As a former mage (Open Beta to G3), I am honestly [once again] disheartened to rank any magical spells due to the fact that Nexon's made mages hugely underpower'd.
I read the full thread, and throughout the read, there were countless instances where a mage would boast about his/her damage, even with fusion/chaincasting/adv spells, and I could point out to myself how ineffective that was compared to melee, or ranged.
Lets Compare:
1) Magnum vs. Smash vs. Firebolt
Firebolt is the safest, I would say. It's true that I use a cc4 firewand to kill ciar adv golems, due to my rF-ness in both Magnum and Smash. I have deranked Firebolt from r3 to r5 in order to rank up cbm, but a r1 critical firebolt should do around 2k damage; correct me if I'm wrong. Firebolt is also the fastest due to the fact that it needs almost no time to damage the target after the skill is loaded, and can be chained repeatedly. However, I would think that 30MP per cast makes it unfavourable to spam in normal dungeon situations.
Smash is often used in pair with wm, but the skill itself has much more potential than firebolt. At 10 stamina per charge (which takes 2 seconds, same as r5+ firebolt), I've seen people do 2k crits barehanded (yes, barehanded), and untransformed. It's true that this skill can't be chained like firebolt can, but paired with wm, I don't see the need for many successful chains on most monsters. Some might say that it's extreme of me to put such a comparison of a strong player that can do 2k crits with smash, barehanded. However, just as I said, smash has much more potential than firebolt, and that's what makes it appealing. At rank 1 firebolt, no matter HOW HARD you try, there is just no way to deal even 1k more damage, even if you transform, have 500+ int, or whether you're an elf/human.
Magnum: I almost feel embarassed to compare this skill with Firebolt. Again, at a cost of 10 stamina per charge and a 1.5 sec load time, 2k+ crits (untransformed, of course) are easily seen at r1, with a human character. With that said...let's move on to elves. At rank 1 magnum, elves have a 0.5 second charge time on magnum, and although the elf race has only been in existance in NA Mabi for less than 4 months, a good elf can, again, easily 1 hit ko one of those alby int. giant-spiders. As for the potential of magnum...I think most of us have seen Milf's ciar boss rush on jp. server?
I don't want to make this a huge-long-post, so I'll save the other comparisons to myself.
After playing Mabi for well over a year, this is my conclusion about mages (until further updates):
Fireball to clear a 3 orb room (mainly in ciar adv), or the 3rd spawn in Siren Dungeon (if the 2nd spawn is bats)
High Ranked Thunder is useful, but wow...the CP, and wow...the MP usage.
Firebolt with a cc4 wand is the only useful basic spell.
Mages have little/no room the improve on a spell's damage after it's rank 1.
Note: the above conclusions does NOT apply to PvP, at all. If you took PvP seriously, and want to argue this point, let's put you against someone with an ego LLB.
Note2: In terms of Ice Spear, it's not mentioned in this post because I don't get it. I mean, I have it, but, I don't get it. I've tried to get a good vid on Ice Spear for a while now, but all I see is a fast (but not by much) but very expensive way for an alternate to windmill, and only on monsters with less than 1k hp. I've heard some VERY NICE things about Ice Spear, but with my own experience, and endless search of a video that shows just how "pwn" Ice spear is, I just don't see it.
This post was not meant to offend any mages out there, I just want to see other people's opinion on my conclusions.
Also, for the people who say "just wait until _______" - I've waited for Fireball, waited for Thunder, Ice Spear, Chaincasting, Fusion Magic. Every new mage content was supposed to be the "ultimate update" for mages, where we should be coming out of the dark, but every update has disappointed me so far. Just remember that new content also brings new things for not only mages, but melee and ranged also, and mages can't expect to sit there and wait to become stronger from new updates.
All in all, I got tired of waiting, so I stopped ranking magic skills (except for enchant), and I'm finding Mabi to be so much more with melee/ranged.
