Ashes of Creation Mage Best in Slot and Stat Priority

Please note: If you can afford to, it's highly suggested that you also use Journeyman Enchanting Scrolls to enchant your Level 20 gear, which will greatly boost your stats even further, giving up a minimum of 8 stats on all your gear and weapons. The more you enchant a specific item, the more expensive it gets as you upgrade it. This also comes with a chance for the item to be destroyed after you've enchanted it 8 times, so be careful!

Item Name	Location	Level Requirement
Steel Spellsword	Crafting or Mob Drop (Most humanoids)	Level 20
Proctor's Focus	Crafting or Mob Drop (From inside Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Steel Long Spellbow or Wand of Briarhome	Crafting or Mob Drop (From inside Tower of Carphin) or Tumok the Wretched	Level 20
Skullcap of the Three Moons	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Undertaker Zon (near Highwaymen Hill)	Level 10
Cloak of Ill Omens	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Corvus (near Gravepeak)	Level 20
Cognoscente Garb	Crafting or Mob Drop (From inside Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Bloom Warden Pants	Crafting or Mob Drop (Citadel of the Steel Bloom)	Level 20
Cognoscente Gloves	Crafting or Mob Drop (From inside Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Cognoscente Belt	Crafting or Mob Drop (From inside Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Bloom Warden Bracers	Crafting or Mob Drop (Citadel of the Steel Bloom)	Level 20
Sweeper's Dusty Shoes	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Eternal Sweeper (Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Goblin's Bone Dangles	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Slaznug (Daragal Estates)	Level 10
Steelbloom Earring	Crafting or Mob Drop (Citadel of the Steel Bloom)	Level 20
Harrowed Stars Necklace	Crafting or Mob Drop (Tower of Carphin)	Level 20
Ring of the Corvid Lord	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob The Corvid Lord (Gravepeak)	Level 20
Ring of the Corvid Lord	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob The Corvid Lord (Gravepeak)	Level 20

The items listed above showcases some of the best gear options for the general Mages. However, based on your overall gameplay, there may be other items that you may prefer. For example, I PvP a lot, so instead of wearing the light armor pieces with Intellect, I'll sacrifice that Magical Power to put some heavy gear on, since it comes with so much armor and even some Constitution, which gives you a bigger health pool. If so, you may want to consider collecting items from the Rosarium Guard set (farmed at the Citadel of the Steel Bloom). I personally use the 3 set from that set. As for the weapons, as mentioned at the start of this page, equip whatever gives you the most Magical Power. When it comes to crafting your weapon, it is importnant to do anything you can to get it crafted at Legendary quality as your weapon will carry your damage much more than anything else you can wear.

Before we get into the gearing, we need to talk about your stats and stat priority. Just like all MMORPG's, stats are very important and you’ll find stats on gear, as well as some consumables that you can use that can boost your stats. There will also be tattoo system implented later on that will also boost your stats.

There’s six primary or attribute stats, and each point added to this main stat will boost additional stats you have that they are calling Waterfall stats. Intellect is our main stat and we want this on most, if not all of our gear since Intellect is the only main stat that gives Mages Magical Power. The stat priority is as follows:

1. Intellect – Each point of Intellect gives you 3 Magical Power, 1 Magic Penetration Rating and 1 Magical Accuracy Rating. Intellect being the primary stat and the Magical Power/Penetration and Accuracy being the waterfall stat. This should be prioritized above anything else.
2. Wisdom – Each point gives you 2 Magical Critical Chance, 2 Magical Casting Speed Rating and 1 Magic Evasion Rating. Still good for Mage, but prioritized after Intellect.
3. Mentality – Far less important than Intellect and Wisdom. Each point gives you 16 Max Mana, 2 Magic Resist and 1 Magical Critical Avoidance Rating.
4. Constitution – The main stat for PvP. This is a defensive stat and I found this stat on a lot of gear more often than the other stats. Each point gives you 10 Max Health, 2 Armor and 1 Physical Critical Avoidance Rating.
5. Strength and Dexterity – These are both Melee stats that will increase your physical damage. You never need to worry about these two stats. The only time I had a piece with Strength or Dexterity on it, was when I didn’t have any bracers at all, so I used a Strength bracer just because it has some Armor on it.

As a Mage your stat priority is Intellect, then Wisdom, then Mentality. Do not stack Constitution unless you're solely PvPing. At some point you’ll find or craft enough gear and you’ll be able to keep additional sets in your bag. It’s nice to keep a few pieces of gear with some Constitution on it, because it brings Health, armor and some Physical Crit avoidance.

Intellect is the most important due to the massive conversion of 3 Magical Power per 1 point on Intellect. Wisdom is nice as it gives you a higher chance to crit, while also making your cast your spells faster. While this is nice as a Mage, it’s not as important as the gains from your point of Intellect considering you only get 2 Magical Crit for every 1 point of Wisdom. Mentality is last priority, simply because we don’t have Mana issues often. The only time Mana is an issue is when you’re AoE mob grinding for long periods of time, since our AoE Spells are much more costly on Mana than our single target spells. That being said your weapon finishers restore Mana if you choose that option in the weapon tree, on top of things like Bless Weapon from Clerics and if your party's Bard is doing his job.

There is a ton of options for armor and weapons to choose from; in Ashes of Creation, any Archetype can wear any piece of gear. That means you can wear light armor, with some heavy armor and if you really wanted to you can even use daggers, spears, huge two handed greatswords, bows and more.

With that being said, leveling your Artisans is incredibly important. Ashes of Creation rewards you for gathering, processing and crafting by making sure all of your best in slot gear can be crafted. This is huge because all this gear can actually drop from certain enemies, however it will almost always drop at a Common or Uncommon quality, with an extrememly low chance to drop at a higher quality. However if you craft the piece of armor or weapon using higher quality materials, then that piece of gear will be a higher quality, offering it more stats than it would otherwise have. The qualities and their colors, alongside an example, are listed below.

• Common – White ( Copper Wand)
• Uncommon – Green ( Copper Wand)
• Rare – Blue ( Copper Wand)
• Heroic – Yellow ( Copper Wand)
• Epic – Purple ( Copper Wand)
• Legendary – Orange ( Copper Wand)

It is highly recommended that you spend the time to farm up all the materials you need at a Legendary quality. Legendary is by far the best gaer in the game and nothing comes close. If you have the gold, you can make it even easier on yourself by picking up the materials on the Player Marketplace. If you can't afford it and don't have the time to farm the Legendary materials, it is pretty much mandatory to at the very least get all your gear crafted at Epic quality, because the loss of stats going down from Epic to Heroic is major.

One important thing to mention is that your weapons carry your stats and damage significantly more than your armor does. This means that you should do anything in your power to get Legendary materials for your weapon crafting as this will be the strongest power up that you can give your character.