[X] My Assistant

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So, I've been reading up on the wiki, and following the advice section therein, and gone with 2h + light armor playstyle.

I seem to be spending the bulk of my stamina on arenas, and finding myself not having enough hours in the day to devote to doing much else. Should I be focusing more in grindfest, item world, or some mix?

I've been reading up on 1h playstyle and it looks appealing, in particular due to counters giving overcharge pips and allowing me to use spirit stance for as long as I have spirit to fuel it. Can't currently do that with 2h style. Would 1h + shade armor work well, or should I transition armor over to power if I am going to do so? Should I wait until around level 200 to do so, or is transitioning over sooner fine?

I am concerned about the loss of melee AoE from 2h. Will the counters/playstyle in general make up for that? Or will this transition wind up slowing down my already sloth-like clear speed?

Independently of the 1h transition question, I am also curious if I am running my toon well with my current build. It feels like I am super-reliant on a lot of buffs, which take a lot of mana draughts/potions to get through even slightly difficult/lengthy content. I run Haste, Protection, Veil of Shadows, Regen, and Heartseeker. In early rounds, I use regular attacks and rely on domino strikes to clear things out quickly until overcharge gets to the 8-10 pip region, then I start working rending blow and shatter strike into the rotation, balancing overcharge pips and cooldowns. If I face boss monsters, then I work in spirit stance and/or imperil/weakness.

If I did transition over to 1h, what kind of rotation would I look at getting used to using? None of the 1h skills are AoE, so they appear more situational to me on paper. Maybe helpful vs bosses.

When I get into the 320-region I'd like to switch over to mage. The wiki says mage playstyle is "expensive" but doesn't really explain too much why. Does the cost of MP potions keep the price higher than melee, or are we talking about high-demand gear in player to player economy?

This post has been edited by Scremaz: Sep 7 2017, 10:40

you could use DW with plate/power armor to burden yourself to 0% speed. Your Swift Strike would be a wasted potency but at least not negatively useful.

I have one agile piece in my DW set, maybe I need to get a replacement. Would it be an improvement if I do that?

Also, I'm not far from 40% speed bonus with my niten set, now I wonder how much speed is enough for that style and how much for DW

As a perennial 1H melee player myself, I'll try to answer some of your questions.

Should I be focusing more in grindfest, item world, or some mix?

For a beginner, arenas are usually the best choice. Item world can get fairly brutal with the damage increase on monsters and you shouldn't even worry about getting potencies on your equipment at your level just yet. Grindfest is okay after you've done all the daily arenas, but don't expect to get too far without proper gear.

Would 1h + shade armor work well, or should I transition armor over to power if I am going to do so? Should I wait until around level 200 to do so, or is transitioning over sooner fine?

Haven't played 1H + full shade myself. I also started out as 2H + leather/shade, switched to plate/power at around 150-200 and have never looked back.

I am concerned about the loss of melee AoE from 2h. Will the counters/playstyle in general make up for that? Or will this transition wind up slowing down my already sloth-like clear speed?

A proper 1H build can clear rounds quite quickly. I don't remember there being too much of a drop in terms of clear speed after switching over from 2H.

If I did transition over to 1h, what kind of rotation would I look at getting used to using? None of the 1h skills are AoE, so they appear more situational to me on paper. Maybe helpful vs bosses.

As for the rotation, I'm using Spirit Shield, Protection and Spark of Life with Innate Arcana. If you don't yet have the IA hath perks, I suggest you start saving hath for them. Best early investment you can make.

My typical combat looks like this:

Enter combat, cast Regen, cast Heartseeker, start hitting monsters. With high counter-strike, it's like you're hitting 3-4 monsters per turn. Once I get enough pips, I activate spirit stance. As 1H, you can remain in spirit stance indefinitely thanks to the constant counters. Whenever I get enough spirit, I use OFC to one-shot the next round. Occasionally I also use mana draughts. For grindfests, I also use health/spirit draughts and Cure/Full Cure. There's really no need for potions/elixirs as 1H.

When I get into the 320-region I'd like to switch over to mage. The wiki says mage playstyle is "expensive" but doesn't really explain too much why. Does the cost of MP potions keep the price higher than melee, or are we talking about high-demand gear in player to player economy?

The cost of potions, scrolls and other mage consumables is largely irrelevant to high-end mages, since they're making so much cash that they can easily afford those.

The main difference is the cost of equipment and upgrading. A high-end Power Armor of Slaughter piece can go for 10m+ at auctions, while high-end Charged mage armor can go for 40m+ and Radiant pieces can fetch 100m+. Upgrading also is a huge factor. A full set of power armor requires Repurposed Actuators (about 60k each) and thousands of High-Grade Metals (about 800 each), while a full set of cotton/phase armor requires Cristallized Phazons (about 200k each) and thousands of High-Grade Cloth (about 18k each). So the overall upgrade cost is insanely higher for mages. And you need good upgrades to get good clear speeds.

Hope that answered it for you (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think lololo is still medium level? Until you've become invincible, speed helps you live. If you need to decrease your speed to increase bleeding wound (DW) or counter-attack (1H) damage, you could use DW with plate/power armor to burden yourself to 0% speed. Your Swift Strike would be a wasted potency but at least not negatively useful.

How much speed does a high level DW player get? I only had 16% speed bonus before switching to 1H, and I had decent DW equipment. I guess if you attained 100% speed bonus, Swift Strike 5 would dilute to 5% effectiveness. I just remembered I only had superior wakizashi, that's probably why I was so slow.

No, speed doesn't help you to live that much. OK, attack speed will probably reduce the amount of attacks (in particular spirits) that you will receive, but it will also reduce the amount of BW damage you'll inflict and will allow you to get Regen+Health draught heal less often.

I don't think even high level can reach 100% speed bonus, even with a full forged Peerless Shadowdancer and all the things.

There's really no need for potions/elixirs as 1H.

Not if you over purchased health potions (like me). I use potion instead of Cure and yet my potion count is standing still at 30k.

As a perennial 1H melee player myself, I'll try to answer some of your questions.
For a beginner, arenas are usually the best choice. Item world can get fairly brutal with the damage increase on monsters and you shouldn't even worry about getting potencies on your equipment at your level just yet. Grindfest is okay after you've done all the daily arenas, but don't expect to get too far without proper gear.
Haven't played 1H + full shade myself. I also started out as 2H + leather/shade, switched to plate/power at around 150-200 and have never looked back.
A proper 1H build can clear rounds quite quickly. I don't remember there being too much of a drop in terms of clear speed after switching over from 2H.
As for the rotation, I'm using Spirit Shield, Protection and Spark of Life with Innate Arcana. If you don't yet have the IA hath perks, I suggest you start saving hath for them. Best early investment you can make.

My typical combat looks like this:

Enter combat, cast Regen, cast Heartseeker, start hitting monsters. With high counter-strike, it's like you're hitting 3-4 monsters per turn. Once I get enough pips, I activate spirit stance. As 1H, you can remain in spirit stance indefinitely thanks to the constant counters. Whenever I get enough spirit, I use OFC to one-shot the next round. Occasionally I also use mana draughts. For grindfests, I also use health/spirit draughts and Cure/Full Cure. There's really no need for potions/elixirs as 1H.
The cost of potions, scrolls and other mage consumables is largely irrelevant to high-end mages, since they're making so much cash that they can easily afford those.

The main difference is the cost of equipment and upgrading. A high-end Power Armor of Slaughter piece can go for 10m+ at auctions, while high-end Charged mage armor can go for 40m+ and Radiant pieces can fetch 100m+. Upgrading also is a huge factor. A full set of power armor requires Repurposed Actuators (about 60k each) and thousands of High-Grade Metals (about 800 each), while a full set of cotton/phase armor requires Cristallized Phazons (about 200k each) and thousands of High-Grade Cloth (about 18k each). So the overall upgrade cost is insanely higher for mages. And you need good upgrades to get good clear speeds.

Hope that answered it for you :)

Sounds to me like I ought to plan to move into 1h power armor, and grind out the credits I need for: hath, auctions, and so on. Consider mage an end-goal.

I'll start looking out for useful pieces of power armor, a good rapier, and a good shield. Thanks for the detailed answer.

Edit: I reset and am now packing a spiffy rapier, shield, and armor. Some pieces are power, some pieces are protection. Slowly working on making all five pieces both. Really digging the counterattacks. They're easily generating the kind of damage output I was doing with Domino Strikes before, and now I'm much tankier in plate. Plus all the stuns being dished out makes the build really survivable. I'm going to try increase difficulty tomorrow.

This post has been edited by Cryosite: Sep 7 2017, 13:59

Also, I'm not far from 40% speed bonus with my niten set, now I wonder how much speed is enough for that style and how much for DW

afaik 30 is enough for 2H FRD - which should the most speed-demanding style.

No, speed doesn't help you to live that much. OK, attack speed will probably reduce the amount of attacks (in particular spirits) that you will receive, but it will also reduce the amount of BW damage you'll inflict and will allow you to get Regen+Health draught heal less often.

30% here. i cast Heartseeker only twice or thrice during the whole PF T&T, iirc.
as for BW damage, well... guess it matters especially if you're using an Axe. expendable for Waki.

Being a free player and having no hath or Innate Arcana, I've never casted Heartseeker normally before, and Regen only a few times. My tactic is to keep spamming Protection, Absorb, Haste, Spark, and Shadow Veil until I get Channeling and I use that or Mystic Gems to cast Heartseeker and then Regen for free. It almost always works, and when it doesn't I use Cure until it does. I tend to get by with few or no draughts this way.

Now that I think about it further, the Bleeding Wound damage loss from Swift Strike or Haste should be irrelevant. It doesn't matter that Bleeding Wound gets slower, all that matters is that the monster dies in the end. As soon as you have beaten a monster close enough to death that he will bleed out and die, move on to the next monster. Bleeding Wound is therefore only slower on the last monster in every round, and it's an extremely marginal loss.

I never thought about speed increasing the apparent duration of Heartseeker, that's cool. I suppose Swift Strike even has a side effect similar to Overpower with 1H or DW Club because you can get more hits in on each stunned enemy.

hello, guys.
i want to ask is there any way to calculate how many materials will it need to forge a Mag gear, including catalyst. it seems that Scremaz's Forge Cost Calculator only apply to Leg+ gears.

hello, guys.
i want to ask is there any way to calculate how many materials will it need to forge a Mag gear, including catalyst. it seems that Scremaz's Forge Cost Calculator only apply to Leg+ gears.

yes, i always forgot to add a Mag section. thank you for remembering me.

use this table meanwhile: [docs.google.com] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gpJ...#gid=1334359925

This post has been edited by Scremaz: Sep 7 2017, 15:50

No, speed doesn't help you to live that much.

That depends, for example I'm using FRD/Niten to clear IW and attack speed is vital as it allows me to generate enough OC to keep the monsters permastunned. If I didn't do that I'd have to cure myself every 2-3 turns even fully buffed, and if I let Haste expire the going gets pretty tough but if I do everything correctly I hardly need to cure/regen.

Otherwise you are perfectly right, attack speed does reduce clear speed for melee, while slightly improving your survivability, and that's especially true for slashing weapons. I'm not so sure about DW club/rapier though, applying stun and PA more often should definitely be beneficial.

I won these Legendary Charged Phase Shoes of Niflheim in an auction on Saturday, and dropped these Legendary Charged Phase Shoes of Niflheim a few days ago.

I'm not sure which shoes to use. To me, the trade-offs between the two seem to even out. Am I missing something that would make one preferable to the other?

I won these Legendary Charged Phase Shoes of Niflheim in an auction on Saturday, and dropped these Legendary Charged Phase Shoes of Niflheim a few days ago.

I'm not sure which shoes to use. To me, the trade-offs between the two seem to even out. Am I missing something that would make one preferable to the other?

The lv 442 shoes are way, way better. On EDB, on Wis, on AGI, on Evade. Sell the others and never look back.

I tend to get by with few or no draughts this way.

What you're saying is that you prefer to waste turns casting spells you may not even need instead of using a mana draught that is worth nothing (it's in WTS @7C, it's probably possible to buy them for 6 or maybe even 5)?
Doesn't seem like a good tactic to me.

It doesn't matter that Bleeding Wound gets slower, all that matters is that the monster dies in the end. As soon as you have beaten a monster close enough to death that he will bleed out and die, move on to the next monster.

Good luck doing that consistently.
Even with inhumane reaction times and concentration it would be difficult to achieve such a precise target switch every time considering that you don't even know the number of stack applied (1? 2? 3? 4? 5?).
You either underhit very often (switch target but in reality there was only 1 BW stack, monster doesn't die and you have to retarget it) or overhit making the "late BW" pretty useless.

It's not a good situation anyway, it's better to have BW damage applied as soon as possible so that you don't have to guess how much much damage the monster will receive in the next X turns.

ah. wow. another thing to check. oh, well. i'd say to write that it scales linearly, keep 250, 2250 and a couple of other points - those with an int multiplier, perhaps?

Here are the relevant quotes.

- The drain rate bonus for powerlevel was rescaled to start from PL 250 and increase linearly up to the cap at PL 2250. It now caps at x6 (i.e., the morale bar takes six times longer to drain) up from the old x4. Chaos upgrades no longer affect monster morale drain rate.

Good catch. The formula to calculate the morale drain factor left out a +1, so it didn't actually go above the clamped minimum of 1 until PL 580. Should be fixed now.

Also a different thing that needs updateing in the wiki.

Looks like this was related to a change in how monsters are internally categorized and counted during the backend refactoring, which now ties into food, gifts, morale drain and so on. I didn't notice the food tiers were different from the rest, and while I could trivially change monsters of level 250-300 from T2 to T1, that would negatively impact the other stuff. I'm going to save myself a bit of effort on making the food tiers separate again, and retcon a "working as intended" on that.

Also some pics to show the exact boundary line.

Being a free player and having no hath or Innate Arcana, I've never casted Heartseeker normally before, and Regen only a few times. My tactic is to keep spamming Protection, Absorb, Haste, Spark, and Shadow Veil until I get Channeling and I use that or Mystic Gems to cast Heartseeker and then Regen for free. It almost always works, and when it doesn't I use Cure until it does. I tend to get by with few or no draughts this way.

That wasn't too different from what I did while still playing 2H. My typical buff rotation was protection, haste, veil, regen, and heartseeker. I'd save heartseeker for last unless I got channeling. Regen was second to last, and would get any extremely lucky second channeling proc'd by the casting of the cheaper three buffs.

Now that I'm running 1H and plate, I'm finding most fights I don't bother casting heartseeker at all. I've picked up IA1 and autocast Protection now, and I manually keep Regen running. That alone is enough for me to handle Hell difficulty arenas. I cast Heartseeker only if I get a channeling proc from casting regen or cure.

What you're saying is that you prefer to waste turns casting spells you may not even need instead of using a mana draught that is worth nothing (it's in WTS @7C, it's probably possible to buy them for 6 or maybe even 5)?
Doesn't seem like a good tactic to me.

I've converted more to this thinking now. Spending 5 turns setting up 5 buffs, then spending turns periodically to refresh them is the real killer. The mp cost to keep a lot of buffs going is not made up for with free Heartseekers off of channeling. The solution to the problem is not to spend more turns and mana to save mana(may as well focus to burn overcharge pips into MP at that point).

My clear times on arenas have gone way up simply by spending less time twiddling my thumbs getting buffs up. Buffs that don't actually increase my practical survivability, nor increase my practical kill speed, but do increase my time comittment and resource expense.

I highly recommend getting at least IA2, preferably 3, for the Spark of Life and Spirit Shield autocasts. Protection is nice too. It's so worth it. This is for 1H by the way.

For DW I have IA5, just because all the buffs are pretty much necessary for survival.

At level 260 I find all those buffs necessary or helpful so they aren't a waste. I don't cast Spirit Shield because that's useless at my level. I used to channel Regen first as well, but I found out that if I do Heartseeker first there is enough channeling to go around for both Heartseeker and Regen and eventually more. Maybe higher interference increases your chances of channeling?

Once you don't need those buffs or start using Innate Arcana, that strategy breaks down. So my idea is to stick with this gimmick as long as possible, and only switch to Innate Arcana when I can go straight to IA3 for the mana reduction.

This may boil down to different play styles and philosophies. What is my goal of this game? Earlier I asked about how to maximize my chances of getting legendary/peerless drops while keeping my level low. If this is the (temporary) goal then it doesn't matter how slow I play, it only matters that I always make the most efficient choices and push myself on PFUDOR.

When I was level 160 I could do almost every Arena on PFUDOR but I needed constant potions and it felt horrible keeping buffs up. At present, doing the same buffs no longer uses potions for me. Maybe the biggest reason is that buffs last longer at high level. Protection lasts four times as long. Thus it's easier to live off channeling or IA forever.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Sep 8 2017, 09:18

(may as well focus to burn overcharge pips into MP at that point).

That's really a bad idea, there are a millions better ways to use 25 OC points

Maybe higher interference increases your chances of channeling?

Chance of channelling is linked to mana cost so higher interference helps increasing the chance.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Sep 8 2017, 09:26

I don't cast Spirit Shield because that's useless at my level.

Yeah, i remember the Spirit usage at the beginning to high to feel worth to cast. But even at your level? I am quite sure i remember that SS did beginn to feel worthwhile befor the last ability level. And that is at 285 so, i am quite sure you should have hit that spot allready.