Ragnarok Online 2 Magician/Sorcerer Skills Guide

Okay so I have decided to redo this thoroughly to analyses each skill in detail. Some skills on the lightning tree I haven’t acquired yet but they are probably not as confusing as the others and I will try to link to where you can find good explanation for them.

First of all, it’s about STATS:

Base on this calculator

There are 3 popular builds:
- Maxing Agi: 50 Agi, 28 Int, 5 Vit
- Balance Agi/Int: 41 Agi, 41 Int
- Balance Agi/Int/Vit: 33 Agi, 33 Int, 32 Vit

Each build has its own reason that justifies itself. I will explain each later. First here are some facts:
- After level up, your accuracy, critical hit chance, dodge chance, parry chance, damage reduction will be reduced. In fact, the contributing points to those chances remain, or even increase after you level up but the point requirement for each unit of those chance increases. Some people say that they also depend on the difference between your level and the mob you’re fighting against and I think it’s probably true too.
- 1 Agi increases 5 Critical point and 1 Dodge point. 1 Int increases 2 Magic Power and 1 Parry point. 1 Vit increases 5 HP.

Reason for maxing Agi: it’s a scarce resource. You can get a lot of Int and Vit from equipment but not Agi. Sorcerer needs Agi because its damages are mainly burst-type. Therefore, the more Agi, more crit, the better. It doesn’t matter how small the increment is, any bit counts.

Reason for balancing Agi/Int: Both are equally important stats, and Vit isn’t as important because Sorcerer isn’t tanker and you don’t get the most out of Vit like other classes. Distribute points into 2 stats equally get more benefit out of stat build than maxing one.

Reason for balancing Agi/Int/Vit: Stat points from level up are limited resources. We should get the most benefit out of it by distributing them equally among Stats that matter to minimize the cost.

Reason for not maxing Int: Take two extreme builds: Maxing Agi and Maxing Int, the difference is 22 Int. That translates to 44 Magic Power. This amount can be converted to +16 damage in Cold Bolt lvl 5, +56 damage in Jupitel Thunder with Wind Arms (Seal of Wind) effect, +44 HP heal in the total heal amount of Land of Recovery. Those numbers look big for new Sorcerers, but if Cold Bolt crit once, or JT crit once, or LOR crit once even in one of its ticks, those numbers mean nothing. How much critical chance you lose with 22 Agi at level 50? I say between 3-4%. With a small number of critical chance to begin with, 3-4% does matter. After you eat crit buff food, drink agi buff potion, get crit buff from Assassin and Agi buff from Ranger, those 3-4% will push your crit chance to a very decent amount.

You should select the build which most fits your trail of thought so you won’t regret it. A bit difference in Stats build cannot ruin your character as the real effect is insignificant.

SKILLS

WATER tree

- Cold Bolt is a very important skill. It is used to trigger the Wind Arm effect and JT Mastery effect. If you are a DPS Sorcerer, you will spam this most of the time. So I really recommend you to max this.

-Frost Diver: Many players will find the Frost Diver + Lightning Bolt powerful and it is truly the best combo to kill mobs before you change job from Magician to Sorcerer. Frost Diver + Jupitel Thunder + Varetyr Spear is also very powerful, a deadly combo for PvP. If you are interested in PvP, it worths investing 2 SP to max out Frost Diver. Otherwise, you should not, read explanation of Lightning Bolt for the reason why it is so.

-Water Arms: Well, it isn’t an optimized skill for combat situation unless you want to be a tanker. However, level 1 Water Arms, as a prerequisite of later water skills, is a nice regen buff when you want to be conservative at earlier level. Just cast it before sitting down, you will find your regen rate slightly faster. (For those who don’t know, press X to sit down)

-Summon Aqua: It works like this: You have to target an enemy and summon Aqua will summon a Water Elemental (very much like Water Elemental in Warcraft III) at that mob location. The elemental will automatically attack mobs nearby, doing single target damage to nearest enemy and that mob will aggro you unless being hold by a tank. Since it does single target damage and will not change to another target unless the current one is down, it is a very good skill in a boss fight and in fighting multiple mobs situation. You should always cast it whenever possible. Investing in this yields very nice result. The only down side is the long cooldown. Note: the water elemental can do critical damage.

-Healing Wave: Do pray that you have no lag in game because this is your main healing skill besides Land of Recovery as a Full Support Sorcerer. Rejuvenation just doesn’t perform well enough to worth the investment. Because healing wave has short casting time and 0 cooldown + it heals a small amount at a time, if there’s any lag, a FS Sorcerer can’t be the sole healer of the party. In optimal situation, healing wave is fast enough to keep tank’s HP up and occasionally crit + triggering Earth Arms’s regen which ease off all healing tasks. However, do pay attention that spamming this too much (over-heal) will kill your mana pool.

-Soul Cleansing: So far in the game, there has been only 2 debuffs that I find annoying. One is the hit reduction (reduce your accuracy) and stun. The former doesn’t affect healing as healing can’t miss so it’s not life threatening. For the latter, if you are stunned then you can’t cast Soul Cleansing anyway so it doesn’t matter. Regarding other debuffs, they are usually insignificant and by the time you cast the skill, they are nearly gone already. Therefore, level 1 is enough.

-Meditation: Its effect is really hard to notice. The description has been changed between RO2KR version and RO2SEA version. Based on RO2SEA version, the majority of its effect is in level 1. Therefore, level 1 is enough if you want to seek some desirable effect from Meditation (if there is actually any). Note: to get accuracy above 95%, you need blue (rare) or purple equipment.

- Deluge: huge heal but you can’t target it. The area of effect is a circle with the same diameter as LOR but only surrounding yourself. You can’t place it from a distance like LOR. Therefore in the case of fighting a boss with big a** AOE, you need to charge in and cast Deluge. It’s a bit risky and time consuming. At level 30, Deluge level 1 is strong enough to virtually heal anything to full therefore a higher level of Deluge might be not needed. At higher level, when tanking classes have invested points into their passives that increase HP and have got better equipment, more points into Deluge is needed for full tank recovery. So you should work towards getting lvl 4-5 Deluge at later level.

FIRE tree

-Fire Bolt: isn’t much stronger than Cold Bolt, plus a 0.5s additional casting time, which is very significant. You are not going to be a wizard so there is no benefit from fire bolt. Leave this at 1 in all cases.

-Fire Ball: here is the treat. A lot of builds still recommend Full Support Sorcerer to go for level 3 Frost Diver + level 1 (or 5) Lightning Bolt. It’s a waste of points and efficiency. For reason why it is so, check Lightning Bolt. Now I tell you why Fire Ball is good. At level 3 (costing 3 SP), you get a spell that does 56% magic power as base damage + 30% magic power damage over time. The casting time is the same as Jupitel Thunder but you get (86%-64%) 22% extra amount of MP as damage. I’m recommending this skill for FS Sorcerer who very likely will not get Jupitel Thunder, but Fire Ball is comparatively stronger if without the x2 damage effect.

-Fire Arms: Like Fire Ball, sorcerer doesn’t effectively benefit from investing in this skill.

LIGHTNING tree

-Lightning Bolt: Here comes your explanation for some of the above issues. There are some reasons why FD + LB combo isn’t an effective combo in long term:
+ 1st, FD can’t freeze a dungeon boss so FD+LB combo can’t be used.
+ 2nd, once FD applied, there will be a 15-20s of reduced effect of freeze so the next Lvl 3 FD only lasts 3s, and the next one lasts 1.5s
+ 3rd, lags make FD goes waste and LB spamming becomes ineffective
Putting in the number, with slight lag + casting animation, in 6s of FD in average you can cast about 4 Lightning Bolts. At level 5, that makes it 22% x2 x4 = 176% during 1.5 + 6 = 7.5s (1.5s is the casting time of FD). If however you use the Fire ball + Cold Bolt + Fire ball combo (assuming all maxed to equal the SP investment of FD & LB), you will do 56% + 37% + 30% x 3/5 + 56% = 167% during 2 + 3 + 2 = 7s (2s is the casting time of Fire Ball, 3s is Fire Ball cooldown time which is enough for Cold Bolt casting time and animation). After that there will be 30% extra DoT from the last Fire Ball. And this combo is much more repeatable (not being diminished as FD + LB combo), not to mention even if there’s lag, its negative effect is absorbed by the long casting time and cooldown of Fire Ball so your DPS is still effectively maintained instead of being completely lost like LB.

-Thunder Storm: a very bad skill, long animation (or rather channeling time), insignificant damage for the risk of aggro multiple mobs. Keep at level 1.

-Wind Arm: very very good spell. It reduces the casting time of your skills and gives chance to double the damage of all Lightning skills. The latter buff should be reserved to use of Jupitel Thunder and Varetyr Spear. Max this unless you’re a Full Support Sorcerer.

-Jupitel Thunder (JT) has 3s cooldown. However, if you have even a slight degree of lag, the casting time + animation of Cold Bolt is long enough for that 3s so that you can cast JT + Cold Bolt + JT simultaneously. The damage of JT level 3 is huge, at level 25 I could crit 900 damage with a JT under wind arm effect while LB can at best crit for 200. My point is, unless you have already had level 5 LB and have no lag at all, LB is totally redundant on your quick slots. Frost Diver should only be used as the 1st spell and never again. Its duration is only enough for 1 JT. Even if you have Varetyr Spear, it’s best to focus on casting Cold Bolt for the Wind Arm effect. Max this as a DPS Sorcerer.

-JT Mastery : Apparently it is 7% > 13% > 15% for lvl 1-2-3 so the last level might not worth 1 SP. How it works: as you use Cold Bolt (as you have to spam a lot for WA effect), there will be a chance that you will receive a 10s buff. During that 10s, if you use JT, it will be cast immediately without the 2s casting time. This will only nullify the casting time, not the cooldown.

-Fore Sight: It works like JT Mastery, but applied for any skill (including healing). It is very useful (particularly in PvP) but a reduction from 4 minute cooldown to 2 minute cooldown is not worth the cost of 4 SP. So better keep it at level 1.

-Lord of Vermilion: This may or may not be a very good skill. Check this thread for detailed discussion. The skill deals AOE damage around where you stand so you don’t have to aim it. I think it’s okay to use once when you’re fighting about 2-3 mobs and 1 of them are close to death, LOV can be used to clear it off. The skill has instant cast but it does like 7-10 tiny hits to make up that 24% of your magic power, each hit can individually crit. The fact that it has so many hits make the animation unnecessarily long for the damage it puts out. So really, LOV is only good when you’re in a tank & spank game (with LOR) against multiple mobs and especially when you’re under accuracy reduction debuff + lag.

-Varetyr Spear: Undoubtedly a very powerful and useful skill. For when the cooldown is done, as you trigger the WA effect, you can do JT + VS right away, instead of JT + Cold Bolt + JT. The in-between Cold Bolt might trigger WA again and for that you would waste 1 x2 damage chance. FD (lvl 3) + JT + VS will also destroy most opponents in PvP. Having VS will get your damage to another level. HOWEVER, don’t get VS until you have achieved a significant amount of survivability skills. For that, I mean at least level 1 Deluge and level 1 Land of Recovery, which also means that you stop at level 3 JT (not getting JTM) and get unlock those skills first. Sorcerer with healing skills make a world different experience for dungeon party.

EARTH tree

-Earth Arms: First of all, after recent patch, this is the skill that you need to max if you want to do any healing at all as it doubles the healing amount of all of your healing skills which are all very weak without Earth Arms. Other than that, if you crit when healing with Earth Arms, the healed target will gain a Heal over Time equal to 30% (lvl 5) of your magic power, over 6s. This 30% is the total amount, not the per tick amount. Earth Arms’s overtime heal only triggers when you crit with either Healing Wave or Rejuvenation. Deluge and Land of Recovery can’t trigger it. However, this is another reason why Sorcerer should go AGI focus build instead of INT focus build.

- Soul Bind: Its cooldown is x10 compared to the KR version, i.e. 50 mins > 40 mins > 30 mins cooldown. Despite long cooldown, you may just need as much cooldown reduction as possible. Two uses in 1 boss fight is not possible. However, if you fail a boss fight, you might need it for your next attempt. Or you may need it for your 2nd run through the dungeon. It’s very important so max it!

-Rejuvenation: After actually making a Full Support Sorcerer, I find this skill quite obsolete. Most of the time I was spamming LOR + Healing Wave. There was almost no room for Rejuvenation. In no-lag condition, Rejuvenation takes quite a bit more time than Healing Wave. Therefore, I suggest that except for FS Sorcerer, all builds should leave this skill at level 1. Even for FS Sorcerer, this should be one of the last skill to get. Even in the most dangerous situation without Deluge being available, spamming Land of Recovery and Healing Wave gives more chance to save the tank than Rejuvenation + Healing Wave. If somehow I find Meditation to be useful I will try to adjust the FS build along.

-Earth Shield: One of the most redeemed point of a Sorcerer. 20% defense is huge and appreciated by everyone. Unless you are playing with your friend/spouse/husband who is also playing a Sorcerer and will have level 5 Earth Shield, you yourself should max this in all cases.

- Land of Recovery: It heals slow and doesn’t heal much per tick but the AOE and total amount make its worth. Also it seems that LOR can crit. Occasionally I see twice as much healing amount per tick. It’s the most SP and time saving heal in RO2 so every Sorcerer should max it, no matter if you are playing with other sorcerers or not. Multiple LOR stack on one another. I’d say 5 Sorcerers spamming LOR can actually tank dungeons, unless they are stunned or wiped out by a huge AOE damage. One thing, if you use LOR while targeting an enemy, LOR will be cast with you as its center. On the other hand, if you use LOR while targeting an ally, LOR will take that person as its center.