Level 55 Enchantress Gear Build Comparisons

Through much discussion about the new level 55 gear, I got to thinking, what really is the best setup for the new lvl 55 gear?

I have heard the Mega Mage is the best
I have heard that mix-matching the green/orange/purples was the best
I even thought that Shadow was comparable to Mega Mage (You can see my other thread HERE and choose for yourself, but I'm straying away from this notion).

There are MANY variables that go into the optimal gear setup for an individual. A player's skill level is most important IMO, followed by the style that person plays the game (Do you head the front lines? or do you hang in back and res?), also it depends if you are with a team, or soloing.

With that said, here is what I came up with. (some things may surprise you :p)

First off, i used Mystic's list of lvl 55 gear for my comparisons (I hope you don't mind, it was a GREAT help!), organized them into excel and went from there.

Here is my list in excel format that I went off of:
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7...gestdamage.png

Notes:
I used the average damage when dealing with a span (i.e. Damage = 150 - 200, I used 175)
I converted all Damage values to 1.0 Speed to keep things easy to compare. (I just took the average damage and divided by the speed, i.e. if damage was 200, with speed of 1.1, then I calculated the damage to be 181.81 with Speed of 1)
I noted all of the Procs the pieces have. I do not know exactly what each of these procs do (If anyone knows exact numbers please let me know), but I wanted to note them due to the fact that they add benefit. (make sure you scroll to the right to see the listed procs).
All of the builds are just pertaining to the gear itself, NO player attributes have been included.
I didn't include the Enchanted set, simply because it makes no sense to choose that over the Mega Mage set.

First Build: Based off of Max Base Armor - More aimed at going "solo"

1st = Max Base Armor Build - Mega Mage (Expensive)
2nd = Mix of items (Very similar Armor, however loss of M/S) (Much Cheaper)
http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/9163/damage10.png

Next I assessed the highest damage producing builds.

First I started with highest amount of BASE damage (CRIT and HIT% are not taken into consideration)
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/1097/damage11.png
These are the top 2 highest base Damage dealing builds. It is interesting that the full Mega Mage Staff set (with the set bonus added in) is still less than the orange set.
*(Keep in mind I converted damage amounts to Damage per Second)*

Next, I took into consideration the effects of CRIT and got some pretty crazy results. Below are the top damage producing builds, with the highest damage producing builds at the top.

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/7455/damage12.png
Highest damage build is a mix of Green and Oranges.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/1896/damage13.png

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6340/damage14.png

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9930/damage15.png

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8578/damage16.png

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1199/damage17.png

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/3457/damage18.png
Even the wand does more damage than the MM set :p

http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/7531/damage19.png

http://img816.imageshack.us/img816/4839/damage20.png

As you can see, The Mega Mage, in terms of highest damage, is actually pretty low on the ranks. But keep in mind this has the added benefit of very high M/S which is important. The procs on the sets also add further benefits.

Now, I created these sets to find the MAX armor build and the MAX damage builds. These sets may not be perfect for every occasion, or your playing style, they are just means to be informative. There are many benefits to certain sets such as MM's high amounts of M/S, and the Procs of the Lowman's Staffs.

I am working on finding a good "All Around" set best designed for and INT mage, both doing solo runs, and team runs. I will update in the near future.

Hope this helps someone pick out a good gear setup!

thanks for this list of set up and gear. im very new to the game so once i find myself up to 55 ill be referring to this thread for build info.
thanks!

Wow nice job!

3 thumbs up. I would love to see the finished work with the armor and such.
Keohike

Fantastic job man:)

Thanks! This is really helpful info :)

Quote:

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I converted all Damage values to 1.0 Speed to keep things easy to compare. (I just took the average damage and divided by the speed, i.e. if damage was 200, with speed of 1.1, then I calculated the damage to be 181.81 with Speed of 1)

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This bothered me a lot - if you're doing systematic data analysis you can't really round variables for ease of comparison. Effective DPS is changed because you've changed 200 damage 1.1 speed weapon into 181.81 damage 1.0 speed weapon.

DPS = 200 damage / 1.1 speed = 181.81 / 1.0 speed = 181.81 (the assumption that altering damage and weapon speed gives you same DPS and effective DPS)

but if enemy has 100 armor (approx in Balefort Sewers):

Effective DPS = (200-100) / 1.1 = 90.9 versus (181.81-100) / 1.0 = 81.81. So you've changed the weapon's effective DPS around.

I'm aware enemy armor is not a factor in this comparison but adjusting your data to conform with a weapon speed of 1.0 would skew output even more than just leaving it out.

Thanks for the support everyone!

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Originally Posted by Physiologic

This bothered me a lot - if you're doing systematic data analysis you can't really round variables for ease of comparison. Effective DPS is changed because you've changed 200 damage 1.1 speed weapon into 181.81 damage 1.0 speed weapon.

DPS = 200 damage / 1.1 speed = 181.81 / 1.0 speed = 181.81 (the assumption that altering damage and weapon speed gives you same DPS and effective DPS)

but if enemy has 100 armor (approx in Balefort Sewers):

Effective DPS = (200-100) / 1.1 = 90.9 versus (181.81-100) / 1.0 = 81.81. So you've changed the weapon's effective DPS around.

I'm aware enemy armor is not a factor in this comparison but adjusting your data to conform with a weapon speed of 1.0 would skew output even more than just leaving it out.

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I knew this would concern some people :p Honestly, I was on the edge weather or not to even do the change, but a few of the weapons I was comparing had a speed of 1.0, and some others had a speed of 1.1.

The way I see it, is there are two ways to look at dealing damage. The first is mob clearing. Mob clearing deals with fast kills and, a lot of times, one shot kills. For this type of damage, I feel it would have been better to leave the data at 1.1 speed for the corresponding weapons. You will not be facing the same mob for anywhere close to 10 seconds.

However when thinking about a boss (which I feel is more critical to analyze your gear setup since they have stronger armor, last longer, and hit harder, but that's just my opinion) you will easily spend much more than 10 seconds. When you are spending these long amounts of time, it is more critical to look at damage dealt for a longer period of time, as a whole, instead of looking at each individual damage amount you can deal.

I can definitely go back and change the weapon speed to their original numbers (or just add another column to show both times and their corresponding damages) and redo the build setups, but I just figured it would be more beneficial to have a comparison of "seconds worth" of battle opposed to one-shot kills of mobs.

For effective damage, lets say that we have 3 weapons and we want to compare them apples to apples:

Weapon speeds: 0.8, 1.0, 1.1

Weapon 1 = (Average damage per hit - enemy armor) / 0.8
Weapon 2 = (Average damage per hit - enemy armor)
Weapon 3 = (Average damage per hit - enemy armor) / 1.1

I estimate enemy armor in the Balefort Sewers to be 120 to 125 (Physiologic - do you have an estimate?), so maybe use 125 for this.



For int mages, when clearing mobs, skill damage is much more important than weapons damage, although weapons damage becomes more important as you go fight a boss.

@WhoIsThis - mobs in Bandit boy Hideout are around 80 armor. so depending on the mob (cloth/leather/plate) you may be looking at 60-100 and maybe 120 at most on bosses. It doesn't appear that the bosses in the sewer have that much armor.

@noneo - Scrubbers may have more total dps, but you are losing nearly 30 armor from the set. you'll get squished so easily on trash with gear like that, and good luck on a boss if you do get aggro. How are you calculating "total damage per second" it should be a lot higher with a gemstone wand, probably close to 30% crit, and the nightmare combo, even on a mob with 100 armor.

I plugged in Scrubbers wand set and MM wand set (both gemstone) using my emulator. 500 tests at 300 seconds at each armor level. Scrubbers crushes MM, but remember that ~30 armor delta may not make scrubbers the most ideal set for doing trash, unless you have a dang good tank.
My base crit is 9, and 99 hit since i'm 107 dex, 172 Int. I could go even more Int and probably eek out a little bit more dps depending on what gives more dps int/dex. you can see that 24% crit plays a huge roll in the difference in damage. May emulator takes into account all damage/buff spells, debuffs, combos, etc.

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...erswandset.png

if i could get my hands on an MM gemstone staff i'd add that to this comparison, or if someone can strip naked and tell me what the +damage to Skills is with the gemstone staff, then i can add it.

idk about you but i use (sewers robes/helm. flushers bracer and adepts gemstone with a ring) and get 135 armor. it works great.

@CosmoxKramer

Mega mage gemstone staff:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_q...Build%2056.png

Min, Max, Average
Weapon DPS 226 264 223
Heal 131 267 199
Frostbite 253 310 281.5
Ice Storm 204 239 221.5
Firestorm 318 430 374
Lightning 306 435 370.5
Drain Life 348 490 419

Sorry about the formatting. Add 30 to all stats with blessings on.


Edit: This is with the set on, a ring (+2% crit, +4 DPS, + 2M/S), (+1 for vanity item), and a pure int level 56 mage.

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Originally Posted by CosmoxKramer

@WhoIsThis - mobs in Bandit boy Hideout are around 80 armor. so depending on the mob (cloth/leather/plate) you may be looking at 60-100 and maybe 120 at most on bosses. It doesn't appear that the bosses in the sewer have that much armor.

@noneo - Scrubbers may have more total dps, but you are losing nearly 30 armor from the set. you'll get squished so easily on trash with gear like that, and good luck on a boss if you do get aggro. How are you calculating "total damage per second" it should be a lot higher with a gemstone wand, probably close to 30% crit, and the nightmare combo, even on a mob with 100 armor.

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Yes I know the lesser armor may not prove to be the best build, I was simply putting together the build with the highest damage rating, and then putting together the build with the highest armor rating. I am going to be working on (personal preference) the most optimal build for all around playing, i.e. the one that makes the most sense. Also, which gemstone wand are you speaking of? I listed all the crit as a percentage next to each weapon.

EDIT: those charts are really great btw!

I'm not a big fan of numbers but practice always proves the truth. My mage's gear is Dex Crown,pink mega robe,scrubber wand,purple bracer and champion's fine crystal ring(2crit,2m/s,4dmg),with full int into stats. This ends me getting 127hit,32crit,3dodge,8h/s,21m/s,183dps,115armor.
I'm very happy with my stats right now because all i focus on is high damage. Yes, i don't run any map if there's not a good tank in team except hideout. So i don't care how many armor i lose because there's not many chance i will take a lot of damage from mobs. and more importantly, mage is not suppose to take a lot of damage,if u are, ur playing style is wrong. and think about it, archer only has 85 armor with bow and they can't heal or mana shiled, if archer can survie, why not mage? with my set i still has 30more armor than a archer and if i switch to a two-hand staff(pink gemstone staff), i still have 102 armor and yes i can heal.

Talking about boss fight, with my set i'm a aggro machine, i pull off aggro from sewer bow bird with no problem,and i'm using a one hand wand. The only exception is a full raid set bird,but i haven't tried beat them with staff because the drained combo from gemstone wand is just too awesome.
and now we talk about survivablity on boss fight.
1.Gold Fever. I don't care if bear can hold aggro on him or not. If he can, all the best. If not, i'll just kite around with mana shield ready for fever and just a few pots maybe.
2.King and Queen. Normally a good bear can hold aggro on king with no problem and if he can't, it will cost me about 3-5 pots the most.To queen,your aoe damage is just too low and slow.
3.Trash. It's wierd i've done so many cata runs with my bear and it seems to me trash is immue to taunt or most of the time. So u'd better hold ur fire a bit on him.
4.Roach.kill bin first while only bear attack boss. By the time bins gone, full attack on boss with no worries of getting aggro.
5.Goblin.Full attack, shouldn't get aggro.

Another thing brought up my mind is i can't believe ppl are willing to pay around 1million for a PINK gemstone wand. Scrubber gemstone wand beats it all the way around and it costs like 1k. I can understand the rest part of Mega Mage pink gear is pretty awesome but pls... a worse wand than orange for 1 million?

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Originally Posted by jiroununu

... and more importantly, mage is not suppose to take a lot of damage,if u are, ur playing style is wrong.

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I don't agree with this. I know plenty of mages that lead the pack and make runs in a far more efficient time, rather than waiting for a bear to run in front, beckon, smash, then have the mage come in and heal/res the party.. You just have to be ready to spam pots, and spam heal. It is definitely not "wrong" though.

And the reason people buy the MM wand is basically due to the M/S / armor combo you get. it really depends on the users priorities.

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Originally Posted by noneo

I don't agree with this. I know plenty of mages that lead the pack and make runs in a far more efficient time, rather than waiting for a bear to run in front, beckon, smash, then have the mage come in and heal/res the party.. You just have to be ready to spam pots, and spam heal. It is definitely not "wrong" though.

And the reason people buy the MM wand is basically due to the M/S / armor combo you get. it really depends on the users priorities.

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I agree with both u and jirou... As jirou said : Mages and supposed to take damage (Correct). As u said: Its faster to do a run with mages taking all the aggro and damage (Correct).

Do you see what i mean? Of course you do ...

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Originally Posted by KaotiicxDream

I agree with both u and jirou... As jirou said : Mages and supposed to take damage (Correct). As u said: Its faster to do a run with mages taking all the aggro and damage (Correct).

Do you see what i mean? Of course you do ...

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I was not saying that Mages should always be in the front. I was simply noting that it is not "Wrong" for a mage to lead the pack and take the aggro. However a person wants to play, that is their decision, if they kill themselves a ton, or get booted because they can't perform that's their problem :p

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Originally Posted by noneo

Yes I know the lesser armor may not prove to be the best build, I was simply putting together the build with the highest damage rating, and then putting together the build with the highest armor rating. I am going to be working on (personal preference) the most optimal build for all around playing, i.e. the one that makes the most sense. Also, which gemstone wand are you speaking of? I listed all the crit as a percentage next to each weapon.

EDIT: those charts are really great btw!

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For maximum DPS, you may want to consider full Mastermind and a dex helm of persistence. That should give you a very high crit.

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Originally Posted by WhoIsThis

For maximum DPS, you may want to consider full Mastermind and a dex helm of persistence. That should give you a very high crit.

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Actually, the Scrubber's set gives a higher DPS, (i'm negating the hit% because it doesn't make a difference when you are already over 100%. and the cap seems to be at 85% anyway)

Check It out. First is the wand comparison with various other equipped items ( I used the Dex helm for all comparisons where crown is noted)

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/747...comparison.png

Next is the Staff Comparison

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3...mparestaff.png

Pretty interesting, I would have thought Mastermind would have been better as well. Keep in mind you sacrifice armor if you go with the Scrubbers items.

I guess you can add the Big Luck to any of these sets and add 1 armor. Every bit helps!

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Originally Posted by noneo

Pretty interesting, I would have thought Mastermind would have been better as well. Keep in mind you sacrifice armor if you go with the Scrubbers items.

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That's why I recommended Masterminds over Scrubbers. I don't consider Scrubbers on an int mage to be very good for the Sewers.

Edit: That said, it's the mana regen in Mastermind that is important. Scrubbers on the other hand ... doesn't have any. Mastermind doesn't have any better armor.

I should also point out that I feel Lowman's is the best compromise if you can't afford Mega Mage.

I agree with that^ You would get annihilated as a pure int mage in the sewers with just Scrubbers. But it definitely gives a high amount of DPS which would be good for lower level dungeons.

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Originally Posted by noneo

I agree with that^ You would get annihilated as a pure int mage in the sewers with just Scrubbers. But it definitely gives a high amount of DPS which would be good for lower level dungeons.

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Mastermind still - you need mana regen or you'll be burning up mana pots. Mage spells are the most mana intensive.

I just realized something that I should have pointed this out some time ago (which Pharcyde pointed out on another thread) - this guide needs to take into account ability damage. DPS isn't all that useful on a mage - the bulk of your damage comes from your spells.

How much does each of the sets affect lightning, fire blast, etc? That is what matters.

This isn't taking into account several mechanical things that can change the "feel" of a set:

1. The effect of the extra damage given to skills. When doing that, you can't use the number normalized to a 1.0 speed, either. You have to use the original average. (This is similar to not being able to normalize the weapon damage because of the effect enemy armor has, but yet another to reason not do so.)
2. The effect of crit% on the skills. Skills do the bulk of your damage, so boosting them with crit can have more of a difference than just a few points of weapon damage. (Those few points, of course, add to the skills themselves, so it's a balance.)
3. If hit% drops lower than 85%, it definitely must be factored in. (That's not usually a problem, though.)
4. For similar reasons, when looking at armor, dodge matters since each percent point is a 1% reduction in aggregate damage.

On lower level builds, much of this usually doesn't seem to matter since the best items are best in every stat. The trade offs seem to grow with levels, though.

I wonder how the enchanted set does in all this...

It's the exact same as the Mega Mage, except instead of +8 M/S per item, it gives +8 H/S per item.