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Astriferious
I have leveled a couple of mages.
My progen, Bela, is the one I use most often. She is a "classic" glass cannon, but flipped so the STR is INT. (126 STR, 58 QCK.) I toyed with giving her the farmer build, as quickness doesn't matter that much in the higher levels, but I like her as is, I think. The ability stones I use are contuse, shock, rally, and aid. I use hybrid fragments when leveling, but then switch to scholars at level 17. I think they give more than enough of an advantage, especially considering they aren't that expensive. I also use two ambushes. (More on the stone use below.)
Some things I've discovered...
I love double ambush. I put the mage first, and thus they eat the first turn bug. And one meditate is enough for my mage to be able to use shock the first round before the enemies go, when my fighters are gathering breath themselves, and thus lets me take out an extra enemy early. I much prefer ambush to discipline, because I often have so much breath built (as I rarely need healing used after the first initial wave) that I "waste" it, doing moves that don't need to be done. So why would I want to generate more of it? Especially when my mage can eat up that first turn bug. Also, I have used that first turn of the mage to rally my second fighter to eliminate more effectively. I could maybe see an ambush/discipline mage, but I'd likely never make a two discipline mage on my own / for my own use.
Speaking of shock... I love Lightning dragons for that ability. It works as well as an eliminate when enough INT is behind it and when facing the right enemies. (I've even managed to take out a Yeti with one shock that went critical. I have done this more than once.) Plus, even if I don't take out the enemy, often they will be paralyzed due to the status effects.
Speaking of status effects, an elemental attack causes more damage than a bolt and has a chance for them (when of the right element), so I will always choose it. You can use the calculator mode of
this incredibly useful tool to see just how much damage your mage can do with different attacks. (For example, against a jeweled octoflyer, which a Nature mage would be strong against, a level 25 mage with 126 INT would do 1105 damage, but with envenom would do 1466 initial damage with poison doing additional damage on later turns.)
I do keep contuse. It is my mage's version of a scratch, but with the added benefit of reducing damage taken. If I can't use shock effectively while my fighters are building up breath, I will use contuse. I'll use it at other times as well to help out. Especially if faced with three physical fighters like the Kelp Tender / Mammertee packs.
As I said with my stone use above, I don't bother with concentration. It just isn't effective enough. My mage can definitely do damage, but she is much more of a "helper" to the glass cannons, working with their strengths and weaknesses, rather than needing her abilities buffed. I mean, as it is, she heals for almost 800 health points and my fighters only have about 1000 points to heal from, and her shock is as effective as an eliminate (1480 points of damage vs a yeti for shock against 1395 points of damage vs a yeti for eliminate), so buffing her up seems not worth the space the stone would take.
Mind is pretty much useless. I'd never focus on that. All defense doesn't seem worth it either. As I said above, she can heal for almost 800, so she can help everyone (including herself) recover really quickly when hit, even when hit hard, so I don't want to sacrifice her attack power when she can help in both areas.
Mixed mages aren't that useful. I believe Kiena used to mention fighters that gained breath via meditate instead of scratch in
this guide? Basically because of the three turns where physical damage is reduced by 75%, meditate to generate breath for physical attacks is inefficient. You'd basically have to alternate rounds where the mixed fighter only meditated with rounds where they could actually use the breath gained by meditate to cause physical damage.
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