[X] My Assistant

By using that.

I am trying to build a dps set for grinding and a set that can latter be used for bosses. I am only level 31 atm so I was trying to see what I should start saving up for.
For dps I was thinking of going for the superior gossamer (slot) of the elementalist, best I have is only a fair one atm http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=be1108eb0f

I was thinking for bosses where I will need to try and debuff them building a set of the superior gossamer (slot) of the curse-weaver. Could a higher level player who runs a mage build let me know if this is worth looking through players wts stores and trying to get the 2 sets built or not. I am currently running a heavy inferno/snowstorm combo is why I was looking into the elementalist boost gear.

This post has been edited by Seldren: Feb 11 2013, 20:18

Don't bother trying to plan ahead too much at your stage, just check some of the free shops for lowbies in the WTS for adequate/decent gear. Unless you're incredibly lucky, you're better off putting most of your effort into leveling up; what you're able to earn in about 100 level's time is literally a fortune compared to what you're capable of right now.

ice+cold isn't bad combination....But as soon as your profs catch up, gossamer of curse-weaver/earth-walker has insignificant effect.

More to the point, you may be able to get away with gossamer now, but more than 1 legendary piece later on is gonna hurt you.

More to the point, you may be able to get away with gossamer now, but more than 1 legendary piece later on is gonna hurt you.

I dont understand what you mean, that the legendary piece later is going to hurt, I am still new to the game sorry if this is a stupid question.

Okay, bear with me, this is my first time trying this.

Primary Attributes
STR: 102 +37 +1
DEX: 102 +28 +0
AGI: 102 +76 +2
END: 102 +19 +0
INT: 90 +3 +1
WIS: 102 +4 +1

Proficiencies (that have any effect on my playing style)
DW: 91.84
LA: 87.33
Supportive: 77.02

Current equipment
Weapon 1 - Weapon 2
Head - Chest - Hands - Legs - Feet

Training
Adept Learner - 67/300
Assimilator - 1/10
Ability Boost - 26/100
Scavenger - 21/50
Luck of the Draw - 8/25
Quartermaster - 5/20
Archaeologist - 4/10

--------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to improve my drops (quality & rate, but mainly quality), but obviously I need credits to train. One person suggested taking on the Arenas at Hell/Nintendo difficulties – a good idea, however I want make sure I can SURVIVE at those difficulties (i.e. not get completely slammed in only 1-2 rounds), so that I can get the full benefit out of it.

(I'm also using Cake/Easy-level IW to try & lvl-up potencies on a pair of "of the Battlecaster" shortswords (this and this) - until/unless I manage to get some Ethereal 1H drops, I figure "Hollowforged" would probably be the next best thing for taking on Legendary+-class monsters, especially FSM.)

Any suggestions?

This post has been edited by The 17th Immortal: Feb 12 2013, 00:23

Seldren:
Mage's damage depends on multiplication and is directly proportional to their magic damage, the bonus from Elemental Damage Bonus and the damage bonus from their spell proficiency. Of course, there's also crit and accuracy to consider, but colloquially the vector of last 3 factors is called "magic score". Math would imply that you'd get the biggest boost if you pad those equally.

However, gossamer has inherently lower boosting values than phase for ...all rolls. Furthermore, innate prof really ruins the day for gossamer, and staff giving prof too adds insult to the injury. This means that while your profs is lacking you're likely to find many 'superior' prices of gossamers for cheaper they'll soon cease to be so as offensive profs catch up rather fast, and soon enough you need a gossamer tier above phase if you wish to keep using that. Past that point is the lucky break of gossamer's lack of need for most expensive monster lab loot in game to forge - but it is not like it is that great in the first place. Because of their additive nature, more than 1 piece of gossamer in concert really rain on each others' parade.

The Elementalist gossamer's unique nature of boosting multiple spelltypes is mostly negated by the fact that it is elementalist, meaning it's not truly worthy of millions of investment. Furthermore, to take advantage of this nature, destruction staff is the best, yet it seems that destruction redwood has kind of low MDB, so it is in the hands of old ebony to give sufficient follow-up.

The Heaven-sent/Demon-fiend lose the EDB bonus to poison(useless) and cure(useful), though they boost soul spells as well. Still, with mechs' innate +50 to soul, that playstyle isn't all that significant. All-in-all, they're worse types of their respective phase.

Mage draws no significant advantage from Gossamer of Priestess/Earth-walker. Melee draws, but the cloth bonuses aren't suitable nor is the cloth defensive enough to support melee with current prof mechanics. At the moment mixing armor types is fine for you, but once you get decent armor prof it will become untenable. A mage close to level 100 might find gossamer of curse-weaver useful for ring of blood, but I do not know, for it is ridiculously easy to gain some prof in easy IW, for more prof at lesser price(potions) than gossamer would give you. Outside there, if the additional duration isn't useless, something may have gone horribly wrong...

Immortal:
Melee is dependent on taking advantage of the time-compression of high difficulties for speed. If you can't handle such IWs, do shorter runs at such difficulties and hand the rewards along with weapons over to someone you want to IW those. But don't brother with IWing such weak weapons, elemental exquisite would be a start. Also, when it comes to Battlecaster 1Hs I'd look for pre-nerf ones with up to 20% MC.
But when it comes to improving your quality, LOTD is a multiplier on your initial bonus: in terms of getting truly awesome drops, you get more like 17.5% than 25% increase, but the bonus itself is largely dependent on how high the arena is and your difficulty. "Nintendo" is good enough I suppose, but you might benefit more from training quartermaster, or archelogist(to fund the first).

But I bet you can improve your gear a lot even with free gear from WTS, "fair" isn't really adequate at your level...

On those higher levelled arenas, 250+ and 260+ there are regular bosses after every wave 50+, in ANY difficulty higher than Heroic I end up being defeated, because they take an enormous amount of time to kill, and this results in me using all potions before last wave.

Why are them so resilient? I mean, am I doing something wrong or is it supposed to be like that anyways?

I got this staff after dumping about a dozen boss-quality trophies:
Superior Ethereal Redwood Staff of Focus

Is this any better than my current staff? I'm currently Holy/Dark mage.

@n125: I use it mainly to reduce cost of Mana. Taking 25 % form 3rd tier spells is quite a lot when I have to do 100 rounds.

@destruction/fenrir/demon-fiend katalox staff: I know, but which one is better a gear with spell or proficiency bonus ?

@PK678353: Do you mean lack of forge upgrades by "lots of work" ? I'm partly aware of how it works.
Reforging and other sophisticated stuff is dark black magic for me (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif).

"Invest in some Spirit Tanks. "

I guess, I'll need to say hello to almost forgotten training : ability boost.

Please don't forge any of that, it's mostly pretty bad. From what I could see it was Average to Superior Demon-Fiend Gossamer, with one piece of (I think) Fenrir Phase. Judging by the low Damage and low Evade on the screenshot, they weren't rocking high PABs, and the Staff is rather unsuited to actually making things die. Get a Focus Katalox instead if you need MC (Destruction/Fenrir/Demon-Fiend otherwise), and some Fenrir Phase. That will cost some money, but at our level it's not all that much to throw together a Fenrir set that isn't terrible. You can pick up a set of functional-but-unexciting pieces for cheap, and then start gathering better ones as you go.

I dont understand what you mean, that the legendary piece later is going to hurt, I am still new to the game sorry if this is a stupid question.

Shorter version of Lement's post (usually I'm the one with the long explanation).

Mage damage is Base damage * Proficiency bonus * Elemental Damage Bonus. If you're using Gossamer armor, you're lowering that EDB. A single piece of very good Gossamer can bring prof up enough to counteract that and add damage, but it gets harder with each piece, and the staff already counts as a piece since it has a prof bonus.

Okay, bear with me, this is my first time trying this.

Primary Attributes
STR: 102 +37 +1
DEX: 102 +28 +0
AGI: 102 +76 +2
END: 102 +19 +0
INT: 90 +3 +1
WIS: 102 +4 +1

Proficiencies (that have any effect on my playing style)
DW: 91.84
LA: 87.33
Supportive: 77.02

Attributes and profs are fine. I would tank INT a bit more if you have no intention of ever going mage, since WIS gives more stuff for melee.

Current equipment
Weapon 1 - Weapon 2
Head - Chest - Hands - Legs - Feet

Yeeah, about that. . . Work on getting yourself some better gear. Shade must use Ethereals to be viable at higher levels. I don't care if it's a Club of Balance, so long as it's Ethereal and has decent Stun proc. Ethereal isn't just low mana and Void damage (though the Void part is huge vs. Giants), it's 0 burden. Burden kills Evade, which is Shade's primary defense. You'll also want to start looking at Balance/Nimble Rapiers, since the PA becomes valuable as monster defenses rise, and Rapier has the third highest Parry/AAB of one-handed weapons (behind Dagger and Wakizashi, but PA > low Bleed). If you want to continue using Shortswords, PM me, I've got an Ethereal Balance one lying around that I'm not using.

I think you're focusing too much on the Shadowdancer and Arcanist suffixes, which are nice but rare as hell. Fleet is much cheaper and lets you get functional defenses for reasonable sums. Negation is meh, but at least you can get quality pieces with excellent PABs for dirt cheap. You'll want to replace the whole set, but start with the Fair pieces and work up from there. Focus on Evade, ADB, PABs and PMI (last, but Shade defense is decidedly two-tiered). Hit up the free shops in WTS, they may not have much Fleet Shade, but they should have a few upgrades for you.

Shade and Avoidance based defenses in general have a problem in that they work well once you get past a certain threshold and very poorly below that. If you don't have enough Evade, it's not consistent, and in a game where you go 50 to 100 rounds, consistency is king. You WILL evade less than average some turns, but getting hit with everything is a lot less common when you have 35% Evade and 25% Parry than it is when you have 20% Evade and 15% Parry.

Training
Adept Learner - 67/300
Assimilator - 1/10
Ability Boost - 26/100
Scavenger - 21/50
Luck of the Draw - 8/25
Quartermaster - 5/20
Archaeologist - 4/10

Better than I expected.

--------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to improve my drops (quality & rate, but mainly quality), but obviously I need credits to train. One person suggested taking on the Arenas at Hell/Nintendo difficulties – a good idea, however I want make sure I can SURVIVE at those difficulties (i.e. not get completely slammed in only 1-2 rounds), so that I can get the full benefit out of it.

(I'm also using Cake/Easy-level IW to try & lvl-up potencies on a pair of "of the Battlecaster" shortswords (this and this) - until/unless I manage to get some Ethereal 1H drops, I figure "Hollowforged" would probably be the next best thing for taking on Legendary+-class monsters, especially FSM.)

Any suggestions?

Wasn't actually suggesting that you run your arenas at Hell/Nintendo. I was just saying that when you get to the point where you can run T&T at that level, 10-12k per run plus drops is about the rewards you can expect out of it.

I wouldn't bother trying to IW on Easy unless the equip is worth it, and those aren't. Easy takes about 100 runs to max things, it's boring as hell. You can get legitimate if crappy Ethereals for cheap in WTS. Very few of us run only equips that dropped for us, it simply doesn't work with the rarer drops (Shade, Phase and Power are all Tier 3, which makes up 2% of armor drops on Normal, up to 10% on IWBTH).

On those higher levelled arenas, 250+ and 260+ there are regular bosses after every wave 50+, in ANY difficulty higher than Heroic I end up being defeated, because they take an enormous amount of time to kill, and this results in me using all potions before last wave.

Why are them so resilient? I mean, am I doing something wrong or is it supposed to be like that anyways?

Schoolgirl marathons are supposed to be a bitch. Unfortunately, they're mainly just boring. Just for funsies, every 3 patches or so Tenboro makes a change that makes them more of a bitch. Like new Ether Theft. Having used it in marathons, I am now firmly in Rei-Tenshi's camp here, new ET blows for marathons (I have to win how many coin flips to get how much mana?). I think if not for Channeling or 2x stacks I would actually lose mana on trying to ET chain Konata.

On the upside, he's at least seen some sanity and capped arenas at 100 rounds (DwD was originally a 500 round arena). On the downside, he recently acquired Windows 8. It's apparently bad enough to make him double Boss+ HP.

This post has been edited by PK678353: Feb 12 2013, 04:55

Schoolgirl marathons are supposed to be a bitch. Unfortunately, they're mainly just boring. Just for funsies, every 3 patches or so Tenboro makes a change that makes them more of a bitch. Like new Ether Theft. Having used it in marathons, I am now firmly in Rei-Tenshi's camp here, new ET blows for marathons (I have to win how many coin flips to get how much mana?).

On the upside, he's at least seen some sanity and capped arenas at 100 rounds (DwD was originally a 500 round arena). On the downside, he recently acquired Windows 8. It's apparently bad enough to make him double Boss+ HP.

Windows 8 could be a whole lot worse, actually. It's not entirely bad once you get used to it, and actually, pretty decent on a touchscreen.

Schoolgirl marathons, like RoB, are optimised for DW. I took Beyond the Clouds on at Nintendo (at about 100 DW prof for Frenzied Blows); it's doable, survivable, but yeah, boring as all get out - about 3 hours or so. The trick is to Shard (and Infuse for weapons) all equips for about that long, bring tonnes of scrolls in, and spam Focus.

Schoolgirl marathons are supposed to be a bitch. Unfortunately, they're mainly just boring. Just for funsies, every 3 patches or so Tenboro makes a change that makes them more of a bitch. Like new Ether Theft. Having used it in marathons, I am now firmly in Rei-Tenshi's camp here, new ET blows for marathons (I have to win how many coin flips to get how much mana?).

On the upside, he's at least seen some sanity and capped arenas at 100 rounds (DwD was originally a 500 round arena). On the downside, he recently acquired Windows 8. It's apparently bad enough to make him double Boss+ HP.

Holy crap, a 500 round arena? That is truly completely insane o_o Well, good to know I'm not the only one having trouble with these bosses. And also good to know that they're called schoolgirls (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Arenas before the 100 round cap: http://ehwiki.org/index.php?title=Arena&oldid=4414

They were changed before I was high enough level to give them a try. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

thanks for helping me understand about the gear bonuses for the way mage works, im going to spend a lot of time looking for gear that helps max out those stats, but I just need to make sure I am understanding this right, using my current staff as an example

http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=abe53c7335

the "Spell Damage Elec +2.44 Wind +2.44 Dark +2.95" would be the EDB and the "Proficiency Elemental +9.06 Forbidden +9.67 Deprecating +13.97" would be the PB based on what class the spell belongs to, and the base damage would be where it says 232.8 base damage under the magical attack section since its a spell? or did I just totally misread what was explained to me? >.<

Windows 8 could be a whole lot worse, actually. It's not entirely bad once you get used to it, and actually, pretty decent on a touchscreen.

Schoolgirl marathons, like RoB, are optimised for DW. I took Beyond the Clouds on at Nintendo (at about 100 DW prof for Frenzied Blows); it's doable, survivable, but yeah, boring as all get out - about 3 hours or so. The trick is to Shard (and Infuse for weapons) all equips for about that long, bring tonnes of scrolls in, and spam Focus.

Yeah, haven't tried Windows 8, but apparently Tenboro didn't like it much. I don't expect it to be as bad as the haters say. I expect the OS to be like Vista in that it's competent enough after a few patches to sand off rough edges. I don't expect all the stupid crap like flaky drivers and cheapass hardware that doesn't meet minimum specs being branded as "Vista Capable" this time. Confusion from the uninitiated about the limitations of Windows RT on the other hand. . . That should be popcorn worthy.

thanks for helping me understand about the gear bonuses for the way mage works, im going to spend a lot of time looking for gear that helps max out those stats, but I just need to make sure I am understanding this right, using my current staff as an example

http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=abe53c7335

the "Spell Damage Elec +2.44 Wind +2.44 Dark +2.95" would be the EDB and the "Proficiency Elemental +9.06 Forbidden +9.67 Deprecating +13.97" would be the PB based on what class the spell belongs to, and the base damage would be where it says 232.8 base damage under the magical attack section since its a spell? or did I just totally misread what was explained to me? >.<

Yep, that's correct.

Is there any way of getting rid of crude/average equipment quickly? Like, batch selling or something?

Is there any way of getting rid of crude/average equipment quickly? Like, batch selling or something?

Lock everything else, then hit sell all.

Okay, bear with me, this is my first time trying this.

Primary Attributes
STR: 102 +37 +1
DEX: 102 +28 +0
AGI: 102 +76 +2
END: 102 +19 +0
INT: 90 +3 +1
WIS: 102 +4 +1

Proficiencies (that have any effect on my playing style)
DW: 91.84
LA: 87.33
Supportive: 77.02

Current equipment
Weapon 1 - Weapon 2
Head - Chest - Hands - Legs - Feet

Training
Adept Learner - 67/300
Assimilator - 1/10
Ability Boost - 26/100
Scavenger - 21/50
Luck of the Draw - 8/25
Quartermaster - 5/20
Archaeologist - 4/10

--------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to improve my drops (quality & rate, but mainly quality), but obviously I need credits to train. One person suggested taking on the Arenas at Hell/Nintendo difficulties – a good idea, however I want make sure I can SURVIVE at those difficulties (i.e. not get completely slammed in only 1-2 rounds), so that I can get the full benefit out of it.

(I'm also using Cake/Easy-level IW to try & lvl-up potencies on a pair of "of the Battlecaster" shortswords (this and this) - until/unless I manage to get some Ethereal 1H drops, I figure "Hollowforged" would probably be the next best thing for taking on Legendary+-class monsters, especially FSM.)

Any suggestions?

i think you should change your offhand to rapier (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
at lvl 200 where those custom mob lvl 1000 begins to appears , you need good rapier to proc PA in higher difficulty ( battletoads & IWBTH ) for fast kill (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
( this lv 1000 mobs is more annoying than boss )

Why can't i train my aura slots anymore i can understand why i can't train my karma amplification but why are the aura slots out as well?

Also what are the most useful spells to have or does that varies.

This post has been edited by Yuffie Kisaragi: Feb 12 2013, 06:18

Arenas before the 100 round cap: http://ehwiki.org/index.php?title=Arena&oldid=4414

They were changed before I was high enough level to give them a try. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

100 one-monster rounds followed by 100 two-monster rounds seem fun (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/duck.gif)

Why can't i train my aura slots anymore i can understand why i can't train my karma amplification but why are the aura slots out as well?

Also what are the most useful spells to have or does that varies.

Aura slots are gone, you can have unlimited auras now (and yes, the costs will be refunded). Good spells for everyone include haste, spark of life, cure, regen 2 and heartseeker/arcane focus depending on route. Shadow veil, protection spirit shield, silence and weaken are also nice to have. Idk about maging but holy/dark seem to be the most popular.