Building the best SW

I know that this will gather a ton of opinions, but as I am still relatively new to the game, I would like some opinions on what would help build a good strong SW.

I'm a PVE player but still want a good strong character.

Here's what I have now:



Here are my stats:



As you can see, I am severely weak.

The gem drops are pretty lousy but I don't mind farming over and over again in the off the wall the chance that I actually get some.

I have managed to get a couple of unique items in drops but that hasn't helped too much. I expect that it would be better with better gems.


So here is the question:


Which gear to go after to build the strongest character? (taking into consideration of events that only happen rarely).

What gems to put with which gear?

 

Well a lot of sw's act as glass cannons basically they have high damage crit speed but low armour health and/or resistance but with a strong tank to absorb damage they can just deal heavy dps without worrying about dieing

Quite a lot use witch hunter (chaser?) Gear to up their damage

I think you should change the golden horn helm for a magic/extradinary hood (should be easy for a premium user) mabey sigri hard can drop something nice

 

@Rory34390 that avatar of yours reminds me of a cockroach, I get a little heart attack every time I see it.

Now on topic, I'd suggest lvl up before doing any important changes. On your way to 45lvl, SAVE EVERY cot you find. You have 17 cots with premium, that cannot be accepted.

As Rory said, would be okay to start out with new moon set (witch whatever set), it gives nice bonuses.
When you hit 45lvl, find yourself legendary wand and crystal, those are primary things; you might want to get 2x weapon dmg, 2xspeed wand, or something close - put rubies in the baby when you get it. Crystal, imo, 1x crit, 3xdmg is the best one, it's hard to find, but look for something close to that to begin with. Your critical is very low, and that with a book, you need left side items with critical.

Now before I make huge post, I'm out of here. If you wanna ask anything else, feel free to do so. Good luck!

 

Well since i failed at making a pic come up here i will just say the stats of my little nub:
Base damage 600-678
Attack speed 1,49
HP 6376
Mana 115
block 0 (book)
crit 956(soon to be 1400)
crit dmg 209%
resistance 153(519 for andermagic)


little nub has a bit to go yet (ps my wand has 6,6% speed,+26 damage, +30,1% damage, +24,9% damage )

 

I keep cot's in the chest and move them over after each farming trip. I have a little over 2000 at the moment. I'm trying to save them as much as possible for later on.

I will try Rory34390 idea and try doing sigri hard a few times to see if I can get some decent drops.


Next question.... What gems should I be saving to use? I may end up having to buy the ones I need as the drops are pretty lousy.

I have a thread in the general section about the differences between the characters. It may just be me, but using my SW I get the lousiest drop rates. Temple sector is the best for experience points, but lousy for just about everything else.

 

Hi Rhysingstar,

First things first, I'm a F2P, so...I need a lot of firepower to kill others.

I have a SW lvl 32 (now) because of PW, so my base damage is 439-474, I only need a few more glyphs to raise it to 460-504...
And i have done this with only 5 magic items + my legendary wand.
I don't have much armor or health, thats true, but neither do i need it...I kill everything that crosses my path from Darbmoor to Atlantis...alone, and if you add blue ess to that, well you get the picture!!!

Just get low lvl items with damage only and upgrade them to lvl 39 or higher if you can and after that, you can worry about getting better sets or unique's.
I also have more critical than you, with only a white book.

As for gems, speed is almost everything for a SW, so get sapphires.
Rubies are excellent if your wand or staff has ??% damage increase.
Health gems would be better, because armor gems only gives you 60 at it highest.
A handful of Diamonds wouldn't hurt, since your all-resistances is very low.

 

Yes, you will definitely need to buy gems (on sale!! wait for sale! ). Basically, the ones you will use are; rubies, sapphires, amethysts and diamonds. I would focus on rubies and sapphires now, and later on you'll need others as well.. (Personally I was doing it like this; first have 4-5 polished rubies and sapphires, then go hunt polished amethysts and diamonds.. when full polished, I switched to building radiant ones). It's a long trip, but you'll do fine.

 

rubies, sapphires, amethysts and diamonds = Thanks.

That gives me a goal while I'm farming and if I can't find them at least I know what to buy.

 

My first advice, that has not been mentioned already, is: don't ID those cra**y Uniques. Go to the Wiki page before you ID a unique and check for it's stats.

As a basic rule of thumb, you never want defensive items on the left side.(with the exception of a few items belonging to sets... such as Roshan's items)

First, you need to replace that Chitin Ring (? w/e it's called), then get a better crystal. While you do this, you should take advantage of the moon events. They can give really good items and don't take much effort to finish.

Get the new moon wand (Karabossa's Staff), especially, since it will give you a decent crit rate boost. Keep your critical rate at 50% ... if you get more, switch to an orb instead of book.

Mages don't need much armor since they should not rely on getting attacked, however, sometimes being attacked is inevitable, in which case, block rate and block amount can make up for some of the armor that you don't have.

Get Ammon's Wings if you can. Get either Dark Helmet or Dark Gloves, depending on what you need more, critical rate or attack speed. Speed is essential to mages, try to get 1,40 or so. Once you've established good overall stats you can focus on improving specific stats such as speed or critical damage. They should not be priority at this moment because you need damage and critical rate very badly.

That's enough on the items advice.

Keep in mind your responsibilities in a group; knowing what your job is increases your worth in it. Mages aren't only about Crowd Control or DPS. You need to support the tank in the group. Stun monsters so they don't attack the tank. Pay attention to the DKs HP and Rage bar; when rage is full, lay down a Singularity. If you wait for the DK to be ready, you have an extra player taking advantage of the 2x damage, instead of just the ranged characters. You wouldn't believe it but DKs can do massive damage, even more so with Singularity helping them. Also, some Rangers like to mark an entire mob and shoot Precision through all or most of them. When you see a Ranger trying to do this, help them out with Singularity and stuns. Singularity is one of the most important skills of a Mage. You should get comfortable with it's cooldown, so you know if you can use it without that decision being detrimental later on, when you might need Singularity again.

With that, I conclude my excruciatingly long post, hoping I've given some useful information. Good luck and have fun

 

That is wonderful advice thanks. I very rarely get in groups, most of the people playing during the time I am on are only interested in PVP so I've done most of the quests and boss fighting on my own.

The unique drops are so rare that I am happy to have any at this point. Farming for gems seems to be dependent on the day. Yesterday I did the temple sector and got a gem 10 out of 12 times. Today I did the same sector 8 times and didn't get any gems. Plenty of gear but nothing extra ordinary or unique. I do like the fact that I can get 40,000 xp points per session but that won't make my sw any stronger.

Doing Atlantis above water is usually better for gear but it is still pretty brutal when trying to clear the level by myself.

Anyway, I certainly appreciate your post and will work on finding some more gems and better gear. I've played a little over 50 days now and for the most part really enjoy this game.

 

Hmm, I can help a little with this, perhaps. (You might remember grouping me in Sargon event, perhaps. ^^)

Whisper me in-game if you see me online, and I'll gladly lend you my damage, or invite you off to where I might already be farming if the party isn't full.

- Lingeringsnow

 

Thanks, I do remember you being very helpful during the event

 

I have been farming and farming and managed to get a little bit of better gear and finally a nice stack of gems (mostly diamonds, onyx, sapphires and amethysts).

Currently I have sapphires in my wand.
Onyx in my crystal (they are better than the rubies in quality)
Amethysts in my amulet (3 polished + 1 polished diamond)
Diamonds everywhere else.

Only the 3 amethysts and 1 diamond in amulet are polished, but all other gems used are at least simple.

It was recommend to put rubies in either my wand or crystal, but as they are lower quality than my onyx I lose some values.

I know that some gear needs to be better and I am working on finding and improving that part.

I have a cape of Gloom (not able to wear yet)

I am only a pve player but I want the strongest SW possible while still having good speed.

So now the question becomes what gems to put where.

What 4 gems (eventually 5) are specific to each piece of gear to build the best SW possible.

I understand that better gear is the most important, but I am trying to do what I can with what I have currently.


Edit:

In the end, this is what I am thinking; ???

5 polished sapphires
5 polished rubies
15 polished cyanite
20 polished diamonds
20 polished amethysts








--MERGED--

I farmed more this morning and with the new gems I managed to combine my diamonds into polished diamonds. I also combined my sapphires into a polished and added 2 rubies (+5 each).

As you can see with the new stats I lost speed, health and resistance.

I gained base dmg along with missile and lightning strikes.

I gained some armor by adding a coupe of simple cyanites.

I am thinking that adding polished isn't the best option until I can do it across the board.

 

That's great armor for your level. Good job with increasing your speed and replacing most extraordinary items and bad unique. Your health, damage, and crit rate are still on the low side. So far, it looks like you've improved a lot, but you're gonna need to do more as those stats aren't very good at level 42.

Try replacing the Eye of M'Edusa, your wand, and Orb, with legendary items. I say find a legendary book and try the offensive mage, but if you prefer a more defensive mage and it works for you, that's fine.

Also, be on the lookout for the Storm of Essences event (that's its name I believe). It has been a while since it was around. The Red Essence uniques give good health and armor, and great damage for being right side items. They will help a lot to improve your weaker stats, if you can manage to get a few pieces. Keep in mind the boss was pretty difficult, so try to raise your offensive stats as much as possible, gather up some andermant (for stones and revives), and gather up red essences(do battlegrounds.. and you might get lucky with a stack or two). Put as much effort into that event as you can, because it's probably the most rewarding of the events. (Excluding Stellar Gold... while it gives a lot of rewards, they are mostly miscellaneous, like dyes and stuff)

Now, I don't know when it's going to happen or if it will be in the near future but, in any case, it helps to be prepared.

 

That isn't the eye of medusa, it is deep sea amulet. XD

 

Oh, thanks Whatever, though, they both suck.

 

Cut the cyanites. They are pointless, get more of amethysts and diamonds instead.

 

I finally managed to upgrade my duria wand to a legendary yesterday afternoon. By combining my sapphires into a polished and adding 2 regular rubies, my attack speed fell to 1,12 but my damage went up.

I'm farming for more orbs to make that legendary along with the belt until I can manage to get unique gear.

I've never been thrilled with the amulet but it's better than what I had.

Having played around 90 days so far I spent the majority of the time leveling up and now I want to spend most of my time trying to build the toughest SW I can.

I got that advice after I put my original thought here.

The new plan is to stock the gear (eventually);

5 Ruby
5 Sapphire
15 Diamond
40 Amethyst

 

That's a good change, you don't really need the speed as much as the damage. The gem plan is nice, too.

 

Hi Rhysingstar,

Racing your SW to lvl 45 isn't a good idea, you should have stopped at lvl 30, to search for some good items...because when you reach lvl 45 you will be too weak to face most mobs.

I will give you an example - I have a SW lvl 2 with 1/3 of your base damage + critical + 1.40 speed and also I have a SW lvl 33 with almost double of your base damage n' critical + 1.36 speed.

You should real concentrate on finding good item first, then keep on lvling up...otherwise you will die with just 1 or 2 hits from strong mobs.