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Question

Which Meelee Weapon/Fighting Style to use when clearing arena?
I am aiming to clear the first 10 rounds on IWBH and 50+ rounds with ease.

Currently have 53/48% and 21/28% mit (Kevlar). Also using Mace, my limit if first 4 rounds on IWBH and can only do 50+ rounds on normal mode, yet it's still hard.


Any tips?

2 handed with a high stun chance/duration mace is by far the best way of clearing arenas as melee. Shatter strike allows you to almost instantly clear every other round or so and stunning multiple enemies due to the splash hits will keep incoming damage low.

Thanks got it (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

In which cases do you use 1h wep/shield then? :3

I played with 1h+shield for a long time, it's not impossible but clearing the higher arenas/high difficulties is very difficult.

1h style is very good in ring of blood fights, with high block/parry/evade and spark of life you're pretty unkillable and just regen will keep you alive. Weapon skills allow you to often stun the enemy and deal very high amounts of damage.

I see, makes sense. i was thinking of switching from mace to 2h bleed/pierce because of their procs. Works in arena?

is it better to use spirit or shatter strike? assume you either have high spirit or u wont run out
a. is there a cutoff for number of mobs for when u switch from one to the other?
assume spirit shield doesnt exist

is frenzied blows like shatter strike (x mobs = x blows) or is it x blows/y mobs

is a mace actually better than high bleed weapons? i know it draws the fight out (though u technically dont take dmg from a number of them) and does that change at a certain difficulty?

does ethereal power armor exist? im a wee bit confuzzled about the armor specific prefixes and stuff.

if the answers to this are posted somewhere just link to them since im still going through the last 100 pages or so (but dont just link the wiki..ugh)

is it better to use spirit or shatter strike? assume you either have high spirit or u wont run out
a. is there a cutoff for number of mobs for when u switch from one to the other?
assume spirit shield doesnt exist

is frenzied blows like shatter strike (x mobs = x blows) or is it x blows/y mobs

is a mace actually better than high bleed weapons? i know it draws the fight out (though u technically dont take dmg from a number of them) and does that change at a certain difficulty?

does ethereal power armor exist? im a wee bit confuzzled about the armor specific prefixes and stuff.

if the answers to this are posted somewhere just link to them since im still going through the last 100 pages or so (but dont just link the wiki..ugh)

Spirit and shatter strike works better than just relying on one. When I was melee, I used spirit to cast my supportive spells. Some people might say that its better to just use spirit on the first half of the arenas after 10 though. (basically just get through them quicker, and cast less). And then after, shatter strike every other round. Also, if you raise your overcharge enough, you can spirit and shatter strike for massive damage. (better for harder difficulties).

Frenzied blows is the latter of your 2 choices.

Mace is better for easier difficulties. Bleed is better for harder difficulties. imho anyway.

Now for my question. I'm an elec/fire mage and my equips are a mix of both. But I was thinking about switching to just full on one or the other. I usually cast tier 1 elec and then tier 3 fire on a critter with coalesced mana. So would it be better if I had a surtr suit? or just moljnir? or is it okay to have both?

I was thinking probably being a specialist and going full on surtr since thats my tier 3 and I want to do mainly harder difficulties. But I mostly have mojlnor for equips >_>. (maybe I should just switch my tiers instead, would be cheaper than buying all those equips).

does ethereal power armor exist? im a wee bit confuzzled about the armor specific prefixes and stuff.

Ethereal armor doesn't exist, and won't be here as Tenb said that.
And wiki is probably your best way to know what suffix you can have for specific weapons/armors.

Now for my question. I'm an elec/fire mage and my equips are a mix of both. But I was thinking about switching to just full on one or the other. I usually cast tier 1 elec and then tier 3 fire on a critter with coalesced mana. So would it be better if I had a surtr suit? or just moljnir? or is it okay to have both?

I was thinking probably being a specialist and going full on surtr since thats my tier 3 and I want to do mainly harder difficulties. But I mostly have mojlnor for equips >_>. (maybe I should just switch my tiers instead, would be cheaper than buying all those equips).

It depends. When I tried to mix holy/dark suit it gives a tiny bit more damage on x25 arenas (where you can't kill anything with the first hit), and heimdall surely helps on cure spells.
The problem though is that I'm not sure if the same would happen on elemental cycles.

You may also try to go tier 3 first; if you can kill 80% of the monsters with one hit, you can probably finish the rest with magic missile. This way you can save some mana cost for cures.

Now for my question. I'm an elec/fire mage and my equips are a mix of both. But I was thinking about switching to just full on one or the other. I usually cast tier 1 elec and then tier 3 fire on a critter with coalesced mana. So would it be better if I had a surtr suit? or just moljnir? or is it okay to have both?

I was thinking probably being a specialist and going full on surtr since thats my tier 3 and I want to do mainly harder difficulties. But I mostly have mojlnor for equips >_>. (maybe I should just switch my tiers instead, would be cheaper than buying all those equips).

I think if you go full elec, it's better. Reason being that the vast majority of monsters I encounter are either Giants or Mechs. There are quite a few undeads too. So I think Wind/Elec would be a nice focus for you to clear arenas.

With the proper equips, you can get ~60% increased in damage for the particular element. With that and lots and lots of mobs weak to elec, you can pretty much clear the arena very easily.

I'm using cold, and most mobs die in 1 hit using tier 1 cold.

So tier 3 first is better huh. And yea, most of them are mechs and giants, thats one of the reasons I wanted to do elec/fire. (fire is good for all those undeads too).

Curing is mana intensive but I just got a shiny ethereal staff of focus so I'm happy. (lose out on destruction but if they die quick on heroic anyway...)

These replys do make me so happy though. I only need 2 equips for elec. (my stats say that I get 42 precent damage currently for elec and 25 for fire). So yea, I might even bring it up to 70 percent if I can get stuff that is better than "fine". (all of my equips are fair and average).

Plus I was thinking about resetting my abilities anyway. With all the exp we get from the hourlys and the dawn of the new day, I can spend some of that on spirit points. Also, until I have the right equips, was thinking just use both tier 3 fire and elec. And yea, the magic missle the rest is always good. My staff prof is ridiculous. (16.55, while elemental is over 100).

So tier 3 first is better huh. And yea, most of them are mechs and giants, thats one of the reasons I wanted to do elec/fire. (fire is good for all those undeads too).

Curing is mana intensive but I just got a shiny ethereal staff of focus so I'm happy. (lose out on destruction but if they die quick on heroic anyway...)

These replys do make me so happy though. I only need 2 equips for elec. (my stats say that I get 42 precent damage currently for elec and 25 for fire). So yea, I might even bring it up to 70 percent if I can get stuff that is better than "fine". (all of my equips are fair and average).

Plus I was thinking about resetting my abilities anyway. With all the exp we get from the hourlys and the dawn of the new day, I can spend some of that on spirit points. Also, until I have the right equips, was thinking just use both tier 3 fire and elec. And yea, the magic missle the rest is always good. My staff prof is ridiculous. (16.55, while elemental is over 100).

Unless you're doing like nightmare+, I don't think T3 is going to be helpful. It'll just be overkill. T2 + T1 should be sufficient, unless you're planning on doing BT/IWBTH IMO.

I see, makes sense. i was thinking of switching from mace to 2h bleed/pierce because of their procs. Works in arena?

I use scythe through arenas w/o issue. It's not any harder than mace, just slightly different. Just figure out the damage your bleed does, and calculate if the mob needs another strike to die or not. I.E. if there's 1 more tick of bleed, (mine does 485 damage for 4 turns + 1st hit), and the mob has 512 hp, you should kill him instead of letting it sit in the red. Under great stamina, w/ slaughter scythe, on hard most things (non-giants/kin) die in 2 hits. Only arthropods can take a while, but with crits you can still one-shot them. Might look into getting a piece of power armor of slaughter to up my damage.

One thing to lookout for is agitated mobs w/ high mana. I dunno if anything's been changed, but it seems later rounds now have a lot more mobs start with high mana bars for me. If a mobs bleeding I'll ignore him and go kill something else, but if he's approaching 50% mana and in the red, it is likely more dangerous on harder difficulties to let him be.

is it better to use spirit or shatter strike? assume you either have high spirit or u wont run out
a. is there a cutoff for number of mobs for when u switch from one to the other?
assume spirit shield doesnt exist

No cutoff since your OC levels doesn't allow you to use it every round. But it's most efficient for you to save shatterstrike for the rounds w/ the most mobs and rounds w/ too many guys with high mana bars at the start or even rounds where there are troublesome mobs (minibosses + resistant to your damage type). Especially in IWs, in later rounds, you'll be fighting 7/8/9 mobs; I always save it for 9 mobs. And definitely use it on the last round of arena w/ a boss. You should also avoid using shatterstrike if your buffs are nearing a need to recast, and it'll take more turns to recover enough OC to activate ss than you can afford, unless you have channeling powerup. I have 130%, so ideally (not whiffing too much) if I have buffs expiring in 5 or 6 turns I'll be okay.

For arena runs, I'd say spirit is better, once your domino chance has gotten to a good enough level (50%+). For the later rounds, now, I'd say i spend 75/25 or 80/20 of the time spirit vs shatter. I use spirit at end of previous round, or beginning of new round if needed, take care of the problematic ones (heavy hitters or high mana), turn it off and clean up the rest. This allows me to conserve OC in case shatterstrike is preferred for the next round.

Also now, w/ high damage and good domino and some bleed deaths, shatterstrike every other round is usually not possible. I'm lucky to build up to 70% OC after a shatterstrike; things die too fast w/o direct attacks.

This post has been edited by etothex: Mar 2 2012, 22:56

Now for my question. I'm an elec/fire mage and my equips are a mix of both. But I was thinking about switching to just full on one or the other. I usually cast tier 1 elec and then tier 3 fire on a critter with coalesced mana. So would it be better if I had a surtr suit? or just moljnir? or is it okay to have both?

I was thinking probably being a specialist and going full on surtr since thats my tier 3 and I want to do mainly harder difficulties. But I mostly have mojlnor for equips >_>. (maybe I should just switch my tiers instead, would be cheaper than buying all those equips).

I'm an elec mage with full mjolnir set, t3 fire and t2 elect spells. Most of the time I just need to cast elec AoE and then a random AoE (not fire, since it's a little more mana expensive) to wipe out the remaining. I only cast t3 fire in higher difficulty which blast off those with deep burns (elec proc) pretty quick.

Got a question on End of Days:

Playing on Hard:
Att: 1950/92.5%30.9% base dmg/hit/crit - Ethereal Mace w/over 200 prof
Def: 75.2/52.2% physical, 42.4/42.5% magical
Avd: 20.2/0/20.6/48.7 evade/bloc/parry/resist, over 185 light armor prof
Comp: 33.3/18.5 Interference/Burden
All

Everything is fine until Round 50 when I start facing a legendary every round. I feel I am missing something as legends are taking me too long to kill, whether I spirit repeatedly or forego spirit and shatter strike as much as possible. Thus, I am running out of mana. I tried spirit shield in lieu of silence but spirit shield failed me around round 75 (not really sure why unless sometimes it doesn't work because it was active and I was low on spirit but I am sure I had enough and it didn't give me any insufficient spirit remarks) I was low on godly pots but I *might* have made it the other 25 rounds if I started getting some mana gems. SO I usually have to burn 2 silences per legend, and then keep refreshing regen II and heartseeker as needed, with an occasional haste thrown in (I stop using haste at the legends to conserve mana).

I can go in with all Mana Elixirs which I plan to do. Which I think should have my Mana hold out to the end.

However, what say all of you 220+ level players? How can I melee legends faster? Advice appreciated.

- JC

This post has been edited by jcullinane: Mar 3 2012, 05:53

I'm cleaning out my equipment inventory and was wondering what are some items that I should keep rather than sell off to the bazaar. I've played enough to know the following are usually keepers:

1H: High proc, Wakizashi
2H: High proc, Slaughter suffix, Scythe, Katana
Staff: High proc, +Damage suffixes, Prof. suffixes
Shield: High block, Kite, Tower
Cloth: EDB suffixes (Phase), Prof. suffixes (Gossamer)
Light: Kevlar, Shade
Heavy: High mitigation, Shield, Power

Are these what most users in the WTS/WTB sections offer/want? Did I miss any? Are elemental defense suffixes actually useful?

Since I play 2H mace with power armor, I have a hard time deciding whether to keep or chuck all the 1H, staff, shield, cloth, and light that just collects dust in my inventory.

Just exactly how much stronger are T1 Spells compared to T2 Spells, and T3 to T2? Is there some kind of base damage correlated with each tier?

http://ehwiki.org/wiki/Spell_Damage

How do I tell if the mana conservation on this staff is any good?

yesterday:
Magnificent Ethereal Redwood Staff of Focus

How do I tell if the mana conservation on this staff is any good?

Has anyone more information / range on mana conservation?

This is mine (courtesy of (Cheater) Tiap)