/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>15432729
Long post/general editorial incoming:

Understand my character is the epitome of imperfect play. If you embraced the grind and put your mind to it, you could be where I am in half the time. I didn't start herb farming until 150 hours in, and I didn't understand weapon mechanics (how two-hand worked) until about 250 hours in. I didn't start spellcasting until 300 hours in. I didn't grind the void at all until 400 hours in. In addition to all that, I run with a large, fast pet team for convenience rather than power, so that's basically all wasted experience/skills that doesn't help anyone in the endgame. The vast majority of my playtime has been traveling town to town fulfilling quests - maybe what Ano is hoping becomes the standard playstyle, but far from efficient use of playtime.

As an 80% melee/20% caster who would rather be casting 100%, I can't stress enough how much more powerful (and unfortunately tedious) magic is than melee in this period of patches. Melee works on a damage curve where the multiplier begins from an arbitrarily low point (weapon dice damage) and multiplies higher and higher through skills and stats. Magic damage works on a damage curve where instead of a multiplier, the dice themselves increase. So you get where I'm at: 8d6+161 x 45.5 for melee. That's a good 9000ish max damage roughly doubled due to the bonus magic damage of my current weapon, increased further by criticals and equipment buffs like bonus attacks. Add on a few bonuses from magic buffs if you want. Of course the vast, vast majority of that is reduced by PV, and it's completely negated if an enemy dodges. Not to mention you need to be in melee range to do damage, and you need a bunch of SP to make use of melee's many special abilities.

Contrast that with my level 170ish, 53d223 ice ball spell. Max damage is 12000, doubled by spell enhancers, and if you cast in rain with elemental scar and magic equip, who knows where we'd be. Resistance too high? Switch to fire ball or magic ball or thunder vortex. Enemy has high PV or DV? Doesn't matter. Damage spells always hit, and balls can hit a zillion targets at once. I've spent 5 times as much of my game time whacking enemies with swords as I have pewpewing with magic dart or ball spells, and ball spells are already beginning to outclass my melee damage. Until some kind of gamechanging update, I'll vocally note magic's superiority over melee.