Two Button Mage

The basic starter mage come with two attack skills:

	Fire Bolt is a good spell that targets a single opponent at a considerable distance, and regenerates very quickly. It is easy to keep a continuous flow of Fireballs, but interrupting it to use another skill will waste time and attack power.
	Shadow Lightning is an area attack skill that affects a number of opponents at fairly close range. It has a 3 second cool down so if you try to hold down the button and use it continuously, you wind up swinging your weapon several times in between blasts. For most mages, this is pretty much a waste since we don't bother with Agility or Strength and couldn't damage a weak cow with our weapon.

The secret to making good use of this basic skills package is all in the timing. With Fire Bolt on your left mouse button and Shadow Lightning on your right button you can develop the timing to use them both with devastating effect. Remember that your screen display sometimes lags quite a bit. If you press the Shadow Lightning button and wait to see the lightning strike you may waste some valuable fractions of seconds. The proper way to attack is to fire off several fireballs and then quickly one blast of lightning, returning immediately to the fireball button again without waiting.

It comes out sort of like this: BOOM -- BOOM -- BOOM -- ZZZZZTT -- BOOM -- BOOM -- BOOM -- ZZZZZZTT! For me the proper count is three beats of Fireball and then a quick Shadow Lightning. It takes a bit of practice to get the timing right, but hey it took a bit of practice to learn to ride a bike, too!

Now if you add:

Ring of Fire

to your arsenal on Hotkey 1, you can throw that in every now and then. You would get BOOM -- BOOM -- BOOM -- ZZZZTT -- BOOM -- BOOM -- BOOM -- ZZZZZTT -- BOOM -- BOOM -- FLASH! -- ZZZTT and have a really devastating attack.

This timing works well against either melee fighters close up or at a small distance from ranged mobs. Of course the same trick works with any of the possible Bolts a mage can train, and Gaseous Blast or Righteous Stomp can replace Ring of Fire in the rotation.