Where to start? By far the most versitile of the mage classes, speccing in any of the three spell lines offers a different angle on what role your mentalist will take - much more so than the different lines in the other mage classes.
Way of the Sun - Way of the Moon - Mentalism
If you are comming from UO and want to play a versitile mage - this is the class for you, they are the closest mage-class to what you are used to - para nukes and heals ;p
This is for the nukers out there - spec here for direct damage, including after the patch, area of effect direct damage. It's all about the nuke here folks. Specced in this line you can solo quite well and nuke for similar damage as an eldrich - the only thing you are lacking is the bolt - an eldrich range starts at 1850, your's at 1500.
Charm - Mythic seem a little bit confused here - scared to give the mentalist a pet, yet unsure how to screw around with the charm to make it in anyway useful. Don't take this line for the charm - see the charm as a lil bonus, that might be useful in future patches - the line is about nuking, and if you are gonna go for it as main line, max it out to 50.
Specc here if you want to be a nuker who can stepup and heal in emergencies, put a few (reccoemnd 15+) spare points into mentalism for the mez's and the heals.
This line is for the subtle mentalist heal-over-time's, the faster of the two damage-over-time, including an AoE after the patch, and max strength on your personal shield line of spells.
Ideal for the group player who wants to also be effective in RvR. In a group, most of what you do is aggro free, the HoT's and the DoT's do their job very well at very low aggro risk, allowing you to sit and rest for mana, or nuke/heal/mez whilst they do their thing over time - here also after the patch is the mana-regen.
Maxing this line out to 50 is not a good idea, 40-45 ish i'd reccomend- you need enough points in Mentalism so your second DoT (that stacks with this one) is still hitting for good damage, and you need enough light so that you can still nuke for real damage.
Mentalism gives you the main DoT, and a strong heal line, regardless of if you spec in it or not.
Mind Mastery gives you a major heal line that is seriously awesome, a mezz line, and a confusion line that has some very nice uses.
Specc in this line to the max only if you want to be a pure group player in PvM and a support character in RvR. The heals are truely awesome on this line, the mezzes life saving, and confuse the buys time, and at higher levels even sets mobs fighting amongst themselves. Imagine how a group of rangers and nukers could benefit from mobs fighting each other, or randomly running about between them changing target before they even reach anyone to do real damage.
This line is more often used as the support line for light/mana mentalists, putting in anything from 10 to 25 or so points into it, taking it to max would leave you unable to solo at all, so it's not something i reccomend.
If you are taking Mana to solo - duking it out requires a decent level of armor, yellow is ideal, green will give you issues here. The rest of the time, equipment really isnt a big deal, mentalists have a very low running cost, but as group players, remember your tanks, do not - and as a mentalist you are in an ideal position to help them out financially.
Staffs drop in all the itemised dungeons, you should never need to buy one, and the epic quest is worth doing too, tho the siabra distorter part is an absolute nightmare without a good full group to watch your ass.
Obviously this varies depending on where you spent your points, but the main idea here is versitilty, nuke, heal or mez, at your discretion, all can be done from a safe distance, and often you will find one mentalist can do the roles of both bard, druid and eldrich all in one.
A typical fight may begin with you mezzing the Adds, HoT the tank(s) taking the aggro, drop your DoT's on any mobs your tanks are fighting, leaving you to put in the extra nuke damage where required or heal if a tank gets low - you can also fast-cast mez if u need to - somthing bards cant do.
Light - Nuke it till it dies, run as and when required, the occasional stun can buy you extra nuking or running time.
Mana - Stack your DoT's, pre-cast a HoT on yourself, throw in as many nukes as you can before it gets to you and duke it out, while ur DoTs take it down and your HoT keeps you on your feet.
Mentalism - Don't solo.
Light - Nuke it. Point & click here, you have heals, perhaps a low mez in your spell-store too, but the main event is the big light nuke, repeated as often as required until the fat lady is on stage.
Mana - This is the subtle part, the DoT's graphix are your freind here, very sublte, and the damage from the DoT's sneaks in over time, so the target doesnt get the uber-nuke "wake up!!! time to run away or blitz that caster" flagged to them. The heals over time are also un-seen, so your visible threat value is low... but trust me, the damage you kick in is massive AND purple con enemies who fail to resist your DoT's take full damage over time, unlike your nukes - who's damage is nerfed even if they fail a resist.
Mentalism - You are the healer and the mezzer... but you cannot res. You have one DoT to throw out for big damage tho, still cant reccomend a maxed out char in this line for RvR, they are just not suited to it.
