[X] My Assistant

Getting ready for Trio and the Tree soon. Anything I need to keep on mind?

I'm trying to farm some crystals for my lowbie monsters, but I'm really having a hard time in (Normal) Crysfest after round 200+.

The thing is, even with (methinks) good Crit rate (36 base) + Stun Proc (29 %), my crowd controlling is pretty bad, I really cannot oneshot thing unless I go Shatter, which is usually 1 turn every 3 or 4, and if I get lucky I stun half room.
Domino is still not capped (190 prof, won't take much) and splash percentage is at 72 %, so there's room for improvement there (also, my equip is kinda trash, but talking of oneshotting stuff that should still not happening that easily).

I'm not debuffing (at that point all my mana goes to cures and buffs, and the upkeep is insane with 89 interference and derived proficiencies at about ~84) monsters, I just focus on the one closer to cast while keeping in mind the splash area, and if I'm lucky half room gets stunned and can evade some blows.

Still after that I can't just keep up with the mana (unless I get lucky and drop like a truckload of mana/channeling gems), I lack the last two level of Pack Rat but that ~860 mana doesn't really last that much at that point.

Funny thing is that I can't use Spirit Shield at all, it just doesn't proc since standard monsters crit don't do that much (50 % mitigation + protection), so I get raped by first turn hits which bring me down to 20-30 % health :E

Thus the question: how good is Mages' (room) oneshot potential on Normal (or Hard I guess)?

Is it possible to oneshot everything without burning all the Mana pool in like 50 rounds, and does one need mega end-game equipment (prices for Heimdall are just insane, Average < 4 EDB stuff goes for so much as 300 k in auctions) for some for it?

I really want to get some crystals but my current setup (or may just be me doing it totally wrong, never count that out I guess lol) really prevents me from going further, if I'm really lucky with gems and channeling I just get to round 300...

This post has been edited by wr4st3r: Jan 11 2012, 16:12

was wondering if I should take out the overchange ability points invested and put in like spirit tank, since overcharge does not give anymore the passive dmg for melees >.<

Yeah, but you don't have all that many points tied up in OC yet.
You'd want 5 points in it, that way you can do the spirit mode + skill combo, since the spirit mode will increase the damage of the skill and you need 110% OC in order to pull it off.

Heeey, was you that said to me remove from exp and put to mana tanks ! (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

But since this new patch modified a lot of things, will reset again and put on exp (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)

about the overcharge and spirit points, should i invest into other things, or stick these "spirit points + overcharge" to mana tank, or I dont know x_X

Actually, what I would suggest is taking the first level of spirit tanks and OC, for that 100% total OC for the combo, and then put points into health tanks first, of course, and then fill out mana tanks as needed, so you can do your longest arena at your standard difficulty without running out of mana. Since the changes in the patch, you no longer get a free heal for completing an arena, and healing with potions outside of combat is a little better than inside, since you don't get hit while wasting a turn to activate them, and it uses the lowest potions first, meaning those lesser and average potions comes to good use, saving the good ones for item slots.

Then points into experience tanks, try and fill them out, it really helps. And they (And the posting bonus) stack with aura bonuses, so try and get all auras active (through training).
And don't spend any more points in infusion and scroll slots, you don't really need them. The advantage with them is that they refill automatically during combat (unlike items, which refill after combat), so you only need a single infusion slot really, as long as you load it with the right type of infusion for what you are doing.

Spirit points are mostly needed for spirit shield and spark of life, and if your spark of life is activating that much, you should probably adjust the difficulty or something. So spirit tanks can wait a bit, while experience tanks helps you gain levels and more AP quicker.
Filling out all experience tanks does a big difference.

About the overcharge I will still think about it, cause overcharge doesnt give anymore passive dmg, but combined with spirit will make the spirit mode last longer, i guess...so probably i will keep the AP till some veteran tells me about it (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

EDIT: oh yeah, another thing I got curious about.

Since I got silence , I almost never use weaken or bewilder. Should i remove these too, or better keep them (i think its best ot keep them, idk) ?

Cause even silenced legendarys really beat me some dmg up>.<

More overcharge makes spirit mode last longer, but it also takes longer to fill it up, so it doesn't give any more benefit really other than the fact that you don't have to spend a turn to activate it quite as often.
And I think it also increases the damage of the skill, if you have more OC, but overall OC tanks isn't really worth it when you got other things to spend AP on.

Bewilder is kinda useless once you get silence, they both do the same thing only that silence does it way more effective.
Weaken is still good, if nothing else just because it is the cheapest deprecating spell, so one you can use to increase your deprecating proficiency (when you are bored and have full mana, equip a staff and enter grindfest and cast weaken on the monsters and then press and hold down R to spam it, the staff is for CM which will decrease cost of the spell so you can cast it more times). But it is good to have to decrease damage output from bosses.
Personally, I go with weaken + spirit shield against the big guys, rather than with silence. They hit hard even without magic and weaken is amazing in cutting that down, not only halving damage but also removing crits completely. And weaken also increase your melee damage done to them.
And let spirit shield deal with the magical hits. Use it together with poison, that aside from doing damage also halves the mp/sp regen.

Thus the question: how good is Mages' (room) oneshot potential on Normal (or Hard I guess)?

Is it possible to oneshot everything without burning all the Mana pool in like 50 rounds, and does one need mega end-game equipment (prices for Heimdall are just insane, Average < 4 EDB stuff goes for so much as 300 k in auctions) for some for it?

I really want to get some crystals but my current setup (or may just be me doing it totally wrong, never count that out I guess lol) really prevents me from going further, if I'm really lucky with gems and channeling I just get to round 300...

Never tried going that far into crysfests, don't have that much need for crystals I guess.

Mages oneshot potential is pretty good, depends a bit on which spells you use. I'm going holy damage first, trying to get a good suit together, and at hard difficulty, with the lowest holy AoE I occasionally one-shot rooms, but usually it requires two hits to get them all, partly because of miss chance and partly because of AoE hitting main target hard and the other a bit less. And celestials and mechanoids got resistance, and even the higher giants are pretty durable, with their high HP.

But my gear is far from good and my proficiencies are still only at 150 or so for staff, cloth and divine.

At normal I think it would be much easier to get one-shots, and definetly easier with a good set.
But burning the mana pool is still a problem, the lowest level holy AoE still costs 35 mana for me to cast and with my current mana pool of 1763, it means 50 casts of that spell, so even one-shotting, I'll run out at around round 50, counting in cost for buffs, upkeep and regen.

But better gear and higher spells and you can up the difficulty, and still do one-shots, won't get as far because of higher costs for the spells, but more rewards from higher difficulty instead.

Funny thing is that I can't use Spirit Shield at all, it just doesn't proc since standard monsters crit don't do that much (50 % mitigation + protection), so I get raped by first turn hits which bring me down to 20-30 % health :E

Thus the question: how good is Mages' (room) oneshot potential on Normal (or Hard I guess)?

Is it possible to oneshot everything without burning all the Mana pool in like 50 rounds, and does one need mega end-game equipment (prices for Heimdall are just insane, Average < 4 EDB stuff goes for so much as 300 k in auctions) for some for it?

I really want to get some crystals but my current setup (or may just be me doing it totally wrong, never count that out I guess lol) really prevents me from going further, if I'm really lucky with gems and channeling I just get to round 300...

Spirit Shield gets better when you're on round 1000+ and they're hitting for 10K+.

Normal: pretty good. Hard: not so much. I spam Thunderstorm until round 500, Chain Lightning after.

Heimdall/Fenrir too mana expensive. Stick with one of the first 4 elements.

So the basic elemental spells are more efficient in mana costs? At my current level, is it wise to up my prof in magic or should I stick with melee?

@ wr4st3r

It might a better idea to wait until your 2H prof >200 if you want to crysfest. The additional domino range helps.

Then again... Without skill, it doesn't matter how godly you are anyway since melee can't 1 shot reliably simply because of the mathematics; melee throw dice to determine attack effectiveness, mage do not. ... And since you probably have some AP left because you don't need to fill all OC anymore, it might be a better idea to learn maging as a part time job if you still want to do this.

Playing melee in crysfest is boring as fuck, too... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif)

This post has been edited by buktore: Jan 11 2012, 20:44

So the basic elemental spells are more efficient in mana costs? At my current level, is it wise to up my prof in magic or should I stick with melee?

They consume less MP, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are more mana-efficient.
But if you're using Holy/Dark on Normal/Hard, you're basically overkilling everything.

I can only get to round ~600 on Normal with Pestilence (same cost as a T3 elemental spell), using elemental magic you can easily go over 1000 rounds.

So I should be looking at roughly having 3 sets to maximize dmg output; elemental, divine and dark. in the long run as well?

Pretty much.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Mages oneshot potential is pretty good, depends a bit on which spells you use. I'm going holy damage first, trying to get a good suit together, and at hard difficulty, with the lowest holy AoE I occasionally one-shot rooms, but usually it requires two hits to get them all, partly because of miss chance and partly because of AoE hitting main target hard and the other a bit less. And celestials and mechanoids got resistance, and even the higher giants are pretty durable, with their high HP.

I'm not familiar with Mages speed (should be second only to Light melee with Ethereal weapons) and cast time, would it be possible to cast twice on the first turn?

Spirit Shield gets better when you're on round 1000+ and they're hitting for 10K+.

Normal: pretty good. Hard: not so much. I spam Thunderstorm until round 500, Chain Lightning after.

Heimdall/Fenrir too mana expensive. Stick with one of the first 4 elements.

Damn 10k lol... Still 1k rounds is pretty impossible for me atm :<<

So Elemental is more efficient in that scenario, is Elec actually the best pick?

I was looking at your awesome spreadsheet (damn good work!), but keeping in mind monster pupulation (and from my experience at least), Wind seemed actually a better option...
No resistance on Giants and Dragonkin (by far the monsters I meet most), still good as everything else on Humanoid, crap damage on Undead but I suppose you just switch to Fire or Holy for them...

Am I missing something here?

@ wr4st3r

It might a better idea to wait until your 2H prof >200 if you want to crysfest. The additional domino range helps.

Then again... Without skill, it doesn't matter how godly you are anyway since melee can't 1 shot reliably simply because of the mathematics; melee throw dice to determine attack effectiveness, mage do not. ... And since you probably have some AP left because you don't need to fill all OC anymore, it might be a better idea to learn maging as a part time job if you still want to do this.

Playing melee in crysfest is boring as fuck, too... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif)

Yeah it's damn boring, no drops at all and the few times I get an artifact HV Stat uses blue font which is the same for critical, I miss them in the logs lol.

Anyway yeah, it's exactly as you say (dice throwing), and that doesn't exactly help when monsters get so strong to rip through your heavy armor...
It's even worse considering that my current spec sacrifices base damage for critical to get more stun, and even that doesn't help ;w;

The thing, if you don't go very far in Crysfest (ie: when crystal drop multiplier caps, iirc Ballistic said it was around 450 on Normal, Skillchip gave us the formula but I don't know whether they stop at +3 per drop or something) the drops are so bad (at least with 0 Crystarium, or whatever the perk is called) it ends up being a waste of time, or very close to it - not stamina, that is actually good.

You think I can go farther than that even if I don't do a total respec to mage (stats, APs)?

I don't have many APs though I'm afraid, I guess I'll level up some more before doing it...

Bewilder is kinda useless once you get silence, they both do the same thing only that silence does it way more effective.

I actually still like (and use) Bewilder, it costs nothing, lasts decent, and since you're not sure they're gonna cast anyway it can save some mana over Silence.

Of course if you know the hit might put you in danger it might be best to go safe with Silence, but I think Bewilder can still fit some scenarios...

This post has been edited by wr4st3r: Jan 11 2012, 22:31

I'm not familiar with Mages speed (should be second only to Light melee with Ethereal weapons) and cast time, would it be possible to cast twice on the first turn?

Haven't seen it happen yet, but might be possible with haste stackage

Damn 10k lol... Still 1k rounds is pretty impossible for me atm :<<

https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?s=&am...t&p=1576448
https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?s=&am...t&p=1523949
https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?s=&am...t&p=1444515

after round 400 every hit from a monster should start denting your spirit shield

you can probably troll around on that thread to see how far some players can go.

Am I missing something here?

Mechs (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Of course if you know the hit might put you in danger it might be best to go safe with Silence, but I think Bewilder can still fit some scenarios...

If you swap to mage, Bewilder is often preferred over other debuffs as noted in the Dance with Dragons thread

Mechs (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Well consdering that there's only one mech who's above 400...

So I should be looking at roughly having 3 sets to maximize dmg output; elemental, divine and dark. in the long run as well?

Here's my experience on how to get those three sets.

1. Get a good staff of destruction, both ebony and katalox. MDB should be better than 32.
The most important thing is its level: at least around 300.

2. Get some good elemental, heaven-sent and demon-fiend sets. Priority is prof., level and evade.

3. Start finishing the fenrir set first. It's the most expensive one, but it can help you in different situations: difficult arenas, IWs, levelfests, EODs.

4. Next, finish your heimdall set. It's useful against EODs and FSM.
An exquisite oak staff of heimdall can sometimes be better than kataloxs in heimdall sets, because it provides buffs to much-needed supportive and curative prof.
Though fenrir suit can do EODs, heimdall set can save your mana, so you don't need to ET that much.

5. Finally, finish your elemental sets. You should have earned so much to pay for those phases.
Elemental set is useful for grinding and IWs. Comparing to fenrir, it saves more mana per round, so you can grind for more rounds/play in harder IWs.

Note 1: You can defeat FSM without heimdall set at normal difficulty, though you may want to beat FSM at harder difficulty so you'll have a chance to get a better drop.
FSM trophies are better used after level 265, when staffs starts getting their 3 turns.

Note 2: You can use those trophies to obtain phases. You can then sell them, or level them up if they're good.
Of course, you can purchase phases from other players if you don't have the time for IWs.

2. Get some good elemental, heaven-sent and demon-fiend sets. Priority is prof., level and evade.

3. Start finishing the fenrir set first. It's the most expensive one, but it can help you in different situations: difficult arenas, IWs, levelfests, EODs.

4. Next, finish your heimdall set. It's useful against EODs and FSM.
An exquisite oak staff of heimdall can sometimes be better than kataloxs in heimdall sets, because it provides buffs to much-needed supportive and curative prof.
Though fenrir suit can do EODs, heimdall set can save your mana, so you don't need to ET that much.

I'm not sure I get it varst, by Heaven-sent you mean Gossamer?

Or is that actually Phase Heimdall (same with Demon-Fiend -> Fenrir)?

He probably means Gossamer.

Heaven-Sent and Demon-Fiend are poor mages Light and Darkness clothes.

Question to mages: what's your base AGI and Action Speed?
Liselotte and friends keep double hitting me, and it's been getting increasingly annoying (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Liselotte and friends keep double hitting me

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)

You think I can go farther than that even if I don't do a total respec to mage (stats, APs)?

I think you could.

I actually played crysfest seriously for the first time right before I replied to you to test thing out (I haven't play a low-difficult, go-as-far-as-you-can type of battle for ages now) ... It's not a great run but I find it easier than I thought; I died at round 393 using 3 godly mana and a spirit pot. I could go on, but it's so boring (and make me careless) I actually happy I died! (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

Still, it's fucking slow and so boring I would rather switch to mage if I plan to do this (I don't) and expect to get something out of it, and recommend you to do the same.


EDIT:: If your question is about playing mage with melee stats. In that case, I don't know... Probably not, I guess. You might have to balanced your stats a bit, and you have to read (3) in this post and keep that in mind. ... Mage may be able to give a better answer to this though.

This post has been edited by buktore: Jan 12 2012, 02:32

I'm thinking about switching to mage cause the numbers tell me to...