Mana Siphon Enemies are no longer a threat, Here is how i did it

I was one of the many people annoyed by these enemies, and I never found any information with a tactic on how to deal with them, at one point, my mage was dealing 65k DPS, with a 5k mana pool & 1650 Mana regeneration per second, and those enemies were still killing me in a second or two.

so having finally achieved this to the point where I at one point got jumped by two locusts with the mana ring, and i simply kept running at the same pace, casting at the same pace and killed them both, I wanted to share with everyone how I did it and I really hope you guys will find it beneficial.

Note:
1. no I'm not talking about jumping in the middle of the ring, because this will mostly not work with bigger enemies, enemies with haste, or worse enemies that can jump or teleport next to you.
2. this solution is for endgame content and will work with players at levels 80+.
3. this is mainly written for spark users with archmage, however, the principle will be the same, so other characters can still modify it to reach their need.
4. obviously, having a super powerful character, dealing more 200k DPS, with a mana pool of over 9k will work, but this is a solution that most of the players can't achieve. hence, I'm writing this.


ok, first for the people who likes having a quick read, below were my states when those mana ring enemies stopped killing me in a second or 2. and or were no longer posing a serious a threat.

My character is sorceress, stormweaver, Archmage

level:85
Main & only spell i cast: Spark
Spark level 24: gem level 19, lightning mastery +1, wand +3, focus +2
Support Gems: Lightning Mastery, Inspiration, Acceleration, Considered Casting, Lightning Exposure, (DO NOT USE ARCANE TEMPO)
DPS:29K
Average Damage per use: 12.18K (Very Important) if higher it's better
Shock Chance: 125%
Shock Magnitude: 62% (with strike twice passive from ascendancy that allows for two shocks to be applied)
lightning exposure magnitude: -67%
Cast Time: 0.42s (Very Important) (MUST NOT BE FASTER THAN THIS, IF YOU CAN HAVE SLOWER CAST SPEED, while maintaining your DPS, then it's better.)
Mana pool: 4100K
Mana regeneration rate: 995
Energy Shield: 4200K



in a nutshell, you have to increase your damage and mana regeneration, decrease the spell cost, obviously, but on the other hand you need to REDUCE YOUR CAST SPEED.

yes I know, cast speed is a very important multiplier to reach high DPS, but in this case, remember that mana is basically our life, so the higher the cast speed, the faster we are losing mana, which will make those mana rings kill us even faster, at which point our high DPS will be useless because we will be dead in a second.


Full Explanation:

so keeping in mind that our DPS, multiplication of the damage per use into the number of casts we can do per second, we want to have as high as possible damage per use and as low as possible casts per second.


here are the steps.

note: for wand, focus, etc, try to have as high as possible + levels to your spells and as high as possible spell % increase, avoid the need to use cast speed increase as much as possible.

1. DO NOT USE ARCANE TEMPO as support gem to your main DPS spell, it's basically an instant death sentence against mana ring enemies.

2. Reduce you spell cost:
A. inspiration support gem. (THIS IS A MUST, even if you have high
mana regeneration, do not remove it, remember, since mana is our
life, we are basically damaging ourselves when we are casting)
B. there are passive skills that you can equip to reduce spell cost
further, like conservative casting or Mental Toughness.


3. Reduce casting speed:
A. use Considered casting support Gem
B. use weapons and rings that rely on level modifiers and spell damage
modifiers, without cast speed modifiers, as much as possible.
C. DO NOT USE JEWELS THAT INCREASE CAST SPEED.

4. apply Shock, increase shock magnitude (THIS IS MANDATORY, since we are reducing our cast speed, having those effects instantly applied to enemies will become our main source of high DPS.)
A. take shock chance passive nodes to bring your shock chance to at
least 100%.
B. take the ascendancy node "strike twice" which allows for two shocks
to be applied at the same time.
C. have as many Jewels as possible with the modifier to increase shock
magnitude, if you can afford jewels with both shock chance and
magnitude, then even better, but magnitude is the main modifier.
D. take nodes that increase your shock magnitude, to 60% or above. like
Alternating current, Breaking Point, Power Conduction, etc)

4. apply Lightning Exposure and increase its magnitude (THIS IS MANDATORY, since we are reducing our cast speed, having those effects instantly applied to enemies will become our main source of high DPS.)
A. equip support Gem Lightning Exposure
B. equip passive skill nodes that increase exposure magnitude, you need
to reach 50% at least exposure,


Funny Fact: doing the above also automatically solved my problem of being instantly killed by those shield skeleton enemies that reflect my spark spell, as again the reason i was dying quickly is because my cast speed was very high, so those shields will reflect alot of spells back at me a the same rate of my cast speed and insta kill me, but reducing my cast speed and alternatively increasing damage and applying debuffs, they also were no longer a serious threat.


This is the first time, I ever write any sort of guide, I hope you guys will find it useful, and will reduce your frustration of dying in what seems like an unfair way.

also I'm in no way an expert player, so hopefully others will improve upon this, so we can all continue enjoying this awesome game.

TLDR: kill enemy before they kill you

I just built more damage. Worked very well.