Spear/Wand/Staff/Sword for Casters

[Asya]

Presort asked the other day why I equip a casters with a spear and focus item instead of a wand/focus or staff. Heres the explaination:

A staff provides the following:
* Base +10e (base)
* Head +30hp or +5e or 20% casting
* Wrapping +30hp
* Inscription 20% casting

Wand + Focus provides the following:
* Wand Wrapping 20% recharge
* Wand Inscription 20% casting
* Focus Base +12e
* Focus Core +30hp or 20% casting
* Focus Inscription 20% recharge

Spear or Sword + Focus provides the following:
* Spear Inscription +5e
* Spear Grip +30hp
* Focus Base +12e
* Focus Core +30hp or 20% cast
* Focus Inscription 20% recharge

A staff will give you 15e + 30hp or 60hp.
Wand/Focus will give you 12e + 30hp.
Spear or Sword + Focus gives you 17e + 30hp.

For heroes a spear is superior to a sword because they actually try to use the weapon. Note: GW AI will not cast Backfire on a character wielding a non-caster weapon.

A wand provides a casting time bonus over a spear. Examine your bar in determing how benefical that bonus is. If most of your skills are 1s or less, then a bonus really doesn't mean that much. Thus for monks a wand is not advised.

For my henchies, I either give them a spear/focus combo or a staff depending on the energy needs of their bar.

Wiki has an article discussing this more.

[knight]

While we're on the topic of weapon sets.

All classes should be equipped with (GvG):
- A +30hp/+30hp main and offhand to swap to for spikes
- A +30hp/20% reduce cripple main and offhand (shield) for lave map

All Casters should be equipped with:
- A 40/40 casting set. If you have more than one professions skills, have a set for both and swap while casting.
- A 20/20/20% ench staff for casting enchantments (or any 20% enchant weapon/shield combo)

All monks should be equipped with:
- A -5 EN/30hp main and offhand (shield) for low energy (vs. e-denial; should be sitting around 25 EN)

Other stuff:
- Any class except maybe a ranger should be using all Health Inscriptions.
- ONE reduce cripple 20% Inscription should be somewhere on your armor at all times.
- I won't both talking about melee weapons because there's just to much for someone as lazy as me.

I'm probably forgetting something, but it's not important

<- Cylon ftw!

[miffic]

I'd like to add here just a couple of notes regarding shields.

Mathematically, the damage reduction from armor is an exponential curve, meaning that the more armor you have, the less of an effect it has, however shields can provide a substantial bonus. I suppose the best way to explain the benefits is through a solid example, assuming that the defender is level 20, against a level 20 foe (ie. PVP situations):

At 60 armor (basic caster armor) the damage taken is 100% (ie. you take as much damage as the attacker deals, assuming the damage is effected by armor). At -40 armor and +40 armor respectively, the defender takes 150% and 50% damage (yes, -40 armor from healing signet effectively doubles damage taken). Shields, when the attributes are NOT met, provide 8 armor (assuming a max shield) to all hit locations and consequently reduce damage to approximately 87.06%. If the shield was further modded properly (say, +10 vs piercing against a ranger) that would make the armor value 18, reducing damage to 73.2%. For interests sake, if the requisite attribute was met, that would improve armor by 16 (reduce to 75.79%) or 26 (63.73%).

In short, it's nice to be able to swap off to a shield for damage reduction purposes on casters. That and it'll allow you to swap weapons to avoid things like energy burners (swap weapons to a focus when you want to cast, swap back and they can't burn you below 0).

In a warrior's case, most people carry shields where possible anyhow so I don't think I'll go into it. The major benefits of shields however are in fact on casters, as the higher the armor value, the lower the benefits.

Also note that there are numerous spells and skills which ignore armor, and well, evidently shields won't help against those.

[Ascalon Destroyer]

This is a really great thread and it would seem anyone who wants to do more intense PvP would need to read it.

My only concern is that according to Knight my monk needs 5-6 weapon sets for GvG and I only get four slots.

[miffic]

Hmm. For casters sets I tend to go with:
Slot 1:
Spear: 20% enchant +30 hp
Shield: +30 hp +10 vs piercing.

Slot 2:
Wand: 20/20 casting set or still a spear with 20% enchant +30 hp (depends on what you're running, prots tend to need the enchant more)
focus: 20/20 or +30 hp and a casting mod.

Slot 3:
Wand: +15 energy -1 regen, caster wand wrap of your choice.
Focus: +15 energy -1 regen, other mod of your choice (generally +30 hp).

Slot 4:
Not entirely a necessity, but I suppose the condition reduction mods here. I tend to find anything devastating would get removed before the duration wears out anyhow, hence there's little need to actually equip the 20% mod in most cases. A +hp set here might be of benefit, but chances are the weapon swaps are too slow or you'll get knocked down, preventing weapon swaps anyhow. A shield in this scenario would probably provide similiar mitigation.

My reasoning behind this would be that the -5 energy mod against burners isn't entirely going to make too big of a difference considering the recharge on eburn/surge. So, start off with holding your shield where possible and it gives you a burn limit of 0 energy. When you do need energy, swap to focus for +12, swap back after to prevent further burning (But your energy will still be regening, just within the negatives so it will be locked at zero, swapping back to the focus will give you whatever energy has regened). When that runs dry you can swap to the +15 -1 regen weapons, allowing for +30 energy. Just make sure you swap back after using it and never die when holding those weapons, otherwise most resses will res you with quite low energy (because you need to swap back to normal weapons for +4 regen, not +2). That should give just about enough energy for most engagements while attempting to mitigate damage and burners to a degree.

Hope that helps.

[hughmanatee]

On a caster:

Slot 1: Armor/HP Set as said +30 on a spear/sword/axe and a shield with VS damage types or -2 while enchanted

Slot 2: 40/40 fast cast set for the most important att, otherwise the blanket hct/hsr all.

Slot 3: 40/+20% staff if I have enchants(like attunements, old aegis or speed buffs), otherwise I consider the global hct and hsr stuff if I'm to multiclassed or running like assassin or derv spells. If we see e-denial, that goes here.

Slot4: the high set +30-2.

I also have an inventory full of crap organized so I can hit F9 and change a slot on the fly.

For melee: A sundering weapon, a vamp weapon and an elemental weapon and a furious spear with a bow in inventory if I need it, I have all the +10 vs X and the 3 good -condition duration shields. I'm also liking sentinels insignias.

For rangers: if I do a condition, I have a +bow for it, an ele bow slot, a +5e bow slot and a vamp hornbow.