Mages have a whole host of combat options, including several that are simply not available to mundanes. The catch? Most of your flashy options are very heavy on the drain. Also, since combat magic has exactly one purpose (combat) it tends to be a fairly bad choice to specialize in.
So what are your other options?
Well, health spells are a very good specialty. The category includes buffs, debuffs, healing, and even one of the nastiest anti-personnel spells in the game (Transmute blood to icor. Seriously, that spell is sadistic!). Once again there is a catch, or rather two catches: number one is that against drones and vehicles you're practically useless offensively (though buffing your team-mates is still a perfectly valid way to contribute), while number two is that most of your spells are only touch range.
Divination is a school with only one form of contribution to combat: buffs. That said, enemy detection and mindnets are far from a worthless contribution to the group's assets, and if you don't mind a lack of magical offense this specialty is an entirely valid choice.
Illusion, our fourth school, is fricking badass for a creative mage. Buffs, Debuffs, Battlefield control, illusion does them all. Many of their debuffs can theoretically one-shot entire mobs of living foes, leaving them writhing on the ground in either agony or ecstasy and taking them out of the fight without inflicting any permanent damage. What's the weakness? well, drones are harder to effect and may have sensors that render your efforts redundant (A drone with a camera, a ultrasound sensor and a ultrawideband radar takes no less than three realistic illusions to remove as a threat (Improved invisibility, Chaff and silence/sound barrier), and even then it can still fire blind or target one of your allies. An awesome school, but to be a master illusionist you need to put a lot of points into it and you can expect to be sustaining a LOT of spells.
Finally, we come to the point of this thread: manipulation. Utility spells, buffs, debuffs, battlefield control and direct combat spells? This is one heck of an option. in particular there is one spell that should not be overlooked for its offensive capabilities: Fling.
Fling basically lets you use your manipulation dicepool for throwing attacks, with force limiting the weight of what you can throw and half magic standing in for strength. Obviously, this means that throwing big rocks and throwing knives at people is generally going to be fairly ineffective, though since the limit is weight rather than bulk some inventive use (eg a sphere of freeze-foam before it's fully hardened) can make that use fun. However, let's be honest. This spell rocks with grenades.
Strengths: Grenades can carry an insane variety of payloads, allowing for this single spell to fill practically any combat role by using the right weapon for the job. Grenades are light, which makes low-force castings perfectly viable. Grenades with the Gecko grenade upgrade reduce scatter by 2m per net hit rather than one, and on a direct hit cling to the target. that means that a force 3 casting is entirely viable and lets you multicast without too much drain.
Then of course there's chunky salsa: Round 1: fling gecko grenade (preferably flashbang) set to detonate on your signal. round 2: wall or barrier spell in a hemisphere around your target, then tell it to detonate. End result: at force 5 you're looking at about 2.5 meters in diameter, which means that the grenade is rebounding 2-3 times in each direction. 6s has just become AT LEAST 30s.
Soak that, M*****F*****!
The catch? Well for a start grenades have a delayed effect. Then you factor in the short range, risk of friendly fire, the possibility that your shot will get caught and thrown back... all the usual problems with grenades.
The sheer flexibility and low drain Fling makes the spell at least comparable with the sheer damage available to most area indirect combat spells. Add to that the fact that it belongs to a much more generally useful school and I have to say it's a very attractive option to the thinking spellslinger who still wants to blow stuff up.
