High Level Spells

[Yosei]

Like I said, each mage is different. Some other mage told me it was stupid that I don't use Nova on one mob. I personally don't think its stupid, but again, we all have different views.

[holyfridge]

I took the time this weekend to head over to an Internet cafe to rule out the possibility that what I talked about earlier was only for what I saw on my laggy computer. I found out that even on a lag free computer, I could still perform 'animation cancelling' on magic blast. I believe it is also true for fireball, ice blast, and lightning blast, but it is a lot more noticeable for magic blast.

I reread what I posted earlier, and found out that I am wrong in that the 'animation cancel' technique will allow you to 'ignore' the cast times needed for magic blast. Instead, you still need to wait for the cast time to complete, but you can command your mage to walk (in any direction) the moment the cast time is complete. The timing required for this is similar to the farming/gathering technique where you have to click with precise timing on the yellow line to finish the gathering faster, but in this case you execute the 'walk' command the moment the cast time is finished. By using this method, you can still allow yourself to maintain a distance from the mob if you command yourself to walk away and it'll look like the magic blast (which is actually just a small projectile) is coming out of your @$$ as you're walking back and getting ready to cast your next spell. As Patch described it, this makes your mage look very "jittery" (perfect word! XD).

Note that this isn't allowing you to spam spells any faster than you already can, but is more to keep a maximum distance away from the mob that you're kiting. As you all notice, if you sit back and have your mage do a full animation of magic blast, the mage takes its sweetass time after the cast time is complete to "jump in the air and shoot a blinding shot" and you're sort of "stuck" there until the animation is done and by then the mob is that much closer to you. With this animation cancel technique, you can save the mob from hitting you 1-2 extra times.

After hearing from Patch, Triumph, and Spirit how much potential damage fireball can do, I will try to include that in my chain of spells and play around more with animation cancelling, as well as all the 3rd job skills once I get higher level. Anyway, I'm sorry I'm kind of digressing from the original topic (though this will save you hp stones in the long run?) and if any mods feel like this should be its own thread, feel free to move it @0@

Yosei - I don't think it's dumb to cast frost nova while soloing since it still does a lot of damage and slows(?) too, maybe cast that first instead of ice blast? I have very little experience with enchanter spells so everything I say is in theory >.<

and since I'm already off topic and we're talking mages anyway, what spells does everyone have empowered (without any cash shop reset items if possible)? I only have around 5 left and want some feedback before I use them.

[Spirit]

Fridge, it really depends on how you have your mage set up and what you are looking for. As you can tell so far in this thread, we each have mages and yet we all play them different ways and are quit happy with the way we play them.
I go for damage. So, I increased the damage on my MM, Firebolt, and Magic Burst, all have 5 points allotted to them in that area, except MM, that one only has 3. Then I also have 5 points in cooldown for Firebolt, Magic Burst, and MM. The rest I leave alone and just let them do their own thing.

Keep in mind, I am only a level 54. Once I get other skills, I may and probably will reallocate some of those stats, but they seem to be the most useful to me right now.

[Yosei]

My build is all about saving sp and cooltime so I can cast more and ultimately at the end, hopefully do just as much or more damage while saving more sp.
I've never been criticized by anyone in my party, and I'm a popular mage around Teva, so I must be doing something right.

[Triumph]

Hmm.

My point spread is such:

5 points in damage for Magic Blast.
5 points in damage for Fire Ball.
5 points in cooldown for Chain Cast.
5 points in cooldown for Inferno.

13 points unused. After listening to a certain individual concerning spells, I didn't empower anything until level 49. My point spread emphasizes massive damage over a small period of time, SP consumption disregarded. SP stones are cheap and replaceable, your time is not.

[toolrocket]

I've decided to spend all my points on all my spells while i have them, and then buy the reset scroll when i reach level 60. By "saving" your points I believe you are only failing to enjoy the benefits of spending those points RIGHT NOW (but i'm a CS user). I also dont believe in saving quests for later. Sort of like the time value of money, you get a bigger bonus from investing your cash (or points) NOW rather than trying to save them. Note, start your Roth if you haven't yet.

That being said, i just bought the 15% crit suit and it's pretty clear that the more spells you cast, the more opportunity you have to achieve a crit. This suggests that you need to be constantly spamming low-cooldown spells to take full advantage of your crit. More spells, more crits, more damage. Even though the spells are weaker, you'll crit more and ultimately take down mosters quicker while enjoying the SP savings of the level 1 spells. Later today i might try to dig the number out of the wiki and verify this mathematically.

[Patchouli]

On SP:
My regular party actually pretty much never used any SP stones, we'd just mushroom while the fighter was gathering and the fighter would just mushroom after doing mock/devastate and everyone would be full again for each group of stuff. (If I was gathering and tanking without a fighter, I'd just lifetap after every group)

On Nova:
I feel it is only good to Nova one mob if you feel you will get 3 hits out of it, otherwise the SP cost and the time taken to resolve the Nova is inefficient.

On Saving quests:
We did this primarily to avoid "yellow wastage", due to exp penalty. When you are -4 levels from the mob, you start getting decreased experience; -4%, at -3 levels -8%, at -2 levels -20%. Since the exp from the quests doesn't change, it becomes "worth more" to turn in the quest when you are forced to kill things while taking the -20%, while if you did the things in the opposite order you'd end up with less exp. (I can give a more detailed explanation with an example if this is hard to follow, it doesn't read quite right to me either :/)

On Empowerments...
From what I can remember (sorry if this is inaccurate, I don't even have the client installed), on the main mage I had...
Firebolt Damage 5 (I did this very early on, in retrospect I feel it was a waste of points.)
Magic Burst Damage 5 (Borderline, I never felt really happy about this in my later levels)
Fireball Damage 5
Chain Cast Cooldown 5
Drain Mind Duration 5
Inferno Cooldown 5

Second mage (60s) had:
Lightning Bolt Cooldown 5
Fireball Damage 5
Chain Cast Cooldown 5
Drain Mind Cooldown and Duration 5