Istaria offers the budding spell caster a tremendous variety of spells to choose from including Arcane (Flame, Ice, Energy, Mind, and Summoning), Mystic, for lack of a better term, (Nature, Spirit, and Blight), Life and Augmentation, and Primal (Dragon). Each has its strengths and weakness, each has its uses.

I really hope some of you out there will add to what I put here. Whatever your chosen form of spell casting is I know you have some information of worth, so pass it.

I want to cover Arcane as it is the area I am most familiar with. Before I get carried away I want to offer a list of commonly used abbreviations and acronyms associated with Arcane Spell casting.

Perf...Perfect Spell
Multi...Multicast
DM...Daunting Mist
DoT...Damage over Time
BC...Binding Crystals
FS...Fiery Strike
AoE...Area of Effect
Mezz...Mesmerize
Root...the act of immobilizing the target with a spell or spells
Slow...slows a targets movement speed

And some definitions

Pull...the act of getting the target's attention
Delay...the time elapsed from the start of casting to the spell actually being cast
Repeater...a spell that casts automatically until stopped by the caster or until the target is dead
Recycle...the time elapsed from casting a spell until it can be cast again
Add...sometimes one or more mobs will join the targeted mob during the pull. These are known as Adds

The Arcane line of spells can best be described as an arsenal. It includes low delay pulling spells, a DoT, roots, repeaters, slows, a mezz, AoE spells, medium delay spells and high delay heavy hitters. There is also a wide variety of techniques that can be used to enhance the spell's damage, enhance range, cause additional damage, slow, root, stun, lower resistance and increase accuracy.

Pulling spells are the spells that have the lowest delay, these spell go off pretty quick and when teched with range can touch out to 60 meters. They include Sear, Freeze, Ice Shackles and Immolate. Ice Shackles is also a root, it does damage but, is broken when any more damage is taken by the target. Immolate is a DoT and it can reach out to up to 60 meters. As the caster progresses through the levels and tiers it is a good idea to keep the best 2 tiers of Sear and Freeze hot-keyed. With practice you can then pull the target with Immolate, hit it with 2 tiers of Sear, 2 tiers of Freeze and stop it temporarily with Ice Shackles. Note that the DoT effect of Immolate will break Ice Shackles. Ice Shackles best use is to root any Adds that might tag along with your intended target.

Once the target has been pulled and is separated from the rest of the spawn it’s time to kill it. This is where your medium delay spells and bolts come in. Medium delay spells include all bombs, Stinging Cold, Energy Strike and Flame Wave. If you opt for the bombs, make sure the target is not in close proximity to any other mobs as the area of effect from the bomb will hit them and then you have more targets than possibly you can handle. To finish the mob use your high delay heavy hitters or bolts. The high delay heavy hitters are Fiery Strike, Burning Hands and Improved Flame Wave.

Bolts are your repeaters and are probably THE most important spells in the arcane users’ arsenal. The delay ranges from very low to medium, the range of possible techniques is impressive, and the versatility of the spell is second to none. Energy bolts have the lowest delay and do the least damage; ice bolts have the highest delay and do the most damage.

Roots, mezz and slows are second only to bolts in importance to the caster. They can be used to keep adds at bay (crowd control), keep the target out of melee range while killing it and to facilitate escape if needed. Binding Crystals and Ice Shackles are roots, Numbing Haze is your mezz and Debase and Daunting Mist are the slows. These spells more than any others can keep the caster alive.

Teching spells is very much a personal preference type thing however, I have learned a few things in 2+ years of spell chunking and would like to take this opportunity to pass some of it along:

Range techs: Reach out and touch someone. The desired target is on the backside of a spawn, maybe 25-30 meters from the edge. No range tech means you get to approach the near edge of the spawn and risk drawing aggro from nearby mobs. Range teching means you can reach into the spawn to pull a desired target with little to no risk of proximity aggro. I personally don’t like range techs on bolts, it raises the delay too much for my liking.

Damage techs: Can extra damage ever be a bad thing? Only if it is of the DoT variety as it breaks mezzes and Ice Shackles. Burning Damage is the only DoT tech of which I am aware.

Stun tech: This is a powerful tech however, its use is limited. It only goes on Energy spells, lasts 3 seconds and has a % chance to hit dependant on tier. Stun on a bomb? It might stun everything in area of effect, it might not. Either way, the stun effect fades long before the bomb recycles. Same holds true for Energy Strike. Stun on a bolt is the ideal use for this tech. A T5 Improved Energy Bolt with the Stun III tech applied is a great weapon. The delay is very low, the damage does NOT set the world on fire but, that stun hit’s with a very pleasing frequency. Stunned mobs don’t attack, don’t heal, don’t debuff; they just stand there helplessly awaiting the next bolt.

Ice Snare: This tech slows the target. Put it on Freeze and the mob will be crawling to you while you pepper it with spells. Put it on Ice Bolt and use it to keep the mob slowed while you pepper it with more bolts and/or spells. (Note: Slowed mobs can still move and cast/shoot. Back away from the target occasionally to keep separation).

Shocked: Nasty on an Energy Bomb, real nasty J Shocked slows attack speed.

Combust: I have this bad boy on all my Flame Spells that will accept it.

Critical Damage: This tech does extra damage and IMO, is much better than pierce, romp etc. I like it on Energy Strike, Binding Crystals, Stinging Cold and Ice Bombs.

Accuracy: Increases chance your spell will hit. A high focus score will do the same thing and not take up a precious tech slot. I am fortunate to have a high Focus score and only use Accuracy on Bolts. I use my bolts a lot, energy bolt on undead and abominations, flame bolt on vexators, ice bolt on kwellans. I WANT those bolts to hit and hit often.

Resistance reducing techs: I found these to be very handy at low and mid levels. Rather less so at higher levels. I think this because at low to mid level one’s skill and power isn’t very high yet and resistances can adversely affect damage output to a greater degree. At higher levels the skill is often augmented with Training Points as is Power and the caster has the ability to simply blast through most resistances encountered.

Tactics:

All the great teched spells in the world aren’t going to do you a bit of good if you don’t know when, where and how to use them. There are some very definite dos and don’ts in spell casting.

Daunting Mist: AoE slow spell. This spell is VERY handy when mass killing farmable mobs like golems and bugs. Run through the spawn to draw agro. When you have nice herd chasing you start running in ever shrinking circles until the herd is in a tight pack, hit Perfect Spell, stop and cast Daunting Mist. Move away from the pack and start launching bombs starting with a multicast of your highest tiered most powerful bomb. Then just cycle through the rest of your bombs. Use Sear, Freeze, and Stinging Cold to pick off any survivors of the bomb barrage.

Debase: Single target slow Used in conjunction with Daunting Mist the combined effect is a root that lasts for duration of the spell. Very useful against named mobs.

Bombs: AoE damage spells. Don’t pull with bombs unless you want a crowd.

Binding Crystals: Root spell. Medium delay, medium recycle, good duration, breaks on accumulated damage. T5 1300 damage breaks it, T4 1100 and so on. Raises target Flame Resistance. Use this for crowd control or to nail a target to the ground to kill at a distance. I keep my highest 2 tiers of this spell hot-keyed.

Burning Sky: T2 AoE. I still use this spell. High Delay, medium cycle. With good Flame and Power scores this spell will still do 200+ damage to T5 mobs. With 2 tiers of bombs hot-keyed this spell offers the caster a 7th AoE damage spell.

Improved Bolts: I have used the ordinary bolts. They just don’t get the job done and IMO, they are only barely better than nothing. Improved Bolts are where it’s at. Improved Energy Bolt with Stun, damage and/or critical damage is a lethal weapon. Low recycle, low to moderate damage but, that Stun is what it’s all about. It is possible to keep a mob stunned for duration of the fight by peppering it with a Stun teched Improved Energy Bolt.

Spell-like Abilities: There are a host of these available if one takes enough schools.

A wide variety of Enhanced and Coordinated Bolts exist. Coordinated Bolts can be very damaging if cast one after the other. Coordinated effect increases damage of following Coordinated Bolts.

Perfect Spell: With this lit off, any spell cast will hit the target for duration of the ability’s effect. The effect last 30 seconds.

Fusion Burn and Burn Out: Damage enhancers

Multicast: Multiple castings of any one given spell. Best used with your most powerful spell, usually Fiery Strike.

Stunner and Dynamic Pulse: Stuns, the latter does a little damage.

Beam of Pure Energy: 40 meters range, low damage. It gets the target’s attention.

Spellbind: 1 minute duration mezz, broken on any damage taken by target.

Engulf: DoT ability. Does NOT stack with Immolate.

I hope this will be of use and that if I left out anything, and I probably did, I hope
some of you other Arcane Spell Chunkers will fill in the blanks. I would also ask the Spirit, Blight, Nature, Primal, Life and Augmentation users out there to post their thoughts here. A Comprehensive Spell Caster’s Guide would be very handy for everyone.