Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/Pre-Ascension Stopping Points

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Last Revised December 20, 2021

Bard (Mid-Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Two Weapon Combat..................|     302     202
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     302     202
 Edged Weapons......................|     302     202
 Polearm Weapons....................|     302     202
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     201     101
 Physical Fitness...................|     302     202
 Dodging............................|     302     202
 Arcane Symbols.....................|      70      15
 Magic Item Use.....................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     302     202
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     201     101
 Mental Mana Control................|     201     101
 Elemental Lore - Air...............|     175      75
 Mental Lore - Manipulation.........|     160      60
 Mental Lore - Telepathy............|     141      41
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Disarming Traps....................|     150      50
 Picking Locks......................|     150      50
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              75

Spell Lists
 Bard...............................|             127

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Armor Use, Shield Use, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Brawling, Ambush, Spell Aiming, Spirit Mana Control, all three unlisted Elemental Lores (Earth, Fire, Water), all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all three unlisted Mental Lores (Divination, Transference, Transformation), Stalking and Hiding, Pickpocketing)

Explanation

Far enough post-cap, bards do everything and mine is no exception. The main unconventional play here is that mine wears robes, at least for now, for improved DS and maneuver offense compared to a conventional augmented chain bard. Almost every skill trained here is straightforward to boost offense, defense, or longevity. However, the impending Hinterwilds pushed me to include First Aid and Survival in her final training plan.

I'll note that only base skills are shown. By using Ascension, her real Manipulation and Telepathy numbers are 75 and 46 respectively, so yes, of course she has a full-powered Song of Sonic Disruption!

Much about bards is up in the air with an impending review in the future, so these plans are playing it safe and only training things that I think will be necessary regardless of what changes. As for other possibilities, though...

Negotiable Skills

• 25 Earth lore is an option for the Elemental Defense III benefit.
• 26 Water lore is an option for the Elemental Wave benefit (and minor perks for locksmithing).

Empath (Current)

 Armor Use..........................|     150      50
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     201     101
 Two-Handed Weapons.................|     201     101
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     201     101
 Physical Fitness...................|     403     303
 Dodging............................|     201     101
 Arcane Symbols.....................|     140      40
 Magic Item Use.....................|     302     202
 Spell Aiming.......................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     403     303
 Mental Mana Control................|     302     202
 Spirit Mana Control................|     302     202
 Spiritual Lore - Blessings.........|     232     132
 Spiritual Lore - Summoning.........|     170      70
 Mental Lore - Telepathy............|     245     145
 Mental Lore - Transformation.......|     157      57
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     201     101
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     403     303
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Major Spiritual....................|              67

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              67

Spell Lists
 Empath.............................|             166

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Shield Use, Edged Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Brawling, Ambush, Elemental Mana Control, all four Elemental Lores, Spiritual Lore - Religion, both Sorcerous Lores, all three unlisted Mental Lores (Divination, Manipulation, Transference), Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

Empaths are arguably the most versatile pure along with wizards, but using all of their talents means they have a very long way to go with conventional exp before everything is "done" and it's definitely time for Ascension. The above build is a touch over 5x cap and arguably even that isn't complete.

In any case, this is my omni-style empath who does a bit of everything. Empathic Link is the glue to make it work, since neither bolts nor melee are especially impressive on their own at cap, but suddenly become so when you can turn single-target strikes into AoE strikes. In some contexts, warpaths at the high end are actually stronger than warmages when it comes to melee power.

• 50 Armor Use is for wearing chain mail with minimum spell hindrance, compensating for warpaths taking more hits than casting empaths.
• Dodging is a grind of over five million experience, but in the long run it's a must when giving up Spirit Barrier to make use of an empath's physical prowess.
• I consider 3x Harness Power unnecessary for wizards and sorcerers due to mana returns from Mana Leech and Dark Catalyst. I wouldn't quite call it unnecessary on clerics at cap, but I could at least see the argument because of Ethereal Censer. For empaths, though, I think it's absolutely worthwhile since Empathic Link is extremely mana-intensive while also being core to their offense. Guardians of Sunfist empaths can potentially make do with 2x Harness Power and 65 Blessings lore for Adrenal Surge, though.
• High Blessings lore is for a strong chance of auto-healing scars since, again, a warpath will take more hits than a casting empath.
• Likewise, 57 Transformation lore is for no hard RT when healing.
• High Telepathy lore is for Empathic Link, which simply improves everything an empath does.

Negotiable Skills

• You can get 4 more DS out of training Minor Spiritual to 70 and about 2 more DS out of training Armor Use to 85, but 6 DS is almost never the difference between life and death when wearing chain mail. Even if it were, I could instead train Dodging ranks and Agility in Ascension for slightly lower DS gains that also offer maneuver defense.
• I'll finish Empath Base if empaths ever get a profession service that requires ranks of it.

Monk (Mid-Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Two Weapon Combat..................|     302     202
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     302     202
 Edged Weapons......................|     302     202
 Brawling...........................|     302     202
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     290     190
 Physical Fitness...................|     403     303
 Dodging............................|     403     303
 Magic Item Use.....................|     201     101
 Harness Power......................|     201     101
 Elemental Mana Control.............|      25       5
 Mental Mana Control................|     105      25
 Spirit Mana Control................|     105      25
 Mental Lore - Telepathy............|     120      30
 Mental Lore - Transformation.......|      70      15
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              40

Spell Lists
 Minor Mental.......................|              50

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Armor Use, Shield Use, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Ambush, Arcane Symbols, Spell Aiming, all four Elemental Lores, all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all three unlisted Mental Lores (Divination, Manipulation, Transference), Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

Compared to most professions, monks finish every majorly important skill pretty early--not long after 2x cap. That said, the Hinterwilds will be a game changer from my testing, so I instead settled on a build that's going to need roughly 3x cap.

Conventional brawling monks are exceptional at killing individual enemies with focused mstrikes or Spin Kick, so my driving philosophy here is to improve her ability to battle swarms by training katars so she can rotate between Clash and Whirling Blade without having to sacrifice Spin Kick. Most of her skills should be self-explanatory since monks are very straightforward, but just to touch on the few that might not be:

• 15 Transformation lore lands a capped Dragonscale Skin monk at -6 CvA, which is a boon.
• 50 Minor Mental is partly for better CS, but also in case I ever want to make use of Shroud of Deception.
• 40 Minor Spiritual is for Wall of Force. While DS is no problem for monks in normal hunting, I've found Wall of Force to be a necessity in Hinterwilds testing even with Spirit Barrier up.

Negotiable Skills

• Training Ranged Weapons--not Ambush, just Ranged Weapons--to have Volley is an option for enemies that are hard to kill with AS or UAF-based attack, but so far I can't find any that are resilient to both.

Paladin (Current)

 Skill Name                         | Actual  Actual
                                    |  Bonus   Ranks      Goals  In-Game Time to Goal
 Two Weapon Combat..................|    302     202        202
 Armor Use..........................|    320     220        220
 Shield Use.........................|    302     202        202
 Combat Maneuvers...................|    302     202        202
 Edged Weapons......................|    302     202        202
 Blunt Weapons......................|    302     202        202
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|    201     101        101
 Physical Fitness...................|    302     202        202
 Dodging............................|    302     202        202
 Arcane Symbols.....................|    201     101        101
 Magic Item Use.....................|    201     101        101
 Spell Aiming.......................|    302     202        202
 Harness Power......................|    302     202        202
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     50      10         10
 Spirit Mana Control................|    201     101        101
 Spiritual Lore - Blessings.........|     93      21         21
 Spiritual Lore - Religion..........|    253     153        153
 Spiritual Lore - Summoning.........|    114      28         28
 Survival...........................|    302     202        202
 Disarming Traps....................|    201     101        101
 Picking Locks......................|    201     101        101
 Perception.........................|    302     202        202
 Climbing...........................|    201     101        101
 Swimming...........................|    201     101        101
 First Aid..........................|    302     202        202
 Trading............................|    302     202        202

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|             40         40

Spell Lists
 Paladin............................|            162        162

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two-Handed Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Brawling, Ambush, Mental Mana Control, all four Elemental Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

My paladin is my second highest exp character and the heart of my vision for her is strong anti-swarm abilities with two weapons trained, allowing steady rotation between Pulverize, Whirling Blade, and Judgment as her AoE abilities. She also wears metal breastplate, so Judgment has no hindrance. That said, she's giving up significant defense both in her armor choice and by not using a shield, but that's what Ascension and simply striking faster than the enemy are for.

• 220 Armor Use reduces metal breastplate armor penalty to its minimum while allowing her to fully train two armor specializations.
• Blunt Weapons are primary and Edged Weapons are a backup to keep the AoE and assault technique trains rolling when the others are in cooldown.
• Arcane Symbols ranks are a little frivolous on this build since so many of her attacks aren't coming from her bonded weapon, nor am I even good about maintaining a scroll supply to infuse anyway, but since I had them trained before Ascension was released, I decided to keep them. I hold out hope that something more will be done with the skill in the future!
• Spell Aiming is even more frivolous, but I figure that the dev team wouldn't have opened it up for semis if they hadn't at least considered the possibility of doing more with it in the future. My true goal for my paladin is actually to have her be very magic-heavy relative to other paladins, but that's not exactly a viable option at the moment. I hope that one day it will be.
• Minimum 150 Religion lore is crucial so that Divine Incarnation - Smite has a 100% chance of a double strike. Even though it can only be used ten times per ten minutes, it's a near-guaranteed kill on anything and an amazing ace to pull out when needed. From there, going to 153 Religion hit a threshold for Zealot.
• Shield Use is something I wanted to have in my pocket as an option, but I've not found it necessary even in the Hinterwilds, the upcoming first Ascension hunting ground. Keeping Wall of Force up is more than sufficient and my paladin feels like my most powerful character in that hunting ground. Still, there might be a future area where I'd need the extra defensive benefits--not just DS--enough to outweigh my preference for a better offensive.

Negotiable Skills

• Training 175 Ranged Weapons for access to Volley is a solid AoE option, though an expensive one. I could see myself wanting it one day, but for now I'm content with 37,747,500 exp looking like a pretty number.

Ranger (Far Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Armor Use..........................|     130      35
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     302     202
 Ranged Weapons.....................|     302     202
 Ambush.............................|     200     100
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     201     101
 Physical Fitness...................|     302     202
 Dodging............................|     302     202
 Magic Item Use.....................|     201     101
 Spell Aiming.......................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     302     202
 Spirit Mana Control................|     201     101
 Spiritual Lore - Blessings.........|      50      10
 Spiritual Lore - Summoning.........|     191      91
 Survival...........................|     403     303
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              20

Spell Lists
 Ranger.............................|             182

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Shield Use, Edged Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Brawling, Arcane Symbols, Elemental Mana Control, Mental Mana Control, all four Elemental Lores, Spiritual Lore - Religion, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

Rangers don't have exceptional offense but do have exceptional defense, so my main concept here is to make use of flexibility. Despite not even going to 2x Ambush, I've found that it's not necessary since almost every enemy is highly vulnerable to at least one thing out of archery and ranger magic.

Key points to note:

• Magic Item Use is currently planned to contribute to Resist; otherwise I'd forego it. I still might, but it depends on how much players value the service and how much this skill contributes.
• Spell Aiming isn't extraordinarily useful yet outside of trolls in warcamps, since the SMR version of Moonbeam is frankly stronger than the bolt version, but I have hopes that Ascension will do more on this front.
• 10 Blessings are for Tangleweed. I'm only listing base skills here, but Summoning lore will definitely be 100 or more through ATPs to guarantee an extra cycle on Nature's Fury.
• Pushing Ranger Base so high is for Spike Thorn and, eventually, Resist. If I find that I need Wall of Force, I can always fixskill!

Negotiable Skills

A lot will depend on what Ascension brings to the table for rangers. My ideal scenario would be a path to make ranger magic strong enough that I could give up even the first 100 ranks of Ambush, then primarily use magic supplemented by archery that only uses Volley and doesn't need ranged AS. Plenty of other scenarios are possible too, though. If there were an evasion-heavy path for rangers, maybe I'd ignore two-handed weapons and ranged weapons to train Brawling instead and make a heavy Spin Kick build.

Rogue (Mid-Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Two Weapon Combat..................|     302     202
 Armor Use..........................|     200     100
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     302     202
 Edged Weapons......................|     302     202
 Ranged Weapons.....................|     302     202
 Brawling...........................|     302     202
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     201     101
 Physical Fitness...................|     302     202
 Dodging............................|     403     303
 Arcane Symbols.....................|      90      20
 Magic Item Use.....................|     201     101
 Harness Power......................|     201     101
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     105      25
 Spirit Mana Control................|      50      10
 Elemental Lore - Water.............|     191      91
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Disarming Traps....................|     403     303
 Picking Locks......................|     403     303
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     201     101
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202
 Pickpocketing......................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              76

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              20

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Shield Use, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Ambush, Spell Aiming, Mental Mana Control, all other Elemental Lores, all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Stalking and Hiding, First Aid, and Minor Spiritual)

Explanation

A triple weapon build with maxed Elemental Targeting is reasonably achievable for rogues compared to warriors trying to accomplish the same.

The core idea is an agile, evasive, lightly armored rogue. She'll primarily swing katars and keep Evasiveness active from either Whirling Blade or Light Armor Proficiency procs, Spin Kick as she can, and supplement crowd control with Elemental Wave and Volley--the latter being additionally backed up by a rogue's phantom Multi Opponent Combat ranks.

Rogues are very multifaceted, so some key points are:

• 100 Armor Use is to learn maxed armor evasion.
• 101 Multi Opponent Combat plus three ranks from Ascension allows Volley to hit up to seven enemies with rogues' 50% benefit for crossbows.
• As far as I can tell, 15 Arcane Symbols is always enough to disarm scarabs. I went for 20 in case I ever decide to use things like Heroism scrolls, though.
• Magic Item Use is for spellburst.
• Elemental Mana Control for multicasting is sheer quality of life.

Negotiable Skills

• Rogues wearing robes end up with significantly higher DS than monks these days due to Light Armor Specialization, so for now I don't feel a need to learn Wall of Force at the expense of AS and elemental TD. Still, monks' robes aren't really robes when they do take a hit whereas rogues' robes are, so maybe I'll change my mind later if this doesn't work in practice.

Sorcerer (Far Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Armor Use..........................|      90      20
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     201     101
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|      10       2
 Physical Fitness...................|     201     101
 Dodging............................|     201     101
 Arcane Symbols.....................|     302     202
 Magic Item Use.....................|     302     202
 Spell Aiming.......................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     303     203
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     302     202
 Spirit Mana Control................|     302     202
 Elemental Lore - Air...............|      58      12
 Elemental Lore - Earth.............|      58      12
 Elemental Lore - Fire..............|      58      12
 Elemental Lore - Water.............|      58      12
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              77

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              40

Spell Lists
 Sorcerer...........................|             186

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Shield Use, Edged Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Brawling, Ambush, Mental Mana Control, all three Spiritual Lores, all five Mental Lores, the Sorcerous Lores, Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

Basically an archetypical sorcerer; there's not much leeway for going off the beaten path sans extraordinary gear. Most of my planned skills for her should be self-explanatory, but the more unusual ones include:

• 20 Armor Use is to wear leather breastplate, which gives a noticeable increase in survivability over double leathers or especially full leathers.
• The meager 2 ranks of Multi Opponent Combat and Demonology lore are both for increasing the number of splash targets for Balefire. Frankly, Balefire isn't worth using at the moment for any reason other than fun flavor, but I'm hoping that the sorcerer review or Ascension will turn that around.
• I don't feel that maxed Harness Power is necessary given the sheer power of Dark Catalyst and its mana return.
• Compared to more conventional sorcerer spell splits, this one sacrifices 2 CS for somewhere between +16 and +27 power for Ensorcell.

The lack of sorcerous lores are because of the pending sorcerer review, as I don't know where I'll settle.

Negotiable Skills

If sorcerers get a way to learn weapon techniques, she'll pick up Polearm Weapons to use their sheer power to compensate for her lacking AS.

Warrior (Far, Far, Far Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Armor Use..........................|     300     200
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     302     202
 Edged Weapons......................|     302     202
 Ranged Weapons.....................|     302     202
 Polearm Weapons....................|     302     202
 Brawling...........................|     302     202
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     290     190
 Physical Fitness...................|     403     303
 Dodging............................|     403     303
 Magic Item Use.....................|     201     101
 Harness Power......................|     201     101
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     105      25
 Spirit Mana Control................|     105      25
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              81

Spell Lists
 Minor Spiritual....................|              20

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Shield Use, Blunt Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Ambush, Arcane Symbls, Spell Aiming, Mental Mana Control, all four Elemental Lores, all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

This is looking so extremely far into the future that I don't want to check the math on how post-cap it is, but nonetheless here's the plan!

The core of this is being an untouchable light armor warrior and capitalizing on her ability to have an excellent 40% evasion rate (against like-level enemies): 15% from Dodging ranks, 10% from Light Armor Proficiency, and 15% from Evade Specialization. Opting for light armor impacts nearly every other training decision:

• 200 Armor Use so she can handle at least two different fittings.
• Brawling and Polearms have reaction techniques based on evading, making them a natural fit. They also complement each other in that it's rare to find an enemy who's simultaneously difficult to kill with both attack forms.
• For enemies who are difficult to kill with AS or UAF, Ranged Weapons are a backup since Volley is maneuver-based damage. I don't need Ambush because I don't intend to use conventional AS-based archery at all.
• Maxing spells is for extra AS and, more importantly, extra DS and TD. In light armor she'll also have no spell hindrance, which means she can let Elemental Wave or even Major Elemental Wave fly.

Negotiable Skills

• I could see stopping at 35 Minor Elemental ranks if the grind is too much to bear, but that's a lot of AS lost.
• Stopping mana controls at 7 ranks each for sharing purposes (that's perfect sharing with 200 rank characters) is an option rather than going for the multicast for quality of life reasons.

Wizard 1 (Near Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Armor Use..........................|     111      27
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     201     101
 Two-Handed Weapons.................|     201     101
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|       5       1
 Physical Fitness...................|     201     101
 Dodging............................|     201     101
 Arcane Symbols.....................|     302     202
 Magic Item Use.....................|     302     202
 Spell Aiming.......................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     403     303
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     403     303
 Spirit Mana Control................|      50      10
 Elemental Lore - Air...............|     167      67
 Elemental Lore - Earth.............|     235     135
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     201     101
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Major Elemental....................|             100

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              75

Spell Lists
 Wizard.............................|             128

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Shield Use, Edged Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Polearm Weapons, Brawling, Ambush, Mental Mana Control, Elemental Lore - Fire, Elemental Lore - Water, all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

This is my archetypical warmage. Key points:

• 27 Armor Use is for leather breastplate, which is a pretty noticeable increase in survivability over full leathers. Brigandine would be even better with guaranteed access to armored casting, which I do have, but isn't what I envision the character wearing.
• 135 Earth lore is for three Core Taps per minute, which is only especially useful in the arena--but I always take her to the arena, so I just leave it in place to avoid needing to fixskill in and out. A Pending Core Tap nerf will likely have me dropping to 102 Earth lore and 100 Air lore to max out Haste, though.
• 3x Harness Power is a bit extraneous, but she was leveled before Ascension existed, so it's there to stay now. Having that much mana is also why she doesn't have 20 Fire lore for Minor Steam.

Negotiable Skills

I don't see training anything else unless wizards can eventually learn weapon techniques, in which case I'll re-evaluate.

Wizard 2 (Far, Far Future)

 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     201     101
 Physical Fitness...................|     201     101
 Dodging............................|     201     101
 Arcane Symbols.....................|     302     202
 Magic Item Use.....................|     302     202
 Spell Aiming.......................|     302     202
 Harness Power......................|     302     202
 Elemental Mana Control.............|     403     303
 Elemental Lore - Air...............|      91      21
 Elemental Lore - Fire..............|      90      20
 Elemental Lore - Water.............|      50      10
 Survival...........................|     302     202
 Perception.........................|     302     202
 Climbing...........................|     160      60
 Swimming...........................|     140      40
 First Aid..........................|     302     202
 Trading............................|     302     202

Spell Lists
 Major Elemental....................|             100

Spell Lists
 Minor Elemental....................|              75

Spell Lists
 Wizard.............................|             128

Click here for explanations!

(skills with no ranks are: Two Weapon Combat, Armor Use, Shield Use, all weapon types, Ambush, Multi Opponent Combat, Mental Mana Control, Spirit Mana Control, Elemental Lore - Earth, all three Spiritual Lores, both Sorcerous Lores, all five Mental Lores, Disarming Traps, Picking Locks, Stalking and Hiding, and Pickpocketing)

Explanation

This is my pure wizard, who accordingly needs less exp than my warmage. There's little to explain here since she's a straightforward, traditional wizard. Some key points, though:

• Combat Maneuvers and Perception are strictly for maneuver defense.
• I don't see going beyond 2x Harness Power as necessary or especially beneficial on a wizard thanks to Mana Leech. My warmage trained those things only because she leveled that far before Ascension existed.
• Going for 2x or even 1x lores also seems unnecessary for conventional hunting. The lores here are only to unlock things like Cone of Elements Lightning and Minor Steam.

Negotiable Skills

• Brawling is a possibility depending on what happens with warmage archetypes.