The Mage is the vocation in Dragon’s Dogma 2 that fuses a mixture of elemental magick and supportive magick to create a class that offers basic self-defense, with incredible party-wide buffs and support. For the most part, a Mage is going to serve as an incredibly good support role in the party, offering key bonuses to increase damage against foes with boons, alongside providing amazing healing, and defensive buffs, alongside potential debilitation cures, movement speed buffs, and straight up shielding from attacks. If you’re in the market for a support playstyle, or want to create a main pawn as a Mage, then look no further at this Mage build for Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Here, you should expect a build that you can edit for your player character and main pawn, and an idea of what support pawn mages you want to look for.

Support Mage Vocation Build in Dragon’s Dogma 2¶

To go into detail on this Support Mage build for Dragon’s Dogma 2, we will explore the various factors that make up a build. We’ll advise the Core and Weapon Skills you want, alongside the ideal Augments you want for your playstyle. These should help you to create an ideal Mage, while benefiting from various passives to give the Mage its best possible survivability and factors.

With that out of the way, you can find more details on skill and augments below. Feel free to use the ToC to auto-scroll to the relevant sections

• Weapon Skills
• Core Skills
• Augments
• Attribute and Leveling
• Pawns

Mage Core Skill & Weapons Skills¶

A Mage’s Weapon Skills are more often than not, situational based, and it depends on the lineup of your composition. For the most part, you want a Boon spell, Celerity, and some sort type of Invigoration spell. However, the options you take are either personal or circumstantial based on encounters and location.

However, if you have to pick three, we recommend the following. You can use four, but the fourth spell we argue as options later on in this section of the Mage build guide.

• Affinity/Boon: Fire boon is a safe bet, and you’ll improve this as you level up the Vocation to get its upgraded version, the Affinity spells. You should grab all of the upgraded Boon and Affinity spells, as then you can prepare your Mage if it is your character or a main pawn to adapt the boon you want for upcoming encounters if you’re more of an advanced player thinking about status resistances of enemies. Not to mention upgraded versions last longer on your pawns. It also has synergy with the Fighter core skill, Enchanted Counter.

• Halidom: A spell that cleanses status effects and debilitations. In the early game, it is not as needed due to limited debilitations, but as you progress, debilitating enemies become more frequent and often stack. Players can ignore this in the early game as long as they keep on top of crafting their items. But it gets more expensive while not using this spell later in the game.

• Argent: Argent spells are strong heal-over-time spells you can focus on a single character. Topping up a squishy character is really handy, and keeping your tank alive against big bosses is also incredibly strong. It also enables you to cast ranged heals, as opposed to your core skill heal which is a close range heal around the caster, enabling safer healing opportunities during fights. Pair the heal with Palladium, and you have a solid healing strategy.

In terms of situational spells, you have two optional spells that slot into your fourth weapon skill slot:

• Celerity is a handy spell, but it’s optional. You can use this spell for running around, enabling you to get around the world faster, outrun awkward fights, etc. But it’s a niche spell, so it’s up to you.

• Palladium can be handy for cheesing certain enemy attacks. Preventing knockdowns, staggers, or knockbacks can save some awkward situations or even prove useful in certain match ups and locations. Again, it is more of an advanced player spell, so Celerity will often take up that slot.

• Levin or Flagration: Both are damage spells your Mages can use as filler. Just try to avoid using them with quick spell in case they need to quick cast a support spell. Remember, this build is about support, not damage, as your party comp will fill the DD (damage dealer) slots up. Extra damage is nice as a fourth spell option when there’s no supporting to be done.

Core Skills for a Mage Support Build¶

When it comes to Core Skills, you want to unlock them all. However, the importance of each differs in different circumstances.

Quickspell: This spell is crucial for patching up emergencies with healing spells or applying buffs as quickly as possible. It will consume stamina while you quicken the spell casts, but it’s worth it to get your buffs out faster. Some of this is mitigated by recommended Augments in the upcoming section of the Support Mage build guide.

Levitate is handy for avoiding ground-only enemies and getting away. It’s also handy for getting on ledges and safe-casting buffs to your allies. Once all buffs are done, you can start zapping from your ledge and having a grand old time.

Focused Bolt: Your improved staff attacks also contribute to better DPS, especially while you’re using a boon. Use this attack as a filler while you need to support your allies.

Remember that your staff has a built-in core skill that does an AOE (Area of Effect) heal around you. This is handy for grouping allies up with you and then getting them to cast that spell. It is handy for out of combat healing and sometimes during fights when your party has a breather and isn’t under threat from AOE attacks. It’s best to get allies to group up with the ‘Follow Me’ command, and then casting it yourself or getting the ally to use the spell by asking for help if possible.

Augments for a Mage Support Build¶

In this section, we review the recommended Augments for the Support Mage Build in Dragon’s Dogma 2. You’ll see a table below of the Augments, alongside its description and instructions on how to get it. We’ll follow it up with more in-depth info in case you want more information.

Ideally, you should level up your Mage Vocation first, as you’ll be aiming for the key augments of Perpetuation and Exaltation.

Perpetuation is huge, as it means less micro-managing your buffs on your allies, meaning they can benefit from your cast for much longer. This means better support for longer, alongside increased DPS (damage per second) when you’re running elemental enchantments for your party. Not to mention it makes the game more fun as you don’t need to worry all too much about constantly reapplying buffs.

Meanwhile, Exaltation is very important, as you’ll burn through stamina incredibly fast. The Quickened Spell Core Skill of the Mage grants players the ability to increase the casting speed at the cost of stamina. The better the recovery, the better your time is casting hastened spells.

As for the other stats, you want Mettle and Apotropaism, as these two augments increase your Physical and Magick Defense, respectively. The more you increase those stats, the better the Mage’s survivability is. Losing your support in a fight when your team comp requires a support is very bad, so it’s always better to ensure you can get these on your Mage character.

Then, you have two other optional ones for Archer and Thief. Here, the Thief grants better threat mitigation, lowering your chances of getting targeted by foes. Throw in a Fighter with a taunt and the augment that increases the chances they are targeted, and your Mage shouldn’t be focused all that often. The other optional augment is unlocking the second Archer augment, as it increases your stamina. You don’t get much stamina bar the standard 15 per level, so additional bonus stamina is nice to have for more quickened casting before you deplete your stamina bar. Keep in mind you can only choose six Augments at a given time, hence why we make you choose between these two.

Leveling and Attributes¶

Leveling in Dragon’s Dogma 2 increases your stats depending on the vocation you are in at the time of your level up. However, unlike DD1, the stat level ups for the mid-game are not exactly consistent. The level in DD2 will tend to give you similar stamina and encumbrance increase per level. However, the remaining stats depend on the class when you level up. Typically, a Fighter will level your health, strength, and defense more consistently, with the occasional level improving your Magick Defense. Meanwhile, Sorcerers and Mages tend to flip-flop between large spurts of Magick, Magick Defense, and then some minor Defense and Strength improvements here and there. Without full data mining, tracking the best vocations at the time of each level up is challenging, so we recommend sticking to Mage and Sorcerer for now to improve those caster attributes more consistently.

When you feel the need to increase your health and Defense, we recommend getting a few levels in Fighter. This enables you to keep up your magical stats while grabbing more generic tanky stats from a fighter since fighters typically increase HP and Defense more often than not. This allows your support to buff your allies, and when their typical squishy backline becomes under threat, they can at least take some beatings.

Remember to increase the vocation rank of the augment you’re trying to farm without leveling up. Leveling up in the wrong vocation may mean poor attribute distribution among your character or main pawn. If you’re about to level up, swap back to the vocation you’re intending to level in, level up and then swap vocation again.

Mage Pawn Builds¶

If you’re running this build on a pawn, we recommend your main pawn have the following traits.

• Personality: Kindhearted
• Specialization: Chirurgeon

The Kindhearted personality is very nice, as it always focuses on helping those in need. Naturally, this makes it an incredibly strong healer-type playstyle. Handy for the core skill, alongside if you run Argent weapon skills for focused healing.

You can also find support pawns with these traits and specs but finding them randomly may be difficult. Alternatively, try hiring another player’s pawn with these stats via the Online Riftstone features.

Remember to use the Help command to get the Pawn to pre-cast important spells. If you’re not in battle, the Pawn typically casts its Boon spell on you, or it will use Celerity. If you’re damaged, it will either try to heal you or use Halidon or Palladium to remove status effects or apply a shield.

Again, with it being a Chirurgeon helps it to understand what type of help you need the most in a fight. This should make Mage pawns much more functional than other specialization types.

And there you have it, you now know all there is to know about a Supportive mage build in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Hopefully, you own have an idea of what pawns you’re looking for, alongside the types of spells that make for a great support mage in the game.