[X] My Assistant

If you have good staff proficiency and a good ether theft staff it's actually very easy to gain mana from a single powerful monster. Remember that if you ever get too low you can cast Magic Missile to proc Coalesced Mana for free.

n125 has the right idea: use the legendaries as mana batteries. Debuff them until they aren't a threat and MM/ET at your leisure.

What is a good debuff combination for doing that? Weaken/Blind, Weaken/Bewilder? Or something involving Silence, Slow, Nerf, or Poison?

i go with weaken/blind

Today i felt a bit daring and used something like 10 legendary droppings. The Shrine was nice to me and gave me a superior ethereal mace of the ox.

So my question now is is ethereal stats really better than normal weapons? Comparing my two maces which would be better?

http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=f95c957206
http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=780cea1b95

Also which is better haste or absorb? What are their mana costs at max and duration? I have some ability points to spare. I'm thinking of haste but donno if the duration and additional speed is worth using it. What is haste's boost a plus 5 or so?

This post has been edited by 545454: Oct 19 2011, 05:30

Ethereal weapons are often worse than comparable-quality non-ethereal weapons, to my knowledge. The benefit to them is that they deal Void damage, which ignores Physical damage mitigation (but is still subject to Physical damage TYPE mitigation, ie. Crushing/Slashing/Piercing).

Ethereal weapons are often worse than comparable-quality non-ethereal weapons, to my knowledge. The benefit to them is that they deal Void damage, which ignores Physical damage mitigation (but is still subject to Physical damage TYPE mitigation, ie. Crushing/Slashing/Piercing).

Other way around. They ignore Crushing/Slashing/Piercing mitigation, but are still subject to physical mitigation from their endurance, etc.

And IIRC Tenboro stated ethereal items have somewhat decreased damage in general, but it's usually worth it to ignore the enemy's crushing resistance, otherwise giants, dragons, and such take forever to kill. (Also they don't have any burden or interference which is real nice).

As for which of those weapons you should use, I can only suggest test them yourself. Though I think the Ethereal mace might just have too low weapon damage to be worth using.

Absorb is useless. Don't bother with it.

Edit: for duration and cost see this page:
http://ehwiki.org/wiki/spells

This post has been edited by mkonji: Oct 19 2011, 05:40

My goodness. Kudos to whomever improved the Spells page on the wiki.

I've been thinking about doing holy/dark maging. Should I just wait for 250 and use those two spells since they are the same prof and explode on each other? Or is that massively inefficient ?

You don't need to wait till 250. The only problem currently is to collect those fenrir phases. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)
I can't say whether it's more efficient or not though.
I can beat all arenas in Hell difficulty at around lv.250, but then my equipments seems to be better than average.

Soul Burst is nice, but nothing to write home about.
And it costs a lot of mana (almost twice the cost of Ragnarok).

What I mean is: use soul burst in the last round only, against bosses.
With a destruction staff it should deal way more damage with the same mana usage.
You can test it by observing how many rounds you need to kill the bosses with their weakness, then use soul burst to see how much it improves things.
Soul burst is also good for konata, a good idea from Ballistic9.

How could I beat "End of Days' arena (lv 220)? I play it as a mage and always run out of mana before made it to final stage because I keep spamming Holy2 to those legendary monsters

Ether Theft would be my guess, but I'm not sure. I'm interested in the answer too since I was planning on asking this question in about 30 levels. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

What is a good debuff combination for doing that? Weaken/Blind, Weaken/Bewilder? Or something involving Silence, Slow, Nerf, or Poison?

ET should be your choice if you run out of mana. You may need an hour if you don't have heimdall phases though.
As for debuff, Nerf itself should be the best choice for anyone. Even better than weaken combination or anything else. At least that's how I play it.
I will explain my logic if anyone's interested.

This post has been edited by varst: Oct 19 2011, 06:29

Thanks for advices, everyone. Looks like it's gonna be a long fight. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

As for debuff, Nerf itself should be the best choice for anyone. Even better than weaken combination or anything else. At least that's how I play it.
I will explain my logic if anyone's interested.

I'm interested. Please

Thanks in advance.

Soul Burst makes Trio so much faster (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I only need to ET on the Dance With Dragons arena on the double/triple legendary rounds. I have Weaken+Slow+Magnet+Nerf up for those, for a safety net and to keep an ET+CM going on all 3. With single legendaries you should only need Weaken+Nerf up (Slow/Magnet slows down mana regen too much, only use if your Staff ET% is too low).

What I mean is: use soul burst in the last round only, against bosses.
With a destruction staff it should deal way more damage with the same mana usage.
You can test it by observing how many rounds you need to kill the bosses with their weakness, then use soul burst to see how much it improves things.
Soul burst is also good for konata, a good idea from Ballistic9.

Eh, I just noticed Burning Soul dramatically increases the damage of Soul Burst.
I stand corrected, it is more efficient.

Yay. My first decent exquisite.
/emocry

Heheh. My first Exquisite was an Ethereal Axe of the Vampire with both proc rates above 20%.

Pretty nice katana, though. Good proc chance, fair stats and a bit above average damage, I think.

Better than your Estoc for non-Boss purposes, at least.

i use Dw. Do i need to upgrade Intelligence (is it even important for a dw user?) or should i leave it more behind ??
Its pretty cheap now so i thought it might be worth to upgrade it.

Here are my stats.
Strengh 81
Dexterity 80
Agility 80
Endurance 80
Intelligence 32
Wisdom 66

This post has been edited by Bonebuster: Oct 19 2011, 20:12

As for debuff, Nerf itself should be the best choice for anyone. Even better than weaken combination or anything else. At least that's how I play it.

Let's confine the discussion to mages, on single legend rounds for EODs in normal difficulty.

You have a range of spells to choose from:
Buff spells: regen2, haste, SV, spark, aranca focus, spirit shield.
Debuff spells: poison, slow, weaken, bewilder, blind, silence, nerf

We need to establish a few principles:
1. We need a spell which can effectively prevent us from dying.
2. We need spells which can buff our damage.
3. We need spells which can replenish our health.
4. We need spells which can improve our stat.
5. Buffs are better than debuffs, assuming they serve the same purpose.
Unless you need to fight 50 or more turns per round, you're bound to waste some mana on those debuffs, since they cannot be brought to next round.
Those wasted mana will accumulate to some noticeable amount, since you need to repeat the whole process 50 times.

So...
1. Spirit shield is a no-brainer. Way too better than spark and silence.
2. Aranca focus is a must. Nerf and bewilder in the waiting list.
3. Regen2.
4. Haste, SV.
Up till here, we have established what buff spells to use.
5. The argument here is: let spirit shield and regen2 do its work.
Without any debuffs, legends are hitting me with 400-500 damages. Since I have about 30% evade, it means legends are hitting me with less than 300 damages per round on average.
This amount of damage should easily be covered by regen2 (even lv.220 player with 110 prof. should be able to replenish least 270 hp per turn. Yes, I calculated that)
(If you feel uncomfortable, use oak staff of heimdall. It surely helps)
Thus you don't need to further decrease the amount of damage you receive. Which means you don't need poison, slow, weaken, blind.

Bewilder and nerf's a bit different. Since they decrease legends' defense, they pretty much act as a buff to our damage.
I haven't tested bewilder, but I should save 2 banish per round with nerf on right now. Minus the cost to cast nerf, it means I can save 1 banish per round. And again, for 50 rounds it will accumulate to a large amount of mp.

In short, with regen2/SP shield/aranca focus/SV/haste/nerf, you should be able to clear EOD in a mana-efficient way.

Anyone feel free to discuss if I have made any incorrect assumptions, or you have different opinions.

This post has been edited by varst: Oct 19 2011, 21:07

makes sense. when i said blind/weaken i meant it in a more general case. ie, that's what i use on FSM/higher difficulty legendaries like IWBTH konata etc.

regardless, the blind helps a lot for me during my mana recharging since that means i don't have to spend time SP harvesting since i dodge at least half the SP attacks that come flying from the legendaries. i think i weaken out of habit more than for utility purpose against the normal legendaries, but i really don't like it when they crit me. more of a psychological thing.

also, if i remember right, you mana battery every round more/less right? i tend to kill/kill/kill/mana battery rather than kill+mana battery/kill+mana battery/kill+mana battery

thus it's in my best interest to keep the mana battery alive as *long as possible* so i can go from 100 mana -> full. which means i *don't* want to increase the damage they're taking. as for bewilder... i don't find it that useful for reducing SP attack damage. i'd much rather just dodge (blind yay!)

This post has been edited by dcherry: Oct 19 2011, 21:29

I still think Weaken is worth casting.
Nerf = 1.25 damage bonus at 20 base cost
Nerf + Weaken = 1.25*1.1 = 1.375 damage bonus at 30 base cost

If you can spare mana for Nerf chances are you can do the same for Weaken.
Plus, more chances to proc Coalesced Mana.

Personally, I stopped using any debuff at all.
Killing a Legendary on Normal takes me 4-5 Pestilences right now, it feels like a waste spending two turns for spells I don't really need.
I'd rather use them to try and steal some mana.

Yay. My first decent exquisite.
/emocry

Can't help but brag a bit then.
http://hentaiverse.org/pages/showequip.php...;key=9cc3ab5be0
Got that exquisite as a arena reward.
Pretty decent IMO.....

i use Dw. Do i need to upgrade Intelligence (is it even important for a dw user?) or should i leave it more behind ??
Its pretty cheap now so i thought it might be worth to upgrade it.

Here are my stats.
Strengh 81
Dexterity 80
Agility 80
Endurance 80
Intelligence 32
Wisdom 66

You can see the stats and what bonuses they give here.
http://ehwiki.org/wiki/Character_Stats

Basically, intelligence gives very little for a melee character. I gives magical base damage and magic crit rate, both of which are worthless for a melee (channeling is, as far as I know, not affected by magic crit).
It gives the same magic accuracy as wisdom, but only a third of the MP that wisdom gives, and gives no regen or anything else beneficial.

In my opinion, you should raise wisdom, by quite a bit, since that gives MP, MP regen and magic mitigation (as well as some magic accuracy and spell resist chance), all very important things even for a melee.
You need that mana and mana regen for buffs and heals.

Also, Endurance is life. It gives hitpoints and both physical and magical mitigation. You need more of that.

Personally, I have endurance as my highest stat, followed closely by wisdom.

Strength is a little more value than dexterity, both affect your damage output and gives a little bonus to either mitigation/HP or parry.
Agility mainly gives action speed, which isn't all big of a deal IMO. Not that you should let it drag far behind like intelligence, but I think dexterity does more of a difference.


So, short.
Primary: Endurance and wisdom.
Secondary: Strength and dexterity.
Close tertiary: Agility.

Last: Intelligence.

wait, pestilences? why not go with heimdall then? breached defense should make banish superior, no? i figured the only advantage of dark was the tier 3

e: IMO INT is "not important" attrib stat for melees while DEX is the "not important" attrib stat for mages.

This post has been edited by dcherry: Oct 19 2011, 21:38

wait, pestilences? why not go with heimdall then? breached defense should make banish superior, no? i figured the only advantage of dark was the tier 3

Because Snowflake gave me a full Fenrir set, and it would feel rude not to use it. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)