A Guide to Mages comment thread

[Ruvanal]

It looks like my server has come back online, so I'm going to stop here for now.  I would like to know what your testing methodology was for gathering your data, as mages are not capable of standing toe to toe with similar level mobs for the extended periods of time required to fire 30 or more wand shots.  What are the stats on your wand, as well?  If you want me to be more specific, you should follow suit.
[right][snapback]66176[/snapback][/right]

Littledude is using the Gravestone Scepter which has a shadow damage of 30-57 and speed=1.5 for a DPS of 29.

I used the CombtStats from the Cosmos UImod to track the hits, misses, resits and such. It allows you to reset the data collection when you want (in between each mob in this case). Also you can look up each type of attack seperately to see what its performance has been since that last reset or start of that play session. In those tests almost all damage came from the wand as the most that came from any other source was 2 swings from his staff on one of the mobs (I did not note if they even hit or not). To stand toe-to-toe with the mobs I used Mana Shield very liberably since that was the only place I planned on expending my mana during the tests. I did drink a couple of Lesser healing potions when I got sloppy with keeping the shield up at first, but generally it was not needed. It would only take a short break inbetween each mob to eat/drink to be back up. And since it took longer for me to copy the combat stats to paper for later this was not much of problem. Most of the mobs were finished off with my having more than 80% of my life and 40% of my mana remaining, so the statement " as mages are not capable of standing toe to toe with similar level mobs for the extended periods of time required to fire 30 or more wand shots." does not seem to fit actual facts that I experienced.

I can only imagine how much more mindless wand spamming would be required to get one's wand skill as close to cap as all weapon-based classes have theirs at all times.

It does not sound like you have really played some of these other weapon-based classes that much yourself. From having played through warriors and hunters quite a bit both in the closed beta and in the current game, they do not have their weapon skills at max all the time. And it can take some time to get a lagging skill into the max-5 to max range range if it is too far behind. While it does not usually take them too long to get teh skill upto 80% of max, the rest can be a long haul depending on the weapon that they are using and its frequency of use (weapon speed very important here). For example for my main hunter, the gun skill usually does not max until about halfway through the current level and that is a lot of shooting to be going through. The hunter almost never has the melee weapon at closer than 6-8 point below the cap as it is not used often enough. For my warrior it also tends to follow the same skillup rate as the gun on the hunter. If he switches to a different weapon than what he has usually been using, it can take as much as 1.5 levels of fighting with it to get it from the 80% mark up to capped if it is one of the slower weapon speeds.

Generally you only need your weapon skill with 10 points of the mob_level*5 point for the weapon to deliver good consistent damage output. Look at my data I listed earlier to see this. It was only when my weapon skill was at more than a 10 point difference to the mob_level*5 that I started seeing any significant resists crop up. And only when the weapon skill was near the point of 20 below the mob_level*5 that the resist started becoming serious detriment to doing damage. But if you look at it that is the same as when a mage is starting to fight mobs that 4 levels higher than themselves.

As to the point of grinding on the wand skill to get it up, the only time I have felt that I was ever grinding it was on the initial 25 points at the start and when I did the data collection listed above. Doing the proceedures that I discussed in other parts of this thread have resulted in my keeping the skill at a reasonable level without going through a lot of tedium.