The Ultimate PvP Mage Guide for Ashes of Creation

Mages are the kings of big burst, AoE and crowd control when it comes to PvP in Ashes. Mage is a powerhouse in 1v1 duels and a mandatory archetype to bring into any scaled group PvP content. On top of this, Mage comes with the ability to provide an unparrelled amount of support via damage and flanking. You have multiple get out of jail cards with sleeps, freezes, blinks and more. If you're looking to be feared on the battleground, then you chose the right class.

For those of you looking for a PvP specific guide, please click the link below.

Strengths

• Phenomenal flankers.
• Extremely high single target damage.
• The best AoE damage in the game.
• Unique and needed debuffs.
• Fun and fluid rotation.

Weaknesses

• Mages hard cast a lot of spells, greatly minimizing your movement.
• Mana can become an issue in grouped PvP goes long.
• Extremely squishy without Shell.

A Mages has a few jobs when it comes to PvP and it depends on what kind of PvP that you're doing. There's Node Wars, Guild Wars, Caravans or just good ole World PvP. Luckily for Mages, our build remains the same no matter what we choose to do and our core gameplay also remains the same; use any of your crowd control abilites to set up your enemies, then hit them with devastating Shatter combos.

Your main job as a mage is to do as much AoE damage as possible in the targetting area that all of the enemies are in. There's a couple ways to do this, with the first one being as simple as sitting as far back in the ranged camp as you can and spam Magma Field, Ball Lightning, Chain Lightning and whatever other spell you want. Mages do the most AoE damage by a long shot and being able to sit back and freely cast their AoE spells will wreck any enemy dumb enough to stand in it.

Another very popular tactic for Mages is flanking. This means while your raid is clashing in the middle, you are slowly and sneakily going around the fight and trying to wrap all the way around the enemy force. This allows you to use Shell to protect yourself with that juicy absorb shield, then Blink in, set up your Shatter combo with Hoarfrost and Cone of Cold, then unleash a devasting Ball Lightning that will do not only a ton of damage, but also put up the Volatile debuff on all enemies hit, making your entire raid do 15% more magical damage.

Another huge perk to PvPing as a Mage is that you're pretty safe. You have a massive absorb shield with Shell, you can Blink to instantly get out of any situation, and you have a couple really strong crowd controls with Slumber putting anyone that's within 5 yards of your target to sleep for 10 seconds and of course you can freeze anyone you want, although it's suggested to only freeze for safety and emergencies, since you will need your freezes to set up your game-breaking Shatters.

For a full list of all Mage Spells, passives, and any other skills, please visit the Mage Skill Glossary

Mage, much like every class in Ashes, can wear any gear in the game, regardless of if it's Light, Medium or Heavy Armor. Each armor type has it's own set bonus depending on how many pieces of the set you have, however for PvP you'll find most Mage players decked out in a mix of Light Armor for the casting bonuses, and Heavy Armor for the Constitution, which is Health, and a huge chunk of armor, making you much more difficult to kill for certain archetypes.

As for weapons, much like the gear, you can use any weapon you find. There are a ton of different types of weapons; from one handers, to two handers, to spellbows, wands, spellbooks and much more. The goal is to just use whatever gives you the most Magical Power. And be careful that it is magical power by the way, because all weapons can be either magical power or physical power.

As for which weapon a Mage prefers, in a perfect world Mages will use a Great Spellsword in their primary weapon slot, which is a two hander, and in the secondary weapon slot you'll use a Wand in their main hand and a Focus in the offhand. Books and Spellbows aren't bad to use in PvP, since they do hit harder on their auto attack damage, but you'll always want to choose whichever gives you the most Magical Power.

One of the best places to get gear is crafted gear, which can take some time to farm and craft, however The Citadel of the Steelbloom is one of the best places to farm for gear when it comes to PvP. There is multiple sets of gear in there that you can use to tailor to your needs. The Bloom Warden and Rosethorn set will give you the most Intellect and Wisdom you can get, but the Rosarium set is the heavy armor set that has a ton of Constitution, Health and Armor on it.

There are a plethora of consumables ranging from potions, to food buffs, to scrolls and much more. All of which can drastically boost your damage, all for a relatively low price. It's highly suggested that you pick yourself up some of these consumables listd below.

• Rations – Provides health regeneration over a period of 20s.
• Scroll of Intellect – Increases Intellect (your main stat) for 2 hours. If you use a higher rarity scroll, used increases, so does the amount of Strength gained. You can only have one scroll buff active at a time.
• Fruit Salad – Gives you 20 Magical Power Rating for an hour.
• Health Potions – These give you Health or Mana, depending on which you consume. These share cooldown with each other, so you can only use one at a time!

Below is a list of all major Mages changes. Intrepid does many patch updates, however they don't always effect Mages, or if they did, they were really minor like visual changes or bug fixes.

• Shatter: Reduced damage from from 300% to 225%
• Ball Lightning hit frequency has been reduced by 50%.
• Magma Field damage per tick has been increased by 20%.
• Shell duration has been reduced from 15 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Prismatic Beam: Fire Empowerment burn reduced from 100% to 25% per tick and increased burn apply chance from 33% to 100%.
• Prismatic Beam: Ice Empowerment chill reduced from 6 seconds to 1 second per tick and increased chill apply chance from 33% to 100%.
• Prismatic Beam: Lightning Empowerment volatile debuff duration reducedfrom 6 seconds to 1.5 seconds per tick application
• Arcane Circle: Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Reduced the cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds and the bonus damage has been reduced from 30% to 20%
• Chain Lightning increased damage by 30%.
• Aftershock passive’s damage bonus has been reduced, to offset this increase. Aftershock now triggers for half of the original damage, down from full.
• Blink: Fixed a bug preventing the Unyielding Blink passive skill from enabling the ability to break disabling effects.
• Chain Lightning, Arcane Circle, and Ball Lightning have updated visual effects.