User talk:Varst

Choosing your playstyle

Basically there’re three playing styles in HV: mage, light melee and heavy melee.

It’s not difficult to change between mage and melee: usually you only need to obtain suitable equipments, adjust your primary attributes, and train your proficiencies.

Some melees would choose to convert to mages at higher levels, because mages can clear rounds much faster than melees. It’s not a must though, as there are numerous melees who can reach high levels.

Mages

Mages are professionals in offensive spells. They primarily use different types of spells to clear rounds quickly.

Advantages

• Their AOE spells can hit every monsters in the field (assuming you don’t miss).
• Offensive spells are generally more powerful than direct attack.
• Their armors don’t have any interference, so their supportive/depreciating spells have the longest duration.

Disadvantages

• They’re mana-intensive. It’s usual for mages to consume tons of mana potions.
• They don’t have great defense, so they can be dealt serious damage from monsters.

Light melee

They wear light armors, which gives great boost to agility and evade.

Advantages

• They don’t rely (that much) on mana.
• They can perform multiple rounds before monsters can react.
• They have the best evade, so monsters can’t hit them easily.

Disadvantages

• They need more turns to clear a round
• It still hurts when multiple monsters land hits on the same round

Heavy melee

They wear heavy armors, which gives great boost to mitigation.

Advantages

• They have great mitigation, which means monsters can’t deal that much damage.
• Rare power variant usually gives the best attack boost.

Disadvantages

• They have high burden, which means monsters can land multiple hits before you can react.
• They have high interference, which shorten the duration of supportive/depreciating spells.
• Diminishing effects on mitigation hurts at higher levels.

There’re also some unsuccessful playing styles

1. Ninja style, with focus on high evade/parry.

Why it doesn’t work:
Diminishing return on stacking evade/parry means it’s difficult to evade/parry every monsters’ attacks.
Also, the attack output is just too low.

1. Battlecaster style

There’re battlecaster weapons, but it’s not recommended at lower levels.
In order to utilize this build, you’ll need high and yet balanced primary attributes, tons of ability points, and trainings on both melee and mage proficiencies.

Supportive Spells:

Protection

Gives 25% bonus to your armor's physical and magical defense.

More useful for melees, less useful for mages (as clothes have low defense)

Haste

Gives you extra action speed.

Useful for almost any type of gameplay except bleeding.

Its effect is more significant when you progress in levels.

It may or may not help mages to shed off damage, depending on the number of creatures which can react after a mage cast a certain spell.

As for melees, a definite plus to stun.

Shadow Veil

Gives you 20% increment in evade.

Since it depends on your CURRENT evade (which in turn depends on your burden), extra burden means SY is more inefficient.

So it's useless for heavy melees now (who has almost 0 evade)

Partial effective for gossamer mages and kevlar melees (who has some evade, but not much)

Effective for EDB mages and shade melees (who has full evade)

Absorb

A universal spell.

Not that good at lower level because

1. It only targets magical attacks. (from elementals/bosses/legends/gods only)

2. It cannot prevent critical hits. ( can be solved in conjunction with bewilder)

3. It only has 75% success chance.

4. There's something called scroll of absorption which has 100% success chance.

It can be good for high-level players when casting with surplus channeling.

Spark of Life

A universal spell.

A spell you'll eventually use when running through arenas.

There're better alternatives in some situations

ROB against gods for mages -> use scroll of life to lower SP cost

ROB against gods for melees -> silence is better

Spkies

Useless for mages. I don't think they're useful for melees.

But hey, you can train your prof. with spikes! (since it has lowest cost)

Arcane Focus/Heartseeker

I don't think I need to explain it, right?

A must pick for their individual playstyle.

SP shield

Another universal spell.

You need this spell when you play high-difficulty areans/normal EODs.

A very good substitute for spark, but it's less useful once you progress in levels.

Eventually you'll need SP shield together with spark.

Curative Spells

Cure 1

Good. You should pick that, and you'll always need that.

Cure 2

Still good. Not as useful as cure 1 though.

Cure 3

It sucks. Even heavy melees don't need them now. Bye Bye.

Regen 1/2

You need them because they can smooth your hp recovery rate.

You probably would like to cast these spells because of its high cost.

Deprecating Spells

Poison

Good against bosses/legends gods.

The damage is not the main focus; it's the reduction in monster's SP/MP regen rate that it's useful.

Because of its long duration, you probably need to put 1 AP only, till you meet gods.

1 AP should provide you with enough duration to kill most of the enemies/bosses/legends.

Slow

It slows down monster's action speed by 50%.

Not that useful at lower level, mainly because of its short duration.

This spell will get better once you have better action speed and depreciating prof.

Weaken

Reduce physical damage by 50% and prevents crit.

A very useful spell for both mages and melees against bosses/legends/gods.

Also useful when you play in x25 difficulty.

Sleep/Confuse

Not a very useful spell.

The problem is that it's too easy to break, and it has low duration.

Bewilder

Reduce magical damage by 50% and prevents crit.

Not as useful as its physical counterpart, but can be used in conjunction with scroll of absorption against magical attacks.

Blind

Reduce physical/magical hit chance by 25%.

A very good spell, but it will not be your first priority.

Silence

Prevent monsters from using special attacks and magic.

Bread and butter for melees against gods. Also useful against bosses/legends.

However

1. It will dispel blind and weaken. It means you'll take more damage and crits.

2. It only prevents monsters from using its skills. It doesn't drain monster's SP/MP, so monsters will still use them whenever silence is off.

It's not that useful for mages because you can'y use silence with weaken, which means you'll get more hits.

Nerf

Bread and butter for any type of gameplay.

It reduces damage, lower monster's evade and resist chance, and reduce monster's defense.

With offensive and defensive potential, it's certainly a must-pick.

X-Nerf

AOE version of Nerf.

Not a must pick, but useful against 3 or more enemies.

MagNet

Reduce monster's action speed by 25% and make them unable to evade attacks.

The later part is more important when you play in the last round of lv.300 arenas, against those dragons.

Otherwise it's just another slow.

Lifestream

Absorbs HP from monster.

Because the damage dealt is so low, it simply doesn't worth it.