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Slightly Inexpensive PVE Survivabilty Build for Mages: No Pally Needed!
LONG READ:
The question of Pally builds usefulness has risen many a time. To be Pure, Dex Hybrid, or Str Hybrid? IMO, a main factor of choosing pally is for survivability. Well let me tell ya, I've been through the pally phase myself. While it may provide more armor, the truth is, your attacks won't be hitting very often. During the Ao3 days
(my last trial as a pally,) I was pretty much just straight up support . My attacks barely hit, so the only thing I was left doing was healing and buffing. While it's the Mai purpose of a Mage, it was pretty boring. I felt like there was so much more I could do for the group.
Initially as mages, we've all (for the most part) done the full int. Your skills will do massive damage, but you're pretty much a glass cannon, and in maps such as sewers, nuri's, and fang, you WILL be dying.. A lot.
Now on to the dex/int builds. I've really seen no flaw in them. You get the dodge, crit, damage, and all that good stuff, along with the essentials of a support class. Now the main concern would be your survivability once you do receive damage. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's no longer an issue! The below pictures will show you how my stats are allocated on level 65. My int and dex are split evenly, save for the 5 point difference. The 15 str was just for the extra point in armor from when I had a full level 58 charmin wand set that granted me the even 170 armor.
Now on to mt fang. I'm always on a quest to gain the most amount of armor WITHOUT going pally and without using buffs. MF items make that really easy! Obviously, the set items are more expensive than the other pinks. Something I noticed between Lilith and chiroptera is the armor difference. Chi. grants more armor from what I've noticed, and is generally cheaper as well, whereas Lilith could be in the millions and Chiroptera a few hundred thousand to the ten thousands. Really, the only expensive piece would be the bracer.
In the below pictures are the items I use. The Chiroptera wand set at level 61. Besides the chi. items, I use the 9armor dex ring and the founders helmet (helmet). If you don't have the helmet that's fine, the elite cap vanity bonus more than suffices (along with an extra 5 dmg/armor). If you don't have those either (I lack them all lol) you can go for the vanity armor now and go with the next caps vanity weapon. If you don't wanna do that either, it's just a 5 armor/DMG difference.
With the said equipment, I total a whopping 202 armor! With no buffs!
During the nuri phase, I had more armor than those with demonic int sets, only with an uncrafted level 58 set.
So as you can see, you dont need to be pally for survivability! Hope I helped :)
