For a battlemage, you'll want to focus primarily on INT. Ignore STR and DEX completely. Personally, I went (per level) 2 INT/1 VIT/1 SPR until 30-40 SPR at which point I switched to 2 INT/2 VIT. Once you hit 80 base INT or so, focus completely on VIT. The reason being that there is a hardcap of 100 on stats and in FoV/late ED you'll be able to gain 20 INT or so from gear and charms easily. Definitely use only magic damage weapons.
For your skill selection 5 in Lockpicking and 1 in Evade should be a given. Fireball and Firewall are your best friends. Other notable skills include Life Leech, Mana Leech, Mana Efficiency, Magic Blast, the weapon specialization skills and Destruction. Ignore magic missile as you'll be meleeing during your cooldowns and thus have no use for a spammable spell. Make sure to take one point in Rush Attack as well. Fireball + Rush Attack to move in + Firewall will decimate any group of mobs, even on the highest difficulty. I personally didn't take Way of the Battlemage for 2 reasons. The first being that rarely will you actually need more firepower, and the second being that the CONSTANT maintenance will get extremely annoying.
For gear and enchants your best set by far (until FoV) will be Ulthring's enchanted with Ultimate lifeline and for the pieces with 2 enchantment slots, 11 melee/ranged armor (whichever annoys you more, ranged or melee). As for your question on stat and skill books, you can't buy them ever. You find them in the world or as rewards from quests and there is a limited supply. Let me know if you have any more questions on the battlemage build, it's one of my favorites.
Edit: One thing I forgot to mention is that with this build, the stat build is exactly the same as a pure mage, so if you want to change your playstyle you can do so easily with a skill respec.
Last edited by Darien; 06/01/11 12:52 PM.
