More testing results

[Dorkus]

For those who are interested

Some notes from my testing.

- Music and spells cut through resistances more effectively, and SIGNIFICANTLY so, as you level, ALL ELSE EQUAL. So if a 30 mage and a 20 mage both cast iceball, and they have equivalent stats in all the relevant categories, the 30 mage will still do more damage. Similarly, a bard using the freeze all instrument will freeze more enemies the higher the level. Dualing DOES affect this -- if you dual a bard to a fighter, then your music/magic will NOT improve upon each level.

- Levels also improve the castability of higher power levels. A high level caster goes 'yellow' on 7th level spells when he reaches the 23rd level (This is with maxed mastery and realm skills). Hybrids can do the same at 27. Bishops and hybrids are thus seriously crippled -- as you get to these higher levels, experience to the next level is VERY hard to get to, and pure casters have a HUGE advantage in that they can cast high level spells effectively at an earlier level (e.g., bishops reach 23 at around 20M exp -- pure casters reach 23 at 15M). This also does not take into account the fact that higher level casters can cut through resistances more effectively. The formula is probably something like 5% resistance reduction per level above the monster level.

- Power cast has an effect on resistances, but it's not very big. For example, my level 40 samurai with 0 power cast hit bucanner ghosts (85 resistance to water, IIRC) for an average of 30 damage. With 100 power cast, the average was 40 damage. Note that the level 40 samurai with 0 powercast was able to hit a monster with nearly 100 percent water resistance for around 80 percent of the expected damage of the spell! (power level 7 iceball does on average 42 damage.... ie the 40 powercaster effectively negated the monster's resistance). This effect seems even LESS pronounced in status spells (for example, freeze all with 0 powercast was nearly as effective as freeze all with 100 powercast).

- Intelligence has no direct effect on anything. Music, magic. Damage, resistance.

Nada. zilch. Nothing.

My conclusions:

1. LEVEL is the #1 determinant of casting ability.

2. Seriously rethink bishops. They have a lot of skill points, and can cast a lot of spells, but they level so much slower than pure casters that they can't CAST (high power is not yet orange or yellow) or CUT THROUGH RESISTANCES (their level relative to monster level is much closer than that of pure casters, in the mid and late game) of high level spells.

3. Seriously rethink dualing. I don't think it pays off to dual a caster or bard at 18, as has been suggested. At the very least, you want to be able to CAST high level spells at high power, so I'd say the earliest you want to go is 22. Even then, if you dual over, your level progression stops, and monsters will resist more of your spells than if you continued on the casting path.

[Kakero]

I don't like bishop because bishop got less hp eventhough they can have many spells.

[otter]

Great. There's another thread in which someone found out that Powerstrike is also relatively worthless, as well as Snakespeed.
Anybody testing out the other "Bonus" Skills?
As to the Bishop, i'd much rather run a party of 3 with a Bish and 2 hybrids anyway--the game's no harder, unless you refuse to let them learn the skills they need to survive, and they advance plenty fast as a trio. Even with 4 "seriously crippled" chars i level faster than with 6 "pure" ones.
Bard-to-Fighter at L11 is my favorite changer; she can buff up the party fine, and i leave the offensive magic to the Bishop, because by L22 (total--11 Bard, one Rogue and 10 Fighter) i do SO much more damage berzerking with X-Cal than a Bard ever dreamed of.
I'm also playing around with Gad-to-Fighter, for the 3rd member of my next start--i'll run either that or a straight fighter, just because i haven't done it yet.
And i'm starting to feel a little ripped off, that my hard-earned skill points are worth less than my level in determining my effectiveness, it seems poorly balanced; tiny little boo,hiss to Sirtech on that count.

[el_kalkylus]

Hmm, I find it strange that you got those bad results from powercast. How many times did you test it? I mean, sometimes, I can do 0 damage to a creature with 150 resistance with crush spell, then the other time I can do 80 damage. This was when I was level 20 and the monsters were around level 30, and I had about 80 powercast. I think powercast makes a big difference. I mean, even if the monster has 150 resistance to earth, then when I cast crush with 80 powercast, I will probably reduce the resistance to something like 90 (I don't know), and then the monster still has good resistance, so you have to depend on luck that your spell will do damage. Maybe more levels reduce the monsters resistance too, but that doesn't mean that powercast is completely worthless. I hope it's not worthless, because it doesn't feel worthless.

[el_kalkylus]

Btw, Otter, snakespeed and powerstrike are not always completely worthless. Check Avenstar's site for more exact info.

I also explained pretty well why you might want to get snakespeed in one of Gimli's thread, felpurr bishops.

[Gimli]

What would happen if you switched the Bishop's class late in the game, say at 20, to a pure caster? Assuming they already had that realm at 100, just switching them would bump them up to 125, which along with leveling up faster, is the other advantage the pure casters have over them. Granted this would only help one realm.

Also it depends on how you're going to use the caster when you talk about dual classing. If you take a character who you envison using only support type magic then monster resistance doesn't matter, your characters are never going to resist heal or stone skin, so if what you wanted was some support or healing magic, once you have the spells you wanted and can cast them at the level you want, why not dual class then?

[Dorkus]

Gimli: this is from the board at IGN. URL is:

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?...start=31504368

Short answer -- the bish to pure caster dual is fine. I meant dualing from spell caster to fighter. [img]smile.gif[/img]

To Charmander2:

I'm not ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, but I'm pretty sure that your ninja/ranger would have an effective spell casting level of 26. This is DEFINITELY the way 'castability' works. So, for example, if you have alchemy and earth maxed, your dual class should be JUST at the point of casting level 7 spells at high power (by 28, he should be able to cast a level 7 (power 7) spell at yellow)

For hybrid classes, 5 levels are irrelevant to casting ability.

Regarding bishops -- the big point here is that RIGHT when bishops begin to seriously lag, around level 16 or so, is when you most need them. This DOES NOT affect monster vs. character level as much as it does pure castability. THe difference between 18 and 20 in terms of casting high level spells at high power is big. An 18 bishop is better off casting fireball than nuclear blast, since he can't get the latter off (even with maxed skills) at more than 2 or 3 power w/o backfiring. The mage, on the other hand, can cast it consistently at 4 or 5 power. Furthermore, unless you're soloing or an extreme exp hound, you'll NEVER get the bishop to a level that he can consistently cast high power high level spells. Again, it takes 20M exp for a bishop to reach yellow on a level 7 casting!

To El Kal:

I was not as systematic about recording things as I was with critical hits, but I'm equally convinced of the results. My guess would be that I cast freeze all and iceball at LEAST 50 times with 3 different classes (mage, bishop, samurai). Actually, I probably cast freeze all around 150 times each, since I wasn't getting a big difference between the classes w/ and w/o powercast. (somethign like 10% difference in average number of ghosts, out of 7, frozen per casting -- 3.6 to 3.3 for a 40 samurai or a 36 mage)

I did NOT say that powercast is ineffective. It adds about 1/3 damage to spells at 100, and it's easy to train. But relative to weapon skills or realm skills, it's puny. 100 earth magic is the difference between a level 7 and level 1 earthquake -- a 7x difference. 100 powercast will increase a level 18 samurai's iceball from average 15 damage to a little over 20.

Actually, this is true of all the special skills -- they're all pretty weak relative to their base skill counterparts (stealth vs. reflection, weapon skills vs. power strike, etc.)

Oh yea -- I didn't test the bishop to mage swap, but I'm pretty sure it works this way. Your effective spell level in mage spells progresses, but it does not in other books (in terms of both castability, and effectiveness). Still, if you're pretty sure you're going to use high-level spells from a single book, it seems like a good switch -- leveling requirements become onerous at high levels for the bishop.

[Gimli]

OK - I was just thinking about you saying to rethink taking a Bishop, I love them but do think it might be good to get them to say 18th and then switch off to pure magic using class. I'm thinking of having 2 in a party who both take 2 books so now I will have to decide which to specialize them in. I'm going to have a pure priest so that won't be one I choose. Was going to go with bishop #1 as a priest/mage book guy who will now switch to mage after 18; #2 was going to be a psionic/alchemist guy who I think I'll switch over to Alchemist at 18.

My other point, take for example my Priest. He's basically going to be a "battery" for the rest of the party, so I am not that concerned about his ability to penetrate enemy spell resistance, all I want is things like being able to cast heal all at power level 7 for example. So I will not bother with Int/powercast, just Piety, and may well switch him to fighter whenever I can cast all the support spells I want from him at power level 7 in the green. At that point why not let him start getting the better HP, wear better armor and beserk attack?

[GreaterDemon]

Humm, very interesting..

I heard that level difference is also a big factor in criticals, notice how you end up criticalling alot of trash, so it only makes sense with magic..

Now you point was to rethink a bishop because of the uber high exp requirements to get higher levels necessary to cast level 7 spells at higher power levels.

Well I found that I was better not getting my level until my bishop or bishops could get theres so that I would have enough skill point usage increases.

I.E. - I find gettimg level ups as soon as you can, gets you into trouble with auto-scaling monsters.

Does this change in the late game..Furthest I have gotten is Just killing AL sedexus, then I find some dumb reason to restart....

Thoughts?

Thanks

GD

[rbeane1]

I use my Bishop mostly for defense and non-combat spells. thus
cracking resistances is not a major concern as in getting all the defensive spells.