Mages are one of the basic Vocations of Dragon’s Dogma 2, which uses staves to craft powerful spells. This Vocation can be played as a main pawn due to its damage-dealing spells or as a supporting character due to its healing and skill-buffing abilities.
Despite being a great support to the party, Mages are weak in terms of survivability. The reason for this is that they lack physical defenses and take time to cook magic, which keeps them at risk. But the good thing is that you can optimize this Vocation to support the pawns and increase your attack speed.
Mages are important characters in building a party, but mastering their positioning and spell-casting timing is crucial to harnessing the full potential of this vocation. With this build guide, let’s make your Arisen a powerful Mage in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Mage Build Overview
This build guide will focus on making the Mage a versatile support Vocation using the best party composition, with strong utility spells to keep the party alive and high damage output. One thing you should be aware of is its vulnerability to being attacked while casting magick. So essentially, you will need tanky pawns to act as meat shields while you hang back and use your arcane power.
| Pros | Healing Spells |
| Increased Party Speed | |
| Weapon Elemental Buff | |
| Strong AEO Damage | |
| Cons | Low HP |
| Long Casting Times | |
| Weak Survivability | |
| Weapon Skills | High Celerity |
| High Palladium | |
| High Levin | |
| Core Skills | Anodyne |
| Focused Bolt | |
| Quickspell | |
| Augmentation | Beatitude |
| Perpetuation | |
| Exaltation | |
| Endurance | |
| Apotropaism | |
| Constancy | |
| Equipment | Weapon – Cardinal Blaze |
| Helmet – Solar Ascension | |
| Body Armor – Edified Vestament | |
| Cloak – Any | |
| Ring 1: Ring of Recitation | |
| Ring 2: Ring of Percipience | |
| Best Party Composition | Main Pawn – Fighter |
| Thief | |
| Archer |
Character Creation Recommendations
Starting with the size of your Arisen, try keeping it small. Body height and size come into play when playing melee type characters. But since that is not the issue here, feel free to pick any size and height you want. Generally, larger size will ensure you don’t get knocked down. Whereas a taller character can carry more items.
Best Weapons For Mage
Mages prefer staves, so if you’re looking for a strong early-game weapon, go for Cardinal Blaze. This staff has high magick stats, making it perfect for casting spells. You can get it from Grisha’s Armory in Northern Vermund.
If you find Cardinal Blaze expensive, you can use Tintreach as a replacement. Tintreach staff offers stats similar to Cardinal Blaze’s, which can also be purchased from Grisha’s Armory.
Best Skills Selection For Mage In Dragon’s Dogma 2
After you’ve chosen your weapon, the next thing you need to focus on is the Weapon Skills; the best weapon skills for Mage Vocation are as follows:
- Celerity | High Celerity: This buffs your entire party with increased speed and attack speed while increasing the speed of your magick casting time. This skill leads to increased output damage for your team.
- Palladium | High Palladium: It creates a protection shield that blocks incoming damage for you and your nearby allies.
- Levin | High Levin: Go for this spell if you’re trying to target multiple enemies simultaneously. It is a lightning spell cast in an AoE that does a log of damage. This requires stamina, so remember to keep a check on it.
Among the core skills, Anodyne is an AoE heal spell that lasts for about 10 seconds and heals everyone within its range. While Focused Bolt launches a condensed magickal burst or charged attack, giving damage to the enemy. Lastly, Quickspell boosts spell-casting time in exchange for stamina.
Best Augmentations
This build uses the following six augmentation to increase your Mage’s support and defense abilities:
- Beatitude: Starting with healing, Beatitude boosts the health recovered by curatives and curative magicks.
- Mettle: Increases physical defense by 25%
- Exaltation: Increases the rate of stamina recovery
- Endurance: Increases maximum stamina
- Apotropaism: Increases magickal defense by 25%
- Constancy: Increases knockdown resistance by 15%
Equipment Selection
The equipment section is broken down into the best helmet, body armor, cloak, and rings your Arisen can equip. For Thief, you may want to consider the following to focus on increasing its strength and attack stats, while reducing stamina.
- Helmet – Solar Ascension: A royal headwear that has a defense stat of 55 and magick defense of 85.
- Body Armor – Edified Vestament: A robe with basic defense of 140 and magickal defense of 180.
- Cloak – Any: Cloaks don’t impact your Vocation’s gameplay, so you can choose any of your liking.
- Ring 1 – Ring of Recitation: Enchanting spells take time; with the Ring of Recitation, you can reduce the time taken, but it also decreases health.
- Ring 2 – Ring of Percipience: This is a perfect equipment for Mages to boost their magickal stats.
Best Party Composition for Thief
To make Mage your primary support character in Dragon’s Dogma 2, you can use the following team to protect it with complimentary damage:
- Fighter (Main Pawn): Having a Fighter on the team will keep the enemies to themselves while giving you the time to cast spells.
- Thief: Having a Thief will help in taking down large enemies quickly with maximum damage and high mobility.
- Archer: Archers are ideal for giving range and consistent damage.
