Lower level help

[Shaylyanarie]

I have noticed a lot of guides for higher levels, but could any of you offer some suggestions for us who are lower level?

As a starter, I have a level 22 pure mage, and a level 16 dual mage, any advice on what I should equip on those?

Thanks!

[Phoenixking]

Equip.....pinks!

[Shaylyanarie]

I have some pinks, but I also have some other colors that cause higher damage, should I still use those, or still go with pinks?

[Palyna]

hmm I think depend on your preference, I chosen all with more armor as full int build is very fragile. (Now i respec to hybrid though) Higher damage may be helpful if you are quick to kill them before they get to you. Most pink items give you higher critical hits. Use combo usually kill them faster. At level 22 I just used whatever I can get to equip.

[Adapts]

I can help, i just leveled my first char on this game from 1-50 the proper, legit way with no powerleveling until keeper runs (thanks cabero). I didn't even die until that $!#% cheesy gurgox and OL. I am a pure, honestly if you care about your deaths i would go wand + shield over staff. Wand + shield gives way more survivability trade off is less dmg, but shouldn't be a prob since you are grouped and speccing right. Staff does more dmg but if you care about deaths with staff, u have to play defensively ie. hit and runs, if u have alot of mobs on you run and wait for CD's or separate the pack.

I would also save your money right now on your pure and roll with what you find until 30 then buy Brain-Freeze stuff. It's night and day once you hit 30 and can use them. After 40s i used whatever millions of pink drops you get from aoe1 + 2, while saving for your 50 gear. Just grind and quest, hit the areas you can in order; LE, swamps, aoe1 etc and you will learn the game the right way :)

[Fyrce]

Just equip whatever works for you. Obviously, the higher stats the better. But there's some balance between what you can get, damage, and various stats. It really depends on your play. Try what your drops on and you'll learn what you like. Generally pinks and purples have the best stats.

[Riccits]

when u just need to level up thers no need to buy always the best equip for each level... purples should be good enogh for farming XP. when u get pinks from bosses, better, or may u find some cheap kind of in shop, but i wouldnt spend more than 2-3k a item at ur levels..

i bought almost nothing until i reached level 35... i played with all i become from bosses and mobs...

[Duke]

DPS is not the only thing you should look at. You want items that regenerate M/s more quickly, so you can use your skills more often. Skills are your true lifeblood. By the same token, weapon DPS matters much less than weapon damage, because your skills like Lightning, Fire Storm, Drain Life, and even Heal are based off your weapon damage.

For a pure INT mage, I'd prioritize as: M/s, Armor, Damage, Int. For a Pally, I'd probably make it Armor, M/s, Damage, Int.

[Atila the nun]

... weapon DPS matters much less than weapon damage, because your skills like Lightning, Fire Storm, Drain Life, and even Heal are based off your weapon damage...

I want to understand this better. I've been focussing on DPS and I can tell that I'm missing something. I can understand the relationship between weapon damage and debuffs like lightning (lower armor for a short period of time, thus a single hit with high damage is better than lots of little hits most of which strike after the debuff wears off). But how would any of the other skills be effected by weapon damage?

[Thelonearcher]

..........blah

[Royce]

I want to understand this better. I've been focussing on DPS and I can tell that I'm missing something. I can understand the relationship between weapon damage and debuffs like lightning (lower armor for a short period of time, thus a single hit with high damage is better than lots of little hits most of which strike after the debuff wears off). But how would any of the other skills be effected by weapon damage?

Weapon damage adds a portion of damage to your skill damage. So in general the higher the damage of the weapon you equip, the higher your skill damage. Also DPS is just plain misleading. It does not take into account target armor, which is subtracted from the damage of each strike, meaning high damage slow weapons (low DPS generally) are far more effective than low damage fast (high DPS generally) weapons.

[Duke]

I want to understand this better. I've been focussing on DPS and I can tell that I'm missing something. I can understand the relationship between weapon damage and debuffs like lightning (lower armor for a short period of time, thus a single hit with high damage is better than lots of little hits most of which strike after the debuff wears off). But how would any of the other skills be effected by weapon damage?

The amount of damage (or healing, in the case of Heal) caused by many skills is comprised of three components: 1) your skill ranks, 2) your relevant ability score (INT), and 3) your base weapon damage. Wielding a higher damage/lower speed weapon actually makes your skills more effective. The exception being skills with fixed effects (Revive, Weakness, Nightmare, Magic Shield, and the Blessings).

Pure INT enchantresses often use a staff for mob clearing, due to the higher damage output of their AoEs, and switch to wand/shield for bosses, for higher armor and M/s regen.

[Royce]

There are actually 4 components, skill rank, int (for Mage damage skills and heal), weapon damage (a portion of which contributes to skill damage), and base damage (which directly adds to skill damage).

[Atila the nun]

I just went through all of the weapons in my inventory and checked the effect of each on my spell damage. I didn't see any change to my heal spell but my damage spells were definitely affected. Why didn't I think to check this earlier in my career!? There's something that doesn't quite add up though. I have a scalefield poker of the bear with lower damage but it gave me the highest lightning damage for a one handed weapon. I realize that as a pally my build is a little different than most. Maybe the difference is the base damage that Royce mentioned. I'll look into this further, I'll post when I have real data.

[Royce]

The amount of damage added by a weapon to your skill damage seems to have some sort of mysterious or random factor. In general, higher damage weapons add more to skill damage, but there are exceptions, so you have to just try stuff out. Base damage is the damage you have just from attributes, not including weapon damage, but does also include damage gained from set bonuses and the item types with damage boosts separate from the weapon's damage (this raises an interesting question about weapons of items types which impart a damage bonus. The bonus is expressed as an addition to the weapon's damage I believe, but should act as some base damage with the usual weapon damage for that weapon type.). Sorry for the digression, anyway base damage adds directly to skill damage.

[Pharcyde]

Edit: FAIL I just wrong sectioned the wrong section...