Pot Usage: SP full delta vs at the Eye

soundslegit

Seekers make less money from full deltas than anyone else in the squad due to pot usage and repairs. I'm curios, what saves the most on mana pots, doing full delta at the Eye with mana auras or making it go faster by doing full delta at the SP?

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

I'd guess you are right that they use the most mp pots, especially since the Divine Quest mp pots that all my other chars use wont keep vortex up. However if you have a barb or bm pulling to the vortex they'll take the most beating since its the greatest number of mobs. By they time aggro switches to seeker 2/3 of the mobs should be dead and mostly just the inc life, def, mag resistance should be left. You can also work with BMs and psys's to stun more often or kill faster so the mobs rarely hit you.

Anyways, the "faster" Delta at spawnpoint is kind of a misnomer. Waves come 2 minutes apart regardless of spawn or eye. The only time saving done is you don't have to wait the 90 second travel time of the bosses to spawn then walk all the way to the eye since you can kill them right there and start the next stage. So lets say 5 waves (2 mins each) and 1 minute to kill the boss=11m stage at the eye vs 12.5mins per stage at the spawn. There are a few double bosses, like stage 3, so that adds another 1.5mins. You're basically comparing an 1 hour 50 minute spawn point delta to a 2 hour 5 minute eye. About 15 minutes. Not huge.

The real reason its faster is if people at the eye want to hold bosses to dig beans then that can take forever.

...

The straight out answer is Eye is cheaper for a few reasons. First, little mp cost. I think the mp aura level needs to be level 3 though for it to keep up with seekers, or bring +mp gear. Second, attack auras would increase kill speed so less repair.

The real answer is learn to use other skills than idiot/afk vortexing. It's much more effective to debuff the mobs with Soulsever then use blade afinity to cast Gemini Slash and all your aoes then put up vortex. Half the time after 5 aoes in about 7 seconds and some huge debuffs (usually combined with HF or subsea) you'll look at the remaining 10 mobs and think vortex isn't even worth it.

Soulsever will increase your entire squads dd, making mobs die quicker, decreasing your repair. 10%, not a huge deal but it becomes 13% with Subsea, 26% with HF, about 40% with Mire... And it stays on. Vortex also has a trickle damage effect where its continuous small amount of damage meaning aggro will change to you will you continue to trickle damage and you'll have a high repair, while a combo like Blade Affinity->Ion Spike->Dark Cloud->Stalagstrike->Gemini Slash (plus debuff effect)->Darkcloud->Stalagstrike can be pulled off in about 10 second and kill most the mobs before they ever reach you so you take far less hits. Burst damage vs trickle damage.

Also, you can use Cloud Eruption and drop vortex so you don't have to feed the meter constantly. Cloud eruption costs 500 stamina, which is less than 1 chi stone. On my server thats about 1k coin, while mp food runs about 650 coins each and I use one about every 12 seconds. So if I'm going to stand there longer than about 20 seconds before new mobs reach me then its more efficient to drop the vortex and CE instead. Then I can move around, and start the next wave with debuffs.

My personal technique is to use the above combo and debuff everything, then decide if I need to vortex. If I vortex I will then drop the vortex with about 5 mobs left and use them to build chi back up for the next set.