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I had been under the impression that mage is always several times faster than melee (assuming the mage set can survive the same difficulty), but it seems that's not necessarily correct? Melee will almost always be going at the speed of ping, with numpad keys held down or with Hoverplay or something, while a mage (who needs Imperil) will be going at a slower speed (turns/sec) determined by reaction time / dexterity. So maybe someone with high ping would definitely prefer mage, but someone with low ping and strong melee gear (Cats?) wouldn't actually experience much of a rounds/min improvement?

I think I'm finding myself in the latter category, though my melee gear isn't that good, and I haven't forged either set yet. Perhaps forging to 20 will have a significantly higher impact on mage gear than on melee? (even though Phazon cost is much higher of course)

melee is easier to work with imo.

After a few days of testing my expensive elemental mage set against my meh 1h set on PF, it seems that mage is only about 10-20% faster in arenas - and that's when I'm trying to go as fast as possible with mage, which is quite dangerous due to their fragility.

Either the many people who said that mage was 2x or 3x as fast as melee were lying, or I'm doing something seriously wrong.

Add in the ~doubled repair costs for L mage gear, and it doesn't seem worth it. Seems I would be better off sticking to 1h. Perhaps if I forge everything to 20, the mage gear would eventually start to seem a little better, but that's many many millions of credits away (and I'm skeptical about much Phase scale improvment over Power Slaughter).

Perhaps mage would be relatively faster in GF due to more average number of monsters per round, but I'm not sure.

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After a few days of testing my expensive elemental mage set against my meh 1h set on PF, it seems that mage is only about 10-20% faster in arenas - and that's when I'm trying to go as fast as possible with mage, which is quite dangerous due to their fragility.

Either the many people who said that mage was 2x or 3x as fast as melee were lying, or I'm doing something seriously wrong.

The best Mage is still probably 30-50% faster than the best melee, but you have to be above level 450 for elemental and dark to make the most of maging.

Ih + shield has lowered the gap due to being able to stay in spirit stance forever and mage received a series of nerfs, some accidental most not.

Its also the case that it depends what you are doing and ping has a bigger impact for melee than mage I think.

1st Tier
1h + shield
Holy mage

2nd Tier:
Dark and Wind mage

3rd Tier:
Lightning Mage
Dual Wield
2H

People bandwagoned lightning mage for a while until we found out how little damage counter resist adds.

There is a rebalance in the wind, so maybe this year it will all change.

The best Mage is still probably 30-50% faster than the best melee, but you have to be above level 450 for elemental and dark to make the most of maging.

Ih + shield has lowered the gap due to being able to stay in spirit stance forever and mage received a series of nerfs, some accidental most not.

Its also the case that it depends what you are doing and ping has a bigger impact for melee than mage I think.

1st Tier
1h + shield
Holy mage

2nd Tier:
Dark and Wind mage

3rd Tier:
Lightning Mage
Dual Wield
2H

People bandwagoned lightning mage for a while until we found out how little damage counter resist adds.

There is a rebalance in the wind, so maybe this year it will all change.

poor little dark me (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)
suddenly i bought that peerless cold pants, but cold mages not even in chart.
i dont know what to do...

Its also the case that it depends what you are doing and ping has a bigger impact for melee than mage I think.

1st Tier
1h + shield
Holy mage

2nd Tier:
Dark and Wind mage

3rd Tier:
Lightning Mage
Dual Wield
2H

Perhaps we should expect mage to become at least a little relatively stronger (faster), but more likely due to a nerf to 1h in an upcoming rebalance patch rather than a buff to mage.

Wind > Lightning? They're both strong against Giants, which seems like it'd be the most important thing. They also both benefit from Willow. Then there's Wind's strength (-25) vs Dragonkin (90 base endurance) compared to Lightning's -50 vs Mechanoid (70 base endurance) - slightly better for Wind. Then, status effects... 10% doesn't seem like all that much (counter-resist with lightning, monster miss chance with wind)... I wouldn't be sure how to rank those. I can't think of any other notable differences... is the strength vs Dragonkin the only reason?

Also, if Wind and Lightning (and Holy/Dark) are that good, do you know why there would be quite a good number of high level Fire/Cold mages (VriskaSerket?, wannaf, many more) if the other types are notably better? I could understand if balance was different in the past, or if they just happened to find some good Fire/Cold gear initially and just went with it...

Also, if Wind and Lightning (and Holy/Dark) are that good, do you know why there would be quite a good number of high level Fire/Cold mages (VriskaSerket?, wannaf, many more) if the other types are notably better?

still not element mage, right now i have only 3/6 items for full cold set, other my element sets really crappy to bother about them. And i afraid that will be another one disappointment (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

Upd: at least i got nice IW on pants. probably that will be valuable for someone cold mage with lots of jewgold.)

This post has been edited by VriskaSerket: Mar 22 2015, 03:23

I started off as full ice mage, maybe because I have nothing for comparison it doesn't seem too bad. I'm wondering why the elemental choice matters that much, are Giants that prevalent?

Monster types with 25% resistance:

8/13 cold resist
9/13 fire resist
8/13 wind resist
9/13 elec resist
4/13 holy resist
3/13 dark resist

Monster types with 25% weakness:

1/13 cold
2/13 fire
2/13 wind
1/13 elec
0/13 holy
1/13 dark

Monster types with 50% weakness:

2/13 cold
1/13 fire
1/13 wind
1/13 elec
2/13 holy
2/13 dark

I've heard that elemental mages have an edge on holy/dark, so I'm confused now. Can anybody explain why certain magic types are better than others? I should probably figure that out before I upgrade my gear. Given an equal amount of every enemy type, if the spells do the same damage you'd think that holy/dark is best.

This post has been edited by FruitSmoothie: Mar 22 2015, 04:11

I started off as full ice mage, maybe because I have nothing for comparison it doesn't seem too bad. I'm wondering why the elemental choice matters that much, are Giants that prevalent?

Monster types with 25% resistance:

8/13 cold resist
9/13 fire resist
8/13 wind resist
9/13 elec resist
4/13 holy resist
3/13 dark resist

I've heard that elemental mages have an edge on holy/dark, so I'm confused now. Can anybody explain why certain magic types are better than others? I should probably figure that out before I upgrade my gear.

I think giants are the most common type of high-PL monster. Once you reach a certain level, you'll likely see one of GC's In Memory Of every other round with giants in it.

Looking at the resist charts is a little bit misleading when considering differences between Holy/Dark and non-Holy/Dark, because of the effects of Imperil. Most monsters have low Holy/Dark mitigation (averages around 35-40 at my level) compared to elemental mitigation (60-65 averages for me) - a difference of 25 - but after full Imperil, elemental mit is lowered by 40 (level 330), while holy/dark mit is lowered by 25 (level 375), so the resulting difference is a bit lower (20-25 mit for elemental, 10-15 mit for holy/dark).

That's assuming you use Imperil. If you wish to play a low difficulty where you can kill most all monsters in only a small number of hits, you might not use Imperil at all (get a couple pieces of proficiency gear instead of Phase), and Holy/Dark are likely relatively better at clearing regardless of other factors.

Elemental also has significantly lower mana costs (for T1 at least) and moderately lower cast speed (less damage taken per turn), as well as slightly less spell damage before calculating mitigation/imperil. See wiki for numbers.

Holy also has holy spell damage, which increases Cure potency.

Since you still have a ways to go before you get full Better Imperil and 0-cooldown Imperil, I'd go for either Holy or Dark. Holy would probably be a little easier due to better Cures, but it's also very popular, so equip prices might be a bit higher than for other elements - but at your level it's probably worth it.

I wouldn't call myself an expert on maging though, so wait to see what others have to say on it.

Holy is good just expensive.

poor little dark me (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)
suddenly i bought that peerless cold pants, but cold mages not even in chart.
i dont know what to do...

I thought cold would be quite strong on pfudor after the player speed fix. However we haven't heard much from enough cold mages. Cold mages seem to neither complain nor brag apart from the difficulty in collecting legendary gear.

Wind > Lightning? They're both strong against Giants, which seems like it'd be the most important thing. They also both benefit from Willow. Then there's Wind's strength (-25) vs Dragonkin (90 base endurance) compared to Lightning's -50 vs Mechanoid (70 base endurance) - slightly better for Wind. Then, status effects... 10% doesn't seem like all that much (counter-resist with lightning, monster miss chance with wind)... I wouldn't be sure how to rank those. I can't think of any other notable differences... is the strength vs Dragonkin the only reason?

The difference depends on what you are doing. In terms of resistances they aren't too different. -50 is useless for all mages until you are over 450 due to Tenboro's rebalancing to encourage melee. Wind has a faster clear time for SG arenas and the defensive debuff helps a lot for high round grindfest.

90% of Willow staffs are worse than redwoods. Willows were balanced before the potency tweak and it seems quite hard to find a willow with good mdb, edb and profficiency. Peerless willow is better :/

The mjolnir debuff is also broken, its gotten a few indirect nerfs. Quite a few patches back monsters had more evade and more resist, so the debuff gave about +10% damage. Now with the evade change and the resist change it gives about 2.8% damage on average.

If you are just doing regular arenas then Mjolnir is better than Wind but if you want to do grindfest and SG then Wind has the edge.

melee.

mouse melee script make it faast.

as long as that melee have nice parry/evade/block rate.

seems like auto play, lol

Before comparing melee and mage, you first need to have a good set of both. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Upd: at least i got nice IW on pants. probably that will be valuable for someone cold mage with lots of jewgold.)

Are you MidNightPass's senpai or something?

How do they compare at lower levels/with worse gear?

How do they compare at lower levels/with worse gear?

Melee is much easier to get used to if you're new, due to basic equipment cost, lack of AP/strong spells, no improved defense from level scaling, etc. I have a feeling that it could be much quicker for a mage to get from 0 to 150, but for that to be done effectively the player needs to have a lot more knowledge about the game than anyone of that level would have.

How do they compare at lower levels/with worse gear?

The main difference I believe is survival at low levels. Mages are very soft, you'll struggle with decent difficulty levels and have to use healing often. They can be done but it sounds like melee is the way to go until higher levels, maybe 200 +, if you want efficiency. Mages do the damage and aoe but if you can't take the hits it'll actually be a lot slower and you're stuck on lower difficulty settings than you otherwise could handle. I did straight mage from the start but got through my first 250ish levels several years ago before massive changes. Even then I don't think it was comparable, I'm just a purist (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) If you care to try of course straight mage is possible. If you don't care about either, melee should likely be the better way to go for you at your level for a while.

Before comparing melee and mage, you first need to have a good set of both. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Im pretty sure most 400+ people here have both (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

The main difference I believe is survival at low levels. Mages are very soft, you'll struggle with decent difficulty levels and have to use healing often.

This seems true of my experience with mage as well, even with gear with strong evade/pmi. On longer arenas I frequently use most all spirit pots, and when there's more than one monster on the field it seems Cure barely heals more than the damage I take that turn. I don't think defensive level scaling is the biggest factor, but I could be wrong. I think the real issues are firepower and gear cost.

Level ~250+ is needed for 200 prof, which is needed for T3, which is essential. If a mage's firepower is not high enough to kill almost all monsters after 4 turns or so (eg Imperil Imperil Imperil T3, or T3 T2 T1 T1), MP and SP gauges will have gone up significantly, and monsters will be more likely to do a lot more damage until they're dead. Kill most monsters quick, or they'll kill (or seriously hurt) you - do you think that might be more accurate?

Unless someone gets super lucky with drops, they'll have to buy from shop/auction staff + 3-5 Phase + 0-2 cotton. Even a halfway decent basic set can cost a good amount. On the other hand, someone with 1h and level ~250-300 who buys Power Slaughter and maybe one or two defensive Plate from the bazaar can finish all arenas on PF, or at least IWBTH for SG.

Melee