Pure, Archer Mage, & Warmage Information

[Whirlin]

In light of all of the recent threads that have been going around, with varying degrees of "How does X wizard build compare to Y"... I figured I'd consolidate my thoughts into a single thread. This is to give some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each build. I'm going to try to be rather Mathy in my explanations of strengths and weaknesses, but in the end, these are just my opinions. Gemstone is a game that can allow for a wonderful variety of horrible, horrible builds that can still end up being viable to take a person to level 100. Feel free to further customize builds however you want, these builds are not the law, they're just meant to give ideas.

Common Training Among all Builds
I'm going to break this down a little bit and categorize this into two categories: Core training, and Discrete Training.

"Stop making shit up and introducing new terms... "
Alright alright... Everyone knows what I'm talking about, it just hasn't really been ever defined.
Core training is everything you're going to train in every level... forever. No exceptions.
Discrete Training is stuff that you will max out, and never need to worry about again.

Still Confused? Enough explanation, lets get to it.

Core Training
Core training for a wizard is actually very easy, very light:
2x Spell Research: Spell Research pretty much helps everything, and being a pure, its not that expensive to train in. (0/24)
1x Harness Power: at Level, you know, not the full 1x, I really shouldn't have to defend training in this (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: 540 potency, mana regeneration, enchanting, and then the whole multi-cast, spellup things. I recommend it for life. (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: Combat Maneuvers Defense (8/0)
1x Perception: Also Combat Maneuver Defense. Also... other stuff (0/3)
Total of 8/35

There's been some debate... but here's the link that highlights Perception is used for Maneuver Defense.
http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Creature_maneuver



Discrete Training
Armor Use: How far you go depends on your build.
4 Ranks will train off maneuver penalties for Full Leather
15 Ranks will train off as much as you can for Double Leathers.
35 Ranks will train off as much as you can for Cuirbouilli Leathers.
Air Lore: 24 Ranks is -1 RT for Haste. I don't care what build you go, this is quite possibly one of the best utilities ever.
50 Ranks of Climbing will let you climb anywhere.
50 Ranks of Swimming will let you swim anywhere.

The Obvious Shit That Appears to be Missing
Magic Item Use? Spell Aiming? Arcane Symbols? Other Elemental Lores?
Calm your tits, look at the individual builds below, I'll get to it.



What training in stuff does, and why its important
Lets go item by item...
Physical Stuff
Armor Use Reduces swinging RT, maneuver penalties, and spell hindrance from wearing armor.
Shield Use Generates DS when using a shield... Derp
*** Weapons Raises AS with a particular Weapon... Derp
Two Weapon Combat Never seen a TWC Wizard before... new thing? Probably not, it's expensive as hell.
Combat Maneuvers +.5 Melee AS per rank. Plus all those shiney shiney special moves... none of which wizards have access to!
Multi-Oponent Combat Allows us to hold our ground with many critters in the room. Expensive at 15/10, but 1 rank yields +1 to the minimum ball-spell area effect. Worth Training? No. Worth picking up an enhancive with +1 rank? Sure.
Ambush Nope
Physical Fitness Core training, HP growth, Maneuver defense
Dodging At 20/20 per rank, you're better off getting a rank in Wizard or MjE.

Magical Stuff
Arcane Symbols Read scrolls, invoke from scrolls, more ranks; more duration. Also assists with Enchanting.
Magic Item Use Use wands, use statues and stuffs, more ranks; more duration. Also assists with Enchanting.
Harness Power Get mana. +3 Mana per rank up to your level, +1 mana for over training.
Spell Aiming It's like weapon training, but for spells that use AS.
Mana Control:Various Core Training, Elemental is cheapest, and we're what we're aligned to. Training outside of elemental has half the impact, and I would only recommend it if you have a pocket -insert non-elemental class here-
Spell Research Core Training Get spell ranks, unlock new spells, make existing spells better.
Lores Bigger Topic... Increases potency of spells that don't get their potency increased by spell research. I'll get to that in my breakdown of Pure training.




Lores... Whats the deal with that?
24 ranks of Air Lore, as explained in the opening post is really the most important thing you can do for haste potency. Other than that, Lores usually short to other training opportunities.

Lores a good bit of spells that we have. Fortunately for the world, these discrete bonuses have been widely documented, and usually apply Simu's basic Seed values (I'm not going into those here). When lores were first introduced, Carabele created a wonderful website that just provides lore breakdowns for different bonuses to different spells. Here's that website:
http://carabele.com/LoreBenefits.htm

Water, Fire, Air, Earth lores' other function is to increase Damage Factors of their corresponding spells. But here's the catch. In most cases, that DF increase isn't sufficient to make up for the next best alternative of an AS increase by training in more spell research. So, to compare apples to apples, we need to compare +1 AS (2 spell ranks) (0/64) to the relative increase in potency by lores (0/6) each. So 10 ranks in Lores versus 1 AS, just to keep it simple... That's also not the full benefit of Spell Research. (arguably, that's not the whole function of lores either though!)

Lets use 906 as an example spell. To make things simple, we'll just be calculating raw damage via DF numbers.
906 gains DF from lores at the rate of .001 Per rank up to 50, and then .001 per 2 ranks post 50.
We'll look at the first 50 ranks first.

-Title-|-Cloth-|-Leather-|-Scale-|-Chain-|-Plate-
Damage Factor|.667|.445|.345|.323|.303
Damage Factor w/ Lores | .677|.455|.355|.333|.313
Required Endroll to be Equal|166|145|135|133|130

Since Lores have a higher rate of change, while +1 AS gives it a higher starting point (think graphs), endrolls above those listed above will favor Lores over the AS boost. Of course, it makes sense that the benefit is largest on those with the lowest base Damage Factor. This is a VERY important concept, but I'll touch upon that in one of the builds below. But lets take a look at post-50 lore ranks and the rate of change.

-Title-|-Cloth-|-Leather-|-Scale-|-Chain-|-Plate-
Damage Factor|.667|.445|.345|.323|.303
Damage Factor w/ Lores | .672|.450|.350|.338|.308
Required Endroll to be Equal|233|190|170|166|161

Spell Research also offers CS and DS boosts, along with intangible things like more leech from 516, longer spell durations, etc. Lores will help damage when your end rolls are already high. Personally, I'm in favor of more spell research, but hey, train however you want. Like I said, it's hard to be a bad wizard.


With that in mind, lets get onto the different builds, their method of attacks, their ideal training, their strengths and weaknesses.

[Whirlin]

The Archer Mage
My memory sucks, but I believe I was the first wizard in gemstone to pick up a bow and try to use it. Fletching had just been released at the same time, and I used to annoy everyone at the cul-de-sac in Wehnimer's Landing by fletching non-stop, and being one of the first master fletchers. Without Artisan Skill verb at the time, there was no way to be certain though! Nowadays with lich, and a lot more fletching scripts out there, its a bit easier to master. I took about a 8 year break for college, full time international travel for work, and all sorts of groovy thigns, and in my time away, a LOT of archer mages popped up, and really took it one step further than I ever did when I was playing, however, I did extensive theorycrafting on the build, and am one of the more vocal about it on the forums... So with that... here we go!

Why Archery?
Wizards main attack at the time were magical bolts via the 900s. This put a very high emphasis on DEX. I found myself unable to pick up scrolls without being encumbered, constantly relying on wands in my lower levels to overcome mana shortcomings, plus, you can't really 'aim' spells. These conditions aggravated me to end end... and some kinda still bothers me today, while others have gotten slightly better.

Archery offers an alternative mechanism for attack that relies on the same DEX bonus, offers an easy way to get to a 10x weapon bonus, and has RT that's not impacted by encumbrance. With Haste, well... you're a one-man arrowstorm.

The real kicker for Archery is that the bonus from 509 goes towards RT reduction, and 513's penalties do not apply. This means that a player only needs a 5 STR bonus to hit a 1 second hasted RT with a bow, while aiming. Furthermore, it means that an Archer Mage can make full use of classic Wizard Bolt Spells. Having two viable attacks ends up being awesome.

Ohh wait... There's more! Our 402 and 404 both have quasi-phantom increases to Perception. Wait... What?
So... 402 will help us find traps and stuff for bandits, we know that. 404 helps us disarm traps better! But both of them assist in aiming. When we aim for the eye... we want to hit the eye. 402 and 404 help that. 613 also helps... but we don't know that one... Get a scroll. Not that aiming matters THAT much when we're firing arrows off every second. I mean, worst case scenario is like, 10 seconds to kill a mob via arrows.



Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
Total of 8/35

Additional Core Training for Archery
1x Ranged Weapons (14/3)
+1x Perception (so you're 2x in it) (0/6)
2x Spell Aiming (6/3)
+20/12
=28/47 Total TP

Optional Additional Core Training
1x-2x Magic Item Use
1x-2x Arcane Symbols
These are nice-to-haves... but since you're not relying on Runestaff defense (explained in Pure Section), they're not required from a pure AS/DS perspective. I personally love them and recommend them... but I can't say they're required.

Dump Extra Points into
Additional Spell Research. Since we're in offensive so much, the additional DS or spell AS are only going to help.

Post Cap Goals
3x Spell Research. More DS to everything, more AS for spells, and better enchanting capabilities.
1x Ambushing. 100 ranks of Ambush will net you 15 AS. AS bonus = ((ranks -40)/4). This is INCREDIBLY expensive at (15/10) per rank for just an AS boost, and that's why it's not listed in core training. This would not assist our aiming, as it only impacts aiming while hidden.

Spell Research Goals
MjE & WIZ until WIZ=13
MnE & MjE until MjE = 20 (At this point, should be 13 wiz, 9 Mne, 20 MjE)
2x MnE until MnE = 31 (level 31)
From there, you have a choice, depending on RT/Race.
*51 Ranks in MjE will reduce RT by 1
*75 Ranks of MnE will max out AS potential from 425
*Wizard Circle will generate the most DS of any three circles


Playstyle
Keep Haste Up
1 Mob? Lots of mana? 505 bolt til it falls, Arrows.
1 Mob? Little Mana? Arrows
2 Mobs? 410, Arrows
2 Mobs? Little Mana? Arrows
>2 Mobs? 410, 518
Undead? Screw blesses, those are annoying. 901/903/904/906
Bandits? Keep 506 and 919 up, 410 + arrows.


The Two Handed Mage
Kinda like a bard. Swing a big weapon really fast.
Two-Handed Mages can be polearm or THW... same TP cost... so, if you want to be a polearm mage, just imagine anywhere you read two-handed, that I'm talking about a two-handed polearm.


Why a Two-Hander?
You know what cleaves through critters quickly? A Two Handed Weapon... You know what cleaves through critters even quicker? A two-Hander swung at 1 second.

Two Handers have some of the highest Damage Factors out there. Paired with Haste, this can be a devastating build.

Two-Handers are a great way to level. By the time this weapon form slows down, time to pick up a makeshift immolation pure build. No reason to do that whole spell bolt thing, that's for suckers. This allows you to pick a race that may be more partial to strength and aura rather than pimping out Dex like with an archery build.


Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
8/35

Additional Core Training for Two-Handers
1x Two-Handed Weapons or Polearms (14/3)
1x Combat Maneuvers (12/8)
+26/11
=34/46 Total

Optional Additional Core Training
2x Spell Aiming
1x-2x Magic Item Use
1x-2x Arcane Symbols

Optional Additional Discrete Training
Take armor up to Leather Breastplate, if not further. You won't be casting spells as much as an Archer or Pure Mage. While the hindrance may suck, overall, better AvD, better defense, as you're gonna be caught in offensive more. It couldn't hurt. Better Armor is ALWAYS a godsend.

Dump Extra Points into
Earth Lore. This is really the only other way to increase AS after you've reached 75 ranks in MnE. Huge diminishing returns after the first few points though.

Post Cap Goals
Unknown... I'll think about it and fill this in later.

Spell Research Goals
Start off with 2/2/2 at level 2
WIZ & MjE until at 9/9 (Level 9)
WIZ & MnE until 13/6 (Level 13)
2x MnE until 25 (Level 25)
From this point on, you have options available to you:
MjE to 27: Depending on Race and weapon, Haste will round 5 second RT down to 1 Sec with 24 ranks of air Lore and 27 ranks of MjE.
MjE to 51: If you can only swing in 6 second RT, 51 ranks will produce an additional -1 RT, and make a 6 second RT down to 1 sec with 506.
MnE up to 75: This will max out the AS contribution of 425.
Wizard circle: Wizard circle generates the most DS of any circle, at 1.25 DS per rank.

Playstyle
513 is a giant wrench in the Two-Hander playstyle.
Subzero commented in another warmage thread that he was able to retain bolting by manually stopping 513. Seems feasible at level 60+, once you have a nice sized mana pool, but it's pretty mana intensive if you need to switch forms often. Buy going out with 513, and maybe switching twice during a hunt would work.

Due to the 513 shortcomings, warmages I've talked to typically train higher armor (leather breastplate or higher), and rely less on spells when they hunt. Spells that they do utilize are those wonderful roll-independent spells like 410, 909, 912. Knock them down, keep haste up, swing a massive weapon at their face. Pretty similar to archery, but no real single-hit option of 505, due to the 513 mechanics.




By the Math: Archery and Two-Hander AS slowdown
I'm sure you've heard it before, that non-pure builds slow down in the 70s/80s/90s.
I won't lie, mathematically, they're not joking. But as I stated in the beginning, even horrid horrid builds work in gemstone... so it's not going to be impossible, it's a matter of preference.

To attempt to stay competitive, an archer or two-hander needs to train Weapon Training + CM or 2x perception... that's netting 1.5 AS per level. Right off the bat we're at a 1 AS per level deficit compared to a semi/square who'se 1xed in CM. We have two tools to assist in bridging the gap: 425 and 509. Rangers have Phoen Strength, Bards are overpowered with Kai's and 425. Pallys train like, 50 ranks per level in CMANs, and then have some AS spell too, I think... Lets just, for argument's sake, compare a wizard to a ranger.

Since 425's potency is .5/level, that still puts us at a .5 AS per level deficit compared to a ranger. Lets see how this plays out:

At level 20, we're 15 AS below them (15 (509) -20 - 10 (606)). We really need that 425 potency!
At 25, we're actually above them (15-25-10+25) by 5 AS due to 425. But they gain on us pretty steadily.
At level 75, we're actually pretty close (75 - 15 + 10 - 50) 20 AS. But we've maxed out 425 potency.
At level 80, we're starting to lag (80-15+10-50) 25 AS.
At 90, we really need every point of AS we can get (90-15+10-50) 35 AS
At new to cap, we're at -45 AS compared to a ranger.

We're kind of at a loss post 425 cap. Archery is kinda in a different situation, because they're guarenteed 10x weapons, and utilize ranged DS rather than conventional melee DS. But then there are all sorts of nice Two-Handers with various flares that a bow could only dream of.

[Whirlin]

The Pure Mage
Seriously... You're a wizard. Why would you pick a class knowing for hurling massive bolts of awesome, and then use it to swing a wet noodle around? It doesn't make sense. You're a wizard, BE a wizard, ACT like a wizard. If you want to swing a weapon, there's a class for that, it's a warrior. If you want to pluck on strings all day, there's a class for that.. a bard. Wizards were meant to be wizards. Mind... Blown...

Why a Pure Mage
Honestly... Pure mages are badass. There's a reason wizards are considered one of the most overpowered classes at the moment. Because we're awesome. Our training all aligns fairly well, and because wizards are so overpowered, they have a large playerbase, and that large playerbase is looking for new and different ways to use them, thus finding more breaking mechanics, thus causing an skybound awesomeness spiral.

While we bolters can't get the same AS bonuses as those weapon flailers, we have two potent AS boosters that we can train so that we can stay competitive on the AS front. Ohh... and to help us out, mob's DS calculation is different than melee DS... Ohh, and even furthermore, those AS boosters that we're training in, also increase the hell out of our secondary skills and defenses. So it's basically a win-superwin.

Runestaves, how do they work?

Runestaves generate DS based on how many ranks in Magical skills you train in. Magical skills can be defined as: Spell Research, Spell Aiming, Mana Controls, Harness Power, Lores, Arcane Symbols, and Magic Item Usage.

Runestaff defense works off of the two handed parry equation, offering components of a flat stance adjustment, and a flat enchant bonus, meaning you'll always get +50 DS regardless of ranks when in defensive versus offensive, and every enchant will add 1:1 to your DS.

The actual equation is: ((Parry Ranks + 10 + (STR Bonus/4) + (Dex Bonus/4)) * Stance Mod * 1.5 ) + Stance Bonus + Enchant Bonus
Note: Stance Mod for Offensive is .2

You gain Parry Ranks from training more magical stuff. It's an awkward equation, but going from 4-11 Ranks of magic per level will yield +10% of your current level to your parry ranks.

Example: If you're level 20, and have 160 ranks in magic skills, that's 8/level, or would yield 20 Parry Ranks.
If you were level 20, and had 180 ranks in magic skills, that's 9/level, and would yield 22 Parry Ranks.

+2 ranks in parrying is quite small, especially considering the cost of those +20 magic skills could be as high as 40 MTPs, which could result in a spell rank.

2 ranks of parry would yield .6 DS in offensive, whereas 1 rank in MjE would yield .75 DS, and 1 rank in WIZ would yield 1.25 DS.

Training specifically for Runestaff DS is not a recommended path.


Core Training
2x Spell Research: (0/24)
1x Harness Power: (0/4)
1x Elemental Mana Control: (0/4)
1x Physical Fitness: (8/0)
1x Perception: (0/3)
8/35
Additional Core Training for a Pure
2x Spell Aiming (6/3)
1x Magic Item Use (0/1)
1x Arcane Symbols (0/1)
Additional TP cost of a whopping (6/5)... That's cheaper than just the weapon training for the alternatives.
Total: 14/40
Additional Optional Training for a Pure
2x in Magic Item Use and/or Arcane Symbols
You don't need to be 2x in MIU/AS. They will not generate more DS relative to additional spell research.
However, if you ever want to do fusion enchanting, you will require 150 ranks in MIU before guaranteeing success with pours.
MIU will also assist recharging items.


Dump Extra Points into
This is a grey area. At low levels, returns from additional ranks of harness power are marginally very substantial. 1 more mana when you have a max pool is 30 is much more than 1 more max mana when you have a pool of 300. During these low levels, AS/CS/DS aren't really problematic either, so further increasing your AS really isn't necessary. Wands are a good patch, but they can be heavy and a whole other burden to deal with. Therefore, I recommend dumping additional points into Harness Power, until your in your 30s. After that, I would recommend holding back on your Harness Power Training until it recedes to a 1x/level value.

After that point though, Spell Research, most definitely.


Training Variations
There are a few popular pure builds that I'll talk about. Why they work, and how you can specifically train for them.

Immolation Build
This is the first I need to touch upon, thanks to Methais posting as soon as I even created the thread :p. Immolation (519) is an overpowered as hell CS attack with a chance of instant death. Due to the TP requirements, Immolation Builds are typically Post-Cap builds. On the surface, 19 mana for a single attack is fairly expensive, but I'll get into other reasons to wait til post-cap for this build as well.

Methais performed some wonderful immolation testing over here:
http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?22624-Fire-Lore-Appreciation&highlight=fire%20lore%20appreciation

The end results highlighted two main things: Fire Lore helps instant death rate. However, we also need the CS in order to guarentee hits, otherwise pumping out 19 mana every cast for a potential for a hit will make us last as long as Jeril on a playground. In terms of training points costs, it's expensive to be 3x in spells to have those high of CS values, and then to tack on being 2x in lores kinda breaks the TP bank until past post-cap. Doing some quick numbers in the wonderful Tsoran training spreadsheet, as a halfling wizard with stats placed for growth, being only 3x in spells and 2x in lores leaves a total of 191 PTPs once you hit cap.

Is being a full 3x in spells and 2x in lores necessary for an Immolation build? Probably not. But Methais really spearheaded the build, and most of the logs you'll see are at that tier. So you can't expect similar returns to the thread highlights until being post-capped.

However, you do have the ability to save some TPs by not training Spell Aiming if you're going a pure CS route. So hey, recapture (6/)3 per level...

Rapid Fire 901 Build
Taverkin is probably the largest advocate of this. On the surface, it doesn't really make logical sense. However, when we dig down into some mechanics, it actually makes a lot of sense. Here's a couple reasons that it's awesome.

Flares from Staff have a static rate of flaring that doesn't vary with the duration between casts.
Damage factors of 901 are VERY low.
You're already training in Air Lore for Haste Potency, even if it is 1/2 DF increase for lightning.
1 mana is stupidly low mana cost for a spell.
Crit Bonus Damage as part of the damage equation.
There's a lich script to prevent overcasting. RCAST


Damage factors are incredibly low for 901. This is because damage factors roughly reflect the amount of mana you spend. Theoretically, 906 should be 6x the DF of 901. DEFINITELY not the case, since at the same time, you'd typically be spending a premium to spend less time killing... Lets break it down in a cost per 1 mana by DF
-Title-|-Cloth-|-Leather-|-Scale-|-Chain-|-Plate-
901 Damage Factor|.150|.133|.111|.112|.128
DF Per mana 903 | .148|.115|.094|.081|.058
DF Per mana 904 | .131|.096|.079|.088|.049
DF Per mana 906 | .111|.076|.058|.054|.051
DF Per mana 910 | .075|.056|.043|.042|.043
DF Per mana 505 | .104|.084|.066|.06|.042
DF Per mana 510 |.071|.052|.046|.044|.044

As you can see, it's a very high damage factor for the mana you're spending. Sure, there's the overhead of casting 515 every minute, and I'm sure we could factor that in... but I'll save that for another day.

As highlighted in the Lores section, Lores have the highest potency on low base damage factors, as they're a static increase to the base numbers. This means that the marginal increase of water/air lore on lightning is heightened. It even overcomes the half potency training. 1 rank of lore increases the DF by .3%. for comparison, 1 rank in fire lore increases fire DF by .1%.

Lastly, more attacks means more critical damage on the damage inflicted. A Critical Rank is calculated by Endroll * DF /Armor Crit Divisor
So, increasing the DF helps increase the critical rank.
Armor Crit Divisors are 5/6/7/9/11 for Cloth/leather/scale/chain/plate. This means you need at least 5/6/7/9/11 damage to get 1 base crit rank.
Once you hit Crit Rank 2... ranks become randomized, and may scale down. Half of the current rank (rounded up) = minimum potential critical. Basically, harder hitting stuff gets slightly nerfed.
Depending on where you hit, there's bonus damage, and a little flavor text associated with your crit rank. For Lightning, you get 1-5 bonus damage just for a rank 1 (average of 3.2 assuming even distribution among locations), and 3-10 on a rank 2 (average of 7). Actually, the tables are pretty much the same for fire.

So Lets maths it out again. 6 mana, 180 endroll, against cloth, hitting the chest.
Fire: .667 DF * 80 = 53. 53/5 = 10 (9 max rank), randomized to 5-9
Teirs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 25,30,50,60,70
53 base + 25,30,50,60,70 (average of 47) = 100 damage (Ignoring fatal crits)

Lightning .15 DF *80 = 12/5 = 2, randomized 1-2
Tiers 1,2 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses are: 5,10
12 base + 5,10 (average of 7.5) = 19 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 114 damage total.

But of course, that's with 0 lore training. I'll break down some additional mechanics around this in my next post when I go even further into maths.


Spell Research Goals
Since Pure builds can typically triple in spells, I'm just going to include some general prioritized goals that can be hit.
WIZ and MjE to 13
MjE and MnE until MjE 18
All Spell Research into MnE until 430 is unlocked
Go back to MjE to train it up to = Level
Keep MjE = Level, Try to get MnE = Level
Any additional spell ranks, dump into wizard circle

[Whirlin]

Now... I'm gonna go the republican route and be incredibly racist for a little while... and apparently political!
Sorry, totally not fitting for any sort of guide.

But, as I highlighted in the beginning, you can pretty much do whatever herpaderp thing you want, and reach level cap... but the purpose of this guide was to highlight some options to help you get there.

Racial Selection... Or... Subclass Selection if you're already bred.

Race|Strength | Constitution | Dexterity | Agility | Discipline | Aura | Logic| Intuition | Wisdom | Influence
Aelotoi |-5|0|5|10|5|0|5|5|0|-5|
Burghal gnome|-15|10|10|10|-5|5|10|5|0|-5|
Dark elf|0|-5|10|5|-10|10|0|5|5|-5|
Dwarf|10|15|0|-5|10|-10|5|0|0|-10|
Elf|0|0|5|15|-15|5|0|0|0|10|
Erithian|-5|10|0|0|5|0|5|0|0|10|
Forest gnome|-10|10|5|10|5|0|5|0|5|-5|
Giantman|15|10|-5|-5|0|-5|-5|0|0|5|
Half elf|0|0|5|10|-5|0|0|0|0|5|
Half krolvin|10|10|0|5|0|0|-10|0|-5|-5|
Halfling|-15|10|15|10|-5|-5|5|10|0|-5|
Human|5|0|0|0|0|0|5|5|0|0|
Sylvankind|0|0|10|5|-5|5|0|0|0|0|

That's a ton of numbers... Most of them don't matter.

STR is Melee AS... The higher the strength, the more likely you can survive a decently long time as a THW build.
DEX is spell bolts and Ranged AS. Archery and Pure Builds
Aura is CS for Immolation Builds

Why DEX is the most Important Stat Ever
If you're using a Bow or Wizard Bolt spells, Dex is already an AS mod... but it is soooo much more than that.
TRUNC(DEX Bonus/4) is added as phantom damage to attacks in absence of crit weighting.
dafaq?

Alright, when calculating damage, everyone knows the easy part:
1) Take the damage factor, multiply by the endroll in excess of 100.
2) Depending on the damage versus the armor type, you get crits... which provide extra damage.

But between those two steps, there's one additional calculation. Take your DEX Bonus/4, round down. While this is not added into your raw damage, it IS added when calculating what rank critical you get. This occurs in all AS based attacks, including melee, ranged, and spells. Not CS though... obviously.

The Phantom Damage has been documented and confirmed for Wizard Bolts and Ranged Weapons. However, it does not apply to ALL weapons. Currently, I am performing testing on THW weapons to determine which (if any) receive the DEX bonuses. Once that has been determined, I will be able to test on Crit Weighted weapons and phantom damage.

Stop talking in machine code. What does that mean?
901 builds kick more ass. Halflings are even better.

901 has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad DF. But hey, if I'm a halfling with maxed DEX, I have a +40 DEX bonus, that's 10 damage right off the bat. If I have already done adequate damage to obtain a Tier 1 crit, I will receive +10 Phantom damage added when calculating the crit. Since a substantial margin of the damage from 901 is based on the crit tier, this further strengthens the build.

This puts Halflings at even a better racial selection than Dark Elves for non-immolation builds. Dark Elves have a DEX bonus at +35 at 100. But since phantom damage is rounded down, they max at only +8 phantom damage, while halflings get +10 phantom Damage. Pretty much the maximum gain you can get from +5 Dex mod.

Here's a wonderful example that Riltus provided to me, with a breakdown of the damage.
>You gesture at a dark orc.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a dark orc!
AS: +212 vs DS: +39 with AvD: +22 + d100 roll: +68 = +263
... and hit for 49 points of damage!
Heavy jolt to chest causes solar plexus to explode. Remarkable display of spraying blood.
Rank 5 Crit w/25 damage

Wizard with 20 air lore and 34 Dex bonus (8 pts. crit weighting)

901 DF: 0.133
Lore DF bonus: 0.012
Effective DF: 0.145
Endroll success margin: 163
Raw damage: 23.6 rounds up to 24
Armor: double leather w/ 6 crit divisor
Calc max crit w/o weighting: 24/6 = 4
Observed Crit damage: 25 (R5 chest)
Observed Crit: rank 5
Minimum Crit weighting for a rank 5 outcome: 6 pts. [(24 + 6)/6 = rank 5 crit]

Without phantom damage, the maximum crit outcome would have been a tier 4 crit (only 20 damage), so that additional phantom damage for the crit roll ended up being an additional real 5 damage.


The following analysis is mainly to highlight the ability to convert between the builds, and the best racial selection options within a given build:

THW Warmages
THW Warmages are mainly concerned about strength, since they need all the AS they can get relative to the other classes before the AS slowdown in the 70s. I'm not really evaluating DEXAGL from a RT perspective, because if you're doing a THW build, you'll be able to swing anything in 6 seconds with any race, which is the RT needed to hit 1 second eventually. If your stats are placed for growth, and you're using a polearm, DEXAGL needs to be a concern... but that's a pretty distinct list of conditions, and you can take care of that decision yourself.

Giantman: +15 STR, but falls short if you ever want to swap to a bolter or ranged with a -5 DEX and suffers in CS with a -5 Aura
Half-Krol: +10 STR, but no penalties/strengths on DEX and Aura
Dwarf: +10 STR, No strength/penalties on Dex, but bad Aura at -10
Human: Barely decent at +5 STR, no Dex, and +5 Aura

It should be noted that these THW warmages races outlined above tend to be weak in DEX and Aura for eventual migration after the AS slowdown. So you'll find it very difficult to swap from a Racially maximized THW Warmage to a Pure or Ranged Warmage.

Ranged Warmage:
Ranged Warmages just need 1 thing: DEX. Even a halfling with -15 STR mod can get to a STR bonus of +5 and fire an aimed longbow at 1 second with haste. The following highlights strength mods mainly as a way to highlight the ability to transition between builds with a fixskills:

Halflings: The Dominant Master Race with +15 DEX, but a wondrous -15 STR and -5 Aura
Dark Elf: +10 DEX, 0 STR, and +10 Aura
Sylvan: +10 DEX, 0 STR and +5 Aura... Sadly inferior to Dark Elves in stats, but infinitely less douchy.
Burger Gnome: +10 Dex, but with the same -15 STR as a halfling, but a +5 Aura
Elves have +5 DEX, 0 STR, and +5 Aura... Making them not bad, but not particularly good
Half Elves just have +5 Dex... 0 STR, 0 Aura... so... Better than all negatives... barely.
Aelotoi Have the same +5 DEX and 0 Aura as Half-Elves, but with -5 Strength... so, worse across the board... But at least they don't need Red Bulls.
Forest Gnomes have -10 Strength for 5 Dex and 0 Aura... They're bad... and if you picked one, you should feel bad.

Pure Builds
I'm gonna do an emphasis on Aura, as our CS mod, because I already highlighted DEX in the Ranged section. Fortunately, the list is pretty short:
Dark Elves with +10 Aura, along with their +10 DEX
Burger Gnomes and Elves with +5, also listed in the DEX breakdown.

By the Numbers
All of the Strength focused races have drastic shortcoming when it comes time to convert to being a pure or ranged build.
Dark Elves have the overall highest statistics modifiers at +20 to relevant stats, but have other shortcomings, like being douchebags and horribad spirit regen.
Short of Dark Elves (literally), Bhurghal Gnomes seem to be a strong option for both Archery and eventual Immolation builds.
Halflings are by far the strongest race if you're going for a pure bolting or ranged builds.


The Stuff Beyond the Numbers
Dark Elves: RPing a Dark Elf turns you into a douche... but a douche with TREMENDOUS RP capabilities and ways to pimp out RPAs. They also have absolutely horrendous Spirit Regeneration Rates, which can influence total mana pool if you go with the COL as a society (next section). Dark Elves have penalties to Sorcerer, Elemental, and Spiritual TD at -5, with a +10 against poison, and +100 against diseases. Base HP of 120. Spirit Regen of 1 per 5 minutes.

Bhurghal Gnomes are kinda annoying little things... Squeaky even to a halfling's perspective. They don't have as established a society as Dark Elves, so you're kinda on your own. They have the best innate Maneuver defense, which is shared with other smaller races, and better spirit regen at 1 per 3 minutes. They have a base HP of only 90.

Halflings are a strong pick for any class, as their total stat bonuses are amung the highest at net +20 (the newer races of both Gnomes and Erithian have +25). they have 'excellent' maneuver defense, following the two gnome races on the best. They get huge TD bonuses: +40 Elemental, +30 Disease, and +30 Poison. They also have the best natural spirit regen at 2/5 minutes, tied with Dwarves and Forest gnomes... Both of whom make poor Mages.


Societies

3 Societies to choose from! That which must not be named (and definitely not the Council of Light (COL)), Voln, and Guardians of Sunfist (GOS).
Each offers unique bonuses... blahblahblah, lets dive in.

COL
COL is the society for people that love hard maths. The society offers very little outside of the core AS/DS benefits... But those additional benefits are pretty nice mechanically.
Sign of staunching stops all bleeding for 1 mana
Sign of Healing is full Health for 2 spirit
Sign of wracking is full mana for 5 spirit
Sign of darkness is a teleport back to town for 6 spirit... can't use while stunned though.
We're talking about an overall gain of 35 AS, 35 DS, 20 Ranged/Spell DS, 15 TD.
Here's the catch... Keeping these signs up cost spirit. Here's the anti-catch... COL sign duration is 10 seconds per level. So at cap, we're talking about a duration of 16 minutes, 40 seconds. Even a dark elf could stagger his signs enough to regen the 3 spirit you use for AS/DS/TD, and still remain static (Barely). Although, a dark elf can't really do that before level 90.

Of course, a Dark Elf couldn't make the same use out of Sign of Wracking due to the slow spirit regen. As a halfling, I'm usually wracking as often as Jeril touches himself. A dark Elf can probably only wrack as often as Gib says something nice to someone.

Overall, COL offers great abilities, low upkeep cost, but spirit can be burdensome for some classes, and make it a non-attractive option. This is why you don't see as many dark elf wizards as the above section would suggest... that spirit regen can hurt.

GOS
Sunfist is an attractive option... ... for melee warmages.
Less AS/DS than COL, at only +30 max. More TD than COL at +20 though. Melee Warmages also get Heavy crit weighting on weapons towards hated foes... Whatever that means...
On the defensive side, while they get -5 relative to COL, they also get Heavy Crit padding.

Don't misunderstand, Heavy crit padding is an absolute godsend. However, if you're a race with 120 max HP, if you get into a situation where the HCP just saved your life, you're likely on the ground/stunned/etc... and there's pretty much nothing that would save you at that HP value. However... how can you truly put a price on saving yourself from death 1/50 times? Is that worth the +5 AS/DS?

Sigil of Power converts 50 stamina to 25 mana. Not bad... but we wizards aren't exactly swimming in stamina, being restricted to 1x PF.

Sigil of Escape provides protection against Stun/web/binds/etc. This is definitely gonna save your ass more times than the HCP from Sigil of Major Protection. This is pretty awesome... won't lie.

The other major attraction of GOS is the ability to Warcamp. Having not been in GOS myself, the best description I've heard is that it's kinda like bandits, but no traps and no ambushing. Sounds pretty horrible to me... But on the flipside, you're on these forums, I'm sure you've seen auctions with random awesome enhancives from bandit camps. They're great hunting grounds, they scale for all levels, and they have amazing loot. Non-GOS people can enter... but it's just easier for them to get in there.

Once you get to a warcamp, I bet you Dark Elves wished you had the Halfling's or Gnome's Maneuver Defense bonus!

The downside to Sunfist is that their durations and costs are static. You're going to be spending a large amount of mana/stamina to keep sigils up throughout a hunt, and that's never really going to change. For the AS/DS boosts, you're looking at 22mana/27 Stamina per minute. Compared to the 6 mana for COL for 15 minutes. Thats a nice bajillion times the mana cost... but at the same time, it's not spirit!

Voln
Voln was recently redone. It now offers +26 AS to all critters, +39 against undead, +26 DS, +13 TD.

Some of the intangibles would be nice... blessing, UAC boosters... Except... we're not monks, so we can't fully utilize UAC to the same extent (Without unlocking UAC CMANs, I'm not even evaluating it as an option in this guide thingy). And blessing would be nice for a melee warmage, but ranged warmages can just use spells.

Their Symbol of mana is attractive... 50 mana every 3 minutes. For a Dark Elf, you would need a mana pool of 417 before wracking is a better alternative. For a halfling, you'd only need a 208 mana pool.
(1 spirit per 5 minutes = 25 minutes for 5 spirit. Symbol of mana every 3 minutes = 8.33 symbols per 5 spirit = 416.66 mana...)

Symbol of dreams is nice, health/mana/spirit/stats recovery. Good to use post-death along with Symbol of Recall, which restores your spells after you die.

They have a lot of weird other abilities, like crazy 'standard success resolution' attacks.

Symbol of Return is like Sign of darkness... so kinda nets out there.

Additionally, Voln has some backdoor teleporting type system thingy where the back of their society is basically pocket portals to everywhere. One of which is the Rift. That's pretty cool... if you want to hunt in a scary scary place.

Voln's symbols work off favor, which you accumulate through hunting undead. This is kinda a non-issue. With the symbol of blessing, warmages can fight undead, and ranged/pures can both just spellcast. Undead are typically pretty easy targets to hunt relative to other critters at like levels, so you'll find yourself hunting a lot of them as anything other than a melee warmage.

By the Numbers
Anybody can do well in any society, but COL benefits are maximized by races with more spirit regen. GOS benefits are maximized by those with high stamina, who can warcamp effectively, and melee warmages. Voln is kinda for those that don't really fit into the other categories. I'd probably align gnomes and halflings with COL, and Dark Elves with Voln. Strictly from the numbers perspective. Although, COL Dark Elf Wizards are pretty common.


Enchanting
Enchanting... I'd be willing to bet 90% of wizards are just pocket wizards used for enchanting lots. Some feedback says that they want more guidance on enchanting here. I wish I could provide exact breakdowns of stuffs, but with hidden rolls on the cast, there's not much I can offer. What I can do is recommend stuff!

The Basics
Enchanting gives +5 bonus on a weapon, shield, or armor. Long ago, the spell used to be called Enchant True, so occasionally you'll hear people calling it Echted. These people are out of touch of reality, and trying to show off their oldschool lingo. It's like when old people try to act cool. You should shun them.

Enchanting up to 4x is minor stuff. 4x is +20, this refers to the total target bonus of the cast. So if you have a +16 item, if you enchant it, that rolls above 4x, so it gets classified as 5x. If you're a pure, you can probably do 4x enchants when you first unlock 925. (I am not liable for any failed 4x enchants at level 25). You can have a bajillion of these going if you want.

So if the target total enchant is gonna be over +20, it's a major project. You can only have 1 major project per... character? account? Not sure. I think it was originally intended to be account, but dunno if it ever went to that level. Either way, they're limited, and that's why they're worth more.

Each target enchant is going to take a temper and 925 cast PER ENCHANT of the target. So enchanting something to 5x is going to require 5 tempers, 5 casts. Each enchant temper also takes more time as the enchant increases. So, 1x may be like, a day to temper, 5x may take 4-5 days per temper... for 5 tempers. So time is ever increasing.

Pouring the Temper: The Good!
MIU, Logic, Aura, Wisdom

Making the Cast: The Good!
Wizard Ranks #1
Major / Minor Elemental Ranks.
Level
Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, Elemental Mana Control
Logic, Intuition, Aura
Familiar Present
Workshop!

GMs have stated that Wizard Ranks (confirmed up to at least 1.5x level) even after being subjected to diminishing returns, are always worth more than the subsequent skills. Beyond that, weightings, etc, are unknown.

The Negative Sides of Both
I'm not gonna go too far into the negatives, because they're obvious and easily remediable.
By Krakii, the negatives are:
Material of the item
Less than full Heal/Spirit, Having wounds
Critters Present, Encumbrance, Death's Sting, Having familiar elsewhere.

The things that can factor into it, but until we have a concrete equation, nobody really knows how big of an impact they have
Material of the item being enchanted.
Some woods (supposedly Witchwood), apparently suck for taking enchants.
Mithril/Vultite are supposedly easy.

Potions Potions Potions
Rohnuru: Good for 1x and 2x enchants
Duqurnu: Good for 3x an 4x enchants
Dirtokh: Good for 4x and 5x enchants
Mirtokh: Good for 5x through 7x enchants.

Those aren't rules, and the potions can likely span a few more Xs on each side, but that's what I personally do.

Pre-Temper Potions:
Ayvenah is used for enhancive.
Eovenah is used for sanctified gear.

Pre-Temper potions are rough to work with. You can make them through alchemy... but honestly, unless you hate life, just buy them from a player shop. I personally spent about 30 months running Lich's alchemy script while off of Lumnis, spent about 15m silvers. You could likely do it cheaper or faster, but likely not both. It's not worth it. Plus the Sanct potion requires an item created through end-tier cleric alchemy. So yeah, that sucks.

Pre-Temper potions give a -200 on the modifier of the temper. What does that mean? I personally found that I was able to succeed 100% of pre-temper pours with approximately 150 MIU ranks. MIU enhancives are pretty cheap too. Virilneus is usually selling some. I'll touch upon this a little more in the next section.

So... How do you do it?
Step 1: GET NAKED.
No, I'm not trying to be Jeril. Seriously. Encumbrance is a huge factor, especially if you're a smaller race. It's also the most controllable variable in the process. So strip down to absolutely nothing. If you have your armor fully trained off and lightened, you may want to consider leaving your armor on, as having it lightened will provide negative encumbrance.
Step 2: Get your item/potion/enhancives. Not enough hands? Throw them in a disk.
Likely you're at your locker. Just take any potion, take the item, throw them in your disk, stash your stuff in your locker. If you've picked up any enhancives, go ahead and put them on. Enhancives are cheap, and effectively last forever if you're just doing them for enchanting. This entire process takes about 5 minutes.
Step 3: Get to a guild workshop.
Lich's go2 works well for at least getting you into the guild. Sadly, this means you likely need to join the wizards guild, even though alchemy sucks. If there's no Narost map, figure out how to get to the workshop. You can figure it out.
Step 4: Cast up a familiar
It's 20 mana... it helps. No reason not to.
Step 5: I don't care if you checked it before, confirm the status of the item with 405.
405 is 5 mana. I don't care if you already checked it in your locker. It takes 3 seconds and confirms the status of the item for the 925 cast.
Step 6: Cast, retemper as necessary... wait X days, rinse, repeat.


A worthwhile post by DaCapn on his takes on the required spell ranks/builds for enchanting:

The context was the discussion regarding the GM's post about wizard spell circle 'always' being the best way to increase your enchanting success.


If I recall correctly, 1.5x wizard was the breaking point where the major diminishing returns set in.

But yeah, I had the exact same discussion with someone on LNet once about their capped 3x wizard base enchanter. I went on about diminishing returns and they set me straight with that post. I still wouldn't advocate that route since it basically makes the character otherwise totally useless (no spellups, no charging, no hunting, just enchanting). Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that out.

For my own enchanting experience, I was 1x wizard base when I started out enchanting and pretty much never had any trouble with enchants as long as my wizard base ranks were at least equal to the destination enchant (for example 35 ranks for 7x, which I succeeded at twice in that time frame).

When I started in on fusion gear, I had to be level 75ish to have 100% chances with the pretemper. I completed 5x fusion without trouble with 50 wizard base ranks but had like 4 minor failures (temper resets and roll-backs on enchant stage) on 6x fusion. I upped my wizard base ranks to like 65 and sailed through the rest of the stages and culminated in a 3% failure. This is only one item but it gave me the impression that 2*bonus in wizard base ranks was a pretty good rule of thumb for fusion.

This was all with the public guild workshops by the way.




My Thoughts on Alchemy
Having done through alchemy, I highly recommend against it. When I started alchemy, in order to stockpile the necessary reagents, I needed to go premium.
Why?
I needed an alt that could be in each city that I'd be able to give my alchemy satchel to when I wasn't doing alchemy
WWWWWHHHHHYYYYY?
My alchemy satchel weighed 120 pounds, and was constantly capped out in capacity.
Why not locker?
You're carrying a ton of different types of reagents, some of which are temporary for the steps your working on, and some of them skins of critters, which don't bundle the same way you can put crystals in jars. A bundle of 10 hawk-owl tufts is still 10 items in your locker.
Why not just a mule?
Access to the FWI alchemy shop is a godsend when you're 2 reagents short on a step. It also facilitates buying additional reagents like essence of fires from Teras hunters, rather than making the trek from Zul Logoth where you find the truffles that you need for your current potions ranks.
But I'm gonna run ;alchemy, and it'll be super fast!
I've been scripting with ;alchemy pretty much as soon as my Lumnis wears off each week, for about 2-3 years now... still not capped in everything.
But I'm only going to rank X, it'll be cheap
I've probably spent at least 15m in alchemy reagents... That's just stuff from the shops too. Not counting things purchased from players (bulk essence of fires, gems to powder)
But you're making mad loots at cap alchemy, right?
I sell on average maybe 1 Avyeneh potion a week. 225k-ish per potion. Approximately 100k in materials, and about 20-40 minutes to create, depending on how many crystals I need to breakdown.
But now you're net positive, right?
No. Not by a longshot... I'm still probably 13m in the hole at the end of the day
But I'm going to hunt for my materials, it'll be cheap!
The way the treasure system works, if you're vastly underhunting, the drop rates will suck. If you're at cap, and going to Gossamer Valley in Ta'illistim for essence of waters, or fire mages for essence of fires, the drop rate will be pretty much non-existent. And the various ayanad crystals are just intermittent, at best. The likelihood of getting the proper tier you need is incredibly low... and if you're breaking crystals down, you're just being inefficient.
Ok, then I'll just set aside a month, and do nothing but alchemy!
When I gave my 15m estimate on just store bought mats... that was also stockpiling the forward-looking materials whenever I stepped foot in any town ever. If you were looking to actually buy supplemental materials at a premium, I can easily see someone spending upwards of 30-50m to master in a month.

That being said... go for it if you want... but I warned you.


Final Thoughts
That's all for now. Hope this has helped. Remember, this is just to give everyone some insight. Being a wizard is easy, but there are a tons of different ways to be one. Above all else, have fun. Gemstone is a GAME. You don't NEED to be the strongest to reach level cap. Stupider people than you, the readers of this awesome guide, have made it to cap in the past, and I'm sure many more will make it in the future. It's all about how you want to get there.

[Methais]

IMMOLATE 4 LYFE!

(And probably ranged after)

[zoraster]

i'd love to see this finished, for what it's worth. Not demanding it or anything, it's already helpful, just saying that you're not writing it for no one.

[Whirlin]

Worked on it quite a bit. today, so here's a pseudo bump, since yeah... edits..

[caelric]

Two Weapon Combat Never seen a TWC Wizard before... new thing? Probably not, it's expensive as hell.


As a note, I have a TWC/OHE wizard in the mid 50's. It's kind of the same principle as a 901/515 bolting wizard; dual weapons wielded at 1 sec swings, both flaring weapons means more flares. Obviously not the same raw damage output as a THW warmage, but still nothing to laugh at. 4x flaring perfect falchion and ebladed superior invar handaxe (total bonus is +22 when ebladed, due to invar), two of the most heavy damage OHEs, still not as much as a THW, though.

Follows your training plan, more or less, although CM is not at 1x, more like 0.5x. Does have full 2x in spall aiming, though,a nd full 1x in PF (since GoS...)

Overall, thumbs up on your comparisons.

[Whirlin]

Follows your training plan, more or less, although CM is not at 1x, more like 0.5x. Does have full 2x in spall aiming, though,a nd full 1x in PF (since GoS...)

Overall, thumbs up on your comparisons.
I can see only being .5x in CM being a big issue... There's always going to be a deficit in AS, partially overcome through 425. But if you're under 1x in CMAN, you're increasing that gap across all levels, beginning earlier in the spectrum. As a ranger in my 80s, the difference is already pretty substantial now that I'm no longer getting anymore 425 potency, but I couldn't imagine having that gap be even larger... and on melee AS.

By the level breakdown example above, we're above them at level 25 when we initially unlock 425, with the gradual decrease to being even, and then being behind... But being only .5x in CMAN, you're losing out on 6 AS by 25... so you never really surpassed them at any point in the spectrum. So you've always been behind them, and will always be behind them, with the rate of change greater than that of a normal warmage.

[audioserf]

I think I want to roll up a TWC GOS wizard just for fun later, but with no spell aim. With a build that intensive I would want to be All In on the physical. It's worth noting that when I did THW warmage from 0-55 or so, I rarely ever bolted.

[caelric]

Yeah, I fixskilled into the spell aim around mid 40's, as I was growing out of krynch. The bolts gave some more options for disabling, but came at the cost of the CM. However, at that level, .5 CM vs 1x CM was only 10-15 AS difference, easily made up by a pure potion.

Plus, bolting just added in some variety that was getting boring with the straight swinging approach.

Also, I seem to remember reading about someone getting two blink weapons (daggers? handaxes?) and dual wielding them with a warmage with 901 in them.

[Whirlin]

updated.

[Aluvius]

Interesting article!

[zoraster]

thanks, whirlin. Question about 901 rapidfire, though... aren't crits based on the damage, not the roll? or is that just for weapons? In other words, a lance deals some killer crits because of its incredibly high DF. Because of that, doesn't that make it much harder to get crits with lower tier bolt spells? the damage might be better, but the criticals would be less, no?

[Whirlin]

Your racial stat bonuses table needs to be fixed. Interesting article!

Well fuck... Damn copy/paste

[Whirlin]

thanks, whirlin. Question about 901 rapidfire, though... aren't crits based on the damage, not the roll? or is that just for weapons? In other words, a lance deals some killer crits because of its incredibly high DF. Because of that, doesn't that make it much harder to get crits with lower tier bolt spells? the damage might be better, but the criticals would be less, no?
You're right, but not entirely there. I'll update the OP with the further explanation.

You're absolutely right, crits are based on the damage, not the roll. Roll does impact DF, which is then used to calculate crits... but it is a step removed.

Now, you changed the use of the term Crits in your question. A crit tier is simply the raw damage divided by the armor factor, which is then a lookup to a crit table dependent on the location. The crit table had a damage value associated with it, which in turn has a wound level on it. You'll get bonus damage at crit rank 1, which means 5-11 damage depending on armor type. even at the high end, 11 damage against plate is an endroll of... 179 with 901 with 24 ranks of air lore (186 without). But a rank 1 critical applies between 1 and 5 bonus damage.

ok... I barely understood my explanation when I re-read it... Lets just leave it at... There's little flat-value additional damage that goes out, hitting things lots means you're getting lots of little flat-value bonus damage.

I'll explain it better in the OP

[Whirlin]

Stat correction: Sylvans actually have +5 aura... the STAT page on Krakii was wrong, I've updated krakii to reflect the official pages.

[zoraster]

You're right, but not entirely there. I'll update the OP with the further explanation.

You're absolutely right, crits are based on the damage, not the roll. Roll does impact DF, which is then used to calculate crits... but it is a step removed.

Now, you changed the use of the term Crits in your question. A crit tier is simply the raw damage divided by the armor factor, which is then a lookup to a crit table dependent on the location. The crit table had a damage value associated with it, which in turn has a wound level on it. You'll get bonus damage at crit rank 1, which means 5-11 damage depending on armor type. even at the high end, 11 damage against plate is an endroll of... 179 with 901 with 24 ranks of air lore (186 without). But a rank 1 critical applies between 1 and 5 bonus damage.

ok... I barely understood my explanation when I re-read it... Lets just leave it at... There's little flat-value additional damage that goes out, hitting things lots means you're getting lots of little flat-value bonus damage.

I'll explain it better in the OP

Sorry, I probably should have walked out my question more.

Yeah, I get that. I guess what I meant was that by going the 901, high density, low critical route you're giving up death, knockdown, stun, amputating, etc. criticals you might get with higher DF spells, thus depriving you of lowered DS and giving you more chances of being hit. Instead you're going more for the death by HP route. That may still be superior, but I think that probably needs to be taken into account. In your example, Tier 5-9 fire crit to the chest is: S6/R2 wound, S8/R3 wound, fatal, fatal, so a 50% chance of being fatal. Tier 1-2 lightning crits are just Rank 1 wounds.

I like your elaboration, but I think it's worth considering that an end roll of 180 vs. cloth for minor fire is an end roll of 160 vs. cloth for shock (in other words, if you're rolling say a 50 to get 180 for fire, with that same 50 roll you're getting 160 for shock because of the AvD). To correct the math then, it's:

Fire: .667 DF * 80 = 53. 53/5 = 10 (9 max rank), randomized to 5-9
Teirs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 25,30,50,60,70
53 base + 25,30,50,60,70 (average of 47) = 100 damage (Ignoring fatal crits)

Lightning .15 DF *60 = 9/5 = 1, randomized 1
Tiers 1 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses is: 5
9 base + 5 (average of 5) = 14 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 84 damage total.


So things are looking down for shock as an option against cloth, BUT:

End roll of 180 for fire against Full Plate, chest

Fire: .303 DF * 80 = 24. 24/11 = 2, randomized to 1-2
Teirs 1-2: Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 5,10 (average 7.5)
24 base + 7.5 = 31.5 damage

Lightning .128 DF *60 = 7/5 = 1, randomized 1
Tiers 1 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses is: 5
7 base + 5 (average of 5) = 12 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 72 damage total.

So clearly at the plate level, shock is winning out. This isn't really a surprise since Fire's DF is less than half against plate as it is against cloth, but shock's is still 85% what it was against cloth.

(please don't misunderstand. really like your guide. Just hoping to really get to the core of things)

And of course, as noted earlier this doesn't take into account lore, which as stated before almost certainly is to the benefit of minor shock more than it is to fire (even though lore is half as effective on an absolute level, it increases the DF proportionally much greater).

[Fallen]

Fun article, very well laid out.*

PS
Dark Elves rule.

[Whirlin]

Sorry, I probably should have walked out my question more.

Yeah, I get that. I guess what I meant was that by going the 901, high density, low critical route you're giving up death, knockdown, stun, amputating, etc. criticals you might get with higher DF spells, thus depriving you of lowered DS and giving you more chances of being hit. Instead you're going more for the death by HP route. That may still be superior, but I think that probably needs to be taken into account. In your example, Tier 5-9 fire crit to the chest is: S6/R2 wound, S8/R3 wound, fatal, fatal, so a 50% chance of being fatal. Tier 1-2 lightning crits are just Rank 1 wounds.

I like your elaboration, but I think it's worth considering that an end roll of 180 vs. cloth for minor fire is an end roll of 160 vs. cloth for shock (in other words, if you're rolling say a 50 to get 180 for fire, with that same 50 roll you're getting 160 for shock because of the AvD). To correct the math then, it's:

Fire: .667 DF * 80 = 53. 53/5 = 10 (9 max rank), randomized to 5-9
Teirs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 25,30,50,60,70
53 base + 25,30,50,60,70 (average of 47) = 100 damage (Ignoring fatal crits)

Lightning .15 DF *60 = 9/5 = 1, randomized 1
Tiers 1 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses is: 5
9 base + 5 (average of 5) = 14 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 84 damage total.


So things are looking down for shock as an option against cloth, BUT:

End roll of 180 for fire against Full Plate, chest

Fire: .303 DF * 80 = 24. 24/11 = 2, randomized to 1-2
Teirs 1-2: Fire critical body damage bonuses are: 5,10 (average 7.5)
24 base + 7.5 = 31.5 damage

Lightning .128 DF *60 = 7/5 = 1, randomized 1
Tiers 1 Lightning Critical Body damage bonuses is: 5
7 base + 5 (average of 5) = 12 damage per bolt * 6 bolts = 72 damage total.

So clearly at the plate level, shock is winning out. This isn't really a surprise since Fire's DF is less than half against plate as it is against cloth, but shock's is still 85% what it was against cloth.

(please don't misunderstand. really like your guide. Just hoping to really get to the core of things)

And of course, as noted earlier this doesn't take into account lore, which as stated before almost certainly is to the benefit of minor shock more than it is to fire (even though lore is half as effective on an absolute level, it increases the DF proportionally much greater).

You're right, but it also doesn't take into account runestaff flares, which is another MASSIVE benefit, due to flat rate proc %s. 6 times the proc rate compared to 1 cast of 906. 1 proc of 20 damage would put them even by your calculations...
Unfortunately, you can't really maths out procs as well as the other mechanics, with the unknown proc rates and variable crit teirs they do.

That's also just one build option. Taverkin is a huge advocate of it. Maybe I didn't make a strong enough statement for a typical 2.6x spell research conventional 906 nuker build. But that's so vanilla I wanted to really highlight why some people are using crazy builds that people don't typically think of...

Maybe I'll phrase it that way rather than doing a writeup on a 'normal' build.

[Dayko]

I love this thread, it helped me out quite a bit. Good job, Whirlin. I give ya major props for this :)

[Riltus]

Runestaves, how do they work?
Runestaves grant DS equal to being 1x in THW if the user has 8 trains per level in magical stuff category highlighted in the first pots. I believe the requirement is not discrete, so if you train 7/level, it'll be less than 1x, but it will be more than 0x. It also can go slightly further, but with unknown diminishing returns. So 16/level will not yield DS as though you were 2x in THW.

Also 99% certain that training in THW doesn't help runestaff DS... but may be awesome if it does... Unnecessary, but awesome.

The Core training for a wizard already grants 4 Magic trains, plus 4 in the additional Pure Core training, and you're all set.

Runestaff parry DS receives 10 bonus weapon ranks in addition to the 'magic ranks per level' converted to weapon ranks. This is not insignicant, particularly at lower levels. With 8 magic ranks per level a runestaff user has weapon ranks equal to level + the 10 bonus ranks.

6 magic ranks per level converts to the following number of weapon ranks including the 10 bonus ranks:

Level 20 = 26 weapon ranks or the equivalent of 1.3x per level weapon training
Level 50 = 50 weapon ranks (1x trained)
Level 100 = 90 weapon ranks (0.9x trained)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8 magic ranks per level converts to exactly (level + 10) weapon ranks.

Level 20 = 30 weapon ranks (1.5x trained)
Level 50 = 60 weapon ranks (1.2x trained)
Level 100 = 110 weapon ranks (1.1x trained)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11 ranks per level:

Level 20 = 36 weapon ranks (1.8x trained)
Level 50 = 75 weapon ranks (1.5x trained)
Level 100 = 140 weapon ranks (1.4x trained)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

15 ranks per level:

Level 20 = 40 weapon ranks (2x trained)
Level 50 = 85 weapon ranks (1.7x trained)
Level 100 = 160 weapon ranks (1.6x trained)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THW skill does not add to runestaff DS. Parry DS activation is based on the weapon held in the primary hand and the appropriate parry DS formula for that weapon base. It will add to melee AS when attacking with the runestaff.

Mega props for this guide. Great job!

Mark

[Methais]

I didn't see this in the ranged guide, but I was wondering what the best weapon type is to use. Is the +30 AS from kneeling with a crossbow worth it, and am I still able to get 1 second RTs with it (1 second with each step that is, I realize crossbows have the extra steps of loading and cocking or whatever it is)? Or should I just go with a longbow and use it as a machine gun?

Also are wizards able to snipe from hiding and stay hidden with enough stalking & hiding? I'm guessing it would require 1x, but I don't know much in general about archery.

[SHAFT]

Roll with a longbow methais.

You'll likely have a 1 sec rt, you don't need hiding.

[Methais]

Roll with a longbow methais.

You'll likely have a 1 sec rt, you don't need hiding.

The hiding part was more just for fun later on, like if I wanted to pwn someone in the face or something. Is 1x enough to remain hidden?

[Whirlin]

I didn't see this in the ranged guide, but I was wondering what the best weapon type is to use. Is the +30 AS from kneeling with a crossbow worth it, and am I still able to get 1 second RTs with it (1 second with each step that is, I realize crossbows have the extra steps of loading and cocking or whatever it is)? Or should I just go with a longbow and use it as a machine gun?

Also are wizards able to snipe from hiding and stay hidden with enough stalking & hiding? I'm guessing it would require 1x, but I don't know much in general about archery.

Yeah... I didn't dive too much more in there, cause of the Art of the Bow guide filling in some info.

Cocking a crossbow, from what I remember, was like, 10 seconds to do. It may be possible with 101 MjE and 100 Air lore to get that down to 1 second, but you'll still be firing it at half speed (assuming no time for actions of loading/kneeling/standing) as a longbow. And heavy crossbows only have superior DFs against Cloth and Scale.

The latest information out of the Archery Guide thread showed that you'll have 3% lower DS with a crossbow than a bow (in offensive). Since we're not spamming spells in guarded/defensive, it could be kinda material. Plus then the DS reduction of kneeling. While feasible, it would require a lot of ranks out of MjE into Wiz for 913 and 905 DS bonuses, and would likely break your immolation build. Don't know if you wanted an 'all-in' change or not though.

As far as bows, Longbows are the best across the board. Being wizards, we cheat! 509's +15 STR bonus means that we only need a 5 STR bonus, 24 air lores, and 51 MjE to fire a longbow in 1 second.

Honestly, I've never even considered hiding. Most snipers are 2x in it minimum, and I've heard 1xing in it isn't really worth it. Plus, I believe, like foraging, there are hidden class modifiers that make it more difficult for wizards. Additionally, if you're sniping, you use both Perception and Ambushing ranks to determine accuracy. Ambushing is expensive as hell, and is really only worth training post-cap. post-maxing spells. So hey, if you really want an all-in build, you could lose all your fire lore and pick up max ambushing ranks for an additional +15 AS at 100 ranks

[Whirlin]

But... I just sold my 5x fusion longbow last night... So I don't have a good bow to sell you... I don't know how you can swap to archery without buying bows from me!!

[Methais]

Yeah... I didn't dive too much more in there, cause of the Art of the Bow guide filling in some info.

Cocking a crossbow, from what I remember, was like, 10 seconds to do. It may be possible with 101 MjE and 100 Air lore to get that down to 1 second, but you'll still be firing it at half speed (assuming no time for actions of loading/kneeling/standing) as a longbow. And heavy crossbows only have superior DFs against Cloth and Scale.

Damn, that's pretty long. Why would anyone use a crossbow with those times?


The latest information out of the Archery Guide thread showed that you'll have 3% lower DS with a crossbow than a bow (in offensive). Since we're not spamming spells in guarded/defensive, it could be kinda material. Plus then the DS reduction of kneeling. While feasible, it would require a lot of ranks out of MjE into Wiz for 913 and 905 DS bonuses, and would likely break your immolation build. Don't know if you wanted an 'all-in' change or not though.

I'm just looking at adding archery to my build, not replacing immolate with it.


As far as bows, Longbows are the best across the board. Being wizards, we cheat! 509's +15 STR bonus means that we only need a 5 STR bonus, 24 air lores, and 51 MjE to fire a longbow in 1 second.

Hmm...I'm guessing without air lore I'd be firing at 2 seconds? I have 162 MjE ranks, so would that make up for the lack of air lore? If not, I'm guessing it wouldn't make a huge difference with immolate, but does anyone know how much less effective immolate would be with 178 fire lore instead of 202? I never ran the numbers on any of that. I just fixskilled into 202 immolate and went out pwning and was like holy shit.


Honestly, I've never even considered hiding. Most snipers are 2x in it minimum, and I've heard 1xing in it isn't really worth it. Plus, I believe, like foraging, there are hidden class modifiers that make it more difficult for wizards. Additionally, if you're sniping, you use both Perception and Ambushing ranks to determine accuracy. Ambushing is expensive as hell, and is really only worth training post-cap. post-maxing spells. So hey, if you really want an all-in build, you could lose all your fire lore and pick up max ambushing ranks for an additional +15 AS at 100 ranks

I forgot about ambushing being required too. Sniping wasn't something I was seriously considering, just more of a for fun thing on the side.

Thanks for the info.

One other question....is fletching really needed for arrows? Or does it just save money?

[Whirlin]

And that's why NOBODY uses crossbows. They're pretty much just orb fodder. Don't even think you could sell a sephwir crossbow (if they exist) for anything substantial.

I don't have access to Krakii at work, but I think there's another Haste tier at 101 MjE ranks? 51 MjE is -1 sec, 24 Air is -1 sec, and 101 MjE may be another -1 sec? So, with enough MjE, you don't need the Air. Also, that's all assuming you only have a +5 STR bonus. If you have +15 STR, that's an additional -1 to RT, so you wouldn't need as much lores/MjE/haste potency.

Although seriously, Air is fucking awesome for tonis bolt as a single-target disabler. Hands down the best opener. And as far as I can tell, NOBODY knows more about immolate's mechanics than you. So maybe that would be an awesome test to do!

Fletching is to make 5x arrows. If you take a bow to 6x, you can just use store-bought arrows, and e-blade them to get the 10x bonus. The reason you don't see much of a market for 6x bows is because it's not necessary. Due to this, the demand is less... Since the demand is less, the prices are less. Since the prices are less, the incentive is reduced. There's no reason for me to enchant a fusion bow to 6x which I could sell for 10m, when I could do a 5x enchant for 5m in less time.

[Buckwheet]

I found fletching to be a waste of time. However there are several people who will take orders for you and you can but like 100k arrows pretty quickly. With a 6x bow I would just buy arrows and eblade them. You only really want fletched if you shoot undead and your spells should kill them anyways.

[Methais]

And that's why NOBODY uses crossbows. They're pretty much just orb fodder. Don't even think you could sell a sephwir crossbow (if they exist) for anything substantial.

That's crazy. I always thought crossbows were the way to go. I have no idea why I thought this, I just seem to remember them being popular years ago. Maybe it was just for random PvP pwnage, and/or me thinking you could only snipe and stay hidden with a crossbow.


I don't have access to Krakii at work, but I think there's another Haste tier at 101 MjE ranks? 51 MjE is -1 sec, 24 Air is -1 sec, and 101 MjE may be another -1 sec? So, with enough MjE, you don't need the Air. Also, that's all assuming you only have a +5 STR bonus. If you have +15 STR, that's an additional -1 to RT, so you wouldn't need as much lores/MjE/haste potency.

I'm a Half-Elf with 100 STR (25 bonus), so that + 509 would give me +40 bonus total.


Although seriously, Air is fucking awesome for tonis bolt as a single-target disabler. Hands down the best opener. And as far as I can tell, NOBODY knows more about immolate's mechanics than you. So maybe that would be an awesome test to do!

It would be a cool test to run. Maybe I'll check it out a few days before FIXSKILLS resets and see. I know almost nothing about Tonis Bolt other than it's an air based bolt. What makes it such a good spell?

I can say that against anything you can ward that isn't fire immune, nothing beats Immolate, hands down, at least if you're not factoring in mana costs. Even on a 101 endroll, the target is going to be completely disabled for a little bit in most cases, corporeal or non-corporeal, and full of wounds (corporeal, obviously). Low endrolls like that are pretty rare though, because if you're using Immolate regularly, you're going to have a CS to where a low endroll would require a really shitty d100 roll. Every now and then something will randomly perform an action while still on fire, but I'm thinking that might be some weird bug or something.


Fletching is to make 5x arrows. If you take a bow to 6x, you can just use store-bought arrows, and e-blade them to get the 10x bonus. The reason you don't see much of a market for 6x bows is because it's not necessary. Due to this, the demand is less... Since the demand is less, the prices are less. Since the prices are less, the incentive is reduced. There's no reason for me to enchant a fusion bow to 6x which I could sell for 10m, when I could do a 5x enchant for 5m in less time.

I am pretty lazy when it comes to things like that. I think I gave up forging after about an hour. How annoying is it to level up fletching without afk scripting and risking getting caught? I wouldn't think the +/-5 to AS would be anything earth shattering, but might as well go for the max if it's not going to make me kill myself irl.

[Buckwheet]

Its boring as hell, but does give decent XP. Just buy master fletched arrows from people making them.

[Methais]

Its boring as hell, but does give decent XP. Just buy master fletched arrows from people making them.

I'll probably just end up buying them. What are the rates like?

[Buckwheet]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?71848-Master-Fletched-Arrows

I usually have been able to find them in the 100k-150k per 100 range. So I just buy like 1,000 from a couple different people and it lasts me quite a while.

[Whirlin]

That's crazy. I always thought crossbows were the way to go. I have no idea why I thought this, I just seem to remember them being popular years ago. Maybe it was just for random PvP pwnage, and/or me thinking you could only snipe and stay hidden with a crossbow.
PVP pwnage... and people didn't know better / have all the maths laid out when they first started. I mean, if you have awesome aim, it's a good opener... but if it takes more than 1 shot... you're F'ed



I'm a Half-Elf with 100 STR (25 bonus), so that + 509 would give me +40 bonus total.

Base RT is 7 +1 for Hiding, +1 if aiming
-1 per every 10 STR bonus
So... 4 seconds base with sniping. You're fine.



It would be a cool test to run. Maybe I'll check it out a few days before FIXSKILLS resets and see. I know almost nothing about Tonis Bolt other than it's an air based bolt. What makes it such a good spell?

Ridiculously high chance of knockdown and stun. I've knocked things down on like, a 104 endroll.



I am pretty lazy when it comes to things like that. I think I gave up forging after about an hour. How annoying is it to level up fletching without afk scripting and risking getting caught? I wouldn't think the +/-5 to AS would be anything earth shattering, but might as well go for the max if it's not going to make me kill myself irl.
You're rich as fuck, buy the arrows... You're a wizard... Enchant up a bow to 6x.

I did more maths on Composite versus Longbows for a PM... figured I'd post it here:


For a one-shot-eye-kill, you need a Crit Tier 8 due to crit randomization (Half of crit tier is the minimum... Tier 4 eye crit is death). Crit Tiers are calculated by End Damage / Armor Divisor.
Cloth: 5 Armor Divisor
Composite Bow: 215 Endroll *.35 DF = 40 = Tier 8 Crit
Long Bow: 200 Endroll *.40 DF = 40 Damage, = Tier 8 Crit
15 lower required Endroll for crit kill

Leather: 6 Armor Divisor
Composite Bow: 260 Endroll * .3 DF = 48 damage = Tier 8 Crit
Long Bow: 248 Endroll * .325 = 48 Damage = Tier 8 Crit
12 lower Endroll for Crit kill

Scale: 7 Armor Divisor
Composite Bow: 273 Endroll * .325 DF = 56 damage = Tier 8 Crit
Long Bow: 260 Endroll * .35 = 56 Damage = Tier 8 Crit
13 lower Endroll for Crit kill

Chain: 9 Armor Divisor
Composite Bow: 362 Endroll * .275 DF = 72 damage = Tier 8 Crit
Long Bow: 340 Endroll * .3 = 72 Damage = Tier 8 Crit
22 lower Endroll for Crit kill

Plate: 11 Armor Divisor
Composite Bow: 687 Endroll * .150 DF = 88 damage = Tier 8 Crit
Long Bow: 603 Endroll * .175 = 99 Damage = Tier 8 Crit
84 lower Endroll for Crit kill

Why do these numbers look so high?
trunc(DEX bonus/4) is added as phantom raw damage to your rolls for determining crits. Which can massively stage up crits. These are also all the thresholds for GUARENTEED crit kills.

[Methais]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?71848-Master-Fletched-Arrows

I usually have been able to find them in the 100k-150k per 100 range. So I just buy like 1,000 from a couple different people and it lasts me quite a while.

150k for 100 arrows? Sounds pretty expensive. I guess you can gather them back up and reuse them indefnitely though right?

[Buckwheet]

Yes, but these would only be for blessing purposes. Get a 6x bow and buy 10 arrows for like 100 coins and eblade them for regular hunting.

[Methais]

Makes sense. How about Vvrael hunting? Are they immune to e-bladed arrows? I forgot if they're immune to any magical weapons, or just immune to spells.

[everan]

So basically there's no reason to enchant a longbow past 6x?

[Buckwheet]

So basically there's no reason to enchant a longbow past 6x?

For defense if you need it, yes. Or if you don't want to spend the money on master fletched arrows you could get a 10x bow and use 0x blessed arrows.

[Whirlin]

You can max your AS with only a 5x Bow. 6x Bow makes it easier, cause you only need to deal with e-blades.
Each enchant adds directly 1:1 to your DS. 7x is +5 DS over 6x.

However, as I mentioned, it's just not widely marketable due to the reduced returns. From an enchanting perspective, why spend 2 months for 4m when you could spend 1 month for 5m? Gotta maximize the return on 925!

However... totally enchant your own bow to 7x.. because WE CAN... for free.

[caelric]

One thing you can do with a crossbow is have multiple crossbows, all cocked and loaded. I know of a couple of folks that have done this successfully as crossbow hunters. Of course, if your 2 (or 3 or 4 or however many you have ready) shots don't kill everything in the room, then you better have another combat style, b/c, as was mentioned the re-cock/reload time is ridiculous.

[Whirlin]

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRPpt2Am60h8QX1Yh4fAEr8AKEiAu7Vb c7P3OGoPqto5fl4GCSE

Get a longbow, fire 1 second.

[audioserf]

There really isn't another way worth doing it. I don't know why there's contention here. Long bow. 1 second. Game over.

[Fallen]

Sighting is key for non Rangers/Rogues, isn't it?

[Methais]

What does sighting do?

[Whirlin]

Sighting helps hit the eye when you aim for the eye. Rangers/rogues typically seek sighting more because they're very much glass cannon: one shot, one kill, otherwise they get collectively clusterf'ed by everything ever made in the history of forever.

We're basically pumping arrows into the critters until they die... if one hits the eye, yay! If not, meh, it's dead two second later anyway. Maybe 5 seconds if we need to pump it full of arrows. I mean, we aim for the eye because we can without it impacting our RT. 'cause we're cool like that.

I'd rather have fusion to help us FURTHER increase our AS via Dex orbs, Ranged Orbs. Or even spell aiming or mana recovery.

[Buckwheet]

Helps you hit the place you are aiming for, like eyeballs. 402/404 should greatly assist that as well as Self Control which as a post cap mage you can easily get charged on scrolls, can wear in spell burst areas, and can get max duration on usage. I don't think it would be a problem without sighting.

[Methais]

404 helps sighting too?

The more you know..

[Whirlin]

402 and 404 are called out in the Art of the Bow archery guide... I updated the OP to further explain archer mage awesomeness.

I figured people may also read that guide if they were interested in archery.... Didn't want to copy the whole thing.. I'll link it in the OP later

[caelric]

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRPpt2Am60h8QX1Yh4fAEr8AKEiAu7Vb c7P3OGoPqto5fl4GCSE

Get a longbow, fire 1 second.

Oh, I agree, I was just offering up a reason why someone might go with crossbows that while not nearly as good as 1 second longbow shots, is somewhat similar

[Whirlin]

I have some plans for this thread when I get home... but I need to do some fun fun mechanics testing.

I'll likely also go back and take a look at overall format and layout, and make sure it all still makes sense with all of these little micro-edits I've made over the last two weeks.

[Whirlin]

Alright... So, I have some more information, thanks to Riltus!

TRUNC(DEX Bonus/4) is added as phantom damage to attacks in absence of crit weighting.
dafaq?

Alright, when calculating damage, everyone knows the easy part:
1) Take the damage factor, multiply by the endroll in excess of 100.
2) Depending on the damage versus the armor type, you get crits... which provide extra damage.

But between those two steps, there's one additional calculation. Take your DEX Bonus/4, round down. While this is not added into your raw damage, it IS added when calculating what rank critical you get. This occurs in all AS based attacks, including melee, ranged, and spells. Not CS though... obviously.

However, if you're a melee warmage using a crit weighted weapon, this MAY not apply. Further testing is still needed on the relationship between Crit Weighted weapons and the base DEX bonus, but previously conducted tests with a claid did not show additional DEX weighting on top of natural weighting.


Stop talking in machine code. What does that mean?
901 builds kick more ass. Halflings are even better.

901 has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad DF. But hey, if I'm a halfling with maxed DEX, I have a +40 DEX bonus, that's 10 damage right off the bat. That means I'm guaranteed a rank 1 critical, even against plate wearing critters. That means I'm guaranteed 5 damage per cast. While 906 also gains the guaranteed 5 damage, when calculating the damage per mana, it weighs heavily in 901's favor.

Due to rounding down, it puts Halflings at even a better racial selection than Dark Elves for non-immolation builds. Dark Elves have a DEX bonus at +35 at 100. But since phantom damage is rounded down, they max at only +8 phantom damage, while halflings get +10 phantom Damage. Pretty much the maximum gain you can get from +5 Dex mod.



Here's a wonderful example that Riltus provided to me, with a breakdown of the damage.

Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Minor Shock...
Your spell is ready.
>You gesture at a dark orc.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a dark orc!
AS: +212 vs DS: +39 with AvD: +22 + d100 roll: +68 = +263
... and hit for 49 points of damage!
Heavy jolt to chest causes solar plexus to explode. Remarkable display of spraying blood.
Rank 5 Crit w/25 damage

Wizard with 20 air lore and 34 Dex bonus (8 pts. crit weighting)

901 DF: 0.133
Lore DF bonus: 0.012
Effective DF: 0.145
Endroll success margin: 163
Raw damage: 23.6 rounds up to 24
Crit damage: 25 (R5 chest)
Total damage: 49
Armor: double leather w/ 6 crit divisor
Calc max crit w/o weighting: 24/6 = 4
Actual crit: rank 5
Minimum crit weighting for a rank 5 outcome: 6 pts. [(24 + 6)/6 = rank 5 crit]

[Rolis]

[QUOTE=Whirlin;1514520]
901 has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad DF. But hey, if I'm a halfling with maxed DEX, I have a +40 DEX bonus, that's 10 damage right off the bat. That means I'm guaranteed a rank 1 critical, even against plate wearing critters. That means I'm guaranteed 5 damage per cast. While 906 also gains the guaranteed 5 damage, when calculating the damage per mana, it weighs heavily in 901's favor.




This information is true, while a little misleading. Not every cast that in cast will provide +10 phantom damage to your critical rank calculation and first your spell must have an endroll high enough to do a rank 1 wound on the plate armor before the phantom ranks will apply.

[Kastrel]

I suppose its worth noting that (aside from the BS that is the air/water lore system for lightning bolts) Minor Shock recieves a proportionally higher DF increase from lores than any other bolt in the game across most armor types. Kind of an interesting dynamic.

[Whirlin]

This information is true, while a little misleading. Not every cast that in cast will provide +10 phantom damage to your critical rank calculation and first your spell must have an endroll high enough to do a rank 1 wound on the plate armor before the phantom ranks will apply.

Let me double check this when I get home and can do a little more testing myself... It may be a matter of rounding damage rolls (one of the few calculations that can allow a roundup... such as a 101 endroll resulting in 1 damage... but it may only be the .15 raw damage for crit calculations.

[Riltus]

You have to do enough minimum raw damage to inflict a rank 1 critical before any weighting is added. The amount of raw damage is (armor crit divisor - 0.5). Once that threshold has been attained, DEX bonus crit weighting is added as phantom damage. In the absence of any other crit weighting, the full value of the DEX weighting is added to each attack.

With 8 pts of weighting (32 DEX bonus) you are guaranteed to increase the maximum crit rank (before randomization) at least one rank vs brig and lower armor. It is possible, with 8 pts of weighting to increase it two ranks.

Here's an example of 8 pts. of DEX weighting increasing a max rank 1 to a rank 3 crit.

You gesture at a giant marmot.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a giant marmot!
AS: +159 vs DS: +73 with AvD: +22 + d100 roll: +65 = +173
... and hit for 26 points of damage!
Heavy shock to chest illuminates ribcage. Cool!
The giant marmot is stunned!


DF vs leather w/24 ranks air lore: .145 (.133 + .012)
Endroll success margin: 73
Raw damage: 11 (73 * .145)
Crit damage: 15 (Rank 3 chest)
Total damage: 26
Armor crit divisor: 6 (double leather)
Dex bonus weighting: 8 (34 dex bonus)
Maximum crit rank w/o weighting: 1 [trunc(11/6)]
Actual crit rank: 3 [trunc(11 raw + 8 phantom)/6]

Mark

[Whirlin]

When Mark signs into Gemstone, it's like Neo entering the Matrix... Just sees through all the machine code

[Aluvius]

I was all excited to try the rapid fire 901 build, then I realized everything in my level range around the Landing is the worst critter to try it on (banshees and stone critters). :)

[SHAFT]

When Mark signs into Gemstone, it's like Neo entering the Matrix... Just sees through all the machine code

I thought I was the only one!

[Jeril]

I suppose its worth noting that (aside from the BS that is the air/water lore system for lightning bolts) Minor Shock recieves a proportionally higher DF increase from lores than any other bolt in the game across most armor types. Kind of an interesting dynamic.

Some testing was done and we proved that you don't need a mix of air/water for lore benefits, training in one or the other works just as well as training in both. We also found out that the DF increase was only halved for the first 50 ranks when compared to other lores.

[Savrin]

[QUOTE=Whirlin;1514520]Alright... So, I have some more information, thanks to Riltus!

But between those two steps, there's one additional calculation. Take your DEX Bonus/4, round down. While this is not added into your raw damage, it IS added when calculating what rank critical you get. This occurs in all AS based attacks, including melee, ranged, and spells. Not CS though... obviously.QUOTE]

Does this mean in layman's terms that a higher dexterity bonus for any class but say.... Sorcerer, and possibly cleric, will result in better critical results?

[Whirlin]

Does this mean in layman's terms that a higher dexterity bonus for any class but say.... Sorcerer, and possibly cleric, will result in better critical results?

Not necessarily... I'm trying to work with Mark to conduct research on a per-weapon basis to determine IF all weapons have the DEX modifier to crit bonuses. Unfortunately, due to some poor mob choices for my testing, my first day of testing needs to be thrown out the window. I selected mobs with natural crit padding and vulnerability... Of course, nothing noted on Krakii... But after I work with an adequate critter with no natural padding, determining the natural padding will likely be my next task.

But, Even with most of my testing thrown out, I think the correlation was very high for all Ranged Weapons and all Wizard Spell Bolts.

[SHAFT]

Krakiipedia is down for me, was hoping one of you gurus could answer a couple of ?'s for me.

1. As an archer mage, is there any benefit in training in air lore past 24?

2. If I'm using LBP, is there any point to train past 27? If so, how far should I take it?

[Whirlin]

There's always benefits of lores... but 24 is the big one for archer mages... You'd need to consider http://carabele.com/LoreBenefits.htm to determine if you want to take it any higher. I probably wouldn't recommend it over the next best alternative for training though.

Dunno about LBP without Krakii

[SHAFT]

Awesome. That is a candidate for most useful website of all time.

[SHAFT]

Loving the archer mage format. It's nice being able to use offensive spells as well as fire arrows. THW mode you're just swinging. I'm having fun.

[Fallen]

What i'd like to see in this guide is tips for fast advancement during your 30 day migration period. How would you build a wizard to maximize ease of hunting before fixskill/fixstating him into a more permanent build?

I'd also like to see more information on stat placement for each of these builds, including for the starter (likely pure melee) build. I would come up with several "optimum" stat placements for different level goals. Usually maxing out around 70 or so, and by that point you can buy a fixstat potion for that last push towards perfect stats at cap.

[Methais]

What i'd like to see in this guide is tips for fast advancement during your 30 day migration period. How would you build a wizard to maximize ease of hunting before fixskill/fixstating him into a more permanent build?

I'd also like to see more information on stat placement for each of these builds, including for the starter (likely pure melee) build. I would come up with several "optimum" stat placements for different level goals. Usually maxing out around 70 or so, and by that point you can buy a fixstat potion for that last push towards perfect stats at cap.

Buy a claidhmore, get Haste ASAP, run things over.

Or...

Get shitloads of gold wands (preferably fully charged), wave them at critters, and maybe train for ewave.

[Fallen]

Buy a claidhmore, get Haste ASAP, run things over.

Or...

Get shitloads of gold wands (preferably fully charged), wave then at critters, and maybe train for ewave.

I'm going to need you to pad that advice out into AT LEAST a 2 page synopsis before I can remotely follow what you're getting at.

[Methais]

I'm going to need you to pad that advice out into AT LEAST a 2 page synopsis before I can remotely follow what you're getting at.

I was just addressing the first 30 days part. The other 1.9 pages would address the rest, and I'm far too lazy to run stats and stuff for the rest of your inquiries.

[Whirlin]

OP Updated for format, and added a snippet about enchanting.

[Methais]

So I just specced over to ranged to try it out for a little bit, and have a question.

My AS is only 387 with my symbols and 425 and all that up. I'm a half-elf wizard with 30 dex bonus, 101 ranged, 202 perception using a 4x long bow and ebladed arrows.

Is this roughly what my AS should be at 100 with no enhancives? It seems a bit low. Even stuff on plane 1 I was testing on was difficult to hit.

[Whirlin]

201 (skill)+ (202-40)/4 (perception)+ 30 (Dex) + 40 (bow + arrow encht)
201+40 +70=
311 + spell effects (50 from 425)+ (+30 from society)
Should be 391

You're also missing out on an additional +10 from 5x bow + master fletched arrows.

But, our Ranged AS will almost always be low, especially post 80. Best to use an opener like 505 tonis bolt to knockdown, and finish with arrows.

I've also heard that the Rift is more unfriendly towards archery than the other hunting grounds? Never been there though.

[Methais]

201 (skill)+ (202-40)/4 (perception)+ 30 (Dex) + 40 (bow + arrow encht)
201+40 +70=
311 + spell effects (50 from 425)+ (+30 from society)
Should be 391

I'm using Voln symbols which I think are +26 altogether.


You're also missing out on an additional +10 from 5x bow + master fletched arrows.

But, our Ranged AS will almost always be low, especially post 80. Best to use an opener like 505 tonis bolt to knockdown, and finish with arrows.

Yeah I just grabbed a cheap 4x bow to test it out with for now.


I've also heard that the Rift is more unfriendly towards archery than the other hunting grounds? Never been there though.

Hopefully that's the case, cause if other capped areas are like this too then archery doesn't seem viable at all as a post cap build, as the AS isn't high enough to reliably hit in most cases.

EDIT: Tested out a warcamp just now and had similar results. Plane 5 wasn't bad, but Plane 4 wasn't doable.

OTF seems to be the only capped area (unless you count plane 5) that it's viable in. Even constructs were doable, but still took more time than they're worth, unless their loot is better than the rest of OTF, which didn't seem to be the case.

DS everywhere else was too high, even if I had another +10 from 5x and perfect arrows. I'm gonna try Teras tonight and see how it goes.

[lordsmo]

Never been an archer. Opening with ewave will take 50 off their spawn DS, and if you can, CMAN feint should knock it down another 100-150. You could always use 530 as well I suppose, especially if the critters are running 140 or 919. It's not like you need your mana for anything else. Though I feel like your previous build of 540 CS and 202 fire lore will make anything else seem pretty slow.

That being said, my level 96 wizard has an AS of 397 with a 0x claid (self-spelled + AG badge) or 417 with an e-bladed greatsword (for the constructs), and is killing everything in OTF pretty quickly. Plane 5 was extremely easy, although I was there only briefly. Nelemar and Plane 4 I have not tried yet, and probably won't until post cap. Not sure how it'll go, but at least in Plane 4 I'll be able to use a nicer weapon without fear of losing it. At cap with a 6x greatsword I'll be swinging 434, and I have a MR 606 item and a huge supply of 211 scrolls if necessary. There's always enhancives too I suppose, although I really prefer to wear as few items as possible.

As far as archery goes, maybe a 6x fusion bow and some good orbs would get your AS into better territory. Also, how far post-cap are you, and how much ambush can you fit into your plan....

[Methais]

I'm about 2x cap, but not willing to give up anything to put points into ambush.

The AS/DS issues were after casting ewave/call wind. Most critters get mowed down pretty quickly in OTF without needing to do more than ewave.

The main thing I was wanting ranged for was to take out Vvrael in the rift, but that doesn't seem to be a possibility. And the secondary reason was just to kill shit indefinitely like I used to be able to do before the mana leech nerf, but at least in warcamps and the Rift, it's not worth the hassle, or even possible half the time.

I expect Nelemar to be similar to OTF though, which I'll find out in a little bit. Both areas are similar, but OTF is much more annoying between the vanishing and constructs (I can kill them with a bow they just take a while).

And yeah, after a 202 fire lore build with a 556 (current, can be beefed up to 584) CS behind it, I can't really expect anything else to compare. Was mostly doing ranged just for when I wanna kill things differently. I've always liked war mages, shit like that.

Also, do you sometimes just lose arrows? I search out my missed ones and gather the rest, but my bundles seem to slowly dwindle down anyway.

[Whirlin]

yes, everytime an arrow goes off into the distance, it is lost. They also go into other rooms and stuff... Usually if you're firing at 1 second, it's a pain in the ass to keep track of all of them.

Without investment into DEX or ranged enhancives, I don't think you're going to see the return that you'd like from Ranged. You've already passed the sweet spot, and are trying to pick it up after it's trailed off.

Although, you may be overstating the requirements on AS for ranged. When using a longbow, the following are the death crit thresholds:
Crit death minimum roll:
Cloth: 150
Leather: 174
Scale: 180
Chain: 220
Plate: 352

BUT WAIT! There's more... Ranged weapons get the phantom Dex mod of DEX/4 as phantom damage... so lets reevaluate at your 30 DEX mod (+7 Phantom damage). (Still theoretical... but fairly certain we proved this one)

Cloth: 133
Leather: 153
Scale: 160
Chain: 197
Plate: 311

And, you can probably hit the eye pretty damn often, and pretty damn fast, if you're running with 402 and 404 active.

[lordsmo]

Heh, yeah, +15 AS for the egregious cost of 100 ambush ranks would be a rare choice for a wizard, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

[lordsmo]

yes, everytime an arrow goes off into the distance, it is lost. They also go into other rooms and stuff... Usually if you're firing at 1 second, it's a pain in the ass to keep track of all of them.

Without investment into DEX or ranged enhancives, I don't think you're going to see the return that you'd like from Ranged. You've already passed the sweet spot, and are trying to pick it up after it's trailed off.

Although, you may be overstating the requirements on AS for ranged. When using a longbow, the following are the death crit thresholds:
Crit death minimum roll:
Cloth: 150
Leather: 174
Scale: 180
Chain: 220
Plate: 352

BUT WAIT! There's more... Ranged weapons get the phantom Dex mod of DEX/4 as phantom damage... so lets reevaluate at your 30 DEX mod (+7 Phantom damage). (Still theoretical... but fairly certain we proved this one)

Cloth: 133
Leather: 153
Scale: 160
Chain: 197
Plate: 311

And, you can probably hit the eye pretty damn often, and pretty damn fast, if you're running with 402 and 404 active.

If he wants ranged to take out Destroyers in the Scatter, a 311 endroll might be hard to achieve against their DS. Also their natural padding...

At least you know the road to cap is wide open for you Whirlin, since the archer mage is apparently effective in OTF and possibly Nelemar with basic gear and no enhancives. You plan on keeping your current build until cap?

[Fallen]

Could you try a heavy X-bow to make up for the loss of AS?

[Whirlin]

If he wants ranged to take out Destroyers in the Scatter, a 311 endroll might be hard to achieve against their DS. Also their natural padding...

At least you know the road to cap is wide open for you Whirlin, since the archer mage is apparently effective in OTF and possibly Nelemar with basic gear and no enhancives. You plan on keeping your current build until cap?

Only because I have a good bow and some minor DEX enhancive gear...

I've been toying with the idea of fixskilling into a pure, just to play with it. I still have my fixskills from last year, and I figure I could try it out for a few weeks without any potential harm if I were to do it before getting the new annual fixskills..

But at the same time, it's not broke, why fix it?

Plus, I'm in a better situation that Methais, I'm a halfling. I have +10 DEX over him, I have 10x in bow/arrow, and I'm COL and not voln...

So that's +29 AS by comparison. Even if I'm just 88, as you only gain 3 AS / 2 levels, I still have a higher AS than him now, even without capping.
With that higher AS, since I have +40, that's an additional +3 phantom damage on my minimum roll crit killing capability... It's pretty awesome how DEX compiles that bonus.

[lordsmo]

Same feeling for me pretty much. Never played Smo any other way (other than sword/board in GSIII), so I'm gonna ride out this claidmage thing. Even post cap I doubt I'll fixskill; just gradually add capabilites until I'm 3x spells etc...

[Methais]

Nelemar was pretty similar to OTF like I expected. Sirens had too much DS (which they often do even vs. wizard bolts), but combatants, executioners, dissemblers, and radicals were easy enough. Magus I could barely touch, and I didn't even bother with sentries. Defenders were easy too but switching to blessed arrows is too annoying to deal with.

I think I'm just spoiled by Immolate and its ability to wreck everything in (usually) one shot, and not used to being in front of critters that I'm unable to hit.

Even against the stuff that I didn't have AS/DS problems against with ranged, it just wasn't as fun as Immolate. Not that I really expected it to be. I'll probably spec out of ranged and pick it back up another time after I max out a few other things. Hopefully my patience will last a month so I don't have to blow bounty points on it.

Ranged probably would have been a lot more fun to do at a lower level much like warmages (I think I tried a 2H build once the day before a fixskill reset a few years ago, and had pretty much the same results as I did with ranged), since it apparently has an expiration on when it's really badass, but I don't think ranged even existed before I had capped. Still fun to mess with even at cap though, and immolate still destroys shit with 147 ranks. Just probably not something I'll end up sticking with. Plus I had to give up disarming traps, which I hate doing, despite me being lazy lately and using the NPC locksmith a lot, and I don't really wanna sink millions upon millions of coins into enhancives just be able to hit things reliably.

[lordsmo]

Going on a tangent here, but I noticed you said disarming traps? Is this effective at 1x? Right now I pop everything that has no trap or a non-fatal trap, and townsmith the rest, but if I could be disarming my own stuff that would be pretty cool. Definitely a worthwhile postcap goal.

[Methais]

Going on a tangent here, but I noticed you said disarming traps? Is this effective at 1x? Right now I pop everything that has no trap or a non-fatal trap, and townsmith the rest, but if I could be disarming my own stuff that would be pretty cool. Definitely a worthwhile postcap goal.

I can do up to around -340 manually, and 408 a lot of stuff over -400. The only big 408 friendly traps I stay away from are usually rod traps and any scarabs that aren't blue or green, mainly because if a rod goes off it kills me usually, and I don't remember what to do about non blue/green scarabs if you trigger them. Uncurse?

Also something I can't remember...is spotting traps just perception based, or is disarm traps a factor too?

[lordsmo]

I can do up to around -340 manually, and 408 a lot of stuff over -400. The only big 408 friendly traps I stay away from are usually rod traps and any scarabs that aren't blue or green, mainly because if a rod goes off it kills me usually, and I don't remember what to do about non blue/green scarabs if you trigger them. Uncurse?

Also something I can't remember...is spotting traps just perception based, or is disarm traps a factor too?

My understanding is that Disarm skill helps with spotting traps both manually and - circuitously, through its effect on the bonus for self-cast 404 - via 416, but I could be wrong. I know almost nothing about the lock picking system.

[Riltus]

I can do up to around -340 manually, and 408 a lot of stuff over -400. The only big 408 friendly traps I stay away from are usually rod traps and any scarabs that aren't blue or green, mainly because if a rod goes off it kills me usually, and I don't remember what to do about non blue/green scarabs if you trigger them. Uncurse?

Also something I can't remember...is spotting traps just perception based, or is disarm traps a factor too?

Disarm scarabs with Disarm (verb) , Disarm (408), Spirit Dispel (119), Mental Dispel (1218), Elemental Dispel (417), Undisease (113) (sky-blue scarabs only), Unpoison (114) (sea-green scarabs only). I believe Neutralize Curse (309) will neutralize a scarab for a short duration (maybe 30 or 60 seconds, can't remember exactly), but it will not safely disarm it. Not sure about Remove Curse (315). Disarming by any method, other than the Disarm (verb), will reduce the scarab's value.

Spotting traps

Helps:

Disarm skill
Intuition bonus
Perception skill
Disarm Enhancement (404)
Presence (402)
Self Control (613)
Naturally Bright Room or Light (205) spell
Song of Luck (1006) - helps your luck

Hurts:

Trap discovery difficulty
Wounds
Sounds (607)
Interference (212)
Weapon Deflection (412)
Naturally Dark Room or Darkness (206) spell
Naturally Foggy Room or Spirit Fog (106) spell
Fumbles

Disarming Traps

Helps:

Disarm skill,
Dexterity bonus
Song of Luck (1006) (helps your luck)
Disarm Enhancement (404)
Self Control (613)
Naturally Bright Room or Light (205) spell
"Modding Down"

Hurts:

Trap disarming difficulty

Sounds (607)
Interference (212)
Weapon Deflection (412)
Naturally Dark Room or Darkness (206) spell
Naturally Foggy Room or Spirit Fog (106) spell
Fumbles
Wounds

Mark

[Methais]

I meant what to do when you trigger the scarab trap, like with the ones that go into your body and slowly kill you like AIDS.

I wanna say Uncurse will get it out but I don't know if that's the case for all of them or just some, besides the blue and green ones that is.

[Fallen]

I meant what to do when you trigger the scarab trap, like with the ones that go into your body and slowly kill you like AIDS.

I wanna say Uncurse will get it out but I don't know if that's the case for all of them or just some, besides the blue and green ones that is.

Green/Blue are best handled with Unpoison and Undisease. A cast of Remove Curse (315 I think) should be sufficient in dealing with the other types of scarabs. If you're quick about it you can usually invoke a scroll or item with the spell before you're killed. Depends on how unlucky you are with the wounds/stuns.

[Methais]

Green/Blue are best handled with Unpoison and Undisease. A cast of Remove Curse (315 I think) should be sufficient in dealing with the other types of scarabs. If you're quick about it you can usually invoke a scroll or item with the spell before you're killed. Depends on how unlucky you are with the wounds/stuns.

That's what I thought about the other ones but couldn't remember. I keep unpoison and undisease scrolls on me for green and blue ones, but they usually don't go off.

Back on topic: Ranged is decent in Nelemar and OTF, and terrible in the Rift and warcamps, and Immolate still pwns everything everywhere.

[Whirlin]

Back on topic: Ranged is decent in Nelemar and OTF, and terrible in the Rift and warcamps, and Immolate still pwns everything everywhere.
Not surprising at all... The allure of the Ranged build is that it's not all-in like being a melee. It may be TP intensive, but I see no reason you can't keep your immolation or spell-bolt build and also be ranged... except maybe air/fire lore allocation... but I don't even think you need the air lore for haste at that many MjE ranks.

[Fallen]

I'm still not sure why a hasted wizard couldn't make the +50 AS of the crossbow +the greater DF work for him over a long bow. You largely mitigate the drawbacks of the crossbow by not caring about staying hidden and having all associated RT down to 1 second.

[Methais]

Not surprising at all... The allure of the Ranged build is that it's not all-in like being a melee. It may be TP intensive, but I see no reason you can't keep your immolation or spell-bolt build and also be ranged... except maybe air/fire lore allocation... but I don't even think you need the air lore for haste at that many MjE ranks.

I pretty much still have my immolate build, just at 147 ranks instead of 202. It still destroys things though and I still get lots of instant kills. I have 1 second haste RT with ranged right now, so no air lore is needed.

Most of today I've been opening with Immolate, and then whatever doesn't die from that I finish off with a bow. Saves some mana and is still pretty quick. Just not sure if it's worth the 2020 TPs I sunk into it. Mechanically it's not, but the novelty of having an alternate mana free attack is still pretty nice.

Somewhat random question: What's the least annoying way to carry around both blessed arrows and ebladed arrows without getting them mixed up? I stopped carrying blessed arrows because it started getting really annoying to deal with.


I'm still not sure why a hasted wizard couldn't make the +50 AS of the crossbow +the greater DF work for him over a long bow. You largely mitigate the drawbacks of the crossbow by not caring about staying hidden and having all associated RT down to 1 second.

I'll probably check that out after Lumnis wears off.

[Fallen]

I'll probably check that out after Lumnis wears off.

Awesome. I'd definitely try to get the process down to a science before going anywhere dangerous, though, as it does involve kneeling.

[Whirlin]

Somewhat random question: What's the least annoying way to carry around both blessed arrows and ebladed arrows without getting them mixed up? I stopped carrying blessed arrows because it started getting really annoying to deal with.


Managing that crap is a pain in the ass. Just immo down the undead. The amount of mana you save from arrowing off any living should save enough mana to just bolt/immo down the undead.

[Methais]

I ended up saying fuck it and specced back out of it. Went back to the rift first and plane 4 seemed doable with archery, but most of the time it was just when immolate didn't kill something and they were rolling around on the ground. Found out the hard way that my bolt DS with ranged is pretty horrible too when I got pwned by a cerebralite after sporting a smooth 380 bolt DS in guarded.

I didn't get around to testing out a crossbow, but in the end, rapid fire 901 ends up being a good choice for a low mana finisher.

When I respecced I dropped perception back down to 101 ranks, maxed out Elemental Mana Control at 202 ranks, mainly for mana leech (my cooldown is 15 minutes now instead of 30, which is pretty nice) and to get back into the recharging business. Had enough TPs for about 30 ranks of disarm so I'll build that back up next.

So...anyone needing charged blue crystals, small statues, or heavy quartz orbs, hit me up. I'll also do ruby amulets on special order, but they'll be expensive, since I'll still be spending 80 mana per charge. Crystals and statues I can do at base cost now.

[Whirlin]

I'll probably try picking up a runestaff when we get a few weeks closer to the annual fixskills... It's definitely been a fun way to level for the last 40 levels or so... but now I have a ridiculous mana pool, I think the necessity is greatly diminished. I also picked up a Sorc as a hunting partner (MA'ing), so I'd rather not worry about arrows and ammo.

Or maybe I'll just go Pure... enchant a fusion longbow up to 7x, and then swap back to ranged with my shiney new bow... that sounds like an even better idea.

I found that I had a much lower physical DS in offensive with a runestaff compared to a bow... like, 20-30 difference. I know this can nowadays be easily remedied through voodoo's stance-dancing, or something akin to it.

[Whirlin]

Stupidest comment I've ever heard:

[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "I did 2 fixskills last week to test PF VS CMAN against boils....."
[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "PF is fucking worthless, thanks for those who insisted pf was the way to dodge boils..."
[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "PF doesnt do nothing with boils..."
[LNet]-You: "sure, I'll take your anecdotal, undocumented evidence to overthrow what Simu posts... that sounds legit"
[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "I dont care to, cuz I used MY 2 fixskills so you can do your own tests... I know now what works..."
[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "chat to winkin hell ya that would be nice.... but oh I do think 1x perception helps, whereas I WAS at .5x perception... but I literally had NO "ZERO" improvement when I fixskilled and did max PF and max perception..."
[LNet]-GSIV:Zanila: "chat to Winkin oh yea wizard ranks I think are the biggest help against boil..."


This is misinformation... If you have questions... ask me me. Don't listen to the derps on Lnet.

[SHAFT]

Pf doesn't do nothin ya'll

[Fallen]

In general, isn't it CM>PF>Perception? That, and Armor Use over training if you're in anything above robes.

[BriarFox]

SMR rolls: PF, perception, maneuver penalty/bonus, encumbrance, modifying spells (618, 313, 1109, etc.), in no particular order. Pretty sure CM doesn't play into SMR rolls at all, and it doesn't even really play into regular CM rolls unless you know the maneuver. Dodge does nothing. That's the best info I have.

[Fallen]

Don't forget wounds/scars and Level Vs Level if we're listing everything. I would disagree on CM not factoring into SMRs, but i'll try to pull up something official to back that up.

[Fallen]

From Krakiipedia:



Protection

There are several attributes which can mitigate damage from creature maneuvers:
Training

Physical Fitness (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Fitness) - Physical Fitness is the primary skill for defense against standard creature maneuvers.
Combat Maneuvers (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Maneuvers) - Combat Maneuvers and Perception factor in equally.
Perception (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Perception)
Shield Use (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Shield_Use) - Shield Use factors into creature maneuvers that can be blocked by a shield.


Looks like it is Physicial Fitness > Perception/CM



>Lastly, what exactly helps in dodging stone fist? It doesn't seem to be physical skills (since I get hit every time), and yet it doesn't seem to be magical skills (since casters get hit almost every time). -Grendeg

The Illoke creatures' Stone Fist spell is primarily based around the standard maneuver roll. Spells such as Mobility (618) (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Mobility_%28618%29), Prayer (313) (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_%28313%29), and Dauntless (1606) (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Dauntless_%281606%29) will benefit you. Ranks in Combat Maneuvers (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Maneuvers), Perception (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Perception), and Physical Fitness (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Fitness) will also be of assistance. The Dexterity (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Dexterity) and Agility (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Agility) stats also play a role.
-M.

[BriarFox]

Of course it's just up on Krakiipedia. Hah. Nice work.

[caelric]

and it doesn't even really play into regular CM rolls unless you know the maneuver.

I thought ranks of CM did have some effect in defending against other combat manuevers, even if you don't know the maneuver. Not nearly as much as 5 ranks of cunning defense, or even better, knowing the maneuver, but better than nothing.

[Whirlin]

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Creature_maneuver_(saved_post)

Physical Fitness > Combat Maneuvers >= Perception. Shield Use factors into some maneuvers, but not all. Those are the standard skills that are taken into account.

[Fallen]

I think Whirlin has me on ignore.

:(

[Methais]

I think Whirlin has me on ignore.

:(

His bow probably did it.

[mrjrd222]

I saw you mention getting to a workshop for each cast of an enchant (after the pour is ready). I was under the impression that only the final cast could fail, so only the final cast needed to be in a workshop with the familiar out etc?

Now, I'm no expert at enchanting, I've done my fair share (most of it was 2 years ago) but I've done a few 4-5-6x fusion enchants and plenty of 7x basic enchants without heading to a workshop (other than the final cast) and had no failures. Have I just been lucky?

[Whirlin]

I don't think intermediate casts have the 3% failure rate, BUT, if you're low on skills, I believe you can still fail the cast roll if you're below 100% guaranteed success. Because... that would be logical (I know, simu coding isn't necessarily logical).
Of course, that's 100% anecdotal with absolutely no evidence to support the assertion... I believe I may have read it somewhere on the internets.

It's also one of those things that I file under, "Why not". It may just be superstitious, but if it only takes like, 30 seconds to get to a workshop and get your familiar out... why not do it? They're all known benefits, it's not like it's gonna cause more chance of failure.

[Methais]

Flares from Staff have a static rate of flaring that doesn't vary with the duration between casts.

Is this confirmed? Reason I ask is because I've been using rapid fire 901 a lot lately, and my staff definitely flares a lot more when I'm using rapid 901 (usually every 4-8 casts), but when I switch to 903, 904, 906, etc., it seems to flare every 15-20 or so casts.

I haven't done an extensive amount of testing, but anytime I switch back to rapid 901, the flares consistently go crazy.


There's a lich script to prevent overcasting. RCAST

I've noticed that most rapid fire scripts seem to be fairly slow, I'm guessing because it does a waitfor (or whatever equivalent command Lich uses) before firing off the next cast.

I threw this together a while back, and it casts ridiculously fast. It will wipe out a swarm within a few seconds. I have no idea how to convert it to a lich script, but it's a pretty basic script if anyone wants to port it over. Any wizard that has mana problems, use rapid 901.


#Rapid Fire 901

put release
put stance offensive
waitfor offensive
goto 901

901:
put incant 901
put incant 901
waitfor You gesture at
match 901 You gesture at
match NOANDTHEN You do not currently have a target
put incant 901
matchwait

NOANDTHEN:
put release
put ;sloot3

[Riltus]

I don't think intermediate casts have the 3% failure rate, BUT, if you're low on skills, I believe you can still fail the cast roll if you're below 100% guaranteed success. Because... that would be logical (I know, simu coding isn't necessarily logical).
Of course, that's 100% anecdotal with absolutely no evidence to support the assertion... I believe I may have read it somewhere on the internets.

It's also one of those things that I file under, "Why not". It may just be superstitious, but if it only takes like, 30 seconds to get to a workshop and get your familiar out... why not do it? They're all known benefits, it's not like it's gonna cause more chance of failure.

The random 3% and/or catastrophic failure (item destruction) outcomes will only occur on the final cast. Failures due to insufficient skill can result on any cast. What is less clear is whether there is an increased difficulty modifier for final casts.

Mark

[Riltus]

Originally Posted by Whirlin

Flares from Staff have a static rate of flaring that doesn't vary with the duration between casts.


Is this confirmed? Reason I ask is because I've been using rapid fire 901 a lot lately, and my staff definitely flares a lot more when I'm using rapid 901 (usually every 4-8 casts), but when I switch to 903, 904, 906, etc., it seems to flare every 15-20 or so casts.

I haven't done an extensive amount of testing, but anytime I switch back to rapid 901, the flares consistently go crazy.

The flare rate is not related to rapid fire.

When the damage from the spell is sufficient to kill the target, any subsequent flare that would have occurred (if the target had survived) still counts as an activation. Higher damage spells will kill more often with fewer casts, therefore, the flare is suppressed more frequently and the observed flare rate is reduced.

Try 901 vs rats without rapid fire. With a sufficiently high AS, you'll never observe a flare activation.

Mark

[Methais]

The flare rate is not related to rapid fire.

When the damage from the spell is sufficient to kill the target, any subsequent flare that would have occurred (if the target had survived) still counts as an activation. Higher damage spells will kill more often with fewer casts, therefore, the flare is suppressed more frequently and the observed flare rate is reduced.

Try 901 vs rats without rapid fire. With a sufficiently high AS, you'll never observe a flare activation.

Mark

I was referring to 901, not rapid fire. Rapid fire just speeds up the process.

I've spammed plenty of 903/904/906 against non-corporeal targets with the same results....far less flare frequency than with 901. 903 is a pretty low damage spell, so I was able to still do plenty of casts before things were dying.

I'd find it hard to believe that almost every flare activation happened on a kill shot with every spell used other than 901. I'll drop down to a stance where I can hit the target but not do much damage, just to get more casts out with another low damage bolt like 903 and see how that goes.

I'll post some logs later today.

[Whirlin]

I believe all flares have a proc rate of 12.5%, in line with Ensorcell. I thought that there was some testing, because people observed fire flaring stuff to flare more often than other, rarer flares like vacume.

I've asked like, a bajillion people to make a flare/swing tracker that also counts deathshots, but haven't had any luck. I'll go post that in the Tg01 thread.

[Methais]

I did some more testing using 903 and dropping to neutral stance so I'd get more hits in before stuff died. Flare rate seemed to be pretty close to when I'd use rapid 901.

12.5% seems about right. A flare tracking script would still rule though.

[Methais]

One small hiccup with ;electrocute...


You gesture at a n'ecare.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a n'ecare!
AS: +506 vs DS: +221 with AvD: +33 + d100 roll: +48 = +366
... and hit for 40 points of damage!
Visible wisps of electricity shoot up left arm. Youch!

** Your runestaff resonates with an extremely high-pitched sound and causes your skin and muscles to harden! **

[Spell re-prepared]
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>
Your disk arrives, following you dutifully.
>
You feel the surge of magic depart.
>
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.

Was an issue with my wizard script too, I just never fixed it. If rapid fire wears off in the middle of killing stuff, that spams pretty much forever until you end the script manually.

[Tgo01]

12.5% seems about right. A flare tracking script would still rule though.

But I wrote one already :(

Don't think it works when casting spells though, could probably update it to do that tonight.

[Gompers]

One small hiccup with ;electrocute...


You gesture at a n'ecare.
You hurl a small surge of electricity at a n'ecare!
AS: +506 vs DS: +221 with AvD: +33 + d100 roll: +48 = +366
... and hit for 40 points of damage!
Visible wisps of electricity shoot up left arm. Youch!

** Your runestaff resonates with an extremely high-pitched sound and causes your skin and muscles to harden! **

[Spell re-prepared]
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>
Your disk arrives, following you dutifully.
>
You feel the surge of magic depart.
>
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
Sorry, you may only type ahead 1 command.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 2 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.
>
You gesture at a n'ecare.
Wait 1 sec.

Was an issue with my wizard script too, I just never fixed it. If rapid fire wears off in the middle of killing stuff, that spams pretty much forever until you end the script manually.

What's wrong with ;rcast? The only problem I ever had with it was sometimes ;sloot3 would hang or be too slow, but switched to ;loot and it worked great. All praise Tillmen!

[Rolton-Sammich]

One small hiccup with ;electrocute...


You feel the surge of magic depart.

Was an issue with my wizard script too, I just never fixed it. If rapid fire wears off in the middle of killing stuff, that spams pretty much forever until you end the script manually.

Uploaded a new version of ;electrocute that should help with that. This verifies that 515 is active.

Though you probably should, as suggested above, check out Tillmen's ;rcast. It's way fancier and has more features, like targeting one creature vs. everything.

[Methais]

I'm pretty sure I've used ;rcast before. It was just slow from what I remember.

[Rolton-Sammich]

I haven't used ;rcast, I was just impressed at the extent of the code. But you're right. It's being very careful about checking things like whether the target is dead, so it's slower.

And you don't want that humane, careful, precise crap. You just want to indiscriminately spray lightning forth from your finger tips like an angry god.

http://i.imgur.com/nR8wm22.jpg

;electrocute them all and let ;sloot sort them out.

[Methais]

I haven't used ;rcast, I was just impressed at the extent of the code. But you're right. It's being very careful about checking things like whether the target is dead, so it's slower.

It seemed to do a waitfor <cast messaging> before doing the next cast, which makes it insanely slow.

[Tgo01]

pick stats
Total Swings: 202 | Total Flares: 32 | Death Swings: 22 | Death Flares: 1
Percent: Total Flares / Total swings: 0.158415841584158
Percent: Ignore all death attacks: 0.172222222222222
Percent: Total flares / non death swings: 0.177777777777778


200 swings is good enough for me. This is with an ebladed pick. So the flare rate is between 15.8% and 17.7%.

[caelric]

Probably 1 in 6 chance of flaring, then, which is 16.666....%

[Tgo01]

Probably 1 in 6 chance of flaring, then, which is 16.666....%

Is that repeating?

[caelric]

ya think?

[Methais]

Alright thumbs up, let's do this...

[Askip]

Excellent thread!

One step I might add to the enchanting list:

5a) check for 25 mana.

Yeah, I've forgotten to do that (back when you had to infuse the mana pool).

:D

[Whirlin]

Added a section on my thoughts on Alchemy in the last entry. Which is surprisingly similar to a recent post I did on the sorcerer threads...

Interesting...

Wait... you mean Whirlin just copy/pastes from all of his posts and makes guides?
SHUTUP

[Methais]

Has anyone tried using stuff like cmfeint at cap?

I'm curious what sort of success rate I'd have using it vs. vvrael destroyers in the Scatter, for when I eventually pick up CM and THW, probably several million exp down the line.

[caelric]

My THW swinging sorcerer has 5 ranks of feint at cap, and it works fine against things in OTF, Haven't tried the scatter or Nelemar, though

[Glitch]

Has anyone tried using stuff like cmfeint at cap?

I'm curious what sort of success rate I'd have using it vs. vvrael destroyers in the Scatter, for when I eventually pick up CM and THW, probably several million exp down the line.

I didn't bother with it when I was scattering. My guess is it would be tough to feint the destroyers as they're pretty much big ass warriors. Honestly, they can't do a damn thing to you in defensive, as long as you have the patience to stance dance, take 4-5 swings, and D up, they're pretty cake.

[Whirlin]

SPECIAL ROVVIGEN ADDENDUM:
Wizards CAST SPELLS. They use Magic!
525 is one of those spells, it is not friendly to the caster.
Don't be distracted by the pretty rocks, you don't want to be standing there. That's why we have Familiars who can WATCH what's going on safely.

[SHAFT]

Whirlin you make it sound like you've never stood in the middle of a meteor shower.

[Whirlin]

Nah, standard 525 invasion rules are as follows:
Infuse down to 285 mana
920, tell familiar to stay, 515, 525 cast til mana = 0
Run away.

[SHAFT]

Nah, standard 525 invasion rules are as follows:
Infuse down to 285 mana
920, tell familiar to stay, 515, 525 cast til mana = 0
Run away.

I bet that's fun. I want to try that.

[Whirlin]

Make sure to announce that you're meteor swarming the fuck out of an invasion before you start doing that though... and I have my familiar run around and warn people as well.

However, one of my biggest complaints is that magic immune critters are also immune to meteors. Things like Greater Constructs are not effected by the meteors.

I'd have considered meteors to be more physical than magic... but I guess not :/

[Whirlin]

I've added a section on spell research priorities on each build archetype.

I've also mirrored the guide on Krakii. So if you love reading Whirlin Guides, but hate the fact that you can't click on EVERY LITTLE THING as a hyperlink to another, fuller article to basically explain exactly what I said, then you'll love reading it on Krakii.

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Guides_by_Whirlin:_Pure,_Archer,_and_War_Mages_Gui de

[Whirlin]

303 Spell Research Builds:
Scaling Spells:
Wizard:
905: +.25 DS per rank over 5
913: +1 DS, +1/3 TD per rank over 13

Minor Elemental:
425: +.5 AS, +.5 DS Per rank over 25, Maxes at 75 ranks
430: +.5 DS, +.5 TD per rank over 30

Major Elemental:
503: +.25 DS per rank over 3
507: +.5 DS per rank over 7
513: +.5 Bolt AS Per rank over 13
516: Potency

All growing spells seem to cap at level. The only unknown is rounding on the fractions. I will personally be testing this within the next two weeks. For now, we're going to assume that spell bonuses are FLOOR'ed functions.

Base, Max DS:
101 Wiz
101 MnE
101 MjE

Results:
Wiz: 110 DS, 29 TD
MnE: 25 AS, 25 CS, 35 DS, 35 TD
MjE: 70 DS, 43 AS
Spell Research based CS: 197

Max MjE CS:
67 WIZ, 77 MnE, 159 MjE
Wiz: 69 DS, 13 TD
MnE: 25 AS/CS, 23 DS/TD
MjE: 30 DS, 43 AS
Spell Research based MjE CS: +226 CS

+29 CS for the tradeoff of 53 DS, 28 TD Compared to 101/101/101

Middle of the road:
100 Wiz, 78 MnE, 125 MjE
Wiz: 110 DS, 29 TD
MnE: 25 AS, 25 CS, 24 DS/TD
MjE: 70 DS, 43 AS
Spell Research based MjE CS: +212

+15 CS for the tradeoff of 11 DS, 11 TD Compared to 101/101/101
-14 CS for 42 DS, 17 TD compared to 67/77/159

[Whirlin]

Claid versus Full/Double Correction

Last Night, Jeril and I had a back and forth regarding claid versus leather in Lnet. I made a couple calculation errors.
My excuses include:
1) I had a ultra shitty day at work
2) Due to (1), i drank heavily upon returning home.
3) I was hunting.

I stated a 108 endroll against full leather would result in a Tier 9 crit, subsequently having an 80% chance of fatality, 20% chance of a T3 would with 8 round stun, assuming crit randomization is evenly distributed. Subsequently, a 112 endroll would be the requirement for the same crit tiering on double leather.

This was all wrong.

First off, we're dealing with a .475 DF on leather. My first mistake was assuming that an uncovered spot receives all attributes of the lower tier armor. That's wrong. DF is consistent across all body parts, only the crit divisor is different.
Since we're dealing with 45 damage to reach Tier 9 on Robes, we're looking at 5 raw damage due to claid's +40 weighting. or a 111 endroll against full leather to be a Tier 9 crit.
For Double leather, we're looking at 6 Crit divisor, requiring 54 damage, raising the raw damage requirement up from the minimum to 14. Divided by the same .475 DF, we're looking at a 130 required endroll

So, it's not a difference of 4... difference of 19. Kinda different!

My other point in preaching for double leathers is physical based CMAN attacks. This is anecdotal, as no concrete testing exists to prove/disprove a correlation between physical CMANs and critical tiering. Furthermore, even if correlation exists, it would need to be further evaluated for different Location compared to ASG values within the same armor type (leather, chain, etc). It's my logical justification for double leathers. But Jeril argues that you can't always be logical with Simu coding.

Magical based attacks, such as Major EWave, appear to pierce all armor and padding, so that's a plus for Full Leather.

Addressing the other argument of "but if I don't get xxx cast off, I'll die!"
Double Leathers have 4% hindrance... For MjE and Wiz circles. If you are using 909 or 912 to knock down creatures, to disable them, which is the most important thing to your survival, then yes, this is an accurate condition.
However, when I've followed up with people asking about this, the common scenario given is, "There are four mobs in the room, and I'm trying to e-wave, I don't want them each to get attacks off at me, reduce my MoC FvF to effectively offensive stance, and then facerape me." This is a non-concern with doubles, as there is still 0% hindrance with MnE circle. So while 912 may sometimes be a better for knockdown + forcing offensive, you're guaranteed 0 hindrance with a 410 disabler.


But double leathers have a .97 Dodge factor to Full Leathers' 1.0!
Relax child, clearly you have some sort of broscience knowledge of gemstone mechanics. Yes, double leathers have a .97 dodge factor compared to full leathers' 1.0. That is them impacted by any shield modifier or any stance modifier later on. And everything is truncated each step of the way.

Since Mages don't train in dodging, we're mainly looking at the 20 dodge from 911. Truncating with .97, a double leather wearer will get 19 Dodge to be modified by stance. .75 for offensive, 1.0 for defensive. So, you lost 1 DS across all stances. However, Double Leathers have a 2 AvD advantage over Full Leathers.

At 51 effective ranks of Dodge, the DS difference becomes 2, and the AvD bonus nets out.

It takes 100 effective ranks of dodge before Full Leathers end up having a higher DS from dodge (for those following along and mathing themselves, it's because of the trunc() functions that it doesn't happen earlier. And at the point you have this much dodge, there's not much you're worrying about.


So what?
All that being said... I probably wouldn't recommend wizards pick up double leathers til 50-60ish. Prior to that, stick to fulls. Two reasons:
1) You're going to need that mana in those lower levels. Every mana point is more important when you have less.
2) You're not really encountering too many severe CMANs or too much risk before 50/60.

It may be a good rule of thumb to pick up a set of 4x fulls when you hit level 10, and then work on enchanting up your own set of 7x doubles when you're able. Once you finish that enchant, that's probably a good time to train for them.


TANGENT
All of that being said, I'm reminded of my college and FFXI buddy, Rukenshin. He was internet famous for theorycrafting the Samurai class back during our FFXI days. After doing extensive theorycrafting on the job, he did an amazingly long, detailed post about how badass a new weapon drop was, and how it would increase your damage relative to other weapon options, you can switch around your gear to maximize damage output, blahblahblah. The reason he did that post, was because his Linkshell (guild) was trying to unload the server's first 3 of them. His posts were so widely read, and so well regarded, it drove up demand for the said new weapon, so they sold those 3 at an ultra-premium. After the sales, he removed the posts about the weapon.

[Buckwheet]

So you are trying to drive the market up on doubles? I happen to have a set of 7x fusion doubles for sale for 50m.

[Tgo01]

I think your next guide should be on why I can't access the repo.

[Whirlin]

Dunno why it wasn't really documented anywhere... or why I'd think differently, but Spell bonuses seem to round down.

52>53 MjE ranks
507 provided +1 DS
503 did not provide +1 DS

[Whirlin]

Updated runestaff section... apparently since I wrote it over a year ago, more information about the detailed runestaff equations have been released.

Going past 1x in MIU/AS will not generate more DS than spell research... unless your spell research rank is going past level in a circle.
That being said, 150 MIU ranks is required to guarantee fusion enchanting pre-temper successful pour, and there are still benefits to recharging / etc with further training those secondary magic skills, so I left it as a subjective decision if it's how you want to do it. From a straight hunting effectiveness perspective, 1x.

[masterdtwin]

Whirlin, since you're updating your guide - You should probably modify the Enchanting section.

If you double check over on the other thread about enchanting, there's a few bits of advice I added. Specifically...

It is well known that every item has some small variable to modify the enchanting value based on the core material used. Some materials are slightly easier, some are slightly harder - by and large the material has very little impact on your overall success - but if you are close based on skills it can be the deciding factor.

I remember reading once that Mithril was modified to be 'more enchantable' than previously, After the changes to being able to enchant items +2/5 or under at the lower enchant level. Previously, imflass was the most desirable material because you could enchant it to 4x, and have it be +22. On top of that it was noted that imflass was also easier to enchant than other materials. Since this change (where +16/+17 to +21/+22 counts as a 5x enchant) mithril was supposedly modified to be slightly easier, making it the new go-to for enchanting projects.

The only other thing to mention would be witchwood. If you pay attention at all - you'll notice that many people fail miserably when attempting to enchant witchwood. Yes, Witchwood is an awesome cool wood and name. It's also PURE EVIL. Seriously, it's just not worth chancing it unless you are absolutely certain you are the supreme master enchanter of all. This has been noted by many enchanters, GM's have hinted at it several times. It's pretty obvious that witchwood is evil. I mean... There is 'witch' in the name... it's not like it's being subtle.

[Haldrik]

You should add Crossbow / Long bow analysis to this post.

I remember seeing multiple discussions about it but can't find the posts!

[Jeril]

You should add Crossbow / Long bow analysis to this post.

I remember seeing multiple discussions about it but can't find the posts!

What kind of analysis are you looking for? Bows are going to do more damage no matter which type you use simply because you'd be firing them more often. Crossbows have 2 actions that generate rt while a bow only has 1. This means at some point no matter what you do you'll be taking 2 seconds to fire a crossbow and only 1 second to fire a bow. Some might keep a crossbow handy to kneel and fire at a dangerous creature but I doubt it, just easier to plink away with haste.

[Haldrik]

What kind of analysis are you looking for? Bows are going to do more damage no matter which type you use simply because you'd be firing them more often. Crossbows have 2 actions that generate rt while a bow only has 1. This means at some point no matter what you do you'll be taking 2 seconds to fire a crossbow and only 1 second to fire a bow. Some might keep a crossbow handy to kneel and fire at a dangerous creature but I doubt it, just easier to plink away with haste.

I found Whirlins post where he did a real nice analysis for me last year.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?82325-New-Archer-Wizard-Crossbow&p=1550814#post1550814

[Thondalar]

What kind of analysis are you looking for? Bows are going to do more damage no matter which type you use simply because you'd be firing them more often. Crossbows have 2 actions that generate rt while a bow only has 1. This means at some point no matter what you do you'll be taking 2 seconds to fire a crossbow and only 1 second to fire a bow. Some might keep a crossbow handy to kneel and fire at a dangerous creature but I doubt it, just easier to plink away with haste.

The concept here is to be able to aim better/hit harder with a mechanical bow...yes, you won't be able to fire as fast, but the shots you take will hit harder.

IMO...wait...is this seriously a question about generic bow vs. crossbow in the warmage/archer mage thread? well fuck me silly...even if you had the best GM-auction crossbow that ever existed, there would be no reason to use it as a mage. Period. Only viable path is longbow+strength+haste and spam away, preferably with flares. You're never going to be able to hide at cap as a wiz...hell, 3x rogues can't hide at cap...regularly, in rift/scatter anyway...

plain crossbow + any class = dead whatever you are, with certain exceptions at particular levels.

mechanical crossbow + most classes = less efficient, technically plausible, but why?

reason no consideration for crossbows in the archer wiz thread = completely implausible

[Haldrik]

reason no consideration for crossbows in the archer wiz thread = completely implausible

Yeah. I'm just not seeing it either. A speed crossbow wouldn't be worth it because haste is being wasted. I was thinking the only one that might be worth it is a double crossbow.

But a 4x longbow is most likely better and probably costs 200K.

I was trying to come up with ANY build on any profession where a crossbow is better. The best I could come up with was a sniping rogue with a speed crossbow. But it's still meh.

[Jeril]

Yeah. I'm just not seeing it either. A speed crossbow wouldn't be worth it because haste is being wasted. I was thinking the only one that might be worth it is a double crossbow.

But a 4x longbow is most likely better and probably costs 200K.

I was trying to come up with ANY build on any profession where a crossbow is better. The best I could come up with was a sniping rogue with a speed crossbow. But it's still meh.

I can buy a 4x longbow off the shelf for 30k or so, it will cost most people a bit more but not much.

I didn't think of it at the time but you lose DS using a crossbow too. They were just designed horribly. They can be a bit amusing but there is no real mechanical reason to use them.

[caelric]

They can be a bit amusing but there is no real mechanical reason to use them.

This.

Sure, for a roleplay reason, crossbows are fine, but they are mechanically much worse than bows (any bow, much less a longbow), and especially so for a haste mage.

[Haldrik]

Chainspear vs. long bow?

GO! :)

The chainspear looks incredibly awesome but I can't see it being mechanically better then a 4x bow with 4x arrows. And it would cost like 50mill-70mill vs... 200k.

[Donquix]

chain spear style points, longbow still wins.

once you can hit eyes reliably, ranged just becomes silly.

[Haldrik]

chain spear style points, longbow still wins.

once you can hit eyes reliably, ranged just becomes silly.

I had to scratch that idea. Ambush/CMAN/shield/thrown/perception is too much for a wizard.

[Bluke]

Hey Whirlin,

Thanks for this awesome guide. Its been extremely helpful and informative. I wanted to ask, what are your thoughts on the stone skin spell; especially for use with the warmage as sort of a "magical redux" spell. I haven't been able to find anything that gives any specifics on how much actual damage is negated with increased ranks in earth lore, but I imagine there to be a good difference between a brittle layer and a very hard layer of stone. Would it be worth training in ranks of earth lore to better make use of this spell or no?

[Whirlin]

Hey Whirlin,

Thanks for this awesome guide. Its been extremely helpful and informative. I wanted to ask, what are your thoughts on the stone skin spell; especially for use with the warmage as sort of a "magical redux" spell. I haven't been able to find anything that gives any specifics on how much actual damage is negated with increased ranks in earth lore, but I imagine there to be a good difference between a brittle layer and a very hard layer of stone. Would it be worth training in ranks of earth lore to better make use of this spell or no?

Stoneskin is nice, keep it up, it won't save you, and it's not worth dedicating additional training points into JUST for stoneskin potency. It CAN help, and WILL help you on occassion, but not nearly enough to bank on.

As wizards, we're really not supposed to be hit, especially compared to something like a square. With an archer or warmage build, our DS simply won't be as high as in a pure build, and we're always kind of riding that fence on what our defenses can handle. If you're in a situation where AS + AvD outweighs your DS substantially, invest in small statues, scrolls, or give a handy to a ranger or something. 540 and 520 will not reliably bridge the gaps and allow you to take hits and shrug it off like Taylor Swift.

As far as the potency, for the above reasons, it's still fairly untested. Currently, it's unknown whether the messaging corresponds to discrete % values or ranges... for example, brittle being 5%, and very hard always being 15%, or brittle being 2-6% and very hard being 10-17%... Perhaps you could convince Tgo01 to write a script to look for the messaging and compile the results into a separate thread... Of course, there are so many variables within the equation, it'll be difficult to determine correlation without a ton of data points... which means being hit... which means something is probably wrong! Furthermore, since we're not being hit for very high numbers in the first place... we'd likely need to take some massive hits to determine correlation...

Fortunately though, this could likely be tested through PVP.

[Illuminaticus]

Love this guide! Thank you so much for taking the time...cleared up many misconceptions I had accumulated after 20+ years of dipping my toes in Elanthia.

[Gnomad]

Re: alchemy drops:


Q1: If I'm way higher level (Way!) than a creature I need to kill for alchemy drops, how can I get those drops now?
A1: Relative level and hunting pressure are not factors in determining if an alchemy drop is found. Feel free to lay waste to those sultry sirens for their hair.

https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Creature_loot_and_experience_changes_(saved_post)

[Methais]

Re: alchemy drops:



https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Creature_loot_and_experience_changes_(saved_post)

I don't think underhunting sirens is possible, since they're found in Nelemar and capped people learn from them.

Go home Warden, you're drunk.

[Fallen]

Maybe he meant nymphs? Don't they drop alchemy components?

[Gnomad]

I don't think underhunting sirens is possible, since they're found in Nelemar and capped people learn from them.

Go home Warden, you're drunk.
There are also super low level "mistydeep sirens" in Ta'Vaalor.


Maybe he meant nymphs? Don't they drop alchemy components?

yeah they drop nymph hairs

[Vusit]

So my Warmage has just been swing away with his maul. He is fully 2x spell aim but hasn't messed with AS,MIU, or mana sharing, other then flares from a runestaff would there be a bonus to using to one?

[Whirlin]

So my Warmage has just been swing away with his maul. He is fully 2x spell aim but hasn't messed with AS,MIU, or mana sharing, other then flares from a runestaff would there be a bonus to using to one?
Well, using scrolls, eventually if you want to recharge stuff... You should be fine on spellburst for a while. Scrolls are fun and may be worth picking up 1x just to be able to use them and not junk them. but if TP are scarce, you can EASILY skip it without recourse.

If you want to be like, super meta, you could always remove your weapon, pull out a staff, and cast your spells that make the peoples fall down... but honestly, that milisecond of vulnerability probably isn't worth it until you finish building your 10x / 10x acuity / T5 fusion warstaff of doom

[Enuch]

Small note Whirlin and I know you and everyone else in the community knows it but truly new folks won't know this information or misunderstand it.

Regarding the Two handed weapon section and 513 for playstyle at the end, the negative effects are no longer there if memory serves there.

[Whirlin]

Small note Whirlin and I know you and everyone else in the community knows it but truly new folks won't know this information or misunderstand it.

Regarding the Two handed weapon section and 513 for playstyle at the end, the negative effects are no longer there if memory serves there.

I'll make a note of it when I have a little time to update stuff... But honestly, it wouldn't impact my overall training recommendations. If you're going to go THW, be committed! Maybe prioritize spell aiming over something like 3x Spell Research, once you have the discretionary points, but not over air lore for haste potency. Evaluating spell aiming versus Earth Lore... with all the buffs on Earth Lore recently... probably a matter of opinion, and comes down to whether or not you're a race with a high dex.

[Zho]

Well, using scrolls, eventually if you want to recharge stuff... You should be fine on spellburst for a while. Scrolls are fun and may be worth picking up 1x just to be able to use them and not junk them. but if TP are scarce, you can EASILY skip it without recourse.

If you want to be like, super meta, you could always remove your weapon, pull out a staff, and cast your spells that make the peoples fall down... but honestly, that milisecond of vulnerability probably isn't worth it until you finish building your 10x / 10x acuity / T5 fusion warstaff of doom


Pfft, who needs to pull out a runestaff?

[Script]>stomp
As you stomp your foot sharply, the sand shakes wildly!
The ground begins to shake violently, making it hard to stand.
A fire guardian loses its balance and falls over.
[Script]>kill
You swing a naginata at a fire guardian!
AS: +105 vs DS: -2 with AvD: +48 + d100 roll: +94 = +249
... and hit for 100 points of damage!
The fire guardian screams evilly one last time and goes still.
Your naginata fades some.

No RT knockdown? Yes please.

[Methais]

Pfft, who needs to pull out a runestaff?

[Script]>stomp
As you stomp your foot sharply, the sand shakes wildly!
The ground begins to shake violently, making it hard to stand.
A fire guardian loses its balance and falls over.
[Script]>kill
You swing a naginata at a fire guardian!
AS: +105 vs DS: -2 with AvD: +48 + d100 roll: +94 = +249
... and hit for 100 points of damage!
The fire guardian screams evilly one last time and goes still.
Your naginata fades some.

No RT knockdown? Yes please.

I keep forgetting this is a thing now.

[Whirlin]

I keep forgetting this is a thing now.
We need to figure out how to add it to waggle.

[Methais]

I'm thinking about possibly swapping out THW for pole arm. I currently use a claid against living and a maul against undead, neither weapons are anything special.

Thinking about polearm for the lance DF for crusaders and other things that don't crit. My question is...if you're fighting a non-corporeal, do you still get bonus damage from the crit you would have gotten if they were corporeal? I can't for the life of me remember how that works.

Also if anyone has any ranged/dex enhancives for sale, I wouldn't mind switching to archery either.

[Lady Sylvan]

If my wizard ever goes warmage, she has a nice maul and katana waiting for her.

[droit]

I'm thinking about possibly swapping out THW for pole arm. I currently use a claid against living and a maul against undead, neither weapons are anything special.

Thinking about polearm for the lance DF for crusaders and other things that don't crit. My question is...if you're fighting a non-corporeal, do you still get bonus damage from the crit you would have gotten if they were corporeal? I can't for the life of me remember how that works.

Also if anyone has any ranged/dex enhancives for sale, I wouldn't mind switching to archery either.

Yes, I think you do. I've seen way different damages from similar endrolls that could easily be explained by bonus crit damage affected by crit randomization.

[Riltus]

I'm thinking about possibly swapping out THW for pole arm. I currently use a claid against living and a maul against undead, neither weapons are anything special.

Thinking about polearm for the lance DF for crusaders and other things that don't crit. My question is...if you're fighting a non-corporeal, do you still get bonus damage from the crit you would have gotten if they were corporeal? I can't for the life of me remember how that works.

Also if anyone has any ranged/dex enhancives for sale, I wouldn't mind switching to archery either.

Weapon attack damage, both concussive and critical, are calculated and applied exactly the same way for corp and noncorp targets. Noncorps sustain critical HP damage but are immune to physical injuries and fatal outcomes. A R9 chest crush crit will cause 70 HP damage but the messaging displayed will be taken from the noncorp crit table (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Noncorporeal_critical_table) (Massive strike to the chest crashes through the [target]'s back in a cloud of vapor) instead of the crush crit table (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Crush_critical_table) (Massive blow smashes through ribs and drives [target]'s heart out the back).

The amount of damage is based on the damage type (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Category:Damage_Types) even though the messaging is the same. Example, if the R9 chest crit was from puncture damage (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Puncture_critical_table), the resultant critical damage would be 50 HPs but the messaging would still be (Massive strike to the chest crashes through the [target]'s back in a cloud of vapor).

Mark

[Donquix]

We need to figure out how to add it to waggle.

Just need to add that it can be selfcast, i can't check now but it works with pestilence for sorcs so, can reference that in spell-list.xml probably.

[Vusit]

so now that the dust has settled a bit, my warmage(31) is still sitting on his fixskill his spell ranks are 20 MjE, 25 MnE, and 18 wiz. should i move them around any?

[Whirlin]

So... I've been asked a LOT when my new recommendations are for lores... and I've had a couple conversations with other capped wizards in the different training paths they're taking... I'll first go into a breakdown of each lore, and some major training points to try to hit.

Fire Lore:
906/908: DF bonus up to 50 ranks, then diminished returns
519: Various bonuses
20 ranks unlocks Steam bolt for evoked 903... Steam bolt has highest Damage:Mana ratio against robes, but not the best critical tables.
513: Seed 4 for AS stacking up to +25
502: Seed 1 for DS pushdown for same element...
425: Seed 10 for 1% crit weighting
415: Double strike. 100% at 100 ranks, 90% at 80 ranks

Air Lore:
505: 20 ranks for Tonis Bolt... best single-target AS resolved opener
502: same as above
405: Detect flares at 30 ranks
410/435: 50 ranks can hit airborne targets
506: 50 ranks lets you evoke to hit the entire group for no additional mana
535: -1% RT for every 5 ranks
911: +Dodge per seed 1
912: Vortex inducing additional RT, 2% per seed 5
504: Open area cast, +1 target per 20 ranks

Water Lore
Major Acid: 30 ranks
418: Extra Mana

Earth Lore
414: 25 ranks for 5% chance to block AS/DS resolved attack
430: Seed 10 chance for Crit Padding
503: Seed 10 chance for +20 DS
507: 15 ranks to 5% activate bolt deflection +1%/10 ranks thereafter
508: 25 ranks for 5% chance of +20 TD
509: Seed 4 +STR
909: Evoke EBP +1% per seed 4/2, +evoke charges
902: Seed 7 for +1 enhancive
905: Seed 5 for +1 DS

Rationale and analysis:
First thing to point out is that a lot of the Air and Earth Lores have discrete training values when bonuses are realized, that we don't see in fire/water.
50 ranks in Air Lore grants the anti-air effect on e-waves, and the groupcast for celerity
25 ranks in Earth Lore grants a ton of potential AS/DS/Padding procs
Fire has a lot of scaling bonuses with incredibly high caps... I'll go into a breakdown of those a little more.
Truth be told, I know a lot of people like 512, but I do not see water lore as being competitive, and will not include any further water analysis in this breakdown.

Understanding the true bonuses of air lore
The biggest benefit in the air lore training is Tonis Bolt at 20 ranks, and then the -1% RT from Haste per 5 ranks. Everything else is really just fringe benefits.
So, Lets evaluate how much of a difference the 1% haste REALLY is in the Gemstone world:
· Base 4 RT becomes 1 at 60 ranks
· Base 5 RT becomes 1 at 105 ranks
· Base 6 RT becomes 2 at 55 Ranks, 1 at 135 Ranks
· Base 7 RT becomes 3 at 20 Ranks, 2 at 90 Ranks, 1 at 160 ranks
· Base 8 RT becomes 3 at 55 ranks, 3 at 115 ranks, and 1 at 180 ranks
· ... I'm stopping there. But I did notice the following mathematical trends due to the way that RTs are truncated:
o 55 ranks results in -1 RT for every Even base RT, starting at Base 6
o 105 Ranks results in -1 RT for every RT divisible by 5
o 135 Ranks results in -1 RT for every RT divisible by 3

Based on the above, I would recommend either 55 or 60 ranks in Air Lore. You receive a lot of the RT reduction bonuses, without going too heavily into air Lore. You also unlock Tonis Bolt, group casting of 506 with no additional mana cost, and the ability to hit air critters with 410/435, and flare detection on 405.

Going to 60 ranks from 55 ranks will net you +1 critter hit with 504 open cast (up from 3 to 4), +1 slot in 511, and +2% chance of Vortex from 912 (from 14% to 16% at 56 ranks)
It will grant additional benefits to 515 or 911, who just received bonuses at 55 ranks
Unlike lores with lots of linear growth, or lots of seed based scalability, we’re fortunate with Air Lore to be able to ‘solve’ for the lore, and make a definitive statement where to maximize the benefits.

Understanding the true bonuses of Fire Lore
906/908 DF bonuses are strongest for the first 50 ranks of air lore, at .001 per rank… subsequently decreasing to half that for 51-100, and one fourth of that for 101+
519 bonuses are two fold:
· (Fire Lore ranks -10)/2, Seed 1 for 1% chance of death on warding margins 50 or higher…
(I think that’s the most complex equation for lore benefits I’ve seen).
· And Ranks /1.5 % chance of an extra damage cycle. (100% at 150 ranks)
The results of the two fold 519 bonuses result in one aspect being seed related, and subject to diminishing returns, whereas the other is a linear progression. More on this later.
513 bonus maxes out at +25: This one becomes rather interesting, mechanically… How many bolts do you THINK it takes to kill a critter? 2? 3? 4? And additionally, it also makes some seed values appear more beneficial than others. Because going from +5 AS per bolt to +6 AS per bolt will still require 5 bolts to max out the benefit of +25 AS… so is that +1 AS really as substantial? Lets do a super quick breakdown:
· +1 per bolt: 25 casts to cap
· +2 per bolt: 13 casts to cap
· +3 per bolt: 9 bolts to cap
· +4 per bolt: 7 bolts to cap
· +5 per bolt: 5 bolts to cap
· +6 per bolt: 5 bolts to cap
· +7 per bolt: 4 bolts to cap
· +9 per bolt: 3 bolts to cap
· +13 per bolt: 2 bolts to cap
· Benefit maxes at +19, always 2 bolts to cap the benefit.
This mechanic of the +25 max, paired with a Summation Seed 4 for benefit ends up producing two forms of diminishing returns. There are two training points to highlight: 72 ranks of fire lore for +9 per bolt, and 130 ranks for +13 per bolt. Pretty substantial implications in those different values!
415 is the last less-than-straight-forward benefit for fire lore, offering double cast potential that unlocks at 10% at 4 ranks, but sales to 100% at 100 ranks. (fire lore skill bonus /2).
For the purposes of this assessment, I feel we have already identified sufficient bonuses to fire lore to recommend at least 50 ranks, so we’ll be subject to linear growth for subsequent lore training.

Understanding the true bonuses of Earth lore:
Do you love 540? Do you wish you had like, 10 other 540 style random procs? That’s Earth Lore. It doesn’t offer that many static bonuses… but whatever.
Regarding the 909 benefit… I cannot state how much this benefit is OVERSTATED. A 1% decrease in EBP will likely not result in any additional DS reduction due to rounding. Lets take an EXTREME example of a 303 dodge rogue. That rogue, in offensive stance, lets assume robes, is obtaining 227 DS from evade alone. A 5% reduction would be down to 215.65. Every additional 1% would be a difference of 2.27DS. When we consider alternative AS boosting effects in the fire lore talents, and a potential bonus from going heavy into a single lore with 502, using a Seed 4 summation / 2 % bonus to train in 909 benefit just falls short. I wouldn’t specifically train for earth lore potency.
As you can see from the breakdown, there’s a lot of Seed 10s, and a lot of 25 ranks to begin the lottery style effects… Seed 10 has benefit points at 10, 21, 33 ranks, and many of those 25 rank unlocks have additional +1% activations at +10 ranks… so, 35 is a great way to get 3 ranks of Seed 10 benefits, and a little above the base 25 ranks bonus 909 benefits at 22 ranks and then again at 39 ranks… so deciding between 25 and 35 ranks shouldn’t be impacted by 909.

Ok… So what are the recommendations?:

Based on the maths above, for Pure Builds, I would recommend 55/60 Air Lore, 35 Earth Lore, 100 Fire Lore, and the remaining 7/12 ranks to put wherever you want.
Ranged Warmages require 66 air lore ranks to fire an aimed longbow in 1s (for races with <15 STR bonus). So they would require 66/35/100, with 1 remainder.
For Physical warmages… Honestly… probably do the same thing… just train the earth/air first, and pick up fire later. By that time, you’ll be capped anyway.

Wait… when should I train what when?
So… this is a little trickier, and comes down to playstyle and your opinion of your character. Based on the changes to Elemental Lore, I do now recommend all various wizard builds to go 1x in Elemental Lore for life. I cannot recommend 2x Elemental Lore while leveling, as I still strongly advocate that spell research will be a better use for additional discretionary training points.

While I’m an advocate of tonis bolt, I can see a lot of justification in prioritizing steam bolt early when you still have mana concerns. The benefits of 502 with stacking a single element early would be justification to go Fire Lore 1x til cap, and then picking up the other elements (probably after you hit 3x spell research… I still don’t think I’d prioritize 2x lores over 3x research)

[Soulance]

Thanks Whirlin! Great stuff as always and I have appreciated the help getting my mage back on track.

So what is the total amount for the spells again? 101/101/101? Or does that also depend on personal preferences? Did I miss this info reading your post?

[droit]

Ranged Warmages require 66 air lore ranks to fire an aimed longbow in 1s (for races with <15 STR bonus). So they would require 66/35/100, with 1 remainder.


Am I missing something? Longbow shots cost 20 stamina per second, so you'd get reductions at 10/30/50/70/90 air lore ranks.

[Whirlin]

Am I missing something? Longbow shots cost 20 stamina per second, so you'd get reductions at 10/30/50/70/90 air lore ranks.
That last tiny amount of stamina can get rounded down if you have more than 50 MjE ranks... If I remember correctly.

[Whirlin]

Thanks Whirlin! Great stuff as always and I have appreciated the help getting my mage back on track.

So what is the total amount for the spells again? 101/101/101? Or does that also depend on personal preferences? Did I miss this info reading your post?
Yeah, a lot of other wizards I've talked to are now recommending a 101/101/101 split, due to the new information about 912 being based on wizard ranks, and 415 CS post 519 nerf.

[droit]

That last tiny amount of stamina can get rounded down if you have more than 50 MjE ranks... If I remember correctly.

I'm still not following you here. Are you saying that MjE ranks affect how much air lore you need to reduce stamina cost to 0 for a given RT reduction? The only time MjE comes into play is if you're manually using quickstrike to reduce your RT below what your air lore naturally reduces during 506. How much longbow RT are you saying 66 air lore reduces?

[droit]

Oh, are you saying that with >50 MjE, you don't need the last 4 ranks of air lore (66 --> 70) to get to 0 stamina cost because of rounding?

[Whirlin]

Oh, are you saying that with >50 MjE, you don't need the last 4 ranks of air lore (66 --> 70) to get to 0 stamina cost because of rounding?
Correct... Sorry, was dwelling on the 535 equation last night, forgot about the 506. Lets do a deep dive breakdown:
50% - (0.5% × Major Elemental Ranks), capped at a minimum of 20% at 60 MjE
We've already established that it's 70 stamina for a longbow qstike in 1s. But that MjE little part of the equation... NORMALLY that function is used only for situations where you're doing activities that you're not going to be able to fully mitigate the stamina cost of Qstike. However, that portion of the equation can also be used to destroy rounding bits for values <5 stamina (since 5 would become 1). Therefore, in terms of air lore training to negate the 70 stamina cost, we really only need 66... Because that 4 remainder can be taken care of with MjE.
How much MjE?
Well, we need at maximum a 24.5% RT final value, which occurs at (easy maths) 51 Ranks of MjE. It's almost as if they knew that this was a previous training breakpoint and tried to create an equation that mirrored the old mechanics.

So, my memory math was off by 1 rank. 51 Ranks MjE and (Stamina cost -4) Air lore ranks is sufficient to have sustained 1s attacks with your celeritied weapon.

[Whirlin]

I'll do my best over the course of the next week (time permitting) to update the OP with the lore information and also reflect the changes in the wiki version... But... time permitting. With an infant around, that seems to be at a premium recently

[Gnomad]

Correct... Sorry, was dwelling on the 535 equation last night, forgot about the 506. Lets do a deep dive breakdown:
50% - (0.5% × Major Elemental Ranks), capped at a minimum of 20% at 60 MjE
So, my memory math was off by 1 rank. 51 Ranks MjE and (Stamina cost -4) Air lore ranks is sufficient to have sustained 1s attacks with your celeritied weapon.You can give a little on the air lore, too. My wizard spends like 3 stamina to get a 1 second qstrike, and that's entirely sustainable. Not like we're using stamina for anything else. If I'm in a swarm, I'll run out of arrows before I run out of stamina.

edit: CoL, obviously. Sunfist wizards might have it different.

[Gnomad]

Also, obligatory link to my celerity calculator:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/hqrtdnzrw9

[Mettler]

I'll do my best over the course of the next week (time permitting) to update the OP with the lore information and also reflect the changes in the wiki version... But... time permitting. With an infant around, that seems to be at a premium recently

What would need to happen to make 512 viable?

Is it that the critter isn't totally disabled (assuming no stun)? Is it because the initial damage isn't high enough to justify opening with it? 512 with two casts of 903 converted to 907 seems pretty deadly for 18 mana...more so than 410/bolt. Is it because 505 is too good an opener not to use?

That 512 prevents creature maneuvers also seems like a plus against certain critters.

I assume some changes to enchant are coming before any kind of compensatory wizard buffs, and that water lore will be a factor, so I'm kinda trying to wrap my head around a future plan given that I think my wizard is going to turn into a pocket enchanter until things are fixed.

Thanks by the way for this breakdown.

[Methais]

Yeah, a lot of other wizards I've talked to are now recommending a 101/101/101 split, due to the new information about 912 being based on wizard ranks, and 415 CS post 519 nerf.

This. From an offensive standpoint, you need minor CS for 415 but still need major CS for mana leech.

I thought wizard ranks for 912 was old news though?


With an infant around, that seems to be at a premium recently

How the hell does an infant afford $40 a month?


What would need to happen to make 512 viable?

Is it that the critter isn't totally disabled (assuming no stun)? Is it because the initial damage isn't high enough to justify opening with it? 512 with two casts of 903 converted to 907 seems pretty deadly for 18 mana...more so than 410/bolt.

903 converts to minor cold (the blue wand spell), not major. Fortunately minor is better.

I never understood that concept in GS. Minor fire > major fire, etc.

[Donquix]

I'm not saying 512 is the most viable offensive option (anyone who does is wrong) but, i still think it's viable and better than whirlin gives it credit for :D

the opening shot from 512 is pretty nasty crit rank wise, but when it doesn't kill it kinda sucks because it ONLY does the crit rank damage, and 1 cycle of it. So, assuming you aren't barely hitting the thing with a like 110 final roll, it will be disabled, take 40+ damage, be stunned and rooted. If it doesn't just die, that's all great... but that also happens with like, every other opener. I do still kill with 512 about half the time on the opening shot, which is pretty nice, but not unique to 512. The conversion to minor cold is great, especially if you're in a position to channel safely. It's not bad, it's just not as good as just blowing stuff up with our other options.

I only partially advocate it because it's coupled with the (still yet to see final form of) enchanting benefits. It's entirely viable, but it's not the best (almost evertying in gs is "viable"). I think it's pretty decent, and if it still works mostly fine and you get teh l337 free enchnating benefit...why not?

Pros and cons for the 512+903 thing:
pros: very low lore investment (512 gets ZERO lore benefit for its actual cast. 22-33 ranks (for 2-3 casts of minor cold) is all you'd ever need, huge opening crit fucks stuff up good but has very low concussion damage when it doesn't, minor cold is a great option for CHANNEL if that's a thing for you, style points, we're all splashing in air lore so if you do water as well you get the benefits to heavy hitting lightning spells as well, enchant benefits, be awesome when you pick up lockpick/disarm at 6x cap, you're back to focusing on MjE CS so you don't have to split training for leech, etc.

cons: demonstrably worse than a fire build offensively (but again, still perfectly fine) and no real defensive benefits (i do notice my ewaves are a bit more reliable at 33 ranks, if that's a thing you care about), way more stuff is immune to cold than is immune to fire especially at cap. Though sanctum of scales seems kinda firey, so maybe that area will be weak to cold somehow. No inherent troll pwning, 907 is a noticeably worse option if you want to ball splash a room (if you go far enough to unlock major acid that's cool but your DF gain/splash lore is split over with earth as well which you probably don't have). When i'm fighting non-corp undead i'm really wishing i could abuse the qualifier-free DF boost from steam bolt.

The "lore" training to use 512+903 really depends on why you're doing it. If you want to be a badass water/cold mage for style...pick up 22-33 ranks and be done with it. Then you can basically train everything the same as whirlin suggested (and at the 100 fire lore threshold you can just attune water and fuck stuff up with 415). If you're just maximizing water lore for enchanting, we need to see the final-final release of 925 changes.

[Whirlin]

I'm not saying 512 is the most viable offensive option (anyone who does is wrong) but, i still think it's viable and better than whirlin gives it credit for :D

It's not that 512 alone is a bad spell... but the lore does not benefit the damage cycles, or any aspects of the hits/disabling aspect of it, it just grants the 903 conversion aspect, which is weak.

So, the thing about converting 903 to 1709 is that it's still taking the 12 mana upfront in order to set it up, which is an incredibly large investment for the 'benefit' of 903 > 1709.

1709 is ROUGHLY equal to a cast of 906. A few minor AvD differences, and relatively minimal DF differences. So, a 12 mana, 3 seconds investment to get 906 at the cost of 903. So, arguably, it takes 4 casts to break even on the mana front. And that's just break even... you'd need more that to start seeing mana efficiency.

So... we're talking about a hypothetical critter that can survive a 512 CS attack (which you already said was incredibly potent), followed by 4 casts of a nuke that's incredibly strong (even stronger if you channel!), just to break even on mana... and THEN we can start to realize a mana benefit from the 903 converstion mechanic. I really don't think such a critter exists.

Furthermore, it's also not JUST about this benefit to 512 from water lore, but also about the alternatives that you're giving up in training that lore. I simply do not see water lore benefits outweighing the variety of benefits that you see out of air/fire/earth. Especially when you consider the breakpoints of 55 air lore, 25 earth lore, and preferably 100 fire lore. What's going to give from there for the water lore? Sure, you could trade in some fire lore, and use the remaining ranks, but then you're also losing 502 potency by splitting more lores. I simply do not think that water lore is really competitive.

Perhaps enchanting will re-evaluate water versus earth, and make it a decent alternative. But even then, enchanting is kind of just a fringe benefit of being a wizard, and not something that I would actively trade hunting viability in order to do.

[Whirlin]

You can give a little on the air lore, too. My wizard spends like 3 stamina to get a 1 second qstrike, and that's entirely sustainable. Not like we're using stamina for anything else. If I'm in a swarm, I'll run out of arrows before I run out of stamina.

edit: CoL, obviously. Sunfist wizards might have it different.
I know there have been a bunch of minor mechanical tweaks associated with QSTRIKE since it's release... but the problem that I personally had with attacking while using some stamina is that if you ever accidentally tried to qstrike while celerity was down... muscles popped... hunt over... or at least, hunting with your weapon. So I'd rather just fully train off the lore and not need to be concerned with that offchance that it happens. Especially as a bow user where the difference is 70 stamina between celerity being up or down.

I'm sure there's a lich one-liner you can use to auto-detect, and qstrike/attack appropriately. But I dunno it.

Although... have the GMs released any new settings for Qstrike that alleviate that concern?

[Roblar]

Yes,

QUICKSTRIKE LIMIT {amount} - Limit stamina usage per combat action to the specified amount

[Mettler]

It's not that 512 alone is a bad spell... but the lore does not benefit the damage cycles, or any aspects of the hits/disabling aspect of it, it just grants the 903 conversion aspect, which is weak.

So, the thing about converting 903 to 1709 is that it's still taking the 12 mana upfront in order to set it up, which is an incredibly large investment for the 'benefit' of 903 > 1709.

1709 is ROUGHLY equal to a cast of 906. A few minor AvD differences, and relatively minimal DF differences. So, a 12 mana, 3 seconds investment to get 906 at the cost of 903. So, arguably, it takes 4 casts to break even on the mana front. And that's just break even... you'd need more that to start seeing mana efficiency.

So... we're talking about a hypothetical critter that can survive a 512 CS attack (which you already said was incredibly potent), followed by 4 casts of a nuke that's incredibly strong (even stronger if you channel!), just to break even on mana... and THEN we can start to realize a mana benefit from the 903 converstion mechanic. I really don't think such a critter exists.

To be fair, can't exactly compare 512 then 903 to straight 906. I don't open with 906. Generally if bolting I would open with 502 at a minimum but usually 410 or 415 since I have a good amount of fire lore. So really to kill any critter I'm looking at 8 mana minimum and typically 14 (502, 906, 906). Anything dangerous gets 410/415, then 502, then 906. So we're at 18 up to 23 mana there too. So 512, 903, 903 for 18 mana seems roughly equivalently efficient. I don't usually open with tonis bolt anymore because I want my critter stunned/disabled before ever going offensive.

Though I agree there's nothing really else water lore gives that is with giving up air or fire ranks. Maybe drop earth lore?

[Whirlin]

To be fair, can't exactly compare 512 then 903 to straight 906. I don't open with 906. Generally if bolting I would open with 502 at a minimum but usually 410 or 415 since I have a good amount of fire lore. So really to kill any critter I'm looking at 8 mana minimum and typically 14 (502, 906, 906). Anything dangerous gets 410/415, then 502, then 906. So we're at 18 up to 23 mana there too. So 512, 903, 903 for 18 mana seems roughly equivalently efficient. I don't usually open with tonis bolt anymore because I want my critter stunned/disabled before ever going offensive.

Though I agree there's nothing really else water lore gives that is with giving up air or fire ranks. Maybe drop earth lore?
So, that's 21 ranks in water lore to save 6 mana. You could just as easily continue to use 512 opener, followed by 906 for roughly the same potency. That 21 ranks would be enough to almost unlock all that Earth lore has to offer, or at least bump you up on your 502/513 benefits with fire lore.

Further thinking about this... Water lore is really just mana. 903 instead of 906... saves you 3 mana... 418... eventually generates a little mana... The problem is that we only have 202 ranks in Lores to train from, and we could all eventually go 3x harness power if mana is really a concern.

I also just don't see any major breakpoints with Water Lore where the numbers come together. For Air, we saw that 55/60 were kinda magically awesome numbers, and Earth Lore is absolutely 25 ranks. Fire is a bit soft too... but with those two major breakpoints for Air/Water, the remainder hits all of the high points on Fire. Water? There's no caps, there's high seeds, and the lack of a 'high' focused lore like training 100+ in fire is detrimental to 502 potency.

If the Enchanting mechanics come out with a low seed, it may be worth re-evaluating a soft cap on Fire's effectiveness, but it would probably still need to be somewhere around the 100 mark, leaving 17 ranks for Water Lore... depending on the seeds they come up with... that may be worthless.

[Methais]

So, that's 21 ranks in water lore to save 6 mana. You could just as easily continue to use 512 opener, followed by 906 for roughly the same potency. That 21 ranks would be enough to almost unlock all that Earth lore has to offer, or at least bump you up on your 502/513 benefits with fire lore.

Further thinking about this... Water lore is really just mana. 903 instead of 906... saves you 3 mana... 418... eventually generates a little mana... The problem is that we only have 202 ranks in Lores to train from, and we could all eventually go 3x harness power if mana is really a concern.

I also just don't see any major breakpoints with Water Lore where the numbers come together. For Air, we saw that 55/60 were kinda magically awesome numbers, and Earth Lore is absolutely 25 ranks. Fire is a bit soft too... but with those two major breakpoints for Air/Water, the remainder hits all of the high points on Fire. Water? There's no caps, there's high seeds, and the lack of a 'high' focused lore like training 100+ in fire is detrimental to 502 potency.

If the Enchanting mechanics come out with a low seed, it may be worth re-evaluating a soft cap on Fire's effectiveness, but it would probably still need to be somewhere around the 100 mark, leaving 17 ranks for Water Lore... depending on the seeds they come up with... that may be worthless.

So making the most of 202 lore ranks would be 100 fire, 60 air, 25 earth and uh...I must have missed what the deal was with 21 water lore. It's 10 for 512 minor cold though right?

But yeah, that seems to be the most efficient use of 202 ranks of lore?

[Donquix]

it's minor cold for X casts. If i recall it's 10 ranks for 1 cast, 21 or 22 for 2, 30-33 for 3. There's several other random benefits that have a breakpoint at 33 (most notably, can do up to +6 item, aka carmlin, base enchant for 411 which is like a randomly plentiful wood for runestaves). 30 ranks also opens up major acid if thats something you care about (I don't think you really should). I think another extra mana per pulse from 418 as well.

I don't think water lore is worth training specifically for effectiveness either, for the record (and I do use 512 + 903 when i can, and have 33 ranks of water lore). But it's pretty nice. They need to hurry up with the stupid enchant update :\

[Whirlin]

it's minor cold for X casts. If i recall it's 10 ranks for 1 cast, 21 or 22 for 2, 30-33 for 3. There's several other random benefits that have a breakpoint at 33 (most notably, can do up to +6 item, aka carmlin, base enchant for 411 which is like a randomly plentiful wood for runestaves). 30 ranks also opens up major acid if thats something you care about (I don't think you really should). I think another extra mana per pulse from 418 as well.

I don't think water lore is worth training specifically for effectiveness either, for the record (and I do use 512 + 903 when i can, and have 33 ranks of water lore). But it's pretty nice. They need to hurry up with the stupid enchant update :\

Well, in regards to 411, that's just based off of your highest lore like 502... so stopping at 100 versus 117 in Fire lore would actually reduce the fire e-blade from +11 (benefit realized at 88 ranks), versus +13 (benefit realized at 117 ranks)

It's seed 10 for 418 benefit... +10 mana per Seed 10 pulses, so you need 21 ranks to effectively gain +20 mana. Which equates to +2 mana after 4 minutes. 33 Ranks gives you +12 Mana after 6 minutes... It's not bad if you're doing an endurance hunt or something... but, again, it's really just mana... you may have higher returns off of just overtraining HP or something.

I could see an argument for Water Lore while leveling, maybe up until 80ish, and then fixskilling over to Fire when closer to cap. But, I'd need to evaluate water lore versus overtraining harness power. As well as success rate of 418 pre-cap. But I don't think you're really going to have the mana to use a 12 mana opener with 512 until 50sish... even then, that's a pretty expensive opener, and relies on more MjE focus.

[Methais]

418 is garbage for hunting because nobody has camped a room since like 1998.

[rolfard]

False. I used 418 in 1998 in magru and still use it today in grimswarm camps and invasions. 3x harness is a post-ELR post-cap goal

[Donquix]

i've used it as well when i know i'm going to be hunting for a while (heriloom on something under me). The mana per pulse, tiny as it is, persists even when you don't stay in the room you node so even if you to wander you end up slightly positive after it runs the duration so why not. it's really not noticeable but it's a benefit so eh. Might be nice for duskruin, or random places where you can easily camp a single room (of which there are number of them scattered around)

but 512 is just weird...it's a disable than randomly has this pretty crazily consistent high crit applied as well. compare to say opening with tonis bolt. for an extra 7 mana half the time the thing just dies, versus the roughly never chance of killing with 505 to open. It is highly dependent on threshold (150 seems to be the magic number) so that would be my problem with it in low to mid levels when your cs is still shitty, more so than the mana cost.

[Nahkaev]

neglected here is the soak benefit of water lore... 100% soaking from 60 water lore makes electric attacks have an almost half chance of landing a really, really long duration stun... and seeing as how they both contribute to that DF there's some synergy there.

it's not great synergy- and certainly doesn't bring my mage into the "hey this is fun" category he was before all this nerf bullshit that made me retire him, but it's there for those with fond memories of 901/515 who want to try to re-live past times.

[Whirlin]

neglected here is the soak benefit of water lore... 100% soaking from 60 water lore makes electric attacks have an almost half chance of landing a really, really long duration stun... and seeing as how they both contribute to that DF there's some synergy there.

it's not great synergy- and certainly doesn't bring my mage into the "hey this is fun" category he was before all this nerf bullshit that made me retire him, but it's there for those with fond memories of 901/515 who want to try to re-live past times.

Fair point, it is the highest lore debuff factor of the lores. However, utilizing it is still a % chance based on Air Lore and a lightning attack. Even if we did take the 17 remaining ranks in the proposal, it would still be around the 50% chance of soaking a target, which isn't really that bad if you want to use it as a chained opener during rapid fire. Maybe a strong case to do 55 Air Lore, and bump water up to 22, but still not really worth drawing too much more away from fire... Plus, I'll actually need to turn around and take a look at fire's major Seed values to see if there's a value around 100 to aim for.


However, I really don't consider the DF bonuses to be worth a damn anymore. The Water/Air benefits to Lightning used to be amazing, because the DF bonuses were all .001 DF increase, regardless of starting point. That's what made 901 so amazing was that the +.001 was like, +.9% of the damage, whereas it's like, +.1% of the damage for some other bolts. Now that rapid fire is a 1s cast, 901 lore benefit really doesn't make it super competitive, because you can't spam it. So you're more often going to be going with a heavier attack spell. And, at the opposite end of the spectrum, it's barely an increase to 910.

[Soulance]

Not really sure how they have it set up because I can drench a creature with water at 50 water lore everytime. So is it about the chance of the extra sparks then? I do notice them from time to time and they have helped me out in a few situations where it'll stun something, but really it's not much more than a little extra damage because seers and griffins don't stun.

[Whirlin]

Not really sure how they have it set up because I can drench a creature with water at 50 water lore everytime. So is it about the chance of the extra sparks then? I do notice them from time to time and they have helped me out in a few situations where it'll stun something, but really it's not much more than a little extra damage because seers and griffins don't stun.

Yeah, 60 ranks ends up being 100%... and being drenched adds 30% chance of getting the little sparks. +additional % from Air Lore training

Against unstunnable critters, you're absolutely right, the damage is pretty superfluous, but, it can be a pretty sizable stun against stunnable critters. >10 seconds

[Donquix]

I was just thinking about the DF lore benefits, and how kinda lame they are. It really is silly it's a uniform increase, regardless of spell level. The only reason i'm reluctant to bring it up as I'm assuming they will just make the lore benefit scale per mana cost of the spell, with 10+ level bolts getting the same benefit we get today on all bolts, and level 1 bolts getting 1/10th of that.

[drauz]

I was just thinking about the DF lore benefits, and how kinda lame they are. It really is silly it's a uniform increase, regardless of spell level. The only reason i'm reluctant to bring it up as I'm assuming they will just make the lore benefit scale per mana cost of the spell, with 10+ level bolts getting the same benefit we get today on all bolts, and level 1 bolts getting 1/10th of that.

I wish they would make spell ranks do the DF increase and have lore ranks do the added stuff.

[Soulance]

Yeah, 60 ranks ends up being 100%... and being drenched adds 30% chance of getting the little sparks. +additional % from Air Lore training

Against unstunnable critters, you're absolutely right, the damage is pretty superfluous, but, it can be a pretty sizable stun against stunnable critters. >10 seconds
I was actually surprised this morning, I didn't even have to drench them in water first, the sparks just happened when I did 518.

[Whirlin]

I was just thinking about the DF lore benefits, and how kinda lame they are. It really is silly it's a uniform increase, regardless of spell level. The only reason i'm reluctant to bring it up as I'm assuming they will just make the lore benefit scale per mana cost of the spell, with 10+ level bolts getting the same benefit we get today on all bolts, and level 1 bolts getting 1/10th of that.

I think it's more of a legacy benefit to lores that existed with the original elemental lore implementation... and they didn't want to go back and remove/change it.

[Whirlin]

Updated the wiki version of this for ELR implications (I think I updated everywhere I need to). Will reflect these updated on this threads sooner or later.

[Methais]

Updated the wiki version of this for ELR implications (I think I updated everywhere I need to). Will reflect these updated on this threads sooner or later.

Does it say "NVM IMMOLATE IS TRASH NOW OLOLOL"?

If not, it should. :(

[Whirlin]

Does it say "NVM IMMOLATE IS TRASH NOW OLOLOL"?

If not, it should. :(
It does

[Whirlin]

So... I've been asked a LOT when my new recommendations are for lores... and I've had a couple conversations with other capped wizards in the different training paths they're taking... I'll first go into a breakdown of each lore, and some major training points to try to hit.

Fire Lore:
906/908: DF bonus up to 50 ranks, then diminished returns
519: Various bonuses
20 ranks unlocks Steam bolt for evoked 903... Steam bolt has highest Damage:Mana ratio against robes, but not the best critical tables.
513: Seed 4 for AS stacking up to +25
502: Seed 1 for DS pushdown for same element...
425: Seed 10 for 1% crit weighting
415: Double strike. 100% at 100 ranks, 90% at 80 ranks

Air Lore:
505: 20 ranks for Tonis Bolt... best single-target AS resolved opener
502: same as above
405: Detect flares at 30 ranks
410/435: 50 ranks can hit airborne targets
506: 50 ranks lets you evoke to hit the entire group for no additional mana
535: -1% RT for every 5 ranks
911: +Dodge per seed 1
912: Vortex inducing additional RT, 2% per seed 5
504: Open area cast, +1 target per 20 ranks

Water Lore
Major Acid: 30 ranks
418: Extra Mana

Earth Lore
414: 25 ranks for 5% chance to block AS/DS resolved attack
430: Seed 10 chance for Crit Padding
503: Seed 10 chance for +20 DS
507: 15 ranks to 5% activate bolt deflection +1%/10 ranks thereafter
508: 25 ranks for 5% chance of +20 TD
509: Seed 4 +STR
909: Evoke EBP +1% per seed 4/2, +evoke charges
902: Seed 7 for +1 enhancive
905: Seed 5 for +1 DS

Rationale and analysis:
First thing to point out is that a lot of the Air and Earth Lores have discrete training values when bonuses are realized, that we don't see in fire/water.
50 ranks in Air Lore grants the anti-air effect on e-waves, and the groupcast for celerity
25 ranks in Earth Lore grants a ton of potential AS/DS/Padding procs
Fire has a lot of scaling bonuses with incredibly high caps... I'll go into a breakdown of those a little more.
Truth be told, I know a lot of people like 512, but I do not see water lore as being competitive, and will not include any further water analysis in this breakdown.

Understanding the true bonuses of air lore
The biggest benefit in the air lore training is Tonis Bolt at 20 ranks, and then the -1% RT from Haste per 5 ranks. Everything else is really just fringe benefits.
So, Lets evaluate how much of a difference the 1% haste REALLY is in the Gemstone world:
· Base 4 RT becomes 1 at 60 ranks
· Base 5 RT becomes 1 at 105 ranks
· Base 6 RT becomes 2 at 55 Ranks, 1 at 135 Ranks
· Base 7 RT becomes 3 at 20 Ranks, 2 at 90 Ranks, 1 at 160 ranks
· Base 8 RT becomes 3 at 55 ranks, 3 at 115 ranks, and 1 at 180 ranks
· ... I'm stopping there. But I did notice the following mathematical trends due to the way that RTs are truncated:
o 55 ranks results in -1 RT for every Even base RT, starting at Base 6
o 105 Ranks results in -1 RT for every RT divisible by 5
o 135 Ranks results in -1 RT for every RT divisible by 3

Based on the above, I would recommend either 55 or 60 ranks in Air Lore. You receive a lot of the RT reduction bonuses, without going too heavily into air Lore. You also unlock Tonis Bolt, group casting of 506 with no additional mana cost, and the ability to hit air critters with 410/435, and flare detection on 405.

Going to 60 ranks from 55 ranks will net you +1 critter hit with 504 open cast (up from 3 to 4), +1 slot in 511, and +2% chance of Vortex from 912 (from 14% to 16% at 56 ranks)
It will grant additional benefits to 515 or 911, who just received bonuses at 55 ranks
Unlike lores with lots of linear growth, or lots of seed based scalability, we’re fortunate with Air Lore to be able to ‘solve’ for the lore, and make a definitive statement where to maximize the benefits.

Understanding the true bonuses of Fire Lore
906/908 DF bonuses are strongest for the first 50 ranks of air lore, at .001 per rank… subsequently decreasing to half that for 51-100, and one fourth of that for 101+
519 bonuses are two fold:
· (Fire Lore ranks -10)/2, Seed 1 for 1% chance of death on warding margins 50 or higher…
(I think that’s the most complex equation for lore benefits I’ve seen).
· And Ranks /1.5 % chance of an extra damage cycle. (100% at 150 ranks)
The results of the two fold 519 bonuses result in one aspect being seed related, and subject to diminishing returns, whereas the other is a linear progression. More on this later.
513 bonus maxes out at +25: This one becomes rather interesting, mechanically… How many bolts do you THINK it takes to kill a critter? 2? 3? 4? And additionally, it also makes some seed values appear more beneficial than others. Because going from +5 AS per bolt to +6 AS per bolt will still require 5 bolts to max out the benefit of +25 AS… so is that +1 AS really as substantial? Lets do a super quick breakdown:
· +1 per bolt: 25 casts to cap
· +2 per bolt: 13 casts to cap
· +3 per bolt: 9 bolts to cap
· +4 per bolt: 7 bolts to cap
· +5 per bolt: 5 bolts to cap
· +6 per bolt: 5 bolts to cap
· +7 per bolt: 4 bolts to cap
· +9 per bolt: 3 bolts to cap
· +13 per bolt: 2 bolts to cap
· Benefit maxes at +19, always 2 bolts to cap the benefit.
This mechanic of the +25 max, paired with a Summation Seed 4 for benefit ends up producing two forms of diminishing returns. There are two training points to highlight: 72 ranks of fire lore for +9 per bolt, and 130 ranks for +13 per bolt. Pretty substantial implications in those different values!
415 is the last less-than-straight-forward benefit for fire lore, offering double cast potential that unlocks at 10% at 4 ranks, but sales to 100% at 100 ranks. (fire lore skill bonus /2).
For the purposes of this assessment, I feel we have already identified sufficient bonuses to fire lore to recommend at least 50 ranks, so we’ll be subject to linear growth for subsequent lore training.

Understanding the true bonuses of Earth lore:
Do you love 540? Do you wish you had like, 10 other 540 style random procs? That’s Earth Lore. It doesn’t offer that many static bonuses… but whatever.
Regarding the 909 benefit… I cannot state how much this benefit is OVERSTATED. A 1% decrease in EBP will likely not result in any additional DS reduction due to rounding. Lets take an EXTREME example of a 303 dodge rogue. That rogue, in offensive stance, lets assume robes, is obtaining 227 DS from evade alone. A 5% reduction would be down to 215.65. Every additional 1% would be a difference of 2.27DS. When we consider alternative AS boosting effects in the fire lore talents, and a potential bonus from going heavy into a single lore with 502, using a Seed 4 summation / 2 % bonus to train in 909 benefit just falls short. I wouldn’t specifically train for earth lore potency.
As you can see from the breakdown, there’s a lot of Seed 10s, and a lot of 25 ranks to begin the lottery style effects… Seed 10 has benefit points at 10, 21, 33 ranks, and many of those 25 rank unlocks have additional +1% activations at +10 ranks… so, 35 is a great way to get 3 ranks of Seed 10 benefits, and a little above the base 25 ranks bonus 909 benefits at 22 ranks and then again at 39 ranks… so deciding between 25 and 35 ranks shouldn’t be impacted by 909.

Ok… So what are the recommendations?:

Based on the maths above, for Pure Builds, I would recommend 55/60 Air Lore, 35 Earth Lore, 100 Fire Lore, and the remaining 7/12 ranks to put wherever you want.
Ranged Warmages require 66 air lore ranks to fire an aimed longbow in 1s (for races with <15 STR bonus). So they would require 66/35/100, with 1 remainder.
For Physical warmages… Honestly… probably do the same thing… just train the earth/air first, and pick up fire later. By that time, you’ll be capped anyway.

Wait… when should I train what when?
So… this is a little trickier, and comes down to playstyle and your opinion of your character. Based on the changes to Elemental Lore, I do now recommend all various wizard builds to go 1x in Elemental Lore for life. I cannot recommend 2x Elemental Lore while leveling, as I still strongly advocate that spell research will be a better use for additional discretionary training points.

While I’m an advocate of tonis bolt, I can see a lot of justification in prioritizing steam bolt early when you still have mana concerns. The benefits of 502 with stacking a single element early would be justification to go Fire Lore 1x til cap, and then picking up the other elements (probably after you hit 3x spell research… I still don’t think I’d prioritize 2x lores over 3x research)
With the introduction of both Mage Armor and 950, time to re-evaluate and highlight some changes:
First, lets tackle 520:
Fire 520: The benefit of this is capped out at only 15 ranks of Fire lore... unless you invest in CMAN to mange your stances more granular.
Air 520: A major lore benefit for this occurs at 55 ranks of Air lore, fitting the mold of the previous recommendations for 535 rounding implications
Earth 520: Given critical padding randomization for values above somewhat, I'm going to say that this benefit is nice, but probably not as nice as it's made out to be. It's a fringe benefit of earth lore, but not really something I would explicitly train for.
Water 520: Dispel protection: This is an incredibly niche impact. Valuable for something like confluence hunting, but other benefits are better. I'd recommend taking the time, and setting up a hotkey to use a dull gold coin rotated in with water lore rather than worrying about the cooldown reduction or explicitly training for this benefit.
Lightning 520: This is another interesting mechanic, but not something I'd explicitly train for... If you're getting stunned more often than every 30 seconds... you're dead. Lets be honest. You need to timestop your way out of that situation, and likely run if you got hit hard enough to be worrying about the 30s cooldown on the lightning proc.

Overall impact on lore recommendations: No Impact

950 Lore analysis:
Earth Lore: The most potent, at 60/135/210 ranks, it increases the number of casts in a minute. So, 60 ranks effectively halves the cooldown.
Air Lore: Changes CASTs to CHANNELs during the spam. This is a sliding scale, so, while there are specific breakpoints of benefits, having a smidgen over a major threshold will still benefit you, so specific training for this is not required.
Fire Lore: Since 513 doesn't work well with 950, we get a pretty substantial AS buff.. using seed 10...
Water Lore: Mana cost reduction.

The biggest thing out of this is the Earth Lore benefits. If we consider the previously decided training path of 55 Air, 35 Earth, 100 Fire. We can also consider going heavier into Earth for 55 air, 60 Earth, leaving us 87 ranks for Fire Lore. What are the implications of this?
Well, Estild came out to say 415 was never meant to hit the same target twice, so the 100 ranks of fire lore for 100% double cast on 415 isn't as important of a threshold to hit.

So what do we lose from 100 to 87 ranks of Fire Lore?
-1 As per cast from 513... however, this effect will still max out at 4 casts under either threshold
-1% Chance of weighting from 425
-2 DS penalty to the 502 penalty... If you're using that.
-5-6 AS penalty on 950 (the fire lore benefits are not discrete... so training between thresholds benefit)
-1 Max Splash on 908

Overall, I think there's a strong argument for a 55 Air, 60 Earth, remaining training in fire lore just due to how absolutely powerful 950 is.

We'll see how 925 comes out... I still wish they made the benefits associated with EMC, and not water lore.

[Tyros]

Can someone help me out here with what I think is a straightforward question that the guide seems to dance around. If my warmage swings a claidhmore in a normal 5 sec rt, what are the optimal air lore and MjE ranks to train to in order for 506 to let me swing in 1 second?

[Tenser]

Did you look at the wiki?

https://gswiki.play.net/Celerity_(506)

It doesn't give an exact answer but may guide you to get real close to your answer.

[Whirlin]

https://gswiki.play.net/Guides_by_Whirlin:_Quickstrike_%26_Celerity:_Reall y_Simple_Math

[Maerit]

Can someone help me out here with what I think is a straightforward question that the guide seems to dance around. If my warmage swings a claidhmore in a normal 5 sec rt, what are the optimal air lore and MjE ranks to train to in order for 506 to let me swing in 1 second?

Here's a 506 RT calculator - https://www.desmos.com/calculator/tdon67w1el

So for example, if you have 55 ranks in Air Lore - you'd need 34 rank in MjE to swing a claidhmore at 1 second (assuming you can swing it in 5 seconds without 506) with no stamina cost.

There's too many variables to give someone just the air lore requirements. MjE effects the formula as does your own stats that determine how fast you can swing a weapon normally (i.e. you'll need a high AGIDEX to swing a Claid in 5 seconds).

[Dayko]

anyone have a copy of the guide since it disappeared from gswiki?