Wizard Training Advice

[Zzyzx]

Hi All!

I am back from a few year hiatus and noticed many changes.
I would like to ask for your advice in certain areas, mainly hunting.
There are so many experienced and helpful people in the Gemstone community I figured I would ask here first before using my annual fixskills.

My main is a capped Wizard. He was setup to maximize enchanting.
Now that the enchanting system was revamped he must hunt to gain essence.

I would like to solo in OTF for now, then other areas later.
My specific questions to maximize hunting are as follows:

1) Should he be bolting or warding when he hunts?
2) Depending on which is suggested above, what would be his common hunting rotation of spells?
3) Spell placement. Should I train 101 in each of the three spell circles (which looks optimal in the Trainer Excel program) or place elsewhere?
4) Lore - Should I place 50 in each of the 4 Lores or concentrate on 1 or 2 Lores?
5) Any other advice would be most welcome!

Thank you all in advance!

[Zzyzx]

Oh and Enhancives. Which ones would be most useful in hunting?

Thanks again!

[Maerit]

2x Spell Aim / EMC for rapid fire bolting is the strongest wizard style. Dex and Spell Aiming would be your primary enhancive stats. There are some elements of warding, but usually 100 MjE is sufficient to ward in capped hunting areas for the sake of 502/516. Most of the time you will 502 something to stun it and reduces it's defenses to bolt attacks (of the same element, thus cold attunement is the best since it works for the most bolts), or use a knock-down skill if stunning the creature isn't viable. Then steam bolt to death (903 evoked will cast 1707 if have 20+ ranks of fire lore). All this while keeping 919 and 515 going full time.

Due to enchanting being popular, the most common spell configuration is 100 MjE (priority 1), 77 MnE (priority 2), and 121 Wizard (priority 3) which gives you excellent hunting potential while still being a good enchanter.

[Methais]

Hi All!

I am back from a few year hiatus and noticed many changes.
I would like to ask for your advice in certain areas, mainly hunting.
There are so many experienced and helpful people in the Gemstone community I figured I would ask here first before using my annual fixskills.

My main is a capped Wizard. He was setup to maximize enchanting.
Now that the enchanting system was revamped he must hunt to gain essence.

I would like to solo in OTF for now, then other areas later.
My specific questions to maximize hunting are as follows:

1) Should he be bolting or warding when he hunts?
2) Depending on which is suggested above, what would be his common hunting rotation of spells?
3) Spell placement. Should I train 101 in each of the three spell circles (which looks optimal in the Trainer Excel program) or place elsewhere?
4) Lore - Should I place 50 in each of the 4 Lores or concentrate on 1 or 2 Lores?
5) Any other advice would be most welcome!

Thank you all in advance!

Dev nerfed our warding spells into dog shit a few years ago, so it's basically bolting and casting 917 now.

First thing to do at cap is max out your EMC to get rid of the cooldown on Rapid Fire.

Spells/lore/HP after that in pretty much any order you want. Put at least 20 ranks into fire lore to unlock Minor Steam - 4 mana high damage/low crit steam bolt you can cast via 903 EVOKE. Everything else is a personal preference imo.

If you're doing OTF, you can probably just call wind or ewave and then follow with either 917 or spam steam.

Wizards are still good, but we're really boring and tedious now for the most part.

[Murrandii]

I removed all water lore

I took 101 in earth to give high bonus to 917 for reasons methais said. My 520 rocks (pun intended) too. Giving so much earth lore makes my 510 and 518 (earth biased) better than steam. Mana wise, it's a bit higher BUT

leach

50 in fire for juicy 513 ranking and some bonus to 917 as well

51 in air for 50%+1 RT reduction (3 seconds rt = 1) with 535, nice synergy with 911 and 511.

Water is COMPLETE GARBAGE. Fast hunting means you'll lose 1 pulse (considering you get 50% essence, you lose just 1 pulse for every 2 minutes hunt)

Good wizards fry in 2-3 minutes anyway.

[Zzyzx]

Thank you everyone for all your informative suggestions! I REALLY appreciate it!

[zephyrii]

Enchanting equation has changed now a lot.

1) Its much harder to do difficult items now due to the 150% increase in ensorcell penalty and the high penalties added by various mechanical scripts.
2) They removed a lot of contributions to your enchanting capability. No more AUR. AS/MIU is minimal benefit, and no more benefits from MjE and MnE. That means to get the even moderately high difficult items you need ~200 wiz ranks. So the old split of 100/77/100 (+extras) is now quite a bit lame for dedicated enchanting.
3) Lores have been...not quite nerfed but are now much less useful for enchanting. Used to be I had to do at least 1.5x lores to feel at a sweet spot, now I barely even bother. Just 0.75x for some of the early breakpoints like timestop, 22 or 35 for fire lore, 25 or so for water lore, that's pretty much good enough now. Lores have become a lot more lackluster after the enchant water lore removal.

[drumpel]

Enchanting equation has changed now a lot.

1) Its much harder to do difficult items now due to the 150% increase in ensorcell penalty and the high penalties added by various mechanical scripts.
2) They removed a lot of contributions to your enchanting capability. No more AUR. AS/MIU is minimal benefit, and no more benefits from MjE and MnE. That means to get the even moderately high difficult items you need ~200 wiz ranks. So the old split of 100/77/100 (+extras) is now quite a bit lame for dedicated enchanting.
3) Lores have been...not quite nerfed but are now much less useful for enchanting. Used to be I had to do at least 1.5x lores to feel at a sweet spot, now I barely even bother. Just 0.75x for some of the early breakpoints like timestop, 22 or 35 for fire lore, 25 or so for water lore, that's pretty much good enough now. Lores have become a lot more lackluster after the enchant water lore removal.

1) I find enchanting to be easier in terms of difficulty under the new system. Items - 6x with 6 or 7 points of weighting - were moderately difficulty for my level 78 wizard. Now he can enchant them to up to 7x without failure (outside of a fumble) without a familiar.

I had a 6x/T2, flaring weapon that my level 99 wizard just got to the point - with a familiar present, in a workshop - that he could enchant the item to 7x under the old system.
Difficulty check on that same item since he was level 97, for the new system, he could have done without any issues and taken it to 7x.

I, however, hate the change in having to hunt to earn essence. Hunting over crowded, easy to hunt hunting grounds is a pain in the ass when you get 4x capped wizard come by and bolt everything in every room as they pass by without a care that others are hunting. Trying to hunt in some of the other areas that outright punishes folks for just trying to walk from room to room isn't fun....wasting time getting into the rift isn't fun.....so the limited hunting grounds that are full of capped folks becomes another chore you need to deal with.

3) Lores were shit when they decided that the more you trained, the less you got in return because of the dumb fucking summation chart they built into the spells with lores.

Oh, wizard 1 put 100 ranks into Lore A. He gets X + 2 for the spell that uses that lore.
Wizard 2 puts 40 ranks into Lore A. He gets X + 1 for the spell that uses that lore.

The summation charts only allowed spells to be trained in to allow the most return for the least amount of effort. Why dump tons of TPs into a lore to see paltry returns once you hit a certain low threshold?

Lores were supposed to be designed to help distinguish different possible training paths to give different flavors. But if a wizard wanted to be a water wizard and put 150 ranks into, his return in his investments was very minimal compared to a wizard that only put 50 ranks into it. Then on top of it, that wizard with 150 water lore ranks now misses out on a lot of over low entry level benefits if they just went and dumped 40-50 ranks into every lore.

The lores only help reinforce wizards to constantly train as they have been - cookie cutter. Sure, variations do work, but you miss out on things and kind of become more of a mutant build than a specialized build.

[Methais]

I, however, hate the change in having to hunt to earn essence. Hunting over crowded, easy to hunt hunting grounds is a pain in the ass when you get 4x capped wizard come by and bolt everything in every room as they pass by without a care that others are hunting.

Curious...how is this an issue when critter spawns scale up when there's more people in the area? Seems like wizards would prefer this for essence farming with our aoe spells.


the limited hunting grounds that are full of capped folks becomes another chore you need to deal with.

If you can handle the place, go farm the hot side of the Confluence. Usually only takes me a few minutes to fill my essence and they're base level 100 on the hot side (95 on cold side). You'd think actual elementals would get some sort of bonus for essence farming, but that would make sense so we can't have that. But yeah it's still a good place for quick essence farming. Most people get pwned in there in 30 seconds, so it usually stays pretty empty. And there's one in every town. If you're war maging it, either bring a cold flaring weapon to prevent it from heating up, or you can use one of the cores that come from plinites that makes your weapons immune to it for a few minutes.

[audioserf]

Enchanting seems pretty easy, I have a little wizard who's 37 now and he's having no trouble at all bringing a 5x 6CER armor up to +35, and he doesn't have any special training for it. The last time I had a wizard under the old system was 2013 or 2014, but I don't think that character was able to 7x things in mid 30s. Could be wrong.

[drumpel]

Curious...how is this an issue when critter spawns scale up when there's more people in the area? Seems like wizards would prefer this for essence farming with our aoe spells.



If you can handle the place, go farm the hot side of the Confluence. Usually only takes me a few minutes to fill my essence and they're base level 100 on the hot side (95 on cold side). You'd think actual elementals would get some sort of bonus for essence farming, but that would make sense so we can't have that. But yeah it's still a good place for quick essence farming. Most people get pwned in there in 30 seconds, so it usually stays pretty empty. And there's one in every town. If you're war maging it, either bring a cold flaring weapon to prevent it from heating up, or you can use one of the cores that come from plinites that makes your weapons immune to it for a few minutes.


I won't name any names, they don't always do it (usually a 50/50 chance when I see them there), but a couple of way post capped wizards just walk into every room in Nelemar and spam their bolt spells and kill everything. I don't kill things that fast at cap (I think i'm 50k from actually hitting level 100), but it's irritating as hell when I start to engage and in walks one of the wizards, spams a bolt - kills everything - then walks out. They never search kills. Just spam and walk.

When those wizards aren't around, getting kills isn't that hard. 10 minutes or less, depending on how fast things are spawning.

I don't enjoy the idea of the confluence, too much of an irritation without proper skills high enough to get around. If I wanted to be hindered for hunting I go out with missing 1 leg or not wear my armor or wield my runestaff.

[Maerit]

You could always try SoS or Warcamps. Both locations will significantly change your kills per minute as a wizard. I was able to handle SoS on my bolting wizard at level 95, and stayed there until 98 - but he left because bounties were not easy to finish.

Just remember, if you do it right, familiar gates can make it possible to go between the main hunting area and the Oasis node, so you can still go destroy things until saturated with essence, then familiar gate back to the node for max absorbs.

[Donquix]

You could always try SoS or Warcamps. Both locations will significantly change your kills per minute as a wizard. I was able to handle SoS on my bolting wizard at level 95, and stayed there until 98 - but he left because bounties were not easy to finish.

Just remember, if you do it right, familiar gates can make it possible to go between the main hunting area and the Oasis node, so you can still go destroy things until saturated with essence, then familiar gate back to the node for max absorbs.

or just gold ring, but it's nice in a pinch to anchor at the oasis. you cannot, as people always want to ask, use familiar TRAVEL to get back to town from the sanctum though. Sadly.

[Maerit]

or just gold ring, but it's nice in a pinch to anchor at the oasis. you cannot, as people always want to ask, use familiar TRAVEL to get back to town from the sanctum though. Sadly.

Right, but the room in the Oasis is an earth node, thus 100% absorb rate, so you don't actually have to leave Sanctum to max enchanting essence.

What's really irritating is that none of the rooms in Sanctum work with SENSE PATTERN for a sorcerer, so there's no way to leverage the 740 gold ring functionality. Relying on a navvable gold ring in Sanctum means you're going to be disappointed on a regular basis, and have a deal with the desert or leaving via cart and re-entering via portal eventually.

[Zzyzx]

So,

Is the consensus to train MnE/MjE/Witard 100/77.126 or 101/101/101/ or 30/20/253?
Also in y'all's opinion is it better to stick with the old enchanting system or convert to the new system?
If I stick with the old system do I still need to hunt and gather essence?

Thanks again!

[Maerit]

The only pro to sticking with the old system is that you can enchant scripted items which are increasingly difficult to enchant under the new system. Examples are Voln / Ithzir armor, high end script flaring items which became very hard to enchant with the new system. Also, you don't need to hunt to enchant.

However, that is super niche, and the new system lets you enchant a ton more items that were previously not enchantable (non-elemental flares of all kinds, banes, permablessed items, resistance gear, +TD gear, etc).

[Tyros]

Why 77 ranked of MjE? I thought 75 was the standard target...

[Methais]

Right, but the room in the Oasis is an earth node, thus 100% absorb rate, so you don't actually have to leave Sanctum to max enchanting essence.

What's really irritating is that none of the rooms in Sanctum work with SENSE PATTERN for a sorcerer, so there's no way to leverage the 740 gold ring functionality. Relying on a navvable gold ring in Sanctum means you're going to be disappointed on a regular basis, and have a deal with the desert or leaving via cart and re-entering via portal eventually.

Just keep a spare ring. I do that with every area I have rings set to, and keep them in different containers so I know which rings are for where.

2 normal gold rings + a macro is basically 1 unnavvable gold ring.

[kutter]

Why 77 ranked of MjE? I thought 75 was the standard target...

I saw Maerit post that as well and still have not figured out why, my goal is 75 Minor/101 Major/127 Wizard, but I might totally be missing something there and since I am still a ways off from that if I figure out why he said 77 I can fix it easily enough.

[Whirlin]

I saw Maerit post that as well and still have not figured out why, my goal is 75 Minor/101 Major/127 Wizard, but I might totally be missing something there and since I am still a ways off from that if I figure out why he said 77 I can fix it easily enough.

+1 DS and TD from 430, +1 CS to MnE circle compared to 75/101/127.

Lose 1 CS from 127 to 125, due to the CS contribution being at .5 over 120, but also lose 1 CS to other circles from the thresholds being *7 due to 10% of post 67 spell ranks for secondary circle CS.
But then you hit the threshold for other CS contribution in MnE, gaining the +1 to Wiz/MjE, but +2 to MnE, and gain the benefit of 430 not being capped (maxes out at 100).

Why you may not want to do this is scaling on 925/917. But, I'm not sure if we have a known impact on the effectiveness of those... and even if we did have an equation, would the +2 at over 120 materially impede their effectiveness.

[kutter]

+1 DS and TD from 430, +1 CS to MnE circle compared to 75/101/127.

Lose 1 CS from 127 to 125, due to the CS contribution being at .5 over 120, but also lose 1 CS to other circles from the thresholds being *7 due to 10% of post 67 spell ranks for secondary circle CS.
But then you hit the threshold for other CS contribution in MnE, gaining the +1 to Wiz/MjE, but +2 to MnE, and gain the benefit of 430 not being capped (maxes out at 100).

Why you may not want to do this is scaling on 925/917. But, I'm not sure if we have a known impact on the effectiveness of those... and even if we did have an equation, would the +2 at over 120 materially impede their effectiveness.

CRAP!!!! Here I thought I knew what my plan was and then in swoops Whirlin and MATH!!!! My capped pure is still a ways from having to worry about it, but from what you are suggesting Whirlin then it might be best to go 101/101/101 since it provides a pretty significant boost to TD, which my wizard at least always seems to struggle a little with.

[audioserf]

My old capped mage had 101/101/101 and I liked it... but that was before updates to 917. 917 hits like a truck if you are over-trained in 900s, and between that and enchanting it seems like you might be lacking as a 101/101/101 build.

[Whirlin]

CRAP!!!! Here I thought I knew what my plan was and then in swoops Whirlin and MATH!!!! My capped pure is still a ways from having to worry about it, but from what you are suggesting Whirlin then it might be best to go 101/101/101 since it provides a pretty significant boost to TD, which my wizard at least always seems to struggle a little with.

That's up to you. Training always has some subjectivity.

However, the big reason it works out is that you're hitting a threshold of *7 in MnE, which makes up for the CS losses associated with WIZ, because your at 120+ ranks in WIZ. Since the CS contribution for 100-120 is .75, the tradeoff becomes more significant. So you will be giving up more potency as you approach 100 to hit the same TD gains. If you wanted to go for 101/121/81 or something, that would work too, just a few CS loss, but minimal TD gains.

But wait... Why are we talking CS for Wiz circle?
While 912, 917, 925 have benefits over 1x, I'm not aware of any post-100 scaling equations to use to determine it's post 100 effectiveness, so in absence of defined benefits, I leverage CS is a reasonable substitute. Given Simu leveraging things multiple times rather than always reinventing the wheel, it's not necessarily a bad assumption, but is an assumption nonetheless.
Plus 915 is a fun disabler... hit with 917 915 519 to super disable a critter. Did that on some waves of Duskruin when there were high DS mobs.

[Ragz]

77 MnE is just postcap training optimization. Its CS contribution to MjE is the main draw. Starting with a base training plan of 100MjE/75MnE/100Wiz to pick up all your bolting buffs and defensive benefits from Wiz is a solid start, then further optimize from there. Most wizards find that, after attending to some other goals, placing most of the remaining ranks in Wiz, primarily for 917 and 925, is the way to go.

Personally, Ragz is 102MjE/78MnE/123Wiz because ranks 101 and 102 of MjE both award a MjE CS point. Rank 103 does not award any direct benefit. 77 MnE is the breakpoint for adding another CS point to MjE, and rank 78 MnE awards another DS/TD point. Rank 79 does not award any direct benefit. Everything else is in Wiz for 917/925.. rank 121 is also another MjE CS point

[Methais]

77 MnE is just postcap training optimization. Its CS contribution to MjE is the main draw. Starting with a base training plan of 100MjE/75MnE/100Wiz to pick up all your bolting buffs and defensive benefits from Wiz is a solid start, then further optimize from there. Most wizards find that, after attending to some other goals, placing most of the remaining ranks in Wiz, primarily for 917 and 925, is the way to go.

Personally, Ragz is 102MjE/78MnE/123Wiz because ranks 101 and 102 of MjE both award a MjE CS point. Rank 103 does not award any direct benefit. 77 MnE is the breakpoint for adding another CS point to MjE, and rank 78 MnE awards another DS/TD point. Rank 79 does not award any direct benefit. Everything else is in Wiz for 917/925.. rank 121 is also another MjE CS point

One thing to note about MjE CS is all it's really good for these days is Mana Leech, since Estild wrecked all our good spells and left our trash spells (514, etc.) in their ongoing trash state. I guess 502 if you're going for super mana efficiency, but that's not going to be an issue unless you're farming.

And with Mana Leech, it doesn't really matter all that much how hard you ward the target, as it's still going to only cost 1 mana on a successful warding.

In the end it won't really make a difference as assuming you're going with 75 MnE, then the other 2 would be either 101/127 or 127/101, which I doubt would have any major impact on 925 or 917.

TLDR: Thanks Estild. Penishead.


http://forum.gsplayers.com/image.php?u=10550&dateline=1455610012

https://i.imgur.com/Qyk3H7A.png

[drauz]

77 MnE is just postcap training optimization. Its CS contribution to MjE is the main draw. Starting with a base training plan of 100MjE/75MnE/100Wiz to pick up all your bolting buffs and defensive benefits from Wiz is a solid start, then further optimize from there. Most wizards find that, after attending to some other goals, placing most of the remaining ranks in Wiz, primarily for 917 and 925, is the way to go.

Personally, Ragz is 102MjE/78MnE/123Wiz because ranks 101 and 102 of MjE both award a MjE CS point. Rank 103 does not award any direct benefit. 77 MnE is the breakpoint for adding another CS point to MjE, and rank 78 MnE awards another DS/TD point. Rank 79 does not award any direct benefit. Everything else is in Wiz for 917/925.. rank 121 is also another MjE CS point

I went with 100MjE/75MnE/127Wiz just to eek out that little bit of extra enchanting power. It is really all negligible though. Its all just a difference of 1-2 CS and 1-2 DS. Since CS spells aren't really used all that much anymore I didn't care about my MjE CS. I use 917 more often so the extra enchanting power and 917 power was the way I went.

[Ragz]

Yeah that’s true; it’s all just minor skill shifts optimizing in a particular direction. To me, the relatively minor gains are worth the relatively minor tradeoffs

[Ragz]

@Methais I am, in fact, a wizard!

[Methais]

@Methais I am, in fact, a wizard!

https://media1.giphy.com/media/yfEjNtvqFBfTa/giphy.gif