PvE Meta Mage Help

So I've been working on my mage lately that is strictly for PvE. I'm half way through getting meta relic and have the following skills so far:
100 Magery
100 Eval Int
100 Meditation
100 Wrestling
76 Resist Spells (Working up to 100)

I read some old forum posts that recommend doing Inscription and Spirit Speak as my final skills. Before I start investing into these, I wanted to make sure this was still a relevant route to go with for PvE. Any suggestions are welcome.

Spirit speak helps with mana regeneration once you get your talisman, and is recommended. Note: it does nothing before you get the talisman, and must be at 100.0 skill to have an effect (99.9 does nothing). Inscription would be helpful for boosting the effectiveness of your Reactive Armor, Magic Reflection, and Protection spells, and is useful for making your own scrolls, spellbooks, runebooks and BOD books. Once you get to higher levels of skill (120 is the best for this), you can craft slayer spellbooks which will double your damage to a certain monster type. These spellbooks don't have to be filled with spells if you've got a normal full spellbook on you, but they also are not blessed and they come with a limited number of charges.

So, inscription is optional and I've had some advice to think of using other things. Some people pick anatomy as their 7th skill so they will be able to stun-punch if they participate in PVP. Other people drop wrestling and pick up anatomy, then use healing as their 7th skill. This still provides the defensive ability you'd get from wrestling (from anat+eval) and also allows you to save mana/regs by healing yourself with bandages. You could also try hiding, which would help you disengage from combat (both PVM and PVP) - very helpful for bathroom breaks, or if you have kids or a spouse who "needs" you right away.

If you forgo spirit speak, there's plenty of other templates - see discussions on PVP mage templates like alchemy/stun, thief mage templates (using stealing or stealth), or using melee weapons, but I'm starting to go into unusual territory with more downsides. The only templates you should definitely avoid are bard templates and taming - with these you will be unable to equip your talisman.

@Chediak Thank you for that info. It was very informative and concise. The forums seem to have plenty of info on PvP builds, just not much for PvE.

Double Post Error

My pleasure - I forgot to note that Spirit Speak is very easy to gain to GM by setting a macro overnight, so it can conceivably be swapped every now and then for a more pure PVP template if you want. You won't have all the advantages at the same time, but still you're not locked in to your PVM choice if you can adjust in advance. An example would be switching from this:


to this: