[X] My Assistant

I believe it is 5 times more.

oops. yeah 5x* more (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)

Regen becomes a lot more effective once you raise your proficiencies.
When I first got it, it looked completely useless and I hardly used it.
This is what they do for me now, after some training:

Cure → 3729 HP (Channeling → 5600+ HP)
Cure II, Cure III → Full HP (~6300 HP)

Regen → 9918 HP (Channeling → 15048 HP)
Regen II → 34650 HP (Channeling → 51072 HP)

tl;dr raise your proficiencies

All the advice makes me wish I could give karma to all of you at once. I'll settle for giving it out one-at-a-time.

My curative magic proficiency is currently 45.34.

This post has been edited by DragonRanger: Sep 25 2011, 21:55

With monsters hitting harder than ever, Regen's usefulness has gone down somewhat though, since the small amount it heals per turn can't last very long against hoards of high damage attacks. I'd have to say that unless I was very unlucky, I only needed Regen alone to sweep through Arenas at Nightmare or lower before the recent patches. Now, I usually have trouble even on Heroic.

However, it's still much better than Cure with high proficiency and it's something I usually constantly keep up (both for healing and for the Channeling chance, which I use for either Regen II or Heartseeker).

Mmm I agree somewhat with you there. My Cure heals ~2.5k in 1 shot while my Regen 2 heals ~450 per shot. Often times I lose 1k hp a turn. When I refresh buffs/use gems, ~450 per pulse is perfect whereas Cure would have been overkill. This is the beauty of regen - very fast healing that doesn't give them much of a chance to attack you while still allowing yourself to heal. In situations where I lose lots of life, my Cure goes from 2.5k hp heal to 3k because regen pulses as well but that's gravy compared to the speed advantage regen offers.

When I do normal arenas, I usually keep AF+Regen 2 up and that's it.

Some people say they clear all arenas every day.
I don't understand that, I did that for a while when I was lower level and didn't have all that many arenas to clear, but now I can't clear all arenas since that would drop me below 80 stamina, which is a place where I don't want to be.

So do people actually play below 80 stamina?
I'm sure that they do of course, but do they really do that a lot, I mean stamina regenerates at the same rate even if you got 80 stamina or 40 stamina, so continually doing lots of arenas would continue to push your stamina down and mean you'd never make it back to 80+ unless you skip a day or two here and there.

Personally, I stop playing when I hit 80, and wait for it to regen.

When I used to clear all arenas I started @ 88-90 stamina every day and ended up @ 75-77.

I'm only doing the arenas with trophies. I hardly have the time to do every arena, but then again I'm doing them all on Nightmare or above.

It's too exhausting and time-consuming to do all of my arenas, especially every day. Usually I just start at Crusade and call it a day once I finish Twisted Plots. That usually takes my stamina from 99 to 78. If I start the session with less than 99 stamina, I'll usually stop a couple arenas short of Twisted Plots just so my stamina has enough time to regenerate back up to 99 before the next Dawn. If I happen to get an artifact and it turns out to be an Energy Drink, sometimes I'll use it and finish off the remaining arenas just to work on proficiencies (Forbidden is a bitch).

I'm going to work on my proficiencies a little after I get spirit shield, in preparation for level 200.

Shift str/dex/agi into vit/int/wisdom, grab a level 10ish 2 handed weapon, and swing away with a bunch of mana potions. Should help me boost my light armor/2H/supportive/curative profs nicely.

I have generally been just doing arenas on normal cause its fast and easy. I don't think that credits are effected by difficultly level? I recently started turning up the difficulty to as high as I could manage for each individual arena challenge cause I just read the patch notes and it states your get better loot which makes complete sense obviously. Yet, the only items I seem to be getting when I turn up the difficulty are godly potions and worthless crystals. (I don't plan on making a monster)

Unless making a monster is actually worth the time and unreasonable amount of crystals?

This post has been edited by teals03: Sep 26 2011, 07:44

The new difficulty bonus to loot only applies to item quality, not to item type. If you want to start getting more equipment drops, you'll have to start working on Scavenger and Quartermaster.

As for making a monster, it's up to you. We don't really know if it's worth it yet because we don't know how many materials will be needed in order to get significant results out of the equipment forge. As with everything else in the game, you'll probably have to buy large quantities of materials from other players in order to get anywhere, though. Anyway, at the very minimum, the only thing you lose out on by making a monster are the Credits you could have earned by selling your crystals to other players. On the other hand, it's possible to get a monster to a respectable PL with crystals just from drops and artifacts alone; mine is approaching PL170. You want to aim for PL250 or higher, but you'll probably have to buy crystals to reach it.

How goes Spark of Life for Innate Arcana, is there a gap where it's not up after it triggers where there's a chance to get killed?

No gap.
And Cloak of the Fallen won't let you die on the same turn SoL triggers, so technically you're immortal.

6 6 You gain the effect Spark of Life.
6 5 Evil crits you for 1668 slashing damage.
6 4 You gain the effect Cloak of the Fallen.
6 3 Your Spark of Life restores you from the brink of defeat.
6 2 Sosuke Aizen hits you for 638 slashing damage.
6 1 You gain the effect Focusing.
I wonder if I should switch from Haste+Shadow Veil to Haste+Spark of Life.

No gap.
And Cloak of the Fallen won't let you die on the same turn SoL triggers, so technically you're immortal.

Assuming you still have sufficient SP, yeah. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I'm almost lv100. I heard there's a drastic change in difficulty after lv100 and 200. Does this still hold true? What should I expect/do in preparation?

Also, should I still balance my stats completely? I know there's an advantage in doing this when you're just starting, but does it still apply now that I'm almost lv100?

It might help to mention your equipment set/play style.

Not too much of a difference in difficulty until you hit 200 imo. Because that's when you meet all the monsters that have decent stats

Assuming you still have sufficient SP, yeah. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

And mana. Damn Spirit Shield + Haste + Spark eats up mana like there's no tomorrow. At least in difficulties where you'd have any use for IA Spark. I don't think I'll find a use for it. Assuming I never get IA 4 and 5. But I'm not complaining, it'll be nice for those who don't have Spirit Shield yet.

I'm not really sure if the Protection spell is doing anything for me (mage). If my calculations are correct (probably not), it's giving me a +1% mitigation boost (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif) +5% if my armor was all 10% mitigation.

Total Physical Mitigation = 1- ( (1-GreenAura) * (1-(STR*0.0004)) * (1-(END*0.0002)) * (1-Item1*(1+ProtectionSpell)) * (1-Item2*(1+ProtectionSpell)) ... )

It might help to mention your equipment set/play style.

[imgur.com] http://imgur.com/a/kq3v7 <- Abilities and Character panels

Fine Mace of Slaughter
Average Power Helmet of Balance
Average Power Armor of Protection
Fine Power Gauntlets of Protection
Average Power Leggings of the Ox
Average Power Boots of Warding

I do the arenas and grindfest on normal difficulty with ease. I usually don't have to use any consumables (not including gems) for the arenas. I might use 1 to 3 lesser healing potions if I don't think I have enough mana for the last rounds Power Flux and Killzone arenas. That's usually because I was unlucky enough to not find any mana gems. I use 7 lesser healing potions in grindfest and can get to round 50-70 before I call it quits.

I have Protection on at all times. I'll Cure when I have <1400HP. I usually use channeling to restart Protection if it's <10 turns before running out. I don't think I ever use my Spirit Attack. It just doesn't seem worth it to lose the overcharge damage bonus. Most things are 1-hit except giants, uncommons, and a few non-giant commons.

I find that I'll miss 2 or 3 times in a row a lot and some monsters' specials can really dish out the hurt (400-1200 dmg).