Mage Arcanist? Am I missing something?

[imported_Chad Sexington]

Am I missing something?

So I converted my old pvp mage into a pvm character. I had some extra skill points to abuse so I figured might as well try Spellweaving because I never tried it before and Focus for some extra mana.

Is nothing worth casting except for Word of Death?

What other spells do you use regularly?

Were the spells just not effective enough because I didn't cast the Arcane Circle with four other people? Is there a huge difference?

Should I be putting it on a melee character instead? What do you do about mana? Just high hit mana leech?

 

[Jolt]

Nope, it's a crap skill.

It's a bit disappointing to admit, since I too recently trained it, and I plan on dropping it as soon as I can be bothered.

There was a few skills that caught my eye, but none of the guides give you an accurate picture.

For example:

Gift of Renewal - an okay skill. It spams the equivalent of Circle 1 Heals on you a dozen or so times. Unfortunately it has a long cooldown which renders it practically useless. Obviously the massively long cast time and high mana cost weren't seen as sufficiently balancing.

Ethereal Voyage - the skill I most wanted to try. I anticipated this spell as being a temporary stealth spell. Like Invisibility is a temporary hide. The reality is that you are transformed into an ugly model that dismounts and lasts too short a time to be useful. Again, with a long cooldown.

Dryad Allure - One of the popular SW spells. An arctic ogre lord pet isn't bad, but there's very little else worth charming, and frankly I think a summoned demon is alot stronger.

All the other summon spells are crap. Weaker than a blade spirit.

Gift of Life - not bad situationally, but it would be better if it worked like the sacrifice virtue. Otherwise it's normally just a extra death robe.

Word of Death - pretty good. Not worth keeping the skill for though.

I could go on, but you get the picture. It needs some serious attention that I doubt it will ever get. The cooldowns on such basic stuff as the heal spell prevent it from ever being anything beyond a secondary skill, if anyone is crazy enough to put it in their templates at all.

 

[Red Shanks]

what about thunderstorm? doesn't it slow down your opponents' fc/fcr cast rate and then you can outcast them?

 

[imported_Ill Saint]

It's not a 'crap' skill, just very much a support skill designed to compliment a variety of templates.

 

[Vincia Eaglehorn]

<blockquote><hr>

Nope, it's a crap skill.

It's a bit disappointing to admit, since I too recently trained it, and I plan on dropping it as soon as I can be bothered.

There was a few skills that caught my eye, but none of the guides give you an accurate picture.

For example:

Gift of Renewal - an okay skill. It spams the equivalent of Circle 1 Heals on you a dozen or so times. Unfortunately it has a long cooldown which renders it practically useless. Obviously the massively long cast time and high mana cost weren't seen as sufficiently balancing.

Ethereal Voyage - the skill I most wanted to try. I anticipated this spell as being a temporary stealth spell. Like Invisibility is a temporary hide. The reality is that you are transformed into an ugly model that dismounts and lasts too short a time to be useful. Again, with a long cooldown.

Dryad Allure - One of the popular SW spells. An arctic ogre lord pet isn't bad, but there's very little else worth charming, and frankly I think a summoned demon is alot stronger.

All the other summon spells are crap. Weaker than a blade spirit.

Gift of Life - not bad situationally, but it would be better if it worked like the sacrifice virtue. Otherwise it's normally just a extra death robe.

Word of Death - pretty good. Not worth keeping the skill for though.

I could go on, but you get the picture. It needs some serious attention that I doubt it will ever get. The cooldowns on such basic stuff as the heal spell prevent it from ever being anything beyond a secondary skill, if anyone is crazy enough to put it in their templates at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

i dont have a problem with gift of life .... i barely die twice, before you stuck you can run away far enough ... so if you get an extra death robe you do something wrong.

best is it works for pets too .... helps a lot if you dont want to wait for a lousy tamer who is not willing to res your pet at brit bank.

wod is fine

gift of renewal helps a lot to in harsh situtaions ... best example are the fire fields in the mag event.

natures fury is fine for me too ... casting is quicker than ev and dispelling monsters most diespell 4 times instead of 2 for ev .... so for me its a perfect shield between me and strong monsters

and so on ....

and dont forget with a 5 lvl arcane circle you spells increase in power.

i also could say ... hey magery ...what a useless skill ... from 64 spells i just use 5 .... GH, invis, ev, recall and gate

also you dont need any reagents, just mana ... so you can heal yourself after dying while your stuff is still in the corpse.

 

[Jolt]

*shrugs*

It's all opinions, yours is as valid as mine I guess.

I'm just offering my own view on what I found to be an extremely disappointing skill. When I was interested in training SW I couldn't find anyone who used it who could give me advice. I had to use this site and uoguide to get details on the spells and quests, and unfortunately I found them a little misleading in terms of power. I understand the need to defend and look on the bright side of things, but if it means saving someone the disappointment I had of spending many hours doing the quest, collecting the spells and training the skill only to be completely underwhelmed, then I'll be brutally honest.

The comparison with magery is laughable. Magery is hands down the most versatile skill in the game. Ask 100 UO players and I bet all my UO gold that 99 would agree.

If they took the pointless cooldowns off all the spells I'd say it was maybe worth 100 points in a loose PvM mage template, but in its current form there's just too many better choices for skills in a template.

 

[imported_Chad Sexington]

After a little playing around with it (at low levels) at Mag I've decided to give it a shot and just go 6x with:

120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Med
120 Focus
120 Resist
120 Spellweaving

It was between that and:

120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Med
120 Music
120 Provoke
120 Discord

My most favorite spell so far is Nature's Fury. They're only one follower slot and they much easier to cast than an EV. EV's are picky when it comes to finding a clean tile to cast. With Nature's Fury doesn't care what tile you cast it on. You can even hit Last Target and it'll cast fine.

Gift of Renewal was handy when grabbing stuff in the fire. The delay timer sucks.

Not high enough skill for WoD yet.


Edit: I just realized I'm using a Crystalline. No need to waste all those skill points when I can still have 60 Focus instead of 120 and have Inscription:

120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Meditation
60 Focus
120 Resist
100 Inscription
120 Spellweaving

 

[Red Shanks]

it looks like only need between 35-60 spellweave would be enough on most templates to take advantage of sw.

 

[Guest]

bah spellweaving is awesome.

for a warrior you dont need much to have the benefits. If your human u dont need any points. Mages should be 100-120. The main spells i use are just about all of them. For me its easier to say what i don't use. The main disadvantage is when you dont have a focus. I run a level 6 focus about every time I use my weaver. ( go to prism of light into the circle with 5 other weavers and u get a level 6) Anyways gift of renewel and attunment are amazing. You get 15-20 hps healed non stop for 2 mins, and oh yes this heals threw anything. Mortal wound, poison, doesnt matter. Attunment you can absorb like 75-100 phyical damage. Awesome for any character. The natures fury are good meat shields that only take 1 slot. For champ spawn and pvp, essence of wind thunderstorm and wildfire are awesome. Word of death destroys monsters when they get low. Etheral Voyage is good for getting threw tough areas where you dont want to be hit. Arcane empowerment is a really nice spell but takes a lot of mana. I find i only use it for extra wod damage. (Ive healed 85 damage with a greater heal with this in effect however hehe) I highly recommed spellweaving if you can get the focus. Without the focus the returns are not very incredible.

 

[imported_Farsight]

<blockquote><hr>

I highly recommed spellweaving if you can get the focus. Without the focus the returns are not very incredible.

[/ QUOTE ]

That pretty much says it all. Spellweaving is amazing with a high level focus. Without a focus, even WoD is nearly useless.

A nice trick, as an example:
We do this with two people in champion spawns, but it works with one. With a level 5 or 6 focus (I use 5's when I can), cast gift of renewal. Run straight into the middle of a tough spawn. Once you get into the middle, start spamming essence of wind. There are very few spawns that this won't kill most of them in and almost nothing can kill you while the renewal is up.

Or to preserve your armor, do the same trick but cast gift of renewal on your ogre lord before hand and invis yourself while everything attacks the ogre.

But really, nature's fury make the best meat shields. With good mana regen, you can take down nearly everything in the game with only nature's fury, just as long as whatever you're trying to kill isn't immune to poison.

Another fun fact is in reaper form, you gain extra SDI, which applies to everything. With empowerment and reaper form, you gain even more.

The only problem I have with weaving is that it isn't incredibly useful in PvP, since my armor already has max SDI against players, most of the spells are slow to cast and mana heavy. If you're surprised by someone attacking you (which we usually are), there isn't time for even the potentially useful spells like gift of renewal. By the time you're done casting it, you're already dead.