Greater Elemental Flares

[Maerit]

In the end, if you're talking UAC it would be best to have the greater flares on gloves over boots. I did some log parsing earlier, and have bubble flares w/ disintegration flares on my boots, and since my T3 attack is kick, they're only activating around 8-10% of the time. While I have KO flares and disintegrate flare on my gloves. The disintegrate flares are activating 20% of the time while the KO flares are actually higher (because KO apparently has a special high flare %).

You get the most mileage out of flares on your gloves.

Or, just sell them to me, so I can add them to my new shiny runestaff being used on my rapid fire wizard (which is where GEF truly shine).

[kutter]

In the end, if you're talking UAC it would be best to have the greater flares on gloves over boots. I did some log parsing earlier, and have bubble flares w/ disintegration flares on my boots, and since my T3 attack is kick, they're only activating around 8-10% of the time. While I have KO flares and disintegrate flare on my gloves. The disintegrate flares are activating 20% of the time while the KO flares are actually higher (because KO apparently has a special high flare %).

You get the most mileage out of flares on your gloves.

Or, just sell them to me, so I can add them to my new shiny runestaff being used on my rapid fire wizard (which is where GEF truly shine).

I would say that for anyone other than a UAC Wizard you are correct, but I use his feet to attack and only use hands when needed to tier up since all of it is one second and the modifiers for feet are better than hands.

[Maerit]

I would say that for anyone other than a UAC Wizard you are correct, but I use his feet to attack and only use hands when needed to tier up since all of it is one second and the modifiers for feet are better than hands.

That's the thing. I did my log parsing on a capped UAC warmage who uses feet as T3 attacks. To tier up, I use jab since kicking is not efficient until you tier up, and he jabs 5x more than any other attack (including kicks). If you parse your logs, I think you'll find that your jabs are where your flare damage is the most noticeable.

I also did the same parsing on a UAC bard who uses punch as his T3 attack, and the end result was very similar though the flare rate on hands was down by around 3-4% because his punches are killing targets and negating the flares more regularly, but the kick flares were also low in flare rate since kicks are often fatal.

[gilchristr]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

[Maerit]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

This might be true at lower levels, but not at cap. The AS problems are real for a warmage at cap. UAF vs UDF with zero EBP makes it substantially easier to land UCS hits than it would be to swing a cestus where your AS is likely lower than the DS of many targets resulting in a lot of misses. On average, my giantman warmage can kill targets in Nelemar within 10-12 seconds of UCS attacks and they're all aimed attacks that aren't missing (aim at the head of target).

501 to bring them to the floor, drop their defenses, and then ground & pound them to death. In a swarm, 410 to bring everything down, ground & pound until they're all dead. This is very fast at cap with 2x EMC for rapid fire, so you can cast your disables with 1s cast RT. I use 519 evoke on non-corp undead as a disable (defenders are immune to 410/909/501). Stomp 909 is great in lieu of having rapid fire.

[Mobius1]

In my testing, I did notice a difference in the amount of tier 2 death crits I got with HCW, but this was with punch (to the head.).

But because tier 2 caps at rank 8 crit, and a rank 8 is needed to death crit, the crit weighting only does so much to combat the crit randomization.

I'd say about 1/3 of my tier 2 punches result in a death crit with crit weighted gloves (Rolfard has told me that he has similar results with his crit weighted gloves.). Though that is certainly an increase over not having it, it's much more minimal compared to the impact crit weighting can have on normal ambushes. But crit weighting can be pretty worthless on normal ambushes, too, if you are already achieving rank 9 crits.

If I were to guess, I'd say UAC crit weighting works exactly the same as it does with normal attacks - it's just that the crit system itself is different. The crit randomization system with regular attacks, has no impact on an ambush at all, as long as you can achieve a rank 9 crit, because even at worst randomization outcome, you still will get a rank 5, which is a death crit. On the other hand, tier 2 UAC, you need a rank 8 and nothing less to kill.

I do often wonder, if you could theoretically achieve 100% or near 100% death crits on tier 2 (assuming you hit the targeted location successfully.), with enough crit weighting, UAF, and MM, and using kick. But as far as I've pushed it with punch (750+ UAF, HCW), and Rolfard with his MCW gloves, our results have been pretty underwhelming. But I'd love to see the results of someone kicking with MCW boots, 800+ UAF, and good MM - Maybe the results would make it worthwhile! (Or maybe it sucks...)

Of course, as for anything but T2 attacks, crit weighting is near useless in most circumstances. A T3 is just plain going to kill whether you have weighting or not (Though I won't speak for wizards, as someone claims it helps them.).

[kutter]

Kutter, if you think 1sec kicks spammed are good, you should try 1sec cestus attacks spammed. In otherwords, no UAC, just a straight brawling weapon attack. I think you will find it more powerful than 1sec kick spam against most creatures, and you do not need to change your training to do it.

Against a creature in plate or something, 1sec kick spam could be better, but against most creatures I think 1sec cestus spam will kill faster.


EDIT - not only will the cestus spam be more effective then the kicks, also in contrast to boots, getting a cestus up to heavily crit weighted will definitely be very noticable over non-weighted cestus (which I dont think you can say for heavily crit weighted boots vs regular boots)

So I am curious about why a cestus and why not a fist-scythe? I was always under the impression if a melee wizard is going to swing a weapon they should swing the heaviest they can in 1 second. So I have tried this, since I have a fire flaring one for when I was hunting some stuff in the nations that had to have fire flares and it works, to a point. As Maerit pointed out, the penalty to UAF is not as severe to wizards as AS seems to be, and I say seems since I have not done any testing. My UAC wizard was just something fun to see what if.

My typical attack style, if there is only 1 or 2 critters is to stomp and wail, if there are more than two e-wave & tremors then wail. He hunts pretty well, I certainly have no complaints but he is only 63 so will see. I typically get perfect Arena runs 90-95% of the time. But it is a binary thing for him, he is easier perfect or he is dead. If you get him on the ground, then he is like any other wizard, squishy as hell, PLUS he is offensive, but it is what it is.

[gilchristr]

Only because I thought the cestus would have a high enough DF to do the job, and it will still leave you with a really high MM in case you want to end up doing kicks. (in fact, for *kicks* I think you could see no penalty for holding a cestus).

A fist scythe would badly affect your MM, for sure.