High Level Spells - Page 2

**Yosei** · 02-28-2008, 06:08 PM

I was bored and soloing stonies while we were replying in here, so I videotaped myself soloing a stonie.

yosei

holyfridge · 02-28-2008, 08:50 PM

Ice blast at level 1 seems to be about the same as maxed ice bolt, but in my opinion you can see a notable difference once you hit level 59 to get ice blast level 2 (both in damage and the slow). Plus it looks cooler =P

Anyway, everyone's entitled to their own spell sequence. My 'golden rule' for spell sequence is to start out with ice blast level 2, then cast MM1 every other spell and FB1 every 3 spells making it look something like:

ice blast (2) => MM1 => FB1 => MM1 => ___ => MM1 => FB1 => MM1 => ____ => etc

where "____" can be lightning bolt (max), magic burst, or magic blast (immediate casts). This way you are doing the most damage possible w/o any lag time/wait time for spells to cd. plz note that i am only level 59 at the moment (or back to 58 after BR quest removal) so i have no experience with fear/nova/inferno yet and are thus not included.

So basically I'm doing the same sequence that Patch does, however I find magic blast to be more of an "immediate cast" spell rather than a spell that has cast time, thus is included as one of the "___" spells. The reason for this is because unlike fire/ice/lightning blast (i'll explain more below), you can "animation cancel" magic blast and treat it like you would casting magic missile/fire/ice/lightning bolts. By "animation cancel" I mean you could take out the lag time it takes to cast by simply telling your character to do something else (like take a step away from the mob) in the time you are casting. By telling your character to process another action that's not another spell (like walk), you can ignore the "second half" of the spell animation (where the mage jumps in the air shooting that blinding blast) and cast another spell immediately. Please note you can't just tell the mage to cast another spell after magic blast to "animation cancel" because the spell you are casting after magic blast won't trigger until after the entire animation of magic blast is done (you are not cancelling anything).

Another example of "animation cancel" is using lifetap. Lifetap is also considered a spell that has cast time. But like magic blast, you can tell your mage to do something else almost-immediately after you cast lifetap. Most noticeable way to see this in my opinion is going into your mushroom house to rest the moment you cast it. You'll see that the animation is still finishing up but you're already in the house.

Ice/fire/lightning blast is something I haven't been able to "animation cancel" with (and thus are not used in my 'golden rule sequence'), but I believe the reason for that is because all the animation happens in the beginning, and by the time you want to "animation cancel" you have already gone through the entire cast time and there's "nothing left to cancel." For magic blast, there is no animation in the beginning, so you could abuse that and tell your mage to do something else to "animation cancel" and allow you to use up that time to cast another spell.

I know this is hard to explain in words, especially cause of my bad English, but this is how I see things. Of course, I am not saying this is how the game works and could just be me since I have bad graphics card on computer. Mix my ghetto computer with lag on server and I could easily be mistaken that the 0.7 cast time for magic blast looks like immediate cast. If someone could try this out and confirm with me that would be great ^^

In terms of HP/SP cost, I agree with Patch in that SP consumption is not a problem while soloing because you will be using up a lot, if not all, or your HP stones before you even get close to running low on SP stones (of course this is as a lvl 59 mage w/o fear). The only time I watch my SP consumption is if I am duoing with a cleric in which case I do not waste SP casting ice blast and just stand still spamming immediate-cast spells (and lifetap if the cleric doesn't mind).

Hope this helped more than it did causing chaos and confusion >.<

Patchouli · 02-29-2008, 02:41 AM

Interesting, I could not get magic blast to animation cancel, but I could get lifetap, fireball, ice nova and inferno to, I would usually do it by tapping "W" and it's quite noticable to me how jittery I look in some of Falcomists videos.

I also noticed whenever I tried to cast magic burst during the "ignored" cooldowns it would play the animation for me and everyone around me but the skill wouldn't go into cooldown and it would actually do no damage (and I could cast it again straight after)

**Triumph** · 03-01-2008, 12:27 PM

Interesting discussion.

I personally favor Fire Ball over any other spell. With a successful critical, I did approximately 1600 damage on orcs at level 60. I haven't killed orcs since, so I'm not sure what I do now at 66.

My personal chain is as follows:

Iblast -> MM -> Fball -> MM -> MB -> MM -> Fbolt -> MM -> Lbolt/Mblast/Fear, dependent on remaining health of the mob, and repeated.

I have never personally found preference for Lighting Blast, seeing as I do roughly 20 more damage at 200 extra SP over Lightning Bolt. Magic Blast is relatively decent, usually dealing ~200 more damage than a normal level 1 spell. Using this chain, I usually only sustain ~800 damage from Blue Clover Trumpies and Red Stonies.

**Spirit** · 03-03-2008, 02:22 PM

I'm not gonna post my skill usage here, because I know that tool is looking for SP savings, and I personally do not go for SP savings, I go for damage. I am all about increasing my damage per skill than SP consumption. I guess it really depends on your playing style. However, I also have free reign of the cash shop and the SP extenders, extra stones, and the SP bottles, take care of that for me. I actually use more HP stones, pots, and extra bottles from the cash shop than I do SP, so I am never worried with my SP comsumption. With all that said though, I would liek to add that I really love Fire Ball. It seems to crit more for me than any of my other skills, so I get a lot of bang for my buck in a way. I wonder if it is random for each person with what skills get more crit rates and all. Kinda like (Just An Example)

My mage crits more with Fireball.
Yos' mage crtis more with Magic Burst
tool's mage crits more with Ice.

Hmmmm......

**Yosei** · 03-03-2008, 03:05 PM

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 · 03-03-2008, 07:23 PM

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** · 03-03-2008, 07:49 PM

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** · 03-03-2008, 09:06 PM

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** · 03-03-2008, 11:45 PM

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.