Greater Elemental Flares

[kutter]

So I dug up a greater elemental flare token and I am wondering what the thoughts are on the best way to use it. I was thinking of adding flares to my paladins forever armor and then adding the greater to it, but it does seem a bit of a waste, so then I thought my rogues perfect 7X wakizashi that already has fire flares, but he is a TWC from ambush hunter so again, seems like a waste when most things are already dead. They would not let me add it to my UAC wizards veil iron footwraps with void flares so that is out and apparently you cannot add it to a nervestaff, so I am at something of a loss as to how to best make use of it. Yes I know, 1st world problem.

[gilchristr]

What seems like a waste is for your wizard to use footwraps with just regular void flares when you have access to greater. Why didnt they let you use the token on the footwraps?

[kutter]

I suspect because they are scripted, they are from Duskruin, they are the some white leather footwraps covered in veil iron spikes. That would have been my 1st choice, a UAC wizard spamming 1 second kicks with greater flares, Duskruin would have gotten a lot easier.

[Tarquine]

Could be wrong, but I had another version of the veil iron UAC stuff, and it was disruption flared. Perhaps yours is as well, and not compatible for that reason? Otherwise, bummer that you can't add it.

[kutter]

I just found that out, it is not void it is disruption, so that would be why it will not let me add it. Still a bummer.

[gilchristr]

You asked if it would be a waste to add to armor; I don't think you can put GEF on armor

[kutter]

You asked if it would be a waste to add to armor; I don't think you can put GEF on armor

And you would be correct so I checked my rogues wakizashi, since I am kind of down to that and it is not cheap, 62000 seashells, now have to decide if it is worth it or just sell the damn thing.

[gilchristr]

If it doesnt help your rogue, dont use it for the rogue. Can you get some different boots, add to the boots, and then have the wizard use those boots, and sell the ones the wizard is using now.

[Derex]

If it doesnt help your rogue, dont use it for the rogue. Can you get some different boots, add to the boots, and then have the wizard use those boots, and sell the ones the wizard is using now.

i dunno flares on rogues can be good if ur twc and need to MOC for room clear

[Derex]

but ya id prob just sell em or put em on the wiz

[gilchristr]

Muer-something was selling 7x void flaring boots tonight, you should buy those, and then do the greater token on them, and have your wizard use those.

Then sell the ones you got

[kutter]

Well, I suppose I could, had not thought about that. Hate to give up my footwraps because they are somewhat weighted too but I suppose I need to think more about it.

[gilchristr]

I would be not surprised on bit if it ended up that, due to some bug, crit weighting on UAC was doing nothing. Seriously, I know exactly what weighting on normal weapons does, and it cannot work the same way for UAC since crit is determined by endroll. You had done a thread before comparing your weighted boots to non-weighted boots, I remember going through it in detail, and found that the results were not impactful (not even observable really).

Even if it isn't bugged, and it does something, whatever it does do may be way way weaker than what crit weighting does on normal weapons. For instance, possibly crit weighting on UAC gives "phantom" modifier to your endroll. So a 195 endroll would be treated as a 201 endroll for purposes of crit weighting. But if thats how it worked, it would be much weaker than crit weighting on weapons (on normal weapons somewhat crit weighting is more akin to adding 15 to and endroll, depending on weapon involved).

[Donquix]

or if you really want to keep the weighting there's some of the 5x SWCW (dark leather moccasins) boots for sale on player shops for 5m. As far as I know they have no scripts at all, then pick up a vaccuum token and there you go.

[Maerit]

I believe crit weighting helps to offset low MM. With a wizard, that is good. Best to use on boots if kick is your T3 attack, and put damage on gloves so you can bolster your jabs.

[rolfard]

There's a hard cap on crit levels per positioning that cannot be overcome with weighting

[Maerit]

There's a hard cap on crit levels per positioning that cannot be overcome with weighting

With both lower MM and UAF, a wizard will actually not always hit the max crit tier at tier 3, so having crit weighting can mitigate that. Someone, say like a bard, who uses a shield + MH weapon, would also find crit weighting on their boots handy if they are using kick for tier 3 since their MM will be substantially impacted by the held items.

Wouldn't recommend for gloves if holding a UAC weapon though. Too many factors involved in that setup.

[kutter]

Well if I can find whoever was selling the void flaring boots then I will talk to them about that. Losing the crit weighting is not a huge deal; realized my footwraps are only light, my handwraps are somewhat.

[gilchristr]

"[Merchant]-GSIV:Meureii: "Selling - some salt-stained canvas boots with thick soles - 7x Void Flaring - 20m""

[khorpulent]

With the great elemental certificates from DR, it was possible to add the flares to a vanilla weapon. The cert actually said that it had to be a flaring weapon, but for whatever reason they didn't actually enforce that requirement.

[Maerit]

In the end, if you're talking UAC it would be best to have the greater flares on gloves over boots. I did some log parsing earlier, and have bubble flares w/ disintegration flares on my boots, and since my T3 attack is kick, they're only activating around 8-10% of the time. While I have KO flares and disintegrate flare on my gloves. The disintegrate flares are activating 20% of the time while the KO flares are actually higher (because KO apparently has a special high flare %).

You get the most mileage out of flares on your gloves.

Or, just sell them to me, so I can add them to my new shiny runestaff being used on my rapid fire wizard (which is where GEF truly shine).

[kutter]

In the end, if you're talking UAC it would be best to have the greater flares on gloves over boots. I did some log parsing earlier, and have bubble flares w/ disintegration flares on my boots, and since my T3 attack is kick, they're only activating around 8-10% of the time. While I have KO flares and disintegrate flare on my gloves. The disintegrate flares are activating 20% of the time while the KO flares are actually higher (because KO apparently has a special high flare %).

You get the most mileage out of flares on your gloves.

Or, just sell them to me, so I can add them to my new shiny runestaff being used on my rapid fire wizard (which is where GEF truly shine).

I would say that for anyone other than a UAC Wizard you are correct, but I use his feet to attack and only use hands when needed to tier up since all of it is one second and the modifiers for feet are better than hands.

[Maerit]

I would say that for anyone other than a UAC Wizard you are correct, but I use his feet to attack and only use hands when needed to tier up since all of it is one second and the modifiers for feet are better than hands.

That's the thing. I did my log parsing on a capped UAC warmage who uses feet as T3 attacks. To tier up, I use jab since kicking is not efficient until you tier up, and he jabs 5x more than any other attack (including kicks). If you parse your logs, I think you'll find that your jabs are where your flare damage is the most noticeable.

I also did the same parsing on a UAC bard who uses punch as his T3 attack, and the end result was very similar though the flare rate on hands was down by around 3-4% because his punches are killing targets and negating the flares more regularly, but the kick flares were also low in flare rate since kicks are often fatal.

[gilchristr]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

[Maerit]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

This might be true at lower levels, but not at cap. The AS problems are real for a warmage at cap. UAF vs UDF with zero EBP makes it substantially easier to land UCS hits than it would be to swing a cestus where your AS is likely lower than the DS of many targets resulting in a lot of misses. On average, my giantman warmage can kill targets in Nelemar within 10-12 seconds of UCS attacks and they're all aimed attacks that aren't missing (aim at the head of target).

501 to bring them to the floor, drop their defenses, and then ground & pound them to death. In a swarm, 410 to bring everything down, ground & pound until they're all dead. This is very fast at cap with 2x EMC for rapid fire, so you can cast your disables with 1s cast RT. I use 519 evoke on non-corp undead as a disable (defenders are immune to 410/909/501). Stomp 909 is great in lieu of having rapid fire.

[Mobius1]

In my testing, I did notice a difference in the amount of tier 2 death crits I got with HCW, but this was with punch (to the head.).

But because tier 2 caps at rank 8 crit, and a rank 8 is needed to death crit, the crit weighting only does so much to combat the crit randomization.

I'd say about 1/3 of my tier 2 punches result in a death crit with crit weighted gloves (Rolfard has told me that he has similar results with his crit weighted gloves.). Though that is certainly an increase over not having it, it's much more minimal compared to the impact crit weighting can have on normal ambushes. But crit weighting can be pretty worthless on normal ambushes, too, if you are already achieving rank 9 crits.

If I were to guess, I'd say UAC crit weighting works exactly the same as it does with normal attacks - it's just that the crit system itself is different. The crit randomization system with regular attacks, has no impact on an ambush at all, as long as you can achieve a rank 9 crit, because even at worst randomization outcome, you still will get a rank 5, which is a death crit. On the other hand, tier 2 UAC, you need a rank 8 and nothing less to kill.

I do often wonder, if you could theoretically achieve 100% or near 100% death crits on tier 2 (assuming you hit the targeted location successfully.), with enough crit weighting, UAF, and MM, and using kick. But as far as I've pushed it with punch (750+ UAF, HCW), and Rolfard with his MCW gloves, our results have been pretty underwhelming. But I'd love to see the results of someone kicking with MCW boots, 800+ UAF, and good MM - Maybe the results would make it worthwhile! (Or maybe it sucks...)

Of course, as for anything but T2 attacks, crit weighting is near useless in most circumstances. A T3 is just plain going to kill whether you have weighting or not (Though I won't speak for wizards, as someone claims it helps them.).

[kutter]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

So I am curious about why a cestus and why not a fist-scythe? I was always under the impression if a melee wizard is going to swing a weapon they should swing the heaviest they can in 1 second. So I have tried this, since I have a fire flaring one for when I was hunting some stuff in the nations that had to have fire flares and it works, to a point. As Maerit pointed out, the penalty to UAF is not as severe to wizards as AS seems to be, and I say seems since I have not done any testing. My UAC wizard was just something fun to see what if.

My typical attack style, if there is only 1 or 2 critters is to stomp and wail, if there are more than two e-wave & tremors then wail. He hunts pretty well, I certainly have no complaints but he is only 63 so will see. I typically get perfect Arena runs 90-95% of the time. But it is a binary thing for him, he is easier perfect or he is dead. If you get him on the ground, then he is like any other wizard, squishy as hell, PLUS he is offensive, but it is what it is.

[gilchristr]

Only because I thought the cestus would have a high enough DF to do the job, and it will still leave you with a really high MM in case you want to end up doing kicks. (in fact, for *kicks* I think you could see no penalty for holding a cestus).

A fist scythe would badly affect your MM, for sure.