Swords or staves for a Dragon Mage caster/melee?

[siddham 19]

Hi. Starting out in SP and I am developing my DM as a caster/melee. I am focussing on mentalism for casting and shield with either sword or stave for melee.

So any advice? Sword or stave?

[chattius 2,520]

The dragon mage is the only class with no weapon based combat art. So it is hard to kill with melee alone.

 

If you play hybrid:

The advantage of a sword is, that you can wield a twohanded sword with x% life leech versus bosses.

The advantage of a staff is that it's damage is boosted with intelligence. And in the AddOn you can shoot with it if having staff lore.

 

If you plan to recharge spells with weapon hits and the spells are ranged, like mind strike, gust of wind, a staff shooting sniper may be better versus normal mobs than the sword variant.

 

There would be a third variant, with no staff shooting, but still with the option to play ranged: take no weapon lore but alchemy to boost the hit chance versus tough mobs. Or take no weapon lore but bargaining to buy CtH (chance to hit) jewelry.

[Dimeron 0]

I have been experimenting with a melee/caster DM in the last few days using single player character editor, mostly inspired by chattius's Sohai build.

 

The primary reason is because I want to (ab)use the two most overpowered offensive mods in the game, life leech % and regeneration per hit (RpH). The third most overpowered mod is death blow, but since Dragon mage doesn't have a weapon combat art it is hard to make use of that one.

 

Here are my conclusions

Why use weapon

We use weapons for two purposes:

Regeneration Per Hit: This allows one to focus mainly on damage but still be able to spam all the spell we want (withing reason), so long as we can intermix it with a few weapon attacks in between. Excellent against regular mobs.

Leech Life %. The most amazing mod for taking out bosses. GOW and destoryer spam may deal damage faster, but this is a lot safer since you will be draining huge amount of life every single hit.

 

Weapon Damage

Now, what Chattius said is right, your weapon damage is completely meaningless. For regular mobs, your weapon will be used to recharge your spells via RpH, and your spells will be doing the damage. For bosses, life leech and weaken will be responsible for all of the damage.

 

Weapon hit Chance

The most important stat. If you don’t hit, you are not recharging your spells or leeching life.

 

I have found that for most part attack stat, while useful, not the most important stat. Most mobs have a capped defense. Once your attack reaches certain level it is not that useful anymore, and you can easily reach an acceptable value for attack just from socketing blacksmith arts. For example, the vendor Noib whet adds 59%+ attack in silver sockets. On my level 190 test character, just with 4 or 5 vendor whet I have something like 4k attack, for every single type of weapon.

 

What you want are two item mods.

First is Opponent’s chance to evade -%.

At higher levels, they can be spawned with 30%+ on rings, and several unique jewelry also have this stat like Inquisition Token, so it shouldn’t be hard to come by. No idea how the calculation is done, all I know is socketing 2 or 3 -30% rings made huge jumps to my hit chance.

 

The other is Chance that opponents cannot evade attacks.

This stat adds straight chance you will hit your target. Ie. Chance that opponents cannot evade attacks 10% means it will add straight 10% chance to your attack, regardless of any other factor. If you can only hit a mob 30% before, you can now hit it 40%. Again, those items spawn on rare rings, but the value is typically a lot less than the Opponent chance to evade. At higher levels it is only ~8 to 11%.

 

A few Dragon Mage set items spawn with this modifier: Torik’s Sight, Thraken’s Law, and Mavv's Winged Helmet, which is very handy.

 

It should also be noted that rare rings can have both “Chance_that_opponents_cannot_evade_attacks” and “Opponent’s chance to evade -%.” You will want those.

 

staff vs swords vs pole-arms

 

Just by looking at the weapons, I would say swords are the best of the three; you can have one handed sword for RpH as well as two handed swords with life leech. But the problem is, you can’t get swords lore without getting Pole-Arm, Staff, or Tactical Lore first.

 

Tactical lore is completely useless since we don’t care about weapon damage. So if you are hell bend on getting swords, I recommend getting staff lore. That way you can have a ranged RpH, and use two handed swords with life leech to whoop bosses.

 

Weapon skill lore build comparison

 

Pole-arm lore only

Pro: Just one skill investment, great reach, thematically fit.

Con: No shield, which hurts survivability.

 

Magical Staff lore only

Pro: Ranged RpH, can use a shield, fast attack.

Con: No life leech. Meaning when you are attacking bosses you have to use a weapon without lore skill.

 

Magical Staff lore and Sword lore

Pro: Best of both worlds, you can have one handed ranged RpH or one handed melee RpH, as well as highest life leech possible on weapons

Con: You need to waste two skill slots.

 

No weapon lore, just socket a few more attack speed and hit chance increasing rings.

Pro: Use whatever weapon you want, great versatility, save up on skill slots for things like Bargaining and EP.

Con: No double strike means bosses will take longer to kill, one or two more slots needed for hit chance and attack speed rings to make up for lack of weapon lore. Using weapons above your level incur very harsh penalty.

 

PS: One good argument for no weapon lore or just pole-arm lore for bosses Signet of Thunder. Just look at that thing. You can eat 200 runes for every single combat art, combine them all into a combo, and still have it all recharged with one hit.

Edited April 8, 2010 by Dimeron

[larvi 0]

My last DM was using a shuriken with %LL. I only ran it up to about level 50 so I didn't test it at higher difficulties but it was working for me up until then. I could still use a shield and get rph from a distance which was nice and didn't have to take any weapon skills. I did have some chance to evade -% gear though. Just another option to throw out there.

[Dimeron 0]

My last DM was using a shuriken with %LL. I only ran it up to about level 50 so I didn't test it at higher difficulties but it was working for me up until then. I could still use a shield and get rph from a distance which was nice and didn't have to take any weapon skills. I did have some chance to evade -% gear though. Just another option to throw out there.

 

From my test character, it works just as well at level 190 so long as you can get 100% hit.

 

You kill slightly slower compared to having pole-arm mastery or sword mastery due to lack of double strike weapon speed increase from the mastery . Nameless guardian took like 20 to 30 seconds to kill instead of 15 seconds, but it is much safer due to being able to use a shield.

[siddham 19]

Thank you so much for those excellent replies folks. I will be reading and taking carefull note...especially RPH which I did not know about.

 

So far I am really liking the game. At first the default camera really put me off; it was nearly impossible to manage it in caves and the like; but I found a fix that has improved it 100%. Still, I bet it put a lot of casual players off...which is a shame.