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I just started a spear , and was wondering wich is better at PvP
70:70 spear , or 85% magical balance spear.

Pls give some opinions.
Ty in advance sly.

Hm, dunno how 70:70 spears do this cap (lack of Spear users on Venus)

However, this is the only vid I found atm of a 70:70 spear at this cap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq4vldJRkD8

Now, for your Q, I think they're both decent for pvp...

the 70:70 has more tankability, but lower damage. If they take fire, they'll have better damage and immunity (not to everything) as well.

the 85% hybrid has less tankability, but in turn has more damage.

here's one hyb spear close to 85% (they say 84% naked, so close enough)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCZD1yJhebI

70:70 Spear w/ max blues (no prem plus or avatar included):

20,882 hp
21,493 mp
81% phy bal
87% mag bal

85% Spear w/ max blues (no prem plus, etc, etc):

17,502 hp (221 str)
24,873 mp
71% phy bal
102% mag bal

So another Q , if i am going 70:70 ( not decided yet), would nukes do any usefull damage??

They will hit alot lower against a full int spear ... I have a friend and he is 70:70 and he is lvl53 with a sos +5 spear and he hit like 7-8k on a earth ghost.
I am a spear 1:8 int but farming on the moment so i can't say how much I hit...
Cya

yes FWWide will do the same damage as soul spear same lvl.
So if you hit FFW then soulspear and ghost spear you can get a lot of DPS.

I use my nukes before enemy reaches me. I have 84% mag. balance so my nuke hit a little
harder than SS same lvl but to get more DPS I use weapon attacks and every now
and then I throw in a nuke...

Both are pretty good at pvp, it'd depend on your personal preference, though 70:70 is harder to build and I think it'll eventually become obsolete (with cap raises). I'd go for the 85%+ mag balance build.

I'd recommend 70/70 Spear.

No offense, but builds do not become obsolete with new level caps. If they sucked before, they will suck in the future, and vice-versa.

The biggest exception being bow builds after the lvl 70 cap, as many of the bow skills were changed with the lvl 80 skill update almost 2 years ago. Now bow builds suck a whole lot less.

The other possible scenario is when the level cap is raised to over 100 and the skill mastery level is still 300. Chinese do not do well with only 2 maxed masteries, we'll all be playing Euro characters if they do not change something here.

Yes 85% does more damage, but not enough to write home about. 70/70 not only gives you more hp, it gives you a greater physical defense rating (figured against physical damage done against you). The lower magical damage is compensated some with greater physical damage.

Your magical damage will decrease against int foes, and the added physical damage will do more damage against the same. So you actually will do more damage against int-strong characters, then you would have going 85% or greater magical balance.

The 70/70 build came about by careful calculations and experimentation with the game mechanics. Although initially done for bow, it works very well with spear.

85% magical balance (85/65) may actually work better with the sword and shield, since the passive for bicheon gives greater physical defence. The verdict is still out on that, as far as I am concerned. I am still looking for the ultimate sword and shield hybrid combination....

70/70 build is easy to make. Watch your naked balances as you level, and go 90 weapon, 90 lightning, and 90 ice. Works for 100 cap too.

You were right about everything but the last part.
if you go 90 light 90cold you will be weaker because you will have no phy. damage buff
and why 90 cold?? you cant use the highest lvl snowshield because your mana pool will
get drained in a matter of seconds.

Best build for this would be 90 fire weap, 60light cold.
Check out Barotixes guide for more details:
http://www.silkroadforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=95919

You don't need a physical damage buff for this build. Piercing force does not increase damage done with fire, but with lightning only (I know it says it does increase force damage, but test it with fire, only lightning gets the damage increase.... until Joymax *fixes* this?) and since you are already int-heavy, you do not need the extra magical protection, and you have plenty of manna for snow-shield. You will do more damage with this build with lightning than you will with fire. So why invest in fire?

This is all rock-paper-scissors, cold is for int heavy builds, fire for str-heavy builds, and lightning does more damage than fire IF you are int-heavy.

I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with fire/lightning builds with this, I was doing that at first, until I saw for myself that piercing force only buffs lightning damage, and that the more magical balance you have, the higher damage lightning does in its damage range. For int-heavy builds, lightning outdamages fire. I stopped leveling fire at lvl 44, I don't miss it.

Snow shield is not the only skill in the cold tree, the passive for cold and ice protection offer significant physical protection buffs without snow shield. I find that I do alot better, toe to toe against str-heavy builds with cold. It is a worthy investment.

Could you prove that? It seems false to me.

Anyways, If what you say that lightning piercing force only affects lightning damage, then I must say that fire does the same damage or out damages lightning with a int-heavy build. Not the vice-versa. I said that I thought that 70:70 build will become obsolete because it's way too much in the "middle" of other builds. He needs damage from both mag and phy atk. It'll be harder to build. What do you intend to do with that build at any cap higher than 100? At 90 cap I'd understand going with cold/lightning/weapon, but that set of masteries would work WAY, and I mean WAY better with a build with 85% + mag balance. If, as you say, lighting piercing force does not affect fire skills, then the best build pvp-wise would be the 90heuksal/90fire/90cold for the 70/70 build and pure int.

If pure int's with fire deal even more or near to lighting int's damage, I don't really see a big point in taking lightning except for speed, where fire would give you easier immunity, destealth and deinvisible, 2 strong nukes at any cap (iirc) while lightning will only give you 1 at 100 cap and higher (not sure, would have to check), and higher mag def.
a video of a fire s/s nuker: http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dsa9C0vYd4
He's dealing pretty good damage if lightning does not affect his fire damage.


Fire and lightning seem to deal pretty much the same damage with a int. I'd put it this way: Int builds need high cold and Str builds need high fire. For me it's more accurate this way.


That's not true. Some chinese builds do not need more than 2 masteries. And it seems that the higher the cap goes, the less chinese builds rely on multiple masteries to survive. Therefore they will do in fact well with only 2 masteries. Though I don't think some hybrids will (that includes the 70:70). Also, the mastery cap will never be raised. They already stated that as true.


Are you sure? lol. What about dual weapon builds? Also bowers used to 'suck' at lower caps if I recall it correctly. They do not really suck anymore. And we have some STR force builds right now. I don't really think there will be any of those anymore with caps higher than 100.


I don't think that's entirely true, even it being only higher mag dmg but lower phy dmg, I think the 85% hybrid will still deal more damage to any other build, simply because mag dmg increases way faster than phy dmg.

Not to be rude, my friend, but I did test this. My son was the one who pointed this out to me. I didn't believe him either, until I did a test. Fire damage remained the same, and lightning damage increased with piercing force.

If you lack a character to test this with, I can see what I can do to produce screenies, but the best proof would be to do this yourself.



Well here are the calculations I came up with:
we'll start with lvl 90 imbues, and lvl 88 Force Piercing Force (+18% magical damage)
w/o piercing force
Soul fire force 658 ~ 1097 (100%)
Thunderdragon force 522 ~ 970 (100%)

w/ piercing force
Soul fire force 658 ~ 1097 (100%)
Thunderdragon force 616 ~ 1144 (100%)

Now the nukes
w/o piercing force
Flame Wave - Hellfire 1028 ~ 1714
Crane's Thunderbolt 989 ~ 1837

w/ piercing force
Flame Wave - Hellfire 1028 ~ 1714
Crane's Thunderbolt 1167 ~ 2167

Hmmm.... lightning outdamages fire.

The lower damage numbers an int-heavy build will never see, which means, hit for hit, he will do more damage with lightning. The threshold is higher for fire, and because the str-heavy build will hit the lower damage numbers, will still hit higher than he would using lightning, plus fire has flame-body which increases the physical damage (useless to an int-heavy build).



At this point, I am not sure what I will do with any Chinese build above the lvl 100 cap.

70/70 build is optimum because of the balances and the dual damage on Chinese weapons. This does not change under any cap. There is another number on your character screen that measures phy defense and mag defense, the balances affect this too. The more strength you have the better you are able to resist physical damage (not just because of higher hp). The more int you have the better you are able to resist magical damage. That being said, raw numbers, although higher in both directions, do not change the formula for balanced build.

If we did this on stat point assignment ratios (i.e. 2:1 or 3:1, etc.) there would be a lot more to what you are saying. I do not see the effectiveness of balances changing from cap to cap without a significant change in how damage is calculated. In effect, with each new level cap, both balances come closer and closer to 100%.



Definitely a formidable build, I agree. And a matter of preference. Just that if it were me, I would take the parry buffs and passive, speed, and that little extra damage over fire.



Can you think of one int-heavy build that does well with 2 masteries? Something will have to give here, damage OR protection. can't have both. If those are my 2 choices, I will go Euro. Pure builds in Euro don't suck.


Dual weapon builds were fun, but I do not think they were ever really viable builds under any cap. In one on one caping they did well, but one on one is not PvP to me. Pvp is about jobbing, parties, using builds strategically in groups to jack trades, hunt thieves, take over fortresses, that's what PvP in SRO is all about. Plus, we knew 3 years ago this game was going to have a lvl 150 cap and 300 skill masteries was the limit.



I already mentioned this. The problem was a lack in balance in the game, not a lower cap. Joymax changed the stats on bow skills down to the lvl 32 bow skills, level cap had nothing to do with it.



I have not yet crunched any numbers, so it is hard to say what the damage numbers will actually be. So I can neither affirm nor deny, but offer my formula as food for consideration, anyway.

Huge reply, I may have forgotten/messed up some things.

theCoder what build do you have? and what lvl?

OK i got home and I just tested theCoders theory.
Coder said that piercing force increases only lightning magic attack...
This is not correct fire nukes also get increase in damage.

So if your build is 90wep fire, 60light cold as i said you lose 3% magical damage increase
from piercing force but you gain 18% of physical damage...

i have a Lv 88 hybrid spear with 85% mag balance on 83 masteries (83 83 60 60) but haven't farmed or leveled it in a while. still curious as how this build with 85 farmed masteries would do in pve and pvp, or 90 cap farmed for matter, but im curious as to any video's posted on wegame youtube or any other website!

so if you have any knowledge post the video here, i was quite pleased with my char but having my own warrior farmed at 90 now im not sure wether or not to invest time and money into this character and build

Ok, this deserves a more scientific approach over the he-said/she-said stuff. My current character is lvl 62, fire is still at lvl 44, lightning is at lvl 58. I used the second book of piercing force which gives a 10% damage increase.

These hits with imbue on Mangyangs without any other skill active (other than grasswalk).



Piercing force does, in fact, effect fire damage. The smaller percentage increase for fire is no doubt because with my lower lvl 44 fire, those attacks had more physical damage in the physical/magical damage ratio.

Just to verify my old thesis was wrong, I did the same with nukes. Keep in mind, fire is lvl 44 and lightning is lvl 58. These nukes were cast without imbues (or any other skills besides grasswalk) on Mangyangs.

Here were the averages, on 10 hits per test:
Fire nuke w/o piercing force: 7864.6
Fire nuke w/ piercing force: 8487.1

And Lightning
Light nuke w/o piercing force: 10206.5
Fire nuke w/ piercing force: 10616.6

Shows more than a 10% increase on fire damage and a less than 10% increase on light. Interesting.

It does show that something was fundamentally flawed with my first test.



I lvled a fully farmed pure str bow to the level cap 2 years.

I currently have a lvl 62 70/70 spear build. Currently farmed at 58 heuksal, 58 light, 58 cold, and 44 fire I plan on deleveling sometime in preparation for the 100 cap.

I also have a 2:1 int hybrid sword and shield I am experimenting with, at lvl 49, farmed at 44 bicheon, 44 light and 44 cold.



No, friend, they changed some skills around that were lower than lvl 70. Strong bow, for instance, used to have a very long wind up. So long, I deleveled it when I got to lvl 50, because it was pretty useless in PvP, back then. I have heard they had also altered Autumn wind, but I have no idea what they changed about with that one now.

Other skills like changing the way fire wall works, all builds benefited from, but were also especially helpful to the bow build.

Sure, new level cap skills helped too, but that helped everyone.

So you are saying that imbues arent affected by piercing force and nukes are?

So do you now agree at 60ligt cold 90 weap fire for 70:70?
Or still no?

Yeah rereading my post, I guess I was clear as mud. No I am not saying imbues are not affected by piercing force. What I did is a mere sampling of damage on manyangs, and clearly imbues are affected by piercing force, and fire in general does indeed get the bonus. So I was wrong about piercing force.



Still no....

Your magical damage is going to be stronger than your physical.

So you are looking at 15% magical damage increase and 18% physical damage increase. For sake of argument, let's say you do 7000 magical damage, and 5000 physical.
Mag 7000 + 15% = 8050
Phy 5000 + 18% = 5900
Total Damage = 13950
Ice at 60, passive + ice guard gives +84 to physical defense.

If we went 90 light and 60 fire. That becomes 18% mag damage bonus and 13% phy damage binus. Here's what we get:
Mag 7000 + 18% = 8260
Phy 5000 + 13% = 5650
Total Damage = 13910
Ice at 60, passive + ice guard gives +84 to physical defense.

The difference is about 40 points!

Now for my preferred build, we go with fire 30, 90 light, 90 cold we have:
Mag 7000 + 18% = 8260
Phy 5000 + 6% = 5300
Total Damage = 13560
Ice at 90, passive + ice guard gives +174 to physical defense.

I loose 350 damage to +174 physical defense. When they raise the level for the passives, this radically changes, it becomes +264 to physical defense at lvl 90 and according to sro.mmosite.com, +336 physical defense at lvl 100.

Now for the imbues:
Fire @ lvl 90 658 ~ 1097 (100%)
Light @ lvl 90 522 ~ 970 (100%)

The difference is roughly 100 points, not really significant enough for me to delevel lightning and go fire.

To have fire and lightning would be ideal, but when you have to pick and choose (we have to do this for the 100 cap), the smarter choice is to go with what will benefit your build the most. I know how easy it is to kill a pure str Chinese char at the level cap, so for me, physical defense and parry are essential for this build.

I would disagree with anyone who tries to tell me that fire is essential for an int-heavy build. Fire was clearly designed with the str-heavy build in mind. Extra magical defense and extra physical damage. If it were me writing the skills, I would have doubled the physical damage bonuses for flame body buff and made the passive give magical defense instead, but Joymax has clearly favored lots of int for the Chinese....

You do have a point there...
So will you wear garment then? because without that mag def from fire you
might get owned pretty easy by pure ints...


Ok now i still see some problems here... you got only 2 shortrange nukes,
so this might be a problem at group pvp IMO, don't you think?

I was advised long ago that hybrids need to go with protector. I still think this is very sound advice. Well alchemied protector can have nearly as much mag damage protection as garments. However, as for any int-heavy build, it is always good to have a good set of garms for grinding, if nothing else, just to conserve on mp pots.



No, this build is not primarily a nuker. Think of yourself as a glaiver, but you are going to get targeted in group PvP, anyone carrying a spear will (that is, after the Euro wizards and warlocks are taken out on your team). The nukes will do about as much damage as your weapon skills so will be handy for grinding. And a little ranged attack is always useful, but not essential for this build, in PvP.

The people who do this build with bow, instead, typically skip the nukes, since they already have ranged attack. But some will still go with it, as the nukes still do good damage with an 80% magical balance.

slytther have you ever played on troy server?

No , why?

just wondering, i knew a sly that used to play on troy. He quit awhile ago cuz he got screwed over by some of his "friends." He said hed come back eventually so i thought ide ask if it was you. thats all lol

slytther you are 2x lvl and have 90posts?
Do you play the game at all???

theCoder I'm like 80% agreeing with you... what are your plans for 100cap?

100/heuksal 100/light 100/cold.

lol,
1. Cause i don't have alot of time , since work and school is more important.Agreed?
2. Ive had like a million( ok maybe 15) characters made and lvled before i found out what my fave build is.

So now i got 2 fave buids, spear(prolly going 70:70) and warlock(might put 5 str lvs later on for hp)

So your Q is answered i suppose?

PS:What armour will i wear?
And i thought about the build 90 heuk/fire/cold(70:70), and skip lighting to have 30 lvs at spare.

Protector for pvp.

Garms for PvE, when you can, to conserve mp potions.

Hey coder in a 70:70 build wouldnt the phys and mag dmg be the same? also in 70:70 you bearly nuke so wouldnt the phys fire buff be better since you do more skill attacks.

No, the balances are the same, but mag damage always > phys damage. If they were the same, then pure str would do as much damage as a pure int. That doesn't happen, that's why pure str is a gimped build all way around, unless you go Euro (in this players opinion of his own experience).

And what is a nuke anyways? If you are doing close to your weapon damage, and it is ranged, why wouldn't you use it? Chinese are all about weapon skills, try as they might, people who try to make Euro wizards out of int heavy Chinese builds are trying to get orange juice from an apple.

That being said, if you are doing more damage with magical, then why not take the 18% magical damage bonus. It gives you a passive you need (parry to lower attackers [mag and phys] damage against you), speed skills that enable you to get out of potentially sticky situations, etc. Fire is clearly the str-heavy build's force. The passive and buff offer additional physical damage, and an additional buff offers good protection against magic (something a str heavy build will be lacking).

Ideally, you would want both fire and light (+18% mag dam and +18% phys dam), but having to pick and choose in higher level caps, go with what will benefit your build more, weapon + lightning + cold.

You could drop or minimize cold in favor of maxing both fire and light, but that's not what I recommend. IMO, for this build, cold protection matters a lot.

Haha makes sense 70:70 does good in pvp without snow shield to right?
and on nivlam i cant get 70:70 its either 69:70 or 70:69 and only get 12k hp and 15k sp even with blues will it get to 22k hp and 27k sp?