Pure, Archer Mage, & Warmage Information

[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_Wh...ly_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?