Excelsior

I would like to have magic essences on this shard too. We can loot from Balrons essences for weapon skills and support damage skills, but no essences for any magic skill. We have 3 main source of damage, pets, weapons and spells. Because there is no skill cap, everyone can use pets. It doesnt matter on stats, etc. Not for fighter / mage style, which depends on stats, items, etc.

I feel, that this shard is hard "fighter" focused. Levelable weapons, "easy" to get high dex and instant heal, angel form with mace, anatomy and heal bonus and essences for bumping up fighting skills a bit more.

I would like to play spells focused character. Just because i dont like to play dex monkey and prefer use variety of nice spells + pets. I "cant" have godly leveled weapon like fighters. Yes, i can level up any weapon like fighter, but leveling mage oriented weapon is much more pain. I can buy book too, but Ultimate is 400 ED (20 mil.) and Omni is 600 ED (30 mil.), what is really expensive to me, compared to looted / cratfted weapon leveled with myself.

Ok, back to essences. When spell focused character is harder to play (in my view), would be nice to have essences related to "mage" skills, like magery, necro, evaluating intelligence, spirit speak, meditation, inscription. I want push my magic skills a bit too, to be stronger as spell caster .

Essences would be nice, but first you may want to get magery/necro revamped to actually be worthwhile on a shard where, as you said, dex monkeys run rampant. Even with a huge amount of spell dmg on my gear, Id still rather use a wep with spell hits than sit around spamming explosion/ebolt.

Just to point out:
"easy" to get high dex and instant heal," = spending about the same (20 mil) as ultimate spellbook. Count the +indiv stat (250 ED) scrolls and gear (easily 5-6 mill).

But other than that - I agree with your point - magic sucks. Getting it to work nicely, however, is not that simple as beefing up the damage/length/power of spells across the board. Perhaps taking intelligence into account for cast (ie. not weapon hits) spells would be a nice start. I mean using Int as a semi-SPD so that a mage who invested his time and stats into maxing his int would blow mobs away with comparatively the same ease as a fighter with a good weapon does. Essentialy this difference in power stems from the no skill cap - normally (on 700skillcap) no warrior would have magery and/or eval int to beef up his hit spell weapons. Or the relayers to take his SPD through the roof.

As a caster based character would it not be in your best interest to get all 6 GoC pieces and give yourself 125% Spell Damage Increase? Throw jewelry on top of that and you have easily 200% with the right jewels. GoC pieces will give you the cap of 40% LMC, Faster Casting 4 and Faster Cast Recovery 6. The 40 Intelligence Bonus bonus would be a nice help, as would the 43 Mana Increase. Resists are almost capped as well, throw in a decent set of leggings and they will be capped. Get leggings with LRC try to make sure you have LRC on your Jewelry to help with that cost. 20% LRC from the hive robe will be a nice starter piece. I see no problem in getting close to 100% LRC if you can find the right jewelry.

Basically any character isn't cheap if you want to be uber, and they all take a lot of work. If you do as I said above you will cap just about every Mage related stat. Essences would be easier for raising skills, but macros do just fine while you sleep. The above equipment set will cost you around 30 mil if you buy it, or will take at least 126 days (GoC) to get. Once you get that far you can increase your SDI another 100% with relayers into slots not taken up by that equipment set. In addition you could add 30 Mana Regen, 40 Intelligence Bonus, 40 Mana Increase and still have points left to allocate towards Hit Points to increase your survivability.

My Flame Strike hits Balrons for 50-60 damage at 131% SDI, increase that another 170% and you are looking at 130-140. Not too far off from my bow hitting for 150-160 with Consecrate Weapon and Enemy of One active. So the potential to succeed is there, but it isn't going to be cheap any way you go.

Just kinda thinking out loud here, so if I'm off my rocker let me know.