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Elemental Spells 101
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The Official Haelrahv Message Forum Forum Index » Mages » Elemental Spells 101
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HR-Trevor
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Joined: 04 Oct 2002
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 Post Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 7:42 am    Post subject: Elemental Spells 101
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I thought I'd take a moment to give some tips to Mages on how they can best use their spells. I think many Mages tend to use a small arensal and rarely deviate from that list of spells, but you might find good cause to juggle your strategy a bit after reading this post.

First of all, let's cover the basics. You have three tiers of single-target elemental spells.

Tier I: Icy Aura, Singeing Strike, Jolt, Acid Bolt.

Tier II: Howling Gale, Flame Wave, Lightning Bolt, Disintegrate.

Tier III: Glacial Winds, Incineration, Chain Lightning, Consuming Cloud.

Each tier is successively more powerful than the next, and consumes more focus per cast. The roundtimes also vary sometimes. Notably, tier III roundtimes are much higher because these spells are much stronger.

Elemental Resistances:
It's worthy to note that each thing you fight has specific weaknesses and strengths. In some cases a creature may be virtually equally weak or strong to all elements, but this is often not the case. Quite often, a creature will be much more resistant to one type and weaker to another.

This difference can be huge in terms of how many spells you need to cast, or how strong your spellcasts need to be. It's definitely worth your time to learn what element is best to use against a creature and then use spells of that type.

Also, there may be creatures you run into that are resistant to all elements. Simply put, this is a difficult creature for you to fight, but since no creatures are fully resistant to all elements, you can take it out with enough persistence. Still, this isn't a creature you're going to want to regularly hunt if you can help it.

The Elements Themselves:
You have four element damage types to work with: Cold, Heat, Electrical and Erosion. Here's a summary of each:

Cold: Moderately low damage, strikes several body areas. High stun chance.

Heat: Moderately high damage, strikes a few body areas. Can set a target on fire.

Electrical: Highest damage, strikes very few body areas.

Erosion: Low damage, hits tons of body areas.

Scenarios for each element:

Scenario: You're starting a fight with something that could potential harm you quite a bit, quick. You want to weaken it, and if you're lucky, immobilize it completely so you can get another shot in before it does.

Solution: Use a cold based attack. It does acceptable damage so you can weaken them by sapping out that HP, and it has a good chance to stun them.

----

Scenario: You're fighting several things and you want to weaken one so you can move on to others for maximum safety.

Solution: Use a heat-based attack. You'll do good damage and possibly good HP damage, plus you will have a chance to set them on fire which will drain health while you move on to the next target. You could also use a cold attack here to hopefully stun them, or you could use erosion to sap out HP to weaken them down.

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Scenario: You're looking to hit something with a strike that is meant purely to do as much damage as possible and you really don't care where. For instance, as a first shot to zap out a lot of health and do major damage to a few areas.

Solution: Use an electrical attack, preferably the most powerful one you have. This will do the most damage possible and allow you to follow up with a weaker spread attack like erosion or cold.

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Scenario: You've softened up an opponent and you want to finish them off in an efficient manner.

Solution: Use an erosion attack. If your opponent has low health points, your goal is to hit a vital area and do even small amounts of damage so you can zap out what's left of their HP. Since erosion attacks affect the most body areas at once you're most likely to hit vital areas. Remember, you can't kill an opponent via HP damage if you hit a non vital area like a limb.

Setting up good combinations:
The best results can come from mixing elements. A good example is electrical and erosion. The electrical attack deals maximum HP damage, then the erosion attack finishes the job.

Another good combination might be electrical, heat, and erosion. Also, heat, cold, erosion. The first deals great HP damage with less chance of "opportunity loss" by using heat as the second element (more areas hit) instead of a second shot of electrical then ends with an erosion blast to finish. The second combo would be for something relatively below you in level but enough that three shots are necessary.

Mixing strengths:
It may be tempting to use only the strongest spells you have, however, this may not be the best plan. You have limited focus to power your spells, and mixing strengths may help you conserve power while getting the job done just as quickly.

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These are just general guidelines and the most important strategic tactic you can employ is experimentation. However, if you're not trying new things out and mixing up your spells to find maximum impact, you're either going to take longer than necessary to kill things or you'll waste valuable focus needlessly. Experiment and you're likely to find yourself to be a more formidable, efficient caster.
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Kit
Cybertech Extraordinaire~


Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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 Post Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 7:46 am    Post subject: Re: Elemental Spells 101
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Inaira and I (and many others as well), helped to compile this list of creatures, weaknesses, what doesn't effect them as much, and other stuff. Here, for easy refrence: tech.haelrahv.net/creatures.html
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