[X] My Assistant

Ignore the cap recovery time, it's a little murky but it means sometimes you can get more than 60 per day depending on timing. As far as I know, yes, it resets at dawn. Soul fragment drop rate is related to difficulty. If you do your REs on PFUDOR, you will get them more reliably.
this information is available on the wiki along with lots more!

Thank you for the answer.
So higher difficulty will give me more chance for soul fragments drop.

Complicated question. Optimal given infinite budget, access to gear that doesn't even exist for sale for months at a time, and high prof levels after grinding for at least months, most likely years? Holy!

The rest of the time? Dark's more accessible (albeit still more expensive for radiants than elemental styles).

With only 30m to spend a beginner mage is likely to be looking at around 3-4k turns (they will be massively underforged, possibly geared with random plain pieces, and not likely to have much in the way of DD levels). In this case, it is not much of an improvement over melee styles, except much more dangerous and likely to be slower in real time.

With a budget more in the region of 100m you can start looking at getting to about 2.4k with low DD levels. 200m, about 2.1k. After grinding for a while, investing in DD levels? My current DWD time is 1.5k at DD7, so I still have room to get better.

WOW
2k rounds in DWD sounds very attractive,but the cost is just...you know
i'll just stick to my 1H shield than, THIS IS SPARTA!!
anyway,thanks for the information

WOW
2k rounds in DWD sounds very attractive,but the cost is just...you know
i'll just stick to my 1H shield than, THIS IS SPARTA!!
anyway,thanks for the information

2K is allready pretty good. My record time as mage is atm 2287 turns and 16 minutes on last sunday. As 1H i never even once made it below 30 minutes. Something i did as holy mage glass pistol on the first try. I am not kidding, i was still building up my prof factor, getting some forging on the staff, i literally was even using a completly useless cloth cap of protection because at that time i literally had nothing better to use for that slot, i was still dying a lot even at the 25 rounds arena and did start DwD only by mistake. So i said, fuck it, lets do this, i wonder how far i will come because i didnt thought i actually would be able to clear it. And Bam, i was just like that around 2k turns and 12 minutes faster. I was laughting for nearly 10 minutes after it did realize what just happend. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

WOW
2k rounds in DWD sounds very attractive,but the cost is just...you know
i'll just stick to my 1H shield than, THIS IS SPARTA!!
anyway,thanks for the information

2k turns DwD comes sooner than you think. All it takes is a starter elemental mage with Radiants.

my current set cost me 15m (excluding forge and IW)
and 90% of forging is my own mats from lab

my current set cost me 15m (excluding forge and IW)
and 90% of forging is my own mats from lab

bolded the important bit - getting equip isn't bad, making it good enough to be worth using? more expensive.

(also, self-drop mats are going to take a pretty damn long time for most people - even my monlab is only enough to forge a piece every 3~ months)

(also, self-drop mats are going to take a pretty damn long time for most people - even my monlab is only enough to forge a piece every 3~ months)

Yeah, i agree. Even 200 Monster dont really guarantee you that much materials and bindings when that is the only source you get them from.

2K is allready pretty good. My record time as mage is atm 2287 turns and 16 minutes on last sunday. As 1H i never even once made it below 30 minutes. Something i did as holy mage glass pistol on the first try. I am not kidding, i was still building up my prof factor, getting some forging on the staff, i literally was even using a completly useless cloth cap of protection because at that time i literally had nothing better to use for that slot, i was still dying a lot even at the 25 rounds arena and did start DwD only by mistake. So i said, fuck it, lets do this, i wonder how far i will come because i didnt thought i actually would be able to clear it. And Bam, i was just like that around 2k turns and 12 minutes faster. I was laughting for nearly 10 minutes after it did realize what just happend. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

i just made up my mind to DIE a warrior ,and now, with your temptation ,well
it won’t hurt trying eh?

i just made up my mind to DIE a warrior ,and now, with your temptation ,well
it won’t hurt trying eh?

Hey, i didnt wanted to convice you to anything. Just sharing an opinion. If you want to go out there and kill everything as a true 1H warrior. Go ahead, i mean i did clear PFest as 1H without SoL, just because i wanted to, because i wanted to know if this is even possible. No matter, how many people did tell me to go mage. I was stuborn and stabbed everything to death with my trusty rapier. A selfdrop i am still very proud about and i did that until i did get my full peerl power armor set and archived absolutly everything one could do with it. PFest without SoL on a regular basis, DwD without unsing any consumables, but then i got another selfdrop my LHOH. And since that time i m building my mage set. Actually i am doing that now since nearly half a year. But i never felt like i was in a hurry. I mean for fuck sake, i did buy my septa star with credits just last january. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

So yeah, what i actually want to say is, do you what you want, do what you have fun with. May it be a walking 1H tank, or a fragile magical weapon of massdestruction. I wish you good luck and have fun. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)

Sometimes having an offbeat build can be fun in it's own way. For example I'm doing a 1H/Holy Arcanist build. Is it meta? No. Do I care if it isn't meta? Fuck no.

The only hard part with doing off-meta builds is finding particular gear for the build you're doing. I'm looking for Legendary or Peerless Savage/Agile Shade Arcanist and it isn't easy because the demand isn't very high compared to heavy or cloth.

Sometimes having an offbeat build can be fun in it's own way. For example I'm doing a 1H/Holy Arcanist build. Is it meta? No. Do I care if it isn't meta? Fuck no.

The only hard part with doing off-meta builds is finding particular gear for the build you're doing. I'm looking for Legendary or Peerless Savage/Agile Shade Arcanist and it isn't easy because the demand isn't very high compared to heavy or cloth.

Savage Arcanist is a collectors piece; this is actually very desired and rather expensive (I've seen pieces going for as much as 50m at peerless).

1H arcanist is practiced by a few players now, and the holy debuff is not worthless; if you're using arcanist, you may as well be using haste & speed anyway, so you can make that debuff last longer. (Same for PA stacks, spread around a bit, and overwhelming strikes.)

Put up a WTB for specific legendaries, though. It sometimes helps just for people to know there's someone looking for them. (Maybe we should consider a centralized equip WTB thread where people can ctrl+F prefix/suffixes to see what's being sought out?)

This post has been edited by lestion: May 1 2020, 02:05

I don't understand, what is the attraction of Arcanist to 1H, and how does it help the Holy debuff?

I've always thought 1H Light is a fine option, but wouldn't Shadowdancer still be preferred to Arcanist?

Sometimes having an offbeat build can be fun in it's own way. For example I'm doing a 1H/Holy Arcanist build. Is it meta? No. Do I care if it isn't meta? Fuck no.

The only hard part with doing off-meta builds is finding particular gear for the build you're doing. I'm looking for Legendary or Peerless Savage/Agile Shade Arcanist and it isn't easy because the demand isn't very high compared to heavy or cloth.

There are actually a few players who are looking for Agile Arcanist gear, though they won't use it for 1H purpose.
I do use Paradise Lost when I play PFFEST as 1H though.
Expect the decently good gear to go for a relatively (or very) high price.

How many Imperil/Paradise do you usually use per round in that case?

It's just a personal playstyle designed to max out the prof gains without slowing myself down much, but...
1) Wrath of Thor, 2) 3xImperil, 3) Paradise Lost, 4) 0-1 recasts of Imperil, 5) Murder everything
Priority to the monsters that did get procc'ed by Paradise Lost, but did not get Imperil'ed.
I've got the recasts of Imperil after Paradise Lost because I have Wrath and Paradise in a Strongest bound to a single key.

It is highly mana intensive, mana draughts and OC can barely keep up... even though I'm full Peerless full feathered. Sometimes I've got to skip Paradise Lost for a few rounds to avoid using mana potions.
It also gives the monsters more opportunities to attack, especially during the cast of Paradise Lost. One does counter-attack a lot during that cast as well though. Monsters do melt even faster when both Imperiled+Breached Defense, it feels great.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that if he doesn't want to farm his profs.

And I've been putting off proficiency farming for ages. I'm only at assimilator 4 and I've been a slacker on my grinding. Doesn't help that I'm broke from trying to improve my monster count.

I have one Legendary Savage Arcanist and one Legendary Agile Arcanist already, but It's going to take an absolute age to get the rest of the build where I want it, but oh well.

I'm surprised that the effect of Breached Defense would still be noticeable after being Imperiled. Assuming monster has an extreme 0.8 PMit for simplicity, Breached Defense alone increases damage by a 1.4x factor, and Imperil by a 3x factor, but together stacked multiplicatively it's only 0.8*0.5*0.9=0.36 PMit thus 0.64/0.2=3.2x damage factor. Well I guess 3.2x vs 3x is still a noticeable difference.

The Paradise could be worth it even if not farming (it's surely worth it if you don't also use Imperil). Wrath of Thor might be the weakest step but as long as it doesn't lose too much it's good for proficiency farming. Do you know if its -10% evade/resist is directly additive (which would be awesome) or just counter-evade and counter-resist (which would be effectively only 2%~2.7%).

No, I have no idea about that. It's near impossible to measure anyway. But considering how all our researches have gone so far, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a layer.
What I do know though, is that casting Wrath does help landing Imperil a bit better.

Hello,everyone.

Is this a good staff?

[234751123] Legendary Arctic Oak Staff of Heimdall (Level 296, MDB 47%, EProf 18%, Int 74%, Wis 49%)

Should I change my fighting style to mage and build around this staff when I reach lv310?Now I play melee(Rapier,force shield,and heavy armor),it takes a lot of time to clear "A Dance with Dragons" arena(over 7000 turns,almost 2 hours). (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

Hello,everyone.

Is this a good staff?

[234751123] Legendary Arctic Oak Staff of Heimdall (Level 296, MDB 47%, EProf 18%, Int 74%, Wis 49%)

Should I change my fighting style to mage and build around this staff when I reach lv310?Now I play melee(Rapier,force shield,and heavy armor),it takes a lot of time to clear "A Dance with Dragons" arena(over 7000 turns,almost 2 hours). (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

no, sorry. A good staff has matching prefix and suffix.

If you want to play cold mage, find a Leg Arctic Redwood of Destruction, or a Leg Arctic Willow of Destruction.
Mage will speed up DWD, but only after investing quite a bit of credits.

By the way, do you play DWD on hard? I used to say "always be hard when facing schoolgirls" - but in the current version of the HV, I think the effect on speed isn't that big anymore. But if you can do DWD on hard in <1hr, I'd say that's much better use of time than grinding 2 hrs.