[X] My Assistant

Even a budget mage set can outperform peerless 1H set in terms of number of turns in arena, but it's somewhat pointless since it's gonna have much lower t/s and a lot more consumable usages.

Because mage spells are aoe, even if you have to chug down potions and elixirs to clear an arena it's still gonna have less turns than 1H, but there's no point in doing that.

In my experience, to build a viable mage set from scratch requires at least 20m, ideally 30m.

I think I'm doing something very wrong, I keep getting close to dying and having to think about keeping myself alive.

Let's try to figure it out...

Here's my unforged mage run.
Comparing the two we can see that you're faster, but you're having trouble to stay alive...
Without that your turns count should be around 4k.


Please tell us:
1) Link all you equipment that you're using to understand it's stats.
2) Do you like mage? Do you want to try 1H melee style?
3) How much credits and/or Hath are willing to spend? How many Amnesia Shards do you have?
4) What number of turns do you desire? What is your goal for now? What is 'viable mage' for you?
Will you be happy with 3.5-4k turns with your current resources? Or do you want 2-2.5k right here and now?
5) At what difficulty you usually play/clear arenas?
6) DwD. At what point do you start to heal every turn / feel pressure/discomfort ?
Describe it using phases: no schoolgirls (bosses), 1 boss, 2 bosses, 3 bosses, last round.
7) Do you smack bosses with staff to get items off cooldown before new round? Or when/why do you do it?
Tip: enable Spirit Stance when Overcharge is full to help you. It decreases mana cost and increases damage, now you're just wasting it...
8) How do you use Imperil? Do you Imperil everything when there's 5+ monsters and start casting damage spells?
Or do you imperil 1 group of normal monsters, kill it, repeat it until everything is dead?



As Saioux said, other staffs are better. Ethereal gives you nothing.
Your staff choices ( possible combinations ): Fiery Redwood of Destruction, Fiery Willow of Destruction, Fiery Redwood of Surtr, Fiery Redwood of the Elementalist, Fiery Oak of Focus, Fiery Willow of Focus.
But you can roll with your staff for now, keep an eye for a new one (first 2-3 choices).
Forging to high heaven is nice. But you don't need it to get started and if you're fine with DwD in 4k turns and much lower with time. But if you want 2.5k turns now...

As Saioux said, in the end game you should strive for shoes, because formulas, math, min-maxing and whatever. Shouldn't bother yourself with it for now.
Yeah, find Cotton Robe of Elementalist to increase your proficiency and damage.
Don't look for high proficiency one. Look (shops, current/past auctions) for Legendary (or maybe charged Magnificent) around your level that you can use.
Or you may opt for Cotton Gloves and Legendary Phase Robe...
If item is good enough try to get some Juggernaut 4-5 on it and then Soulfuse.


And my additional advice:
- Remove some points from Intelligence and Wisdom and use it to increase your Dexterity (like +50) and a little Agility (~10-15?). It will increase your survivability.
- Try to exchange your Energy Drinks into Precursor Artifacts. Check existing threads or create one.
Shrine artifacts to get bonus Attribute points. Repeat until you get to like +20-25 bonus points.
- Try to find 1-2 Charged Phase pieces and get Juggernaut 4-5 on it (use Item World service in WTS). Don't shy from low damage.
- As all your items are soulbound, can't advise to get at least Juggernaut 4-5 on some of it...
But you can try to find average-high damage ones around your level and IW it.
- If you Sparked/Stopped on Health threshold try using Health Potion, Full-Cure first instead of Cure.
You can bind key in Monsterbation that will use first available item/skill in specified order.
- If you haven't... train some Pack Rat and slot Mana, Spirit and Last Elixirs.


Don't be discouraged (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
So:
- Find some cotton piece ( Cotton Robe or Cotton Gloves + Phase Robe ) and forge Cotton to at least 5, it's cheap.
- Increase your Dexterity, Agility and Endurance. Will take some days...
- It will get better.


HV Utils hint: you can click on "Statistics" button to increase right pane to show every stat.

Thanks for the analysis tox101, I feel like I'm too poor to play mage properly. Thanks for this important information thats not written on the wiki. I would never have guessed that you need some Elemental Cotton gear since phase just looks better in every way. To answer

1) Legendary Ethereal Redwood Staff of Surtr Legendary Amber Phase Cap of Surtr Exquisite Radiant Phase Robe of Surtr Magnificent Phase Gloves of Surtr Legendary Cobalt Phase Pants of Surtr Legendary Jade Phase Shoes of Surtr

2) Yeah so far mage has been better than melee for me since I don't have any melee equipment at all. I have tried using heavy melee using garbage gear and it does seem a lot safer but since this is garbage bin trash I did very little damage and the schoolgirls took forever.

3) I'm poor af if I sell my artifacts and energy drinks I have maybe 2m max

4) I don't have a particular turn count goal for this since I only play this casually while watching twitch streams and only recently installed monsterbation scripts.

5) PFUDOR

6) Maybe a little after 110 or so but even before I have to be careful since my hp can drop at any time.

7) Sometimes I hit the purple coalescence for some free mana thats about it. I'd rather not waste spirit since my Spirit Shield and Spark of Life goes off pretty regularly.

8) In later rounds I always start with no more than 2 Imperils and then damage to try and thin some of their numbers before I get smorced. Early rounds just Imperil everything and then start damaging.

At the moment mage is still better for me but maybe I should try make the switch to melee. Any cheap budget melee tips? Like is all Power a good build or is it noob bait like all Phase? This type of stuff should really be written in the wiki who would figure out that you need 1.7x your level in proficiency. You would only get answers from asking here at the risk of morons thinking they're funny by posting the "read the wiki" image.

moe-moe-kyun, embedding images so big will break the page

-snip-

TL;DR
=> Better be a top-notch 1H than a mediocre mage, for the same price.

I've been monitoring my clear turns required for DwD@PFUDOR and only changing the dmg perk it appears to have zero affect on the turns required.

Does the dmg perk even work? Is it because of the large time between getting the perk and monster level creep?

Maybe Tenboro saw clear speeds dropping and added the higher level dmg perks just to keep pace o.O.

It's more like your perk was not active yet when you tried out DwD.

First DwD on PFUDOR completed!
(IMG:[i.gyazo.com] https://i.gyazo.com/d0624c86b0008a1f0f93ad2fd6403a61.png)

I'm surprised how easy it was, but goddamn that took a long time! It didnt help that my voidshard ran out in the middle of the run haha.

I'm surprised how easy it was, but goddamn that took a long time! It didnt help that my voidshard ran out in the middle of the run haha.

Dude, "have you ever heard of our lord and savior Imperil?"
>330 and you haven't hollowforged your weapon? Should see an IW-er. I think there's one who can give you a free hollowforge at your level.

Dude, "have you ever heard of our lord and savior Imperil?"
>330 and you haven't hollowforged your weapon? Should see an IW-er. I think there's one who can give you a free hollowforge at your level.

Actually haven't, only been back less than a week after a few years hiatus.

What's the tactic with imperil? Does it not eat through mana on a 1h heavy build?

Actually haven't, only been back less than a week after a few years hiatus.

What's the tactic with imperil? Does it not eat through mana on a 1h heavy build?

Imperil bosses to kill faster. Don't forget to learn and slot relative abilities (Faster and Better Imperil).

If you can survive, try not to use Haste. Or at least don't use it in the earlier rounds...

Gotcha, thanks.

What's the tactic with imperil? Does it not eat through mana on a 1h heavy build?

At first, you may feel only bosses need to be imperiled. But later on, you'll think imperil is a good opener for standard mobs. In addition toward SGs, I use one cast of imperil upon mobs each round. It save me one to three turns compared to unimperiled mobs. The spell drain matched regeneration from mana draughts. Given that they're cheap, I don't mind burning through my stock. I get to grind deprecating proficiency as a bonus too!

I feel like I'm doing something wrong, I got more than 4.3k turns today (just under half an hour). Maybe I'm not using Frenzied Blows or OFC often enough. I should have taken a screenshot.

Using Club/Rapier btw.

This post has been edited by Drksrpnt: Apr 27 2019, 07:44

Actually haven't, only been back less than a week after a few years hiatus.

What's the tactic with imperil? Does it not eat through mana on a 1h heavy build?

With proper preparation (feathers) and training, I am able to cast 4-5 depr spells per round and a few supportive spells here and there as 1H heavy, without having any mana issue. At worst, I may need to have mana draughts on at all times near the end of PFFEST, due to frequent healing.

At your level, assuming a full Magnificent set and only IA3, you may not have things as confomrtable as I have, so you may need to use one mana potion here and there if you use more than 2 depr spells per round and need to heal frequently.

So no, mana consumption is actually not a problem for 1H... if you do the effort of lowering your Interference with Featherweight Shards. I'll keep repeating again and again that feathers do solve huge issues for 1H players, mana consumption being one of them.

With proper preparation (feathers) and training, I am able to cast 4-5 depr spells per round and a few supportive spells here and there as 1H heavy, without having any mana issue. At worst, I may need to have mana draughts on at all times near the end of PFFEST, due to frequent healing.

At your level, assuming a full Magnificent set and only IA3, you may not have things as confomrtable as I have, so you may need to use one mana potion here and there if you use more than 2 depr spells per round and need to heal frequently.

So no, mana consumption is actually not a problem for 1H... if you do the effort of lowering your Interference with Featherweight Shards. I'll keep repeating again and again that feathers do solve huge issues for 1H players, mana consumption being one of them.

Is there any way to reduce the resist chance of imperil for 1h heavy build?
I found I have been wasting a lot of mana and overcharges in my run...I tried suffused aether enchantment it significantly improved the speed of clearing DwD (by about 10%). If only I can afford to do that everyday...

I feel like I'm doing something wrong, I got more than 4.3k turns today (just under half an hour). Maybe I'm not using Frenzied Blows or OFC often enough. I should have taken a screenshot.

Using Club/Rapier btw.

For DWD? Spirit stance OFC as many rounds as you can, open rounds with imperil + FB otherwise. My testing indicates it makes no noticeable difference whether you use imperil on all monsters or only schoolgirls, and it actually makes it slightly slower activating spirit stance for FBs.

Lololo can probably give more refined instructions if you can talk about what you're doing currently

Is there any way to reduce the resist chance of imperil for 1h heavy build?
I found I have been wasting a lot of mana and overcharges in my run...I tried suffused aether enchantment it significantly improved the speed of clearing DwD (by about 10%). If only I can afford to do that everyday...

Deprecating prof perk helps

This post has been edited by lestion: Apr 27 2019, 22:55

2268 turns
Holy set. Holy day
Not too bad, not too good either.


This post has been edited by -vincento-: Apr 28 2019, 04:01

2268 turns
Holy set.
Not too bad, not too good either.

you reached my average with 46 levels below me (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

This post has been edited by yami_zetsu: Apr 28 2019, 03:57

2268 turns
Holy set. Holy day
Not too bad, not too good either.

I should have taken a screenshot of my run today. I got a little below 2200. But with a t / s of 2.1 my times are around 15 minutes. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/anime_cry.gif)

This post has been edited by Xythy: Apr 28 2019, 04:15