All attributes should definitely go into sorcery, the dps and haste boost given from it is significant. Higher level gear takes care of health and mana is taken care of by talents/potions.
Using frostbite and grouping up enemies is much more efficient than killing enemies one at a time if you are fighting melee enemies and learn the approach and coordination to do it. It works well for leveling. You do not need to get all the frostbite talents, just the one point for the snare duration increase. It is situational, but so are a lot of the talents. It won't be much help for rg story runs probably but it is nice for farming ancient and shadow cores when you get that far along (they are used to craft the ramie armor and infernal weapons). The approach to it is to run through enemies to gather them up behind you (use rejuvenate, plasma shield, and cauterize to keep hp up), miasma on top of the enemies for a 2 second stun, use frostbite directly after miasma (it has to be before the stun runs out or it doesn't work), take a few steps away from the enemies, then you have 5 more seconds to blast the enemies to death before than can touch you. You can pull large amounts of enemies safely like this (unless you lag).
As for crit, you are better off investing into other things. Many healers use crit, but those are healers.
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There is a damage obelisk in whispergrove cave that increases direct damage by 5%. It doesn't count for bleeds, but bleeds can't get criticals either so that doesn't affect this comparison. The critical obelisk increases critical chance by 5%. A critical hit does 50% more than a regular hit. Putting bleeds aside, the damage obelisk is straightforward, it increases damage by 5%. The critical obelisk gives a chance to increase the damage of a hit by a good amount.
Lets say you do the basic attack 100 times and each time, your base damage is 200. With the damage obelisk, you would do 210 damage 100 times for a total of 21,000 damage. With the critical obelisk, would hit 100 times and 5 of the hits would be crits. 95 hits would not be crits. The total damage calculation would look like this: (5x300)+(95x200)=1500+19000)=20,500. On average, the critical obelisk increases direct damage by 2.5%. The damage obelisk is clearly stronger. Crits only do 50% more so the 5% chance correlates to a 2.5% increase in damage on average.
But, this isn't the whole story either. If you have crit chance already (which you do from base focus and focus on weapons), additional crit chance does not benefit as much. So, lets run the scenario of 100 basic attacks again, but this time, assume you have 50% crit already. With the damage obelisk, on average, you do 50 critical hits and 50 non-crits. Criticals do 315 damage (300x1.05) and non-criticals do 210. the total damage calculation would look like this: (50x315)+(50x210)=15,750+10500=26250. If you take the critical obelisk, regular hits do 200 damage, critical do 300, and your critical chance would be 55%. The total damage calculation would look like this: (55x300)+(45x200)=16,500+9,000=25,500. Starting with 50% crit, the damage obelisk still gave 5% more damage and the critical obelisk gave only 2% additional damage.
For healers, you have to consider that the damage obelisk does not count for healing and the crit obelisk counts for both healing and attacking abilities. Further, the prophet tree has abilities like Think Fast (increases haste after getting a crit heal), Intensify Spirit (increases a targets max hp after a crit heal), and Flash of Light (gives additional healing after getting a crit heal).
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Steve mentioned that essence of magic only increases the damage on the basic attack. This is true.
The Fountain of Mana talent increases maximum mana, it doesn't reduce mana used unless you mean as a percent of your maximum (in response to Steve's comment). I would also like to point out that Fountain of Mana will not increase the mana restored by stamina potions. It only counts for mana potions. It is an okay talent but I do not think it is needed. In my opinion, if you want to do better on mana, as a mage, the best way to approach it (assuming you already have Free Your Mind and Starlight) is to add an aquamarine.
Also, the Nightmare talent does not work as described. It grants an attack power boost after casting miasma. The talent says it will give 10% more attack power for 5 seconds with one talent point and it will give 15% more attack power for 10 seconds with two talent points. The actual effect is it will give 10% attack power for 5 seconds with one point (working as described for the first talent point) and it will give a 10% attack power boost for 10 seconds with two talent points (the attack power boost does not raise to 15%).
From a DPS'ing standpoint, Miasma is not worth casting for the attack power increase during long boss fights. It can be useful for casting before a boss spawns so your first few hits get a boost, but again, that does not make it worth the points. However, Miasma is a nice solo talent.
Phase Walking (reduces threat) is not necessary. A tank that knows what they are doing and has okay gear won't lose threat from the dps dpsing. Attacking too early or wandering too close to stray mobs is usually the problem when a dps gets aggro.
I would probably build like this: http://TalentTheory....3N2O2Q1V1Pd3g2/
Boiling blood is the strongest ability mages have for dps'ing dungeons. It is important to talent it. It may not seem great if you use it in story mode though. In dungeons, enemies have more hp. Even in story mode, the enemies health is way higher. This is offset by all direct damage being doubled in story mode. When direct damage is double, it becomes less worth it to use bleeds. So.. Don't judge the ability by how it seems in story mode.
Concerning using a staff vs a shield with a one-handed weapon, you can always have both and use the staff for dps'ing dungeons and use the shield for soloing when you want extra defense.
Steve mentioned using a ruby or topaz in an essence. Your essence dps is added to your dps given by attack power and the result is your dps stat. For mages, it works out that the topaz adds more dps. I can provide the math behind it if you are interested. It is also worth noting that the void elemental does not receive a bonus from ruby. Ruby will increase both your healing and your damage whereas topaz will only increase damage. Ruby is preferable for healers.
Edited by Elrog, 23 November 2017 - 18:08.
