Mage/Dark Wizard Help Can You Improve My Fatal Build?

https://wynndata.tk/s/yi6547
(customs are black catalyst post-patch)
Improved meaning higher health with little loss of damage, higher damage with little loss of health, better mana sustain without losing much of either of those, or just straight improvements.

 

(Hey, do you mind if I include this in the OP Mythic Builds thread? This build is amazing)

 

(No problem)

 

Your build is actually really close to the old 0-int warrior I used to use; you even made it better than what I had with tenuto and new black catalyst which gives you some nice -1st%. There's also high eledefs and good steal-sustain, nice!

I've tried to improve it by changing some items to be closer to my current 0-int. Please judge it for yourself before and after the commentary I put below. [EDITED - I forgot black catalyst needed both ring slots.]
[https://wynndata.tk/s/81i0e4] impossible build
https://wynndata.tk/s/zhb49f - edited build

Pre-emptive notes:

• Slayer is expensive, but luckily you don't even need a good one because black catalyst. If you're hard on cost, definitely go with ossuary + hepha.
• The crafted spell ring (lapis spam) costs something in the 10-20 LE range to craft if you don't grind for a few days. You can replace this with a tank/survivability ring if you want, like OKR. I only chose not to use OKR because black catalyst looks really strong and mage has heal.
• EDIT: I'm choosing to not use black catalyst. Instead, I'll use okr + spell ring.
• I chose euouae for the skill points, this is also replaceable (if you like hpr + hp + some def, you could consider flashfire gauntlet).
• Chain lightning definitely makes spell-steal more sustainable if it still is a 100% pop on MS and LS. Something I haven't tested or considered.

Spoiler: Deltas (my build stats - original build stats)

• ~800 less hp. Not too much of an issue (w/ decent agi and the heal spell) imo
• ~100 less hpr. You'll definitely feel this, but at least you have heal.
• ~800 less LS. You will feel this; however, let's do the math.
  • Assume you miss no hits w/ super slow and LS pops each hit. You get a hit every 1.96 seconds and 1600 health from LS over 2 hits (a roughly 4 sec span of time). You also get 16 Mana from stealing, a shit ton. Very cool.
  • If you're not using LS with the build above (rip 6/4 MS), you still get +7 mana per 4 sec. With that, you can meteor-tp-heal (I think). I prefer this because of higher mobility, you don't have to stand near or in range of a mob to survive, and you don't rely on the timing and accuracy of your hits (remember, the bullet point above is an ideal scenario, and with lag/crowd fighting/mage melee mechanics you could easily take 1+ hits/be in a bad position/get 0 or 8 mana instead per 4 seconds).
  • I haven't considered mage vs warrior range of attack or the aoe of the different melee attacks. The problem of being too close to something when trying to hit it is diminished with mage for sure, though.
• +7/4 MR and -2/4 MS. If we weight MR and MS equally, you get +5 mana/4sec, but because this is mage, I prefer spell spam and keeping out of range.
• The past two points are the result of changing the build from a spellsteal to a generic brainwash 0-int. On warrior, generic brainwash plays much more smoothly (trust me), and while I haven't tried mage, I think you'll get more use out of +5 (or "potentially" more) Mana per 4 seconds while being able to stay out of range of mobs.
• Worse eledefs. The workaround is to not get hit :).
• Different skill points. Your build has -str , mine has +53 (brainwash). Tenuto forces you to invest in def (nothing wrong, but if I recall min-maxing def/agi is the way to go). Also not sure why you invested +15 extra skp to dex; imo you have the damage and could put it more to use in agi. My build maxes out agi at 114, and if you chose to dump your extra skp into agi you'd end up with 93 (you would still take ~30% base damage compared to mine if you get hit though). Again, with higher agi and a playstyle that doesn't require hitting things to get mana, just try not to get hit.
• Better damage, both in melee dps (but why) and spells. This is basically the result of brainwash + spell ring.
• Spoiler: Very Consistent Damage

  
• + ~ 40% walk speed. This is just a nice-to-have thing, but doesn't matter too much when you can tp spam.

Spoiler: Combat Insights

PVE

• Honestly, spell-steal mage could work. You have heal if things go wrong and with high WS, you could feasibly get hits in with high accuracy and continue dodging.
• A big reason I switched to brainwash-slayer warrior was not having to get accurate melee hits (hard with high WS and a small aoe hit). I also had the option of OKR for sustain. With mage, I think the immediate disadvantages of spellsteal hero go away: you gain a guaranteed pop per 3 melee hits in chain lightning, a better melee attack for spellsteal, and a back-up spell (heal).

PVP

• Spell-steal bad. You get comboed. No do spell-steal in PVP. Bad. May need to heal w/ 5-cost heal and 0 MR. Bad. Walk up to a spell-spam assassin to try to super-slow hit through agi. Bad. Get comboed.
• With warrior, brainwash-slayer and hero is godly (high sustain and damage while being an agi-tank). On a fatal mage, though, I'd imagine you just do the standard tp-meteor and occasional heal when you do get hit. MR pvp good.

Sorry for the huge post, I just really like analysis and 0-int builds. 0-ints used to be a meme (@hppeng ), but now they're probably my favorite type of build to use.

 

I very much appreciate the lengthy and informative feedback, your insights will absolutely help me make this build better. I hadn't considered slayer, mostly because I currently have 2 other builds that I plan on making that will use slayers (also because I'm poor). You are right about not needing the extra points in dex though. Thanks a lot for this.