Mage - Leveling Build

Overview

Class: Mage

Designed for: Leveling

Focused on: DPS

Difficulty:

Easy

Strengths

• Good for Solo Play
• High Single Target DPS
• Easy to Play
• Good Mobility

Weaknesses

• Squishy
• Low AOE DPS until high level

Overview

Even though the Mage offers great AOE DPS at end game, this class also offers incredible damage throughout the leveling experience, making for a fantastic choice for those players looking to play solo without having to rely on others to level up in Ashes of Creation. Its incredible single damage DPS is also very easy to pull off early with simple rotations.

Skills

19

21

22

20

23

24

18

17

10

12

11

14

16

5

8

7

9

13

15

2

1

4

3

6

Equipment

Weapons

Wand

Greatsword

Stamina

14

10

21

13

9

20

12

8

19

11

7

18

3

6

17

2

5

16

1

4

15

As a Mage and especially while leveling and particularly in solo play, avoid focusing on Sustained Guard, as your primary strategy relies on dodging and sprinting. Instead, start by prioritizing Escape Velocity to boost your sprinting speed in combat (default key C). This becomes essential later on, allowing you to kite enemies during cooldowns or escape danger quickly.

Next, invest in Recuperation Training and Evasive Maneuver to increase your dodge evasion rate. These upgrades also unlock Springstep, significantly enhancing your mobility by improving dodge distance.

Finally, use any remaining points on Guard Training to lower stamina costs when blocking (default key E). Adding Mental Fortification can also be useful, as it reduces your chance of being crowd-controlled (CC’d) while blocking, which can help in specific situations.

Rotations

Fire Single Target Rotation ↴

• Start the rotation by casting 3 Firebolts before using Combust for quick burst damage. Follow up with Blink to make your next Lightning Strike cast instantly and deal incredible damage.

• Once you've unlocked Fuse, make sure to start the rotation with Lightning Strike to make use of the extra damage you deal while applying burns to Shocked targets.

Frost-lightning Single Target DPS Rotation ↴

• This rotation focuses on dealing high burst damage to single targets, being the bread and butter of the build at early levels once you've unlocked Shatter and Shattering Shards so comboing frost and lightning spells becomes much more powerful.

• Start the rotation with Frostbolt then continue to auto-attack using your wand until the target is frozen and your Frostbolt cooldown is reset. Once frozen, use Lightning Strike but don't cast the entire channel just to trigger Shatter for extra damage. Use Frostbolt next to also trigger Shattering Shards for extra damage before using auto-attacks again until the target is frozen once more.

• Once the mob is frozen, use Chain Lightning to trigger Shatter instead of waiting for Lightning Strike cooldown to come back up. You can then repeat the rotation from the beginning either on the same mob or on a new one.

AOE Rotation ↴

• This build isn't lacking in AOE damage either though. Make sure you group up a few mobs before using Shell to gain a shield and not lose HP while you are pulling the mobs together. You can follow-up with Arcane Circle to boost your damage as well but the the long cooldown might make it difficult to fit this every time you do the rotation so try to use it when you pull a larger amount of mobs.

• Use Hoarfrost to apply Chill and then use Cone of Cold to freeze the mobs together. Channel Ball Lightning so it hits all enemies you've frozen in order to deal damage through the Shatter proc.