Warmage or Pure?

[Nystin]

Hello,
I have recently started a warmage, he is Sylvan. Ive crunched all the numbers for either a pure or warmage, they both cap out nicely but I was wondering how much trouble will I have (if any) as a Sylvan warmage. So far so good, everything is what I want in his build, I am able to fill my head in less than 5min, haste and maul 2 sec rt, solid DS, I can carry a bunch of loot, and its working now., but will this all come to a crash? Is a pure a more viable long term build than a warmage? I am very happy with my current build and stats, and most of all I have a blast with him but Im wondering if I will hit a wall somewhere down the road and have to "rethink" my training plan.

:club:

[Cyprion]

Been a warmage since level 0. Hes 42 now and haven't had a problem yet. Maybe there's a wall later, but I haven't found it yet. I was able to start fighting level 40 creatures at 30. I will be moving on to something new soon, so who knows on that whole wall thing, but doubt i will see one.

[AnticorRifling]

There's no wall.

[Ribbons]

Warmage for the first 30 days, switch to Pure if you're unsatisfied as a warmage.

[Ragesh]

There's no wall.

This.

[Nystin]

Thanks for the input.
So far everything is going smoothly and I feel at times like im cheating,.. ewave, haste and my maul makes me smile every hunt. I didnt really think I would hit a wall wich was a poor choice of words on my part, I think my biggest worry is being able to continue hunting solo throughout the game.
A couple folks have been nice enough to PM me and offer words of wisdom and I wanted to say thank you.
:club:

[Daragon]

Hello,
I have recently started a warmage, he is Sylvan. Ive crunched all the numbers for either a pure or warmage, they both cap out nicely but I was wondering how much trouble will I have (if any) as a Sylvan warmage. So far so good, everything is what I want in his build, I am able to fill my head in less than 5min, haste and maul 2 sec rt, solid DS, I can carry a bunch of loot, and its working now., but will this all come to a crash? Is a pure a more viable long term build than a warmage? I am very happy with my current build and stats, and most of all I have a blast with him but Im wondering if I will hit a wall somewhere down the road and have to "rethink" my training plan.

:club:

Pure will always be better a training path because, well, thats what mages are made for. Not to down warmages or anything, I like those too, but I am a little more fond of pure mages..

[AnticorRifling]

Better would be an opinion. Cheaper skill costs = better then sure I guess a pure is "better". Now if you want to talk effective hunting, secondary skills, etc. I'd probably go on a limb and say they are close to equal at higher levels. I could enchant (when I remembered to get shit out of my locker and actually do it) bolt, swing, spellup, gate, with zero issues. My hunts were fast and I always had mana enough left over to gate back, unfry, rinse and repeat. I think the only advantage a pure mage would have would be a few more spell ranks but really I can't see much else.

[Daragon]

Better would be an opinion. Cheaper skill costs = better then sure I guess a pure is "better". Now if you want to talk effective hunting, secondary skills, etc. I'd probably go on a limb and say they are close to equal at higher levels. I could enchant (when I remembered to get shit out of my locker and actually do it) bolt, swing, spellup, gate, with zero issues. My hunts were fast and I always had mana enough left over to gate back, unfry, rinse and repeat. I think the only advantage a pure mage would have would be a few more spell ranks but really I can't see much else.

Well, yeah everyone ends up being pretty close to even later on. As far as magic stuff, a pure is the best with magic. Warmages however do give you more options.

[AnticorRifling]

I don't think it's a matter of being close "later on" really most people won't hit the upper tiers of their character skills (lvl 100+) In the lvl 60s when I quit I was fully 2x'd in spells, spell aim, had a higher CS than most mages because of heavy MnE training, could bolt if I wanted and used whatever the MjE spell that raises bolt/lowers swing and be just fine. I could pick up the lance and run a hunt perma wizard shielded and hasted and still have mana after fried to gate back in.

The pure route is fun if that's the play style you enjoy but to say it's better is outdated thinking.

[Ragesh]

Having tried it both ways I'm actually in favor of skipping spell aim all together as a warmage. I think I cast 513 once and just ended up being angry I couldn't STOP 513 to end the spell early, so I dumped the points elsewhere. At 55 I can still effectively uphunt by about 15 trains, so I view spell aim as a waste of TPs IMO.

[AnticorRifling]

Yeah I don't like being painted into a corner though and laid my training out before fixskills was something you could just drink.

What else would you spend the points in? I was to the point that at 66 I was starting to have a surplus.

[LOL BRIELUS]

IMO, the archermage is an upgrade from the warmage - more DS, you can use 513 without AS drop, and 1 second aimed arrows to the eye are just uber.

[Ragesh]

Yeah. I had an excess of 200+ PTPs so I dumped them into PF last train.

Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 111 27
Combat Maneuvers...................| 157 57
Polearm Weapons....................| 157 57
Physical Fitness...................| 150 50
Arcane Symbols.....................| 155 55
Magic Item Use.....................| 155 55
Harness Power......................| 155 55
Elemental Mana Control.............| 155 55
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 102 24
Perception.........................| 50 10
Climbing...........................| 120 30
Swimming...........................| 120 30

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 30

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 55

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 30
Training Points: 49 Phy 0 Mnt (130 Phy converted to Mnt)

[AnticorRifling]

Nice looking setup. And yeah the archer mage has potential I've just had no first hand experience with it.

[Daragon]

IMO, the archermage is an upgrade from the warmage - more DS, you can use 513 without AS drop, and 1 second aimed arrows to the eye are just uber.

Hmm. Never tried an Archer mage, sounds interesting. Maybe one day I will roll one up. But, wouldn't a Two-hander who uses a Runestaff still have higher DS as long as you train 8x a level in magic skills? Could actually do that too..

[Ragesh]

Since a runestaff is considered a two handed weapon, you wouldn't even need the magical ranks for the DS.

[Daragon]

Since a runestaff is considered a two handed weapon, you wouldn't even need the magical ranks for the DS.

True, however you do get more DS from the magical side of it..plus you also get that cool magical deflect effect..

[faloon]

This is what im running with atm. Definatelly have noticed my AS faultering at these levels but still manageable with 909. I am a dwarf warmage.

Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 20 4
Combat Maneuvers...................| 175 75
Two-Handed Weapons.................| 175 75
Physical Fitness...................| 175 75
Harness Power......................| 173 73
Elemental Mana Control.............| 102 24
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 102 24
Perception.........................| 90 20
Climbing...........................| 120 30
Swimming...........................| 90 20

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 73

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 73

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 32

[Nystin]

Any advice as to spell training? (currently 2x per lvl minor and major elem)
Should be 19th or 20th lvl when the 30 day is up.



:club:

[faloon]

I focused on getting to 509 and 905 then went to 414 and back to 911. After all those i worked towards 430. Pretty much left wizard circle alone after 911 for a long time. Didnt start using 909 to hunt with until 50's.

Hope that helps some.

[caelric]

913 is a nice DS boost, don't forget

[faloon]

That is my mistake. I went to 913 and then stopped wizard circle for a long time. Thanks. :)

[Daragon]

That is my mistake. I went to 913 and then stopped wizard circle for a long time. Thanks. :)

Don't forget wizard shield...I believe it is 919...

[faloon]

That is an aweful lot of mana for a 60 second spell. I have not hunted with 919 personally.

[Carblin]

I'm actually thinking about rolling a warmage for an alt. What tips, ideas, pointers, etc would you give to someone who's not done too much research into it (other then reading this thread)?

What weapon type? (I'm partial to claids, but I've heard lances are the way to go as a mage.)

[faloon]

I did Naginata in Plat and am using a claidh in shattered. I like the Naginata better personally but both options work great. I'll let someone else respond with the technical aspects of it.

[Daragon]

That is an aweful lot of mana for a 60 second spell. I have not hunted with 919 personally.

It's not really that much mana for any type of caster. But its up to anyone what they want. I can personally say that spell saved my ass quite a bit. It may only last for 60 seconds, but it takes less then 60 seconds to get your head blown off.

[Nystin]

I have a weapon question.
The way I see it I can get a regular maul use elemental blade +20 attuned to fire because im in sunfist,. use sigil of minor bane when needed +5 and heavy crit weighting. So I should be at +25, flares, and weighting.
Or
Do I spend 2-3 million on a forged maul,...... and what do I get with that?
+20 and weighting?

:club:

[Donquix]

I like forged mauls, but I have a thing for perfects when you can get them.

I still need to get maul glyphs :\

To give you some hard numbers...

the plain maul will be, with bane running, +25 with heavy crit weighting and flares

a perfectly forged maul is going to have the innate +3 avd, so effectively it will be +28 w/ heavy crit weighting and the bonus df

Just taking a simple average of the maul DFs on all armor classes gives you an average DF bonus of 0.0249. If you average around a 200 endroll with the plain it would be 203 because of the avd that's an extra 2.5 damage per hit. Obviously that is more on cloth than plate.

the perfect you also have the option of blessing and keeping all of it's bonuses and it's obviously a more attractive weapon to have on you should you come across any merchants working.

[Nystin]

Thank you, great answer I have always wondered about all of that. I do have a perfect vultite flail I use (bought it because it was way cheaper than the maul) But also have the plain maul,.. so in short I need to save save save!
Oh and the flail works great!

[TheLastShamurai]

You can still e-blade perfectly forged weapons as well, they just need to be either steel or invar. If it's invar, it pushes the weapon to +22, since it has an odd enchantment.

I'd go with invar for the extra enchantment, and because steel is for homosexuals.

[caelric]

use sigil of minor bane when needed +5 and heavy crit weighting.



Minor bane is +5 and heavy damage weighting. Major bane is what you want. +10 and heavy crit weighting.

You should probably be able to find a superior maul for a decent price, as opposed to a perfect maul, which will runs multiple millions.

And yes, as was mentioned, invar has the extra +2, so if you can find a superior invar maul for cheap, you are doing well. E-blade it, and with major bane, you have a flaring, +32 HCW weapon that has +4%DF and +2 AvD. Not bad at all.

[Nystin]

Not bad at all, great information from everyone.
Is ewave and win win spell? I was out hunting last night in hill trolls and noticed it was knockin them all down,. will that spell miss? I read certain critters are immune,.ect ect.. but the ones that are not immune all get knocked over??

[AnticorRifling]

The spell can miss. It's not a bad spell but at low level it can be mana intensive to use over and over. There's pros and cons to every set up spell you have, or will have as you level, at your disposal.

[Nystin]

Mana intensive yes,
along with pre-hunt spell up, elemental blade, and haste in the field.... being young and running around with 50 mana blows at times, good times!! So good to be back in GS!

[audioserf]

Termors is a far more relaible knockdown than E-Wave if you like to overhunt at all. I was knocking kiramon defenders down at level 25.

[Nystin]

Forgot about that wonderful spell, thanks!

[AnticorRifling]

Downside is knocking over other players, no roundtime in the knockdown so they can get right back up, doesn't stance them down like call wind, you should babysit your tremored room so if something runs out or it's not a swarm you might be standing there with your thumb in your butt, etc.

But it's not a bad spell, they are all situational.

[audioserf]

Other players?

I haven't seen one of those in a hunting area since I was on the glacier. Heh.

Not much of a problem in modern day GSIV.

And Tremors absolutely stances creatures down - when they stand back up, they do so in offensive. And you get 5 knockdowns for the price of one. I love Tremros. Call Wind sucks for me, really, hardly ever does knockdowns for me even like-level.

[Nystin]

Awsome, heading in now to try out some tremors. Last time I cast that was by accident, and the end result was not good....end result bleeding chest and a run to town with leaf in hand!

Thanks Everyone for some great insight and advice!

[AnticorRifling]

Other players?

I haven't seen one of those in a hunting area since I was on the glacier. Heh.

Not much of a problem in modern day GSIV.

And Tremors absolutely stances creatures down - when they stand back up, they do so in offensive. And you get 5 knockdowns for the price of one. I love Tremros. Call Wind sucks for me, really, hardly ever does knockdowns for me even like-level.

True enough I guess I'm still remembering it being an issue with more than just 1 person per hunting ground.

I was talking about the stance down as compared to call wind. When they stand up that's fine but I'd rather hit them when they are in stance O on the dirt with that additional DS loss.

More than anything I just used feint and call wind. I also loved when I got to a hunting ground where I knew my 415 was going to hit. If I was in that situation 415 would be my opener because it often stunned and dropped things to the ground.

[Nystin]

30 days are about up,.. I did switch to pure for about an hour.... Needless to say I enjoy the warmage build much better... overhunting by around 4-7 levels. I am enjoying GoS did my first warcamp the other night and it was a complete riot, alerted the guard, all hell broke out,.. ewave haste ect ect,.. was fun untill mana supply was down to zero.. then it was all about runnin.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the advice and words of wisdom!

:thanx:

[Ceyrin]

Warmages will continue to rock until Naos nerfs haste.

[AnticorRifling]

Haste was already nerfed once...

[phantasm]

Naos has demonstrated a remarkably slow project completing pace, and I am happy with that.

[audioserf]

Yeah Naos is slow as shit, which is fine by me. Dude only seems capable of nerfing things, although 540 is pretty rad and that was his baby.

If Haste truly gets ruined I'm going to have to fix to pure and that will be gay because what is the point of a half-krolvin pure mage. :(

[AnticorRifling]

RP....don't use fire spells burnt hair is never a good smell.

[Jace Solo]

Haha, is there really a reason to nerf haste again?
Warmaging is a fun alternative...GS needs as many fun alternatives as possible...

[audioserf]

I know this, you know this, but SIMU? They have made it abundantly clear that their myopic worldview in the name of BALANCE trumps any type of fun. These are the people who think spending 1500 hours of manual at the keyboard time is acceptable to master forging

[Kitsun]

When he asked for suggestions for his lore review, I tossed up the idea for an air lore unlockable, higher mana cost, group version. His response was the only reason he would touch haste would be to downgrade it.

[audioserf]

Yet ranged weapons and 1030 continue to exist.

SIMU owns

[Nystin]

One more day till the 30 is up and I tried one last build, went with a shield/pure build with 24 ranks of fire, went to a warcamp and destroyed everything with major fire and gold wands. (good fun)
Couple questions with this build if I wish to go the imo path..and I plan on using a shield.

Shield training,... I played around with 1 train and multiple trains... how many do I need? I stuck with one train +22 shield and my DEF was better than the runestave or THW (I did try a build with more shield train and didnt see much of a change )

Fire Lore... How many ranks should I be lookin for long term for the nice effects.... will 15 ranks do for now or less? I noticed some folks doing MOC 5 ranks, is that a must for Imo build?

Still searching the boards for answers but thought Id throw this out for you all to chew on! thanks again.

[Donquix]

You don't need MoC at all for immo. MoC and fire lore is likely purely for 908 spam in warcamps, which is pretty devastating.

fire lore increases your maximum targets you can splash to, and damage factor. The MoC increases your splash frequency.

If you're going to be doing more 908 spamming then whatever is fine, more is obviously better but it depends what else you want to train. If you want to immo you need a lot of fire lore (and mana) to get it to insane levels. Earliest I see most people start to focus on immo is in the 60-70 range.

[Jace Solo]

What's a good range of fire lore and MoC to shoot for in the 30-40 range for warcamps?

[Jace Solo]

And ya...it doesn't even take 500 hrs of farming, forging, etc to master it in WoW...and that was a headache

[Nystin]

I did 24 ranks to play with in camp,.. spam 908 ewave here and there and I felt like a fat kid in a candy store,.. truly amazing;however, it can go through your mana pretty fast, and I would have some nice wands for back up.
I knew the immo path was a later level goal,.. I am leanin towards this build over the warmage build.
So what about shield training,.. one good enough for what I need,. or should I try to dump a few trains in here and there?

[Donquix]

Haste was already nerfed once...


When he asked for suggestions for his lore review, I tossed up the idea for an air lore unlockable, higher mana cost, group version. His response was the only reason he would touch haste would be to downgrade it.


The primary benefit of Strength to wizards is mitigating encumbrance. The bonus to physical AS is meaningless to pure wizards. The spell is also a social spell, in that it is not self-cast and is rather highly sought after by other professions. We ike things that bring players together. We want you to be able to buff your friends a bit. If they're a profession that is intended to use weapons, they will welcome to added AS of Strength.

Haste, likewise, has benefits outside of combat and is also sharable with your fellow non-wizard players. Also, we have changes in line for Haste, most likely with the release of the Elemental Lore Review changes. The end is nigh?

:\

[Ceyrin]

The almighty nerf cometh!

[audioserf]

If they fuck haste I am just going to roll an empath because they are literally the best class in GSIV and probably will be for quite some time.

[faloon]

Well in the 70's my warmage is out performing my warpath. Maybe a pure empath is what your saying is the best class?

[Asha]

. Maybe a pure empath is what your saying is the best class?

As far as pures go, hands down.

[audioserf]

Yeah that's what I meant. Sorc-path is the way to go for pure hunting power.

[audioserf]

Recent posts by Naos and Oscuro seem to make it farily clear that the warmage is a build operating on borrowed time. I'm pretty much done at this point. I don't want to keep playing a doomed character, and I don't feel like grinding out the newbie years again. I'll probably cancel by the end of this billing cycle.

[Jace Solo]

You could go pure...cause it's pretty nasty as a pure wiz.

[phantasm]

Don't quit now, Naos will resign or die before he finishes the lore review, you still have a massive amount of borrowed time.

[Donquix]

You could go pure...cause it's pretty nasty as a pure wiz.

That's the problem with this particular nerf. A LOT of warmages have no interest in playing a pure build, you can't fixskill this particular problem away for a great many people.

[Fallen]

That's the problem with this particular nerf. A LOT of warmages have no interest in playing a pure build, you can't fixskill this particular problem away for a great many people.

The problem is Immolation looks like it might take a hit as well. If that happens, Wizards wont have either build to really be powerhouses. They will be nice and balanced...and boring as hell.