Artie Question

Illarion

Hello!

My membership credits have ticked up to about a 1,000, and I'm going to buy an artie, but I'm not sure which is best for hunting.

I have:

• lvl 2 crit pendant
• diadem
• collar of diablerie
• shield of absorption

I'm a tsol'aa sage occie.

So: should I buy:

• +2 con belt?; or
• +10% health/mana ring; or
• level 2 sip ring?

Help! 

Frederich

What level are you?

Frederich

If you're level 85 (like I think you are) with 13 con (probably? idk)

Bracelet will give you about 400 more health and however much mana.
Belt will give SLIGHTLY more healtha t like.. 450.. but no mana, and you get more endurance.
level 2 sip ring will make your sip go beyond that, and make it about 50 health better.

So.  Really, it's up to you!  I went with bracelet > Belt > Sip though (because I got a level 3 belt for free)

Zahan

Your sip is based on your health.  Raise your health first, which also raises your sip, then raise your sip.

That considered, 10% bracelet to start.  It gives only slightly less hp than the con belt (like 50 less hp), but you also get mana.  It's the clear-cut better deal.


/2 cents

edit: you said 10% ring but I think you mean the bracelet.

Illarion

Thanks, that's super helpful.

Aegoth

con v. mobs always

Nazihk

Illarion said:

So: should I buy:

• +2 con belt?; or
• +10% health/mana ring; or
• level 2 sip ring?
  

What gives you more health at this point, +5% max health or +1 con?

If the answer is +5% max health, get L2 bracelets. This will leave you with ~300 leftover. Get L1 con on the next tick.

If the answer is +1 con, get L1 bracelets and L1 con. Then finish the L2 bracelets on the next tick. 

Raw health is pretty much the best thing you can get for bashing, because mob damage doesn't scale with your health at all, but all your healing does.

Bann

SoA is also incredibly strong.

Korben

I'd go with Lvl 1 belt, Lvl 1 bracelets and Lvl 1 health regen ring, for 1050 credits (I'm sure you can get those 50 quickly).

Zahan

Korben said:

I'd go with Lvl 1 belt, Lvl 1 bracelets and Lvl 1 health regen ring, for 1050 credits (I'm sure you can get those 50 quickly).

Do not ever buy a level health regen ring.  Ever.  Those things are garbage.  You regen like 100 hp every 10 seconds.

Xaden

Health regen is hot. Once you're happy with your overall health level.

Cooper

Zahan said:

Korben said:

I'd go with Lvl 1 belt, Lvl 1 bracelets and Lvl 1 health regen ring, for 1050 credits (I'm sure you can get those 50 quickly).

Do not ever buy a level health regen ring.  Ever.  Those things are garbage.  You regen like 100 hp every 10 seconds.

This is terrible advice. Regeneration rings provide some of the best healing for credits spent. 

Atalkez

Zahan said:

Korben said:

I'd go with Lvl 1 belt, Lvl 1 bracelets and Lvl 1 health regen ring, for 1050 credits (I'm sure you can get those 50 quickly).

Do not ever buy a level health regen ring.  Ever.  Those things are garbage.  You regen like 100 hp every 10 seconds.

You say that until you die because you were 7hp away from living.

Regen is A+

Zahan

Cooper said:

Zahan said:

Korben said:

I'd go with Lvl 1 belt, Lvl 1 bracelets and Lvl 1 health regen ring, for 1050 credits (I'm sure you can get those 50 quickly).

Do not ever buy a level health regen ring.  Ever.  Those things are garbage.  You regen like 100 hp every 10 seconds.

This is terrible advice. Regeneration rings provide some of the best healing for credits spent. 

It's 2% regen on 10 second tick for L1.  So let's say you have 8k hp because you have L2 tank arties, that's around 160 a tick.  If you're fighting, how long are your average fights?  30 seconds?  Maybe less than, but we'll go with that.  That'd be 3 ticks, so 480 health.  That might save your ass in a pvp fight but if you're getting that close to death, that often, while hunting mobs, you probably should find a slightly easier area to hunt.

It looks great on paper, I get that.  It works for mana but the amount of damage you take is incredible, by comparison.  The amount you regen with an L1 is not even single digit percentage of the overall damage you took during that fight.  Just shielding 1 time, and getting that 1 extra health sip, gets you a huge amount more health than that ring you spent 300 credits on.  In my opinion, it's not worth it.

Zahan

Math to the rescue - turns out I was wrong!

My numbers were super old, apparently.  Updated with modern figures and balance times, regen shows to be worth it now.

Very nice.


This makes me wonder what else I have bad info on.

Ankhareoutef

Should just trust the wise ones. They've proven they pretty much have a good grasp on it.

Atalkez

Zahan said:
 

If you're fighting, how long are your average fights?  30 seconds? 

Depends who and what you are fighting. Against Seragorn (Occultist), sure, the fight is probably over in 30-35 seconds. Against anything else other than alchemist? More like 3-5 minutes.

Also, depending on who and what you are fighting, it may come down to a resource in the end. Willpower or Endurance. I've been locked because I was going for my kill with 1% willpower, it dropped then I couldn't even focus. This is why regen/adding of any kind is good (health, mana, wp, endurance).

Zahan

@Atalkez

Illarion said:

for hunting.

Those alchemists, though.

Antonius

One fight while bashing might be 30 seconds, but generally you don't just stop afterwards. The aim should be to not have to stop at all, ever, and be able to just move to the next room and kill the next thing. Regeneration then helps a lot more because your fight isn't 30 seconds, it's however long you bash for.

Zahan

Antonius said:

One fight while bashing might be 30 seconds, but generally you don't just stop afterwards. The aim should be to not have to stop at all, ever, and be able to just move to the next room and kill the next thing. Regeneration then helps a lot more because your fight isn't 30 seconds, it's however long you bash for.

We have to consider gold cap which brings a huge devaluation to being efficient.  You might as well take your time, be safe, and enjoy yourself.  Talk with friends.  Take breaks and pet your cat.  Still feel like playing this game when you hit dragon.  You can't hunt [for profit] for very long anymore, so I'm not sure that I agree you should just never stop at all ever.  Hunting like that is liable to burn you out.

My opinion about the worth was based on old information that I now have updated, anyway.  

The price of being one of those old ones, sometimes, is that your knowledge becomes outdated.  If we're wise enough, we can accept that, process new information, and become better off for it.  

I haven't run the numbers on max health vs regen.  I get the feeling it's still better to start with max hp though simply because max health also affect regen but regen does not affect max health.  Maybe regen is slightly better, but I would be surprised if it "helps a lot more [since the aim should be to not stop]" if so. 

Do you any numbers for this?  I'd be curious to see them.

Ailea

Go with either the level 2 bracelet (for increased mana/health) or for the extra con points. I'd probably go with the bracelet as it raises both and you do use mana with your occie skills. 

Morthif

Bracelet then belt

Illarion

Thanks folks, really appreciate it.  Bought the bracelet, and saving up for the belt.  Super useful info all round though.

Frederich

If you're lucky like me, Illarion.

You can buy a level 2 bracelet, and somehow get the wheel of many fortunes to give you a level 3 belt. :')

Antonius

Zahan said:

Antonius said:

One fight while bashing might be 30 seconds, but generally you don't just stop afterwards. The aim should be to not have to stop at all, ever, and be able to just move to the next room and kill the next thing. Regeneration then helps a lot more because your fight isn't 30 seconds, it's however long you bash for.

We have to consider gold cap which brings a huge devaluation to being efficient.  You might as well take your time, be safe, and enjoy yourself.  Talk with friends.  Take breaks and pet your cat.  Still feel like playing this game when you hit dragon.  You can't hunt [for profit] for very long anymore, so I'm not sure that I agree you should just never stop at all ever.  Hunting like that is liable to burn you out.

My opinion about the worth was based on old information that I now have updated, anyway.  

The price of being one of those old ones, sometimes, is that your knowledge becomes outdated.  If we're wise enough, we can accept that, process new information, and become better off for it.  

I haven't run the numbers on max health vs regen.  I get the feeling it's still better to start with max hp though simply because max health also affect regen but regen does not affect max health.  Maybe regen is slightly better, but I would be surprised if it "helps a lot more [since the aim should be to not stop]" if so. 

Do you any numbers for this?  I'd be curious to see them.

I perhaps wasn't clear enough. When I said that regeneration "helps a lot more" I meant in comparison to regeneration when you're not constantly fighting things (and therefore wasting regen ticks entirely because they don't heal you for anything), not in comparison to other artefacts you could buy. Viewing regeneration in the context that a fight lasts 30 seconds is considerably different to viewing it in the context that a "fight" (bashing trip) lasts several minutes or even hours.

In terms of being efficient, I disagree. People say things like "What difference does it make if it takes me two hours or three hours to hit the gold cap?" Well, an hour, obviously. That's an hour you can spend focusing entirely on other things - combat, roleplay, whatever it is you enjoy doing - rather than having to split your attention. It also means that, if you only have two hours, you can still hit the gold (soft)cap rather than falling short. If you enjoy bashing, you may as well maximise your gains from it as much as you can. If you don't enjoy it, you may as well make it as efficient as possible so you have to spend as little time doing it as you can.

You don't have to take your time in order to be safe, and I suspect most people - due to only needing to input directions, if that much when hunting - could bash at full efficiency and talk to friends at the same time; the only sacrifice in efficiency they'd be making is foregoing off-plane hunting spots like Annwyn.

Zahan

Antonius said:

I perhaps wasn't clear enough. When I said that regeneration "helps a lot more" I meant in comparison to regeneration when you're not constantly fighting things (and therefore wasting regen ticks entirely because they don't heal you for anything), not in comparison to other artefacts you could buy. Viewing regeneration in the context that a fight lasts 30 seconds is considerably different to viewing it in the context that a "fight" (bashing trip) lasts several minutes or even hours.

In terms of being efficient, I disagree. People say things like "What difference does it make if it takes me two hours or three hours to hit the gold cap?" Well, an hour, obviously. That's an hour you can spend focusing entirely on other things - combat, roleplay, whatever it is you enjoy doing - rather than having to split your attention. It also means that, if you only have two hours, you can still hit the gold (soft)cap rather than falling short. If you enjoy bashing, you may as well maximise your gains from it as much as you can. If you don't enjoy it, you may as well make it as efficient as possible so you have to spend as little time doing it as you can.

You don't have to take your time in order to be safe, and I suspect most people - due to only needing to input directions, if that much when hunting - could bash at full efficiency and talk to friends at the same time; the only sacrifice in efficiency they'd be making is foregoing off-plane hunting spots like Annwyn.

Ah I see now.  

I still say that you stop to look at your gold, admire your stats, see your score, check who lists, respond to a comm, give a newbie a help file, etc.  It's almost never that I can just hunt non-stop for 2 hours whenever I want and be completely left alone, and I am a rogue with a gem and a veil.  Even then, you may clear out a whole room with a handful of mobs back to back, but then you have to walk to a new room.

"If you enjoy bashing" I agree it can even be fun to try to optimize your time and be as efficient as possible.  This is how I am.

But I accept I am a minority.  Most people I've come across, don't rush home from work excited they get to sit and press F1 for 2 hours.  Only 1 of my 6 closest achaean friends actually are a dragon.  They often hunt begrudgingly because it's a good source of gold.  They are the people you hear say things like "What difference does it make if it takes me two hours or three hours to hit the gold cap?".  They are the ones I try to consider when offering hunting advice.

Encouraging them to do it slightly faster, doesn't address the fact that it bores them to death, but adding an overlay of enjoyable activity does.  For some, talking to friends or doing other stuff while they hunt is the only way they can stand to hunt at all.

All this seems kind of moot though since I already admitted, a couple times, that I was wrong and have better numbers now.  Regen is worth it during the fight, because of the huge recovery time on elixirs (~5 seconds).  That's really what matters most, because it matters to everyone.

Atalkez

Bashing the most boring thing ever.

Gladly auto everything about it except walking. I never have to stop killing to chat. I track gold and have have an alias to display. Also have it show total when I pick up gold.

Korben

I ran some numbers through Cooper's spreadsheet and came out with the best health artie upgrade path (for a 21 Con L100 Dragon, though I believe there's not much of a difference outside very low levels and/or Con).

L1 sip  >  L1 Bracelets  >  L2 sip  >  L2 Bracelets  >  L1 Regen  >  L1 Belt  >  L2 Regen  >
L2 Belt  >  L3 Bracelets  >  L3 sip  >  L3 Belt.

Cooper

Wow, someone actually used that for something useful! Awesome. 

That said, the spreadsheet calculates based on boosted healing per credit spent. It is hard to put a value on just having more health because of how pk damage scales.

Korben

If you ever feel up to it, I suggest adding a column for the Cape, with an additional green cell for its value (since that can vary quite a bit if you buy the parts from other people).

Edit: and an additional cell for its average expected effect, since it won't be at full effect all the time.