Ranking Magic.

• Randochan wrote on 2015-08-19 14:17
  Heya Folks!,
  This is Laureatus from the Ruairi server,
  
  I have recently rebirthed out of close combat in the hopes that i can get the "Spellsword" Hidden talent And now i was wondering, Does anybody have any tips on ranking magic skills ie:what to train on, etc
  
  Thanks Mabination!
  
  :llama_sparkle:
• Osayidan wrote on 2015-08-19 14:33
  There's such a variety of magic skills that unless you have a huge AP pool to just rank any and all of them you're better off deciding on a group of magic skills to rank first.
  
  Training can vary a lot based on the skills, since many behave a certain way and need training requirements based on that behavior. In general you'll want to train skills on an easily controllable source of monsters, so either field monsters or certain shadow missions.
  
  There's some essential skills you'll want to max out, like magic mastery, meditation, magic weapon mastery & bolt mastery, along with the elemental mastery that would benefit you the most based on your choice of skills to start with (so for example fire mastery if you decide to start with fireball).
  
  Have a look at all the magic skills: http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Category:Magic_Skills
  
  And you can get a better idea of what direction you want to go in, and then people can provide more specific advice.
• Randochan wrote on 2015-08-19 14:56
  Thanks alot for the advice, I was actually looking for advice on ranking the bolt skills, As i am focusing on those at the moment,
• UnclePine wrote on 2015-08-19 15:54
  Firebolt served me well when I started with my current character and is currently doing so 1,6k levels later. Firebolt r1 really helps in term of survivability (in the sense that if a monster is running at you, you can simply cast a firebolt at it and it will die), so I'd probably buy and upgrade a fire wand (fire elemental resonance/fire elemental resonance/fire elemental resonance/fire elemental resonance/fire elemental amplification 4) or savage fire wand (savage wand special upgrade/fire elemental acceleration 1/fire elemental acceleration 2/fire elemental amplification 4/artisan) and rank it first. A chain casting +4 wand drains a lot of MP, but it makes training Firebolt really easy. Afterwards, you can focus on masteries and/or other types of bolts knowing that if things go downhill, you can always use Firebolt.
  To rank Icebolt, I'd say that the easiest way is to get a Beginner Ice Wand by creating a new alt with the Mage talent, upgrade it with chain casting +4 and then spam it knowing that Beginner equipment always costs 1 gold to repair, even at 98% (Weiss in the Shyllien Reserve).
  I don't know an easy way to rank Lightningbolt other than just spamming it, but I know that a chain casting +1 wand can be used to effectively stun lock mobs in 1v1 scenarios thanks to how Lightningbolt works.
  
  Don't neglect Magic Weapon Mastery, it's a great skill that benefits every magic user (unlike masteries that only provide a bonus to a specific element).
  
  I can't give you any suggestion about staves because I don't own a good one yet.
  
  Intermediate magic is mostly up to preference, so without more information on your playing style or your character it's difficult to say more than what's written on the wiki.
  
  Finally, Magic skills often require a ton of AP and only really pay off at specific ranks so as Osayidan already suggested you may want to choose one or two skills, rank those and then move to the next ones instead of "ranking each one of them a bit as soon as you can". EXCEPTIONS: Snapcast and Inspiration, as they both require you to spam them considerably at each rank, should probably be ranked as soon as you fulfill their requirements unless you plan to spend days waiting for their respective cooldowns to refresh when you'll try to actively train them.
  
  EDIT: The Shadow Cast City shadow mission is a great place to train Magic skills.
• Osayidan wrote on 2015-08-19 16:12
  Bolts rank up super easy, you can even do it on appropriate field mobs if you have -CP gear (or if your current CP is low enough, lucky you), otherwise just abuse the correct difficulty of shadow missions that give you unlimited mobs (been so long that I forgot their names, I think there's dorren request and that sacrifice one with the big circle). If you're pulling in enough AP you can also rank the element masteries along side them.
  
  Avoid chain casting firebolt right away because you won't have enough mana for it to be useful, but do plan to use it later on because it's OP as hell.
• Rydian wrote on 2015-08-19 20:03
  When you bring up the talent window and look at the skills in a talent, they're listed in order of most talent EXP to least (more or less). So ranking up the first few skills listed can get you a lot further along than if you just two the last two skills, for example.
• Daakun wrote on 2015-08-19 23:54
  Personally I'd rank ice bolt, lightning bolt, fusion bolt, magic weapon mastery, and magic mastery as my first few mage skills.
  In any order really, but I'd like to emphasize that magic weapon mastery is a better early investment than the ice/lightning/fire masteries since it applies to every bolt spell instead of just one.
  On the other hand, as a 'spellsword' in specific you might want to ignore magic weapon mastery for a while since it only applies when using a magic weapon.
  
  Until you can afford to use a chaincasting fire wand (both in repair fees and in mana costs), either fully stacked icebolt (recharging from the 4th back to the 5th after each attack if your ping supports it) or one charge of ice/lightning fusion are going to be your best options for reliable magic damage.
  Heck, I'm level 7800ish and I still use ice/lightning fusion when cc+4 firebolt is overkill.