[DGDobrev]

In my opinion, Magic Pole Axe is a pretty bad spell choice for a mage, and a decent one for a Paladin in the champion of the arena battles. If a player needs physical damage, he/she might be better off with Ice Snake at early levels or low-level Geyser. If those are not applicable, Flaming Arrow and Poison Skull do outstanding work. Poison Skull is probably the best spell against demons and dragons (with the exception of the bone/black dragon of course) since both have no resistance towards it and with higher intellect, the post-effect always procs, which means even more damage.

It was a lot of fun one one of the champion of the arena games I had lately - this comes as an example just how good those spells are. I tackled the metamorph with a single stack of Paladins and what do I see? Over 2k hyenas! He promptly turned them into paladins, so I hit a flaming arrow and a poison skull on that stack. Suffice it to say, they were dying by the hundreds, and the carnage was a marvel to behold. Before they actually managed to take a swing at my own paladins, those 2056 paladins were down to less than 400, which is practically nothing against a decent sized paladin stack (150+) with stone skin and magic spring on.

And that's keeping in mind I played a Paladin in this game. A mage would have done even better.

I would also like to add that in my opinion, if I mage resorts to using disabling spells like fear, slow, trap, stone wall dragon ability and such in the middle game onward, something is badly wrong with the char or army lineup. The mage's start is tough, but once he manages to hit distortion level 2 and chaos level 2-3, he gets rather overpowered (even with flaming/poison combo, backed up by mana accelerator for quick mana gain), as long as he uses units with good resistances.

EDIT: This is why I always go for neatness 3 and buy every item in this game later on. The mage is in dire need of extra might runes, and the other two types won't hurt either, because they will provide options to boost some not so necessary, but nice to have skills such as adrenaline and other skills that are deeper in the mind and might trees.