So, with KS (2 slots) I've noticed that the +Attunement buff doesn't really seem to produce particularly noticeable results with respect to where my attunement hovers while casting. I haven't extensively tested this, but, and while I know this is comparing a magic prime to a magic secondary, I feel like the increase to attunement generated from PoM (2 slots) on my Cleric, or the increase in mana levels generated from Merauds Commune (Free-ish!) or Elemental Fissure (2 slots) on the Warmie, produce SIGNIFICANTLY more noticeable results to overall attunement levels than does the +Attunement bonus from KS. I haven't tested with my Moonie and Aura Sight, but my Cleric and Warmie are just FUNNELING mana into their spells and sitting at much higher attunement, compared to my Necromancer who with nearly 650 in Attunement skill, is tapping out with casts that my Cleric can pull off with ~400 in Attunement skill.

I think that a better comparison would be Blessing of the Fae (1 slot, but is a cyclic), which provides both +Attunement pool and +Attunement regen, and from, again preliminary and not terribly extensive testing, it seems produces a larger increase in attunement levels during spellcasting, DESPITE being a cyclic.

Could this get looked at? I feel like the +Attunement isn't really doing much, and might also need the +Attunement pool. I'd even gladly take a 1-slot metaspell that provided +Attunement pool regen.

AFAIK, KS isn't weaker than PoM, the issue is that Attunement falls outside a necros SoI so they're getting 15% at most vs 20%.

Fissure is another beast entirely, since it directly boosts room mana. Same for Meraud's Commune.

Fae boosts pool size, not skill.

IMO, the issue is more that Attunement skill gains have a soft cap that gets hit pretty soon on in the long run of things. By the time you're able to bump it up by 15-20% of your skill, you aren't going to get a bunch of return out of it.

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<<I haven't tested with my Moonie and Aura Sight

Aura Sight is alright for increasing mana levels, but it isn't any different than other +Attunement buffs. I typically get an additional mana level to each spellbook when I cast it, sometimes two if I was near the top of the range. As a Necromancer, your bonus is going to be slightly less due to SoI, so I would only expect one mana level out of it. Moon Mage mana levels scale a bit better with skill than room-based I think too, although I'm not sure of that. If true, I think it's because there's no room mana booster equivalent possible for them.

Where attunement is really at for Moon Mages is with Shadowling. That has essentially the same effect as Blessing of the Fae, where it adds an extra pulse of regeneration every so often while also very slightly increasing the base regeneration indirectly by increasing the maximum amount of attunement.

I don't really have any attunement issues on my Bard for the most part. The only time I worry about mana is when chain casting for training, and only then do I put up BOTF. Sometimes I put it up in combat if I'm being particularly mana intensive with buffs or something, but that's less common. I definitely sit at a lower average attunement level than my Moon Mage while doing magic related stuff, but that in and of itself isn't a bad thing and is to be expected given the skillset differences.

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My point is more that just +attunement doesn't seem to do much. And there's precedent for other magic secondaries to have a +regen. Blessing of the fae seems pretty useful, even as a cyclic, which makes me think buffs to attunement regen are more potent than buffs to attunement.

Also, absolem, I'm not sure how you could determine that shadowing is a 'minor' buff vs 'a buff'.

<<Also, absolem, I'm not sure how you could determine that shadowing is a 'minor' buff vs 'a buff'.

First, I never used the word 'minor' so that's you reading what you want into what I said.

That said, the buff to base attunement regen that Shadowling provides is relatively small since it is derived from the buff to max attunement pool. I.e. a percent of some percent. The vast majority of the attunement regeneration of a Shadowling comes from the additional pulses every 30 seconds or so.

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We can have these discussions without the snark, I know you can.

Address points of a post without targeting the other posters.


Annwyl
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If you've questions or comments, take it to e-mail by writing me at DR-Annwyl@play.net.

I'm all for going back to the good ol' days of needing to cut open the KS cysts to activate them.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Oh, and I did a quick test of BOTF to compare with Shadowling. BOTF works by greatly increasing the base regeneration, unlike with Shadowling. I didn't do extensive number testing, but it appears to double or near-double the base regeneration at max cap whereas Shadowling adds less than 1%. It's unclear if BOTF, like Shadowling, adds additional pulses of attunement on each pulse like it did in 2.0, since I only tested on myself. If it does then the amount is a lot less than the cost of the cyclic, because I always lost a lot of attunement on each pulse.

Of the two, BOTF is faster at regenerating attunement but is less consistent since pulses drop you back down a fair amount and also uses up the Bard's valuable cyclic slot. When using BOTF at cap, I tend to equilibrium at around 70% attunement. Ironically, casting it with less mana can actually be advantageous if only using it for yourself depending on your attunement needs, since you might not need all of the regeneration effect and by lowering the mana you can lower the impact of your pulse costs on your attunement. Shadowling takes longer than BOTF to regenerate attunement, but it's always in a positive direction so it's more consistent.

If I were playing my Necromancer currently, I would opt for something more like Shadowling and less like BOTF if given a choice of which type of regeneration effect to have. It's slower, but doesn't interfere with other magical tasks I may want to do.

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<I do have in mind an Arcane mana booster, though.

Hopefully as a cast on effect and not room effect?

<<@abselom: I used botf to rebuff and run my tm routine. It seemed to leave me with more attunement than without. Ks doesn't seem to change the place my attunement ends up after a routine or during a tm routine.

I was not comparing KS with BOTF with any of that.

You will be looking for the comments I made about Aura Sight as compared to Shadowling way back in my first post.

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<armifer: an arcane fissure would be great. Necromancers are kind of in a neat place as magic secondaries, because none of the other magic secondaries also have weapons as depriortized, except empaths who are... Well different, and paralyze isn't doing damage. My necromancer uses A LOT of mana, and taps out frequently.

Why I asked earlier about a cast on (self) effect or room cast. I don't really see Necro's casting some sort of arcane fissure. Seems to me it would be some kind of transcendental magic that would mutilate the body further and allow for a direct connection to the arcane magic streams, since its a amalgamation anyhow.

>> My necromancer uses A LOT of mana, and taps out frequently.

Yuuup.

Part of this seems intended -- cyclic TM is kinda stupid without it being easily sustainable forever, even if it is painful to learn TM without it. But even just buffing I am running out of mana more than once, and that's with judicious and careful use of cambrinth. With buffs this is especially a problem because I'm burning minutes off the duration while I wait for my mana to come back.

I'm glad to hear some consideration will be given to it, even if that means we have to wait for it.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

<<Part of this seems intended -- cyclic TM is kinda stupid without it being easily sustainable forever, even if it is painful to learn TM without it. But even just buffing I am running out of mana more than once, and that's with judicious and careful use of cambrinth. With buffs this is especially a problem because I'm burning minutes off the duration while I wait for my mana to come back.

This is something that can be grown into eventually, although skillset placement and abilities will have a large impact on that, and there are other ways to manage mana in order to accomplish decent training with a cyclic TM.

When I was having issues using SLS, the biggest help was realizing that I didn't need to keep it active all of the time in order to learn well. Cyclic TM spells have two resources: the obvious attunement one, but also the available targets. By largely ignoring the attunement resource in favour of managing the spell with respect to available targets I found that the attunement resource became a non-issue. In my case specifically, by activating SLS whenever there are 3 or more creatures in the room and immediately turning it off once there are only 2 or less I am able to manage my attunement effectively. I came across this discovery because I found that I was often ending up with only one or two creatures when maintaining SLS, and that wasn't enough to effectively train defence and, to a lesser degree, weapons. I started to cast SLS based on the number of available targets and discovered that it also happened to solve the attunement issues that I had been having.

Perhaps something like that would work for Necromancers too.

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> This is something that can be grown into eventually, although skillset placement and abilities will have a large impact on that, and there are other ways to manage mana in order to accomplish decent training with a cyclic TM.

Very much this. As a fellow magic secondary with a cyclic TM, I was having significant mana issues for a while, but a combination of more skill and making appropriate adjustments took care of it. The most significant change I made was keeping my buffs staggered, so they didn't all need to be recast at once.

SLS isn't really a good comparison since it's single target. But, that aside, USOL doesn't work terribly better for me for training, and besides, VIVI trains stealth pretty excellently. I use VIVI as my primary TM trainer, since it trains both stealth and TM.

>Is that with min prep or min prep+1 vivisection casts? If it's just for training purposes then there isn't much point to using more mana than that unless there's some tiered effect to Vivisection that's unlocked with higher mana levels that I'm unaware of. E.g. TKT and TKS hit more times with more mana.

I was under the impression that TM learning was a function of damage dealt. I am almost positive I lock TM faster with higher casts, and I certainly kill faster. It's a pretty dramatic difference - min preps of vivi can take between 6-7 casts to kill, while casts of 25 + 10 mana cambrinth charges take 4-6.

>That has no bearing on anything. It's the same attunement draining mechanics as any other TM cyclic

I got my wires crossed and thought you were talking about training, not attunement - mea culpa.

>It is part of the formula, however, the majority of the experience is due to your skill relative to your target's skill. Extra damage will provide a bonus to that amount, but it's only a small amount more. You likely do lock slightly faster, but then running out of mana from casting high mana casts can make you learn less TM in the long run than using less mana per cast and not running out of mana. You can't learn TM if you have no mana after all.

I'm not being very concise or clear here - if I'm just doing my TM routine, which is 25 + 10 mana charges, attunement is stable. Very low, but stable. With KS up, I don't see a difference in where attunement hovers. If I also cast some large buffs, attunement taps out - my ability to cast spells is basically 'cast lower' or 'only do one thing magic-wise, buff or cast offensive spells'. This is in contrast to my Cleric who is funneling comparable amounts of mana into spells with no attunement issues at much lower skill ranges, AND, my bard, with less skill using botf, sees significant improvements on attunement pool levels. Which is why I'm asking for a tweak to KS.

If I cast VIVI at min prep, time to lock TM is noticeably longer, and I kill more slowly. This means other skills move more slowly (skinning/than/fa), and it'll take me longer to get to the next skill in my rotation. I don't know what the behind the scenes numbers are, but I wouldn't call the extra XP from higher casts a 'small amount'.

Anyway, to get back on topic - while I'd love for a ritual/spell combination that upped Arcane mana, I'm kind of hoping Necromancers get something other than an Ethereal Fissure with different window dressing.

Or you do what I do, get sick of dragging it out or needing to pause for attunement constantly, and just keep Fire Ball invoked and lock TM in a tiny fraction of the time because you get 4-5 mindstates per cast instead of 1 sometimes. It's not like the occasional hand exploding is a big deal.

I've never really noticed Vivisection teaching Stealth all that well either and I've tried it at many different relative skill levels. It's a nice supplement I guess, but ambushing locks way, way faster on the same mobs. It's not even a serious contest for me which to rely on for Stealth training. Perhaps if I had/used BUE that might be different.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>>just keep Fire Ball invoked and lock TM in a tiny fraction of the time because you get 4-5 mindstates per cast instead of 1 sometimes.

Oh I use it to hunt, not just train.

>>I've never really noticed Vivisection teaching Stealth all that well either and I've tried it at many different relative skill levels.

VIV, like all mundane sniping, teaches stealth way further than normal ambushes. Snipe attacks are like the arrange of stealth. I definitely experience it happening.

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