Pure, Archer Mage, & Warmage Information

[Whirlin]

In light of all of the recent threads that have been going around, with varying degrees of "How does X wizard build compare to Y"... I figured I'd consolidate my thoughts into a single thread. This is to give some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each build. I'm going to try to be rather Mathy in my explanations of strengths and weaknesses, but in the end, these are just my opinions. Gemstone is a game that can allow for a wonderful variety of horrible, horrible builds that can still end up being viable to take a person to level 100. Feel free to further customize builds however you want, these builds are not the law, they're just meant to give ideas.

Common Training Among all Builds
I'm going to break this down a little bit and categorize this into two categories: Core training, and Discrete Training.

"Stop making shit up and introducing new terms... "
Alright alright... Everyone knows what I'm talking about, it just hasn't really been ever defined.
Core training is everything you're going to train in every level... forever. No exceptions.
Discrete Training is stuff that you will max out, and never need to worry about again.

Still Confused? Enough explanation, lets get to it.

Core Training
Core training for a wizard is actually very easy, very light:
2x Spell Research: Spell Research pretty much helps everything, and being a pure, its not that expensive to train in. (0/24)
1x Harness Power: at Level, you know, not the full 1x, I really shouldn't have to defend training in this (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: 540 potency, mana regeneration, enchanting, and then the whole multi-cast, spellup things. I recommend it for life. (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: Combat Maneuvers Defense (8/0)
1x Perception: Also Combat Maneuver Defense. Also... other stuff (0/3)
Total of 8/35

There's been some debate... but here's the link that highlights Perception is used for Maneuver Defense.
http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Creature_maneuver



Discrete Training
Armor Use: How far you go depends on your build.
4 Ranks will train off maneuver penalties for Full Leather
15 Ranks will train off as much as you can for Double Leathers.
35 Ranks will train off as much as you can for Cuirbouilli Leathers.
Air Lore: 24 Ranks is -1 RT for Haste. I don't care what build you go, this is quite possibly one of the best utilities ever.
50 Ranks of Climbing will let you climb anywhere.
50 Ranks of Swimming will let you swim anywhere.

The Obvious Shit That Appears to be Missing
Magic Item Use? Spell Aiming? Arcane Symbols? Other Elemental Lores?
Calm your tits, look at the individual builds below, I'll get to it.

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What training in stuff does, and why its important
Lets go item by item...
Physical Stuff
Armor Use Reduces swinging RT, maneuver penalties, and spell hindrance from wearing armor.
Shield Use Generates DS when using a shield... Derp
*** Weapons Raises AS with a particular Weapon... Derp
Two Weapon Combat Never seen a TWC Wizard before... new thing? Probably not, it's expensive as hell.
Combat Maneuvers +.5 Melee AS per rank. Plus all those shiney shiney special moves... none of which wizards have access to!
Multi-Oponent Combat Allows us to hold our ground with many critters in the room. Expensive at 15/10, but 1 rank yields +1 to the minimum ball-spell area effect. Worth Training? No. Worth picking up an enhancive with +1 rank? Sure.
Ambush Nope
Physical Fitness Core training, HP growth, Maneuver defense
Dodging At 20/20 per rank, you're better off getting a rank in Wizard or MjE.

Magical Stuff
Arcane Symbols Read scrolls, invoke from scrolls, more ranks; more duration. Also assists with Enchanting.
Magic Item Use Use wands, use statues and stuffs, more ranks; more duration. Also assists with Enchanting.
Harness Power Get mana. +3 Mana per rank up to your level, +1 mana for over training.
Spell Aiming It's like weapon training, but for spells that use AS.
Mana Control:Various Core Training, Elemental is cheapest, and we're what we're aligned to. Training outside of elemental has half the impact, and I would only recommend it if you have a pocket -insert non-elemental class here-
Spell Research Core Training Get spell ranks, unlock new spells, make existing spells better.
Lores Bigger Topic... Increases potency of spells that don't get their potency increased by spell research. I'll get to that in my breakdown of Pure training.

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Lores... Whats the deal with that?
24 ranks of Air Lore, as explained in the opening post is really the most important thing you can do for haste potency. Other than that, Lores usually short to other training opportunities.

Lores a good bit of spells that we have. Fortunately for the world, these discrete bonuses have been widely documented, and usually apply Simu's basic Seed values (I'm not going into those here). When lores were first introduced, Carabele created a wonderful website that just provides lore breakdowns for different bonuses to different spells. Here's that website:
http://carabele.com/LoreBenefits.htm

Water, Fire, Air, Earth lores' other function is to increase Damage Factors of their corresponding spells. But here's the catch. In most cases, that DF increase isn't sufficient to make up for the next best alternative of an AS increase by training in more spell research. So, to compare apples to apples, we need to compare +1 AS (2 spell ranks) (0/64) to the relative increase in potency by lores (0/6) each. So 10 ranks in Lores versus 1 AS, just to keep it simple... That's also not the full benefit of Spell Research. (arguably, that's not the whole function of lores either though!)

Lets use 906 as an example spell. To make things simple, we'll just be calculating raw damage via DF numbers.
906 gains DF from lores at the rate of .001 Per rank up to 50, and then .001 per 2 ranks post 50.
We'll look at the first 50 ranks first.

No code has to be inserted here.

Since Lores have a higher rate of change, while +1 AS gives it a higher starting point (think graphs), endrolls above those listed above will favor Lores over the AS boost. Of course, it makes sense that the benefit is largest on those with the lowest base Damage Factor. This is a VERY important concept, but I'll touch upon that in one of the builds below. But lets take a look at post-50 lore ranks and the rate of change.

No code has to be inserted here.

Spell Research also offers CS and DS boosts, along with intangible things like more leech from 516, longer spell durations, etc. Lores will help damage when your end rolls are already high. Personally, I'm in favor of more spell research, but hey, train however you want. Like I said, it's hard to be a bad wizard.

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With that in mind, lets get onto the different builds, their method of attacks, their ideal training, their strengths and weaknesses.

[Whirlin]

The Archer Mage
My memory sucks, but I believe I was the first wizard in gemstone to pick up a bow and try to use it. Fletching had just been released at the same time, and I used to annoy everyone at the cul-de-sac in Wehnimer's Landing by fletching non-stop, and being one of the first master fletchers. Without Artisan Skill verb at the time, there was no way to be certain though! Nowadays with lich, and a lot more fletching scripts out there, its a bit easier to master. I took about a 8 year break for college, full time international travel for work, and all sorts of groovy thigns, and in my time away, a LOT of archer mages popped up, and really took it one step further than I ever did when I was playing, however, I did extensive theorycrafting on the build, and am one of the more vocal about it on the forums... So with that... here we go!

Why Archery?
Wizards main attack at the time were magical bolts via the 900s. This put a very high emphasis on DEX. I found myself unable to pick up scrolls without being encumbered, constantly relying on wands in my lower levels to overcome mana shortcomings, plus, you can't really 'aim' spells. These conditions aggravated me to end end... and some kinda still bothers me today, while others have gotten slightly better.

Archery offers an alternative mechanism for attack that relies on the same DEX bonus, offers an easy way to get to a 10x weapon bonus, and has RT that's not impacted by encumbrance. With Haste, well... you're a one-man arrowstorm.

The real kicker for Archery is that the bonus from 509 goes towards RT reduction, and 513's penalties do not apply. This means that a player only needs a 5 STR bonus to hit a 1 second hasted RT with a bow, while aiming. Furthermore, it means that an Archer Mage can make full use of classic Wizard Bolt Spells. Having two viable attacks ends up being awesome.

Ohh wait... There's more! Our 402 and 404 both have quasi-phantom increases to Perception. Wait... What?
So... 402 will help us find traps and stuff for bandits, we know that. 404 helps us disarm traps better! But both of them assist in aiming. When we aim for the eye... we want to hit the eye. 402 and 404 help that. 613 also helps... but we don't know that one... Get a scroll. Not that aiming matters THAT much when we're firing arrows off every second. I mean, worst case scenario is like, 10 seconds to kill a mob via arrows.

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Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
Total of 8/35

Additional Core Training for Archery
1x Ranged Weapons (14/3)
+1x Perception (so you're 2x in it) (0/6)
2x Spell Aiming (6/3)
+20/12
=28/47 Total TP

Optional Additional Core Training
1x-2x Magic Item Use
1x-2x Arcane Symbols
These are nice-to-haves... but since you're not relying on Runestaff defense (explained in Pure Section), they're not required from a pure AS/DS perspective. I personally love them and recommend them... but I can't say they're required.

Dump Extra Points into
Additional Spell Research. Since we're in offensive so much, the additional DS or spell AS are only going to help.

Post Cap Goals
3x Spell Research. More DS to everything, more AS for spells, and better enchanting capabilities.
1x Ambushing. 100 ranks of Ambush will net you 15 AS. AS bonus = ((ranks -40)/4). This is INCREDIBLY expensive at (15/10) per rank for just an AS boost, and that's why it's not listed in core training. This would not assist our aiming, as it only impacts aiming while hidden.

Spell Research Goals
MjE & WIZ until WIZ=13
MnE & MjE until MjE = 20 (At this point, should be 13 wiz, 9 Mne, 20 MjE)
2x MnE until MnE = 31 (level 31)
From there, you have a choice, depending on RT/Race.
*51 Ranks in MjE will reduce RT by 1
*75 Ranks of MnE will max out AS potential from 425
*Wizard Circle will generate the most DS of any three circles


Playstyle
Keep Haste Up
1 Mob? Lots of mana? 505 bolt til it falls, Arrows.
1 Mob? Little Mana? Arrows
2 Mobs? 410, Arrows
2 Mobs? Little Mana? Arrows
>2 Mobs? 410, 518
Undead? Screw blesses, those are annoying. 901/903/904/906
Bandits? Keep 506 and 919 up, 410 + arrows.

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The Two Handed Mage
Kinda like a bard. Swing a big weapon really fast.
Two-Handed Mages can be polearm or THW... same TP cost... so, if you want to be a polearm mage, just imagine anywhere you read two-handed, that I'm talking about a two-handed polearm.


Why a Two-Hander?
You know what cleaves through critters quickly? A Two Handed Weapon... You know what cleaves through critters even quicker? A two-Hander swung at 1 second.

Two Handers have some of the highest Damage Factors out there. Paired with Haste, this can be a devastating build.

Two-Handers are a great way to level. By the time this weapon form slows down, time to pick up a makeshift immolation pure build. No reason to do that whole spell bolt thing, that's for suckers. This allows you to pick a race that may be more partial to strength and aura rather than pimping out Dex like with an archery build.

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Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
8/35

Additional Core Training for Two-Handers
1x Two-Handed Weapons or Polearms (14/3)
1x Combat Maneuvers (12/8)
+26/11
=34/46 Total

Optional Additional Core Training
2x Spell Aiming
1x-2x Magic Item Use
1x-2x Arcane Symbols

Optional Additional Discrete Training
Take armor up to Leather Breastplate, if not further. You won't be casting spells as much as an Archer or Pure Mage. While the hindrance may suck, overall, better AvD, better defense, as you're gonna be caught in offensive more. It couldn't hurt. Better Armor is ALWAYS a godsend.

Dump Extra Points into
Earth Lore. This is really the only other way to increase AS after you've reached 75 ranks in MnE. Huge diminishing returns after the first few points though.

Post Cap Goals
Unknown... I'll think about it and fill this in later.

Spell Research Goals
Start off with 2/2/2 at level 2
WIZ & MjE until at 9/9 (Level 9)
WIZ & MnE until 13/6 (Level 13)
2x MnE until 25 (Level 25)
From this point on, you have options available to you:
MjE to 27: Depending on Race and weapon, Haste will round 5 second RT down to 1 Sec with 24 ranks of air Lore and 27 ranks of MjE.
MjE to 51: If you can only swing in 6 second RT, 51 ranks will produce an additional -1 RT, and make a 6 second RT down to 1 sec with 506.
MnE up to 75: This will max out the AS contribution of 425.
Wizard circle: Wizard circle generates the most DS of any circle, at 1.25 DS per rank.

Playstyle
513 is a giant wrench in the Two-Hander playstyle.
Subzero commented in another warmage thread that he was able to retain bolting by manually stopping 513. Seems feasible at level 60+, once you have a nice sized mana pool, but it's pretty mana intensive if you need to switch forms often. Buy going out with 513, and maybe switching twice during a hunt would work.

Due to the 513 shortcomings, warmages I've talked to typically train higher armor (leather breastplate or higher), and rely less on spells when they hunt. Spells that they do utilize are those wonderful roll-independent spells like 410, 909, 912. Knock them down, keep haste up, swing a massive weapon at their face. Pretty similar to archery, but no real single-hit option of 505, due to the 513 mechanics.

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By the Math: Archery and Two-Hander AS slowdown
I'm sure you've heard it before, that non-pure builds slow down in the 70s/80s/90s.
I won't lie, mathematically, they're not joking. But as I stated in the beginning, even horrid horrid builds work in gemstone... so it's not going to be impossible, it's a matter of preference.

To attempt to stay competitive, an archer or two-hander needs to train Weapon Training + CM or 2x perception... that's netting 1.5 AS per level. Right off the bat we're at a 1 AS per level deficit compared to a semi/square who'se 1xed in CM. We have two tools to assist in bridging the gap: 425 and 509. Rangers have Phoen Strength, Bards are overpowered with Kai's and 425. Pallys train like, 50 ranks per level in CMANs, and then have some AS spell too, I think... Lets just, for argument's sake, compare a wizard to a ranger.

Since 425's potency is .5/level, that still puts us at a .5 AS per level deficit compared to a ranger. Lets see how this plays out:

At level 20, we're 15 AS below them (15 (509) -20 - 10 (606)). We really need that 425 potency!
At 25, we're actually above them (15-25-10+25) by 5 AS due to 425. But they gain on us pretty steadily.
At level 75, we're actually pretty close (75 - 15 + 10 - 50) 20 AS. But we've maxed out 425 potency.
At level 80, we're starting to lag (80-15+10-50) 25 AS.
At 90, we really need every point of AS we can get (90-15+10-50) 35 AS
At new to cap, we're at -45 AS compared to a ranger.

We're kind of at a loss post 425 cap. Archery is kinda in a different situation, because they're guarenteed 10x weapons, and utilize ranged DS rather than conventional melee DS. But then there are all sorts of nice Two-Handers with various flares that a bow could only dream of.

[Whirlin]

The Pure Mage
Seriously... You're a wizard. Why would you pick a class knowing for hurling massive bolts of awesome, and then use it to swing a wet noodle around? It doesn't make sense. You're a wizard, BE a wizard, ACT like a wizard. If you want to swing a weapon, there's a class for that, it's a warrior. If you want to pluck on strings all day, there's a class for that.. a bard. Wizards were meant to be wizards. Mind... Blown...

Why a Pure Mage
Honestly... Pure mages are badass. There's a reason wizards are considered one of the most overpowered classes at the moment. Because we're awesome. Our training all aligns fairly well, and because wizards are so overpowered, they have a large playerbase, and that large playerbase is looking for new and different ways to use them, thus finding more breaking mechanics, thus causing an skybound awesomeness spiral.

While we bolters can't get the same AS bonuses as those weapon flailers, we have two potent AS boosters that we can train so that we can stay competitive on the AS front. Ohh... and to help us out, mob's DS calculation is different than melee DS... Ohh, and even furthermore, those AS boosters that we're training in, also increase the hell out of our secondary skills and defenses. So it's basically a win-superwin.

Runestaves, how do they work?

Runestaves generate DS based on how many ranks in Magical skills you train in. Magical skills can be defined as: Spell Research, Spell Aiming, Mana Controls, Harness Power, Lores, Arcane Symbols, and Magic Item Usage.

Runestaff defense works off of the two handed parry equation, offering components of a flat stance adjustment, and a flat enchant bonus, meaning you'll always get +50 DS regardless of ranks when in defensive versus offensive, and every enchant will add 1:1 to your DS.

The actual equation is: ((Parry Ranks + 10 + (STR Bonus/4) + (Dex Bonus/4)) * Stance Mod * 1.5 ) + Stance Bonus + Enchant Bonus
Note: Stance Mod for Offensive is .2

You gain Parry Ranks from training more magical stuff. It's an awkward equation, but going from 4-11 Ranks of magic per level will yield +10% of your current level to your parry ranks.

Example: If you're level 20, and have 160 ranks in magic skills, that's 8/level, or would yield 20 Parry Ranks.
If you were level 20, and had 180 ranks in magic skills, that's 9/level, and would yield 22 Parry Ranks.

+2 ranks in parrying is quite small, especially considering the cost of those +20 magic skills could be as high as 40 MTPs, which could result in a spell rank.

2 ranks of parry would yield .6 DS in offensive, whereas 1 rank in MjE would yield .75 DS, and 1 rank in WIZ would yield 1.25 DS.

Training specifically for Runestaff DS is not a recommended path.

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Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
8/35
Additional Core Training for a Pure
2x Spell Aiming (6/3)
1x Magic Item Use (0/1)
1x Arcane Symbols (0/1)
Additional TP cost of a whopping (6/5)... That's cheaper than just the weapon training for the alternatives.
Total: 14/40
Additional Optional Training for a Pure
2x in Magic Item Use and/or Arcane Symbols
You don't need to be 2x in MIU/AS. They will not generate more DS relative to additional spell research.
However, if you ever want to do fusion enchanting, you will require 150 ranks in MIU before guaranteeing success with pours.
MIU will also assist recharging items.


Dump Extra Points into
This is a grey area. At low levels, returns from additional ranks of harness power are marginally very substantial. 1 more mana when you have a max pool is 30 is much more than 1 more max mana when you have a pool of 300. During these low levels, AS/CS/DS aren't really problematic either, so further increasing your AS really isn't necessary. Wands are a good patch, but they can be heavy and a whole other burden to deal with. Therefore, I recommend dumping additional points into Harness Power, until your in your 30s. After that, I would recommend holding back on your Harness Power Training until it recedes to a 1x/level value.

After that point though, Spell Research, most definitely.

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Training Variations
There are a few popular pure builds that I'll talk about. Why they work, and how you can specifically train for them.

Immolation Build
This is the first I need to touch upon, thanks to Methais posting as soon as I even created the thread . Immolation (519) is an overpowered as hell CS attack with a chance of instant death. Due to the TP requirements, Immolation Builds are typically Post-Cap builds. On the surface, 19 mana for a single attack is fairly expensive, but I'll get into other reasons to wait til post-cap for this build as well.

Methais performed some wonderful immolation testing over here:
http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthrea...20appreciation

The end results highlighted two main things: Fire Lore helps instant death rate. However, we also need the CS in order to guarentee hits, otherwise pumping out 19 mana every cast for a potential for a hit will make us last as long as Jeril on a playground. In terms of training points costs, it's expensive to be 3x in spells to have those high of CS values, and then to tack on being 2x in lores kinda breaks the TP bank until past post-cap. Doing some quick numbers in the wonderful Tsoran training spreadsheet, as a halfling wizard with stats placed for growth, being only 3x in spells and 2x in lores leaves a total of 191 PTPs once you hit cap.

Is being a full 3x in spells and 2x in lores necessary for an Immolation build? Probably not. But Methais really spearheaded the build, and most of the logs you'll see are at that tier. So you can't expect similar returns to the thread highlights until being post-capped.

However, you do have the ability to save some TPs by not training Spell Aiming if you're going a pure CS route. So hey, recapture (6/)3 per level...

Rapid Fire 901 Build
Taverkin is probably the largest advocate of this. On the surface, it doesn't really make logical sense. However, when we dig down into some mechanics, it actually makes a lot of sense. Here's a couple reasons that it's awesome.

• Flares from Staff have a static rate of flaring that doesn't vary with the duration between casts.
• Damage factors of 901 are VERY low.
• You're already training in Air Lore for Haste Potency, even if it is 1/2 DF increase for lightning.
• 1 mana is stupidly low mana cost for a spell.
• Crit Bonus Damage as part of the damage equation.
• There's a lich script to prevent overcasting. RCAST

Damage factors are incredibly low for 901. This is because damage factors roughly reflect the amount of mana you spend. Theoretically, 906 should be 6x the DF of 901. DEFINITELY not the case, since at the same time, you'd typically be spending a premium to spend less time killing... Lets break it down in a cost per 1 mana by DF
No code has to be inserted here.

As you can see, it's a very high damage factor for the mana you're spending. Sure, there's the overhead of casting 515 every minute, and I'm sure we could factor that in... but I'll save that for another day.

As highlighted in the Lores section, Lores have the highest potency on low base damage factors, as they're a static increase to the base numbers. This means that the marginal increase of water/air lore on lightning is heightened. It even overcomes the half potency training. 1 rank of lore increases the DF by .3%. for comparison, 1 rank in fire lore increases fire DF by .1%.

Lastly, more attacks means more critical damage on the damage inflicted. A Critical Rank is calculated by Endroll * DF /Armor Crit Divisor
So, increasing the DF helps increase the critical rank.
Armor Crit Divisors are 5/6/7/9/11 for Cloth/leather/scale/chain/plate. This means you need at least 5/6/7/9/11 damage to get 1 base crit rank.
Once you hit Crit Rank 2... ranks become randomized, and may scale down. Half of the current rank (rounded up) = minimum potential critical. Basically, harder hitting stuff gets slightly nerfed.
Depending on where you hit, there's bonus damage, and a little flavor text associated with your crit rank. For Lightning, you get 1-5 bonus damage just for a rank 1 (average of 3.2 assuming even distribution among locations), and 3-10 on a rank 2 (average of 7). Actually, the tables are pretty much the same for fire.

So Lets maths it out again. 6 mana, 180 endroll, against cloth, hitting the chest.
Fire: .667 DF * 80 = 53. 53/5 = 10 (9 max rank), randomized to 5-9
Teirs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 25,30,50,60,70
53 base + 25,30,50,60,70 (average of 47) = 100 damage (Ignoring fatal crits)

Lightning .15 DF *80 = 12/5 = 2, randomized 1-2
Tiers 1,2 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses are: 5,10
12 base + 5,10 (average of 7.5) = 19 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 114 damage total.

But of course, that's with 0 lore training. I'll break down some additional mechanics around this in my next post when I go even further into maths.

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Spell Research Goals
Since Pure builds can typically triple in spells, I'm just going to include some general prioritized goals that can be hit.
WIZ and MjE to 13
MjE and MnE until MjE 18
All Spell Research into MnE until 430 is unlocked
Go back to MjE to train it up to = Level
Keep MjE = Level, Try to get MnE = Level
Any additional spell ranks, dump into wizard circle

[Whirlin]

Now... I'm gonna go the republican route and be incredibly racist for a little while... and apparently political!
Sorry, totally not fitting for any sort of guide.

But, as I highlighted in the beginning, you can pretty much do whatever herpaderp thing you want, and reach level cap... but the purpose of this guide was to highlight some options to help you get there.

Racial Selection... Or... Subclass Selection if you're already bred.

No code has to be inserted here.
That's a ton of numbers... Most of them don't matter.

STR is Melee AS... The higher the strength, the more likely you can survive a decently long time as a THW build.
DEX is spell bolts and Ranged AS. Archery and Pure Builds
Aura is CS for Immolation Builds

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Why DEX is the most Important Stat Ever
If you're using a Bow or Wizard Bolt spells, Dex is already an AS mod... but it is soooo much more than that.
TRUNC(DEX Bonus/4) is added as phantom damage to attacks in absence of crit weighting.
dafaq?

Alright, when calculating damage, everyone knows the easy part:
1) Take the damage factor, multiply by the endroll in excess of 100.
2) Depending on the damage versus the armor type, you get crits... which provide extra damage.

But between those two steps, there's one additional calculation. Take your DEX Bonus/4, round down. While this is not added into your raw damage, it IS added when calculating what rank critical you get. This occurs in all AS based attacks, including melee, ranged, and spells. Not CS though... obviously.

The Phantom Damage has been documented and confirmed for Wizard Bolts and Ranged Weapons. However, it does not apply to ALL weapons. Currently, I am performing testing on THW weapons to determine which (if any) receive the DEX bonuses. Once that has been determined, I will be able to test on Crit Weighted weapons and phantom damage.

Stop talking in machine code. What does that mean?
901 builds kick more ass. Halflings are even better.

901 has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad DF. But hey, if I'm a halfling with maxed DEX, I have a +40 DEX bonus, that's 10 damage right off the bat. If I have already done adequate damage to obtain a Tier 1 crit, I will receive +10 Phantom damage added when calculating the crit. Since a substantial margin of the damage from 901 is based on the crit tier, this further strengthens the build.

This puts Halflings at even a better racial selection than Dark Elves for non-immolation builds. Dark Elves have a DEX bonus at +35 at 100. But since phantom damage is rounded down, they max at only +8 phantom damage, while halflings get +10 phantom Damage. Pretty much the maximum gain you can get from +5 Dex mod.

Here's a wonderful example that Riltus provided to me, with a breakdown of the damage.
>You gesture at a dark orc.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a dark orc!
AS: +212 vs DS: +39 with AvD: +22 + d100 roll: +68 = +263
... and hit for 49 points of damage!
Heavy jolt to chest causes solar plexus to explode. Remarkable display of spraying blood.
Rank 5 Crit w/25 damage

Wizard with 20 air lore and 34 Dex bonus (8 pts. crit weighting)

901 DF: 0.133
Lore DF bonus: 0.012
Effective DF: 0.145
Endroll success margin: 163
Raw damage: 23.6 rounds up to 24
Armor: double leather w/ 6 crit divisor
Calc max crit w/o weighting: 24/6 = 4
Observed Crit damage: 25 (R5 chest)
Observed Crit: rank 5
Minimum Crit weighting for a rank 5 outcome: 6 pts. [(24 + 6)/6 = rank 5 crit]

Without phantom damage, the maximum crit outcome would have been a tier 4 crit (only 20 damage), so that additional phantom damage for the crit roll ended up being an additional real 5 damage.

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The following analysis is mainly to highlight the ability to convert between the builds, and the best racial selection options within a given build:

THW Warmages
THW Warmages are mainly concerned about strength, since they need all the AS they can get relative to the other classes before the AS slowdown in the 70s. I'm not really evaluating DEXAGL from a RT perspective, because if you're doing a THW build, you'll be able to swing anything in 6 seconds with any race, which is the RT needed to hit 1 second eventually. If your stats are placed for growth, and you're using a polearm, DEXAGL needs to be a concern... but that's a pretty distinct list of conditions, and you can take care of that decision yourself.

Giantman: +15 STR, but falls short if you ever want to swap to a bolter or ranged with a -5 DEX and suffers in CS with a -5 Aura
Half-Krol: +10 STR, but no penalties/strengths on DEX and Aura
Dwarf: +10 STR, No strength/penalties on Dex, but bad Aura at -10
Human: Barely decent at +5 STR, no Dex, and +5 Aura

It should be noted that these THW warmages races outlined above tend to be weak in DEX and Aura for eventual migration after the AS slowdown. So you'll find it very difficult to swap from a Racially maximized THW Warmage to a Pure or Ranged Warmage.

Ranged Warmage:
Ranged Warmages just need 1 thing: DEX. Even a halfling with -15 STR mod can get to a STR bonus of +5 and fire an aimed longbow at 1 second with haste. The following highlights strength mods mainly as a way to highlight the ability to transition between builds with a fixskills:

Halflings: The Dominant Master Race with +15 DEX, but a wondrous -15 STR and -5 Aura
Dark Elf: +10 DEX, 0 STR, and +10 Aura
Sylvan: +10 DEX, 0 STR and +5 Aura... Sadly inferior to Dark Elves in stats, but infinitely less douchy.
Burger Gnome: +10 Dex, but with the same -15 STR as a halfling, but a +5 Aura
Elves have +5 DEX, 0 STR, and +5 Aura... Making them not bad, but not particularly good
Half Elves just have +5 Dex... 0 STR, 0 Aura... so... Better than all negatives... barely.
Aelotoi Have the same +5 DEX and 0 Aura as Half-Elves, but with -5 Strength... so, worse across the board... But at least they don't need Red Bulls.
Forest Gnomes have -10 Strength for 5 Dex and 0 Aura... They're bad... and if you picked one, you should feel bad.

Pure Builds
I'm gonna do an emphasis on Aura, as our CS mod, because I already highlighted DEX in the Ranged section. Fortunately, the list is pretty short:
Dark Elves with +10 Aura, along with their +10 DEX
Burger Gnomes and Elves with +5, also listed in the DEX breakdown.

By the Numbers
All of the Strength focused races have drastic shortcoming when it comes time to convert to being a pure or ranged build.
Dark Elves have the overall highest statistics modifiers at +20 to relevant stats, but have other shortcomings, like being douchebags and horribad spirit regen.
Short of Dark Elves (literally), Bhurghal Gnomes seem to be a strong option for both Archery and eventual Immolation builds.
Halflings are by far the strongest race if you're going for a pure bolting or ranged builds.


The Stuff Beyond the Numbers
Dark Elves: RPing a Dark Elf turns you into a douche... but a douche with TREMENDOUS RP capabilities and ways to pimp out RPAs. They also have absolutely horrendous Spirit Regeneration Rates, which can influence total mana pool if you go with the COL as a society (next section). Dark Elves have penalties to Sorcerer, Elemental, and Spiritual TD at -5, with a +10 against poison, and +100 against diseases. Base HP of 120. Spirit Regen of 1 per 5 minutes.

Bhurghal Gnomes are kinda annoying little things... Squeaky even to a halfling's perspective. They don't have as established a society as Dark Elves, so you're kinda on your own. They have the best innate Maneuver defense, which is shared with other smaller races, and better spirit regen at 1 per 3 minutes. They have a base HP of only 90.

Halflings are a strong pick for any class, as their total stat bonuses are amung the highest at net +20 (the newer races of both Gnomes and Erithian have +25). they have 'excellent' maneuver defense, following the two gnome races on the best. They get huge TD bonuses: +40 Elemental, +30 Disease, and +30 Poison. They also have the best natural spirit regen at 2/5 minutes, tied with Dwarves and Forest gnomes... Both of whom make poor Mages.

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Societies

3 Societies to choose from! That which must not be named (and definitely not the Council of Light (COL)), Voln, and Guardians of Sunfist (GOS).
Each offers unique bonuses... blahblahblah, lets dive in.

COL
COL is the society for people that love hard maths. The society offers very little outside of the core AS/DS benefits... But those additional benefits are pretty nice mechanically.
Sign of staunching stops all bleeding for 1 mana
Sign of Healing is full Health for 2 spirit
Sign of wracking is full mana for 5 spirit
Sign of darkness is a teleport back to town for 6 spirit... can't use while stunned though.
We're talking about an overall gain of 35 AS, 35 DS, 20 Ranged/Spell DS, 15 TD.
Here's the catch... Keeping these signs up cost spirit. Here's the anti-catch... COL sign duration is 10 seconds per level. So at cap, we're talking about a duration of 16 minutes, 40 seconds. Even a dark elf could stagger his signs enough to regen the 3 spirit you use for AS/DS/TD, and still remain static (Barely). Although, a dark elf can't really do that before level 90.

Of course, a Dark Elf couldn't make the same use out of Sign of Wracking due to the slow spirit regen. As a halfling, I'm usually wracking as often as Jeril touches himself. A dark Elf can probably only wrack as often as Gib says something nice to someone.

Overall, COL offers great abilities, low upkeep cost, but spirit can be burdensome for some classes, and make it a non-attractive option. This is why you don't see as many dark elf wizards as the above section would suggest... that spirit regen can hurt.

GOS
Sunfist is an attractive option... ... for melee warmages.
Less AS/DS than COL, at only +30 max. More TD than COL at +20 though. Melee Warmages also get Heavy crit weighting on weapons towards hated foes... Whatever that means...
On the defensive side, while they get -5 relative to COL, they also get Heavy Crit padding.

Don't misunderstand, Heavy crit padding is an absolute godsend. However, if you're a race with 120 max HP, if you get into a situation where the HCP just saved your life, you're likely on the ground/stunned/etc... and there's pretty much nothing that would save you at that HP value. However... how can you truly put a price on saving yourself from death 1/50 times? Is that worth the +5 AS/DS?

Sigil of Power converts 50 stamina to 25 mana. Not bad... but we wizards aren't exactly swimming in stamina, being restricted to 1x PF.

Sigil of Escape provides protection against Stun/web/binds/etc. This is definitely gonna save your ass more times than the HCP from Sigil of Major Protection. This is pretty awesome... won't lie.

The other major attraction of GOS is the ability to Warcamp. Having not been in GOS myself, the best description I've heard is that it's kinda like bandits, but no traps and no ambushing. Sounds pretty horrible to me... But on the flipside, you're on these forums, I'm sure you've seen auctions with random awesome enhancives from bandit camps. They're great hunting grounds, they scale for all levels, and they have amazing loot. Non-GOS people can enter... but it's just easier for them to get in there.

Once you get to a warcamp, I bet you Dark Elves wished you had the Halfling's or Gnome's Maneuver Defense bonus!

The downside to Sunfist is that their durations and costs are static. You're going to be spending a large amount of mana/stamina to keep sigils up throughout a hunt, and that's never really going to change. For the AS/DS boosts, you're looking at 22mana/27 Stamina per minute. Compared to the 6 mana for COL for 15 minutes. Thats a nice bajillion times the mana cost... but at the same time, it's not spirit!

Voln
Voln was recently redone. It now offers +26 AS to all critters, +39 against undead, +26 DS, +13 TD.

Some of the intangibles would be nice... blessing, UAC boosters... Except... we're not monks, so we can't fully utilize UAC to the same extent (Without unlocking UAC CMANs, I'm not even evaluating it as an option in this guide thingy). And blessing would be nice for a melee warmage, but ranged warmages can just use spells.

Their Symbol of mana is attractive... 50 mana every 3 minutes. For a Dark Elf, you would need a mana pool of 417 before wracking is a better alternative. For a halfling, you'd only need a 208 mana pool.
(1 spirit per 5 minutes = 25 minutes for 5 spirit. Symbol of mana every 3 minutes = 8.33 symbols per 5 spirit = 416.66 mana...)

Symbol of dreams is nice, health/mana/spirit/stats recovery. Good to use post-death along with Symbol of Recall, which restores your spells after you die.

They have a lot of weird other abilities, like crazy 'standard success resolution' attacks.

Symbol of Return is like Sign of darkness... so kinda nets out there.

Additionally, Voln has some backdoor teleporting type system thingy where the back of their society is basically pocket portals to everywhere. One of which is the Rift. That's pretty cool... if you want to hunt in a scary scary place.

Voln's symbols work off favor, which you accumulate through hunting undead. This is kinda a non-issue. With the symbol of blessing, warmages can fight undead, and ranged/pures can both just spellcast. Undead are typically pretty easy targets to hunt relative to other critters at like levels, so you'll find yourself hunting a lot of them as anything other than a melee warmage.

By the Numbers
Anybody can do well in any society, but COL benefits are maximized by races with more spirit regen. GOS benefits are maximized by those with high stamina, who can warcamp effectively, and melee warmages. Voln is kinda for those that don't really fit into the other categories. I'd probably align gnomes and halflings with COL, and Dark Elves with Voln. Strictly from the numbers perspective. Although, COL Dark Elf Wizards are pretty common.

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Enchanting
Enchanting... I'd be willing to bet 90% of wizards are just pocket wizards used for enchanting lots. Some feedback says that they want more guidance on enchanting here. I wish I could provide exact breakdowns of stuffs, but with hidden rolls on the cast, there's not much I can offer. What I can do is recommend stuff!

The Basics
Enchanting gives +5 bonus on a weapon, shield, or armor. Long ago, the spell used to be called Enchant True, so occasionally you'll hear people calling it Echted. These people are out of touch of reality, and trying to show off their oldschool lingo. It's like when old people try to act cool. You should shun them.

Enchanting up to 4x is minor stuff. 4x is +20, this refers to the total target bonus of the cast. So if you have a +16 item, if you enchant it, that rolls above 4x, so it gets classified as 5x. If you're a pure, you can probably do 4x enchants when you first unlock 925. (I am not liable for any failed 4x enchants at level 25). You can have a bajillion of these going if you want.

So if the target total enchant is gonna be over +20, it's a major project. You can only have 1 major project per... character? account? Not sure. I think it was originally intended to be account, but dunno if it ever went to that level. Either way, they're limited, and that's why they're worth more.

Each target enchant is going to take a temper and 925 cast PER ENCHANT of the target. So enchanting something to 5x is going to require 5 tempers, 5 casts. Each enchant temper also takes more time as the enchant increases. So, 1x may be like, a day to temper, 5x may take 4-5 days per temper... for 5 tempers. So time is ever increasing.

Pouring the Temper: The Good!
MIU, Logic, Aura, Wisdom

Making the Cast: The Good!
Wizard Ranks #1
Major / Minor Elemental Ranks.
Level
Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, Elemental Mana Control
Logic, Intuition, Aura
Familiar Present
Workshop!

GMs have stated that Wizard Ranks (confirmed up to at least 1.5x level) even after being subjected to diminishing returns, are always worth more than the subsequent skills. Beyond that, weightings, etc, are unknown.

The Negative Sides of Both
I'm not gonna go too far into the negatives, because they're obvious and easily remediable.
By Krakii, the negatives are:
Material of the item
Less than full Heal/Spirit, Having wounds
Critters Present, Encumbrance, Death's Sting, Having familiar elsewhere.

The things that can factor into it, but until we have a concrete equation, nobody really knows how big of an impact they have
Material of the item being enchanted.
Some woods (supposedly Witchwood), apparently suck for taking enchants.
Mithril/Vultite are supposedly easy.

Potions Potions Potions
Rohnuru: Good for 1x and 2x enchants
Duqurnu: Good for 3x an 4x enchants
Dirtokh: Good for 4x and 5x enchants
Mirtokh: Good for 5x through 7x enchants.

Those aren't rules, and the potions can likely span a few more Xs on each side, but that's what I personally do.

Pre-Temper Potions:
Ayvenah is used for enhancive.
Eovenah is used for sanctified gear.

Pre-Temper potions are rough to work with. You can make them through alchemy... but honestly, unless you hate life, just buy them from a player shop. I personally spent about 30 months running Lich's alchemy script while off of Lumnis, spent about 15m silvers. You could likely do it cheaper or faster, but likely not both. It's not worth it. Plus the Sanct potion requires an item created through end-tier cleric alchemy. So yeah, that sucks.

Pre-Temper potions give a -200 on the modifier of the temper. What does that mean? I personally found that I was able to succeed 100% of pre-temper pours with approximately 150 MIU ranks. MIU enhancives are pretty cheap too. Virilneus is usually selling some. I'll touch upon this a little more in the next section.

So... How do you do it?
Step 1: GET NAKED.
No, I'm not trying to be Jeril. Seriously. Encumbrance is a huge factor, especially if you're a smaller race. It's also the most controllable variable in the process. So strip down to absolutely nothing. If you have your armor fully trained off and lightened, you may want to consider leaving your armor on, as having it lightened will provide negative encumbrance.
Step 2: Get your item/potion/enhancives. Not enough hands? Throw them in a disk.
Likely you're at your locker. Just take any potion, take the item, throw them in your disk, stash your stuff in your locker. If you've picked up any enhancives, go ahead and put them on. Enhancives are cheap, and effectively last forever if you're just doing them for enchanting. This entire process takes about 5 minutes.
Step 3: Get to a guild workshop.
Lich's go2 works well for at least getting you into the guild. Sadly, this means you likely need to join the wizards guild, even though alchemy sucks. If there's no Narost map, figure out how to get to the workshop. You can figure it out.
Step 4: Cast up a familiar
It's 20 mana... it helps. No reason not to.
Step 5: I don't care if you checked it before, confirm the status of the item with 405.
405 is 5 mana. I don't care if you already checked it in your locker. It takes 3 seconds and confirms the status of the item for the 925 cast.
Step 6: Cast, retemper as necessary... wait X days, rinse, repeat.

---

A worthwhile post by DaCapn on his takes on the required spell ranks/builds for enchanting:

The context was the discussion regarding the GM's post about wizard spell circle 'always' being the best way to increase your enchanting success.

If I recall correctly, 1.5x wizard was the breaking point where the major diminishing returns set in.

But yeah, I had the exact same discussion with someone on LNet once about their capped 3x wizard base enchanter. I went on about diminishing returns and they set me straight with that post. I still wouldn't advocate that route since it basically makes the character otherwise totally useless (no spellups, no charging, no hunting, just enchanting). Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that out.

For my own enchanting experience, I was 1x wizard base when I started out enchanting and pretty much never had any trouble with enchants as long as my wizard base ranks were at least equal to the destination enchant (for example 35 ranks for 7x, which I succeeded at twice in that time frame).

When I started in on fusion gear, I had to be level 75ish to have 100% chances with the pretemper. I completed 5x fusion without trouble with 50 wizard base ranks but had like 4 minor failures (temper resets and roll-backs on enchant stage) on 6x fusion. I upped my wizard base ranks to like 65 and sailed through the rest of the stages and culminated in a 3% failure. This is only one item but it gave me the impression that 2*bonus in wizard base ranks was a pretty good rule of thumb for fusion.

This was all with the public guild workshops by the way.

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My Thoughts on Alchemy
Having done through alchemy, I highly recommend against it. When I started alchemy, in order to stockpile the necessary reagents, I needed to go premium.
Why?
I needed an alt that could be in each city that I'd be able to give my alchemy satchel to when I wasn't doing alchemy
WWWWWHHHHHYYYYY?
My alchemy satchel weighed 120 pounds, and was constantly capped out in capacity.
Why not locker?
You're carrying a ton of different types of reagents, some of which are temporary for the steps your working on, and some of them skins of critters, which don't bundle the same way you can put crystals in jars. A bundle of 10 hawk-owl tufts is still 10 items in your locker.
Why not just a mule?
Access to the FWI alchemy shop is a godsend when you're 2 reagents short on a step. It also facilitates buying additional reagents like essence of fires from Teras hunters, rather than making the trek from Zul Logoth where you find the truffles that you need for your current potions ranks.
But I'm gonna run ;alchemy, and it'll be super fast!
I've been scripting with ;alchemy pretty much as soon as my Lumnis wears off each week, for about 2-3 years now... still not capped in everything.
But I'm only going to rank X, it'll be cheap
I've probably spent at least 15m in alchemy reagents... That's just stuff from the shops too. Not counting things purchased from players (bulk essence of fires, gems to powder)
But you're making mad loots at cap alchemy, right?
I sell on average maybe 1 Avyeneh potion a week. 225k-ish per potion. Approximately 100k in materials, and about 20-40 minutes to create, depending on how many crystals I need to breakdown.
But now you're net positive, right?
No. Not by a longshot... I'm still probably 13m in the hole at the end of the day
But I'm going to hunt for my materials, it'll be cheap!
The way the treasure system works, if you're vastly underhunting, the drop rates will suck. If you're at cap, and going to Gossamer Valley in Ta'illistim for essence of waters, or fire mages for essence of fires, the drop rate will be pretty much non-existent. And the various ayanad crystals are just intermittent, at best. The likelihood of getting the proper tier you need is incredibly low... and if you're breaking crystals down, you're just being inefficient.
Ok, then I'll just set aside a month, and do nothing but alchemy!
When I gave my 15m estimate on just store bought mats... that was also stockpiling the forward-looking materials whenever I stepped foot in any town ever. If you were looking to actually buy supplemental materials at a premium, I can easily see someone spending upwards of 30-50m to master in a month.

That being said... go for it if you want... but I warned you.

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Final Thoughts
That's all for now. Hope this has helped. Remember, this is just to give everyone some insight. Being a wizard is easy, but there are a tons of different ways to be one. Above all else, have fun. Gemstone is a GAME. You don't NEED to be the strongest to reach level cap. Stupider people than you, the readers of this awesome guide, have made it to cap in the past, and I'm sure many more will make it in the future. It's all about how you want to get there.

[Methais]

IMMOLATE 4 LYFE!

(And probably ranged after)

[zoraster]

i'd love to see this finished, for what it's worth. Not demanding it or anything, it's already helpful, just saying that you're not writing it for no one.

[Whirlin]

Worked on it quite a bit. today, so here's a pseudo bump, since yeah... edits..

[caelric]

Two Weapon Combat Never seen a TWC Wizard before... new thing? Probably not, it's expensive as hell.

As a note, I have a TWC/OHE wizard in the mid 50's. It's kind of the same principle as a 901/515 bolting wizard; dual weapons wielded at 1 sec swings, both flaring weapons means more flares. Obviously not the same raw damage output as a THW warmage, but still nothing to laugh at. 4x flaring perfect falchion and ebladed superior invar handaxe (total bonus is +22 when ebladed, due to invar), two of the most heavy damage OHEs, still not as much as a THW, though.

Follows your training plan, more or less, although CM is not at 1x, more like 0.5x. Does have full 2x in spall aiming, though,a nd full 1x in PF (since GoS...)

Overall, thumbs up on your comparisons.

[Whirlin]

Follows your training plan, more or less, although CM is not at 1x, more like 0.5x. Does have full 2x in spall aiming, though,a nd full 1x in PF (since GoS...)

Overall, thumbs up on your comparisons.

I can see only being .5x in CM being a big issue... There's always going to be a deficit in AS, partially overcome through 425. But if you're under 1x in CMAN, you're increasing that gap across all levels, beginning earlier in the spectrum. As a ranger in my 80s, the difference is already pretty substantial now that I'm no longer getting anymore 425 potency, but I couldn't imagine having that gap be even larger... and on melee AS.

By the level breakdown example above, we're above them at level 25 when we initially unlock 425, with the gradual decrease to being even, and then being behind... But being only .5x in CMAN, you're losing out on 6 AS by 25... so you never really surpassed them at any point in the spectrum. So you've always been behind them, and will always be behind them, with the rate of change greater than that of a normal warmage.

[audioserf]

I think I want to roll up a TWC GOS wizard just for fun later, but with no spell aim. With a build that intensive I would want to be All In on the physical. It's worth noting that when I did THW warmage from 0-55 or so, I rarely ever bolted.