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What class would you guys recommend? I'm currently using A two-handed weapon with crushing damage. And my armor is all heavy. I tend to die a lot too, any tips?

Mage.
Seems to have been the best option for a while and this patch made it even more so.
Do the switch before you get too stuck with melee gear.

Hello! I have just start playing this game around 3 weeks ago. This game is fun, and the free credits give me meaning to play the game. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

After the newly patch (0.6.3), I am a bit lost in choosing melee style/equipments.

As a beginner, I pick 1H club + shield + light armor aiming as a defensive fighter. I use club as weapon because its attacking power is on pair with 2H weapon. My shield provide 29% blocking rate at my level. I give up on heavy armor because the slow speed and high interference making me use more MP for recovering. Also, the price for good cloth armors are too high for me.

In 0.6.2, my attack power is barely enough to handle hard difficulty, with 140% OC. After the patch, I find the new 1H skill is powerful, only when facing a single boss class monster, which is very rare. When I play arena/grindfest/crysfest/item world, I find it very hard to survive until rounds 35 even in normal difficult. Then I switch to 2H weapon yesterdays to see any different. With the new 2H skill that give free kill every few rounds, I could survive more rounds with a common 2H mace and 0% in 2H prof.

Now, I would like to ask the experienced players about the usefulness of 1H style. I would like to know is there any way to keep 1H style as strong as 2H style?

Sorry for my poor English.

Yeah, 2H is superior due to it's ability to hit multiple monsters with one attack.
And since everything except ring of blood is multiple monsters, 2H is way better in most situations.
Defenses like evasion, parry and block are also subject to diminishing returns, meaning you get lessout of it the more you have.
If you have 50% block, 50% evasion and 50% parry, that does not mean you have 150% defense and enemies will never hit you.
Instead 50% block gives you 50% chance to get hit, 50% evasion halves that to 25%, and 50% parry again halves that to 12,5%.
Yes, having 87,5% chance of avoiding an attack is really good, but good luck getting evasion and parry that high.
And first there is the same stacking problem within each category. So a shield that gives 30% block and 5 OMFG-powerful armor pieces giving 10% block each and 1H-proficiency at 200 (giving 10% block), is not 30+10+10+10+10+10+10=90%.
No, it's 100*(1-0.3)*(1-0,1)*(1-0,1)...., for a total of 37,2% chance to get hit. Or 62,8% block.
And that is with some really awesome stuff that is in mnay cases not even possible to get.

And that would of course require heavy armor, to get the special shield armor which gives bonus to armor.

And usually, heavy shield armor is actually worse mitigation-wise than light kevlar armor, but with way higher burden and interference.


But overall, the most powerful way is going mage.
There you can use AoE spells to one-shot an entire room full enemies and go through arenas really quickly.

I'm going to beginning to do the arenas with all the schoolgirls in them. End of Days is the first one that I will unlock.

Other than maybe getting a different staff for holy damage, maybe a different set of phase with emphasis on holy damage, what else should I do?

Thanks! Also, please PM to me your reply to my questions because I probably won't see it in this forum anyways since I hardly visit this thread.

Not much to add. Keep SP shield, Aranca focus and regen2 on. Also keep haste and SV if you want to.
Some people like to ET on konata exclusively. For me I like to ET on every legendaries evenly so as to keep my buffs on.

Not much to add. Keep SP shield, Aranca focus and regen2 on. Also keep haste and SV if you want to.
Some people like to ET on konata exclusively. For me I like to ET on every legendaries evenly so as to keep my buffs on.

So Ether Theft plays a very important role in these arenas, then?

So Ether Theft plays a very important role in these arenas, then?

It really depends on your gear and your level.
The best way though is to observe how many rounds you can clear with 1 godly mana potion, then immediately estimate how many rounds you can clear with 12 godly mana potions. (not 13 for safety reason)
Then you'll know how many rounds you may need to ET for mana.

for anyone playing melee at this point in the game:

-Stop playing on difficulties above Normal
-Bazaar all of your leather/plate and respec to mage

This is pretty much the discussion in regards to anyone thinking of continuing to use melee until further notice.

This post has been edited by Bunker Buster: Dec 28 2011, 02:47

A question!

Which is better for late game? 2h or DW? and which armor class do i accompany both with? and what stats do i stack with either of them?

I do not get those comments about melee becoming unplayable after patch. AFAIK overcharge bonus nerf does nothing to ethereal weapons users, so what am I misssing?

A question!

Which is better for late game? 2h or DW? and which armor class do i accompany both with? and what stats do i stack with either of them?

Of those two, 2H is better, since splash damage will hit multiple mobs.
And Light armor is superior since kevlar gives almost the same protection as plate, but without the same high burden and interference.

But even better is going staff, mage and cloth armor.

I do not get those comments about melee becoming unplayable after patch. AFAIK overcharge bonus nerf does nothing to ethereal weapons users, so what am I misssing?

Not unplayable, just very very weak.

And if you don't think the OC nerf did something to ethereal weapon users, you really are missing something.

It used to be that the overcharge gave you a bonus to melee damage equal to 1/3 of the actual overcharge.
So even with no ability points into overcharge boost, you still got a 33% increase of damage, when overcharge was at 100%.
With lots of points into overcharge boost, you could all the way up to 280% overcharge, giving you a 93% damage bonus.
And this was passive, meaning as soon as you got your overcharge up, it stayed that way until you either used your overcharge or the arena was over or you fled, with no other costs associated.
This affects all melees equally, including those using ethereal weapons.
Ethereal weapons just do void damage instead of their normal crush, slash or pierce. And it is still counted as physical damage. Also they don't have any burden or interference, which is really good, but primarily the advantage of ethereal weapons is that they bypass damage specific mitigations like that of giants (which has 50% against crushing, making normal maces do only half damage).

Now, overcharge in itself is worthless.
We got a new attack skill that is pretty sweet, but eats up all the overcharge, and spirit mode, which gives a 100% damage bonus, but which also eats up overcharge and spirit points as well.

For lower level players, this spirit mode 100% damage bonus might seem like an improvement over the earlier 33% passive damage bonus, but when you get up in levels, the passive damage bonus would increase, which this spirit mode doesn't.

And that's the problem. Melee players were already very underpowered once you got up to the higher levels, and this patch made high-level melees even weaker.

For example, the spirit cost for spirit mode seems like nothing for lower-leveled melees, which is because they haven't yet gotten spirit shield, which is essentially what your spirit points are for.
And you will notice spirit mode drawing your spirit, since you have to have spirit mode running as often as you can just to try and get your damage up there.


Basically, melee is good at lower levels, when you don't have a lot of AP to spend on spells.
But as you get higher, mages become more powerful and this patch just enhanced on that part.
So once you get past level 100, it's time to start thinking about switching over to mage.

This post has been edited by Randommember: Dec 28 2011, 12:20

And if you don't think the OC nerf did something to ethereal weapon users, you really are missing something.

To me actually, the nerf hits me harder when I'm using my Ethereal.

This is because my ethereal Mace has horrendous base damage (it's all about critical and accuracy), but on higher difficulty settings it's still better since like 70 % of the monsters on HV is either a Giant or a Dragonkin, who put standard Maces to shame.

What happens here is that when I have my ethereal on, Shatter Strike (which is far superior than Spirit Stance when you're fighting larger waves from my experience) will do abysmal damage and won't oneshot jack on mid difficulty settings, thus taking even more time than a standard Mace - standard Mace which is still unusable on anything harder than Heroic because of the aforementioned Giants and Dragonkins.

If instead I decide to burn my OC into Spirit Stance, it'll just take longer (Than Shatter Strike) to clean the wave, I'll suffer more damage and will have to burn more mana in heals.

For lower level players, this spirit mode 100% damage bonus might seem like an improvement over the earlier 33% passive damage bonus, but when you get up in levels, the passive damage bonus would increase, which this spirit mode doesn't.

And that's the problem. Melee players were already very underpowered once you got up to the higher levels, and this patch made high-level melees even weaker.

For example, the spirit cost for spirit mode seems like nothing for lower-leveled melees, which is because they haven't yet gotten spirit shield, which is essentially what your spirit points are for.
And you will notice spirit mode drawing your spirit, since you have to have spirit mode running as often as you can just to try and get your damage up there.
Basically, melee is good at lower levels, when you don't have a lot of AP to spend on spells.
But as you get higher, mages become more powerful and this patch just enhanced on that part.
So once you get past level 100, it's time to start thinking about switching over to mage.

Spirit Shield it's not the only issue, see the bolded part: what I mean is, Spirit Stance doesn't actually translate in a 100 % boost.

Well numerically it does, but the thing is that you don't have it up 100 % of the time: sure your attacks will do double damage (which an endgamer already did with maxed Overcharge btw, so to them it's worthless), but your Overcharge drains way too fast, and on longer crysfest/IW runs you're gonna burn mana like crazy - or you simply won't be able to activate it because you need Spirit Shield.

Basically, when people are like "it's 100 % vs your old 33 %, it's good", it's not really like that, because half of the time you're activating Spirit Stance or recharging Overcharge, and at some point you'll run out of Spirit.

Could someone explain to me deal with oak and willow staves? Looking ar EHWiki equipment ranges, it seems there are set to have much less MDB than others, without much in a way of compensation. Is there a point other than making good staves drop less frequently?

On somewhat related note, from generic mage formula, it seems for calculating dmg 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof. That would mean 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB. But from comments here it seems to me there is something to EDB I'm missing...

Could someone explain to me deal with oak and willow staves? Looking ar EHWiki equipment ranges, it seems there are set to have much less MDB than others, without much in a way of compensation. Is there a point other than making good staves drop less frequently?

On somewhat related note, from generic mage formula, it seems for calculating dmg 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof. That would mean 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB. But from comments here it seems to me there is something to EDB I'm missing...

For oak staff, just keep heimdalls with insanely high holy EDB and good MDB.
You can throw other oak and willow staffs away at this moment, since there's no particular use for them.

I can't get why 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof would become 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB, but anyway...
when you progress in levels, you'll have more natural prof. from your character. It will produce a cross-term effect which makes EDB and MDB far superior at higher levels.

As for comparison between EDB and MDB... I don't know.
I'm not sure whether MDB still works as before or not. The only thing I could say is that MDB staffs (destruction) are more valuable than EDB staffs because they can boost every spells you're using instead of one specific spells.

Since we're at it, I'll ask too since I don't know much about staves:

From the wiki Willows seem to be utterly useless (low damage, no elemental bonus and even weaker dark damage, only 3 proficiencies) or something like that, is that right?

Redwood too doesn't seem that great, but at least it has every proficiency.

Oak I guess can help with FSM and schoolgirl marathons...

Katalox seems to be the best, but I've never actually dropped one (that might explain it lol) :V

Can Ebony rival Katalox for elemental mages? Bonus wise it seems so, but I don't know if the Holy/Dark combo is just way better than elemental (if it was me I'd just go with Wind for Giants+Dragonkin lol)...

Katalox and ebony serve different purposes; one isn't better than the other. If you are set up to use elemental magic, you will want to use an ebony staff because it provides bonuses to the appropriate proficiencies and EDB. Likewise, if you use holy/dark magic, you will want to use a katalox staff for the same reason.

Holy/dark magic is nice because they are complementary and the base resistances of custom mobs are set up such that when an enemy type is resistant to one, it's typically weak or neutral to the other. Moreover, their status effects are really nice, with Breached Defense making enemies take more damage and Blunted Attack being like a mini-Weaken on everything, the latter of which sticks to every target when applied with Ragnarok. The downside is that holy/dark spells eat through your MP very quickly.

Personally, I still like elemental spells, but the drawback is that it's very possible that you'll run into groups of enemies that are largely resistant to your EDB-backed element of choice, leaving you with no option but to use spells that will do less damage (though this might not be an issue if you have high end phase?). Furthermore, once you get into the schoolgirl runs, you'll be at a disadvantage since three of the four schoolgirls are resistant to elemental magic.

Ebony/Katalox have different purposes, you'll need both types. Most high level mages have 1 holy set, 1 dark set and at least 1 elemental set.

Ebony = fire/elec/cold/wind, for low difficulties (GF/CF/IW), ie: cheap T1+2 AOE spell cost. Common drop rate.
Katalox = holy/dark, for high difficulties (arena/ROB). Very low drop rate.

On somewhat related note, from generic mage formula, it seems for calculating dmg 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof. That would mean 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB. But from comments here it seems to me there is something to EDB I'm missing...

It used to be 1 MDM (not MDB) > 1 EDB > 2 Prof. Not sure what the conversion rate is now. Generally though you want a staff with as high MDB as possible and phase with as high EDB as possible, everything else is secondary.

I can't get why 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof would become 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB, but anyway...

I said that because

MDB staffs (destruction) are more valuable than EDB staffs because they can boost every spells you're using instead of one specific spells.

and profs... I thought they do more than just dmg at half rate, but I guess that's melee only (damn them! I hate how melee in light are almost equal to mages as far as supportive goes - that's so... counterintuitive). Though ditto on "The damage caused by Status Effects" and what's the ratio compared to increase from MDB and EDB.

Anyway, I asked because I had Superior Oak Staff of Heimdall drop, and after calcing it, I decided even if I go holy, there's no way it give me more than my crappy Ex Redwood of Dest some1 had thrown to bazaar for less than 500 cr.

This post has been edited by Valheran: Dec 28 2011, 14:58

I said that because
and profs... I thought they do more than just dmg at half rate, but I guess that's melee only (damn them! I hate how melee in light are almost equal to mages as far as supportive goes - that's so... counterintuitive). Though ditto on "The damage caused by Status Effects" and what's the ratio compared to increase from MDB and EDB.

Anyway, I asked because I had Superior Oak Staff of Heimdall drop, and after calcing it, I decided even if I go holy, there's no way it give me more than my crappy Ex Redwood of Dest some1 had thrown to bazaar for less than 500 cr.

The best thing about redwood staffs is the 50% 3turn ET

It used to be 1 MDM (not MDB) > 1 EDB > 2 Prof.

That's exactly what I want to know, why 1 EDB is (/was) better than 2 Prof?

And it says MDB on wiki, MDM for some reason makes me think of mitigation (Magical Defense: Mitigation perhaps?).

This post has been edited by Valheran: Dec 28 2011, 15:15

What happens here is that when I have my ethereal on, Shatter Strike (which is far superior than Spirit Stance when you're fighting larger waves from my experience) will do abysmal damage and won't oneshot jack on mid difficulty settings, thus taking even more time than a standard Mace - standard Mace which is still unusable on anything harder than Heroic because of the aforementioned Giants and Dragonkins.

Small tip that works.
Activate spirit mode first and then use shatter strike.
It will cost you a turn (although activating spirit mode seems like a fairly quick action) but it doubles your damage, including your damage for shatter strike.
Makes it a bit more potent, and since spirit mode turns off as soon as you use shatter strike, the cost in spirit points doesn't get very burdensome.

Basically, when people are like "it's 100 % vs your old 33 %, it's good", it's not really like that, because half of the time you're activating Spirit Stance or recharging Overcharge, and at some point you'll run out of Spirit.

Did some calculations on that in the patch thread.
Basically, if you use every action to attack, and you hit your target with every attack, the damage bonus will be equivalent of 75% over time.

This since you keep gaining overcharge even with spirit mode on, making it last longer.

But if you do anything except hitting monsters with an unlikely accuracy, the relative damage bonus drops off.
And then I mean anything at all, including activating spirit mode.
And misses, potions, buffs etc, all cause it to go do down.

Compare that to the static 93% of the old OC system.

Could someone explain to me deal with oak and willow staves? Looking ar EHWiki equipment ranges, it seems there are set to have much less MDB than others, without much in a way of compensation. Is there a point other than making good staves drop less frequently?

On somewhat related note, from generic mage formula, it seems for calculating dmg 1MDB=1EDB=2Prof. That would mean 1MDB>2Prof>1EDB. But from comments here it seems to me there is something to EDB I'm missing...

Not quite sure how it works, but the impression I've gotten is that the formula is roughly something like this.
Spells work on a percentage modifier basis. So it takes your magic damage as base, and increases it with the bonus from the appropriate spell proficiency, then you get the percentage bonus from your elemental damage bonus and a percentage bonus from the individual spells formula.

Lots of percentages that stacks up, causing the truly huge damage output that mages have.

So the magic damage bonus from staffs don't really count that much, although more gives a higher base since it all comes from there.
+10 in magic damage on a staff isn't that big of a deal, but it applies equally to all damage spells, making it universally useful.

Elemental damage bonus is much more so. Because here +10 means 10% more damage done with that damage type.
And proficiency gives a bonus of 1+prof/200, meaning 200 in proficiency doubles the damage. Or if you want, each point of proficiency increases spell damage related to that proficiency with 0,5%.
So a staff with +40 in proficiency bonus gives a bonus damage to spells in that proficiency of roughly 20%.

So 1 EDB is really equal to 2 prof.
But I don't think 1 MDB is in the same class, since with 1000 magic damage, that is only a 0,1% increase, and since it is not percentage base, the value of each point decreases as the total gets larger.

Just compare the difference between a destruction staff with 300 bonus magic damage, and a staff with 100 bonus damage and 200% elemental damage bonus.
One of those is common at higher levels, the other would fetch incredible prices if sold (apart from being impossible since EDB don't go that high).

So it's more like 10 MDB = 1 EDB = 2 prof.
But the MDB varies in value depending on how much you already have.

Since we're at it, I'll ask too since I don't know much about staves:

From the wiki Willows seem to be utterly useless (low damage, no elemental bonus and even weaker dark damage, only 3 proficiencies) or something like that, is that right?

Redwood too doesn't seem that great, but at least it has every proficiency.

Oak I guess can help with FSM and schoolgirl marathons...

Katalox seems to be the best, but I've never actually dropped one (that might explain it lol) :V

Can Ebony rival Katalox for elemental mages? Bonus wise it seems so, but I don't know if the Holy/Dark combo is just way better than elemental (if it was me I'd just go with Wind for Giants+Dragonkin lol)...

Being a bit of a newbie mage, I'm not the best expert on it, but here goes my thoughts.
Redwood seems to have a higher MDB, and does give a bonus to all proficiencies, somewhat making up for a lack of specific EDB.
Essentially making it a universal staff, adaptable to the circumstance.

Willow and oak staffs are of course related to their specific element, holy or dark. And Ebony does the same for elemental spells.
Willow staffs does indeed seem to be pretty weak. While Oak staffs are better for holy spells than katalox in general, willow seems to hold no advantage over a katalox. And it doesn't make any sense that it gives a bonus in elemental proficiency.

Katalox are rare and generally superior, since they do both dark and holy, which is a good combination since you can explode the status effects for bonus damage (essentially a "free" spell) and no monster has good resistances to both holy and dark.

Kind of the way katanas are superior to longswords.
Except that while katanas are fairly weak due to longswords being weak since they don't stun and don't cause bleeds as good as scythes, katalox doesn't suffer from that problem.

That's exactly what I want to know, why 1 EDB is (/was) better than 2 Prof?

And it says MDB on wiki, MDM for some reason makes me think of mitigation (Magical Defense: Mitigation perhaps?).

The equation is something like (1+EDB/100)(1+Prof./200), right?
Since you have natural prof. and prof. from equipments, we can separate prof. in the above equation into 2 components: Prof_natural and Prof_equipments
So the equation becomes
(1+EDB/100) [1+(Prof_natural+ Prof_equipments)/200]
= (1+EDB/100)(1+Prof_natural/200) + (1+EDB/100)(1+Prof_equipments/200)
= (1+EDB/100)(1+Prof_natural/200) + (1+EDB/100+Prof_equipments/200+EDB*Prof_equipments/20000)

As you can see from the equation, the second part represents what you understand: 1EDB~2prof.
The first term is what I called 'cross-term effect': when you have high natural prof., you with get a large first term with high EDB rather than high Prof.

that's why 1 EDB is almost always better than 2 Prof