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Tally wrote on 2011-01-02 23:20
Okay, better question, then. Which would be a better match for a solo situation? In party, I'm partially covered if I make a grievous mistake, or a string of fatal misses with my arrows. In solo, there's no one to cover me, and I lack any recovery if I'm in Albey or a shadow mission.
Therefore, I would prefer more reliable attacks within a solo situation. Which would fit the bill more, or should I just go for both?
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Chinaboy475 wrote on 2011-01-02 23:23
xD I have same question as Tally lol
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Shanghai wrote on 2011-01-03 01:43
Flamer would help in clearing away multi-aggro, since most enemies spawn in pairs or are close enough that you can score 2 mobs with a Flamer. It's damage is entirely based on criticals though.
Water Cannon has a constant damage output(unless you're far away), and more charges make it devastating when shot at point black(a Rank 1 fully charged WC can easily hit over 1k at point blank) it's a single target skill though, so if you get multi'd you better have a pet out.
WC seems like your best bet, since it doesn't miss and it can't get interrupted(unless you fire at the wrong time) like Flamer does.
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Chinaboy475 wrote on 2011-01-03 02:45
how would you use WC with ranged attack?
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Shanghai wrote on 2011-01-03 02:54
Quote from Chinaboy475;273863:
how would you use WC with ranged attack?
You can't, really. Since Range takes awhile to load as well as WC, they don't mix well if you're in trouble. You can easily switch between the 2 if you've got a Barrier Spikes wall up though. You can try loading Wind Blast on a Cylinder to knock an enemy away, then proceed to use WC. For times where you miss with arrows, I recommend using WM and then switching to Alchemy to use Wind Blast so you have time to load WC.
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Cynic wrote on 2011-01-03 06:17
Quote from Shanghai;273876:
You can't, really. Since Range takes awhile to load as well as WC, they don't mix well if you're in trouble. You can easily switch between the 2 if you've got a Barrier Spikes wall up though. You can try loading Wind Blast on a Cylinder to knock an enemy away, then proceed to use WC. For times where you miss with arrows, I recommend using WM and then switching to Alchemy to use Wind Blast so you have time to load WC.
^ Range would only really work in a party and/or Boss fight (again, usually in a party). Since solo-ing leaves you open whall you're charging your attacks, unless you have a pet to help distract the enemy and hold aggros.
Flame Burst is helpful in some situations, but WC is your best bet.
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Ailyene wrote on 2011-01-03 07:33
This is addressing the question of Flame Burst VS Water Cannon.
Personally, I find flame burst much better than water cannon because flame burst can deal damage to mobs. It's like, windmill VS smash in a way. Flame burst has a really small area so you have to know how to aim well, but a fully loaded flame burst which crits is so great - even in SCC hard. I just discovered today that as long as my flame burst crits once out of 5 times, I can kill gold bone lancers once my flame burst ends (I do have royal alchemist enchants/the title and a fully upgraded stiff fire cylinder though). As for the things with more HP such as fighters, all I need to do is switch weapons quickly and windmill. All dead.
I understand that water cannon can get a lot of damage with all water drop enchants/a good cylinder, but it just doesn't kill fast enough compared to flame burst in a mob because it's one-on-one, not an area attack. Of course, in order to have good flame burst, you'll need preferably master of chain cylinder or a high-ranked CC so you won't take forever loading 5 charges. But you should be aiming for that if you're an alchemist, no matter which type of alchemist you are.
All my observations come from hard mode missions. I think water cannon might be better in lower difficulty missions where monsters have less HP because you have the potential of killing faster one by one. However, in missions with high-HP monsters, dealing damage to a mob is more efficient.
Also, as for juggling water cannon and range...it's super easy for a human. As long as you have rank 1 AR and you know how to fight, you shouldn't really be worrying about being unable to shoot an arrow in time. Sometimes I still use water cannon despite liking flame burst better because it's not worth loading 5 charges to pick off 1 monster, and I can toggle them just fine because AR rank 1 loads so darn fast.
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Cryosite wrote on 2011-01-03 16:14
I still don't get why people have so much love for water cannon, flame burst, and heat buster.
In order to get either skill to do the amazing damage people quote for them, WC and FB need to be fully charged. I.E. only useful a your initial attack. After that both are low damage spam skills. Heat buster can only be used sparingly, between spam usage of the weak attacks.
Further, in order to get said amazing damage, you need to put several alchemic damage enchants on your gear... which could be max damage enchants for your archery and/or crit enchants. You could find yourself some kind of happy medium between the two, but you'll have to either have a mediocre set for both, or two specialized sets of gear, and switch from one to the other based on which style you want to do well in.
And what are you getting out of all this? WC and HB are both single target attacks... kinds like your AR and Magnum, except you need to be pretty close (water cannon does way less damage when not close up, and heat buster has low range). Flame burst also requires really close up fighting, and has a tiny area effect comparibly to the splash range of your magnum. yeah, you can get more than one target with it but it isn't something you'll rely on too heavily outside of favorable spawns.
Not one of them however comes close to your crash shot in terms of area effect. If you want to take out a cluster of enemies, that skill will be far more effective than flame burst could ever hope to be.
Rather than waste your time and lots of AP on mediocre attacks that are close range, just invest in some basic bolt spells from magic. You can load then while a bow is equipped (major plus), and can use them in similar ways that you'd use basic alchemy attacks. A fully loaded firebolt is still pretty nice damage, even if it falls a little short of the ideal water cannon. Lightning bolt is a great stunning attack that is fast to load, and can do some minor area tricks when loaded more than once.
I'd suggest finish ranking crash shot before really worrying about doing magic or alchemy, but if you're really that traumatized by the miss rate and want something that never misses... go with magic. and if the DPS of bolt spells isn't as high as alchemy attacks can hit... go further into magic and pick up an intermediate spell like Thunder. Alchemy attacks can't match the DPS of Thunder. Besides, Thunder will give you more will (helpful for critting with range!) and more mp (you already use mana shield when you need to stay alive). Heck, Master of Thunder is a really nice Dex title to boot. Alchemy skills will give you either no stats at all, or mostly some stamina. Even Basic bolt spells will at least give you INT, which will improve your mana shield efficiency (assuming you have less than 300 INT currently).
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Ailyene wrote on 2011-01-03 21:11
Flame burst is certainly not comparable to the splash of magnum in any way because flame burst does a heck load more damage. Despite having a tiny area, it's still usually very good for killing at least 3/5 of a mob very fast in SCC. I've heard that crash shot is really good, but with 251 base dex as a human, a crapload of +damage and dex enchants, and using a pretty nice bow with rank 1 AR, magnum, range, and rank 5 CS, I really don't see CS doing great damage at all. The load time is very slow, the aiming time just takes up more time, and I sure seem to miss a lot at 80%+. Maybe it sucks at rank 5, but even when I have 615 dex in TF, it just isn't performing as well. I'm not sure if rank 1 really makes that big of a difference. I'd love to see a video of human archer who doesn't have crazy base dex with rank 1 crash shot fighting in a hard sm to see how good it actually is.
Also, a lot of people don't want to go magic because of the MP cost. Using any adv magic as your main attack drains MP like crazy and even though mana herbs are easy to get, it's just not worth it to some.
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radionoise wrote on 2011-01-03 21:48
Quote from Ailyene;274739:
Flame burst is certainly not comparable to the splash of magnum in any way because flame burst does a heck load more damage. Despite having a tiny area, it's still usually very good for killing at least 3/5 of a mob very fast in SCC. I've heard that crash shot is really good, but with 251 base dex as a human, a crapload of +damage and dex enchants, and using a pretty nice bow with rank 1 AR, magnum, range, and rank 5 CS, I really don't see CS doing great damage at all. The load time is very slow, the aiming time just takes up more time, and I sure seem to miss a lot at 80%+. Maybe it sucks at rank 5, but even when I have 615 dex in TF, it just isn't performing as well. I'm not sure if rank 1 really makes that big of a difference. I'd love to see a video of human archer who doesn't have crazy base dex with rank 1 crash shot fighting in a hard sm to see how good it actually is.
Also, a lot of people don't want to go magic because of the MP cost. Using any adv magic as your main attack drains MP like crazy and even though mana herbs are easy to get, it's just not worth it to some.
At r1, with 350+ max ranged damage, Crash Shot takes roughly 3~4 seconds at close range to OHKO any cluster of 7 or less hardmode enemies if it crits. If it doesn't crit, you can always load it consecutively as long as you can control aggro. Since it doesn't push back enemies, if you can use it correctly it can have the highest AoE DPS in the game. R1 does make a gigantic difference... both in target count, splash range and damage.
Flameburst is still a very good AoE skill and perhaps my favorite from the basic alchemical attacks, though, and there's no reason to choose either over the other since you can always rank them both. Having Flame Burst is a lot more convenient for an archer/alchemist hybrid than magic would be, because bolts aren't really needed if you have r1 range and Thunder, while a great skill, will deplete your MP when switching from bow to wand.
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Meikeru wrote on 2011-01-03 22:03
Quote from Cryosite;274513:
I still don't get why people have so much love for water cannon, flame burst, and heat buster.
It's looks like a fun attack. Would you rather stab, pierce, ice, or blow it up to oblivion? I would go with the blowing up to oblivion. Over-kill? Yes. Really Needed? No. Fun? Yes.
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Tally wrote on 2011-01-03 23:42
Sure, crash shot is great. I love it. But it loads slow and aims slow, and archery as a rule is pretty low damage without its crits, which caps out at 30% regardless of protection (not that crash shot follows protection rules for crits).
I would love to rank it to r1.
IF IT DIDN'T COST 260 AP JUST FOR r5 TO r1
With the 260 AP it would take for me to get 50% more damage and a little more range, I could max two damage skills, or max one and r5 the other. A far more cost-efficient way to spend my AP.
Bolts I would consider, but I would have to nix Lightning bolt, as it makes stiff enchants counterproductive. Firebolt can be useful to reposition enemies to give me breathing room, or perhaps to get another crash shot ready. Its damage is on par with water cannon, however, and I am not particularly interested in investing so much AP to get to 300 int to make magic worthwhile.
Alchemy is sounding a little better to me, honestly.
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Ailyene wrote on 2011-01-04 04:12
Quote from radionoise;274771:
At r1, with 350+ max ranged damage, Crash Shot takes roughly 3~4 seconds at close range to OHKO any cluster of 7 or less hardmode enemies if it crits. If it doesn't crit, you can always load it consecutively as long as you can control aggro. Since it doesn't push back enemies, if you can use it correctly it can have the highest AoE DPS in the game. R1 does make a gigantic difference... both in target count, splash range and damage.
Yeah, but unfortunately it is very tough for me to get enough dex to actually have that much damage because I get 0 dex from level ups at my age, so it all depends on skill dexterity and max damage enchants. Even after ranking all dex skills possible, without any from level ups or age-ups, I'd probably only have 4xx dex. Right now, for crash shot, I'm more concerned about the loading time and aiming time. I often find myself unable to pull off another aim for 50%+ after the first shot simply because the monster charges at me and my load time is still slow at rank 5. Maybe rank 1's decrease in load time makes it a ton better...but I don't want to spend another 250-300 AP to check. x_X
Anyways, alchemy is great if you have master of chain cylinder because 40% CC would mean you'd be able to charge 5 charges quite quickly, and the cost of alchemy crystals is quite low.
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radionoise wrote on 2011-01-04 04:35
Quote from Ailyene;275272:
I often find myself unable to pull off another aim for 50%+ after the first shot simply because the monster charges at me and my load time is still slow at rank 5. Maybe rank 1's decrease in load time makes it a ton better...but I don't want to spend another 250-300 AP to check. x_X
4xx base dex (or around the 38x range)should be enough for decent r1 CS damage in hardmode shadow missions with good crit/damage enchants and a fully upgraded Glorious Caliburn/Fancy Long Bow... you'll end up with ~300 max more or less.
As for the load time... sadly, it really doesn't get any better after r5, using CS at medium-long range will take quite a few seconds to execute and leave you very little time to aim the second shot (you can always counter and load CS during counter animation, though... you'll get at least 80% for sure). What most people do is use it at point blank, the aiming is nearly instantaneous and if you load a second crash shot during the animation, you will have time to walk to another enemy and shoot another point blank CS to stunlock the entire mob.
Like most ranged skills, its true damage potential lies in zero distance shooting... but at the same time, many humans archers don't feel comfortable being so close to enemies, and lag or monster speed can also deter you from pulling off such skill chaining.
Flame Burst is a far more reliable AoE, and with r1 Crit + CC Master title it can deal much better damage than Water Cannon... specially in hardmode where criticals are essential. I would just get both to r1 at one point or another, and depending on the situation use whichever will fit best :D
There's some youtube videos from an elf player in TW server who combines range/magnum, CS, Shock and Flame Burst + pet usage rather skillfully and shows how alchemy + range can be a very versatile and powerful character build.
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Tally wrote on 2011-01-04 22:12
Quote from radionoise;275303:
There's some youtube videos from an elf player in TW server who combines range/magnum, CS, Shock and Flame Burst + pet usage rather skillfully and shows how alchemy + range can be a very versatile and powerful character build.
If you could find that video, that would be quite helpful.