Pandora's PVP Wizard Guide

Alright, a disclaimer: This guide is for helping
you play your wizard and not suck at it. If you want to blow like Haiz
and LLama go ahead, that's your choice, I don't really care. If you
don't like me, or you don't like the way I play, don't read the guide.
It's for helping people not suck, if you suck and refuse to admit it
then there's nothing I can do for you. Don't complain. If you don't
like my guide, shut up and leave. If you like my guide but think it
could be better, tell me how. Lastly, sometimes I call classes by their
MY-EN names... Clerics are Priests (EP), Blademasters are Warriors
(WR), Venomancers are Werefoxes (WF), barbarians are Werebeasts (WB),
Wizards are Mages (MG), and archers are the only class that kept their
old (better) names.

That said, this guide, like all of mine, is an eternal work in
progress. It is NOT complete as you see it, and probably never will be.

For a skills analysis and descriptions, go to the next
post, "Pandora's PVP Skill Handbook". The post after that, Pandora's
Box, is a Cube of Fate guide geared toward mages. The rest of this post
is a general mage and mage PVP guide. Enjoy!

Welcome, wayward gimp.

So, you rolled a mage. Well, I'll tell you right now you're making a
big, big mistake. While I love wizard more than any other class, I'm
going to tell you right now that you're in for a wild ride. Your class
is considered underpowered by many (and they're right!), it is
difficult to get parties until around 80 and you are basically food for
any archer who notices you no matter what build you're in. (Well, until
you have full HH90 light armor, anyway.)

There's only 4 reasons to roll a wizard.
1) You like to be different.
2) You're a masochist.
3) You like oneshotting people.
4) You're just that hardcore.

Figure out which you are, and make sure you are ready for this
commitment before moving on. Mage is a lot of fun to play, and you're a
powerhouse if you can make it to a high level, but getting there is
hell. If you're going to be a casual player, please do yourself a favor
and roll Archer or cleric.

Making your character.

Unlike archers, of which males are horribly homosexual (ask a male
archer to use a lightning attack on you and watch his pose. Nuff
said.), both genders look okay for mages.

And, unlike archers, mages look good in basically any style you can put
them in. I couldn't find any decent "longer" hair options, so I stuck
with short hair, but it worked out nice. Red schemes look really good
when casting fire spells, by the way. One of my mage friends made a
full light blue/white scheme and it looked pretty awesome when he was
casting Ice Dragon.

Don't neglect the skin tone option. While I picked a basic Caucasian
skin tone, I have seen mages who do crazy crap like purple/red and make
it look really cool. Experiment! We're an exotic class, it's only
natural that we'd look that way. Remember that you are the rarest class
in the game, so there's nothing wrong with having a rare looking
character as well.

The lowbie levels.

Just when you thought the lowbie levels as an archer were rough, enter
mage. Your damage is not much better than an archer and you get hit
like nothing. Unlike archers, I really REALLY do not reccomend putting
any con in at all. In fact, even if you're going light mage, don't
start raising your str or dex for now. Just get enough str to wear
robes your level and pump your int with every point you get. The faster
you kill things, the faster you can get out of the hell that is pre-60
mage.

When you start running out of grind spots, try swimming around for a
bit and killing water mobs. With sandstorm and stone rain, we kill
water mobs very quickly and water gets the same 1.5x exp modifier that
flying gets. For a long time as a low level flying mobs will be mostly
wood, which we have no advantage over (no barrier OR critical element)
but if you can slip into a vipents party full of archers and priests
you'll get good EXP anyway.

Eventually you'll be able to kill Foxies/Foxwings and you will be able
to rape these. They cast fire magic, so buy some robes from the AH that
have only one or two elements and one of them fire (this way you have a
ton of fire resist), throw on your fire barrier and rape 'em with water
spells. We are the best class in the game for faming foxies, which are
in turn (IMO) the best exp early game. If you want to duo foxies take a
priest with you; his buffs will both cause you to kill faster and save
your heirogram. Good places to go after foxes are in the air above
hidden heroes and in the air behind city of misfortune.

At this point you should be thinking (THINKING, NOT STATTING) which mage you want. There's two kinds of real mages.

The Builds

~Full Int~

This build is the most simple, and most common. You get enough str to
wear your gear and everything else goes into int. You hit like a mac
truck, you take damage like you're paper, and you do what a mage's job
is to do - hurt like **** and die in two shots.

To succeed as full int, you need good gear. Really good gear. Like, +
your gear up with mirage stones to +4. All of it. And fill it with HP
or pdef shards (this is arguable - I say mix them both, but that's just
me.) You need the HP and the pdef from nice gear or you're just going
to want to quit the game.

On your gear, you're looking for +pdef mods, because your pdef sucks
horribly. +HP is nice too but +pdef is your #1 priority. If you get
armor with good pdef mods, then your survivability will improve
considerably.

Please understand that as full int, all an archer has to do is target
you and roll his face on the keyboard and you are dead. You'll die
faster than Deity can rack up a credit card bill. The upside: unless he
has winged shell on, you'll oneshot his ass with a crit. And even if
you're a bit too scared of your critting ability, Force of Will can buy
you a few seconds to get another Sandstorm off.

If you put con on a mage you're retarded. You only get 10 hp per point
of con, which is the lowest con HP modifier in the game. And unlike a
priest or fox, your job is not to be able to take a couple hits to do
other things. You don't do other things. The only thing you do is kill
things. If you're going to roll a gimp class, at least do your job.

~Light Armor~

This is the secondary build, which can save your ass in PVP. While the
bonus from con is minimal, mages are able to build themselves to equip
light armor and this is especially effective on them because of Earth
Barrier's huge pdef modifier. Keep in mind that you will hit for
significantly less damage (UPDATE: Actually, a full int guild member of
the same level and I tested our damage on the same target, using the
same gear, and he hit for 200 more sandstorm than me. 2900 vs 3100
average. Since then, most of our full int have restatted light
armor...), however, you will be able to take a lot of hits. With proper
use of blink, the only way to really die on a light mage is to be chain
stunned. You will crit significantly more than full int and every
sandstorm crit on an archer is a oneshot, so keep that in mind. This is
the build I use.

As a light mage, you have all the pdef you need. It's a good idea to
pick either your necklace or your belt, and make one of them pdef
based, and the other one magic defense based. Then, when picking armor,
you're looking for +hp modifiers (NOT +PDEF, YOU HAVE PLENTY AND MORE
SUFFERS FROM DIMINISHING RETURNS) and +hp stones. I cannot stress
enough that +hp is infinitely better than +pdef for you.

To follow a light build, your STR and DEX must be your level +4, and 3
int every level. If you put stats in any way other than this you will
not have enough int to equip your level's weapon, or enough str/dex to
equip your level's armor. It is not possible to equip everything your
level and put con on in a light armor build.

Update: The HH90 green light set makes light mages basically impossible
to kill. A 9X Conquerer archer with a +4 HH90 bow described fighting me
today as "like fighting a warrior that can actually kill me." Robes do
roughly the same damage but drop dead fast as hell. I am fully
confident now that light armor is the way to go.

~Other Builds~

I am a very, VERY firm believer that builds other than light and full int are total crap. And here's why:

Heavy Mage:
Problem #1: You don't have enough Mag to equip a weapon of your level,
which means you're equipping a lower level weapon which gimps your
damage tremendously. That, or you're equipping a set of armor 10 or
more levels below your level, in which case you might as well just go
light armor anyway. Problem #2: This game has diminishing returns. That
means that the difference in ACTUAL REDUCTION (I.E: How much your
damage is reduced) between 1000 and 2000 pdef is MUCH bigger than the
difference between 5000 and 6000 pdef. Yes, heavy mages over 100 can
get over 22,000 Pdef selfbuffed, but that really doesn't help you when
the reduction of your pdef is only 4-5% more than a light armor of your
level. You're trading a LOT of damage and some crit for 5% reduction?
Come on. That 5% less damage does NOT help you when your HP pool is too
small to support it. This build is a joke build only for people who
like to see huge useless numbers next to their physical resistance.
Next!

Vit Mage/Hybrid Mage:
Of all the "other builds", this one is the closest one to being useful.
Vit mages are robe mages who put points into vitality. Exactly how much
they put in varies from mage to mage, but all of these mages have one
thing in common. They have the same or less survivability than a light
mage, with less crit rate and the same damage. You'll be able to take a
few hits from a warrior, but not much because we have the lowest
vit-to-HP ratio in the game (10 HP per vit, that means if you put in 50
vit you only gained 500 hp...), and if you're going to be in robes
anyway you absolutely do not need additional hp for magic spells. Light
armor offers more survivability along with a raised crit rate for
increased offensive ability.

Melee Mage:
Shut up.