Get Sure Footing and Fireball asap. SUF is one of the best buffs in game and FB is prob the best TM training spell in game.

> Get Sure Footing and Fireball asap. SUF is one of the best buffs in game and FB is prob the best TM training spell in game.

I absolutely agree with sure footing. You don't have to worry about fireball early on. You'll train well enough with fire shards and you'll quickly outpace your defenses with TM.

Must have spells, in my opinion:

- Swirling Winds (evasion)
- Sure Footing (parry)
- Rising mists (if you do stealth)
- Tailwind (you do train a ranged weapon, right?)
- Mantle of Flame (Melee weapon boosts = more damage = more learning = more weapons = more TDPs)
-

Very good spells:
- Frostbyte (AOE debilitation - yes, please, and the knockdown? Easier to train weapons and TM on).
- Electrostatic Eddy (I'm at the point that I don't run AOE TM spells any more, because they kill things too quickly. Eddy is a good "why not" type of spell)
- Paeldryth's Wrath (Solely because it helps you train TM when spawns are bad)
- Fireball, at higher levels, because splash damage.
- Ignite, because it's random damage bonuses
- Substratum, because it boosts TM damage which is great for learning or high spawn rooms
- ES, because elemental attacks.

My opinion on AOE TM spells:
- Fireball and Chain lightning are fun.
- Rimefang is a better killer in general, but only at higher levels. At low levels, it doesn't replenish enough blades fast enough.
- Fire Rain is a better killer if you have lots of things in your room. The damage it does is significant, since it doesn't depend on engagement radius.
- Ring of Spears can be a better killer if you're constantly moving things through your engagement radius (shove/pw), or if they retreat on their own for various reasons.

I like to lock TM quick and then train all weapons, so FB is awesome for that. Cast 100 mana CL vs a 100 mana FB on multiple critters and FB gives more mind states every time. This happens at the low end also.

You've got the good spell suggestions already covered, aim to get Aegis of Granite for your ritual spell as well, it's great for overhunting.

In regards to weapons, large edge/large blunt are in really bad places right now. That's not to say they won't be worth training if that ever changes, but as a new warrior mage I'd go se/2he sb/2hb staves/polearm ht/bow. (Honestly I'm casually backtraining everything with my warrior mage just because we have summon weapon)

If you dig summon weapon, train forging for the weaponsmithing techniques.

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

I'll echo a lot of what I've seen here. Buffs are better at low levels, because you won't have the mana to put out lots of big-power AoE's. Here are my thoughts in general:

First Spell
If you care about having one of each type of spell, get either GZ or FS for the multi-shot.

Get ASAP:
SUF, SW, MAF - main buff suite. MAF will change once the barrier review is done.
Ignite - Weapon damage buff and one of our few utility trainers.
FB - Best TM trainer. Although, I haven't tested it, Chain Lightning might actually be good too since 3.2 with the min prep reduction.
ETF - Who doesn't want a mana boost?

High Priority
AEG - Get this as soon as you can cast it.
TW, Substratum - offensive buff suite.
EE - Anti-stealth and best debil trainer.
AC - Great defensive spell, train warding all the time!
Rising Mists - If you train stealth, get this.

As you grow:
Debil spells - Have one for each resistance type and the variety lets you get around immunities.
Fire Rain - Great for invasions.
Rimefang - Your cyclic TM for when Fire Rain isn't the best tool.
DB, BG - "thrown" TM. Best for quick kills in PvP and PvE. It's our special thing, might as well get them.
MAB - Expands your damage output options.
At least one of the AoE Debil spells.
At least one of the AoE TM spells.

Worth Considering
LB, FRS - Specialty spells - DFA and armor-piercing, respectively.
FoI - Comes in handy surprisingly often.
VoI, LW - Anti-magic. For PvP and certain mobs.


- Saragos

>>Really curious about what's bad with large edge/blunt?

As far as I can tell, it just has poor DPS. I think it goes something like this (with made up damage levels for illustration purposes).

**Caveat: This is my own perception and I haven't done serious testing.

- Small Edged: Very Fast to Fast, Damage 1-3
- Large Edged: Moderately Slow to Slow, Damage 2-4
- Twohanded Edged: Slow, Damage 4-6

So basically, LE doesn't hit the middle of the range very well. It's slow without gaining a lot of damage.

Large edged's niche was probably supposed to be the "free offhand" that would allow you to either hold a shield or another weapon. However in practice both of those options turned out to be subpar.


- Navesi

>>I like two handers. Only been using large for the fact that I can keep cambrinth in one hand with it.

I'm training up a little cleric, and I just made a buff script that puts on/takes off my cambrinth (while holding my 2hander) So I'm not attacking, but I'm still parrying and can easily add in some circles or whatnot while waiting for full prep if I need to.

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

> Thanks again for all the advice. Really curious about what's bad with large edge/blunt?

There's a very narrow niche where HE/HB is better at anything, and that niche basically assumes that you stop training your character. HE/HB share a base RT with 2HE/2HB. Low weight HE/HB have roughly the same stats at twice the RT as high weight SE/SB, and high weight HE/HB are only slightly better stat wise than low-weight 2HE/2HB. That's great, HE/HB stop growing with you right there. 2HE/2HB can continue to grow in weight until they're much, much better at raw damage.

I like brawling a lot, although I'm not sure how it compares to swords and such in terms of DPS. It's the only way you'd be able to fight naked, though :) And it's fun to punch stuff in the face.

If you end up training it you can pick up a blowgun later which will allow you to "brawl from ranged."

>However, knowing that it's more of an issue with the way HE/HB is designed makes a lot more sense about it.

If you ever somehow get your hands on an amazing tyrium or auction level large blunt/edge it's no where near a bad weapon to use that the general populations decision is based on. I play in Plat, so much easier to get access to these things, but 2 second RT large blunts with high impact stats and perfect FOI tells a completely different story. But apples and oranges instance wise.

Also given that our defenses are tertiary skills, the more weapons you train makes your TM/Debil and weapons not end up running away from armor/shield/evasion. I personally train all weapons to stay real rounded skills wise. Your Magics will run away on you and it makes it tougher to proceed when you are getting beat on because defenses are lower. Just something to think about.

> Also given that our defenses are tertiary skills, the more weapons you train makes your TM/Debil and weapons not end up running away from armor/shield/evasion. I personally train all weapons to stay real rounded skills wise. Your Magics will run away on you and it makes it tougher to proceed when you are getting beat on because defenses are lower. Just something to think about.

Ok, soapbox time. I apologize for going off-topic here, but I have to.

If you hold back any of your primary skills back to your secondary skills, then you're just giving up the advantage of having a primary skill. You're going to have your tert defesnes wherever they're going to be - there's no reason to force your primary skills to be as low as secondary skills. If you have a character with 450 in tert skills, 500 in secondary skills, and 550 in primary combat skills it just works to your advantage. Extra TM! Bonus! It might come in handy sometime.

But nobody ever says, "Man, I wish I had less TM."

There's only ONE situation where it could be a problem - if you can't survive or hit with weapons a higher creature, but are capped in TM. But that doesn't make it tougher to proceed - that's just a time when you can't learn TM. Ok, so you lose out on a potential X ranks of TM. But keeping TM back wasn't going to make your defenses any higher or make you advance that critter ladder any faster!

So, if that happens, stop training TM there until you get higher. But here's the thing - the ranges get bigger at higher ranks. Being capped out on primary skills but unable to move on is a problem that disappears at higher ranks. I can tell you this much - I've gained roughly my last 400+ ranks of TM while training all my skills on the same critter (which obviously has changed over time) with all of my skills moving as fast as they can possibly move - I only train as many weapons as I can keep moving at once. In all that time, I haven't capped out my TM on a critter so I had to turn it off.

If you throttle your TM, you're just denying yourself ranks and TDP's.

I'm sure there comes a point where, mathematically, it makes sense to train all weapons in order to get more TDP's for a given amount of time input. But remember as well that due to higher stats and higher masteries, your ability to train more weapons at once will increase, and you'll find that you can train low ranked weapons on much higher critters.

That's my two cents on the issue. I know it goes against some of the conventional wisdom.

- Saragos

> If you hold back any of your primary skills back to your secondary skills, then you're just giving up the advantage of having a primary skill.

For combat based skills, you're going to do this either by choice or because the game forces you to. Primary skills will eventually stop learning on creatures you're fighting. There are ways around it, but they're so much of a hassle that many people choose not to do it. For example, trying to find two hunting areas close enough in skill that you can train both tiers without dying.

> You're going to have your tert defesnes wherever they're going to be - there's no reason to force your primary skills to be as low as secondary skills.

There are. If your primary skills are combat oriented then you could get to a point that you're killing to fast to effectively train.

> But nobody ever says, "Man, I wish I had less TM."

They do. When TM stops training and they realize that they could have artificially slowed the progress to increase other skills to still keep more skills moving. Multiple skills turns into those juicy TDPs which turns into free stat points which is the same thing as passive, always on buffs that push you past global caps. It also means faster learning, and could potentially mean higher primary skills than you otherwise would have had.

So people aren't saying, "Man, I wish I had less TM." They are saying, "Man, I wish I was more well rounded." Yet, that's effectively the same statement.

> There's only ONE situation where it could be a problem - if you can't survive or hit with weapons a higher creature, but are capped in TM.

In my mind, there's a very easy (fundamentally, I doubt it's so easy programatically) solution to this. TM symbiosis. Barring that, the TDP re-write (I know, we're not talking about this) or increasing the teaching ranges (unlikely since combat is already too safe at the upper end).

> with all of my skills moving as fast as they can possibly move

How? I'm not saying your lying, but I find this statement very hard to believe. If you're in the 400+ range on TM, how are you still locking TM while surviving on a creature (which one?) teaching you tertiary skills (probably around 60-70% of your TM ranks) while providing enough bodies for you to train all weapons on?

Or are you talking about keeping TM at low mindstates?

>>They do. When TM stops training and they realize that they could have artificially slowed the progress to increase other skills to still keep more skills moving. Multiple skills turns into those juicy TDPs which turns into free stat points which is the same thing as passive, always on buffs that push you past global caps. It also means faster learning, and could potentially mean higher primary skills than you otherwise would have had.

TDPs from 250 TM = TDPs from 250 TM, regardless if mind locked or clear.

OP has it right, in this regard. there's no difference between capping TM in a day and Armor in a week vs. TM and Armor in a week. After the week is up, you're in the same place.

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

>>Except when you extend this to scale. Over time, your TM will not cap when your armor caps and you'll slow down learning. By intentionally taking it slow, you can create x bits over y time while using the mana/creature health on other skills. That means you get more ranks overall at the cost of slightly slower TM learning. That is more TDPs.

I'm sorry but this makes zero sense. TDPs are an absolute gain from skill ranks. Slowing your learning means you slow your gain rate until cap, but cap is still cap, and you gain the same amount of TDPs if it took you a day to cap TM or a week (on this specific critter).

Defenses gate your TM learning on higher creatures, so you can overhunt to a degree if you want to maintain TM learning specifically, but eventually you'll reach a point where you can't realistically survive. (which is tangental in this scenario, so doesn't really come into play)

My point is this. If you gain (arbitrarily) from a specific creature 0-100 ranks in any given skill, you're maximum TDP gain for that creature is still the maximum TDP gain at skill cap. Irregardless of what you cap first, you can only complete that creature at your slowest skill gain, in our case, that would be defenses. If you need 65 ranks of defenses to begin playing with the next creature, then this creature just became a 0-65 creature, so that's also irrelevant.


So if after the first day, you're defensive tertiary skills are at (in this scenario) 40, but your TM is at 100, then you have gained X TDPs.

If after a week, if your defensive tertiary skills are at 100, and your TM is at 100, then you gain Y TDPs.

-versus-

If after a week, if your defensive tertiary skills -and- your TM is at 100 (because you gated), then you have gained Y TDPs.. still.


Not taking weapons or other combat-related skills into consideration, which ideally you would be weaving those into your daily training anyway. (And either way, they don't matter in this scenario, we're talking about self-gating a skill, which is silly)

>>TDPs from 250 TM + ML + drain > TDPs from 250 TM + clear + drain. If your TM is clear then you're either capped out on the creatures you can survive, or you're arbitrarily gating your TM. Either way, it's not what we're discussing here.

>>Except when you extend this to scale. Over time, your TM will not cap when your armor caps and you'll slow down learning. By intentionally taking it slow, you can create x bits over y time while using the mana/creature health on other skills. That means you get more ranks overall at the cost of slightly slower TM learning. That is more TDPs.

x bits over y time = x bits over y-self gating time. mana/creature health are infinite for our consideration.

Also, just to point out...

>>or you're arbitrarily gating your TM. Either way, it's not what we're discussing here.
>>By intentionally taking it slow, you can create x bits over y time while using the mana/creature health on other skills.

These mean the same thing, so which is it?

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

>>Unless you have ways to artificially increase spawns, such as multiple characters sitting in a root, you will not have an unlimited supply of creatures.

spawn rate is faster than 200 seconds for every creature in the game, and unless you're practically hard capped, then you'll remain above 1/34. So you will in fact, have an unlimited amount of creatures. If something spawns slower than every 200 seconds, then 1) GMs need to look into this as a potential problem and 2) find something else.

If. for some reason, the creature you are hunting is a slow spawner, and you want to train multiple offensive skills, then cycle through every skill 2 mind state levels at a time. If you're killing them too fast, adjust your offensive power. I have this problem currently, so I use lots of feints and jabs with slicing/impact weapons, and run low damage cyclic TM spells like ring of spears. The goal is to keep everything moving, which we agree on. My point is don't stop/slow training TM just because you might accidentally cap and stop learning before you reach a point you can move on to a new mob, that's just not an ideal way to train.

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

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"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh

> No idea where my post went, i'm not retyping that wall of text.

It's probably best for everyone.

> TL:DR I'm sorry you don't understand that your method has no benefit compared to keeping everything locked.

I get that you're trying to help, and I'm grateful for that. I just don't think you get that there are multiple factors and 25 of 5 things gives you more than 40 of 3. I guess we won't see eye to eye here.

> Please explain how you gain any benefit over a given period of time by artificially slowing your learning rate of a skill.

I think we've already gone through that. I'll try one last time.

- Killable critter 1 spawns.
- Killable critter 2 spawns.

Overtraining TM: You use TM to kill critter 1. You're at 1/34.
Not overtraining TM: You use TM to kill critter 1. You're at 3/34.

You use weapon 1 to kill Critter 2. You're at 3/34 in that weapon.

- Killable critter 3 spawns.

You use weapon 2 to kill Critter 3. You're at 3/34 in that weapon.

- Two more critters spawn.

If you're overtraining TM: repeat using the pattern above, adding 1-2 weapons.
If not overtraining TM: repeat replacing TM with a weapon, so +1-2 weapons.

After the 6 critters, if not overtraining TM,
- Your TM has likely pulsed out. It's Learned 3/34 ranks if you're not overtraining it. It's learned 2/34 ranks if you are.
- You have 2-4+ weapons that pulsed out for 3/34 or will before they come back up in the rotation.
- That's 9-12+ mindstates worth of experience and their accompanying TDPs.

After 6 critters, if overtraining TM.
- Your TM has pulsed out twice at 2/34. You've killed a creature with TM that could have added more mindstates to a weapon.
- You have 1-3 weapons that pulsed out for 3/34 or will before they come back up in the rotation.
- That's a total of 5-9 mindstates worth of experience, and their accompanying TDPs.

There are some slight variations to this, and the numbers aren't real, but the point remains. The more skills you're training, the closer they stay to your tertiaries, the better they each train. If you rush some skills early then they still catch up when you stay close to your terts.

Now, before the objections,
- If you say that this doesn't count because of limited spawns and TM is free then see the caveat in my first post.
- If you say this doesn't count because you can go to a different hunting area to push TM then see the caveat in the post above as well.
- If you say that the numbers aren't real then there's nothing I can do to convince you other than encourage you to try it on a new character. I don't care enough about your training efficiency to do that for you.
- If you say that you don't have any problem keeping everything locked then I'd say you're at the early to mid stages of a creature's training span and to wait until you're near the end. A phase that can easily last weeks or months depending on your ranks.
- If you say that you have more than enough weapons or you could always add more then I'd point out that your TM is still taking the place of at least +1 weapon you could add in.

> The only thing I'm giving up by this is that I train only 7-8 weapons as opposed to all 13

I would say that 7-8 weapons, at level, is training wide if you aren't counting masteries. Even so, if you didn't kill as fast with fireball, could you squeeze in 13? What would the rank difference be in your TM and what would be the sum of the ranks you'd gain?

> Not for me. Not for a long time. The last time I did 2 hunting areas was bouncing back and forth between leucros and guardians.

Right. I've said multiple times that this approach is a more effective option, assuming you are okay with the hassle and you have two areas nearby that fit the requisite mold. I'm not discussing this approach. We both agree that it works.

> With careful critter choices, you can avoid this. Also, don't use spells like DB, BG, or cyclic TM in training. They kill too fast for the experience you get.

So we're agreeing then? You have to shut down damage channels, or reduce the primary skill, to keep secondaries and tertiaries growing.

> But once you move past the point where that happens, anything that makes your TM lag is costing you, IMO.

But we're giving advice to a new player. I think the advice we give someone out of the character generator is far different from the advice you'd give someone that's post 150.

> Stop training TM when it caps
> Stop training weapons when they cap
> Move on when Defenses allow you to.

This is what I'm (poorly) trying to explain. If you kill things slower with TM, you can add more weapons. This lets you continue to use TM to train without having to stop it, and you don't have worry about extra bits being lost due to mind lock. Nothing will cap faster than your defenses, and they'll train really well with fewer mob deaths on the next tier. For training purposes, this is superior.