couple issues/questions/thoughts

[Gooch]

So after doing some testing with my new air savant with a completely overhauled list of spells I noticed something that seems amiss. When using maximize, on any of the spells that had their sp cost reduced in U9, they ended up costing more than double the sp. They seem to cost what they used to cost before U9. For ex, scorching ray costs 8 sp but maximized it cost me 27. Anyone else notice? I'm using maximize all the time now because of the SLA's but it's costly on spells like this.

the range on ray spells and cones friggin rocks!

Should I take GH or Reconstruct? One HAS to go and scrolls are costly...

Prismatic spray takes the bonuses for your highest enhancements/item buffs no matter what ray hits and the targets can be hit with multiple rays....almost all of which have uncapped level maxes or instakill. best damage spell? Am i missing a negative to it other than cone-pointing issues?

Cyclonic blast is uncapped too and falls under the air savant, but is there a reason to keep both?

I've read multiple posts on how much people like deep slumber for helpless bonus and crushing despair for the will save debuff but they seem to require Heighten to make them land reliably and then therefore cost quite a bit to cast. It's then roughly the same cost as casting 2 of your planned spell (aoe damage or mass hold/disco) but without the hassle of trying to get all of the mobs into the debuff/sleep. I am new to the use of those spells so maybe i'm missing something with strategies and just need some advice.

LOVE the SLA's, new DoTs, and the ele curse!

[Jaid314]

of those two spells, i recommend reconstruct. 150 point reconstruct with fast cooldowns will do you far more good than 20 minute GH with fast cooldowns...

only negative i know of with prismatic spray is that IME it has terrible targeting.

cyclonic blast should be capped at 20d6 last i checked. it has the advantage of dealing untyped damage, which is nice and tends to work on just about anything. is it worth it to you? well, that i'm not sure of. for many air savants, i suspect they're already taking eladar's electric surge and niac's biting cold, leaving just two spells available. one will likely go to ball lightning, leaving one last slot. cyclonic blast is not a bad choice for it, but then neither is break enchantment, and it's good to have one or the other for removing persistent AOEs. which one you should take depends on whether you place greater value on dispelling debuffs on your party and buffs on your enemies, or if you favor dealing nearly-unresistable damage with a knockdown effect on the side (essentially single target, though hitting 2 or 3 at a time is not impossible)

edit: missed answering the last bit.

crushing despair gives the will save penalty as long as it gets through spell resistance; no heighten required. but yes, it is as expensive as casting twice in some cases. on the other hand, if it makes your spell land on the first try, it may very well be worth it anyways.

[Tid12]

So after doing some testing with my new air savant with a completely overhauled list of
the range on ray spells and cones friggin rocks!

Indeed! loving it!

Should I take GH or Reconstruct? One HAS to go and scrolls are costly...

Faster recon is better than faster GH, im an air savant and took Recon.

Cyclonic blast is uncapped too and falls under the air savant, but is there a reason to keep both?

I tried it but dont really like it..better Lv 5 spells IMHO. Niacs, Eladrin, Prot and Ball for me. Break ench can be scrolled imho.

[MindCake]

So after doing some testing with my new air savant with a completely overhauled list of spells I noticed something that seems amiss. When using maximize, on any of the spells that had their sp cost reduced in U9, they ended up costing more than double the sp. They seem to cost what they used to cost before U9. For ex, scorching ray costs 8 sp but maximized it cost me 27. Anyone else notice? I'm using maximize all the time now because of the SLA's but it's costly on spells like this.

I'm guessing you have some efficient maximize enhancements and items? Otherwise it'd be much worse.

Maximize costs 25 SP, just like before. So it's completely not worth the cost on all but a handful of spells.
I'm running with maximize off for that very reason.

[Gooch]

oops. for some reason i was thinking maximize was double sp cost. my bad. I wish there was a way to program which spells you want to maximize and which you didn't cause it obviously rocks for the SLA's and the high level spells (even some of them dropped in sp cost like polar ray being 20) but blows for things like scorching ray. But if i'm not going to use it, why did I take the meta? Should I just have empower instead?

I'm thinking reconstruct too but i can hear the people now yelling at me for not having GH...

Right, cyclonic is capped at 20. I guess i was thinking in terms of it not being capped at 15 like CoC is so it seems tons better. However, after studying the description more it does say that it is a "bolt" spell and not a cone so hitting more than one monster could prove difficult. I'll have to test more I suppose but that might be worth dropping. I've never used break enchantment but i'll take a look further.

I never thought about taking both lvl 5 DoT's. That woudl be killer on boss's....but also not necessary if there are better choices. I'm thinking that keeping hold monster until I get mass HM is probably best....then switch it out to niacs or break ench. I really want teleport tho! I go through tons of scrolls ugh.

thanks for the comments

[Tid12]

I'm thinking reconstruct too but i can hear the people now yelling at me for not having GH...

Carry scrolls of GH, they will yell more at you if you havent Recon trust me :P

[Gnorbert]

Maximize is still something you want for times when SP conservation isn't an issue. If the goal is to do as much damage as possible in a short period of time then you want to have maximize available to turn on for that. Otherwise you can turn it off for a little while.

Or you can look at it this way. Most casters used to run around with maximize on all the time... and now that the spell points of spells have been reduced suddenly it's too costly to use maximize? So overall you can cast more spells than before but because of the relative cost it's no longer ok to use maximize as much?

Now sorcs have some spell like abilities and lower cost spells.... the fact that maximize still costs the same doesn't suddenly make it worse to use. In fact you have more effective SP enabling you to keep it on.

[MindCake]

Or you can look at it this way. Most casters used to run around with maximize on all the time... and now that the spell points of spells have been reduced suddenly it's too costly to use maximize? So overall you can cast more spells than before but because of the relative cost it's no longer ok to use maximize as much?

Now sorcs have some spell like abilities and lower cost spells.... the fact that maximize still costs the same doesn't suddenly make it worse to use. In fact you have more effective SP enabling you to keep it on.

Before U9 it was _more_ SP efficient to cast a level 4 or higher spell with maximize on, than it was to cast it twice.

Right now it's more efficient to cast the spell, and either chain in some lowbie spells like scorching ray, melf, mm, or whatever while waiting for the cooldown, or carry two high level nukes and just cast two. More button mashing, same or more damage, less SP cost.

Sure, with costs reduced you can cast more. But SP still remains a resource that you need to manage, at least usually, so you need efficiency.

[Alizar]

Before U9 it was _more_ SP efficient to cast a level 4 or higher spell with maximize on, than it was to cast it twice.

Right now it's more efficient to cast the spell, and either chain in some lowbie spells like scorching ray, melf, mm, or whatever while waiting for the cooldown, or carry two high level nukes and just cast two. More button mashing, same or more damage, less SP cost.

Sure, with costs reduced you can cast more. But SP still remains a resource that you need to manage, at least usually, so you need efficiency.

The SLA's get free use of metamagics so I would think running around with these off is a bad idea. For the most part I cycle between the three earth savant SLA's and acid rain with all metas on and do very nice damage. Much higher then before U9. Spell point conservation is no longer much of a worry. I find I have more then enough in between shrines now.

[MindCake]

The SLA's get free use of metamagics so I would think running around with these off is a bad idea. For the most part I cycle between the three earth savant SLA's and acid rain with all metas on and do very nice damage. Much higher then before U9. Spell point conservation is no longer much of a worry. I find I have more then enough in between shrines now.

I'd say it's a matter of taste, as it's always a tradeoff:
a) Waste some time and SP with unmaximized SLAs, but save SP on spells.
b) Waste some SP with maximized spells, but save some time by higher damage overall.
c) Waste some time and sanity by toggling metamagics on and off every 4 seconds.

For me a) wins for now, because Spell point conservation is still a worry. I don't have my archmagi and shroud SP items yet, and I don't know all the quests to know where the shrine is to pick a correct pace. I figure this may change when I just want to get the nth run through [whatever] done.

[Thesoulgazer]

The SLA's get free use of metamagics so I would think running around with these off is a bad idea. For the most part I cycle between the three earth savant SLA's and acid rain with all metas on and do very nice damage. Much higher then before U9. Spell point conservation is no longer much of a worry. I find I have more then enough in between shrines now.

SLA? What is that?

EDIT: Oh, the intigrated spells.

[Gooch]

I suppose i'll sound like a cheap4ss but spending a ton (they are like 120pp?) on GH scrolls to buff others is tough to swallow. Take away what we make on vendor trash now used for crafting and i'm going to lose money every group quest. :/

[Seventh]

I suppose i'll sound like a cheap4ss but spending a ton (they are like 120pp?) on GH scrolls to buff others is tough to swallow. Take away what we make on vendor trash now used for crafting and i'm going to lose money every group quest. :/

Grab Recon and stop dropping GH on others. If someone pesters you for GH tell them to go screw themselves or to grind out Xorian Cipher for a gird, depending on how charitable you feel.

[azmodeus1]

I suppose i'll sound like a cheap4ss but spending a ton (they are like 120pp?) on GH scrolls to buff others is tough to swallow. Take away what we make on vendor trash now used for crafting and i'm going to lose money every group quest. :/

yea i stopped buying heal scrolls on my cleric, i just let the party/raid wipe now.

/sarcasm off...

part of the job of an arcane IS the buffs, too many are forgetting that role for the sheer fun of nuking...to which i can see the appeal. with most arcane dropping extend, melee are rarely being displaced for melee heavy quests and while the arcane doesnt' notice the difference, the sp amount to heal for the increase of melee dmg is huge. just keep the other factors in mind when choosing spell selection please.

[Gooch]

yea i stopped buying heal scrolls on my cleric, i just let the party/raid wipe now.

/sarcasm off...

part of the job of an arcane IS the buffs, too many are forgetting that role for the sheer fun of nuking...to which i can see the appeal. with most arcane dropping extend, melee are rarely being displaced for melee heavy quests and while the arcane doesnt' notice the difference, the sp amount to heal for the increase of melee dmg is huge. just keep the other factors in mind when choosing spell selection please.

I'm not understanding what you are saying completely. I certainly expect to buff, with the few buffs that I do have. I'm just torn between reconstruct and GH. I'll take and use whatever others think is best for the group but right now i'm getting differing answers.

sp amount to heal for increase in melee damage?

[icekinslayer]

I'm not understanding what you are saying completely. I certainly expect to buff, with the few buffs that I do have. I'm just torn between reconstruct and GH. I'll take and use whatever others think is best for the group but right now i'm getting differing answers.

sp amount to heal for increase in melee damage?

A heal spell hits wf's for way more hp than any reconstruct you could cast would. carry recon scrolls for the odd time you'll need em, but almost every quest is good to have GH.

[Dematto]

sp amount to heal for increase in melee damage?

With fewer sorcs passing out Displacement and refreshing it regularly, in favor of pitching nukes, melees are getting hit between 30 and 50 percent more often in many scenarios. That's what he's referring to. There's more incoming damage that has to be dealt with on the healer's end.


Even after losing Extend on offensive spells, at level 16 I'm seriously considering grabbing Extend again. I've got the feat slot for it at 18 for sure, and even my take of GSF: Conjuration isn't of dire importance, so there's possibly 2 places I could slot it in after Max/Emp/Heighten/Toughness/SF:Conj.


Wise fwom your gwave!

[Gooch]

right. maximize is suddenly more costly because it can cost 3x as much sp to cast a spell while before it was at most a little less than double. However, maximizing the SLA's for free is offsetting. Oh and I rarely used maximize before, just for boss fights, i've just been using it a lot while testing the savant build out to see max damages.

[Gooch]

one other noobish question. I see people talk about taking Quicken and I don't understand why. Every spell i've ever cast has been instant except for solid fog. Why would i need faster casting time?

If it's cooldown that it applies to then I still don't see the need cause there are plenty of other spells to cast in the meantime imo.

what am i missing?

[Zachski]

one other noobish question. I see people talk about taking Quicken and I don't understand why. Every spell i've ever cast has been instant except for solid fog. Why would i need faster casting time?

If it's cooldown that it applies to then I still don't see the need cause there are plenty of other spells to cast in the meantime imo.

what am i missing?

A quickened spell completely ignores concentration checks, meaning that nobody can ever interrupt your spells via damage. Not to mention there are a few spells that still take a second to cast even for a Sorcerer.