Hailstorm or Bolt Composer+Bolt Mastery?

This is an archive of the mabination.com forums which were active from 2010 to 2018. You can not register, post or otherwise interact with the site other than browsing the content for historical purposes. The content is provided as-is, from the moment of the last backup taken of the database in 2019. Image and video embeds are disabled on purpose and represented textually since most of those links are dead.

To view other archive projects go to https://archives.mabination.com

gentrone wrote on 2011-02-02 00:05

I'm almost done with Elemental Masteries... so there's nothing else to rank aside Magic Shields and Party Healing.

I was wondering which option would represent the lowest opportunity cost in terms of AP and overall efficiency. I know HS is good but very situational; Bolt Composer, on the other hand, can be very versatile and goes well with Inter Magic and wands (more uses).
Claudia wrote on 2011-02-02 00:09

I would say Bolt Mastery for sure, but i'm on the fence about Bolt Composer. I'm personally not a fan of it.

As for Hailstorm, if you're willing to invest that AP, it seems like a solid choice, but costly AP-wise. [But as a magician, you're used to it, right? ;D]
Joker wrote on 2011-02-02 00:12

Quote from gentrone;315224:
I'm almost done with Elemental Masteries... so there's nothing else to rank aside Magic Shields and Party Healing.

I was wondering which option would represent the lowest opportunity cost in terms of AP and overall efficiency. I know HS is good but very situational; Bolt Composer, on the other hand, can be very versatile and goes well with Inter Magic and wands (more uses).

It works like this.. For Hailstorm you need 3 things... Ice Mastery, Rank F icespear and hailstorm itself.. going on that its about 590-600 ap..

For Bolt composer its about 900-1100 for everything i think..
But well worth it as bolt composer will do better MP Dmg Effeciency and will be useful in many more places...

Not only that but Bolt composer outdoes the Dmg/Mana by ALLOT i mean allot... allot..
it can hit multiples it can knockback/down it can stun multiples... it does high dmg...
and becomes the bread and butter of a mage... REALLY as much as wm becomes spammable for melee this is your wm... except instead of 10% hp ... its like 4-8 mp add a mana reduc or hebona and it becomes even better... upgrade a ice crown wand for ice fire combo, upgrade lightning prob for lightning fire and such..

its very nice

PS: ap numbers arnt fully accurate but off the top of my head they seem about correct
gentrone wrote on 2011-02-02 00:17

Quote from Joker;315243:
It works like this.. For Hailstorm you need 3 things... Ice Mastery, Rank F icespear and hailstorm itself.. going on that its about 590-600 ap..

For Bolt composer its about 900-1100 for everything i think..
But well worth it as bolt composer will do better MP Dmg Effeciency and will be useful in many more places...

Not only that but Bolt composer outdoes the Dmg/Mana by ALLOT i mean allot... allot..
it can hit multiples it can knockback/down it can stun multiples... it does high dmg...
and becomes the bread and butter of a mage... REALLY as much as wm becomes spammable for melee this is your wm... except instead of 10% hp ... its like 4-8 mp add a mana reduc or hebona and it becomes even better... upgrade a ice crown wand for ice fire combo, upgrade lightning prob for lightning fire and such..

its very nice

PS: ap numbers arnt fully accurate but off the top of my head they seem about correct

Yeah I have rank 1 Inter Magic and Elemental Masteries, except Ice Mastery, which is rank 3 atm. I was wondering what to rank after that. I use bolt composer here and there but it doesn't seem that useful in Hard Missions, maybe because it's rank F.

Well I'm a seasoned mage... I have pretty much every type of wand and upgrade path.

You say fire+ice outdoes HS in terms of Damage/MP? How's that?

Quote from Claudia;315228:
I would say Bolt Mastery for sure, but i'm on the fence about Bolt Composer. I'm personally not a fan of it.

As for Hailstorm, if you're willing to invest that AP, it seems like a solid choice, but costly AP-wise. [But as a magician, you're used to it, right? ;D]

Yeah, BC + BM take almost the same AP as HS... yeah pretty willing to spend 400 AP.
abc33kr wrote on 2011-02-02 00:33

go for bolt composer.

It can easily do as much/outdo hailstorm and it doesn't take that much mp

[video=youtube;86YZBmHWXn8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86YZBmHWXn8[/video]
Justified wrote on 2011-02-02 00:40

Hailstorm deals 6 full charge shots per ~37 seconds.
6 * 5 * 300 = 9000 damage / 170 MP / 37 seconds

Fire-Ice deals 650% + 480% + 330% + 210% + 100% times base damage per ~7.5 seconds.
1770% (120 + 80) = 3,540 damage / ~50+ MP / 7.5 seconds

Fusion also has more multipliers (Fire Mastery, Ice Mastery, Bolt Mastery, Fusion Bolt) to increase damage.
The problem is that you spend much more time charging your bolts than firing (unlike Hailstorm which has one longer charge time), so you'll need more covering fire to activate it.

Other key differences is that Fusion Bolt completely rapes your wand durability. A Stiff Deadly Trinity Staff is much easier critical than a Stiff Counter wand with a Stiff Marshal shield. Trinity Staff has 10% damage upgrades plus Gem upgrade, while an Ice Wand will boost +28% damage at the cost of 2.5 more seconds charging (or you could opt for MP Reduction).
Cryosite wrote on 2011-02-02 09:32

People are throwing around all these numbers for bolt composer.

650% equalls firebolts 6.5 stack multiplier. check.
480% is what?
330% is what?
210% is what?
100% is base damage... which was already included in 6.5 multiplier. why is this being added again?

All these multipliers are being added together. Why are they not being multiplied together?

Fusion bolts have no elements. why are element masteries being applied? Has it been proven that these even apply at all?

Ice+fire should be 120*6.5*1.15*1.15*1.15+80*1.15*1.15*1.15 (assuming bolt mastery and elemental masteries even apply)=1186.3+121.7=1308, multiply that by wand/int/whatever. You'd need 270% multipler from wand+int+enchants to achieve the damage you're posting (capped INT gives almost 50%). That is only for the first shot; the 6.5 multiplier from firebolt decreases for each shot as your number of bolts stacked decreases.
Justified wrote on 2011-02-02 11:45

Quote from Cryosite;316333:
Fusion bolts have no elements. why are element masteries being applied? Has it been proven that these even apply at all?

That is only for the first shot; the 6.5 multiplier from firebolt decreases for each shot as your number of bolts stacked decreases.

6.5 multiplier, or 650% you figured out.
As you said, the multiplier from Firebolt decreases on each shot, which is the resulting 480, 330, 210, and 100 that I said.

[s]As far as I can tell, the Firebolt multiplier applies to Icebolt as well. I could be[/s] wrong on that [s]though, but it never crossed my mind that it wouldn't.[/s]

For Elemental Masteries, the mana reduction still applies, so I'd assume the damage bonus applies too. I'm not sure how "correct" it is to say that Fusion Bolts have no element, as I see a very significant boost of damage on Ice mobs for my attacks. Exactly how the elementals effect a fused bolt, I'm not quite sure, but that also leads to my guess that elemental boosts apply.

Somebody else said that Bolt Mastery does apply to Fusion, and that only the title doesn't. How this makes sense, I don't know, but it'd make even less sense to claim that the skill does and the title doesn't without some kind of source/experience with it.

Edit : Because talk is cheap.

[Image: http://i54.tinypic.com/fd7cq8.jpg]

6282 White Spider, 5286 Town Rat

^ Should be sufficient proof that elements do make a difference.
Spiders are Ice-type and take ~20% more damage.

R1 FB = 120max / R1 IB = 80max / R9 BF = +7% / R4 BM = +12% / R1 FM = +15% / RF IM = +1% / 789 Int = +39% / Wand = +28% / Hebona = +15%

Firebolt = 120 * 1.15 (Fire Mastery) * 6.5 (Charge bonus) = 897
Icebolt = 80 * 1.01 (Ice Mastery) = 81
977.8 * 1.39 (Int/MATK) = 1359
1359 * (1+ 0.07 [Fusion Bolt] + 0.12 [Bolt Mastery] = 0.28 [Ice Wand] + 0.15 [Hebona]) = 2202
2202 * 2.5 (Critical Hit) = 5505 Final Damage

^ Sufficient proof that Elemental Masteries and Bolt Mastery (along with Hebona) contributes to Fusion Bolt. The calculated damage is only 4% off of my screenshotted damage.

It's possible that the elemental bonus/reduction is calculated separately. By distributive property, it could be that both basic bolt damages are independent, then just added together at the end.

Though this begs the question, is Fusion Bolt really worth ranking for the +15% damage and some MP save (irrelevant if MP10s)? CC+4 Fire is likely to outdamage both Fire-Ice and Fire-Lightning, as the damage from fusion bolt is almost entirely dependent on Fire. Fusing with Lightning gets a bit more damage, but at the cost of focused damage and the necessity for grouped mobs.

Also, discharging Fusion Bolt uses durability for each actual bolt fired. Fire-Ice uses 6 hits on it's 5th charge, though I'm not sure whether Fire-Lightning uses 10 or 30 hits.