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One of the most frequent questions we get in Ask the Experts is 'what gear should I use to play mage?' and the answer is quite complicated and lengthy to keep typing out again.

There are three major components to a mage gear set - a staff, cotton armor, and phase armor. I will first explain what stats are important to mage and why, and then I will talk about different equipment choices you can make.

Proficiency

The most important part of a mage's stats is proficiency. The proficiency associated with a spell affects three things:

- Reduces enemy resist chance against that spell (counter-resist)
- Reduces the mana cost of the spell
- Reduces the time it takes to cast a spell

Finally, when casting a spell that deals damage, there is also one further effect:

- Reduces enemy damage reduction against that spell (counter-mitigation)

We will explore the formulas used to calculate these stats.

Proficiency factor

First, you need to know your proficiency factor. Proficiency factor is a number between 0 and 1, where it is capped.

CODE

prof_factor = (effective_proficiency - monster_level) / monster_level

In persistent HV, monster level is always the same as your level, but in isekai, monsters can be higher level than you in the Tower, which is why it is important to be accurate and use the monster level instead of player level for this formula.

For example, if you were a level 500 player and you have 900 proficiency, your proficiency factor is (900-500)/500=0.8.

Counter-resist

Your counter-resist is calculated as such:

CODE

counter_resist = prof_factor * 0.5

This produces a multiplier (between 0 and 0.5) which is added to other sources of counter-resist (for example, you might have 0.2 from penetrator 5 on staff), and then multiplied by the monster's resist chance to produce their actual resist chance against your spells. For example, if a monster has 25% resist chance, but you have 50% counter-resist (a 0.5 multiplier), it will only have a 12.5% chance to resist your spells.

Counter-mitigation

Counter-mitigation is calculated as:

CODE

counter_mitigation = (prof_factor ^ 1.5) * 50

This number is then subtracted from your target's specific mitigation value against your element. For example, a monster with 75 fire mitigation would only have 25 after counter-mitigation if you have an elemental proficiency factor of 1.

Note that because this formula is exponential, proficiency becomes more and more effective the closer you are to the maximum.

Mana cost reduction & spell cast time

Unlike counter-resist and counter-mitigation, the proficiency factor is calculated a little differently here.

Every spell has a minimum proficiency (which is the proficiency required to cast the spell in the first place), and a maximum proficiency value. These can be viewed on the wiki spell tables in the 'min/max prof' column.

Your proficiency factor for these spells is calculated as:

CODE

prof_factor = (effective_prof - min_prof) / (max_prof - min_prof)

With a cap of 1, as before.

Both of these stats are simply prof_factor * 0.25. While the effect of mana cost reduction is fairly straight forward, the effect of cast speed is harder to explain, and beyond the scope of this guide. (I will explain action speed in another one, in time.)

A note on imperil

All elements except holy and dark are presently best played using imperil. Generally a non-imperil player would require extremely high quality radiant equipments, full forging, and very high DD levels, to complete a grindfest, and I have tested that regardless of staff choice, it performs worse than imperil for elemental players. It can perform similarly in low-level arenas. Holy and dark mages can complete grindfest faster as non-imperil if their damage stats are high enough, but it can cost a significant amount of elixirs to make possible.

There is not really a non-imperil style for schoolgirl arenas; even extreme endgame holy gets significantly better performance by using imperil against schoolgirls (although you do not need to imperil all monsters in a round, as they'll die to the area damage before the schoolgirls go down anyway).

With full imperil abilities, imperil reduces elemental mitigations by 40, but dark and holy imperil only reduce by 25.

As a result, elemental mages aim to get a proficiency factor of 0.79, which allows them to reduce any monster to 0 mitigation. As mitigation cannot go lower than 0, and counter-resist has a significantly smaller effect on damage, elemental mages generally want to be as close to this goal as possible, without going too far over.

However, holy and dark mages must reach a proficiency factor of 1 to have the same reduction.

Staff choices

With all that explained about proficiency, we can now move onto the equipment used by mages, and explain why.

There are 5 major factors that make staff types different. These are:

- Primary proficiency (elemental, divine, forbidden)
- Deprecating proficiency
- Base counter-resist
- Base spell damage bonus
- Suffix availability

All types of mage, for all purposes, generally prefer Penetrator 5 Spellweaver 4 as their staff IW potencies, although Spellweaver can be swapped out for Archmage for a staff that is only used for arenas by a player who isn't worried about survival.

I will talk about each staff type for various types of mages, and why they can be good or bad, organised by mage element. You should consider that, at time of writing, it is significantly safer and faster for elemental mages to use imperil, so that factors heavily into staff choice.

Note that all mages must use a staff with a 'matching' prefix, ie, hallowed for holy, fiery for fire, etc. A wrong-prefix staff compares poorly to a right-prefix one no matter how high the rolls are; a low-quality legendary matching willow will outperform an unmatching peerless.

Fire/Cold Mage

Fire & cold mages choose between redwood and willow staffs, depending on what type of battles they will play. Generally, redwood is better for arena, while willow is more suitable for farming grindfest or item world.

Willow staff has base counter-resist and deprecating proficiency, which means that it has a much greater chance to hit with imperil. However, while it does have elemental proficiency, it does not have base fire/cold spell damage bonus, meaning you will deal less direct damage with this staff. The endgame (DD9, peerless staff, high-quality equipment) PFUDOR grindfest turn difference between fire/cold and wind/elec is about 100-200 turns.

Willow staff only has 3 suffixes, and the only ideal one is Destruction, although Focus and Curse-Weaver both have potential to be used in improvised circumstances.

Redwood staff has base fire/cold spell damage bonus, and deprecating proficiency, but it does not have base counter-resist, meaning it is worse at landing imperil. It also has more suffixes, which means the preferred choice can be rarer (Destruction), but there are also other viable options (Elementalist, Surtr for fire mage, Niflheim for cold mage). These alternative suffixes perform reasonably well, although to make the best use of Elementalist, you must accommodate for that and use more phase equipments to make up for it.

Oak staff has base counter-resist and base fire/cold spell damage bonus, but it does not have deprecating proficiency or a good suffix for elemental players, so it is generally not used.

Katalox does not have elemental proficiency, base fire/cold spell damage bonus, or base-counter-resist, so it is never used for elemental mages.

Elec/wind Mage

Unlike fire/cold mage, elec/wind mages generally use a willow staff for all content. Redwood is very slightly more effective in arena, but the difference is minimal. However a redwood may still be used by a beginner.

Due to the cost of armor pieces, it is generally not recommended to start as an elec/wind mage, and you should not be misled - by staff quality or their debuffs - into thinking there will be a significant performance difference. Investing the same amount of credits into a fire/cold set will generally get you better performance unless you can afford fairly high forging and similar equipment roll qualities.

Oak does not have base elec/wind spell damage bonus, so it is never used. The same goes for katalox.

Dark mage

Dark mages are similar to elec/wind in that they generally use a willow staff for all content. The closest equivalent to a redwood staff for a dark mage would be katalox; a beginner could use a Demonic Katalox of Destruction/Fenrir/the Demon-Fiend, but it is not recommended, for two reasons.

One is that Willow staff has bonus base spell damage bonus for dark, making it especially strong. The other is that, because dark mage has 'slower' (less safe) spells, increased mana costs and higher level requirements for ability unlocks, it is generally not recommended for a beginner to play as dark unless they are willing to invest in good quality equipment. Dark performs very well and is comparable to wind/elec, and will perform best for beginner mages in schoolgirl arenas.

Oak does not have forbidden proficiency, dark spell damage bonus, deprecating proficiency or a good suffix for dark, so it is never used.

Holy mage

Holy mage is often touted as the best type; however, for the vast majority of players, it is the worst element. This is due to its staff choices, combined with the strength of imperil, and weakness of non-imperil playstyles.

The preferred staff for holy mage is Hallowed Oak of Heimdall. Oak does not have a Destruction suffix, but due to oak's high base holy spell damage, the Heimdall multiplier actually pushes it up to being the highest-damaging staff in the game on paper. However note that oak does not have deprecating proficiency.

Katalox is a viable alternative for a 'beginner' holy mage, and in arenas. Suffix choices include Heaven-sent, Heimdall and Destruction. Note that katalox always performs worse than oak even on average damage, and it has no base counter-resist. Also note that the idea of a 'beginner' holy mage is kind of counter-intuitive; good holy equipments are enormously more expensive than other elements, meaning performance at the same price will be significantly worse, other factors aside.

Neither redwood nor willow staffs have divine proficiency, so they are not acceptable options for a holy mage.

Because holy cannot have divine proficiency on a staff as well as base counter-resist and deprecating proficiency, unlike the other 5 elements, it is the worst at casting imperil. As with dark, holy also has a weaker imperil debuff, but unlike dark it does not have an excellent staff for imperil, and therefore it is the weakest style for an average player.

However acceptable performance can still be gotten in arenas, where the barrier for entry is lower (as the monsters in arenas are much easier), but note that if you select holy and you wish to grindfest, you will either be completely unable to complete it (non-imperil) or performing poorly compared to other elements (imperil), until you have extremely high levels of gear quality and the final levels of DD.

Cotton & Phase equipment

Finally, mages must select their cotton equipment in order to reach their proficiency goals, and then fill the rest of their slots with phase armor to maximize damage. As different equipment slots have different stat budgets (with robe being the strongest and shoes the weakest), optimizers must consider which slot(s) to use for proficiency carefully.

A note on IW potencies - Juggernaut is basically the only thing that matters to a mage, and even that is generally only needed for harder battles. Capacitor increases the maximum mana pool but gems, draughts and potions are relative to your base mana pool (which is unaffected), so it only really affects elixirs.

Specific mitigations can be useful (for both beginner and 1H mage) but mages do not take much elemental damage to begin with; cloth armor gives a decent amount of resist chance against magic attacks, and most monsters do not have significant time to charge SP attacks or use their MP attacks (plus, if they do use their MP attacks, mitigation won't help you - only spirit shield will).

It can be extremely expensive and difficult to IW armor for 2 specific potencies due to the amount of possibilities, so while small gains could be made, they are not worth the expense and most mages should only care about getting Juggernaut 5 on their clothes.

Prof slots

A key factor in selecting your 'prof slot' is being realistic about how much you play, and your future prospects for proficiency gain; there is no point in trying to play with the typical shoes of the elementalist if you are not likely to ever reach ~580 base proficiency (assuming peerless shoes and peerless staff), for example. Do not underestimate the proficiency grind. Reaching 580 proficiency is roughly equivalent to levelling 1-500 10 times.

For the vast majority of elemental players, the most realistic choices are cap or gloves long-term. Beginners should generally choose a robe or pants as their first slot (especially if they use willow rather than redwood, which has slightly higher base proficiency), to reach their proficiency goal sooner, as it will still take some grinding even with full forging. My general advice is not to think too hard about futureproofing - by the time you have grinded enough proficiency for a 'more efficient' slot to work for you, the expense of switching gear slots and forging them anew will not be as problematic for you.

Holy/dark players will usually play with gloves+shoes (with their respective proficiency suffixes) for a very, very, very long time. If you only do arenas, consider cap instead of shoes. Theoretically, a holy/dark mage can reach slightly better efficiency using robe as their sole proficiency slot, but only if they have a peerless staff, peerless robe, and their base proficiency exceeds 590. (As you can imagine this is not realistically attainable for almost all players.)

After selecting your proficiency slot(s), fill the rest of your slots with phase equipment with a suffix matching your chosen element.

Prefixes

For raw damage, the hierarchy is radiant > mystic > other prefixes. On paper, peerless 'other' prefixes are roughly equivalent to a mystic piece with 65% average rolls, or a radiant with 25% average rolls. Raw damage tends to be the best choice for easy content regardless of element, as long as you can survive it.

The 'charged' prefix increases cast speed, and as such, it is the only defensive prefix for mage. New players should consider this, and charged generally performs better (significantly fewer cures) than radiant in grindfest for imperil players. An endgame imperil player may mix charged/radiants for slightly better performance. However arenas are fairly easily survivable so if you have the budget to forge some equipment, you do not need to rely on cast speed, and can jump to using radiants ASAP.

Conclusion

Please feel free to reply or PM me if I've missed information or made errors with this explanation of mage equipment. This is intended for beginners, so some advanced details may be glossed over, and you may have a slightly different experience depending on the way you play.

I do want to note that it is possible to survive or perform well in lower equipment than this guide might imply; this is for the general case of players of most skill levels & various factors, but it is entirely possible to comfortably handle PFUDOR arenas with many levels of gear, including much lower than what is described here. Obviously however it's been a long time since I was in the low 300s and I didn't start playing mage til 450, so it's not easy for me to give very well-researched answers about the minimum viable requirements for any level of mage.

This post has been edited by Nezu: Jul 1 2022, 08:36

should consider to pin this to make it more visible

This post has been edited by ryuseii: Feb 28 2021, 23:42

should consider to pin this to make it more visible

Nah, it's a player opinion, plus there will probably be other guides in the future - I'll probably create a sticky as a list of player guides though, at some point.

Thanks for the guide! Some of these seem to directly address many of the questions I've posted on the ask the experts thread over the past many months.

Something that wasn't clear though:

Is proficiency factor exclusively an elemental proficiency thing or does it matter for depreciating proficiency as well? The imperil section reads ambiguously on this point to me.

I've been meaning to ask about this imperil thing... I've been frustrated that my imperils are still not sticking to targets frequently enough for my rounds to not be constantly interrupted by having to go back and re-cast it. Does it get better as depreciating proficiency improves? Can I expect to pass a threshold where imperil will work nearly 100% of the time? Should I get Evil Enchantress hath perk? If yes, should I get it before I get Eminent Elementalist as a fire mage?

Thanks again!

Something that wasn't clear though:

Is proficiency factor exclusively an elemental proficiency thing or does it matter for depreciating proficiency as well? The imperil section reads ambiguously on this point to me.

I've been meaning to ask about this imperil thing... I've been frustrated that my imperils are still not sticking to targets frequently enough for my rounds to not be constantly interrupted by having to go back and re-cast it. Does it get better as depreciating proficiency improves? Can I expect to pass a threshold where imperil will work nearly 100% of the time? Should I get Evil Enchantress hath perk? If yes, should I get it before I get Eminent Elementalist as a fire mage?

Thanks again!

Yeah, deprecating also has a proficiency factor. Even supportive does, although since there are no offensive supportive spells, it only really benefits from the mana cost reduction and cast speed increase.

Yes, imperil landing rate does improve slightly with deprecating proficiency. It won't be quite 'nearly 100%', but somewhere around 92-94% chance to land is achievable. However, that translates to roughly 20% chance to miss at least one of the 3 hits, depending on monster resist chance (try it yourself: (1 - resist after CR)^3 = chance to land all 3). It's viable to use curse-weaver shoes along with a willow staff to push your deprecating prof factor up to 1, if you're bothered more by that than the small efficiency loss in damage. That's what I did on the grind to 600 elemental prof, and I'd credit that for preserving some very small part of my sanity.

No, I don't think you should prioritise Evil Enchantress over Eminent Elementalist; it's big enough a difference that it's worth buying for players who run grindfests, but not so much that it outweighs access to your normal proficiency.

Thanks.

I think the guide could use some discussion of hath perks and trainings. At the very least which we are being assumed to have or not have in the guide.

For example when you're talking about the difficulty in achieving 580 in elemental proficiency, does that assume Eminent Elementalist or not? Does that assume some rank in Assimilator, or maybe even that its maxed? Or did it assume none of these and having them makes it easier?

I'd also like to see some discussion on how primary attribute points are assigned (this is found on the wiki, granted), but also how most players assign their final, level 500 attributes. Diminishing returns are incredible here so I'd really like to see where you put your points such that leftovers are nearly zero. The wiki advice of "0 strength, 150 dex" doesn't make sense to me when the first 250 (at least) points of each are basically free, zeroing them out won't net you one extra point of int or wis, I'd guess.

Thanks.

I think the guide could use some discussion of hath perks and trainings. At the very least which we are being assumed to have or not have in the guide.

For example when you're talking about the difficulty in achieving 580 in elemental proficiency, does that assume Eminent Elementalist or not? Does that assume some rank in Assimilator, or maybe even that its maxed? Or did it assume none of these and having them makes it easier?

I'd also like to see some discussion on how primary attribute points are assigned (this is found on the wiki, granted), but also how most players assign their final, level 500 attributes. Diminishing returns are incredible here so I'd really like to see where you put your points such that leftovers are nearly zero. The wiki advice of "0 strength, 150 dex" doesn't make sense to me when the first 250 (at least) points of each are basically free, zeroing them out won't net you one extra point of int or wis, I'd guess.

It's not really meant to be a full mage guide, just a discussion about equipment. Yeah, perks have some effect on stats, so maybe it's worth putting in.

When I say 'base proficiency', I'm talking about the number that appears in your character sheet below your attributes - the hath perks don't affect that, they increase your 'effective' proficiency. Yes, that assumes even rank 25 assimilator and gold star, and hell, even if you have catgirl and awards it's certainly not gonna come overnight. Getting high proficiency is very, very, very grindy - most likely more than anything most readers will have done before in their entire lives, letalone in HV.

The way PABs are assigned again doesn't really fall into the scope of an equipment guide, but they really don't matter as much as everyone thinks. The only one I've found to make any 'significant' difference at level 500 is endurance (assuming dexterity is kept reasonably equal, rather than left way behind), and we're talking extremely minor gains even there. I don't try to perfectly zero out my exp usage.

It's not really meant to be a full mage guide, just a discussion about equipment. Yeah, perks have some effect on stats, so maybe it's worth putting in.

When I say 'base proficiency', I'm talking about the number that appears in your character sheet below your attributes - the hath perks don't affect that, they increase your 'effective' proficiency. Yes, that assumes even rank 25 assimilator and gold star, and hell, even if you have catgirl and awards it's certainly not gonna come overnight. Getting high proficiency is very, very, very grindy - most likely more than anything most readers will have done before in their entire lives, letalone in HV.

The way PABs are assigned again doesn't really fall into the scope of an equipment guide, but they really don't matter as much as everyone thinks. The only one I've found to make any 'significant' difference at level 500 is endurance (assuming dexterity is kept reasonably equal, rather than left way behind), and we're talking extremely minor gains even there. I don't try to perfectly zero out my exp usage.

I considered "& Stats" to mean attributes would be included, after all there's PABs on the equipment

What do you have your endurance and dex set to on your elemental mage?

Regarding proficiencies, doesn't it hard-cap pretty low without the perks and training? Or can it go just as high but just takes longer? Because if the former then we really need to know that in the guide, I think. For example, if you can never hit a 1.0 prof factor without the respective hath perk, even given infinite time to raise your base proficiency, then that seems pretty important to know.

Thanks again!

Edit: Oh yeah I remembered something else...

I see a higher price being charged for armor itemworld service for Jug5 Cap5, but more recently I'm seeing that Cap5 doesn't actually do anything for a mage (counter-intuitively), and is significantly more expensive to get along with Jug5. It actually hurts you to get Cap5 because resists would actually be useful. I think some discussion of this (how to properly itemworld your mage gear) would be worthwhile in the guide too.

This post has been edited by Chaisy: Mar 3 2021, 21:28

I considered "& Stats" to mean attributes would be included, after all there's PABs on the equipment

What do you have your endurance and dex set to on your elemental mage?

At the moment I have 550 dexterity and 595 endurance, but I've toyed around with 600 endurance, 570 dexterity, or the opposite much lower builds in the past... it doesn't make a lot of difference even in grindfest, although there is a (very) minor survival gain.

Regarding proficiencies, doesn't it hard-cap pretty low without the perks and training? Or can it go just as high but just takes longer? Because if the former then we really need to know that in the guide, I think. For example, if you can never hit a 1.0 prof factor without the respective hath perk, even given infinite time to raise your base proficiency, then that seems pretty important to know.

You can hit prof factor 1 without the perk, you'd just need different cotton pieces to do so (in effect, this costs you some EDB).

The 'cap' you speak of could refer to two things - the base proficiency cap (your level * 1.2) or the absolute limit that could be gained from gear.

The former won't limit a levelling player - even with assimilator 25 you won't hit that since prof gain is tied to exp gain, and you'll be levelling faster than you can get close to the exponential requirements for that factor. A level 500 player is limited to 600, but good luck hitting that, I only know of 3 players who've hit that for sure and I have my suspicions there's less than 10 in total.

The latter... well, that will never really be an issue either: there's up to 5 armor slots and a staff you can use for proficiency, so you can always add more if needed. I am sure anyone could exceed 1 at any level by using an elementalist staff and 5 cottons, by quite a distance, so there should never be a cap that completely prohibits someone from reaching 1.

Edit: Oh yeah I remembered something else...

I see a higher price being charged for armor itemworld service for Jug5 Cap5, but more recently I'm seeing that Cap5 doesn't actually do anything for a mage (counter-intuitively), and is significantly more expensive to get along with Jug5. It actually hurts you to get Cap5 because resists would actually be useful. I think some discussion of this (how to properly itemworld your mage gear) would be worthwhile in the guide too.

Any specific double-potency IW request for armor is going to be potentially extremely difficult and expensive - I simulated a worst case scenario of over 2000 resets for that (although obviously it could be infinite if you had bad enough luck).

Cap5 doesn't really do anything for a mage because mana draughts and potions restore a % of your base mana pool, which is unaffected by capacitor, so only elixirs are affected. But it's also worth noting that specific mitigations barely affect mage either - elemental monsters always deal elemental damage, sure, but the vast majority of monsters don't get time to charge their sp attacks, and half don't even get a chance to use their mp attacks either. In some fests I take 0 damage of certain types (dark most notably since it's only available as an SP attack).

As for whether jugg5 should be considered in the guide... sure, I guess I'll put a note somewhere. It only really matters a lot for grindfest/IW players, so it's not really an entry requirement for a new mage, but it's probably worth knowing.

The 'cap' you speak of could refer to two things - the base proficiency cap (your level * 1.2) or the absolute limit that could be gained from gear.

The former won't limit a levelling player - even with assimilator 25 you won't hit that since prof gain is tied to exp gain, and you'll be levelling faster than you can get close to the exponential requirements for that factor. A level 500 player is limited to 600, but good luck hitting that, I only know of 3 players who've hit that for sure and I have my suspicions there's less than 10 in total.

The latter... well, that will never really be an issue either: there's up to 5 armor slots and a staff you can use for proficiency, so you can always add more if needed. I am sure anyone could exceed 1 at any level by using an elementalist staff and 5 cottons, by quite a distance, so there should never be a cap that completely prohibits someone from reaching 1.

Any specific double-potency IW request for armor is going to be potentially extremely difficult and expensive - I simulated a worst case scenario of over 2000 resets for that (although obviously it could be infinite if you had bad enough luck).

Cap5 doesn't really do anything for a mage because mana draughts and potions restore a % of your base mana pool, which is unaffected by capacitor, so only elixirs are affected. But it's also worth noting that specific mitigations barely affect mage either - elemental monsters always deal elemental damage, sure, but the vast majority of monsters don't get time to charge their sp attacks, and half don't even get a chance to use their mp attacks either. In some fests I take 0 damage of certain types (dark most notably since it's only available as an SP attack).

Ok, thanks again, that makes a lot of sense, and I should have thought of the "just sub even more cotton for phase" thing myself.

And on the 1.2x base prof cap, I use Supportive for a proxy for the highest any of my profs could be to this point in my leveling. I've had Assimilator 10 for a long while now, and its basically ~ 49-50 points higher than my level and been staying right there. Before I had Assimilator 10, it was at 1 or 0 and it was I think around 25 points higher? I don't 100% remember. Anyways I plan to take it at least to 20 soon thanks to the recent influx of credits and see how much higher this soft-leveling-cap goes.

Now the one thing you said that surprised me a lot that conflicts with what I had previously read on the wiki:

At the moment I have 550 dexterity and 595 endurance, but I've toyed around with 600 endurance, 570 dexterity, or the opposite much lower builds in the past... it doesn't make a lot of difference even in grindfest, although there is a (very) minor survival gain.

Ok so granted you said "much lower builds in the past" but there's much lower and then there's much lower:

Stat Equal to Priority
STR Can be kept at 0 Lowest
DEX Level * ~0.2 Low
AGI Level * ~0.9 Mid
END Level * ~0.9 Mid
INT Level + a bit High
WIS Level + a bit High

Taken from here:

https://ehwiki.org/wiki/HentaiVerse_Advice_...nced#Mage_Stats

You have your dex at around level * 1.1 or 1.2, and your endurance around level * 1.2. This says to keep the DEX around zero point two times the level. And END around point nine.

Do you just disagree with the advanced wiki advice, is the wiki out of date, or what? Particularly with regards to DEX but END too.

From Isekai I know that attributes are scaled weird at low level, but mage doesn't become truly viable until level 310, so the advanced advice on the wiki shouldn't giving advice for that (I would think).

I've spent the past couple of months changing my mage persona's attributes for str and dex down from near level par to what the wiki advises, and I'm about 15 days away at 10 point reductions per day from achieving it. But I've begun to question this advice more and more the longer I keep at it. I also have my END at 400 at level 443 (slightly more than level * .9) and now I'm thinking I should raise it to what INT and WIS are, or close (they are at 531).

And the reason for having high DEX on a mage build is entirely for the "25 points = +1% Attack Accuracy and Parry Chance"? I.e. I take it the attack accuracy isn't just melee attack accuracy but magic too?

Do you just disagree with the advanced wiki advice, is the wiki out of date, or what? Particularly with regards to DEX but END too.

The Advice pages on the wiki are the bane of my life; those are player opinion, and quite often wrong or based on limited second-hand knowledge. They shouldn't be on the wiki in the first place, and part of my reasons for revamping this section and putting guides here was to get rid of them - the wiki should be exclusively for absolute information, never opinion or things we only have a limited understanding of.

And the reason for having high DEX on a mage build is entirely for the "25 points = +1% Attack Accuracy and Parry Chance"? I.e. I take it the attack accuracy isn't just melee attack accuracy but magic too?

Nah, it's not for the attack accuracy, it's solely for the parry chance. It's a fairly cheap source of survivability for an endgame mage, since we don't have any other source of parry.

Nah, it's not for the attack accuracy, it's solely for the parry chance. It's a fairly cheap source of survivability for an endgame mage, since we don't have any other source of parry.

Thanks, I just wiped out 2 months of minusing stats to get 10% more parry for the cost of less than 1 points of INT or WIS.

thank for this helpful thread bro nezu

Thanks a lot for this guide. It helps me huge.

this is a very nice guide and I have been meaning to move towards a mage style play now that I am approaching a appropriate level for it and I have built up enough equipment

I have revised a couple of statements about non-imperil viability, particular for dark mage.