Mage

Mages are fragile spellcasters who can either serve a supportive role, or band together to unleash devastating area of effect damage upon unsuspecting foes.

## Role

A mage in Knight Online is perhaps the one of the most versatile classes when it comes to their role. While some classes are better tailored to DPS or heal their party, mage remains a key utilitary component in both PvE and PvP.

This is mostly attributed to their most powerful ability: Summon Friend. A cast that allows them to teleport an ally in their party from anywhere in the map to the mage's location.

Their most popular PvP builds are suited towards party support, as a mage equipped with the most durable gear and a shield; or as a nuker, sacrificing almost all survivability to inflict tons of damage, usually coupled with other mages in the same group. On the other hand in PvE, mages excel far and away in damaging enemies with extreme amounts of defense, as those usually don't possess a lot of elemental resistance, if at all.

## Attributes

Mages can specialize in 3 different elements, each with their own perks and benefits.

Lightning (blitz) mages get access to several projectile spells, blinds, stuns and medium damage.

Glacier (ice) mages get access to an equal amount of instant and projectile spells, movement speed slows and medium damage.

Fire mages do the highest damage of all 3 elements, and get access to superior nukes and damage over time abilities at the cost of utility.

All 3 elements share the same type of spells, with the only different part being the element. As is the case for their Blast, Armor, Resistance, Novas, and Blade skills, among others. Their true uniqueness mostly shines in their level 80 spells, each being notoriously different depending on the element. Fire offers a damage over time projectile, while Ice disables an enemy for a little over 10 seconds, rendering them invulnerable and finally Lightning gives you a small distance blink or teleport, which can be cast in any direction you want to gain or close some distance between you and your foes.

Every mage ability does more damage the higher is the level of the skill and all of them ignore enemy armor. It is their elemental resistance what plays its role instead.

A mage does not usually spec for wearing shields because it's not one of their main attributes, and having the lowest defense rates in the game together with no real way to escape pressure like Rogues do, makes them the most vulnerable class in Knight Online. They need to be supported as much, if not more than a Warrior in order to strive in PvP.

In PvE, their damage against bosses is unrivaled, and a few mages can easily overcome a melee party in a long fight against a durable boss.

Their main stat attribute is Magic Power, and their secondary is Intelligence.

## Strategy

In PvP, as a support mage, your primary goal is to keep your party tightly knit and to create opportunities through your AoE crowd control abilities, while teleporting allies away from danger as much as you can. Positioning is key for your survival.

Only one support mage per party is recommended.

As an offensive mage, your mission is to try to land the perfect AoE bomb on distracted foes. To do this they need to be as sneaky as possible, or if geared enough you can just go to town on your opponents. One or two death become a secondary concern when all you need is a clean opening to rain death upon dozens of enemies!

Offensive mage parties in the other hand need as many mages as they can use. 7 mages and a priest is optimal, but 6 mages can work too.

## Master Quest

At level 60, a Mage can become an Arch Mage (El Morad) or an Elemental Lord (Karus), unleashing their full damaging potential through better AoE nukes and unique effects such as blinks or a guardian dragon.

See a full list of requirements for the mage master quest here.

## Equipment

Mages can only equip Staff artifacts. Even if they look like books or lampposts, they're still classified as Staves.

Shields require strength, an attribute that is not recommended for mages. So to equip one, you need to go out of your way and spend around 40 points into a stat that will bring you no benefit, other than being able to equip the shield.

Mage's armor has the least amount of defense out of all classes in the game. Even some of their best-in-slot jewels (such as Flame or Imir rings) have a really low defense value when compared to other similar choices.

Mage gear is not as easy to find, but also usually the cheapest to purchase.

## Leveling

A mage does not have an easy time leveling up, they're slow and most of their cast times get interrupted by monster attacks. They're not great solo, even with a Transformation Scroll equipped (an item used to improve cast times). While the utility they bring with teleports in melee parties is often desired, it is ultimately not a must-have. At all levels, mages are optional in melee EXP party compositions.

However when paired together, mages can truly shine. Aptly named "mage parties" can decimate large groups of monsters in a relatively short time frame. This is arguably the fastest way to level up, but back in the day, it was undisputedly the best.

End game leveling however is ruled by Genie parties nowadays, a type of EXP where mages don't really come on top.

## Trivia

* For years, Magic Power gained from items (armors, unique accessories) did not augment a mage's spell damage output against other players - only against monsters. Recently that was changed to finally affect both monsters and players.
* Like human warriors, except the other way around, there was a gender preference for human mages. Female mages offered a higher baseline intelligence amount compared to human male mages, along with slightly faster cast times. As of today, both male and female mages feature the same stat attributes on character creation.
* Originally, Karus characters could only create male mages. This was changed in a later expansion that allowed female Orc characters (formerly restricted to just the Priest role) to also become a mage.
* Mages are one of the very few classes to receive an entire redesign for one of their RoFD skills: Vampiric Fire.
* Mages are the only class that requires specific scrolls in order to use pre-level 60 abilities such as Blast, Thorn and Impact.
* Instantly Magic, is one of the abilities with the highest cooldown in the game, sitting at 180 seconds of recharge.
* Before the Guard Towers at PvP zones got upgraded, mages used to terrorize their enemies' bases with quick dives into towers ending with a catastrophic barrage of AoE spells that obliterated most life forms inside the so called safe-zones of PvP maps, namely Ronark Land. Said strategy is still possible but in a different way, requiring the use of a special quest item.
* Mages and priests are the only classes where intelligence stat points give additional mana points and 10 of each elemental resistance for 20 character stat points of intelligence.
* Every weapon in the game can be infused with elemental damage, but only mages truly depend on it for most of their damage output. EG: A fire mage is supposed to use a Staff with fire elemental damage, otherwise their DPS will be really low. Same can't be said for other classes, where any element, even Poison, works just fine.
* Regular, non-unique mage weapons have a distinct elemental damage amount per upgrade level. While other weapons (daggers, bows, maces, spears, etc) feature a scaling 10 elemental per level (80 elemental damage at +8), mage staves' elemental only increases by 8 per level (64 at +8).
* A mage's damage varies depending whether it is dealt against a monster or a player. Players receive 1/3 of the damage that a monster would normally receive.
* Mages are invaluable assets in the daily event Juraid Mountain. Monsters there feature extraordinary amounts of defense, and corridors can be slow to cruise without a shortcut.
* There are in fact, failsafe abilities inside a mage's arsenal. Every level 9, 43 and 56 spells, along with their blade skills, are impossible to interrupt.
* There are some abilities that have faster than usual casts. That is the case for level 43 and 56 spells across all 3 elements. There are however, outliers, especially in the fire skill tree. Ignition, Incineration and Ignization all offer fast cast times.
* A common trick to save thousands of mana in a mage's repertoire is to have a Lobo, Lupus or Lycaon staff at the default upgrade value (+0). Those staves offer a 30 MP recovery stat, which means that you will recover 30% of all the damage you inflict. One single AoE spell can fill almost your mana to full depending on how many foes you hit! Really useful for leveling, just don't forget to swap to your regular staff once your mana is replenished.
* A known bug with a mage's Guard Summon is that they can attack foes inside safe zones, such as Lunar Valley when invading.