Need Royce to give exact figures but sound like dex-int is your go.
Need Royce to give exact figures but sound like dex-int is your go.
I realize this goes against most conventional wisdom, but I think a dex/str enchantress build has its advantages. The extra str gives you about 60 extra health points, for a total of 260 health instead of 200. That sounds really unglamorous compared to crit or dodge or damage, but that extra health will save your life many times.
For a build used mainly for rushing (as mine is), I think dex/str is absolutely the way to go. But even for regular play it can be very useful. Just today I was helping defeat gurgox in a regular game. It was a long fight since we only had four people and the other weapons in the group were not doing that much damage, and several times I was just a tiny amount of health away from dying. Now we all know how in that fight having an extra mage be alive can make all the difference, since half the mages might be dead after a scream even with an orb, and it's a loooong way to walk back from the entrance - so the extra few health points really saved the day.
Here are some screenshots with the stats. As you can see crit and dodge are quite decent especially on the dagger build, and base damage with the blaster is also not bad. What I find really neat is that with dagger my dex mage has more armor, more dodge and almost as much health as my level 48 paladin, who was also built for rush survivability and was already doing well in ao2 maps 4 and 5 and unpotted Tpaxx runs.
Without gear the build is 125 dex/123 str/7 int. This means you have to equip lower level gear first to equip higher level one. I'd be happy to walk people through the process if anyone has questions.
It would be great if someone with a pure dex void mage could post a screenshot of their stats for comparison.
As for putting points into int, as Royce says the extra boost to the spells is not that significant except perhaps for heals, and you can only cast spells every so often anyway. Lightning for instance at 7 int is 50-120 damage, at 57 int it's 55-133 and at 142 it's 64-160. Not really worth the points spent, in my opinion. Also, buff and debuff effectiveness doesn't depend on int. It's true that for mana shield more int means more mana and thus a slightly stronger shield - but what you really want do do with the shield is spam chug mana pots when it's on, and not just rely on your max mana and regen for it. Even with only 7 int I rarely die with the shield on - it's the 46 seconds when the shield is not on that are the real issue.
Kalielle - level 56 mage | Kaley - level 55 roundup bear | Clusterstorm - level 55 rush paladin
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So guys, just for some preliminary data on stat driven skills, it's not quite as bad as I thought, but still not so great. It's very difficult to quantify this because the stat driven skill effect is not simply X amount of skill damage per Int point. Also just FYI, stat driven skills do not effect buffs, debuffs, mana shield, etc. They were never supposed to but there seems to be some confusion about this, so I thought I'd mention it. The only skills affected are heal and the damage skills (frostbite, lightning, firestorm, icestorm, and drain). So as it turns out stat driven skills increase damage of higher damage skills (and heal) more than low damage skills. So for an easier way to compare to base damage, what I did was track the stat driven skill effect on drain (highest damage skill) and Icestorm (lowest damage), both at rank 5, and looked at the average damage increase of the 2 skills. I looked at min damage increase per point Int and max damage increase, and averaged them for average damage increase, then averaged the average increase between the high damage and low damage skills. So as it turns out, the average added skill damage from stat driven skills is almost identical to the base damage boost from the same amount of Dex, though with stat driven skills, higher damage skills benefit more, and with Dex, low damage skills benefit more. However, stat driven skills plus damage increase from Int outweigh Dex for average skill damage increase slightly. At the same time, Dex does boost Crit 3 times as much as Int does, and that makes a pretty big difference as well. Really, it makes the situation pretty close. I think for a character who still needs to increase hit% like a paladin, Dex is definitely better, but for a character who cares about having more powerful heals (not affected by damage so not affected by Dex afaik), Int may be better. Also for characters like a Dex mage who already have high hit%, Int may have a better payoff.
As for Str on an Enchantress, I am completely against it. The extra 60 health is decent, but that is literally all you are getting from it. Str is a wasted attribute. If you want an enchantress with higher survivability, then you may as well invest enough in Str to wear Str armor and get the much higher armor advantage that comes with it. Investing in Str for health on an Int or Dex simply doesn't make sense to me. You are sacrificing significant weapon and skill damage, healing strength, etc for the ability to maybe survive a blast every once in a while
Last edited by Royce; 10-24-2010 at 05:08 PM.
How does this equipping lower level gear work on maximizing stat points? Since I mainly switch between blaster/talon wing, do I have to go through the lower level gear before? So the point is to have enough dex to wear lower gear that will be enough to boost your Dex up to the minimum amount to wear the void gear?
Thanks, Royce, for the numbers, looking at the testing I did this week end I moved to 158 str, 11 int (for the +1 m/s) and rest in dex, difference so about 5 across the board with dex then int, I'll post the numbers later.
Cool, if you want any specific figures:
Heal and Drain are increased by an average of about 0.25 (health/damage) per point of Int (about 0.35 max and 0.14 min increase per point of Int).
Average damage of Icestorm increases by about 0.07 per point of Int (about 0.15 max damage increase and no min damage change).
So the best figure to sum up the stat driven skill effect that I have so far is 0.16, which somewhat approximates the overall average skill damage increase per point of Int (not including Int's contribution to base damage).
the reason ppl go with the second attributes as str is cause of our ridiculously low health
Yeah, but like Royce said, health is all you will get from that str.
You'd have 200+ (225 on my 39 mage, not sure if it goes higher with level) health at 50 anyway, pop an armor pot and you'd be as good as a bird. Plus you have heal, mana shield, and a quick armor buff.
ik u were just wondering
my dexmage is dex then int
Yeah, I might do this equipping lower level gear method if I figure out how to. I have a rough idea, just lack exact stats or such.ik u were just wondering
my dexmage is dex then int
Your base stats need to be enough, that with your final gear setup, the boosts will be enough for the items to stay equipped. So for a void setup, with talon, your gear would give you 44 Dex, and the highest requirement would be 158 Dex, so you need a base Dex of at least 114 (and of course it will be easier to pull off if you have more). Then you need to equip gear with low enough requirements that you can equip it (with 114 Dex), and high enough boosts that it will build your Dex high enough to eventually equip Void items (starting with the helm which will have the lowest req.). It may require intermediate steps of gear to get there. Your best options are low level pinks (Snipers, JT, Shivering, etc) which will have lower requirements but still have high Dex bonuses). Also remember for a blaster setup, your final gear setup will only have a Dex bonus of 33, so you would need a Dex base of at least 125.
Spot on, thanks Royce. So in short I need a total of 125 Dex (since I'd definitely be using blaster), then enough low level gear dex bonuses that add up to 154, then eventually 158. Sounds good!
Yeah, and the best bonus you can get that I am aware of on low level gear is 7 Dex on Sniper, JT, Shivering, Copperhead, etc. So it looks like the biggest bonus you should should be able to get at first is actually 28, so not quite enough to get to the void helm req. However, Horus items have 8 Dex, so basically, you will have to start out with some lower pinks, get enough Dex for Horus gear, switch in at least one piece of Horus gear, then move to the Void helm, etc.
True. Unless I put that extra 11 points into dex, just to be lazy :P lol
Totally true and I would do that, if current ao3 str gear wouldn't have such terrible stats - mainly lack of decent dodge, plus of course the lack of mana regen doesn't exactly help palas either.
My mage can turn into a pala wearing rift gear, as you know, and while I haven't played with that setup quite enough to be certain, it seems so far that she doesn't survive any easier with rift gear than with the void setup. Basically the void's dodge outweighs the rift's extra armor. Add to that the void's crazy high mana regen and the gear choice for mages is pretty clear.
Kalielle - level 56 mage | Kaley - level 55 roundup bear | Clusterstorm - level 55 rush paladin
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I understand what you're saying Kali, and Dex mage is certainly a good option in AO3, but I disagree with this part:
While the dodge will give you better survivability than an Int mage, the issue for mages in AO3 is mainly 1-shot crit deaths. A paladin has the armor (and bit of health) to survive shots that an Int or Dex mage would be killed by. True, with high dodge, you may avoid some of those crits, but when they get through, you will still be dead. A paladin will have to heal/be healed much more often, but as long as that is happening, should have the best survivability of the 3.
Hi all, this is not in depth, but it is a start and data is going in that is progressing me onwards towards the Character/Equipment Simulator im working on.
Anyway attached is breakdown of Paly with secondary stat as DEX v INT (note I havn't done the comparison with Skills yet, as have chewed through my re-specs and need to get some more (I seem to eat them like breakfast.
Google Docs spreadsheet.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?...en&output=html
@Royce/whoever
Follow up questions, I just got the 4 pieces to do my +28 dex requirement. So from 154-28 thats a base of 126 dex? So from 126 base dex > Put on 4 pinks > 154 dex > put on helm > 158 dex > put on the rest of gear. So between switching from talon/wing to a blaster, I don't need to go through another round of those 4 lower level pinks do I? Only if I actually remove my void set?
Changing loadout set might bork it, not sure, but as long as you didn't go under the equip min, should be fine.
Wouldn't I have enough req. dex to equip a blaster from talon/wing, then enough dex to equip a talon/wing from a blaster anyway? Gonna test it soon but just would be nice to be able to get a confirmation
Awesome work on spreadsheet btw.
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