Stats don't matter to a mage.
- Stamina yields laughably little returns. High elves and their dark elf cousins have the least amount of stamina, closely followed by the Erudites. The difference between a dark elf with NO points in stamina and a human who went full stamina is a measly 77hp at level 60. The amount of times that will make or break anything are going to be precious few.
- Strength obviously isn't going to affect your combat ability in any meaningful way. As far as loot goes you can summon an endless supply of 100% weight reduction bags so str for a mage is less relevant than for other casters. Useful for lugging around coin and that's about it really.
- Agility is largely considered a trash stat. Unless you're an Erudite with 70 starting agi needing another 5 to avoid the penalty I've yet to see anyone recommend it.
- Unless you plan to melee with some proc weapon for NeXT LeVEL magician plays dexerity will not do anything more than make you OT hammer a bit faster.
- Charisma is useful for marginally better vendor prices, as long as you hit those breakpoints (76, 91, 104). As a mage you'll be doing a lot of vendoring and I believe the price difference from lowest to highest breakpoint is around 6% and as far as p99 goes that's a huge boost. I doubt anyone's gonna cast divine intervention on you otherwise there's that too.
- Even intelligence isn't the most important thing in the world as you can rarely just dump your whole mana bar onto a target like a wizard can (no root). Intelligence can also be capped regardless of how few points you put into it so for the absolute minmax it makes no sense to invest in but otherwise probably is the best stat.
So we can pretty much disregard the stats when picking a race for a mage What's left?
Erudites: 5MR, meh.
Dark Elves: Hide, less useful for mages as they have pets. Hide becomes pretty useless at higher levels too as more things start seeing invis. Ultravision, neat but infravision is OK and you can summon ultravision items anyway, eventually if you're nerd enough you will get proper truevision or ultravision items. If you ever play on a new server you never "need" to camp guise of the deceiver for 48hrs. Main issue with dark elves is that they have arguably the worst faction, that said it's also pretty sweet to be able to murder elves without feeling like you're ruining anything.
Humans: Stamina, but stats don't matter.
High Elves: Charisma, but stats don't matter.
Gnomes: Small size allowing you to wallhack which is convenient but not as useful as it would be on a class that has lulls. Note also that most races can see partly through walls if they sit and for males it's only during the seating animation. Small size allows for probing through doors without shrinking or using illusions first, minor convenience for most. However, being able to hide behind objects and COTH shrunk people to raid encounters is VERY NICE and largely why people would recommend gnomes.
IMHO: Pick gnome or if you know you're not gonna raid then a dark elf (preferably female) will do fine. Or you know, just pick whatever you think looks coolest because outside of raiding none of these things are impactful.
As for stats. It's hard to choose between nothing and nothing. Charisma would initially appear as the best choice but it will depend on your dedication and how far you wish to take your class. With crazy BIS gear you'll get items loaded with enough charisma to not have to concern yourself with starting points in charisma. It's also possible to trade out slots before vendoring, a Kobold Jester's crown (velious) and a Crude Stein will allow a gnome that went 0 points in charisma to hit max breakpoint. Before velious you'd have to swap in a whole lot more pieces though (E.g. crude stein, gypsy medallion, 2 x opalline earrings, 2 x golden cats eye bracelets = 6 slots total) which would cannibalize precious bagslots and possibly reduce your potential income.
Str dex or sta will serve you best from a minmax point of view once you have that end-game gear and out of those only sta will matter in a fight. Before that int (or charisma) will serve you best. That's why I'd go 25sta 5 str if I was a tryhard. If I wanted a smooth experience I'd go 25int 5 sta or if I was feeling cheeky 25cha and 5sta.
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