In Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, flexibility is the name of the game. Your gear dictates your class in this Diablo clone, and your skills are leveled up by using them, meaning that you’ll naturally get stronger in the areas you choose to focus on. There are some semi-permanent choices you’ll have to make along the way, granted, but everything you do can be undone for a fee of gold or Primordial Affinity. So don’t need to feel married to a particular build!
At a very basic level, there are three broad methods of dealing damage: melee, ranged, and magic. In this Wolcen magic build guide, we offer you some direction on how to build a formidable caster through gear, skill choices, and perks on the Gate of Fates.
More Wolcen:
- Wolcen Tanky DPS Builds Guide – Best Perks, Skills, Armor
- Wolcen Bow DPS Builds Guide – Best Perks, Skills, Armor
Wolcen Build Guide – Best Perks for Magic Damage
Wolcen uses a unique perk system called the Gates of Fate, a sprawling wheel of nodes that can be rotated to pair up your favorite trees. The best tree for dealing magic damage on the center-most ring is the Scholar trees, so this is where you’re going to want to focus as you begin your journey. Mages are fairly versatile, though, so you’ll also benefit from certain perks in the Soldier and Sentinel trees as well.
After working your way to the second rink of perks, you’re going to want to focus on nodes in the Warlock and Cabalist trees. Here are the foundational passive skills from each tree.
Scholar
- Heightened Concentration: +20% spell damage, +20% ailment damage.
- Adept: +15% spell casting speed, +10% damage.
- Emotional Intelligence: +250 maximum willpower and rage.
- Steadfast: +5% rage cost reduction, +5% willpower cost reduction, +5% to all resistances.
The mage build relies on spell damage and the above passive skills provide an enormous boost in that regard. You’re eventually going to want to specialize in a particular kind of damage, though, so you’ll have to consider perks like Attrition Strategist, which increases you ailment chance score by 50%.
Soldier
- Capable: +25% maximum health, +3% rage cost reduction, +3% willpower cost reduction.
- Unyielding: +25 toughness.
- Zealous Might: +15% attack damage, +10% critical hit damage.
In the Soldier tree, you want to try and bump up your health a bit. The melee weapon damage doesn’t benefit a mage, but the attack damage bonuses do, so it’s worth seeking out some of those skills. Also, Second Wind, which gives you a burst of healing if you fell below 30% health is useful to any class.
Warlock
- Dominator: +20 willpower on hit.
- Magical Mastery: +15% spell damage.
- Strike Like Lightning: +5% move speed, +5% attack speed, +5% spell casting speed.
- Ravenous Magic: +2% life leech from spell damage.
The Warlock tree is all about resource increase and life leech; Ravenous Magic and Faith Leech will heal you for a certain percentage of damage done. You’ll also likely want to pick up Twisted Obligation to up your maximum willpower and rage. They are your spell casting fuel, after all.
Cabalist
- Clarity of Mind: +10% spell cost reduction, +10% spell damage.
- Crippling Decrepitude: +30% ailment damage, -15% damage that is not damage over time.
- Magical Mastery: +15% spell damage.
- Tormentor: +10% status ailment chance score.
With the Cabalist tree, you’re going all in on status ailments. The skills here increase the chance for you to afflict ailments on enemies, and increases the damage those ailments do. You can capitalize on this by specing into Immoral Offering, which gives you a +5% bonus to damage for killing an enemy that is afflicted.
Your Next Steps
From there, you’re going to have to make some tough decisions. The third ring on the Gate of Fates includes four trees that are centered around spell damage, and where you head is going to depend on your playstyle and gear.
For example, if you’ve managed to pick up some gear that boosts the damage done by your summoning skills, you may want to lean on the Plaguebringer tree. Or you can dip into the Abyssal Shaper tree if you’d like to double down on inflicting status ailments on your enemies. Flexibility like this is one of the strengths of Wolcen.
Wolcen Build Guide – The Best Magic Skills
Mage builds in Wolcen are more varied than bow and melee builds. That’s due to the fact that there are a number of viable spells and damage types available to magic users. If you prefer burst damage, you’ll want to go with abilities like Arctic Spear and Consuming Embers. If you want to lean into the damage over time skills of the Cabalist perk tree then you need spells like Conflagration.
The below skills are focused on burst damage.
Consuming Embers
A fireball that explodes on impact. You can do a lot of damage with that alone, but add the Seeking Flames mod, and you’ll get a second fireball projectile.
Arctic Spear
What makes Arctic Spear so useful is its ability to amplify its frost damage. Drop a Winter’s Grasp on some enemies, cast an Arctic Spear, and watch the fireworks.
Tear of Etheliel
Drop a big chunk of ice on your enemies. That’s it. That’s the skill. Nothing fancy here.
Annihilation
Shooting a giant laser out your hands is as mage-y as things get. This is your go-to sustained damaging spell, and it’s made even better when you modify it with Pressure of Time, which gives you a second beam to work with.
Aether Jump
This is just for some much-needed mobility, which the mage build sorely lacks. Use this when you find yourself in a tight spot or backed into a corner. It’s always important to have a Plan B when things don’t go your way.
Wolcen Builds Guide – Most Important Attributes
Characters in Wolcen have four core attributes: Ferocity, Toughness, Agility, and Wisdom. Whenever you level up, you’re awarded 10 points, which you can freely allocate among the four attributes. While all character archetypes benefit from all four attributes, you should prioritize certain ones depending on your playstyle.
For the mage build, the most important attributes are Wisdom and Ferocity. Wisdom is especially important if you’re speccing your mage heavily into ailment-based damage, as that attribute bumps your spell status ailment score. Adding points into Ferocity will boost your spell crit chance, too, which is just a flat increase to your damage output, especially if you dip into the Soldier perk tree on the Gate of Fates for the crit damage bonuses.
Wolcen Builds Guide – Notes on Gear
It’s best to stick to staves for this build. Also, you’re going to want to look for weapons and armor that stack spell damage, wisdom, and critical chance, and ailment chance. The last one in particular gels well with the Cabalist perk tree. Life leech is another good stat to keep an eye out for, especially if you rely on sustained damage spells.
And there you have it! These are the building blocks for a great magic-focused build in Wolcen. What build will you be running? Let us know in the comments section.
