High Level Spells

[toolrocket]

Here's what i do...

Party: Lvl 1 MM (dmg +5), Lvl 1 FireBolt (dmg +5), Lvl 1 or 2 Magic Blast (dmg +5, SP decrease +5), and if aoeing Magic Burst (dmg +5)
In this way, you can pass out plenty of dmg damage killing aoe or one by one.

Solo: My technique is to cast all my Max Level spells in sequence, while mixing in the max Magic Missile every 4 seconds.

My question is: Why bother with the level 50+ ice and fire spells? The casting time is laggy, plus the extra casting time allows the mob i'm trying to solo to get closer and inflict more damage.

The fireball spell is ok, because it has it's own cooldown and it amounts to an extra spell to cast while soloing, but ice is worthless - it's weak on damage and the decreased movment speed effect doesn't really help all that much.

I'm dying for a way to efficiently mix in the l50 fire and ice, but the SP cost is so high it's not worth the damage. My fireBOLT +5 hits harder than the fireball and it's so much faster.

Has anybody come up with an economic and efficient way to work these spells into your routine? I can't figure out what their intended use is. Also what good is fear (non pvp)?

[Yosei]

Your choice in skills is fine. But for soloing, I use ice first(slows down the mob) then I just stick with my same skills, except doing magic burst, fire bolt, and MM1. The fire one I kind of find useless D: I also find the lightning one useless, until they add its true feature <.<

Since Patch went into detail I guess I will too ;p

First I cast ice, then I cast magic blast, FB1, MM1, usually by then the mob is to me, then I cast fear and continue the sequence of magic blast, FB1, and MM1.

[Patchouli]

Hmm, for me nothing hit harder than the fireball, so I'm going to carry on here with that assumption, although I had it empowered in damage, and at a higher level.

The Fire and Ice are both good for lead spells when soloing, the Ice more so, the Fireball being there for the second choice option while the iceblast cools down. The ice makes them way slower than the low level ice, so succeeding it usually means that you can go into a chain of all the low level spells:

(assuming you don't want to cast inferno or nova in the path they are going to walk to you)

Iceblast -> (mm fb1 mm lb8 mm) magicblast(for me I find this sucks for damage/time, and I use it here only so that the second round does not have a casting gap) and if the monster wasn't very deep into red, it should probably die without you taking any damage, then if you don't want to wait, the second one can go Fireball -> (mm fb1 mm) magicblast (mm, fb1, mm) although you'll usually take damage from this one without some things landing critical.

You can also back up enough from an Iceblasted monster if it didn't die and you don't want to stand and take damage. Additionally an iceblasted monster will take more hits walking through a precasted nova/inferno than a non iceblasted monster too.

Fear is also good for not taking a hit to kill a monster, which improves your soloing longevity without needing to restock. (you can use all cheap spells after the fear so you "save" the mana cost back)

[Yosei]

I guess it varies per mage, Patch's does more damage per hit, mine saves SP, but they both probably kill in the same amount of time.

[Patchouli]

That can't be right

If I do more damage a hit I have to cast less things and so it should die faster

(Edit: This is not intended to be rude or flame-y or anything)

(Edit2: Out of curiousity, after the magic blast, with the intent of saving sp, why do you go to fb1 first instead of mm1 first instead of the other way around since they do very similar damage, and you'd be able to throw a second mm immediately after the fb if you wanted another inexpensive shot?)

(Edit 3: Edit 2 meant to: Yosei)

[Yosei]

Those skills also take longer to cool, while I'm using all skills that cast in 4- seconds. I've tried using both your method before, and I prefer the one I use.

I do magic blast, FB1, then MM1, because magic blast and FB1 take longer to cool than MM1, so by time I'm at MM1, magic blast has cooled, and by time I use magic blast, fb1 has cooled.
I like to be able to constantly cast skills. I don't care if they're doing less damage.

[Patchouli]

But after mb ->mm(1.3s) -> fb1(1.3s) -> mm(1.3s) magic blast has cooled, and fb1 -> mm(1.3s) -> mb(2.3s) -> mm(1.3s), firebolt has also cooled, so it's still continuous that way without cooldown empowerments. (I think) (The time listed is how long each spell took to discharge when I timed it previously)

Granted I have a very low opinion of magic blast so that might just be it, I try and avoid using the thing like the plague due to that discharge time which never did significant damage for me even with a 5 damage empowerment to be worth the 2.3 seconds compared to magic missile 1's damage / 1.3 seconds

And yeah, I have 15 second cooldown spells in use, but I have other things that I'm throwing during that so it's still constant fire over the 15 seconds, although the second half of it is slightly clumsier than the first half

(But I do like mage discussion!)

[toolrocket]

Patch- your way works fine and probably does more dmg. But you're spending a helluva lot more SP doing it.

[Patchouli]

Agreed about SP usage, but I always ran out of hp stones rather than mana stones so I didn't really consider it a problem, also I'm not trying to say anyone's way is bad or anything like that, I'm just interested in the (friendly?) discussion about it all, because I find it interesting (I'm aware of the irony of me not playing fiesta and finding fiesta mage discussion interesting )

I need to go to sleep now though, so I'll check in on it in the morning if it's still going?

And uhh... sorry for derailing your thread... somewhat.

[toolrocket]

Yeah yeah, i didn't mean to sound unfriendly. I'm just trying to figure out how to best use fire and ice.