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Kelvas wrote on 2014-09-14 19:38
[UB]Hi all,
Like what the title suggests, I'm not entirely sure what talent I should do next. I'm close to finishing magic, (Just need a few ranks for Spell walk, and Snap Cast, and to finish Meteor Strike's training requirements for the master title) and I'm currently sitting at around 1.1k INT. I'm pretty sure I'm at a good point with magic to be able to move into a different talent now, unlike my thread from 7-8 months ago (which I look back and and think of how stupid I was.)
I know I can still get at least 200 more intelligence from life skills and remaining ranks for musical knowledge and composing, but I can simply return to ranking int skills later. Plus, I never liked life skills, and I'm low on budget and time to buy books, mats or pick stuff all day. The majority of the remaining damage I can get comes from reforges, which really won't be necessary tbh. Maybe having a blaze or MATK reforge would be nice, but it's not like I can afford them at the moment.
Anyways, back to my original topic. I have the following options available:
1. Lances
This is my most likely choice. My primary single target damage skill is CC firebolt, but that eats up mana and durability like crazy. I much rather smash and not chug down pots all day. Plus, I'm not that useful in MA without a puppeteer, especially in the final round where spamming firebolt or hailstorm is pretty stupid. Unless there's someone pinning final round NPCs against a wall so I can blaze, I'm pretty much useless. There's also the case where magic isn't effective against certain mobs. Heck, I still do their method basic when it's the daily.
I'll make a Secret Penetrating Knight Lance since putting both secret and 67th floor on a lance is out of my price range.
The problem with lances is that I won't have the sufficient balance and crit rate to support it. I'll have ~60% balance and ~101% crit when the lance is fully upgraded. The crit rate isn't that bad, and can be remedied by BFO to a certain extent. (EDIT: Derp. I just realized that Blood Master + Santa Claus will give me 10% crit, so ~111% with lance)
2. Alchemy
This is my second most likely choice. I can't afford a Holy Eagle Mask, so I use a Rebis guard cylinder instead. This will allow me to use alchemy as support like rain casting. Or, I can simply use a tidal wave + rebis to spam WC and/or with hydra under a cloud since I have a decent chuck of mana from doing magic. Problem is that Alchemy eats up AP almost as bad as magic, and CC WC also eats up durability like crazy.
3. Fighter
I'm not a huge fan of fighter since the animations are too freaking long. Multiple CC Firebolt or Lance Smash will do more DPS, but I may need the will for my crit rate.
That's about all I can think of. Feel free to suggest anything, and thanks for reading.
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ironwoman wrote on 2014-09-14 20:13
I'd go with lance. Of course, you'd have to rank your other close combat skills first.
Reason? You're already a mage, you can go rank str and make use of gunner. Also, since you probably have not much dex raised, you can just run around with a thames set and it'll still be fine for maging.
As for balance, you can easily make it up by getting swarming accessories, and swarming on your gauntlets, and sight on your armor. There really aren't good armor prefixes besides sight and conceptual. Conceptual isn't even much more damage, and is roll dependent. Sight is much easier to enchant and pretty much gives you everything you need.
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Daakun wrote on 2014-09-14 20:28
Personally I did Ninja at that point; str for melee, will for crit, and you can even use smash with it.
Lances only really get good when you have enough str backing them that you smash for big numbers, it's a pretty bad str-newbie set since you're just screwing yourself over with the wonky distance mechanics if you aren't using it in situations where the piercing matters.
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Kelvas wrote on 2014-09-14 21:02
[UB]
Quote from ironwoman;1247306:
I'd go with lance. Of course, you'd have to rank your other close combat skills first.
Reason? You're already a mage, you can go rank str and make use of gunner. Also, since you probably have not much dex raised, you can just run around with a thames set and it'll still be fine for maging.
As for balance, you can easily make it up by getting swarming accessories, and swarming on your gauntlets, and sight on your armor. There really aren't good armor prefixes besides sight and conceptual. Conceptual isn't even much more damage, and is roll dependent. Sight is much easier to enchant and pretty much gives you everything you need.
Thanks for your input.
Yup, I know I have to rank my other close combat skills for lance. I probably won't use the thames set. I already had enough of enchanting set items and blowing them up back when I was using a hebona set. Whenever I enchanted something, I always had a heart attack since set pieces for a specific effect are annoying/hard to get it.
I completely forgot about the existence of the sight enchant. I had a hard looking for one in the past, but I'll try again. As for other enchants, I'll probably slap cheap max attack enchants on my current set so I can continue with mana reduction.
Quote from Daakun;1247310:
Personally I did Ninja at that point; str for melee, will for crit, and you can even use smash with it.
Lances only really get good when you have enough str backing them that you smash for big numbers, it's a pretty bad str-newbie set since you're just screwing yourself over with the wonky distance mechanics if you aren't using it in situations where the piercing matters.
Thanks for your suggestion. The thing is that I don't like ninja. Ranking it will only be stats to support gunner or lance later on. One of the other reasons I wanted to use lances was because of piercing. In the final round of MA, that 8 piercing would be extremely beneficial instead of me spamming firebolt or hail.
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ttinchung111 wrote on 2014-09-14 21:40
I'd suggest doing as ironwoman suggested and speccing into warrior for str and survivability, and obviously not going straight into lances without first ranking every other warrior skill first. Alchemy is a pretty bad option for mages because well.. there's not really much you do in alchemy that you wouldn't already do with magic, and it doesn't really give you much. Fighter is also a pretty bad idea for you because its all single target damage, and thats already provided in spades and much more reliably through the use of chaincast firebolts.
The options that aren't mentioned are possibilities that are probably worse. Gunner is a decent option, as it gives a lot of dps, but its best done after having a high str stat as well as a high int stat. Ninja is okay at best as it supports future warrior and maybe fighter and gunner through stats but the skillset itself is fairly weak without having stats already backing it up. Puppetry is a decent option, giving you more reliable aoe and crisis is pretty broken, allowing you to do the crisis-blaze combo yourself assuming you dont lag. Archery is possibly the worst option as it doesn't give any stats that combine with int in a skillset, and doesnt provide anything that magic does not, not to mention its grindy as hell to be good at.
tl;dr, warrior good, puppetry, ninja and gun ok, alchemy and archery bad
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ironwoman wrote on 2014-09-14 22:36
Quote from Kelvas;1247318:
[UB]
Thanks for your input.
Yup, I know I have to rank my other close combat skills for lance. I probably won't use the thames set. I already had enough of enchanting set items and blowing them up back when I was using a hebona set. Whenever I enchanted something, I always had a heart attack since set pieces for a specific effect are annoying/hard to get it.
I completely forgot about the existence of the sight enchant. I had a hard looking for one in the past, but I'll try again. As for other enchants, I'll probably slap cheap max attack enchants on my current set so I can continue with mana reduction.
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Reason I mentioned thames set is because having a lance isn't worth it if you can't deal damage with it.
You have few options:
1. Buy pre-enchanted thames set
2. Enchant them yourself
3. Or get a ridiculously good lance
You start to see lance damage shining around 630 max.
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Kelvas wrote on 2014-09-14 23:31
[UB]
Quote from ttinchung111;1247333:
I'd suggest doing as ironwoman suggested and speccing into warrior for str and survivability, and obviously not going straight into lances without first ranking every other warrior skill first. Alchemy is a pretty bad option for mages because well.. there's not really much you do in alchemy that you wouldn't already do with magic, and it doesn't really give you much. Fighter is also a pretty bad idea for you because its all single target damage, and thats already provided in spades and much more reliably through the use of chaincast firebolts.
The options that aren't mentioned are possibilities that are probably worse. Gunner is a decent option, as it gives a lot of dps, but its best done after having a high str stat as well as a high int stat. Ninja is okay at best as it supports future warrior and maybe fighter and gunner through stats but the skillset itself is fairly weak without having stats already backing it up. Puppetry is a decent option, giving you more reliable aoe and crisis is pretty broken, allowing you to do the crisis-blaze combo yourself assuming you dont lag. Archery is possibly the worst option as it doesn't give any stats that combine with int in a skillset, and doesnt provide anything that magic does not, not to mention its grindy as hell to be good at.
tl;dr, warrior good, puppetry, ninja and gun ok, alchemy and archery bad
Thanks for your input. I plan on doing lances. And yes, like I said before, I know I have to rank my other close combat skills first before lancing. I should have mentioned in in the OP. lol.
As for alchemy, I have to disagree. It's actually pretty useful with magic imo. Rain Casting prevents aggro, ele frozen blast gives me time to do free damage, hydra can damage times that magic can't, and shock will allow me to charge uninterrupted (sucks with blaze though). WC spam won't suck my MPs dry as well.
I do plan on doing gunslinger, but like you said, it'll be after I accumulate a decent amount of str along with my int.
Quote from ironwoman;1247345:
Reason I mentioned thames set is because having a lance isn't worth it if you can't deal damage with it.
You have few options:
1. Buy pre-enchanted thames set
2. Enchant them yourself
3. Or get a ridiculously good lance
You start to see lance damage shining around 630 max.
Ah. I see, I'll see what I can do on getting a thames set then. Good thing I still have time before I start lances seriously. [/UB]
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Oberynn wrote on 2014-09-14 23:38
If you already have decent int, just r1 shooting rush + way of the gun then stat stack STR while working on damage enchants.
Lances are great and all that, but you'll have a bigger head start on guns and WOTG is better at making up your shortcomings when it isn't efficient to just blaze or firebolt something.
You also can keep focusing on INT to make both your skillsets better and you'll never have to empty out your bank account for the elemental reforges that are pretty much a necessity with physical combat.
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Kelvas wrote on 2014-09-15 00:42
[UB]
Quote from Oberynn;1247353:
If you already have decent int, just r1 shooting rush + way of the gun then stat stack STR while working on damage enchants.
Lances are great and all that, but you'll have a bigger head start on guns and WOTG is better at making up your shortcomings when it isn't efficient to just blaze or firebolt something.
You also can keep focusing on INT to make both your skillsets better and you'll never have to empty out your bank account for the elemental reforges that are pretty much a necessity with physical combat.
Thanks for your input. I didn't consider gunner since I only have 1300 between str and int, with my str on the low side. Also didn't consider how much ele reforges are a necessity (I didn't even think of ele reforges when I was writing the OP for some reason, lol.) , and I probably won't have one for a VERY long time considering that I'm probably going to reforge a pair of gloves next, and then a wand. Without a ele reforge, perhaps doing gunner might be a better idea. I might just do as you said, and work on easy str skills since I have a ton I can collect from my combat tab and do gunner. My balance should be fine with gunner after I get a sight enchant. I won't have to get thames set either.
Edit: I've thought about it. Here's what I'm going to do:
0.5 Finish ranking spellwalk/snapcast and work on shockwave since it gives some int.
1. Finish ranking combat mastery, wm, assault slash, and smash. (I'm going to need str either way, so why not?)
2. Rank shooting rush, bfo, WotG, and dual gun mastery.
3. While I'm ranking those skills, I'll look for a sight enchant. I'll also replace my handgear whenever I start reforging a pair of gloves and will slap quartz/assault on them.
4. Find automatic and hawk ES and slap them on.
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