[X] My Assistant

Your equipment and clearance speed is much better than mine... I assume you mean that the monsters hit too hard at IWBTH to play without imperil and without tapping.

Which battles are you referring to? 100 round arena?

not really. just spend 200k to get all my non-staff stuff. a lot of them are pretty mediocre. ie meh phase Cap or Gloves or Shoes. my cotton are decent, ie MMax prof but other stats are quite meh. Robe & Pants. though, i get this 3+2 build idea from cirrux & staff idea from Treesloth.

iirc, my 100rd Arena@BT clear speed is slightly less than 1100turns or ~11turns/rd. so at ~2turns/sec that's ~9.2mins. however, for IWBTH, i simply don't hit hard enough and ran out of mana quite fast. there's enough 50% resist that there's always 1 guy left that require another few blast to kill. also, they hit harder, so more cure. hence, "wasting" a lot of mana. i guess right now, i'll forge the MDB & EDB a bit more and see how it goes, but it seems like I'm going through HG woods like crazy.

ps. my holy magic score is only 7676 (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

I wonder if it is beneficial to go 4 phase 1 prof (0.56 prof factor) with imperil, or just stick with 5 phase (0.27 prof factor).

imo, if you're going to imperil go full phase. if not, prof build. also, it really depends on how much time a day you've for this "game". currently, I'm just trying to fit all arenas <2hrs.

This post has been edited by malkatmp: Mar 20 2015, 12:10

Go for 1H power if you are going to play daily arena at PF at your level. Go for maging if you are GF grinder who do not care about crystal.

Isn't that the wrong way around, 1H + Shield clears grindfest much easier and at less cost than mage.

Isn't that the wrong way around, 1H + Shield clears grindfest much easier and at less cost than mage.

my crystal/min rate on holy is twice as fast as it is on 1h

my holy set clears DwD 1.5x and T&T 2x as fast as 1h set does.

1H is only good for achievement hunting (dat pfudorfest clear)

Mage gears are getting cheap nowadays, it's the cp that makes it costly. Basically, when you start feeling tempted to throw 5m at a power of slaughter piece, you should switch to mage with mmax phase instead.

Either way, at the asker's level (199 at the moment) his main goal is probably XP and credit income on as high a difficulty as possible - which is possible with 1h, but definitely not with mage, not yet at least.

my crystal/min rate on holy is twice as fast as it is on 1h

my holy set clears DwD 1.5x and T&T 2x as fast as 1h set does.

Thats only holy though. Also I mentioned grid fest. What you are saying is still the opposite of what they said.

Mage is the best for arena and 1h + shield has the easiest grindfest clears.

Thats only holy though. Also I mentioned grid fest. What you are saying is still the opposite of what they said.

Mage is the best for arena and 1h + shield has the easiest grindfest clears.

Both my electric and cold set without the prof hath perk and have no forge are much faster than my 1H set in Hellfest. It just that my mage set cannot go as deep as 1H.
BTW, holy end even earlier than electric. It is just that holy kill and die faster so I can play more rounds.

This post has been edited by Colman: Mar 20 2015, 15:51

Mage is the best for arena and 1h + shield has the easiest grindfest clears.

Grindfest clear, sure. Grindfest income per time spent (starting over once you run out of pots), maybe mage can be better, even if the player has to drop down a difficulty or two in exchange for clearing 3x as fast. Maybe that's what was meant by "Go for maging if you are GF grinder who do not care about crystal."

Still, at the player's level of 199, mage is almost certainly not effective enough regardless, compared to 1h - but once someone gets to a level where maging can start to compete with 1h (310+? 350+? depends on gear) I'd think a player would prefer mage everywhere. (unless you're like me and mage repair costs are prohibitive (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif))

imo, it depends what you want out of grindfest.

for me:
~200rd Hellfest in my Cold gear takes ~20mins which yields ~2800-3000 crystals.
~750rd Hellfest in my 1h gear takes ~2.5hrs which yields ~18,000 crystals.

so if i do 3.75 ~200rd Hellfest (ie ~750rd Hellfest) in my Cold gear, it'll take 75mins or ~1.5hrs & yield ~11,250 crystals.
if double that (ie 7.5 ~200rds Hellfest or ~1500rds total & use double stamina or 30 stamina?!) in the same gear, it'll take ~2.5hrs & yield ~22,500 crystals.

but i'd imagine doing that many rds of hellfest for crystals will means you'll probably barely breakeven with all those ED use.

imo, it depends what you want out of grindfest.

for me:
~200rd Hellfest in my Cold gear takes ~20mins which yields ~2800-3000 crystals.
~750rd Hellfest in my 1h gear takes ~2.5hrs which yields ~18,000 crystals.

so if i do 3.75 ~200rd Hellfest (ie ~750rd Hellfest) in my Cold gear, it'll take 75mins or ~1.5hrs & yield ~11,250 crystals.
if double that (ie 7.5 ~200rds Hellfest or ~1500rds total & use double stamina or 30 stamina?!) in the same gear, it'll take ~2.5hrs & yield ~22,500 crystals.

but i'd imagine doing that many rds of hellfest for crystals will means you'll probably barely breakeven with all those ED use.

Go for Nintendo GF. That's what I did.
I am doing PF GF recently.

Hellfest has too low profitability already... Play Nintendo or BT at least. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

almost full pack of monsters not brings me even one CP for last week.
except that issue ~7CP in month.
half of them in 200-400 range, so i think about raising them to 900+

today gifts.)
"Received a Crystallized Phazon. x3"


This post has been edited by VriskaSerket: Mar 20 2015, 23:41

imo, it depends what you want out of grindfest.

for me:
~200rd Hellfest in my Cold gear takes ~20mins which yields ~2800-3000 crystals.
~750rd Hellfest in my 1h gear takes ~2.5hrs which yields ~18,000 crystals.

so if i do 3.75 ~200rd Hellfest (ie ~750rd Hellfest) in my Cold gear, it'll take 75mins or ~1.5hrs & yield ~11,250 crystals.
if double that (ie 7.5 ~200rds Hellfest or ~1500rds total & use double stamina or 30 stamina?!) in the same gear, it'll take ~2.5hrs & yield ~22,500 crystals.

but i'd imagine doing that many rds of hellfest for crystals will means you'll probably barely breakeven with all those ED use.

more rounds you do - more artifacts you get.
im still spending ED bought in november.)

is int even sligthy useful in a mele build. I check the wiki and it doesnt give me anything i need.
does at least increase healing or something?

is int even sligthy useful in a mele build. I check the wiki and it doesnt give me anything i need.
does at least increase healing or something?

It contributes to Spirit. You can neglect Intelligence if you want.

is int even sligthy useful in a mele build. I check the wiki and it doesnt give me anything i need.

If you use Spirit Stance, Intel will very very slightly prolong how long you can maintain it before running out of spirit. So maybe upgrade Intel if everything else costs more than 100x more.

Is it normal for a 75-ish mage to get nearly oneshot by the strong attacks from a rare mob/token of blood challenges? Or does my equipment/stat distrubution suck that much?

Is it normal for a 75-ish mage to get nearly oneshot by the strong attacks from a rare mob/token of blood challenges? Or does my equipment/stat distrubution suck that much?

Yes. Even melee (was me) get one shot by stray dalek.

Is it normal for a 75-ish mage to get nearly oneshot by the strong attacks from a rare mob/token of blood challenges? Or does my equipment/stat distrubution suck that much?

Mages are extremely fragile. If you don't kill most all the spawned monsters within the first few rounds, they'll frequently use their MP and then SP attacks (once you start fighting PL 400+ monsters), which do quite a lot of damage to mages since mages have no specific physical mitigation, nor any shield.

For a mage to play and survive on a similar difficulty to a melee character with similarly valuable gear, you need to be a very high level (250+ bare minimum, preferably 310+ or 350+). Otherwise, you just don't have enough defense (from level scaling and from abilities), nor do you do enough damage to kill the monsters before they kill you.

If you think you care more about playing on a high difficulty (XP/credits) than playing as a mage, then you might consider switching to a melee style with leather armor for the next 100 or so levels.

Is it normal for a 75-ish mage to get nearly oneshot by the strong attacks from a rare mob/token of blood challenges? Or does my equipment/stat distrubution suck that much?

Yes, it's normal, and those monster will always one-shot you if you don't take the proper precautions.

Against a monster in the Ring of Blood, all you have to do is cast Silence on it to prevent it from using its MP and SP attacks. Weaken will also help if its regular attacks give you a hard time. From there, you will win as long as you keep the appropriate Deprecating spells active and have enough MP to last the fight.

Outside of the Ring of Blood, you use Spark of Life, Spirit Shield, Shadow Veil, and Protection to prevent against getting one-shot by MP and SP attacks. However, if it takes you too many turns to kill, you will face too many MP and SP attacks and just hemorrhage SP as a result, which isn't good. The solution is to kill quickly, before monsters can unleash their MP and SP attacks, and if you're struggling to do that then you need to keep lowering the difficulty until you can.

I've been full mage since level 1, no problems here on hard difficulty (Though I could see problems with higher difficulty).

Sleep helps a lot even without the abilities. In Arenas with 3 bosses, I usually Sleep one and aoe the others with Imperial. Make sure to grind up Deprecating prof to 30 for Imperial. That has made Arena and RoF so much easier. I can use my Frost magic with it against anything, even if they naturally have 95% Frost resist and do more damage with it than with their weakness thanks to my Nilf gear.

I find Weakness is usually more helpful than Silence, maybe it's just me. No critical hits (Which are the only thing that have really put me in danger) and -25% damage. Silence won't help you with normal attacks or crits but might help you a bit more with certain bosses. I'd say at least early on, stick with Weakness. I fight level 700+ enemies and normal attacks and crits are still more dangerous to me than special attacks.

What you start with in a battle depends on how many enemies there are. Sometimes I buff in order of: Regen, Protection, Haste, Shadow Veil, Arcane Focus, Curing inbetween if I take too much damage. If there are more than 5 enemies, you might wanna lead with a tier 2 or 3 spell to try to take some out some enemies so you can safely buff. On the level before a boss, I Spark of Life and Absorb too. Also don't forget about Concussive Strike, Mages have a helluva lot of CC for dealing with multiple bosses.