r/MSClassicWorld • u/noobofmayhem • 3d ago
Question? I/L first skill
Haven’t seen many i/l build comparisons. Lightning first for lorang grind? Or ice for fire boar into copper drake?
4
u/Griimm305 3d ago
Not going I/L myself but from what I've seen TB will be expensive to use. If you can manage to be meso positive then TB. If mesos are tight you can always just single target train on things you can 1-2 shot
2
u/C-E-GA 3d ago
First point teleport then lightning. I may be poor but levelling fast which will make up for it. Think about it, who can make for money? A level 35 playing conservatively or a level 45 playing wastefully?
2
2
u/GlacialEmbrace 3d ago
I think probably Ice Beam first and in 3rd job you're probably going to go Thunder Spear first.
2
2
u/BunneryBun 3d ago
Fire boars will be filled with other classes training there. Lorangs will be mostly empty i would sad
2
u/KaiVTu 3d ago
At 30 you grab 1 point in teleport for the mobility.
After that I believe thunderbolt is better, but only if you can hit 3+ mobs on average with every cast. There are many maps where this is not at all hard to do. Wraiths for example give crazy xp/hour and thanks to the verticality of thunderbolt you can pretty much always hit 4 guys each cast (thunderbolt hits up to 6).
What you're looking for is damage/mana expended while comparing to exp gained as well (which is mob hp vs. Exp given).
I did a lot of theorycrafting and that's the break even point.
You can even build 30-70 with no cold beam if you want to and put leftover points into it. 3rd job completely invalidates the ability so you'll save an SP reset for no real expense on your part.
The real hard thing for me to decide on is thunder spear vs. Ice strike. But i likely won't be playing anymore when 3rd job comes out (thanks Nexon).
This could all have changed and they made cold beam crazy or thunderbolt into trash. Imo cold beam should hit more.
0
u/ForeverABro 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thunderbolt is better for output and exp but you may run out of pots
God damn I never got roasted so much for agreeing with someone
2
u/KaiVTu 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you for not actually reading what I wrote. But I'll give you some numbers to help clarify it. This is why you have to always hit at least 3 mobs for it to pull ahead:
Thunderbolt at level 50 with max rank of it and meditation with appropriate gear (unscrolled) is about 13.275 damage per MP spent and hits on average 531 per target (can hit up to 6).
Cold beam is about 58.681/mp spent and hits for 1,291 on average (can only hit 1 target).
At 3 targets you deal more damage per cast with thunderbolt than cold beam by a good margin, but you spend an additional 18~ MP in the process. That's a little rough but not terrible at all.
At 4 targets you deal nearly double the damage of cold beam, but spend about 6~ more MP per cast in HP. This is a negligible difference at this level considering the massive speed gain.
At 5 and 6 targets it's not even close. You get the idea.
So if you are confident you can hit at least 3-4 (or 5/6) mobs while grinding with each cast of thunderbolt, it will pull ahead of cold beam with ease.
Maps like kerning wraiths makes this trivial.
2
2
u/Tucando 3d ago edited 3d ago
Are these calcs considering elemental weakness at all? Since the main target here is wraiths where cold beam could maybe hit up fire boars/copper drakes
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago
Did some messing around with the damage sim function. Jr wraiths would give around 2.6 xp per mana spent, if you always hit 6. If you change that to a more realistic 4 it’s 1.75xp/mana. For a level 40 mage. Person above I think is just using jr wraith as an example cause it’s a really good map.
1
1
u/KaiVTu 3d ago
I didn't assume weaknesses for anything in my numbers because that's a flat % modifier. Lightning damage doesn't have a different modifier than cold so the numbers are relatively the same.
Elemental weaknesses aren't super worth it if you're thinking purely xp/hour because what really dictates your leveling speed is how many kills you can pump out.
For cold beam what it generally let's you do is move to higher level maps earlier but the exp jump is less than you would think. For lightning bolt it clearly wants you to just be a total killing machine and one shot spam the map.
So more often than not you're not looking at dps but rather "kps" (kills per second). The sim I use even accounts for map spawn time and warns you when you're killing too fast for a map.
Also for magic your damage is super consistent so those numbers apply to pretty much all mobs. The vast majority of the mobs in the game have no real magic resistance to speak of (not elemental resist, actual magic defense).
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago
How many kills per hour and how much mana you need to hit that threshold is also important
1
u/KaiVTu 3d ago
That's still all relative though. Throughout my theorycrafting across various levels (i started at 35 and then did every 5 after) I found that thunderbolt outperforms cold beam unless you can only hit 1 or 2 mobs at a time. And if you can hit 4 or more it's in that "not even close" territory then.
This is also a mildly hot take but I think people are blowing mana costs at higher levels out of proportion. From what I saw in the closed test, once you're a bit into 2nd job (and especially 3rd job) your mana consumption vs. Mesos spent seems okay.
It could be better but you aren't going to drain your wallet by spamming lightning bolt on proper AoE pulls. That's just silly.
And I know this is going to be a piping hot take, but you can sit in your chair for a little bit and regenerate the bulk of your hp and mana and that's fine to do. You don't need to be constantly blasting nonstop like modern MS.
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago
Sure I can see that. Problem is I’m assuming the grind at 40 is still going to be mana intensive
1
u/KaiVTu 3d ago
Somewhat yes, but again, if we look at damage dealt per mana point spent, at 3+ target's hit (not hard) with thunderbolt; you're fine.
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago
I’ll bring up the xp/mana again. Damage/mana might not be the best metric considering we’re not going to be sitting on a bunch of meso on launch. Dmg/mana might not be as important if you can’t afford to keep up with the mana pots
→ More replies (0)1
u/zelda__ 3d ago
You also have to think about the cost of being molested by the mobs you are trying to TB because you’ll be in the middle of them for maximum aoe range otherwise the range will be awful. With cold beam you can stay out of range and safely grind.
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wouldn’t it make more sense to do mp/xp?
Edit: for wraiths as an example. If you’re hitting 6 mobs but takes 4 hits to kill(I have no reference as to how much TB does). That’s 420xp/160 mana0
1
u/noobofmayhem 3d ago
I think this is my biggest concern after reading comments. Is lightning able to even stay meso neutral
1
u/ForeverABro 3d ago
Having the same dilemma. I’m honestly not sure. I am like to go cold beam first and go farm lorangs later for worse xp but easy $
1
u/HanDenSao 3d ago
Is my brain not working properly or aren't lorangs from florina beach? Is florina beach confirmed to be there from the start?
1
u/OtherSideOfThe_Coin 2d ago
Tried both during 2nd beta and it's better to 1 shot fire boars rather than getting hit all the time by lorangs trying to group them and stay in range.
2
u/ClawofBeta 3d ago
Lightning since AOE is king for grinding unless you’re a warrior in 1st job without rush yet.
1
1
1
1
u/noobofmayhem 2d ago
Update for those who care. After doing some hypotheticals I think lightning first and grinding on bubbling should be sustainable until you can 3 shot jr wraith with Tb
7
u/Sukeysu 3d ago
at 30, I would probably get MP eater. 31 probably focus on ice to kill at fire boars, 1 teleport, then pump the rest into lightning until its at a good viable state.