Blood mages?

[Droth]

Are there any out there? i havent been back for all that long but i havent seen too many about. got extreemly tired of my mage i hear they are wonderfull at higher levels but they arent my cup of tea. so i started trying out alot of the other schools schools. after about 4 days of this i ran across bloodmage. only in the twenties for now but each fight takes alot of thought and care and i really enjoy that.

[Droth]

(sorry about this double but for some reason in can no longer edit my post after about 30 seconds) ehhem also i've searched the forums a bit and there isnt a whole lot of infomation out there on them. if you can think of any feedback that would be helpfull to fledgling magi i would be very greatfull(spells and techs that dont stack ,the max you need in the spirit/blight skill to use the highest tier fully teched spells stuff like that) also i would be very interested in hearing how they play later on in life and what roles they usually play in groups. any little tidbits would be welcomed.

[walkerglassmire]

As I've mentioned to you elsewhere, I'd suggest snagging the Craft Calc on the Download page to get a LOT of spell info.

[Droth]

920 spirit 1030 blight to max out those spells thanks to the crafting calculator. now that i've appeased you how about the rest of the questions that you cant just ask the crafting calculator?
1.what spells and techs dont stack and/or override eachother?
2.how do they play at mid and higher levels?
3.what is thier main function in groups?
4.i've heard blight isnt usefull at higher levels but thats not for sure and no one mentions why.
5.what are some of the best ways to tech thier spells weapons and armor?
6.suggestions on how to spend points
7.suggestions on multi classing
8.are there some spells that just arent worth casting and why

please note that there are new players comming to this game some i'm sure that are wondering about bloodmage and there just isnt any information about them out there.
but droth horizons.gi waaaaa well that site doesnt tell you anything about the role and function of the class, doesnt give you any advice what so ever about how to build one, doesnt tell you how long the recharge timer is on abilities, it just doesnt give you alot of information that would be handy. a new player comming hear looks up bloodmage on the forum, finds nothing usefull, maybe somehow hears about horizons.gi, goes there and sees something about lifetaps and abilities that sound interesting but he will still be lacking alot of important information that only other players can give.
but droth you can build it however you want waaaaa. no you cant. if as a mage of some type you say put most of your points into the wrong stats even though, through the discription it sounds like a good idea in the end you are going to come up lacking and have nothing but frustration.
in closing if you dont have the answers to any of the above questions and dont have anything usefull to say please dont come here and fog up my thread

[AA0]

There is a call for adventurer and crafter guides for all schools, hopefully its being worked on.

[Droth]

yes but untill then perhaps something here so people dont have to stumble around in the dark? there is nothing stopping anyone with some knowledge of the class from stopping in and givng a few words of advice.
also how about i narrow this down a bit. If you have never played a bloodmage or have no usefull knowledge about the bloodmage class or do not have a comment that is somehow related to said class or one of the above questions please dont fog up this thread.

[Gengel]

Hiya! If ya can find me awake in Order, please seek me out. I am Master Bloodmage and I am alway looking for a friendly ear.

~< Gengel >~

[tjl]

My bloodmage is still in his 40's, single classed. so I cant answer all your questions as best as others on the forum.

1.what spells and techs dont stack and/or override eachother?

as for as teching, the crafting calc should take this into account. If you can make it in the program, you can make it ingame. as for spells stacking (i assume you mean in combat), that is something you will learn as you play the character. as i recall, there were very few stacking issues

2.how do they play at mid and higher levels?

I'm just starting the mid levels, and it's quite challenging. My spells and gear are not up to par though.

3.what is thier main function in groups?

single classed, your going to be doing damage, and debuffing mainly. multiclassed, you can add healing/detoxing to that.

4.i've heard blight isnt usefull at higher levels but thats not for sure and no one mentions why.

it is still useful, but only marginally. mobs get much much tougher at higher levels to offset the players' well coded AI . but the blight spells don't scale well to compensate that. most of them are flat reductions to stats, which help very little at that tier. -100 focus on something with prob 1300+ focus... will mean very little.

5.what are some of the best ways to tech thier spells weapons and armor?

can't really answer this. but they are spellcasters so power/focus rate highly.

6.suggestions on how to spend points

spend in power/focus and blight/spirt. maybe some in evasion. you can retrain quite often, so its good to experiment with what fits your playstyle.

7.suggestions on multi classing

anything from the mystic side. (life, nature, spirit, blight, and augmentation skills) cleric, healer, spiritist and druid are great with bloodmage. shamans too.

8.are there some spells that just arent worth casting and why

a lot of the blight spells, for the reasons above. all the spirit spells are very useful though.

[Droth]

thanks very much

[Droth]

two more questions i've run into.
1. do ethereal leech and paroxysm work together? i've heard it does but i've never seen both of them show up in the combat log or over thier heads and they give back so little life and usually both go off at about the same time so it's very hard for me to tell.i just want to make 100% sure so i dont waste that long of a cast time on something that isnt ticking
2. why is it sometimes fighting the same beeltes i do around 30-40 damage with one spell almost everytime i cast it and out of the blue will do half that much? on both the lifetap spells there is only about a 2point veriance of min/max damage on the spell discription. perhaps that ends up multiplied by a great deal when power is added in? that's my theory but i can not tell if it is correct or not.
:edit: it just did it again. usually i hit for 50+ damage this time i hit for 26 :/
oh and spirit adept says it adds +1 damage is that +1 to the original damage that then gets multiplied by power or just +1 period? and while my bolt always does at lease lets say 30 damage now my theft of life stated 2 points of damage higher on its min damage usually does about 25 and sometimes drops to 17 per cast? it has a higher min damage than the other spell how is it doing less damage? i know these beetles use harden armor but spirit isnt supposed to be affected by armor and my bolt doesnt drop a single point off it's damage when i hit them with it after harden shell and all my spells are spirit >_< what's going on?
:report: i used leech on one tiny critter and paroxysm on another after letting something chew on me for a bit to lower my health and i saw both messages per tick but i also casted them both in a differant order on something and the weaker one was the only one i saw tick so it could be doing both and just not telling me so it could still be either :/

[Deth]

two more questions i've run into.
2. why is it sometimes fighting the same beeltes i do around 30-40 damage with one spell almost everytime i cast it and out of the blue will do half that much? on both the lifetap spells there is only about a 2point veriance of min/max damage on the spell discription. perhaps that ends up multiplied by a great deal when power is added in? that's my theory but i can not tell if it is correct or not.
:edit: it just did it again. usually i hit for 50+ damage this time i hit for 26 :/
oh and spirit adept says it adds +1 damage is that +1 to the original damage that then gets multiplied by power or just +1 period? and while my bolt always does at lease lets say 30 damage now my theft of life stated 2 points of damage higher on its min damage usually does about 25 and sometimes drops to 17 per cast? it has a higher min damage than the other spell how is it doing less damage? i know these beetles use harden armor but spirit isnt supposed to be affected by armor and my bolt doesnt drop a single point off it's damage when i hit them with it after harden shell and all my spells are spirit >_< what's going on?

Beetles have the harden shell ability it is a big armour buff. So all your spells that do not say eatheral in the text do normal spirit damage and are blocked by armour. So they drop when they use this ability.

spirit adept adds +1 to the damage listed in the spell, I think to min and max. So if it was 10-20 it is now 11-21 and then this is multipled by the delay of the spell to figure out damage. I am not sure when the extra damage from power is added I assume before delay but I could be wrong.

If you look at the Spirit bolt spell it is eatheral Spirit Damage when means it ignores normal armour but is reduced by eatheral armour . Theft of life is a Spirit damage spell so it has to work against armour. If you compare the delay of the 2 spells I assume spirit bot has a longer delay which is why it would be doing more damage.

The thing to remember is Ethereal and Spirit are two diffrent things. You can have Ethereal fire, ice, energy, and spirt damages but not all spirit is Eathereal. It is just that a lot fo Spirit spells are ethereal.

[Droth]

Ahha! yes that's it i'm sorry i thought it was spirit that made it bypass armor not ethereal. that's what's been going on. thanks that has been driving me crazy for days

[tramsan]

two more questions i've run into.
1. do ethereal leech and paroxysm work together?

No. IIRC, leech will overwrite parox. The singularly most useful situation for a parox is farming, in 1-on-1 combat it's not quite so valuable.

[Helcat]

No. IIRC, leech will overwrite parox. The singularly most useful situation for a parox is farming, in 1-on-1 combat it's not quite so valuable.

wont overwrite, just wont cast as they conflict.

[Solanaceae]

I belive its +1 delay adjusted, like many of the other "adept" skills.