Earth Lore

[Whyspe]

Is earth lore viable at all? Was thinking of maybe doing earth and water or maybe earth and fire on my wizard. From the bit of digging in here I cant really find a mention of anyone trying to train this.

[Kitsun]

Not having any lores is completely viable from a game play standpoint. So, training in earth lore doesn't make you unviable unless you're cutting Spell Aiming or Spell Training to do so.

[RSR]

Earth lore is very viable and a few different people have done it over the years. The biggest knock against it in my book is that while it does increase your melee AS pretty substantially via 509, it does nothing for your bolt AS and there is no additional bonus towards reducing encumbrance.

Hurl boulder is pretty damaging with a lot of earth lore though. It's not a bad way to go all in all.

-Richard.

[DaCapn]

Kitsun's point probably sets the strongest president here.

Fire will always be the best mechanically. As a minor bolt, 904 is better than 903 and barely more costly, fire lore boosts 906 and 908, 510 and 906 are pretty close in DF compared to mana cost, fire lore gives larger bonuses to DF and affects a better spell set. Earth lore... you're really only looking at 510 and 520. Water is okay. Air is nice to splash in for 505 (and 511 and 506) but the DF boost isn't that valuable since the crit-kill thresholds on the unbalance table are crappy. It's only really viable as a disabling setup (the knockdowns in the crit table are, unsurprisingly excellent). Lore diversification in all other contexts is a pretty silly move. You could always do air/water. But then again, you could get the same DF boosts with just fire (in the <= 50 ranks category).

As far as a water mage is concerned, I've always been curious how well a 512/903 build would work. Never curious enough, though.

[zzentar]

Kitsun's point probably sets the strongest president here.

Fire will always be the best mechanically. As a minor bolt, 904 is better than 903 and barely more costly, fire lore boosts 906 and 908, 510 and 906 are pretty close in DF compared to mana cost, fire lore gives larger bonuses to DF and affects a better spell set. Earth lore... you're really only looking at 510 and 520. Water is okay. Air is nice to splash in for 505 (and 511 and 506) but the DF boost isn't that valuable since the crit-kill thresholds on the unbalance table are crappy. It's only really viable as a disabling setup (the knockdowns in the crit table are, unsurprisingly excellent). Lore diversification in all other contexts is a pretty silly move. You could always do air/water. But then again, you could get the same DF boosts with just fire (in the <= 50 ranks category).

As far as a water mage is concerned, I've always been curious how well a 512/903 build would work. Never curious enough, though.

You are leaving out the utility effect from air lore, larger disk capacity, faster haste. Also want to throw in that many creatures are immune to fire, almost none are immune to vacuum.

[DaCapn]

You are leaving out the utility effect from air lore, larger disk capacity, faster haste.
I mentioned those things.

Also want to throw in that many creatures are immune to fire, almost none are immune to vacuum.
The only wizard spells that can cause vacuum crits are 411, 415, 435, and (I think) 915. Fire is still the best all around. There are creatures that reflect lightning spells. There are creatures which get cured by 403. I've never used 907 (the only wizard ball spell that's not 908) in Icemule but It's probably not too helpful there. You could spend your points on earth lore and have the least immunities but you're only advancing one bolt spell (and no ball spells for splash damage) and a relatively expensive one at that. 510 is already beefy as hell. The fact that you can't aim it is more of an issue than the DF.