Introduction
I’ve played a lot of lightning magic, matter of fact it’s the only magic I have on all of my 5 files, those being one of every magic build. Throughout my time playing this magic I’ve been able to gather a wide pool of knowledge about the magic, and also develop some very particular opinions on certain pairings with lightning.
This thread has a focus on me making three tierlists, and explaining my choices for each decision made on it, some elements of each list may be rushed or have some slight mistakes, it’s not the easiest task to be locked in whilst crunching a ton of numbers and figures. 
Incase those two little paragraphs didn’t convince you that I know what I’m talking about (I don’t), here’s every lightning build I can remember running to date.
Builds
Lightning Water Mage
Lightning Metal Mage
Lightning Earth Mage
Lightning Crystal Mage
Lightning Fire Mage
Lightning Magma Mage
Lightning Plasma Mage
Lightning Glass Mage
Lightning Wood Mage
Lightning Ice Mage
Lightning Conjurer (with and without Sunken Sword)
Lightning Sailor Warlock
Lightning Basic Warlock
Lightning Thermo Warlock
Lightning CFist Warlock
Lightning Boxing Warlock
Lightning Ileg Warlock
Lightning/Ice Sailor Savant
Lightning/Ice CFist Savant
Lightning/Ice Ileg Savant
Lightning/Water Basic Savant
Lightning/Metal Boxing Savant
Lightning/Metal Boxing Savant
Lightning/Metal Basic Savant
Lightning/Glass Boxing Savant
Lightning Paladin
The Tierlists
Notes
- I wanted to do a tierlist of every weapon skill ingame for Lightning Conjurers, but I feel as if it’s too similar to a wider pool of conjurer builds to be worth doing.
- I also wanted to do tierlists for Savant Second FS/Magic, but with the Awakening change coming at the end of the year, I gave myself an excuse not to.
Awakenings/Builds
Explanation
S TIER
-
Warlock - Given you’re using the appropriate fighting style, all of your FS moveset can benefit from a lightning imbue, making it by far the easiest lightning build to pick up and most definitely the best overall.
-
Conjurer - Lightning Conjurer is one of the most popular builds in all of Arcane Odyssey, and it’s for some very good reasons (other than how cool lightning looks). It benefits from bleed synergies and sunken sword’s soaked synergy, definitely a bit more difficult to use in PvP than Warlock, but shines miles above it for PvE.
A TIER
- Mage - I think Mage has a very low skill floor, but that a lot of it’s players don’t use it right, if your second magic combo is built off a damage synergy, you have to be trying to proc that damage synergy as much as possible (this applies ESPECIALLY to lightning/water mages), due to this, it’s in the tier below Warlock and Conjurer.
B TIER
- Savant - This is my main build! Definitely not as easy to use as Warlock, Conjurer or Mage, but can still reap the same benefits (damage synergies, paralysis, etc). Not having an imbue for now definitely hinders lightning savant’s overall potential.
C TIER
- Paladin - As of 1.17, lightning paladin is completely useless due to no synergy potential whatsoever.
Warlock’s Fighting Styles
Explanation
S TIER
-
Sailor Style - Lightning Imbuement gives Sailor Fist slowness and slightly extra damage, making it the ideal pick for an already powerful solo fighting style.
-
Iron Leg - Has a very strong bleed synergy with lightning, allowing you to profit off Iron Leg’s damage even more, the imbuement will also make up for Iron Leg’s lack of base attack speed by a small margin.
A TIER
- Thermo Fist - I only found this out today, but searing has a damage synergy with lightning (thank you Miraheze wiki). Whilst having this synergy is useful, it relies on you being able to keep your heat meter at a steady and high amount, and definitely has a higher skill floor than what’s in S Tier.
B TIER
-
Cannon Fist - I feel as if this is sort of a sleeper pick, cannon fist in general is by far the worst fighting style, and your only benefit from this is some extra speed. I think it can also apply bleed with certain cannonballs (not so sure about this - I would love for someone to confirm/deny), but it’s so far outclassed by Iron Leg that it wouldn’t even move it up a tier. If I didn’t like the idea of cannon fist it’d definitely have it’s own tier at the bottom, but I feel it does have some slight boons to it.
-
Basic Combat - A slight speed increase makes this a solid pick, but definitely outclassed by A and S tier.
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Boxing - You’ll zoom around pretty quick with this, and that’s about it.
Mage’s Second Magic
Explanation
S TIER
- Water - Enables lightning’s status effect to be used to the fullest, and has a small damage synergy.
A TIER
all magics with a damage synergy that aren’t cleared by lightning (to my knowledge)
B TIER
all magics with a damage synergy that are cleared by lightning (to my knowledge)
C TIER
- Explosion - I’m about to land a crazy take which I hope nobody cares about - but albeit Explosion has no synergy with lightning, and charred is cleared by lightning, it has one sole benefit. We’re on mage, mage has higher tiers, that means things are bigger, what else is boosted with tiers? Clash rates, and explosion makes up for 3/4 of the clashes that lightning loses, which is the most situational piece of knowledge out there, but it was important enough to me to bump explosion up one tier.
D TIER
no synergy whatsoever
Lightning Variants
Mage
Warlock
Conjurer
Paladin
Savant
Overall
Conclusion
I think the only thing I want to state at the end of this topic is, if you disagree with me or think I’ve gotten a piece of info wrong, please send a reply so I can alter the lists and my reasoning for placements! 
