- This is not a hard game. But unlike Path of Exile or Grim Dawn, you can play with many different configurations and get really far in this game. This is not one of those "broken" builds that make the entire game a cake walk. It is solid, though, and I had fun playing it.
- This build is a staple in this kind of games. I played almost the same concept in Titan Quest and Path of Exile. It relies on extreme defenses and a solid damage output that can comfortably get you to endgame and beyond.
- It is a build that makes management of the character quite easy since it is rather minimalistic. If you are the kind of player that becomes overwhelmed easily or just doesn't want to bother with micromanagement, this might be a fun build for you.
- I'm at lvl 85 right now. Maybe, this guide will change if I ever bother getting to 100, but I'm doing absolutely fine in the corrupted maps :-)

First off, let's look at the skills you should have equipped for this. While reading further, you may notice that those are not the same skills that are listed below. There is a simple reason. You need "runic invocation" equipped because it gives you runes with passive effects, but you will not need to use it.
Your active skills:
- disintegrate
- glyph of dominion
- flame ward
- teleport
I use a controller. The setup may vary depending on your personal preference.

This is your base dps-tool and the heart of this build. Some advice for its usage and skill progression:
Get to "laser focus" early. Having it gives you a plethora of advantages:
- You no longer have to rely on mana or mana regeneration. Sure, the damage reduction make this an underwhelming experience at first, but without the necessity to peranently monitor your mana levels, investing in attunement, mana and regeneration frees up your equipment, skill tree and character abilities for defensive and offensive options.
- Having two different elements may be annoying to manage. 100% more fire damage means only 50% more damage for your disintegrate spell, so making it lightning only gives you an advantage.
- This spell takes some time to build up damage. You will have to use it constantly, so there is no room for pauses. Making it free to use diminishes this problem.
- Other abilities increase the damage drastically, but they also increase the mana drain, so this is also no problem for you now.
- Finally, the other spells you will frequently use do not cost a lot of mana, so you are at no advantage. I'm currently at 170 mana. If you want to take advantage of passives that require 300 mana, you can try to invest in it a little bit, but it really is not necessary unless you want to use additions like "tendrils" "flame vent" and "unleashed power".

DO NOT WORRY!
- I haven't encountered enemies that were immune or significantly resistant to lightning. There is no risk in investing in only one damage skill with one specific element.

BY THE WAY
- Disintegrate causes spell lightning damage over time. So a lot of affixes increase that damage (lightning, damage over time, spell damage etc.). I feel like nominal damage (such as +12) does more additional damage over all than percentages (such as 20% more lightning damage).
- As a spell with damge over time, it never crits. This may suck a bit, but you also don't have to worry about crit chances and crit power. Another free slot for making your mage beefier or more dangerous.

MOVING ON
In this order, you should get "escalation", "amplification" and "twinbeam". "Lucomancer" and "resurgence" are essential, too. The rest is up to you. "Stored Power" is an easy pick since I really felt no difference in the alleged "delay". If you have the additional points, some extra defense is always nice ("galvanized defense" and "praesidium").

Here's your second in command. It is not your main damage skill. So you really only need to use it for its assists.
- You will already have a high base level in skills, so there is almost no question about the order. Still...
- "Runes of disintegration" looks like an obvious choice, but get "charged reflections" first. It is really annoying to cast your rune somewhere and having to run to that location (see strategies below).
- Apart from increasing the damage of disintegration "arcane mirror" and "sanctuary threshold" are nice addition. Damage reduction is extremely important since you will be standing around a lot, becoming a sitting duck.
- It is not exactly essential, but prolonging the rune and making it bigger maks its use much more comfortable and increases your time limit before you have to recast the spell ("careful drawings" and "doom scribe").

[disregard that point in "static sparks". It was left over from an experiment I abandonned. I'll take another screen shot as soon as I edit this guide later.]

You don't want to die, and neither does your character. Thus, as with almost all builds, flame ward is a staple here.
Keep in mind that many effects seem awesome at first, but most only work while flame ward is active, which is only a few seconds. So I decided to make it an exclusive ward-provider.
- Get "dual aegis" and "fortification" early (as well as maxing all skills in between). Especially "dual aegis" is invaluable. Being able to use it twice (even double-tapping for one giant boost) can save you if you underestimated a situation.
- The rest is up to you. I had some points left and decided to turn flame ward into a lightning spell for some bonus points as well as the speed buff. It is a "nice to have", but you might have better ideas depending on your playstyle.

This is kind of an underdog here. In theory, it might be an essential tool in your skill belt. But to be honest, I mostly forget to use it or treat it as a gimmick. Maybe I haven't reached a point yet at which I need every small edge to get by?
- Hypothetically, it should be quite powerful as a tool to increase damage output, reposition yourself and give you some more ward/resistance.
- You should be able to use this skill every 4 to 8 seconds, depending on how long your runes last. You will have ways to reduce skill cooldowns via items, character traits and other skills, so you really don't need to invest here. The way reductions are calculated in this game (negative exponential growth) make one strong reduction way more useful than many small ones. Still, If you plan to use teleport often, you may want to invest in "comet rush".
- I had an on-and-off relationship with the idea to take the three skills at the bottom right in order to cast up to three elemental novas while teleporting. I think that the nova is too weak to make you benefit from the passives it grants. It looks cool, though.
- There is not much more to say here. Just pick the skills as shown in the image for a small ward and resistance boost on the go, especially if you are out of dodge-charges.

You may already see where this is going. If you have a better skill (like one of the skills that can be cast while channeling disintegrate), go for it. I may not be fair to this skill, but it feels like it really doesn't live up to my expectations. It is a flashy spell, so it gets some points for coolness.
I think I'd like it more if the additional ward-gain was guaranteed instead of having a low chance of being activated.

FIGHTING
Fighting is quite simple, actually.
- If you feel that things might get a bit dicey, prepare by sacting flame ward.
- Use your glyph of dominion. You now have 4 to 8 seconds to blast your enemies.
- If you skilled everything correctly, you can mostly just stand there and watch hordes of small enemies getting erased like thin pencil lines. You can stand inside a boss' channeling ability or watch an AOE directly pointed at you while slowly melting a boss monster. I was at lvl 80 when I encountered the final boss (before corruption), and I stopped dodging after noticing that its dps couldn't match up with my ward-gain per second.
- When your rune explodes, recast it and continue.
- If you feel like you are in a bad position, teleport to a different location, cast a new glyph and continue blasting.
- If you see your ward being depleted quickly, use flame ward. If the enemy turns out to be too tanky and powerful to just powerblast them, regroup and use a more careful approach, dodging and skirting the enemy in order to avoid the stronger attacks. Though I only remember exactly two situations in which an enemy really hit me hard. One was that sabertooth tiger that insta-killed me with a surprise attack. The other one was that mage in the Soulfire Bastion, because I was underlevelled and underestimated the situation.
- Don't forget to pick up the loot if it is nice.

CAREFUL!
- As long as you stand inside your glyph and channel disintegrate, you have enough damage reduction and ward gain that you should be relatively safe. The moment your rune explodes, you kind of enter the danger zone. Shortly interrupting your disintegrate in order to cast a new glyph is not a problem. But the moment you walk, dodge or teleport, you need to be quick because that is the moment you are most likely to get a lot of damage. Don't teleport into a danger zone (an AOE). Luckily, you can cast flame ward without interrupting your spell.
- The other thing that gets you killed is wandering around after and before a fight. Observe your surroundings and be alert.

THE KEY: WARD
Another reduction of sorts is focusing on ward, ward decay threshold and ward retention instead of health and regeneration.
- As far as I know, there are no enemies that circumvent ward to attack your health directly (those exist in other games...).
- Ward is just like health, but it reduces its own number over time (the higher your ward, the faster the decay). Ward decay threshold is basically the number of ward that is not affected by decay. The thing is that if you run out of ward, you still have some health that delays your death just long enough to react (normally).
- The mage has a multitude of ways to gain ward. Also, mage items give you a lot of that. So it makes much more sense to invest in ward instead of boosting vitality and regeneration. I have 1300 health and a base of 3000 ward. That should be enough to get by.

I am not at level 100 yet. There will be more passives to pick. I'll revisit this later.
If you look them up in-game, most of these passives are self-explaining. And at this point, you might know why I picked them.
- Everything that gives you intelligence is fair game.
- Everything that increases damage relevant for disintegrate should be a priority.
- Everything that increases ward, ward decay threshold or ward retention is essential, though you should look at the conditions in which it is triggered. Some make no sense in this build or give you way too little for your investment. "Reactive ward", for example, is worthless. If an enemy manages to burn through your 6000 ward barrier, that small ward-gain you get at 70% health will be as solid as a piece of wet two-layer toilet paper.
- Look at the passives that give an additional bonus after you have invested a certain number of points. They are quite useful.
- You may be reduced to using sceptres and magical off-hand catalyst in order to utilize your "inscribed instruments" and "mental catalysis", but the next section will show you that you should be using those two items anyway.
- I may get to 7 points in "celestial doom" eventually. 100 ward per second when fighting a boss monster is neat.

I'm sorry. I'll try to figure out how to use those nifty tools that let you see the actual stats on these items instead of a rather useless screenshot of my loadout.
The most important items:
- In early game, you should get hold of an item named "Tolmat's Incorrect History of Eterra". It's an item that buffs minions, but it is nice because it gives you a useful damage sponge. At the beginning, you will be squishy, your disintegrate will sometimes feel pitiful and you can be glad to have some meat shield between you and your enemies. And that thing pulls aggro and lasts for a long time even in areas beyond level 50. So you can concentrate to blast at a distance.
- "Knowledge of an Erased Mage" (relic) is essential. You get a bonus to all your skills and if you manage to get a woven version or an upgrade through empowerment, it may also give you levels in one of your skills. I was lucky enough to get 4 levels in disintegrate, which enabled me to pick all the good stuff instead of making hard decisions.
- "Fragment of the Enigma" (off-hand catalyst) gives you one level in all lightning skills.
- "Apex of Thought" is the final essential item for the build. It gives you a lot of ward decay threshold, ward per second as long as you stand inside a glyph, which you will be doing all the time, and also gives you the ability to shred an enemy's lightning resistance. As a little bonus, you get one or even two levels to your buff skills.

optional items:
- I know I have "Omnis" (amulet). I'll eventually try to get "Nihil". There really are no sensible options. Before you reach level 76 and have somewhere between 600000 and a million coins, you might try to get the "Invoker" set (two rings and a necklace), which give you some bonus levels, though the items themselves are a bit unimpressive.
- "Aberroth's Command" (sceptre) is kind of a no-brainer because of the hefty increase in damage, but there might be exalted items with even more damage output. I tried using "Culnivar's Claim", but constantly losing all your mana leads to situations in which you can't cast your rune and start using disintegrate because even though it is free, you can't cast it if you have no mana.
- I relied on the "Erased" items (belt, rings, gloves and the relic) because the belt gives you an additional health potion for every "Erased" item you have equipped. Having 7 potions is great since you can turn health restoration into ward gain, thus making this another way to increase your defenses if you find yourself in a pickle.
- "Telf'un's Mirage" and "Wall of Nothing" are both very good defensive items.

idols:
- This is my preferred layout. All of these give me ward per second, ward decay threshold and extra damage. No surprises there. I mentioned that my mage can basically stand in the middle of an apocalypse and barely flinch, but as the corruption levels rise, I often feel like trying to chop down trees with a tea spoon, so you might consider investing in offensive capabilities a bit more than I did.