CA levels: the same question you always get

[BlindPetey 0]

I'm new to Sacred, and I've read around quite a bit trying to figure out how to balance my CA levels. I still am not sure I've gathered any "rules of thumb" for them. Care to help?

 

Right now I have an Astral Lord on Silver, around level 30. His SF and NA are both at level 1 still, as I'm afraid of raising them too high and damaging their utility (as I did with AG, which now takes 10 seconds or so between uses). When I look at high level toons posted online, they have massively high CA levels (100+) - how much of that, usually, is from eating runes, and how much from item boosts?

 

I'm gamely struggling to kill enemies with extensive use of Rallied Souls, but that has obvious limitations (such as boss fights). I'm about to unlock perma-Veil, but that will just allow me to avoid the issue rather than confront it. I also have a backup ranged Dryad I'm running a bit now, as her weapons-based skills seem to bypass the suckness of low level CAs due to their damage source being weapon damage - again, avoiding the issue rather than confronting it.

 

Concrete questions:

1. When could I expect to start finding a lot of +all CAs or +all Astral CAs? Is it worth constantly forging runes in and out of weapons? Should I just chow a dozen SF and NA runes and have done with it?

2. I've seen "keep duration > regen" as a rule of thumb around for many CAs.

3. I've also seen "keep one or two main damage CA spammable and have the rest as powerful as you can."

4. Can someone explain the full implications of raising CA level on Aspect cooldown (as opposed to cooldown for arts with cooldown times, which I get)

 

I'm sorry these are so remedial, but the Xbox documentation is laughable when it comes to even playing the game, much less understanding strategic choices in character building.

Edited May 21, 2009 by BlindPetey

[Dragon Brother 619]

I can't answer anything to shadow warrier specific, but some basic regen stuff I can help with. First of all leveling up Combat Arts only increases the regen of that particular ca. Unless it's a buff most of which give a blanket penalty to all Combat Arts. In regards to duration > cookdown that's pretty useful however since some of the Combat Arts have cooldown and another regen before they can be used, that's not always possible. General rule? Well I suppose that's. More of a preference thing. I usually try to find a happy medium of damage and regen where it all works well. Experiment a bit if you're not sure tho. Go for a big hitting slow ca and then try spammamble ones. See what works best for ya. And as to high level characters, socketing alot of +all skills seems to be the go, at high levels this can be huge bonuses to everything giving huge regen bonuses meaning you eat runes instead of socketing so many.

 

I realize I haven't answered everything but hope it helps some

[Knuckles 904]

Alot depends on your skill choices and how many points you've assigned to them. I typically keep regen on attack CA low and keep buff level at maximum (in early lvls I look at the applicable Aspect-it'll say what highest level without penalty is) I would increase NA since it's a buff and on SF I typically take the reduction in cooldown for 1st mod.

 

If you list your skill choices/levels I could probably give you a more detailed answer to help you out