[X] My Assistant

I just bashed my way through the legendaries.

This post has been edited by MidNightPass: Sep 29 2011, 00:25

I see so it's possible. Sounds like it's now worth the trouble though, considering I'm not in a hurry and effective alternative ways don't require as much preparation as I thought.

Real Life is impervious to: Elemental, Holy, Dark
It is resistant to: Soul, Crushing, Slashing, Piercing
It has no weaknesses.

I know as soon as I hit level 100, I took out a mace and whacked it to death. I didn't use any pots, and I just threw on a mace (that, when including Crit chances, usually stuns every 1/2-1/3 hits). I used 1-2 Scrolls of the Avatar (Shield, Haste, Barrier), and a few Scrolls of Shadows (Shadow Veil). I kept up Spark of Life the whole time, and usually Regen as well. With all the stunning going on, the resistance to the mace didn't really do much.

The only "Ultimate" monster I didn't beat in the first try with this strategy was the Unicorn, and that's only because on my first try I forgot to set the difficulty from IWBTH to Normal. Second time around on Normal, I destroyed it and the FSM on my first try each. Mace/clubs' stun potential is at its greatest in the RoB.

On the Unicorn, use Infusions of Darkness (the Unicorn's weakness is Dark) or Dark-based spells, and on FSM use Infusions of Divinity or Holy-based spells.

This post has been edited by Spartan0021: Sep 29 2011, 01:02

I just beat the gods. How the hell do you people do it without using items? My mace is 28% proc stun and I'm sure I used 5 greater mana pots and 2 greater spirit pots (+5 or so infusions for IPU and FSM each). I kept Spark of Life, Protection, (and the proper infusion for IPU/FSM) on myself and Weaken on them constantly and I was being 1-shot'd by their spirit attacks left and right. I'm sure the stuns helped, but I can't imagine how I would do it without pots.

I probably could've saved on those pots if I had Silence, or if the stun proc can be refreshed if the target is already stunned. (ie I can stun them again back to 3 turns when they still have x turns left.) But that'd make maces overpowered.

Spirit shield makes things much easier against gods. Mages also benefit from infinite spirit/mana against gods with the help of a nice Ether Theft stick

When I fought IPU/FSM I maged it and was too cheap to use any items so I built spirit back up with soul reap and built mana back up with ET

When I fought RL as a melee I was using EW/CW gear and dual wielded proc items (I think one was banshee and other was vampire)

Didn't have to use a potion in that case either

I just beat the gods. How the hell do you people do it without using items? My mace is 28% proc stun and I'm sure I used 5 greater mana pots and 2 greater spirit pots (+5 or so infusions for IPU and FSM each). I kept Spark of Life, Protection, (and the proper infusion for IPU/FSM) on myself and Weaken on them constantly and I was being 1-shot'd by their spirit attacks left and right. I'm sure the stuns helped, but I can't imagine how I would do it without pots.

I probably could've saved on those pots if I had Silence, or if the stun proc can be refreshed if the target is already stunned. (ie I can stun them again back to 3 turns when they still have x turns left.) But that'd make maces overpowered.

I'm not certain, I may have just gotten a tad bit of luck with mace specials. Remember a critical also has a 100% stun rate, so your stun proc can be determined by much more than just that (as I said earlier, my mace averages between 1/2-1/3 of hits being a stun, so about a 40% rate or so, but it only has a 29% stun proc). In addition, I have 140% overcharge (which I'm certain when going against the gods, every bit counts). If you have the spare mana, also keep weaken and poison on them (unless they have a full spirit attack bar). I also recommend buying some Scrolls of the Avatar from players in the WTS forums, as they give you Shield, Barrier, and Haste. Try some Scrolls of Shadows as well, as they give you shadow veil. I know for my fights, the gods were likely stunned for about 3/4 of the fight, and they usually only got off 1-2 specials. If you still find you're having some troubles, try buying some soul stones at 1,000-1,500 each. They increase your Overcharge by 100% (even over your current max), and I BELIEVE they stack. So, one of those adds an extra 33% damage to all of your melee attacks.

The main things to take away, that you haven't already been using (the weaken is good), are the Avatars and Shadows (they raise your evade by 20% at a cost of 50C/30 turns - a very nice investment, which caused multiple spirit attacks to miss). The Haste provided by the Avatars also allows you to get, on average, two hits in per one hit they get (and you can get Avatars at 250C each, for ~50 turns of Haste, Shield, and Barrier). When you're stunning every 2-3 turns, that means that 2/3 (1/3 chance [really, higher than that] of stunning, multiplied by two hits before they get to attack) of the time you can restun them before they can even think about using that spirit attack. The last thing is to use Poison - it halves the rate that their SP/MP recharges, so throw that on them whenever SP or MP isn't full. If they're full already, it's not doing much other than a tiny bit of damage, and isn't worth the MP overall.

Edit: Oh yes, and one more thing: If you have Regen, use it when you get Channeling. With the amount of time the gods are stunned, it will often heal you right back to full health (or very close) by the time they are unstunned.

Also, I use a set of power armor, however that may affect the outcome (I know it gives me at least 200-300 extra damage per hit and some extra accuracy/crit chances, as well as alright defenses).

Also, I'm throwing this in because I need to remember to give you and Dcherry a karma shot when it regenerates.

This post has been edited by Spartan0021: Sep 29 2011, 06:50

Spirit Shield is useless without any AP in Spirit Tanks, right? I can't imagine 151 Spirit lasting long between Spirit Shield and Spark of Life. :\ I need 25 AP to get everything I want out of the 190 and 200 tiers, so it seems like it will take forever before my Spirit is at a respectable level. Adept Learner is high too, and I want to start saving up for Hath.. ugh

When I fought IPU/FSM I maged it and was too cheap to use any items so I built spirit back up with soul reap and built mana back up with ET

When you do this, what do you do about your buffs and HP? Whenever I do this all the MP I earn goes right back into healing and restoring Supportive spells, so I never get anywhere.

mmm when I fought against FSM/IPU i had self casted (no levels of IA) haste/shadow veil/arcane focus/regen/spark (i don't think i had spirit shield at the time, got too impatient and fought them before i got spirit shield). it was practically hell because i was too cheap to use a potion but the spark ate away so much effin spirit. i kept the two gods weakened (to stop crits and because it's a cheap spell that can proc coalesced), blinded, and poisoned. was using a 32/3 oak staff vs FSM and a 50/2 redwood vs IPU.

wasn't a great experience. spirit shield makes it so much easier now.

if my memory serves me right i really was meleeing with a vampire+banshee dual wield. with spirit shield that kept me tip top shape basically.

e: meleeing vs RL*

This post has been edited by dcherry: Sep 29 2011, 06:52

I'm not certain, I may have just gotten a tad bit of luck with mace specials. Remember a critical also has a 100% stun rate, so your stun proc can be determined by much more than just that (as I said earlier, my mace averages between 1/2-1/3 of hits being a stun, so about a 40% rate or so, but it only has a 29% stun proc). In addition, I have 140% overcharge (which I'm certain when going against the gods, every bit counts). If you have the spare mana, also keep weaken and poison on them (unless they have a full spirit attack bar). I also recommend buying some Scrolls of the Avatar from players in the WTS forums, as they give you Shield, Barrier, and Haste. Try some Scrolls of Shadows as well, as they give you shadow veil. I know for my fights, the gods were likely stunned for about 3/4 of the fight, and they usually only got off 1-2 specials. If you still find you're having some troubles, try buying some soul stones at 1,000-1,500 each. They increase your Overcharge by 100% (even over your current max), and I BELIEVE they stack. So, one of those adds an extra 33% damage to all of your melee attacks.

The main things to take away, that you haven't already been using (the weaken is good), are the Avatars and Shadows (they raise your evade by 20% at a cost of 50C/30 turns - a very nice investment, which caused multiple spirit attacks to miss). The Haste provided by the Avatars also allows you to get, on average, two hits in per one hit they get (and you can get Avatars at 250C each, for ~50 turns of Haste, Shield, and Barrier). When you're stunning every 2-3 turns, that means that 2/3 (1/3 chance [really, higher than that] of stunning, multiplied by two hits before they get to attack) of the time you can restun them before they can even think about using that spirit attack. The last thing is to use Poison - it halves the rate that their SP/MP recharges, so throw that on them whenever SP or MP isn't full. If they're full already, it's not doing much other than a tiny bit of damage, and isn't worth the MP overall.

Edit: Oh yes, and one more thing: If you have Regen, use it when you get Channeling. With the amount of time the gods are stunned, it will often heal you right back to full health (or very close) by the time they are unstunned.

Also, I use a set of power armor, however that may affect the outcome (I know it gives me at least 200-300 extra damage per hit and some extra accuracy/crit chances, as well as alright defenses).

Also, I'm throwing this in because I need to remember to give you and Dcherry a karma shot when it regenerates.

I guess Avatar scrolls are all that and a bag of chips. I actually stopped keeping Poison on for IPU and FSM because the 114 damager per turn and the mana required to keep it up didn't seem feasible. That might've been when I got their Spirit Attack way more than RL (on which I kept Poison on constantly). I didn't even know Poison slowed the target regen rate. Good to know for future battles. Thanks!

Spirit Shield is useless without any AP in Spirit Tanks, right? I can't imagine 151 Spirit lasting long between Spirit Shield and Spark of Life. :\ I need 25 AP to get everything I want out of the 190 and 200 tiers, so it seems like it will take forever before my Spirit is at a respectable level. Adept Learner is high too, and I want to start saving up for Hath.. ugh

Spirit shield is actually quite useful even without any AP in spirit tanks.
A few things that make it superior to spark of life:
1. In maximum it takes only 25% of your base spirit, while spark takes a fixed 50% each time it activate.
Which means it's eaiser to replenish using spirit gem.
2. Spirit shield drains your mana according to how much damage you received. Spark only cares about your hp dropping below 0.
3. You'll need to recast spark of life once it activates. If you use spirit shield, you don't need to recast until its duration expires.

Some people may argue that you'll need to keep your hp at a fair level when you're using spirit shield, but come on, you're going to let spark of life unnecessarily activates? No! You will still keep a fair level of hp.

oops. I should have mentioned that as well. I just got my first level of spirit tank about 3 hours ago. I never used any spirit tank prior til now. Spirit shield blows spark out of the water until you go up against 9 IWBTH monsters. Then it's probably a wise idea to use both.

Spirit shield is actually quite useful even without any AP in spirit tanks.
2. Spirit shield drains your mana according to how much damage you received. Spark only cares about your hp dropping below 0.

I think you mean draining spirit?

So basically Spirit Shield functions as a sponge to absorb hits that would otherwise wreck your entire HP bar, and Spark of Life is another chance if you get banged by a bunch of small hits?

yep. with spiritshield you should be virtually immortal in a 1v1 unless a) the guy quad taps you four big ones or (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) you run out of spirit

308 9 You gain 50050 Credits!
308 8 You gain 6050 EXP!
308 7 Your HP and MP have been fully restored!
308 6 Arena Token Bonus! [Token of Blood]
308 5 Arena Clear Bonus! [Fine Estoc of Balance]
308 4 Real Life dropped [Black T-Shirt]
308 3 You are Victorious!
308 2 Real Life has been defeated.
308 1 You hit Real Life for 604 void damage.

thanks to you (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Thanks guys. Looking forward to the 190 tier. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I just beat the gods. How the hell do you people do it without using items? My mace is 28% proc stun and I'm sure I used 5 greater mana pots and 2 greater spirit pots (+5 or so infusions for IPU and FSM each). I kept Spark of Life, Protection, (and the proper infusion for IPU/FSM) on myself and Weaken on them constantly and I was being 1-shot'd by their spirit attacks left and right. I'm sure the stuns helped, but I can't imagine how I would do it without pots.

I probably could've saved on those pots if I had Silence, or if the stun proc can be refreshed if the target is already stunned. (ie I can stun them again back to 3 turns when they still have x turns left.) But that'd make maces overpowered.

Why shouldn't you use items? They drop in enough numbers that they sholdn't be holy and used only in extreme emergencies.
For me, in longer arenas it seems to drop more pots than I can carry with me in my inventory.

Being one-shotted by their magical and spirit attacks is the big problem.
One way to fix that is spark of life, except that spark will only work 2 or maybe 3 times, more than that and you will be out of spirit.
Silence makes things much easier, because that means no magic or spirit attack, so all you have to worry about is having high enough health to survive a standard attack that crits.
If you can do that, then you don't need spark of life, and can save a little mana there.

Also, you should try out using haste, having more turns compared to your enemy is really nice.
And poison is good to, I'll say why later.

Spirit Shield is useless without any AP in Spirit Tanks, right? I can't imagine 151 Spirit lasting long between Spirit Shield and Spark of Life. :\ I need 25 AP to get everything I want out of the 190 and 200 tiers, so it seems like it will take forever before my Spirit is at a respectable level. Adept Learner is high too, and I want to start saving up for Hath.. ugh
When you do this, what do you do about your buffs and HP? Whenever I do this all the MP I earn goes right back into healing and restoring Supportive spells, so I never get anywhere.

Spirit shield is superior to Spark of life in most cases.
Spirit shield will activate when you get hit for more than 25% of your health, and will then remove spirit points dependant on how much damage above that 25% of you health that it has to absorb, maxing out at 20% (with full APs) of your base spirit for a hit that would do more than 100% of your health in damage.
So in theory, if you get hit by something that would take off 30% of your health, it will only do 25% of you health in damage, and 1% of your base spirit.
Meaning you can survive quite a few hits that would have easily killed you, provided you can heal up between them, since them doing 25% of your health means you will only survive 4 of them before you run out of health, no matter how much spririt you have.

Not having enough MP is a problem for melees, but if that wasn't a problem, the game would be easy. Just gotta prioritize.
Not having enough AP is only a problem for lowbies apparently, the really high level players have more AP than there are things to invest them in, leaving them with spares.
As for money and hath....well, you gotta have something to strive for.
Spark of life is superior here, since when you HP hits zero, it will activate and nullify all other attacks that round, giving you a chance to heal up, as well as giving you that cloak buff that reduces damage for a few extra turns.

I guess Avatar scrolls are all that and a bag of chips. I actually stopped keeping Poison on for IPU and FSM because the 114 damager per turn and the mana required to keep it up didn't seem feasible. That might've been when I got their Spirit Attack way more than RL (on which I kept Poison on constantly). I didn't even know Poison slowed the target regen rate. Good to know for future battles. Thanks!

Poison is actually quite good.
It does a bit of damage, and deprecating spells gets twice the amount of bonus duration from proficiency compared to supportive spells, so the high cost of poison might just be that you haven't increased your deprecating proficiency enough.

Apart from doing damage, which is actually quite respectable in my opinion, based on it's cost and duration (try calculating it's damage per turn, that it got a 100% chance to do that damage, not counting misses when casting the spell, and how many turns it lasts) but it also halves mana and spirit regeneration for the monster, which admittedly doesn't do all that much if you use silence, but if you wanna use weaken + spirit shield instead, that might be good.
And it also gives you a reduced chance of missing the affected monster with attacks, so it will also help out your melee damage, and also it's proc chance, since you can't proc if you can't hit.

Poison is a nice spell for bosses, since it gives some nice effects and lasts a very long time with decent proficiency.

I'm pretty sure APs are a problem for everyone except older players.
I'm level ~240 and still 300 APs away from completing my Ability Tree.
Mostly because Artifacts keep giving me crystals I do not want.

I only have 300 AP now, which is not enough to complete even the SP tanks.
Those older players get tons of AP before that AP revamp.

Huh....I give up. Practically useless to say that.

This post has been edited by varst: Sep 29 2011, 15:18

So basically Spirit Shield functions as a sponge to absorb hits that would otherwise wreck your entire HP bar, and Spark of Life is another chance if you get banged by a bunch of small hits?

I feel an urge to rip your av out of your posts for some reason >_>

Maybe it's time you got a new Mokou avatar (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Meanwhile, I've now got 5 OC overcharges maxed and I'm still not feeling much of a difference. Though I am now starting to spam spirit attacks on giants. Tends to one shot them on 3-4 spirit points.