I have a question.

_Raido - Archosaur

In a mass PK/1v1/TW situation,

Would ToP be better than Aquaflame Armor?
Why would either be better in all 3 situations?
Would it be different for fully geared Demon/Sage Wizards?
Is the utility of a 16second Extreme Poison better than the damage reduction of windshield?

Thanks. -Rai

Adroit - Lost City

I'm going to just assume a dex genie already (which you should have for spark anyway) and a purify wep.. but here goes..

Aquaflame armor is almost certainly superior in all three situations. ToP can be used for two purposes, the first is if you are close to 50% hp and use it to tick your charm (to decrease the chance of a charm bypass) and the second is for the heal. The first one is easy to see where AFA is superior, for the sake of argument let us pretend you were fighting another wizzie, you have 10k hp and let's pretend other wizzy can hit you for 9k with a BIDS crit. The situation is that other wizzy has been poking your hp down to ~55% and then sleeps you and starts channeling BIDS.. and you are worried about this crit so you want to use your genie to help you. Case 1: you use ToP to tick your charm and you're up to 13k hp when the 9k crit hits you.. so you drop to 4k hp and over the next 6 seconds you gain back ~7.2k hp. Case 2: you use AFA (53% reduction with 100 dex), it hits you for less than 4.5k with a crit, and you are back to full hp with the charm tick and continue the 50% reduction for the next 10 seconds. I hope you can see the obvious advantages to AFA in this example, #1 AFA costs less to use (95 energy vs 115 energy), it will work regardless what hp you're at (if you are between 6.5k hp and 9k hp.. ToP will not tick your charm and you'll just get bypassed because the heal isn't instant), after the hit you are very vulnerable on ToP.. the heal may not come soon enough while you're low on hp (not to mention the wiz could use mortal reversion when you're low and put you in a bad situation again in a few seconds).. where AFA you survive the hit and then go to 100% hp and still have a massive reduction that'll carry you until your charm is able to tick again (I'll address the amp in a sec).

The second use for ToP is just for the heal, usually if your charm has already ticked and you don't think you'll make it to your next tick in time. A lot of people use ToP in situations like this, but the heal is just too slow.. and often times just doesn't save you. Again with a non-str genie it's only going to heal you ~72% in the full 6 seconds, so if you need that hp in the next 2 seconds.. you are only getting ~26% back by then.. and it just is not well suited for this kind of thing imo. AFA will more than double your survival instantly, and again you want to use it as early as possible (the more hp you have.. the more they'll have to go through even w/ the reduction), but it is more forgiving than ToP. Even if you use AFA at 36% hp, you gain more survival instantly than you will receive from ToP in the next 6 seconds.. and is just in general far more likely to save you.

Another side note is that AFA cannot be purged, so that is very nice in all pk/1v1s/TW.. if you are getting hit by archers and stuff the ToP can be purged off you but AFA cannot. I cannot stress enough how huge it is that AFA increases your survival instantly (by more than double), whereas ToP works over a time period and usually increases your survival by less than 72%. ToP also loses some of the effectiveness from heals if the charm ticks at an inconvenient time (if it ticks just as you get the heal.. the heal is wasted obviously). I think that the only two possible scenarios that I could come up with that would ever put ToP in better standing is if your opponent can one shot you for ~106-129% of your hp (can't be more or less) and you are at between 50.01% hp and ~61.1% hp where the charm tick with ToP will save you and AFA would not (extremely rare case for both the opponent to hit in that very narrow range and for you to be in that very narrow range esp with hp pots defense charms etc).. or the other scenario where you are below 36% hp and use ToP.. then don't get hit for the next 6 seconds (lol) where you'd gain slightly more survival at second 6 over AFA. 99.99% of cases AFA is the better choice, the situation (pk/1v1/TW), and wizard culti don't change anything at all. AFA is perhaps even better in pk and TW because the animation is less flashy and cannot be purged.

The only other downside to AFA is the ~31% amp after 10 seconds that lasts for another 10 seconds. In most cases where I use AFA I use it to buy time for a purify proc, where I'll be out and kiting around waiting for my charm to cd while the amp is there. I've been using AFA quite a bit lately, and can say that the amp afterwards has not been a deciding factor in any death that I can recall in the past several weeks. The amp is about equivalent to having sharptooth on you, which isn't all that dangerous, and I'll usually be kiting during the amp duration anyway.. so this really isn't much of an issue in my experience. So AFA costs less, effect is almost always better, lasts longer, and is less flashy.. if you are only deciding between ToP and AFA on a dex genie, I'd strongly recommend AFA

_Raido - Archosaur

My genie is 85/100 Longevity with:

Extreme Poison
Fortify
Spark (Obviously)
Badge of Courage
Tree of Protection
Holy Path
Absolute Domain

As it stands I still never use ToP, so I'll be replacing with AFA.

Gear isn't an issue, trust me. Plus I do have a purify weapon.

I was thinking of replacing EP with Wind Shield just for the damage reduction but in almost all PvP situations I can keep it up on the opponent or target almost constantly provided I'm not being targeted.

If another wizard was going to bypass me I'd just AD and kite until my genie was not exhausted anymore. I'd just be worried if they stopped channeling it.b:shocked

Nurfed_You - Harshlands

afa is hard to see cast. so you can let htem waste 2 sparks on you while you take ~40% of hte normal damage they would do. I got AD on my genie and never ever used it.