[X] My Assistant

I never thought I'd need to confirm this, but....

All drops stop at stamina = 9, correct?

Yep

Yep

Is Long gone worth it?

Is Long gone worth it?

Sure, if you drink enough.

Is Long gone worth it?

If you use use an ED every day it will only take about 100 days for it to pay for itself.

What prof should I train up before my rate normalize? I want to be a mage.

What prof should I train up before my rate normalize? I want to be a mage.

Not realy needed, but if you insist: fisrt choose your element, or rather: holy, dark or elemental.
1. Grind that element's proficiency by spamming spells
2. Grind staff proficiency by wacking monsters on the head with a staff (I use a dedicated low strength persona for this, equiped with the lowest damage staff I could find in bazaar and never repairing it so it is 100% damaged)

And save credits for the element proficiency perk of your choice.

Is Long gone worth it?

Certainly worth it, but what's even more important: the effect is very visible every day, which makes this a very gratifying perk.

Wanted to write up something for this in the next couple of days, but might as well do it now (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
// Having written the post now, i must say i think i missed the point (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) But gonna leave it here anyway, just for reference and feedback and stuff (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/duck.gif)

So i started my mage switch at about 360, now i'm at 370, but first things first.
My starting point is pretty crappy, but survivability oriented, 1H and wanted to switch to elemental mage. I started with about 100 prof in elemental, 100 cloth prof and 160 prof in deprecating.

Step 1: The long boring grind
Get Hoverplay and set it up to spam T3/2/1 on Hover. Equip some exq+ phase of element and cotton of elementalist, set difficulty to hell and just spam elemental spells to gain proficiency.
This is boring as hell, as you don't really do any damage at all, especially without Imperil, but prof gain is the goal so grind away.
This took me a week or two of just spamming spells in Arena. Also buy plenty of Health Draughts/Potions and Mana Draughts/Potions on WTS. About 2-5k each should do it for a while.

Step 2: Gearing up
While you're spamming away for proficiency, go on the lookout for decent (not top grade just yet) Leg Phase of your element and either a Leg your elements Redwood or Willow Staff of Destruction on the auctions. As the market is right now, you should be able to get a base set going for around 1m credits.
Once you get an armor piece, switch back to 1H and IW it to get Jug (5 is best of course, but if you don't have enough Amnesia Shards like i do, 3 or 4 may work as well for now). Once the piece is IWed go back to step 1 (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)
This is also the step where you should decide if you want to go with 4+1 or 3+2, as we're still grinding away i picked 4+1 for now.

Step 3: We're getting somewhere
Once your effective elemental proficiency goes above your player level it's time to actually do something with it. By now you should have some stuff from Step2, so ramp up the difficulty a bit and include Imperil as you'll have to get up that prof as well to be effective (seriously, the difference is ridonculous).
So start each round with imperiling the mobs then cast T3 if everything is still alive, otherwise finish off with T2/1. Your MP consumption will steeply ramp up at this point (you're actually spending more mana on Imperil than damage spells), so check that you have enough potions. You'll likely gain more (almost double) prof in deprecating than elemental per battle at this point.

Step 4: Looking forward
By now you should have your base set bought and IW'ed with somewhere between 140-150% HP Bonus. Monsters no longer resist every little spell you cast so go ahead and try what you can do (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)
This is the point where it gets horribly expensive, aka where you actually start forging. As prices are now, you'll spend upwards of 1mil per piece just to forge it to 5 (phasons are kinda expensive).
---

My take away so far ...
- I'm now able to do everything on IWBTH just fine, PFUDOR only really works on RE, page 1 arenas and, oddly enough, SG arenas (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)
- On normal rounds i went down from 3.5t/s to about 2t/s due to imperil, but each round only lasts 7-10 turns now instead of 50-60 as before with 1H.
- In comparison it's way faster to the extent that i keep rapidly losing stamina (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)
- SG arenas are annoying as get out but don't take any longer than before.
- Being used to 1H i was surprised at the amount of potions you have to drink and cures you need to cast.
- The main problem seems to be ordinary melee attacks as far as damage taken goes. I hardly ever get hit by a spell or something else that triggers spirit shell.
- If you're using numpad to imperil and mouse to hover attack, it's way more comfortable to move your keyboard in a way, that you don't have to reach about your body to reach the numpad (as in less chance for carpal tunnel comfortable), at least if you use your mouse with the right hand (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)
- I went with fire even if it's the "crappy element", but on the other hand it's cheap

And just to show i'm not cheating too much in regards to what i'm saying, here's a gear/stat screen

there is any guide out there to a simple mage?
i play a 1h+shield // 2hand with heavy armor all my 250 lvls, and want to switch to mage but dont know anything about it.

also i see that with hi latency, mage is in general more fast clearer than 1h/2h, is that true?

If you don't mind, I will add a bit of your text to the advice page on wiki.

a doubt about Action Speed page: https://ehwiki.org/wiki/action_speed

is it only my impression or the concepts of Action Speed and Action Time overlap a bit? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

Imperil and Silence just became available to me, should I invest AP on it for my 1H Heavy and DW Light personas?

Imperil and Silence just became available to me, should I invest AP on it for my 1H Heavy and DW Light personas?

iirc at your level silence was really useful for me at high difficulties. beiing sure that a certain amount of mobs won't MP/SP you is quite a relief. plus:
1. fully upgradiing it is quite cheap for what it offers.
2. it's not like it can really do that much against one target and with such ridicolous duration/cooldown.

if you have trouble with APs, i'd suggest you to upgrade Silence and a bit of Better Imperil.

Why does for mage, dex is 0.2 x level? I thought it need to be higher to increase evade. From the advice page

Why does for mage, dex is 0.2 x level? I thought it need to be higher to increase evade. From the advice page

Dex does not increase evade.
Agi does.

Dex is for parry. Is evade more preferable than parry for mage?

Dex is for parry. Is evade more preferable than parry for mage?

Well, you can evade spells and physical attacks, but can only parry physical attacks.
You still want parry as mage, but it's not as important as dodge due to the hit-rolls, which go Dodge > Block > Parry/Resist. (Hence also 1H avoiding dodge like the plague)
For normal rounds you'll mainly get hit by physical attacks, but let's assume you have 50% dodge and 50% parry with 0% block, as you're not using a shield.
1. You will evade 50% of all incoming attacks.
2. Then you have 50% attacks left over, which do not get blocked for obvious reason
3. Of those remaining 50% you will then parry 50%, so your effective mitigation through parry is 25%.

Also, the higher your evade gets, the less benefit you gain from parry.
back of napkin math: effective_parry = ((1 - dodge) * (1 - block) * parry)
There is always a balance there, where you will get more for putting exp into dex than the same exp in agi.

Also, the higher your evade gets, the less benefit you gain from parry.
back of napkin math: effective_parry = ((1 - dodge) * (1 - block) * parry)
There is always a balance there, where you will get more for putting exp into dex than the same exp in agi.

Well, effective parry is not a good measure of the effectiveness.
I mean, if you have 0 block and you parry 9 hits out of 10 and if you have 90 block and you parry 9 hits out of 100 (+ 90 blocked) you parry a lot less but the effectiveness is the same, out of 10 incoming hits you parry 9.
Parry, block and dodges should be judged based on damage received, and in that case 50% parry will halve the damage anyway, irregardless of the block and dodge you have (excluding magical damage).

Dex is for parry. Is evade more preferable than parry for mage?

for anyone but 1H, actually.

Well, effective parry is not a good measure of the effectiveness.
I mean, if you have 0 block and you parry 9 hits out of 10 and if you have 90 block and you parry 9 hits out of 100 (+ 90 blocked) you parry a lot less but the effectiveness is the same, out of 10 incoming hits you parry 9.
Parry, block and dodges should be judged based on damage received, and in that case 50% parry will halve the damage anyway, irregardless of the block and dodge you have (excluding magical damage).

Yup. Exactly. No matter how high the other stats are, parry will always filter the same % of physical attacks.
Another main problem about why mages keep dex lower than other stats is because dex is for parry only for them.

I want to move up to PFUDOR Arena for the additional credits and exp, but my gear isn't good enough. I can't survive it reliably, and when I do, my clear speed is very low, thanks to the SGs.
I use DW/Light armor and I cast Imperil on boss monsters. I also have IA 4 and keep Protection/SoL/Haste/Spirit Shield up all of the time. I don't have a lot of experience with other styles, but this approach seems to have gotten me pretty far without requiring much attention. However, it's not holding together in PFUDOR. This might be an equipment problem, but I'm thinking that my play style might also be an issue.
Is 1H superior to DW for high difficulties? It seems that Overwhelming Strikes is really needed to overcome the increased Parry chance everything has on PFUDOR, even though my weapons have Overpower on them, and DW seems to have trouble with survivability in general. The whole reason I chose DW was for the clear speed, but it seems, from what I've read, that 1H has comparable or superior damage when factoring in counters and permanent Spirit Stance. Does 1H require fewer turns to clear Arenas than DW, even on lower difficulties?

tl;dr: Should I switch from DW to 1H?

Is 1H superior to DW for high difficulties?

Very, especially for lower level players who don't have the gear quality / forging / AP / level scaling to shrug off PF's high incoming damage.

Overwhelming Strikes is very nice, but non-mage takes a while to clear rounds anyway; dealing with monster hits without getting overwhelmed is the bigger issue, which is solved with 1h's shield.

Does 1H require fewer turns to clear Arenas than DW, even on lower difficulties?

For lower-level players, definitely. (The difference is less for high-level players)

If you try 1h, make sure you use a rapier. (Actually, even if you continue with DW, make sure you have a rapier in at least one slot)