Training postcap

[Arenia]

Hello everyone, i just recently hit cap and am looking for advice on what to work on next. Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

thank you



Armor Use..........................| 40 8
Combat Maneuvers...................| 140 40 (cdefense)
Physical Fitness...................| 403 303
Arcane Symbols.....................| 201 101
Magic Item Use.....................| 201 101
Harness Power......................| 201 101
Mental Mana Control................| 102 24
Spirit Mana Control................| 201 101
Spiritual Lore - Blessings.........| 165 65
Spiritual Lore - Summoning.........| 163 63
Mental Lore - Manipulation.........| 117 29
Survival...........................| 201 101
Perception.........................| 201 101
Climbing...........................| 150 50
Swimming...........................| 150 50
First Aid..........................| 201 101


Spell Lists
Major Spiritual....................| 40

Spell Lists
Minor Spiritual....................| 40

Spell Lists
Empath.............................| 141

[Wrathbringer]

Put all extra points into pickpocketing.

[Mikalmas]

Really depends on what you wanna do. I would venture to guess most pures is gonna focus on 3x spell training first to max CS.

[khorpulent]

The obvious answer would be that you should train in spell ranks to improve CS. However, that is slow, tedious work, so if you want some more immediate benefits, I've posted some ideas below. I've listed them roughly from least-to-most point intensive, and also more or less the order I did them in myself).

Bring MMC to 100 ranks to get 7 total targets for 1117 (you'll get 6 targets at 50), as well as a little extra mana regeneration and mana spellups.

Train in mental lore:
Transformation lore to reduce healing RT -- 57 ranks gives you zero hard RT, 48 ranks gives you max 3 sec hard RT (which brings it in line with cast RT). 50 ranks of transformation gives you an extra use of 1150. (I still don't see how any empath can stand to make it to cap without transformation lore...healing RT is evil).

Transference lore to let you heal scars at 50 ranks and to increase the range of 1140.

Telepathy to increase chance of damage propagation of 1117 and chance of link overload. 100 ranks will also let you cast 1120 on undead stuff consistently. Telepathy will also give you extra warding cycles of 1110, but that's irrelevant without SA.

(Also, I think manipulation lore is a waste of points, especially if you use 1117, but hey it's your character).

Spiritual Lore:
Continue training in summoning lore to increase the chance of a 4th cycle from 1115. With those 65 blessing ranks (I'm assuming you're in Sunfist), you'll max out at about a 90% chance, which is good enough.

Spell Aiming: I think it costs roughly 1.5m exp to get to 2x in SA. That's probably more of a fixskills kind of thing.

You could always keep working on CM, but I've always preferred the magical stuff. My empath is at 17m exp and I still only have 12 CM ranks so far.

You could also work on getting to 2x in HP.

A bit of trading is always nice, too.

[khorpulent]

Oh, and you'll get CS the fastest if you go up empath circle to 160 before working on the spirituals.

[Arenia]

Right now the extent of my healing is myself and my hunting partner and we're mostly in Nelemar these days. I am GoS which is why i had the 65 blessing ranks.

I really appreciate the advice, thank you.

[Velfi]

The lack of Transformations lore stuck out to me the most, it's so great for any build of empath. I'd also second picking up SA and/or 2x HP if you're doing the normal caster route.

[BigWorm]

You're already 3x PF and have a good amount of ranks in CM which are both common post-cap goals. I would go for 57 ranks of ML: Transformation first to get all healing round time to zero and another use of 1150 per day. After that, I think your best return on investment is 3x spells because a higher CS makes most of your spells more effective. If you are running out of mana a lot, 2x HP might be worth considering, but I think you would do better to improve your spells first so that you kill faster instead of casting more with a lower CS.

24 ranks of MMC is enough for 5 targets which is enough for most scenarios. If you are commonly dealing with bigger swarms you can get more, but this always felt like a good stopping point to me since 76 ranks for two more targets is a lot more investment. You need to ward stuff to tag them with 1117, so improving your CS will help you here too.

Unless you need the SA to hunt something that is normally immune to empath CS spells (e.g. water elementals since you hunt Nelemar), I'd put that off until much further post-cap.

Even with the increased 1117 passthrough rate, I have never found Telepathy lore to be appealing. Even if you do, you will again get better returns by improving your CS first.

[khorpulent]

Yeah, you probably won't need to hit 7 targets with 1117 that often, but MMC is dirt cheap. It might be worth it just for the extra uses of mana spellup, and the increased mana recovery won't hurt. The points it would cost you to get to 100 ranks of MMC would net you 3.4 spell ranks (I guess about 1.75 TD).

You get 1 rank of MMC for 5k exp, vs 1 spell rank for about 53k exp (or 106k exp per 1 CS). Up to you, but I'm impatient and tend to prefer immediate returns on my TPs if I can get them.

People always knock spell aiming for empaths, but I actually trained 2x in SA all the way up to cap. The trade off of spell ranks for 202 SA ranks works out to be about 9 or 10 CS. You can definitely do without it, but I've always appreciated the versatility.

And if you're having mana problems, I'd suggest looking into getting some stamina recovery enhancives instead of blowing points on HP. Stamina recovery enhancives work as a percentage of your total stamina, so with 3x PF, you can get huge increases in recovery. With 3x PF at cap, your base recovery will be about 50 stamina/pulse, but you can get it upwards of 150 with enough enhancives. I get something like 145 stamina per pulse, which translates into nearly 75 mana every minute with sigil of power (and I also have 65 blessing ranks, so I can also use 1107 every 5 minutes). Each "point" of stamina recovery enhancives is actually a percentage point of your overall stamina, if I'm not mistaken.

Telepathy lore is definitely something you'd think about way post-cap. The real benefit of telepathy is that it allows you to use 1120 on undead, which is a huge advantage in the rift, sanctum, and reim. The benefits to 1117 are all lagniappe (though that link overload is pretty rad).

If it were me, I'd do 1x MMC and 51 transformation ranks (you'll still have 2 seconds on some scars, but close enough) before slogging away at spell ranks. Even if you're only healing yourself, you don't want to have to sit through RT when healing yourself or a partner in the field. I don't really sit around and heal -- I see healing RT as a combat skill.

[Arenia]

Thank you for the great advice, i also have one other question.

What would be the MAX that i would want in my spell circles (if i ever get there)?