After level 60, one of the most entertaining things you can do is duel with other level 60s. This helps you get aquatinted with the mechanics of PvP combat which should be useful for future updates. By the time you've reached level 60, your talent tree is probably a mishmash of spells chosen because they sounded useful for various tasks. Now that you've completed all the quests there's probably a lot of spells you don't need anymore, so re-specing is necessary and costs just around 50 Gold. Head over to the Mage Trainer in Greenmont to do this. The best place to look for duels is in Observers Market (Greenmont) and the Suspended City (Sinskaald Rift).
For duelling, your strategy and talent build is far more important than your equipment so you need to pick these wisely. The idea is to deal as much damage as quickly as possible, while your opponent is stunned if possible. To this end, we can discard all the spells which have long casting times. Elemental Finishing, for example. Each talent point you spend is vitally important so when building up your tree don't spend any arbitrarily. Each point needs to have a purpose in a PvP 1v1 context.
Talent Tree
This is the talent tree I've chosen (click to modify). I'm sure there are better ones, but this seems to win me most Mage Vs Mage duels. There are 8 combat spells I use, all in a specific order. But before we go into spell strategy, let me briefly mention equipment.
Equipment
Beyond the armor you get from quests, high cost equipment doesn't have as much influence on a duel as talent build and strategy. When picking new equipment, wisdom bonus, mana regeneration and hit chance are much less advantageous than stamina (health points), critical chance and spell power. For this reason epic crafted gear and the new rune purchased amor are ideal for duelling. My personal favourite staff is the Heartforger of Sorcery.
Pre-Battle
After you've accepted a duel request you have 5 seconds to activate your shields and target your opponent. Firstly, activate Shield Energy and then Stone Armor. After this, target your opponent and spam the Lightening Fall spell. If your target decides to sneak (turns invisible) then you can't target them. They usually do this for 20 seconds, waiting for your Stone Armor to wear off, so after 20 seconds use the AoE spell Shock Wave to try and catch them out, since they are probably close to you. You can also use Shock Wave immediately after the duel starts, if you think they're close by. I don't recommend using Frost Blast at this stage since it has a long cool down and is vital further into battle. Also take care not to spam Shock Wave too much since it can drain your mana very quickly.
Spell Strategy
My spells, in this order, are:
- Lightening Fall
- Ice Burst
- Rock Piercing
- Water Prison
- Fireball
- Cyclone
- Fire barrage
- Shock Wave
This order is not arbitrary. First, the opponent is stunned which is vital, since if they get chance to stun you first, you're as good as dead. While they're stunned, or after you've both recovered from being stunned simultaneously, use Ice Burst. This has a 60% chance of freezing the victim which increases the damage of Rock Piercing by 30%. After Rock Piercing you need to silence your opponent with Water Prison, so they can't interrupt you while you cast Fire Ball. Fire Ball takes a while to cast but is necessary to put your opponent in burning conditions, which gives Cyclone a 100% critical hit chance. Once you've used Cyclone, your opponent is probably dead, but if they've managed to cling onto life and Water Prison has worn off, you need to use Fire Barrage to interrupt their come-back spell. Once you've done this, hit them with Shock Wave. By this time Rock Piercing will have cooled down, so use that and anything else that has cooled down.
Obviously this strategy will not suffice for every battle, so consider it as a guideline and use your best intuition and improvisation in each unique duel. Good luck and happy duelling!
