The good thing is that with fixskills, you can play around a bit. If you are in your first 30 days, skill migration is pretty fast. After that, you will need a fixskills to make any significant changes. Note that the date that fixskills comes around is May 20; just around the corner! If you want to try out a pure caster, this is the time to do so. Fixskills do not accumulate; use it or lose it. You could fixskill to a pure caster build (with 2x harness power) on May 19, and if it isn't to your liking, you can use the new fixskills option after May 20 to change back.

Warmage is a bit of a specialty build, and pure mages are in some ways better hunters, once they get over the early mana problems. Having said that, my gal Gwen has been a warmage since day 1. She chose THWs, but with good agi/dex score, a lance (polearm) can hit even harder. (You want an unhasted RT of 5). Warmages can only 1x in weapon and CM skill, so their raw AS will never match that of a warrior, but there are little tricks one can use to close the gap. Pure potions, for example, give you an AS boost equal to the spirit spell 211. Earth lore increases the AS boost to physical weapons that you get from self-cast strength spell.

You will want to go a bit heavier on physical stats than usual; weapon and armor and CMan skills cost a lot of PTPs. I was able to keep from converting any TPs at all until cap (when I ran out of the ability to train in PF, CM and weapons). Make sure you eventually train fully in PF; this skill is a prime consideration when trying to avoid maneuver attacks. You don't HAVE to go to double leathers, but I have a very nice set (7x, HCP). MnE spell hindrance with these is 5%. Armor skill needed to wear these without maneuver penalty is 15 ranks. You will eventually have spell failures when casting e-wave, there's no getting around it, but usually things can wait for a second cast. (The chance of two casts in a row failing is 0.0025 or 1:400). Additionally,I carry e-wave embedded amulets for those rare occasions when you absolutely cannot afford to have even that first e-wave fail.

Warmage tactics are pretty simple; always have haste up, and use disabling spells such as e-wave, tremors or call wind to drop target DS. Once you get a lot of CMan ranks, feint and disarm skills can be added to that arsenal. Given these facts, your first goal will be to grab 24 ranks of air lore and 27 ranks of MjE spells; this will (unless your agi/dex stats really stink) drop your hasted RT with a Maul or Lance to 1 second.

Do not neglect spell aiming; it's a damned cheap skill and worth getting. You will, in general, not be using 513 since it lowers your weapon AS, but in a pinch, you can stow your weapon, grab a runestaff and throw 513 up. Some critters have a high DS against weapons, but are vulnerable to bolt attacks. In fact, you can hit most critters quite well bolting even without 513 in effect. Also, I always carry a runestaff for use when facing bolt casting critters. THWs can NOT block bolt attacks.

Do not blindly copy my training plan; it's a bit eccentric even for a warmage. You will want to get more ranks of MnE spells than usual, to maximize the AS bonus from 425 relatively. However, I pumped this up even further; I use e-blast/e-strike as primary warding attack spells. CS with these currently is 505, which is fairly decent. I may have gone a bit overboard with the earth lore; my AS boost from self-cast strength is now +9, but I could have stopped a wee bit earlier and put the TPs to better use; +8 AS boost is almost as good. I won't train in this skill any further; the ROI for the TP cost invilved isn't worth it.

You can make a simple macro or even a script to keep you perma-hasted. Something like ... stop 506\rincant506\r Hit the macro key every 60 seconds (or have a script fire up for you) and you're set to go. Oh, and I attuned to earth for the effect on Major e-wave and such; nothing I know of is immune to earth flares (except for magic resistant critters, of course).

As you can see, I have a fair amount of spell ranks to make up; I'll be converting a lot more TPs from here on in.

>skill
Gwenievierre (at level 100), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 70 15
Combat Maneuvers...................| 206 106
Two-Handed Weapons.................| 202 102
Physical Fitness...................| 201 101
Arcane Symbols.....................| 140 40
Magic Item Use.....................| 140 40
Spell Aiming.......................| 302 202
Harness Power......................| 201 101
Elemental Mana Control.............| 160 60
Spirit Mana Control................| 10 2
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 102 24
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 172 72
Perception.........................| 120 30
Climbing...........................| 150 50
Swimming...........................| 170 70

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 58

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 88

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 58
Training Points: 90 Phy 0 Mnt (266 Phy converted to Mnt)
(Use SKILLS BASE to display unmodified ranks and goals)

14 days remain until the annual FIXSKILLS is to be granted, on 05/20/2015.

Your 30 day migration period will begin when you choose to degrade a skill.

Further information can be found in the FAQs.
>inf
Name: Gwenievierre Zauberfrau Race: Half-Elf Profession: Wizard (shown as: Travel Guide)
Gender: Female Age: 56 Expr: 7824939 Level: 100
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 98 (24) ... 102 (26)
Constitution (CON): 99 (24) ... 101 (25)
Dexterity (DEX): 100 (30) ... 100 (30)
Agility (AGI): 100 (35) ... 100 (35)
Discipline (DIS): 88 (14) ... 88 (14)
Aura (AUR): 100 (25) ... 100 (25)
Logic (LOG): 100 (25) ... 108 (29)
Intuition (INT): 90 (20) ... 90 (20)
Wisdom (WIS): 99 (24) ... 99 (24)
Influence (INF): 85 (22) ... 85 (22)
Mana: 269 Silver: 50

>>Abelia will probably be looking up your girl in-game sometime soon for a little mentoring if that's fine by you.<<

I tend to be on a bit late; like after midnight Eastern. Also Gwen is in semi retirement as I am busy working on Guennwhfar's guild skills (rogue). You can look for her, however, if you need advice. She's only a rogue and has few spells, but oddly enough has a much theoretical knowledge of warmages as Gwen does.

::This space for rent::

It isn't a bad idea to neglect on combat maneuvers early until you have the air lore and spells you want/need to make the build work. The loss of a little bit of AS early isn't going to hurt you especially when you spend those points to push towards that 1 second hasted attack which at least doubles your number of attacks. You can then build your combat maneuver ranks up for the later levels where the AS will matter more.

>Hint: use flaring weapons.

Good idea! So far I've been using an enchanted claidhmore, and a superior maul I picked up for undead slaying (and maybe a 4x mattock as well).

Getting a decent flaring two-hander would be fun, though. I'll keep an eye out for one, or add them myself at the summer festival in the Landing. They usually have that shop (up to 4x weapons).

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