The use of certain spells in Wyvern (Must Read for Mages)

[Salkand]

When I first began to play Wyvern, and up to the present, it is apparent to me that a large majority of mages use only fireball and blizzard as their means of fighting. Sometimes I will see a mage augment their spells with slow, or fear, or paralyze, but nothing of serious attacking potential.

When I prompt other players about their use of spells, and why they do not use certain spells the general response is usually that the cost of reagents is not worth it to use that spell for training. I would like to go into certain spells and why they are in deed worth it, and what is wrong with this mind-set in wyvern. I believe this will also help mages adapt after the nerf that in theory will eliminate spam spells.

First off you have your low lore spells like blood dart, firebolt, and acid dart. Acid Dart is of course good for diamond golems, blood dart is important for a death mage because it allows you to kill weaker fire creatures like elementals, wyverns, and fire drakes, as well as wisp. Other than that, these spells have no further use, but when you can no longer cast 6 fireballs at one time, these spells will become more important for eliminated low level monsters.

Next you have you medium lore spells like firespray and icestorm. Most people believe these two useless because fireball and blizzard can do more damage (due to you firing 6) and have a greater range. But I have experienced two separate areas where firespray was more useful than fireball, unfortunately I am not permitted to mention which areas. Also, because of how cheap and abundant the reagents for these spells are, you can easily obtain enough to use for training. Also, you can cast these spells while your fireball/blizzard combination is active raising the damage you do to your opponent.

At this point, many of you may be thinking "That is all fine and good, but what about spells like thunderstorm, dragon breath, destruction, and deathray, that have a more expensive reagent." Well, obviously I do not expect people to spend 100 gold for thunderstorm and dragon breath to fight monsters, it is just not worth it. If it takes 2 dragon breaths to kill a decent monster, that is 200 gold a monster. . . that number can get high rather fast. But, dragon breath and thunderstorm can be used to augment your fireball/blizzard to greatly strengthen your attack, this becomes important if you are in a sticky situation or against very strong monsters like LQ monsters.

Destruction doesn't become useful unless you are surrounded by many powerful monster and can take them all out at once. Obviously for a death mage like me, these monsters would also have to be a fire creature.

Deathray. . . well, there will never be a good opportunity to use death ray while fighting monsters. Not unless 10 wyverns line up and let you kill all of them. As far as I can tell, except for killing players (which is quickly no longer becoming the case) death ray has no practical use for fighting against monster.

Obviously learning your build is important, to augment myself I use many spells.

If I have to quickly kill a lot of creatures, am low on mana, and some of those creatures are fire creatures, I may use petrify to not only take out the fire creatures, but create a barrier to regain mana. The point is, all the spells have a use that most mages do not think worth it. But when you can no longer spam fireball, I hope this information comes in handy.

[Godhand]

Most mages only used fireball/blizzard because collecting reagents are a pain in the butt. Its not good when half of the weight that your carrying are reagents.

Firespray is not good, firebolt does the same damage and no reagent.

Icestorm is really good. nice damage

DB is great, until you run out of reagents.

Thunderstorm, who uses air?? and lightning stone weighs a ton, slow spell, can't catch running monsters.

Destruction is the most useless spell outside of pking.

Deathray is to expensive to cast on monsters.

Stonewind a spell i like, but reagents are too heavy, expensive, and rare.

Really, none of these spells are worth it, the only way that people will use them is if they have no other choice.

Fireball/blizzard is definitely overpowered, but at the same time the other spells suck.

[Salkand]

So as a counter to me explaining how these spells are useful, and how they can augment, which means help fireball and blizzards. You pretty much answer with, "nope, they are useless." thus reestablishing the mindset that I just worked against.

And the reagents are too difficult to get? Are your legs broken or are you just lazy?

and if I ever find myself surrounded by 5+ wyverns, destruction actually becomes a cheap method of killing all 5 really fast.

[anatil]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Most mages only used fireball/blizzard because collecting reagents are a pain in the butt. Its not good when half of the weight that your carrying are reagents.

Firespray is not good, firebolt does the same damage and no reagent.

Icestorm is really good. nice damage

DB is great, until you run out of reagents.

Thunderstorm, who uses air?? and lightning stone weighs a ton, slow spell, can't catch running monsters.

Destruction is the most useless spell outside of pking.

Deathray is to expensive to cast on monsters.

Stonewind a spell i like, but reagents are too heavy, expensive, and rare.

Really, none of these spells are worth it, the only way that people will use them is if they have no other choice.

Fireball/blizzard is definitely overpowered, but at the same time the other spells suck.

Actually I agree with salkand on this. Right now fireball/blizzard is the most common because of its effectiveness but there are times when you need more than just that. In the near future, with the spell spam getting nerfed, fireball/blizzard is going to become difficult to use (depending on the timer that they'll put in place).

For those of us who have had the joy of making a mage three things became apparent real fast: 1) Training/looting is a pain. 2) There are monsters that fireball/blizzard just can't touch and worst yet monsters have higher and higher resistances. 3) Fireball/blizzard is all nice and well...but what if the monster is in your face? The ball spells will pass through it.

Bolts and spray spells are great for taking care of enemies that get close and personal. Another great use for them is when there's loot you don't want to destroy.

[Lanterra]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Most mages only used fireball/blizzard because collecting reagents are a pain in the butt. Its not good when half of the weight that your carrying are reagents.

Firespray is not good, firebolt does the same damage and no reagent.

Icestorm is really good. nice damage

DB is great, until you run out of reagents.

Thunderstorm, who uses air?? and lightning stone weighs a ton, slow spell, can't catch running monsters.

Destruction is the most useless spell outside of pking.

Deathray is to expensive to cast on monsters.

Stonewind a spell i like, but reagents are too heavy, expensive, and rare.

Really, none of these spells are worth it, the only way that people will use them is if they have no other choice.

Fireball/blizzard is definitely overpowered, but at the same time the other spells suck.

Firespray may only do as much damage as firebolt, but it can catch a greater number of enemies. It's also more controllable that a fireball. I hate it when launch a fireball and as it's flying the monster(s) move out of the way and it hits out of your field of vision and A.) doesn't hit any monsters. B.) destroys the loot before you even get to it.

Also I've heard destruction can be good if you find yourself surrounded by things like diamond golems.

[Hamel]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Most mages only used fireball/blizzard because collecting reagents are a pain in the butt. Its not good when half of the weight that your carrying are reagents.

Firespray is not good, firebolt does the same damage and no reagent.

Icestorm is really good. nice damage

DB is great, until you run out of reagents.

Thunderstorm, who uses air?? and lightning stone weighs a ton, slow spell, can't catch running monsters.

Destruction is the most useless spell outside of pking.

Deathray is to expensive to cast on monsters.

Stonewind a spell i like, but reagents are too heavy, expensive, and rare.

Really, none of these spells are worth it, the only way that people will use them is if they have no other choice.

Fireball/blizzard is definitely overpowered, but at the same time the other spells suck.

Who uses air? People who know just how awesome it is. Since most monsters typically have less resistance to shock damage, air magic can be very powerful. Thunderstorm is especially useful against LQ bosses and large crowds of tough monsters. You can't catch running monsters with it? Who in their right mind would waste a thunderstorm on a monster that's running away?!

The reagents aren't really that heavy, I normally carry about 10-20 lightning stones on my air mage and just use them sparingly. If you don't like the weight of reagents, just acquire some strength.

Also, since ball spells are probably going to be weakened in the future, I suspect these other spells will see a lot more use.

[Dracco]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Thunderstorm, who uses air?? and lightning stone weighs a ton, slow spell, can't catch running monsters.

Hey, I used Thunderstorm all the time while training. I carried 160 lightning stones in a bag of GH and had no trained strength with 2 omnis on (the reagents aren't too heavy when in a bag of GH). It took down reapers fast, along with any other monster that was in the room.

[goonyton]

My three cents.

Do not underestmate fire spray, it has a lot of uses some mentioned here some not and does more damage than a single fireball. Also if mana per damage is your main worry fire spray is the better way.

Fire bolt I do not find as usefull but it has its place.

The various dart spells are very usefull if there is loot in the area and just one medium to low level monster in the way. I did not know about blood dart and diamond golems, I have been looking for a way to kill them for a long time and distruction is way to expencive way to go about doing it.

If you have the lore to spare for them I would think a person would be well advised to pack at least one heavy spell for when you step on a summon trap and teleport does not work, that goes double now that you can not log fast.

For that I personly like DB as the reagents are light which is a major worry for a pixie.

As for regents, if you know your way around most of the low level ones can be bought is massive amounts if you know where to look and the others, just make a market for them and they will show up in MAH.

One spell I have not seen mentioned above is Fire Wall. Other than my resists I use fire wall more than everything except fireball and lightening bolt. If you fill a whole area with them then get a big monster or several to follow you into it... I have yet to have one walk out that walked into such a trap(excluding those that are fire proof)

Fire wall can also be great on stairs.

[Andron]

When I still had Sygma, I noticed a few things. I got my fire/air/water to lvl 25 through the combination of items plus training.

Fire- Firespray is an awesome spell to have in the mage arsenal, along with firebolt. Combine a few fireballs and firespray and you're good, specially RD's where the monsters run in the halls at you.

Water- Icestorm is just as awesome for the same reason firespray was, but frost wave is like a little blizzard pretty much, run up cast your frostwaves run away or teleport.

Air- My favorite of the three elements, why? The buffs it provided. Speed, see invis, xray, darksight, I know one of those aren't air. But, combine all those together and you have what is effectively a super glimpse. I could see the entire screen for around 10 minutes at a time. Great for exploring and questing. I also used thunderstorm, specially when reapers ran, I'd try to chase two or three into a corner and I'd cast to finish them off. Mainly though, I used air for those awesome abilities it granted me. It would be nice for new air spells though, redundant statement, I know it's been suggested to death. I also forgot to mention that with air you could also use water breathing and fly if you wanted to and invis.

[Kabroz]

Originally Posted by goonyton

I did not know about blood dart and diamond golems

Blood/Acid dart work on diamond golems because they aren't resistant to Acid (much, if at all) So that's one way to kill them as a mage, but again with the "nerf" where, in theory, prevents spells spamming. In order to kill a monster, for example a diamond golem, you'd need to cast many at once to kill it and depending on your level of Death/Water (whichever dart) that may be a lot. Also with the spell spam "nerf" you may not be able to cast those dart spells as frequently as you'd like so as to kill off the monster.

However, that isn't to say that the dart spells aren't going to be useful. It all depends on what the "nerf" is going do to the system. Blood/Acid Dart will still be useful for helping take out low to mid level monsters, like dragons. In the end, it just depends on the "nerf".

[Godhand]

Originally Posted by Salkand

So as a counter to me explaining how these spells are useful, and how they can augment, which means help fireball and blizzards. You pretty much answer with, "nope, they are useless." thus reestablishing the mindset that I just worked against.

And the reagents are too difficult to get? Are your legs broken or are you just lazy?

and if I ever find myself surrounded by 5+ wyverns, destruction actually becomes a cheap method of killing all 5 really fast.

Errr, did i not give the reason why they were useless/suck?? I counter by giving reasons why they suck, not just saying they were useless. I backed up my claim.

Well, when I said all these spells were useless/suck I didn't really meant that, what i mean was that compared to fireball/blizzard all these spells are useless.

Salkand, "if I ever find myself surrounded by 5+ wyverns, destruction actually becomes a cheap method of killing all 5 really fast."

Guess what? if i find myself surrounded by wyverns i use Blizzard, didn't cost a thing and kills every single one of them, even on the outer edge of the map.

Anatil, "but what if the monster is in your face? The ball spells will pass through it."

You know that this is a mages dream?? to have 4-5 monster in your face. all it takes is alias to easily wipe them out.

Lanterra, "Also I've heard destruction can be good if you find yourself surrounded by things like diamond golems."

destruction is never useful for monster killing, so your calling 20+ destructions to kill diamond golem a good thing?? All that money wasted and time collecting reagents for that??

Hamel, "Who uses air? People who know just how awesome it is. Since most monsters typically have less resistance to shock damage, air magic can be very powerful. Thunderstorm is especially useful against LQ bosses and large crowds of tough monsters. You can't catch running monsters with it? Who in their right mind would waste a thunderstorm on a monster that's running away?!"

Well most monster that have less resistance to shock, guess what?? they also susceptible to either fire or water. thunderstorm on lq bosses?? who in their right mind would do that?? you have less chance of winning than a lvl 15 meleer.

dracco, "Hey, I used Thunderstorm all the time while training. I carried 160 lightning stones in a bag of GH and had no trained strength with 2 omnis on (the reagents aren't too heavy when in a bag of GH). It took down reapers fast, along with any other monster that was in the room."

So can I, with one set of 7 fireballs. I didn't have waste any reagents for that matter or carry a ton of reagent, and i kill them faster than multiple thunderstorms.


You can use fireball/bizzard for practically every situation, its faster and cheaper. They only spells that i find useful with fireball/blizzard is firebolt and icestorm, to even kill faster while the fireballs are expanding. Also prismatic shield for even more damage at the same time. One thing about damaging loot, the faster you kill, the more loot you see.

If fireball/blizzard gets nerf in the future i can see a case for using the other spells, but why even bother with them now, when you can do just about everyting(damage wise) with fireball/blizzard. Kills faster, more efficient and cheaper.

[Hamel]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Well most monster that have less resistance to shock, guess what?? they also susceptible to either fire or water. thunderstorm on lq bosses?? who in their right mind would do that?? you have less chance of winning than a lvl 15 meleer.

There is a big difference between something being weak against something, and not having resists to something. Teshuvah has said that many monsters are weak against shock, which sort of balances out it's lack of a ball spell.

I have found that many, if not most, LQ bosses (like most monsters) are not strong against shock. I know for a fact that many monsters are strong against fire or ice.

If you're saying that air is weaker than fire and water, then yes, yes it is. Just like water is weaker than air and fire, and like fire is weaker than air and water. Because you're spending twice the skill points.

Originally Posted by Godhand

If fireball/blizzard gets nerf in the future i can see a case for using the other spells, but why even bother with them now, when you can do just about everyting(damage wise) with fireball/blizzard. Kills faster, more efficient and cheaper.

I believe this was one of the major points of this thread. Informing people of the many uses of the lesser used spells in case the overpowered ones get fixed.

[Kabroz]

Originally Posted by Godhand

Anatil, "but what if the monster is in your face? The ball spells will pass through it."

You know that this is a mages dream?? to have 4-5 monster in your face. all it takes is alias to easily wipe them out.

Fireball/Blizzard only passes through them if they are 1x1 (or 1x2 and you're facing the.. uh.. 1 side, lol) otherwise it will hit them and it'll be fine. And fyi, the dream isn't a bunch of monsters in your face, it's a bunch of shogs/drachies/xipes in a small room down the way

Originally Posted by Hamel

I believe this was one of the major points of this thread. Informing people of the many uses of the lesser used spells in case the overpowered ones get fixed.

I thought they were going to be fixed >.>

[Hamel]

Originally Posted by Kabroz

I thought they were going to be fixed >.>

Perhaps, who knows what the wizards are planning to do, well, other than the wizards themselves, of course.

[Dracco]

Originally Posted by Godhand

dracco, "Hey, I used Thunderstorm all the time while training. I carried 160 lightning stones in a bag of GH and had no trained strength with 2 omnis on (the reagents aren't too heavy when in a bag of GH). It took down reapers fast, along with any other monster that was in the room."

So can I, with one set of 7 fireballs. I didn't have waste any reagents for that matter or carry a ton of reagent, and i kill them faster than multiple thunderstorms.


You can use fireball/bizzard for practically every situation, its faster and cheaper. They only spells that i find useful with fireball/blizzard is firebolt and icestorm, to even kill faster while the fireballs are expanding. Also prismatic shield for even more damage at the same time. One thing about damaging loot, the faster you kill, the more loot you see.

If fireball/blizzard gets nerf in the future i can see a case for using the other spells, but why even bother with them now, when you can do just about everyting(damage wise) with fireball/blizzard. Kills faster, more efficient and cheaper.

You're right, a set of fireballs can easily take down reapers faster than thunderstorm, but when I RD I'm clearing out, usually, 3 rooms at once, fireball in 1 room, blizzard in another, and thunderstorm, prismatic shield, frost wave, and firefrost in the last. Letting the set of fireballs burn away so you can recast in another room takes too long, that is why the reagent spells can be very useful (You can use firespray instead if you don't want to buy costly reagents). As for firebolt, it just doesn't have the capability to clear the room of all the monsters nearly as fast as the cone spells.

P.S. Is frost wave used that much? I rarely hear anyone say they use it.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by dracco

P.S. Is frost wave used that much? I rarely hear anyone say they use it.

It was one of my most used spells when I was a mage, it along with blizzard killed things so much faster if I was in a jam, it also gave me versatility to blizzard in one direction and run over to frostwave whatever I needed too.

[Rarkvar]

When I used Thunderstorm as vesrayech he would rip through most monsters. He had 2 in air at the time and 22 in fire. Thunderstorm did about the same as 5 fireballs would do. Especially when it came to fighting reapers.

I personally think there is a bug in air magic if thunderstorm doesn't get stronger by 15 air magic, but I'm not concerned about it.

Each spell has their purpose as well as pros and cons. You have your ball spells that explode and hurt enemies within a specific radius. They are also ranged spells. The only problem with them is the difficulty in hurting the monsters if the room is huge.

Cone spells appear to do more damage faster and have better accuracy (If you're good). THe major problem with these spells is that you have to get close to monsters. If you get feared, paralyzed, confused, etc, then your chances of dieing will increase. Especially if you're a human mage.

I dislike the lesser spells such as firespray and ice storm.
Human Mages, in my opinion, are really too weak for it to matter though. We have a low amount of health and we don't get that much sp for mana shield to benefit us that much. It's just one of those things to have to put up with.