Meditation for Medea?

[Nightbreeze]

Okay! I would like the opinion of some experienced players.

I made a character inspired by Medea from Greek tragedy. She's a witch who poisons her husband's lover and murders their kids, so she can watch him suffer. It's a good time. Uplifting read. Anyways, I wanted to cram a lot into this template and it ended up looking like this:
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(cap of 720)
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Magery - 120
Eval Int - 120
Anatomy - 80 (with eval gives me like 110ish defensive skill when using slayer books in pvm; resilience to disarm)
Resist - 100 (hopefully some resilience in pvp situation?)
Poisoning - 80 (doesn't seem to make a difference for 120 mages to go higher?)
Necromancy - 100
Spirit Speak - 120
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I was going to lean heavy on LMC, a high int, mana regen equipment, and the 20med/20focus from Jack of All Trades so I - hopefully - wouldn't need meditation. But I really don't have the experience to know whether or not I can get away with that.

1) So the question I'm asking is:
Is this build viable without meditation?
I don't have a soulstone so I can't just store my meditation for later and run some trials and see how it feels. I was hoping y'all might better know the difference between 1.68ish passive mana per sec versus 2.4ish in a practical way. (i.e. Don't say 0.72ish)

2) Relevant sub questions if you're feeling froggy:

• a) If I can't drop Meditation, what should I drop instead? Anatomy? Resist?
• b) Do I need resist spells? How important is it these days?
• c) Are there any other caster builds that don't use Meditation or Focus?

3) Some conditions and assumptions (possibly anticipating some questions and saving y'all some time)

• a) I wanted a lot of versatility, but I mainly see myself in pvm situations. If I can be vaguely useful in pvp that'd be great though.
• b) I'm v poor, having just returned to the game; so I'm gonna have to build up to the ideal template.
• c) I won't drop poisoning below 80. No matter how bad of an Idea that is. I'm v stubborn.
• d) I know poisoning doesn't synergize with necromancy, but… THEME (and also character slots). I'd really like both.

Thanks so much for reading! Also this is my first post here so if it's janky, that's why.

 

[TaldarinZPhoenix]

I have a build that is extremely similar to yours. My template is:

120 mage
120 eval
120 SS
105 (85+20 midnight bracers) Necromany
80 poison
120 resisting spells (all or nothing here for me)
~70 med or so

I lost my soulstones to IDOC years ago but my as my “mage” i used to swap around 120 focus, 100 anatomy, 100 scribe, 120 med, mystic and Spellweaving on her as well but the above is what I stuck with 90% of the time.

At a champ spawn, wither and wraith form and youll never run out of mana with wisp. Single target longer fights I do see a bit of a mana drop off (like navery or osidrion, champ spawn bosses etc).
I would love to have 100 anatomy on my template, but really there is a trade off between PvM fight length and PvP defense.

I imagine with less than 60 med if you arent running wraith form, you will notice you are running out of mana a hair more than you’d like.

I like resist at 120. At 100, youre better protected from mana vamp or mana drain, but a paralyze will still get you for a precious second. Its hard to be a great PvM mage with defense against both Dexxers and mages. Run mage weapon and just hope not to get disarmed or dismounted so fast.

 

[TaldarinZPhoenix]

Quick side note: i think poisoning does quite quite well with necromancy,

Evil omen + poison spell = guarenteed lethal poison.
Corpse skin = -15 resist to poison
Poison strike: chance to poison target based on your poisoning skill.

 

[TaldarinZPhoenix]

Im going to try this on that character now that you got me thinking....

120 Mage
120 SS
100 poison
105 necro
120 resist
100 anatomy
75 med

Effectivly removed Evaluate intel for 100 anatomy and 20 more poison. That way, you can run the poisoning mastery, use a mage weapon to inflict lethal poison in melee, even as a mage,
Poison field and poison spell dont need eval,
Wither, strangle, poison strike all good spells.
So long as a monster isnt poison or cold resistant, you should do ok, and you gain back your full defense to both mages and dexxers in PvP.

 

[Nightbreeze]

Thanks for your insight!
I didn't know that poison strike worked like that. I also didn't know there was a poisoning mastery, now I can def see the appeal of injected strike and the anat/poison with mage weapon.

I didn't even think of dropping eval. I figured explosion might be a part of my single target rotation, and the eval/anat defense formula was on my mind. I really like the last template you suggested.

Also there's a soulstone in the uo store rn, I have exactly enough currency to buy it leftover from my character transfers. Could help me get the versatility I wanted. Then I could have a more traditional necro mage build some of the time.

 

[Nightbreeze]

Follow up question. How exactly does Anatomy and Poisoning work together to apply poisons with injected strike? Is there an equation for that? Somewhere on a testing thread a player said that it worked on a nox mage without anatomy, but I don't know what lvl of poisoning that applied. It would be nice to know how much flexibility that mastery has.

 

[TaldarinZPhoenix]

Im not sure I never tested that, But if it works without anatomy and applies lethal, I would consider dropping anatomy and trying to work wrestling on there perhaps? I am wondering if the amount of poison resist debuff is effected by anatomy, because the lowering of poison reaist is important to the functionality of the skill

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Short answer: drop resist, 110 mage, 100 anatomy, 120 necro. Rest in med. You don't need a Mage weapon using defense wrestle, and can use a modded book as main for a med/mage boost, then switch to slayers when damaging.

You can use the necro mastery conduit to apply corpse skin to a bunch of gathered targets at once then poison field them.

Don't need to worry too much about mr on suit as you'll have wraith form/dark wisp. make the char as negative karma as possible and lock it as it boosts the wisps effect.