Two attacks
Many times we will do things automatically. These are things we leaned long ago and tend to forget that others may not know the trick.
This hit me on one of the Queen quests. I had set up the Queen with Bludgeoning and Piercing Vuln. I did that so the killer could switch back and forth between spell types. As you toss a spell you it will lose effectiveness. This is shown on a bar below the spells.
As that percentage drops the power of the spells goes down. So having two attacks that you can switch between is much better than having one.
Most monsters have two weaknesses. I have discovered that many people never bother to learn the one weakness for a monster, let alone two. When the spell economy was high it did not matter too much. As more and more high levels are created the eco is dropping rapidly. This means the players must play smarter.
For boss monsters like the Queen two vulns work well. Most of the time you're working with weaker more numerous monsters. What you do is to switch attacks every other monster. If fighting stronger and weaker versions you might save the stronger attack for the stronger monster.
This morning I was fighting Olthoi swarms on the plateau with Moby Dick and Xandran. I was fighting Nobles, EVs, Soldiers and Workers. The Workers and Soldiers I would use piercing attacks. This let me hit the Nobles and EVs with Bludgeoning. When picking off one or two at a time it may not make much difference but when fighting six or seven it makes a big difference.
There are a lot of places to find the vulnerabilities monsters have. Sometimes it takes trial and error. Every so often you find a monster with only one weakness but that is good knowledge to have as well.
The two-attack technique is mage problem. Melee's just need to find the most effective attack they can do and leave it at that. Mages are always more work but that is the price you pay for power.
Never ending battle
I was doing some power leveling at the lava fields. Yes, I do that a few times a month. A good group can get three to five million an hour.
I was teamed up with Paraduck. If a mage ever needs a powerful good melee teammate Paraduck is a good choice. We had cleared a bunch of Vapors, Diamonds, Hellfires, Plasmas and assorted other monsters for a few buff cycles.
I like to fight there for two reasons. It is exciting fights with a chance of death at every turn and I'm not fighting over a handful of pathetic corals all day. I had died once when a Vapor golem got a shot at me after barely surviving a Diamond and Plasma Golem attack.
We were joined by a 60lv archer. I warned him that we might scare him a bit. He played it cool and did as much support as he could. When he could not touch what we were fighting he would provide heals.
Another mage joined us and we ended up at the edge of the crater. After buffing up we started to traverse around the lip. We had our share of Hellfires, Vapors, Diamonds along with some Virindi. I picked up a sing key after one battle.
Somewhere deep in we came to a spot that was strange indeed. I'm thinking this is a known spot as two red dots showed up while we were in battle.
It started out with a few Vapors, three or four, hard to say. As soon as we attacked three Diamond golems joined in with an unknown number of Plasma Golems. This became a nonstop battle. No sooner did we finish off one than two more took its place.
There was no time to loot or take a breather. Paraduck was everywhere. Normally I switch to him ever so often to provide heals and recover his stamina. This time he was on his own. I was burning Stillness gems to keep in the battle. Each one cleared over a page of de-buffs off me.
Finally after at least 10 minutes we got a rest. No one had died but it was close. Several times I got a heal or drain just before taking a big shot. One fizzle at a bad time would spelled the end. With level VI de-buffs to every stats and skill, fizzling was all too common.
I had burnt about all my comps and had dug into peas a few times so it was time to go. I was there around three or four hours and made about thirteen million points.
Trained vs spec'd
I was asked by someone when a non-spec'd mage was equal to a spec'd mage. In terms of pure power, defined as not being resisted with most spells, this is possible. In fact there are many old school mages out there who can stand toe to toe with any Battle Mage.
His next question was why would someone specialize if in time they were the same as a non-specialized but with far fewer skills. The answer to that is time.
To fully answer his question I got out RainPea and ran a few numbers. This has no reality to it. It is an isolative case of only the magic stats. In the case of Og it does not reflect reality at all.
First off is BM vs 4-school. I have taken a base of 250 for self and focus. At high levels this is not far from what most have. My mage has 255 and 248. I made a base of 250 for mana conversion. That is high but about what most would not raise above. Lastly I put two skills, Creature and Item, that a BM and 4-school would stop raising, at a base of 280.
Current high-level content could be safely fought with a War and Life of 300 base. An Og can get away with a lot less because he can cast yield but we are not taking that into account for this comparison.
To get a War and Life to 300 with a BM you would be spending 745 million points. A 4-school would spend 1.3 billion for the same skills. Over 500 million points difference. It gets worse.
To reduce resists we push it to 310. The BM would pay 837 million points. The 4-school would be spending a wamping 2.1 billion. Now we are talking a 1.26 billion point difference. That is a lot of killing.
Lastly the final goal of many mages is a base skill of 320. Very few things would resist such a number, even with a pile of de-buff on you. To hit that skill you need 1 billion points for a BM and 3.8 billion for a 4-school, almost 4 times the points.
Of course the 4-school would have a bunch of other skills to help them out. Nevertheless, unless the game changes a lot, a BM is far better than the 4-school.
So how does a 4-school compare to the other popular template, the Og? This is hard to be realistic with because the Og would not stop at 280 with creature. In fact he might well push his creature to 320. My Og's Creature is 309 right now. Still we can get an idea how specializing just one of the skills would effect the results.
At 300 it cost the Og 721 million. This is even lower than a BM because creature is costing so little. That changes as we go higher. At 310 base and Og spends 1.15 billion and at 320 2.1 billion. Because of the costly War an Og will spend over twice the xp of a BM at extremely high levels. Up to around the 310 mark the Og comes out a bit better. Of course in the real world this is not true as the BM is stronger starting at about 60. Realistically an Og and BM can fight about anything after 90.
To finally break it down I'll show the xp for the single skill. This is with a self and focus of 250. At 280 the cost difference is 9 million to 75 million. At 290 18 million to 160 million. At 300 38 million to 344 million. At 310 84 million to 735 million. At 320 200 million to 1.57 billion.
I strongly believe the key skill for a mage is Life. War is only slightly lower. The reason I put Life higher is several fold. A resisted War spell can get you killed but most often is not that big a deal. A resisted Life spells if a Vuln does not mean much. However an emergency "I need this drain" being resisted will almost always result in a death.
The second big reason is Life de-buffs need much greater skill to use than War. With a bunch of de-buffs my War can fall to below 330 and still not fizzle much. If my Life falls to 340 I can expect to fizzle more than succeed. To use my Life de-buffs without fear of fizzle I need it to be at 360+. Life de-buffs also are costly mana wise. This may change when I raise my mana conversion more but for now it is a problem. A few resists to Life de-buffs can drain my mana quickly.
War of course is not far behind Life. For this reason I have spent 274 million points for my non specialized War while only 60 million on my specialized Life. Of course Life is still 10 points above War because of the specializing difference.
So the bottom line is a 4-school can be as strong as any other mage given enough time. The problem is we are talking ages and ages to get there.
Think before you talk
There has been many times where I have spoken in anger. Leaches who jump my battles I have a hard time not talking to. The problem with that is the type of people would leach. They fall into two groups, those that don't know any better and those who don't care.
Yelling at a guy who does not care what you think is quite useless. In fact they might get enormous enjoyment out of your anger. The other group will not understand your anger and respond with anger of their own. Of course both cases will hurt your enjoyment of the game more than the leaching itself.
It is far better to simply request they refrain from leaching you in the future. "Please don't attack what I'm fighting." The person who does not know any better will respond. The "who cares what you think", will keep doing it but moving away from the freak will make your day more pleasant. I'm sure I would have enjoyed better play if I had done this in days past.
Then there are times where you get into a conflict from over crowding and bad timing. I was killing a pod of Virindi yesterday. There where three groups to deal with. I killed one by killing the VE and running. I de-buffed the next VE and was running from the Observers. The idea is to de-buff on the first run and kill on the second.
I had run just enough to make the Observer turn back. Before it had gone far it dropped. This meant that someone had killed the one VE had de-buffed.
I had seen a guy shortly before and figured he was jumping my fight. I quickly ran back and killed the next VE. I looted a Yellow Jewel that had dropped from my first kill. While killing the third VE I saw that there was someone on the other side of the pod.
As there was no way he could know I was fighting this pod I controlled my natural reaction. Unfortunately he did not. The bodies rotten from the last group I killed and a sing key dropped. As I looted it he said, "That is my key". I still controlled my anger and said, "Sorry, your wrong." Then he started to lie.
"I killed four of them before you jumped in." Of course he did not know I had sixth sense active and know there were only three. As I had killed two of the three and the one he killed I had de-buffed his statement was ridicules.
I tried to think he was just in error and had killed a few observers. Of course if he had killed the observers he would have looted them, not wait for them to rot. While trying to explain this a Zeffer jumped us. I was not doing well for some reason, fizzling and being resisted. The other guy just stood there not fighting, even when it turned in him.
I cannot tell if he was hoping I would die but it seemed that way. I finally killed it and realized that my buffs were gone. I had 50 hit points left and was fizzling my heals several times in a row. I can toss a VII spell with no buffs but I also had de-buffs from the Virindi.
I was still trying to be nice to the guy. I said, "Opps, buffs gone." I no sooner hit return than a Zeffer spawned right next to me. I took off running but it was one of those times when every spawn in the world appears. No matter where I ran I saw large groups of yellow dots. Finally the Zeffer put me out of my misery and sent me to the LS.
The guy still tried to make his case with tells. I'm guessing in his mind he was right. I never got angry and was always polite. While I did not change his tone I did feel better about myself.
Patch
This is one patch I'm looking forward to. With this delay I'm seeing just how important the patches are. I have done most of the quests and other stuff. This means the last few weeks were spent leveling. While leveling is needed at times you can easily get into a rut.
I'm predicting that Keys will increase in value by a large a amount. There is armor and weapons with spells that can add on top of the Item spells. People who broke down some files exposed them.
The teaser seems to hint at two things, skill sell back and a new magic skill. A costly new mage skill will be the big kibosh on BM's. If it is an eight or more point skill Og's will become strongest template. Being able to sell back Missile defense for this skill would be a dream come true.
I'm expecting this to be a high level quest if we are right. I also expect that all this will change the balance between Mages and Melee. In fact even if we are totally wrong about all of this I expect Melee's to be much stronger with this patch.
Fist just hit 104 and cannot fight near as well as Mage, 10 levels below him. So no matter what I expect to gain a lot from this patch.
If there is a skill sell back I'm not sure if I have one to sell with mage. Leadership, Lore and Lock Pick are all skills I enjoy and use daily.
Lore is expected to be a big need with this patch. Fist is buffing to 290. I expect that even that will be too low.
This is a hint and our interruption could be way off. We will see tomorrow afternoon.
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