Erf,tactics mage?

[Goodoljoe]

I read that idea of tactics mage is well..to run around with tactics(duh!) with litle to no dex and just hope your weapon specials land while you magery combo someone for stupid damage.But its hard enough to keep very high DCI being totaly exempt of HCI on a pure or necromage ,dosnt a tactics mage also need to keep both DCI and HCI AND lrc?I can imagien keeping 70 DCI 45 HCI 100 lrc 2/6 and any decent amount of LMC/MR its a total nightmare.So does the average tactics mage run around with super godly unnatural suits or they just stick to mediocre defense/offensive atributes?Im trying to think a suit to try tactics mage and im crying inside :O

Thanks

 

[ZidjiN]

You can allways get HCI/DCI on your weapon aswell.
15HCI spirit of the totem
10HCI Glad Collar
10-20 HCI weapon

15 DCI AoF
20 DCI Leggings
5 DCI Quiver
>15 DCI Ring


You can even Get both DCI/HCI on both ring and weapon, 10 extra HCI from totem and maybe a Bracelet instead of your orny.
If you run an orny and Void this alone gives you 60LRC, 40+HCI, 50+DCI and 20 LMC.
It takes sometime to build a suit like this but it certainly isnt impossible.

 

[Zyron]

yea i was actually thinking of using a bone harvy mage.

bring those back..ya kno?

 

[Lefty]

There are different ways to look at this as it pertains to a tactics mage. You have to consider many things. The playstyle in general. First of all, you can put away the thought of doing mass damage with a melee hit in general. Concussion blow was nerfed down and you will probably only get it off on your first assault. After that it is a rabbit chase. The bone harvester concept still has a little juice as well as a war fork mage. However here is something I would like to try.

A micro bush mage. With the last publish they fixed the nerve strike bug, now you should be able to nerve strike those that are casting or doing other forms of actions.

The following template is just an entry level. It gives the ability to nerve strike and riding swipe. Note that Nerve strike and riding swipe damage is tallied up with the level of Bushido, Parry and also anat, tacts, str bonus as well as Damage increase items are calculated for damage. Stating this I encourage others to join in and maybe we can cook up the best template to find the best damage mix.

Base Template
50 bush
90 tacts
120 swords
120 Magery
100 med
120 resist
120 eval

Update - I went on test center to do some test. This is some of my finding, just on using nerve strike on critters.

First of all there are 3 types of damages calculated in a nerve strike

1. Nerve strike direct damage - Based on Bushido skill. The higher the skill , the higher damage. Testing showed Parry had no effect in the damage where it was stated otherwise.
2. Base weapon damage - tactics, str bonus, anat, and di reduced by armor resist. Common melee damage.
3. Hit spell effect - This also is included.

Note: As far as hit spell effects, the best would be hit fireball. For some reason there is a bug with hit lightning which negates the direct damage as well as the base weapon damage.

Thus at times you will see 3 sets of damages off of one nerve strike. Combine this with a combo and you got yourself a good offensive mage. Other benefits is confedense and LS. Don't however count on evasion. With this and pots it should be a decent template and the ability to use other weapons to disarm,mortal and bleed.

 

[Lynk]

Lefty's 50 bush template is garbage, the 50 bush is too low to use nerve strike reliably.

Tactics mages are no longer a reliable build. You used to be able to get sick burst dmg but the way specs are set up now while holding a spell its not realistic.

Your best bet if running a tactics mage is to use a fork and bleed/disarm. Thats it. The only exception is archer mages because you can nuke people with a concussion between spells.

 

[Lefty]

Lefty's 50 bush template is garbage, the 50 bush is too low to use nerve strike reliably.

As I said it is an entry level, but it is not garbage. Your target might resist the para hit, but the big thing is you still get the tallied damage.

Overall it does more damage per skill point investment. More damage than a concussion mage, or death strike with much more reliability.

 

[Lynk]

As I said it is an entry level, but it is not garbage. Your target might resist the para hit, but the big thing is you still get the tallied damage.

Overall it does more damage per skill point investment. More damage than a concussion mage, or death strike with much more reliability.

No it doesn't. The damage range of a nerve strike is extremely low at 50 bushido. And I'm not talking about them resisting a para hit, I'm talking about your hit rarely actually doing a paralyze. Even at 120 bushido you have like a 90% chance to para.

A concussion mage would be more damage output.

Have you even played that specific template recently? Part of me thinks you haven't.

 

[Lefty]

No it doesn't. The damage range of a nerve strike is extremely low at 50 bushido. And I'm not talking about them resisting a para hit, I'm talking about your hit rarely actually doing a paralyze. Even at 120 bushido you have like a 90% chance to para.

A concussion mage would be more damage output.

The problem is that you may not be up to date on a few changes as I have mentioned earlier in this thread. Concussion was nerfed. Why do you think you don't see a ton of archers and dexers running around using it for massive damage?

"Have you even played that specific template recently? Part of me thinks you haven't"

Well correct on that specific template, but prior to the PvP publish I ran a PvP sammy mainly, so I am well aware as of how damage is rolled out on a bokuto. The PvP publish notes state that bushido and parry are calculated to determine direct damage. My testing proves to me parry isn't equated in the damage. It also states that damage would be reduced by 1-10hp. I don't see the difference.

There are 2 factors as of why no one has been using nerve strikes in main stream PvP. The most important fact is the 90 tactics requirement. This nerfed most PvP bush templates. The only ones running around now are those without Magic Resist. The second reason was the nerve strike bug. You couldn't pull off a nerve strike hit on someone who was frozen or casting. However now it is fixed.

But you have your opinion and I have mine. As of now I am converting my old sammy into a bok mage without parry. I am squeezing in 120 bush, and I will have little med.

 

[Lynk]

Do you play EA run shards? What concussion nerf?

 

[Barl DeAbreago]

They did say a while back that they would be rolling a patch out in which they changed the way concussion worked.

It would be more akin to its original self, knocking out a portion of your mana and doing damage instead of just doing insane damage.

I had been told that the patch went through, but I've still seen concussion doing high numbers. I'm lead to believe either they still haven't put the patch through, they dropped it, or their attempted nerf to archers didn't work at all.

 

[Barl DeAbreago]

Here's the Last mention I can find of it:

Concussion Blow:

Previously this was direct damage scaled according to the difference between Current Mana % and Current HP %. This implementation penalized players for being low on mana or health. So a playing using mana to keep themselves fully healed would increasingly take more damage from the attack. Also if a player was hit with the attack and did not use mana to heal, then the next attack would do additional damage because of the difference between mana and hp increasing from the first hit.

Additionally, this damage was in addition to the damage from the actual hit allowing for HUGE damage output to players.

This has been recoded so the bonus damage is CONSTANT. The old concussion effect of reducing the targets mana pool has been tweaked and put into play again. Concussion will now have the effect of a temporary mana drain, scaled by the targets immunity to the effect. Attackers will ALWAYS get the bonus damage from the attack, the drain effect will be scaled based on the defender's immunity/resistance.


-This was posted by Robert Mul Jan 9, 2009. It was among some TC1 Balance testing notes along with potion immunity. In the same post he talked about the slime event, champion spawn artifacts, and etc *Just to give you a point of reference*

I can't find anything that specifically says 'this is implemented now'. But I had heard that it was.

 

[Lefty]

I'll admit I didn't find anything in print, however I haven't seen or have done a wild concussion blow in a long time. It isn't a main stream damager like it used to be. I can't remember the last time I got ghosted by a concussion.

Anyways we can debate if it is nerfed or not, I just know it doesn't do the mad damage it used too. Thing is often the Devs make changes and they get rolled out without Publish notes, and vice versa. They do some changes to test, forget, QA takes a quick look and bam, Published. Perfect example is the 80 dex requirement for Parry which was rolled out on publish 25. It was silently removed between SE and ML and put back into play around Publish 43.

The only sure way is to test.

 

[Farsight]

I recently did extensive testing on concussion blows, and they work exactly as advertised.

Which means a concusson blow against someone with full health and full mana will do exactly 10 damage extra. A concussion blow against someone with full health and no mana will do 30 damage extra.

Since I haven't been a PvP archer for very long (about a year now, I think) and I've only been using my crossbow for a month, I'm not sure how it worked before. But if 10-30 damage extra is nerfed, I would have hated to have met the pre-nerf concussion archer.

 

[JoO]

sounds about right. I usually save conc blows till sort of late in a field fight. But its not uncommon for them with a fireball proc to do upwards of 60 total damage.

 

[Lynk]

I recently did extensive testing on concussion blows, and they work exactly as advertised.

Which means a concusson blow against someone with full health and full mana will do exactly 10 damage extra. A concussion blow against someone with full health and no mana will do 30 damage extra.

Since I haven't been a PvP archer for very long (about a year now, I think) and I've only been using my crossbow for a month, I'm not sure how it worked before. But if 10-30 damage extra is nerfed, I would have hated to have met the pre-nerf concussion archer.

It was never nerfed. I don't think Lefty PvPs.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

It was never nerfed. I don't think Lefty PvPs.

Wasn't it suppose to be nerfed? I vaguely remember some sort of talk about them nerfing it along with the dread mares....don't recall them actually doing it mind you, but I guess they could have snuck it in there...but I don't think I have noticed a difference if they did.

 

[Lynk]

I was just testing damage last night on my necro archer and I can guarantee you that concussion was not nerfed.

 

[JoO]

What not to wear was coming on and I tried to change the channel and Lynk gave me a concussion. He just adores Clinton.

 

[Lynk]

It was a new episode, and Stacy had the cutest blouse.

 

[Farsight]

Wasn't it suppose to be nerfed? I vaguely remember some sort of talk about them nerfing it along with the dread mares....don't recall them actually doing it mind you, but I guess they could have snuck it in there...but I don't think I have noticed a difference if they did.

Concussion blows and adjustments to how potions work were potential changes that made it to test center and were shelved after overwhelmingly negative feedback.

It could still happen, but probably not until after SA is out.

 

[RichDC]

I tried the Tactics bush mage using the below template in factions:

gm magery(120crystaline)
120 eval
120 med
120 swords
120 bush
90 tactics
and then theres 50 points left over.

I did contemplate dropin bush to around gm and having 70resist + use the aegis for a boost. However, i opted for the spellweaving pixies.

I thought of dropping med, however upon consideration mana cost was going to be so high on this temp that it was imperitive to have max LMC and Max MR, meaning max med.

The weapon i used was a sc no pen 20ssi 48lightning 30ish stam leech bok. Meaning i could keep dex low...i think i had it around 50(maybe lower).

I actually think my real stat setup was

125 int
115str
15 dex, using the faction crimmy to 25 and potted to 50.