Help with my mage...

[Hurricane]

I have an elder ranger as my primary character, but have recently started a mage. Mostly started him for the idea of enchanting, but also considering building him into a fun character that I will play until capped.
He is currently 24 with below skills and stats(at level 24), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 70 15
Shield Use.........................| 93 21
Edged Weapons......................| 108 26
Physical Fitness...................| 105 25
Arcane Symbols.....................| 102 24
Magic Item Use.....................| 62 13
Spell Aiming.......................| 130 35
Harness Power......................| 128 34
Elemental Mana Control.............| 45 9
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 62 13
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 54 11
Elemental Lore - Fire..............| 54 11
Perception.........................| 70 15
Climbing...........................| 74 16
Swimming...........................| 74 16

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 13

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 19

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 20
I am currently using a 7x OHE, a 7x shield, and 7x full leathers. I had planned on using him as a battle mage untill he gets quite a bit older. (any opinions on this plan welcomed).
My questions are:
1. Should I continue to use a OHE and shield, maybe looking for a higher enchant, or move to THW and go with a claid, maul, lance... etc...? My plan is to look for a 3x claid and haste/feint at a 1 sec RT Opinions/suggestions welcomed!!
2. Would a pure using a runestaff be more effective. I am not sure how a mage uses a runestaff, are they mainly used for defence and any enhansive properties they carry? Or does a mage actually swing a runestaff as a THW?

I am leaning towards a war mage.. so mainly want opinions on claid/or other THW vs. a high enchant OHE w/shield. How should I change my training (if at all) other than the obvious change from OHE to THW if I go that route?

[Jymamon]

Armor Use..........................| 70 1
Way too high if you're staying in fulls. You need 4 ranks to wear full leathers. Unless you plan to wear doubles, you're wasting a lot of TPs here.

Shield Use.........................| 93 21
Edged Weapons......................| 108 26
Warmages tend to want to do maximum damage with every hit. There's nothing wrong with OHE, my second mage did it for a while, but unless you're group hunting THW is generally the preferred route. 7x OHE doesn't beat 0x claidh for raw death and destruction unless you can't hit with the claidh at all. (Or you have some rare/powerful OHE. I'm guessing that's not the case, though.)

Arcane Symbols.....................| 102 24
Magic Item Use.....................| 62 13
Nothing wrong with these, but if you need to make up points, you can skimp here as a warmage. As an enchanter, you want to 1x in each of these (or more).

Spell Aiming.......................| 130 35
"2x or go home" is the general opinion on SA. I tend to agree. If you're not 2x, you have better setup spells than wasting mana on a bolt.

Harness Power......................| 128 34
You can drop this to 1x if you need points. As a warmage, you're mostly casting haste in the field and that should be plenty to keep it up almost constantly. Especially if you ....

Elemental Mana Control.............| 45 9
... take this to an even 10 (or 20) for the extra mana in the field. (Also, of course, useful for sharing mana when spelling up. As either type of wizard, that'll constitute the majority of your spell casting for a while.)

Elemental Lore - Air...............| 62 13
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 54 11
Elemental Lore - Fire..............| 54 11
I have no idea where you're going with all these lores. My rule, though, is 1x or less until you're older (50+). If you go the THW route, you'll want to push EL:Air to 24 ranks as soon as you can. (Even if that breaks the <1x rule-of-thumb in the shortterm) for the additional -1s to haste.

Perception.........................| 70 15
I think everyone should at least 1x in perception. The bonus against maneuvers alone convinced me of that a bit back. That said, it is a prime candidate for skimping on until later if you need to make up TPs for more critical skills.

Major Elemental....................| 13
Minor Elemental....................| 19
Wizard.............................| 20
Less wizard ranks and more elemental ranks for a warmage. You want 425 at 25th level. I'm guessing you went the other route for enchanting purposes. This is one of the (many) areas where being an enchanter and a warmage are at odds with each other.

There was a recent thread here (or maybe the officials?) on spell circle v. benefit that would be worth reading for determining which circle you want to train in.

You're completely missing CM. If you're a going to swing a weapon, 1x for life.


I had planned on using him as a battle mage untill he gets quite a bit older. (any opinions on this plan welcomed).
If you want to gimp yourself, play a wizard as not a wizard. Opinionated enough? :) Actually, warmages are fun, but if your primary goal is to be an enchanter, you're better off as a bolting wizard.

While a warmage can enchant, they're going to be more limited until what they can pull off until much higher levels due to all those TPs going into physical skills instead of into stuff that, you know, increases your enchanting abilities. You could try to walk a hybrid line between the two - I'm sure there's folk who have done it - but you're not going to be particularly great at either.


2. Would a pure using a runestaff be more effective. I am not sure how a mage uses a runestaff ...
Runestaves are for defense. To over generalize, consider them a shield you carry in the right hand.

As a pure...
... you'll be better at enchanting
... you'll have more mana
... you won't "waste" 1 second between attacks (515 > 506)
but
... you'll never really have enough mana until much later
... you'll have less options on hunting until much later. (As a warmage, you can whack away until it falls. Unless you want to deal with wands, a bolter needs to be more picky to make each attack count).
... manuevers will be your bane.

As a pure, you'll likely find you use less "toys". Swinging a weapon, there's frequently a new weapon (or shield if you stick with that) to go try out. Even with the recent flare changes, runestaves are bland in comparison. (I hope that continues to be less true, but I'm not going to hold my breath). That could be good or bad depending on what you like.

Neither, however, should have any problem hunting and frying. Both can be a lot of fun, it just depends on what you want to do.

[Hurricane]

As a re-cap, (going battle mage route)
sounds like I should ditch the OHE and shield and find a nice claid.

My re-train consisting of:

combat maneuv. ASAP
drop armor to 4
increase air lore to 24 at least..(should i drop the other two? all together??)
increase perception
increase spell aiming
increase elemental spells, less wizard

Thanks for the help, any added comments welcome..

[Tenlaar]

Ugh, I just typed out a more lengthy post...and then dropped my mouse, which landed on the back button. So I'm going to do the TL;DR version.

I personally find that it makes for a more enjoyable character to get some secondary/tertiary skills that have low end goals before heavily investing in CM. 30 ranks EMC, 24 air lore, 10 or 20 ranks climb/swim, 5 ranks MOC. I even prefer to get as close to 3x spells as I can until I have 425/527/920 and then 1x MjE until spells drop back down to 2x, then start raising MnE again. Then, as those skills get finished up, start pumping the CM hard.

TL;DR version of TL;DR post, CM isn't the end-all skill it's sometimes made out to be, and I am sure could even be a post-cap goal for a perfectly viable warmage.