[X] My Assistant

lv.483, roughly 50% progress to lv.500. Should arrive in August if I keep daily arena, but somewhat hope not so.
Also roughly 50% progress to unlock all monsters and 50% progress to collect all Ponies, but they should take me more than one years in same case. As the game and real world change fast doubt if I really can finsh them

that barrel helps a bit, doesn't it? Should help to speed up the 2nd half.

that barrel helps a bit, doesn't it? Should help to speed up the 2nd half.

The dawn helps more actually. The 1st half take me more than 1.5 years in arena and 5 months for the 2nd half is already consider all bonus includes dawn. Should burn EDs to play GF if want to levelup fast, but I'm too poor to

50th unlock, 100th total monster (2x monsters by way of the first gold star). Still have a ways to go before I max it out with all 200..

Oh that's a long way to go, you are only 22% done.

it will have to stay at Archmage for awhile. I would have preferred Spellweaver but item world can be painful sometimes. I used around 80 shards for this. Mayhaps in the future I'll have it Spellweaver and Penetrator. Now to work on my Peerless Redwood.
Peerless Tempestuous Willow Staff of Destruction

it will have to stay at Archmage for awhile. I would have preferred Spellweaver but item world can be painful sometimes. I used around 80 shards for this. Mayhaps in the future I'll have it Spellweaver and Penetrator. Now to work on my Peerless Redwood.
Peerless Tempestuous Willow Staff of Destruction

Honestly, depending on what you're using it for, that might be better than P5S4. I don't think there's anything special from mine.

(IMG:[files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/hrfbny.png)

One down, one to go (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/faint.gif)

Honestly, depending on what you're using it for, that might be better than P5S4. I don't think there's anything special from mine.

I'm just happy it was one of the two. I have such terrible luck with item world sometimes.

(IMG:[files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/hrfbny.png)

One down, one to go (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/faint.gif)

Good luck

I've been trying out all melee styles, to get all prof to above 500. I was already close to lv 500 when the 'proficiency at dawn' was introduced, so everything was still at 430-ish prof.
- 1h I knew from years ago, but it's still a good style. A bit boring perhaps?
- DW works quite nicely, and it's a bit more fun: timing the spirit stance and the frenzied blows just right makes a lot of difference

So now I still need 2h prof.
- Niten works quite well in arena's but dude it's soooo sloooow against schoolgirls
- 2h is... broken. Tried in SPL: slow as hell + died half way

I ranted a bit on IRC about that. Tenboro actually answered. He thought that all melee except 1h were terrible. But I disagree, DW and even Niten are useful as is. But he thinks making small changes to 2h is a waste of time, because of all the plans on re-balancing the game mechanics. Let's hope we get that soon...

Good luck

Thanks! It seems your good wishes travel fast as I now have another thing to post on this thread.

(IMG:[files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/ff2fpo.png)

After a gorillion runs and shards, I'm free...

I've been trying out all melee styles, to get all prof to above 500. I was already close to lv 500 when the 'proficiency at dawn' was introduced, so everything was still at 430-ish prof.
- 1h I knew from years ago, but it's still a good style. A bit boring perhaps?
- DW works quite nicely, and it's a bit more fun: timing the spirit stance and the frenzied blows just right makes a lot of difference

So now I still need 2h prof.
- Niten works quite well in arena's but dude it's soooo sloooow against schoolgirls
- 2h is... broken. Tried in SPL: slow as hell + died half way

I ranted a bit on IRC about that. Tenboro actually answered. He thought that all melee except 1h were terrible. But I disagree, DW and even Niten are useful as is. But he thinks making small changes to 2h is a waste of time, because of all the plans on re-balancing the game mechanics. Let's hope we get that soon...

Ah so that's the reason the BoS rised in price after we were about to reach under 40k per piece (and the reason my wallet had to fight hard for that one equip in the auctions (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif) )

I can only offer advice for the 2h part but as always it's the basic stuff, work on your attack patterns and forge your stuff, the weapon most importantly. My PGC runs are pretty much cureless and I don't even have an ethereal weapon so you can trust me that at the very least you should be able to reach the end of that arena unless you're playing no-imp no-SoL no-Spirit Shield with a heavy set and a 100% burden unforged katana without feathers (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

No Noni what are you doing! If you tell him "everything's is ok as it is" for all non-1h styles they'll never get a buff. Tenboro pls gib 2h native weapon parry, gib overwhelming strikes, gib more range to attacks and skills and gib more overcharge sources. Any of these would go a long way to making it less "troublesome" for many. Unless some of those game mechanics changes are coming reaally soon in which case might be worth waiting and see what happens.

Honestly, 2h's biggest issue is that light armor is SLOW. I tried 2h myself (with a mace) and the difference between light and heavy armor actually ended up being the speed. Sure, with light you can probably get away with a non Mace weapon, but the lack of attack power is severe.

For what it's worth, Mace + Heavy is with the exact same adb more or less similar in speed as 1h rapier in normal arenas. (no imperil for both) Just a lot less survivable. Mithril power armor might help, but I simply used my 1h set, and it doesn't really feel like it's really worth investing into. Plus mithril of slaughter.. yeah right. Good luck with that.
For the mace to really work, using rending blow on CD is basically mandatory. Unlike imperil it doesn't miss, hits 5 targets and is the absolutely strongest damage amp in the game. (3 stacks of pen) 1h is still not any slower though, and does not really require anything special in normal arenas, while in school girl arenas 2h is probably staying bad. Unless at some point my prayers get heard and school girls only appear every 10 rounds with a guaranteed trophy drop, instead of every single round, only wasting time with their bloated hp.


That said, 2h would probably work surprisingly well (outside of school girls) if:
-2h damage (ability) gets buffed a bit
-2h can't get parried anymore (seriously, how the heck does that even make sense)
-It gets some better survivability by either being able to benefit from a damage buff of light armor, or other means. (btw., both leather and shade are honestly in dire need of buffs)
-Rending Blow's CD would be lowered a bit, and the duration increased. (think 10sec -> 5sec CD and 5turns -> 10 turns duration)

Speaking of armor, aside of leather and shade armor feeling a little awful, plate is also one I'd love to see changed. Given how the meta evolved to damage > everything, I feel like any type of equipment with absolutely 0 offensive meaning has no place in the game anymore, and plate (as well as leather) are kinda like that. Plate even more so, as leather can be agile... I guess.
I was thinking about some kinda basic spike component, that works similar to the protection ability, but is scaled on base adb. So for example they'd give 15-30% of base adb damage to anything that attacks you, based on the slot, ignoring damage mitigation of the enemy (i.e. a bleed tick). That might make it more interesting to mix it with power armor (for adb).
Leather would also need something to make it interesting to mix with shade. Cloth already has that. (protection and warding are unfortunately entirely useless suffixes that in general may need some heavy rework, or just need to be removed..)


This got longer than I planned. Oh well.

Well, playing no-imp with a mace. Of course it's gonna be slow (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) but I'll refrain from further comments because if I don't word it properly there's a chance it could be read as a "everything's fine as it is" and that's exactly the thing I'm trying to avoid.

In any case reinforced leather of protection and deflection have some decent defensive stats and I considered keeping a couple when I was moving to shade but the attack power loss is many times worse than the defensive stats aquired, so maybe it could be buffed a little in both, given some new suffixes and it could be mixed just like cloth perhaps?

I was thinking that for light styles crit damage could be buffed to go way over 100%, so at that point there would be no complaints about not being in perma spirit stance since you still deal double damage most of the time, but that comes with crit chance and as always if you go this route carelessly you end up buffing DW disproportionately while fucking niten and 2h. In the end these are no more than musings of random players and we can only hope and wait that whatever comes next is good for those styles and melee as a whole but from what Noni posted that might take a while so yeah... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Well, playing no-imp with a mace. Of course it's gonna be slow (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Imperil requires too much manual activity with its miss chance, so while it's good with turns needed and in theory, it's not necessarily good with real time. You aren't a mage who gets very high rates of inflicting it to the point you spam the hotkeys with more care to your survival than actually hitting imperil. Given that you have rending blow, it's also a lot less interesting.

I think turns aren't everything, but how much time you actually need for the turns also counts. Imperil has about the same chance of hitting as a Rapier's penetrate armor for me. (with a good 50% crit rate including Heartseeker) And it's not as uncommon as you'd think to miss that 4 or 5 times in a row. Heck, even 10 times happens more often than you'd think. I generally use Imperil in random encounters, and it happened often enough that I had to go through my entire mana pool to imperil everything, or had to basically give up.

I can't provide proof for it, nor do I really want to test this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Rending Blow on CD usage isn't performing worse than Imperil when it comes to real time.

This post has been edited by killi890: Mar 21 2022, 13:08

Just hit level 450! Pleased to be getting the last level of Archmage ability.

Imperil requires too much manual activity with its miss chance, so while it's good with turns needed and in theory, it's not necessarily good with real time. You aren't a mage who gets very high rates of inflicting it to the point you spam the hotkeys with more care to your survival than actually hitting imperil. Given that you have rending blow, it's also a lot less interesting.

I think turns aren't everything, but how much time you actually need for the turns also counts. Imperil has about the same chance of hitting as a Rapier's penetrate armor for me. (with a good 50% crit rate including Heartseeker) And it's not as uncommon as you'd think to miss that 4 or 5 times in a row. Heck, even 10 times happens more often than you'd think. I generally use Imperil in random encounters, and it happened often enough that I had to go through my entire mana pool to imperil everything, or had to basically give up.

I can't provide proof for it, nor do I really want to test this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Rending Blow on CD usage isn't performing worse than Imperil when it comes to real time.

Oh no no, it's not that you have to imperil everything or that using RB is bad. There's this thing with imperil mages where once you imperil everything and fire your spell there's always these one-two dudes who resist the spell and hold you back from going to the next round and same thing happens with the style where if you don't imperil all the dudes you don't see a significant reduction in turns and with the melee imperil it's not really feasible to blanket imperil I agree. Also guaranteed instant 3 stacks of PA > Imperil always, for both damage and real time.

The point is that comparing a mace with a rapier for speed is not exactly the best comparison, if anything a fair one would be estoc-rapier. There's also the thing that if playing with a mace you are a sitting duck dealing pitiful damage whenever you're waiting for the cooldown or the PA wears off so if not using imperil on top whenever you can it will be incredibly slow (that's what I mean with the no-imp thing). Stuns mean nothing if it takes you an eternity to kill the stuff so if PA is the thing you want might as well use an estoc. Same base firepower, 100% PA uptime at no OC cost or cooldown.
I understand the desire of not wanting to get hit given the style's defensive stats but there's a point where the users have to either choose more actions in the form of shaky imperils with the mace or deliberately take the hits with other weapons in the name of damage if they want to keep up with the fat monsters on levelup.

People in the past were aware of these issues and the limits of the mace so tried to strike a balance with the use of power armor (also because it was really cool for the user(s) to use a power armor with a mace) but the only notable example I could find from this comes from high level, was heavily focused on low burden, had solid investment and as far as I can tell it's main purpose was to make IWing smooth and stress-free. It seemed to be a success for that but don't remember if the user even cared about it being top speed as long as it was as comfortable as possible.

Oh and yeah I agree that turns aren't everything, I see some mages still have some 1h sets on their hands most likely legacy sets or because at times maging might be too annoying to play despite its speed.

Just hit level 450! Pleased to be getting the last level of Archmage ability.

Grats! It seems like the last big upgrade so hopefully it makes a noticeable difference.

Got hooked into another hell game.

The point is that comparing a mace with a rapier for speed is not exactly the best comparison, if anything a fair one would be estoc-rapier.

That's not possible. Remember, it was power armor Mace vs power armor Rapier. Estoc has 0 defensive properties and gets messed up by parry more than a Mace. (Mace is actually one of the better offensive 2h weapons, as it gets parried a LOT less with the stun) I don't think you need to compare these, as Estoc would require light armor and that's already that then. Huge adb loss and STILL much more squishy than 1h Rapier. Actually surprising how Estoc doesn't even have some parry.


That said, the offensive problem that 2h faces is largely related to tanky enemies at the edges and the problem that if something tanky isn't affected by an Imperil, or Rending Blow, you will need A LOT more time. Unless you use an Estoc maybe, but that comes with the drawback that it's not very compatible with 2h's best skill: Rending Blow. Feels like using 1h Club.
Not gonna say Imperil isn't helping, but I already did a comparison where Rending Blow on CD was used vs. a 100% hover play 1h Rapier. If you add Imperil to the equation (i.e. doing a quick 2 5 8 cast), Rapier can also use that. That's why I say, 1h Rapier is roughly the same speed as 2h Mace with Rending Blow and using typical 1h power armor. Imperil is unlikely going to change this drastically if both use it. 2h is just not as strong as it should be, vs. a perma spirit stance 1h. But let me tell you, the short moments of spirit stance 2h shows you something you'd easily use the moment 2h can sustain it permanently while still spamming Rending Blow. That'd be an immediate fix. Those moments really feel GOOD. Power armor still required though.

This post has been edited by killi890: Mar 22 2022, 09:56

I'll just drop the case here as my main reason for posting here was for other purposes rather than begging Tenb for buffs yet again and it's not exactly my goal to keep players away from their maces as I understand it could be the only thing keeping some players alive sane.
However as a final thought I'll just say I personally consider mace weapons as actually being at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of speed for the style despite the stuns as there's for sure a variety of ways to play against a round of monsters within a style. But whether that's true or not I'll leave for the curious to experience themselves (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Ten thousand Soulfrags ... time to soulfuse some 5h1t (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)

Ten thousand Soulfrags ... time to soulfuse some 5h1t (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)

Only that!? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

I have 48090 and, according to my notes, I have already used 79820 since the current system was implemented (in 2016). (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Only that!? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

I have 48090 and, according to my notes, I have already used 79820 since the current system was implemented (in 2016). (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I started soulfusing crappy items since I was l.150 or so, and more and more after I got Soul Catcher .... exp, mag, leg, cloth, leather, plate, plains and rares, you name it .... both useful and useless ...

I think I have already bazaared at least as much SF as you have used, if not more (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Edit : Perhaps I should have said "10 thousand sf. AGAIN !" (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

This post has been edited by mundomuñeca: Mar 23 2022, 17:33