around redspire untill lvl 10-11, then camp the Arcade.
As you progressm move further down the arcade, best loot on top on Harvesters, best XP on bottom on Servents. I just started a mage like this, and I am going to roll a UA like this tonight =).

Ive heard several people mention rolling a noob this weekend. we should all get together!

Lagmatic · Post by **Lagmatic** » Sat May 31, 2003 12:55 am

There's no real need to worry about template any more.

You can change it all around later, and probably will.

Just make sure you get all your skills fairly quickly. Og probably does that best, if you can get twinked to 26.

Phred · Post by **Phred** » Sat May 31, 2003 1:21 pm

Odd... I thougth starting out no spec got you all the skills the fastest

Lagmatic · Post by **Lagmatic** » Sat May 31, 2003 1:52 pm

oh sure, you can do the no spec, but 1-26 is like 2 hours of work...

Phred · Post by **Phred** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:01 am

And it tends to go faster if you have the ability to kill things (ie, OG does not have that option readily available)