Beetles - does poisoning use up mana?

[Tabin]

My newly 5 slot beetle already uses up all its mana just from weapon specials and the oh so rare rune corruption. So far, I'm not super impressed with how often the beetle uses rune corruption. Anyways, does add poisoning further waste mana by giving it one more ability to spend mana on?

 

[MalagAste]

My newly 5 slot beetle already uses up all its mana just from weapon specials and the oh so rare rune corruption. So far, I'm not super impressed with how often the beetle uses rune corruption. Anyways, does add poisoning further waste mana by giving it one more ability to spend mana on?

Yes poisoning uses mana...

 

[Adrahil]

My newly 5 slot beetle already uses up all its mana just from weapon specials and the oh so rare rune corruption. So far, I'm not super impressed with how often the beetle uses rune corruption. Anyways, does add poisoning further waste mana by giving it one more ability to spend mana on?

Funny you would mention that, I was thinking the same thing. My beetle seems to very rarely use Rune Corruption.

 

[Tabin]

Yes poisoning uses mana...

Thanks! Save me the headache of testing it. XD

I'll probably leave poisoning off and hope that it encourages the beetle to use RC more. Now, I'm wondering if it was a bad idea to put AI on.

 

[Pawain]

All pets have 30 mana in 2 mins. Thats why Focus, Med, and 30 MR are needed. And why Focus and Med scrolls cost so much.

 

[afk]

everything uses mana (including healing and discord), the question is how much(i believe the devs were possibly going to post this info, according to a past question they were asked). And to be a bit more on topic i have a finished poison AI/RC beetle and a not quite finished 4 slot RC only beetle and it may be my imagination but my RC beetle seems to kill faster.

 

[Tabin]

everything uses mana (including healing and discord), the question is how much(i believe the devs were possibly going to post this info, according to a past question they were asked). And to be a bit more on topic i have a finished poison AI/RC beetle and a not quite finished 4 slot RC only beetle and it may be my imagination but my RC beetle seems to kill faster.

Can you perform a test for us?! A comparison between AI/RC and RC only beetle would be great! I'm also wondering if RC has a cool down timer or not.

Do you notice if your RC only beetle runs out of mana just as fast as your AI/RC or does the mana last 2x longer? If the mana pool lasts 2x longer, then maybe the RC has a cool down period.

 

[afk]

Not aware of any cool down timer, i'll see if i can figure out a good comparison since stats/skills are not exact same and will post.

 

[afk]

Forgot i had a finished AI/RC beetle that is gimped ( the base damage dropped from the max to the next lower lvl for some reason). Any way as him and my 4 slot have the same base damage i thought it would be easier to make a comparison. There was of course a couple problems as my 5 slot AI/RC had 120 wrestle and the 4 slot RC only 110 as well as my 5 slot having higher tactics and anatomy. As i recall a +10 points in wrestle should give a 25% increase to hit, and add in the extra damage from higher tactics and anatomy a 15% increase approximately. So my 5 slot should have a DPS( damage per second) average of 40% higher than my 4 slot.

Was using swoop as a testing agent, now basically it should take appox. 7( for 4 slot) seconds for every 5 seconds(for 5 slot) to kill swoop. which would mean they would be doing the same DPS after accounting the variance in wrestling, tactics, and anatomy skills. It was actually a 8 to 5 ratio when i tested however i forgot to account for swoops hp regen(doing the extra time it takes the 4 slot to kill swoop) so after rechecking the numbers the DPS was almost very close to being the same. note there are a lot of factors i did not account for(like swoops wrestle) as i just assumed an average over time and number of swoops killed and of course it would take too long to do accurately in any case so this is just a rough estimate from the numbers i got.

First thing i observed is my 4 slot would use RC back to back and sometimes wait 30-60 seconds, although he was never close to being out of mana( my 5 slot never ran out of mana either), so i would say it is highly unlikely that there is a cool down period. Rather it seems like a weap hit spell where there is a percentage chance of using(going off) or something similar.

As i note,(after taking into account the disparities between the beetles and the swoops HP regen) the DPS was close to identical, which would mean that having AI and RC did not give any extra damage( the average damage over time) as having RC alone.

However the mana use was different as the the 5 slot AI/RC was using approx. 85 mana per minute of combat and the 4 slot was using approx. 23 mana per minute( past what they could regen) also noting that the 5 slot has about 4 moore MR than the 4 slot.

So after testing and coming up with these rough estimates, if you are looking for DPS and conserving mana then i would not advise putting AI and RC on same pet.

 

[Tabin]

Forgot i had a finished AI/RC beetle that is gimped ( the base damage dropped from the max to the next lower lvl for some reason). Any way as him and my 4 slot have the same base damage i thought it would be easier to make a comparison. There was of course a couple problems as my 5 slot AI/RC had 120 wrestle and the 4 slot RC only 110 as well as my 5 slot having higher tactics and anatomy. As i recall a +10 points in wrestle should give a 25% increase to hit, and add in the extra damage from higher tactics and anatomy a 15% increase approximately. So my 5 slot should have a DPS( damage per second) average of 40% higher than my 4 slot.

Was using swoop as a testing agent, now basically it should take appox. 7( for 4 slot) seconds for every 5 seconds(for 5 slot) to kill swoop. which would mean they would be doing the same DPS after accounting the variance in wrestling, tactics, and anatomy skills. It was actually a 8 to 5 ratio when i tested however i forgot to account for swoops hp regen(doing the extra time it takes the 4 slot to kill swoop) so after rechecking the numbers the DPS was almost very close to being the same. note there are a lot of factors i did not account for(like swoops wrestle) as i just assumed an average over time and number of swoops killed and of course it would take too long to do accurately in any case so this is just a rough estimate from the numbers i got.

First thing i observed is my 4 slot would use RC back to back and sometimes wait 30-60 seconds, although he was never close to being out of mana( my 5 slot never ran out of mana either), so i would say it is highly unlikely that there is a cool down period. Rather it seems like a weap hit spell where there is a percentage chance of using(going off) or something similar.

As i note,(after taking into account the disparities between the beetles and the swoops HP regen) the DPS was close to identical, which would mean that having AI and RC did not give any extra damage( the average damage over time) as having RC alone.

However the mana use was different as the the 5 slot AI/RC was using approx. 85 mana per minute of combat and the 4 slot was using approx. 23 mana per minute( past what they could regen) also noting that the 5 slot has about 4 moore MR than the 4 slot.

So after testing and coming up with these rough estimates, if you are looking for DPS and conserving mana then i would not advise putting AI and RC on same pet.

Amazing write up! Thank you for taking the time to test this for all of us who were wondering. I really like your detailed description in the different variables between the two test setups. You certainly know how to perform an experiment.

It's very interesting that the DPS averaged out to be almost the same. Swoop has pretty high resistances so AI seemed like a good special move to really speed up the kills. I did some math and assuming the monster has a resist of 70, one AI + 2 regular hits is a near equivalent of 3 hits with RC debuff. It sounds like the RC only beetle was using RC more than the AI+RC beetle for it to produce similar DPS.

I'm going to rebuild my beetle and try RC only. I'm interesting in long lasting fights so mana consumption is something I need to consider for sure. Depending on the situation, I also plan to cast spells that hurt the bosses so having RC on as much as possible will be hugely beneficial.

Thanks again for your help!