Welcome to my horrible mage guide
I am a mage main as most may say, with having 420 (nice) hours in my fire/explosion mage save. Safe to say I don’t really like using meta magics. If you are a meta magic, this guide probably isn’t for you since clearly you know how to game works 
I’ll separate this sorted from the most biggest (And sometimes no brainer) ideas and all the way to the most minute. I’ll be assuming you aren’t using a necessarily fast magic (AKA most magics). Meta magics such as Shadow, Lightning, and wind will not be considered (Also light but I KNOW THAT ISNT META HUSH)
Magic, and how to choose it properly
Hello! You chose a primary magic and regret it, but now you can’t change it even with interchange. This part is to help you make the best of your situation.
Secondary magic is important if you want to change up your playstyle. Stun combos are best for a rushdown-esque playstyle while a long duration effect is more useful if you wanna play with more pressure. Knowing DOT times is important as well.
As an example, a primary fire mage would most likely not be mixing with plasma even though they have a positive synergy buff. This is due to their 3s DOT time. However, a plasma mage can use fire as their secondary magic due to fire’s 5s DOT time. Something like choosing Explosion as a primary, and plasma as a secondary (With plasma’s high speed its easier to hit) would be a far better choice.
Understanding stun synergies is also important too: As a primary fire mage, it would be unwise to pair it up with ash (As ash’s attacks clear the fire’s DOT, a lot of its damage, while having low damage multipliers).
Its pretty no brainer stuff if you’ve read the wiki, but I hope it at least makes one person choose their magic wisely. It took me 3 interchanges for me to realize that my choice of plasma as a second magic was a stupid choice, and my choice with ash as a less stupid choice (I use explosion now)
Spell Choice
There are currently 7 magic spells in the game, with 2 more to come next update. Choosing what spells you use is important for a “”“”“zoner”“”“” class like mage.
If you need to apply a status effect on someone, use explosion/pulsar if they are in the air or beam if they are on the ground. For slower magics, its recommended to not use beams but rather explosion/pulsar as its more guaranteed. Damage trading is important, as if you risk taking 150 damage from a shot but then deal charred (And then use fire/plasma/ash), you can get the all important 20% damage buff for your next attack dealing over 300 damage. That’s a good damage trade!
If your magic is slow, then I’m sorry to say you would probably not be able to use blasts as they are far too slow to hit anything (Prediction is good and all, but when the clashbox destroys the effort of prediction it usually makes you wanna give up on life).
An underthought spell is Leap. I’ve seen some mage users simply use leap instead of pressing T. Here’s my advice on that:
…don’t.
Leap will take a shockingly large amount of energy. That time charging could be used on dodging or blocking, resulting in you taking damage. If you can use T, use T since you’ll be able to use leap again mid air resulting in you gaining a huge height advantage.
This is half-message to them and half-message to myself because I do it all the time too.
Gear
Attack speed.
If you wanna go AOE mage, use attack size obviously but attack speed is incredibly useful for mage. Attack Size doesn’t impact your beam size (only the explosion at the end) nor your projectile (only the explosion at the impact). This means the two best options for dealing with mid-air targets is not improved by your attack size. Having better speed is more important since you’ll be able to hit them with greater chance as you don’t have to predict as much
Make sure you invest at least a little into agility. Trust me, 24 agility goes a long way to help the movement-starved build that is called Mage.
If you for some reason haven’t heard, there’s a amazing website that helps you build a good ratioed-armor build. Ask people around for help on armor builds, you’d be shocked to find how many people are willing to help.
Animation
This is for those who are REALLY try-hardy. Using the foot-casting animation will make you shoot the blast from your feet, making your character tilt towards where you are aiming. This does help reduce the size of your hitbox while using the spell
For multi-blasts, don’t use the ones that have multiple magic-circles. They are faster, sure, but they are far less accurate then the non-multi magic circle ones.
Also coward animation’s charging does decrease your hitbox by a smidge. But if you are really that nitpicky about your animations, why are you even using non-meta magic? Comeon. Get out of here.
Dashing
Yes, changing how you dash is important to PVP.
Having it Shift-To-Dash may be more convenient and far more precise, you’ll lose out on the ability to charge mid air and lose a lot of frames to blocking. This is because when you charge there’s a little period where the charging is still active. Because of this, you won’t be able to charge while that buffer period is active, and you won’t be able to block making it so using Shift-To-Dash in PVP is objectively worse then using Double Tap.
What? Your keyboard can’t handle rapid inputs like that? TOO BAD. Wait until Vetex fixes it
(Its a simple fix: Make it so blocking cancels your charge, and delete the buffer period. I don’t know about the consequences, but please do these changes my keyboard hates rapid same-key inputs)
The most important info of them all…
Wanna be good at mage? Don’t play mage.