Heavy Mystic?

Mana.

First and foremost.

Mysts are the biggest mana hogs in the game atm. Gimping your int just to wear heavy armor will cost you a ton more in pots and charms. And mysts have some of the best heals and self buffs in the game. The idea of a myst going HA is somewhat b:question

Mysts have no phys attack tree like a veno that will warrant you to get more STR.

First of all i don't give a damn about mana. So i won't mention it.

As mystic... pretty much everything a mystic does is influenced by your magic attack (nukes, heals and your pet's damage), while a veno in fox form has more benefits on their physical defense and they also won't be needing their matk to do their job better, which is debuff.
So basically no matter what your gameplay is, you'll need your matk to get the best out of your mystic, and this means the more matk you have the better.

I can write a wall of texts explaining why arcane is the way to go, but im not going to spend too much time here by sharing my experiences. My veno is HA for about 2 years now, with nirvana gear. My mystic is pure magic, and definitely don't want to change either one.

LA can be even worse then HA because you'll have low ends on both Pdef and Mdef. It doesn't give you more survivability compared to arcane, but of course it depends on the way you shard, but that also counts for arcane. More crit with LA is a mootpoint because we have the skill Lucky Break. I have to say however, LA is definitely a build that works up till level 90. From 90 onwards, i definitely wouldn't advise it.

Also take in mind that arcane has the flexibility to get vit points in their stat build for more HP. And be aware that as support, you'll not function as a tank. So think about which build benefits your squad the most.

In the end it's your choice of course, and hope this helps.

.

Retsuko - Heavens Tear wrote: »

As mystic... pretty much everything a mystic does is influenced by your magic attack (nukes, heals and your pet's damage), while a veno in fox form has more benefits on their physical defense and they also won't be needing their matk to do their job better, which is debuff.

pdef is worth what when you rarely tank, can't use BP, suck at aoe? EVERY class debuffs; Veno is dd just like every other class. Mystic also has Verdant Shell (no need to gimp ability for bonus pdef), Aegis Sphere, and healing herbs which heal a certain amount regardless of mag. I don't disagree that HA is fail for mystic: I disagree that HA is good for any mage class.

LA can be even worse then HA because you'll have low ends on both Pdef and Mdef. It doesn't give you more survivability compared to arcane, but of course it depends on the way you shard, but that also counts for arcane. More crit with LA is a mootpoint because we have the skill Lucky Break. I have to say however, LA is definitely a build that works up till level 90. From 90 onwards, i definitely wouldn't advise it.

LA is never good for mages.

Also take in mind that arcane has the flexibility to get vit points in their stat build for more HP. And be aware that as support, you'll not function as a tank. So think about which build benefits your squad the most.

Vit is for barbs to stat. Any other class does it to mooch off other players.

Synta - Dreamweaver wrote: »

My mystic is pure, but i'm going to advocate LA simply cos I suspect nobody else will otherwise xD

My mystic was LA for ages, and to be honest, I loved it. When I statted to pure, I noticed the difference immediately. I didn't hit that much harder, the nerf is really not that bad. Maybe 10-15% at most (it's a fair bit, but nothing near what people make it out to be).

During progression from xx-9x; it can make the difference of 4 hit kills vs 3 hit kills which is ~33% faster progression. 3 hit kills vs 4 means 1/4 of the MP used to kill. Add this to the better max mp, mp recovery (including clear thoughts + eruption). You end up spending less than half as much doing the same thing using less time. -Better equips pay for themselves.

Venomancer skills have a high % weapon damage component in their skills, which means that base magic attack is less of their damage. Even so, with the gear and shards available today, HA venos are pretty much antiquated. Their damage is garbage, and survivability isn't terribly better than that of an arcane.

Given that, while HA was once a semi-viable build for venos, it never has been or will be for mystics, for several reasons:
1. Lower % wep damage. The highest % weapon dmg for a mystic skull (not including 100 skills or Thicket, nor AS which must be treated differently due to its bizzare properties) is 100%. Compare this to venos' 300% on ironwood:
Lv 11 ironwood is:
Throw a splinted bug at the enemy inflicting Wood damage equal to base magic
damage plus 300% of weapon damage plus 2770.0.

Lv 11 Bramble Tornado is:
Deals Wood damage equal to your basic Magic
Attack, plus 100% of Weapon Damage, plus 3750

Now, base magic dmg + 300% wep dmg vs base mag dmg + 100% wep dam.
Supposing both characters are using heavy armor and a +10 R8 wep:

http://pwcalc.com/5c64919b997604ed
vs
http://pwcalc.com/2ad406bf274605dc

Mystic mag attack is 8954-10325, averaging out to 9639.5 and wep dmg is 1695-2027, averaging out to 1861.
Veno mag attack is 8073-11406, averaging out to 9739.5, and wep dmg is 1522-2329, averaging out to 1925.5.

(Note here - Have to add rings and shards to wep dmg, so will do this below:)
So, ironwood does:
9739.5 + 3*(1925.5 + 150 + 222) + 2770 = 18997
Bramble does:
9639.5 + 1*(1861 + 150 + 222) + 3750 = 15622.5

That's 3.5k or so less, which means significantly less damage in pve and a good deal less in pvp, too. On the other hand, if both are pure magic, only the base mag damage changes. For veno, it becomes 11923-16846, or 14384.5, whilst mystic is 13225-15250, or 14237.5. In terms of raw magic attack, they remain roughly the same, but look at how that affects the damage calculation:

Ironwood does:
14384.5 + 3*(1925.5 + 150 + 222) + 2770 = 24347
Bramble does:
14237.5 + 1*(1861 + 150 + 222) + 3750 = 20220.5

Where am I going with this? Honestly... This led me to a surprising conclusion, because I set out to do one thing and proved another. Somehow, despite the 300% in veno skills, the increase in damage from going pure magic is roughly the same as it is for mystics. I guess that kind of defeats my own point, but I'll leave my numbers here if they're of interest to anyone.

That said, you should note the actual numbers. Aside from the 100 skill, AS, and cragg, Bramble Tornado is a mystic's hardest hitting skill, and compared to a veno skill (venos being often wrongfully considered a poor dd class) of the same chi cost, it is quite a bit weaker. Thus, I think a case can be made for mystics needing the raw damage from being full magic more. Also, with Verdant Shell, a mystic has better pdef as an arcane than a veno does (foxform aside, as one cannot always stay in fox form). The only reason to even consider HA is for PvP purposes though. No caster should be HA for pve--its detrimental, because damage differences are much more noticible in pve than in pvp, and for a magic class, there is less reason to need survivability in pve, much less physical since those things you would be conceivably tanking (Haunted Headless aside) likely have a magic attack at range.

Finally, there is the cost. Good HA for a caster costs more than AA. Not only do you need the gear itself, which shines more at (expensive) high refines due to HA refining more HP, but you need stat points. Notice that my builds all use Love: Up and Down. It is possible to wear HA without this tome, but it is very difficult to do so and will likely cause anyone attempting to do so to have to forego either weapon or armor quality. And HA is only even worth considering if you can get high quality armor and weapons. As an experienced PvPer, can tell you that HA venos, even in fox, who think TT90 green is good enough are a total joke, both for my BM and my Veno.

To the above, plus trollz; spoken like true carebears. Granted vit is **** on mystics, but it's great on a veno. Only a pver could reasonably say it's not.

TolanSky - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Not to nitpick, but this is incorrect. The Mystic Skill "Absorb Soul" does 125% magic damage + between 486.2 to 2900 damage to players. Additionally it does 200% magic damage + between 907.0 to 5800 damage to monsters. So, yeah your claim doesn't hold water.

If I am doing my math correctly and using the numbers from the builds you provided and including Absorb Soul in the calculations I come to 23,708 damage for a minimum damage Absorb Soul, and 52,900 for a max damage Absorb Soul. On the other hand I come to 15,409 damage for a minimum damage Ironwood and 42,326 for a max damage Ironwood. So even discounting Thicket and the level 100 Skills, Mystic is able to out class Venomancer in the damage department. Granted, Absorb Soul is so slow in the channel speed department as to be virtually uncastable. But the point still stands.

"Aside from the 100 skill, AS, and cragg, Bramble Tornado is a mystic's hardest hitting skill." =P
I caught that, and fixed it after I posted, yeah.
Edit: Whoops, I looked at the wrong place in my post. My bad, I forgot to edit that first instance when I was fixing it.

I chose ironwood and bramble because they're roughly equivalents, both costing a small amount of chi, having small casting times, etc. It's worth noting that veno can gets between 20-30% more dmg if using amp, which I didn't include because it's outside the raw damage, and because that would lead into comparing other debuffs which I'm not as ready to do. My posts might look like they're from the archer forum, but they're not really. *cough*

Also, just to note, if I'd been doing absorb soul, I would've used the PvP damage since, tpo me, the idea of a mystic going HA for pve is laughable. I would suspect that you used the PvE damage, though I'm not sure since working through the attack math once was bad enough. Honestly, I should've known this was going to be the case--when trying for max damage on dmg-test npc, I used the same weapon (+10 Sinrabansho) on my veno (85 vit white) and mystic (pure mag) and even without amp, my veno hit consistantly higher numbers with ironwood than my mystic did with Weeping Breeze Dance. The latter is stronger in PvP than AS, and with Lucky Break I could make it crit. AS damage could not be tested because it is applied as a one-tick DoT, not an attack, which means it cannot take amplify damage or attack lv bonuses (relevant in the age of perma Jones's Blessings).

If you don't believe my claim that AS is a DoT (something I'll add to my guide when I get around to it), then I present the following evidence:
1. Does not show in dmg log of user or target
2. Still causes social agro if used
3. Ignores attack and defense levels
4. Ignores immunities (try, for example, Myriad Rainbow on a damage immune mob; it can still take the physical bleed DoT because the initial hit does no damage)
5. Does not wake up a sleeping target (indicates that the actual skill hit does no damage)
6. Is blocked by the use of genie skill "Faith," which blocks any debuffs
7. Cannot crit

From the above, particularly 1, 3, 6, and 7, I believe it is quite reasonable to conclude that it is a dot.

Anyway, sorry if that seemed excessive, I didn't mean it as a rant, just a rambling on why I chose to compare IW and Bramble instead of IW and AS.

Nah, saying it's a DoT is the easiest way to explain all of its strange behaviors. Marista also forgot to add full damage air to ground to her list.

TolanSky - Heavens Tear wrote: »

You are aware that at max level our Res Buff skill costs 2,900 MP to use? That means that by itself it will almost always tick one's MP charm especially if that individual decides to go the Heavy Armor or Light Armor route instead of the Arcane Armor route. I think the point that Nine_Lives was trying to make is that Mystic is the one class with the skill that has the single highest MP cost in the game at the moment. Even if Cleric is the class that ultimately uses the most MP over the course of any given boss battle.

People that concerned over mp costs don't use MP charms.

Barbarian is not the only class that can benefit from a high Vitality score. Both Seeker and (at least in theory) Blademaster can also benefit from a high Vitality. Seeker more so than Blademaster as it is the other primary Tanking class these days other than Barbarian. So claiming that Vitality is something that is for Barbs, and that other classes that use it are simply mooching off of other players, is quite a silly statement in my opinion.

Barb has the highest return on HP per vit AND has a major atk that is based on max HP. Not sure, but i don't think BMs generally stat vit either especially when many use HA which has higher return on HP per refine.

Additionally mage classes that have a serious flaw in the base HP department can also benefit from both sharding HP Gems, and from allocating points into Vitality. Especially if they are going for the Arcane Robes build instead of any of the other builds. Though I am of the opinion that people using the pure magic and arcane robes build should actually be sharding Garnet's in at least half of their armor socket slots.

Garnets? -Really? For those rare ranged phys mobs?

Wait, if I am reading this right, your entire argument in favor of the Light Armor builds... is based on the fact that with Light Armor Builds you have a higher critical strike rate, and thus can kill things faster with your attacks? You do realize that Mystic is a pet class, and thus can kill things faster even without a high critical hit rate due to the fact that they in essence double team enemies?

I don't argue for LA. LA is fail for any mage.

And as for saving MP, the easiest way I have found for saving MP is to turn your pets special attacks off, then sick the pet on an enemy using the attack enemy option for the pet instead of using the auto-attack option that makes the pet attack an enemy when you attack an enemy. That will save considerable amounts of MP, may not be the most efficient way to kill mobs, but it certainly is the cheapest MP wise.

Fail advice: You can cast Resurrect, Transference, Verdant Shell, and more and not lose any MP by timing the casting of Clear Thoughts. On [?] mobs and bosses: Storm Mistress's skill is more MP efficient than Nature's Vengeance. Even on 100 normal quest mobs I dealt with today; I needed no pots and had Storm Mistress's skill on default using Master Li's Technique and Celestial Eruption for MP recovery. There are occasions where turning off summons skills can save you on MP but that's usually in a fail squad that requires you to spam out heals in which case you'd probably be using Salvation anyway which requires MP for protection buffs. Fails will cost healers regardless.