Training PM on 07/18/2007 11:07 PM CDT
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I'm not having too much trouble actually training, I use YS and prep 10, charge camb 11, harness 10, however harness always locks much faster than PM, sometimes I'll sit with Harness and MD both locked and PM only at perplexing. What would I increase? Mana in the spell?, harness less?, to get PM to train more per cast?

For reference:

Primary Magic: 145 52% bewildering Harness Ability: 146 35% mind lock
Power Perceive: 126 57% very muddled Magical Devices: 126 97% mind lock


-Dek
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Re: Training PM on 07/19/2007 01:28 AM CDT
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Try Preparing with more mana. With preparing at higher mana, you'll harness and charge cambrinth less, so you should be able to find a nice sweet spot to mindlock all your skills evenly, or close to it. You may have to adjust your routine every now and then if ya seek'n to optimize yer learning.

--Zenitar
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Re: Training PM on 07/19/2007 07:29 AM CDT
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The best way I've found to train PM to 400+ is AC, harness cast release At 300 PM right now I need 10 mana to move quickly but at your ranks you'd probably only need 5


Jaedren says, "Alas, no Khri Ronco (Set it and forget it!). Woe."
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Re: Training PM on 07/19/2007 11:20 AM CDT
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Dek, get rid of the harnessing. I have prepped YS 11, charge cam 11 focus cast from about your ranks up to where I am now, 230s.

AL at around 13 or 14 seems to move PM nicely too in the mid 100s.


Axillus - Halfling Warrior Mage
>You charge your steel-toed footwrap at a musk hog.
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Re: Training PM on 07/19/2007 12:10 PM CDT
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Harnessing and charging camb will lock harness faster, sooo...
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Re: Training PM on 07/20/2007 10:39 AM CDT
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>>Harnessing and charging camb will lock harness faster, sooo...

Additionally, waiting for full spell prep trains harness better. Snap-casting trains PM better.

~player of Gulphphunger
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 09:46 AM CDT
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"Snap-casting trains PM better."

i am almost certain that the GMs just said that fulling preping a spell is the best way to train PM. full prep also boost to PP learning.

at 400 ranks in PM I do this

prepare voi
charge armband 11
focus armband
cast
prepare fs
face next
cast

repeat

I have gotten PM Harness PP and MD locked without going fluid doing just this. involved wall ranks tho.


works with cirtters around, or you can cast at players safely. The higher tier spell you cast the more oyu learn. the 2 third tier low casting cost repeatable spell we have is MoF and VoI. i dont have MoF.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 10:31 AM CDT
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If nobody is around you can also substitute FRS or FoS for FS, as they can both be self cast and will destroy the Veil.




http://www.drplat.com - The DragonRealms Platinum Community Website. Be sure to vote DragonRealms as your #1 MUD!
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 10:44 AM CDT
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Are there many situations where VoI is worth having? I'm not too stoked on FoI, and I don't even have IP, but I'm always trying to come up with some reason to have two Water spells so I can start using the Hand of the Elements title.


Axillus - Halfling Warrior Mage
>You charge your steel-toed footwrap at a musk hog.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 12:02 PM CDT
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<<i am almost certain that the GMs just said that fulling preping a spell is the best way to train PM.>>

This is flat out wrong. PM/harness experience is affected by casting time. Waiting longer yields proportionally more harness experience, while casting sooner yields more PM. And...

<< full prep also boost to PP learning.>>

...this is misleading. More exp per cast does not necessarily mean more exp in a given period of time.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 12:19 PM CDT
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i know snap casts used to be better. but field testing will show you that you need to wait full prep or almost full prep to get the highest tier of experiance gain. Getting PP off snap casted spells is barley noticable.

i did it osmething like this.

takes 5 voi snap casts of same mana value to get to thoughtful in primary.

takes 2 voi full preped of same mana value to get to htoughtful in primary.

Harness is affected by useing higher ratios of shared/harnessed/cambrinth in the spell to what you prepare the spell at. thats why i always mim prep then charge up to my backfire point.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:14 PM CDT
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I use veil of ice fairly regularly. Its a great way to prepare for any magical encounter. What's the first spell a WM uses to lead off a fight anyways? TM? Nah, we go for ice patch, vertigo, thunderclap or a similarly suited non-TM disabling spell. Then if it lands we can quickly bring down the VoI and unload on them - and if the disabler fails, then the VoI can block the counter attack.

VoI also helps when trying to protect allies from things like Cave Trolls, Spriggans, Fire sprites, Fire Atik's, Heirophants (go raise quest!), and Sky Giants. I realize most people aren't into group hunting, but if you are at all involved with events VoI can go a long way to ensuring you come out alive.

VoI is a nice non lethal, non aggressive way to prevent enemy mages from casting TM spells. You cast it on your opponent, and he's immediately at a disadvantage for casting on you. And if 50 of you are madly circling a sky giant, cast VoI on the giant - not once on every person circling it...

Finally, VoI hides your facial features and can be colored. Both are nifty roleplay oriented side effects that might be cool to play with.




http://www.drplat.com - The DragonRealms Platinum Community Website. Be sure to vote DragonRealms as your #1 MUD!
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:31 PM CDT
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From clear to concentrating, 30 mana, 6 second pause, 233 seconds (according to the FE timer) elapsed.


[S]>cast
233 seconds elapsed
prep sod 30

You gesture.
The shifting plexus of glistening azure lines reforms around you.>>

SKILL: Rank/Percent towards next rank/Amount learning
Power Perceive: 1276 99.85% concentrating
Time Development Points: 582 Favors: 6 Deaths: 159
Overall state of mind: clear



The 233 seconds that elapsed means one drain pulse took place for a certainty, and potentially two. I wasn't really paying attention.

I'll be giving your side of this argument an utterly massive advantage in the following ways...

A: I'll be starting from learning, not clear.
B: I've ranked, and am now on a more slowly draining rank.
C: I'll be ensuring that only one drain pulse takes place.





You feel fully prepared to cast your spell.
cast
268 seconds elapsed
prep sod 30
[S]>
You gesture.
The shifting plexus of glistening azure lines reforms around you.
[S]>
That won't affect your current attunement very much.
You spread your hands apart then slowly bring them together, fingers interlocked.
>rel

You aren't holding any mana.
You let your concentration lapse and feel the spell's energies dissipate.
Type RELEASE HELP for more options.
>
You feel fully attuned to the mana streams again.

Power Perceive: 1277 00.27% thoughtful



Note that I let this one run for a bit longer - it basically amounted to two extra 'bonus casts'. I did this because I am such a swell guy and wanted to make sure the difference in experience was as readily apparent as possible.

It turns out that waiting for the full 20 second prep doesn't yield 3.333... times the experience that casting with a 6 second prep does. Not even close. Or, in other words, the PP experience most likely either has a high base amount beginning from the smallest amount of time that triggers it, and then a linear progression towards full prep, or it simply has a non-linear progression that flattens out towards full prep. There are probably some other possible configurations that would provide this result, but one of those seems most probable.

And, just for grins, and to ward off the, "but but you can use more mana in a full prep than a snap cast and that surely will yield more experience, right?" cries, I waited until the first pulse that brought my PP back down to 'learning' and ran the test again, only this time I did it with max prep instead of only 30 mana. Hey, it can only help, right?

I'm currently waiting for it to hit "pondering" before I stop the script. Insert Jeopardy theme song here...

Ok, never mind, I'm at 311 seconds and still at thoughtful. Considering I started a solitary pulse under thoughtful, and only pulse once since...yeah.

I'm sure someone will feel it necessary to point out that my new higher rank, in addition to pulsing more slowly, also has a slightly bigger pool, and thus takes more experience to fill. Were the results even remotely close, I'd rerun the original test, but it's so far off that I really don't think it's necessary.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:37 PM CDT
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>Or, in other words, the PP experience most likely either has a high base amount beginning from the smallest amount of time that triggers it, and then a linear progression towards full prep, or it simply has a non-linear progression that flattens out towards full prep. There are probably some other possible configurations that would provide this result, but one of those seems most probable.

Agreed. Seems to me it ought to be exponential rather than logarithmic, in order to achieve the effect that I think they were going for, but I'm just a math nerd.

-Durnil
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:43 PM CDT
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I don't know - they stated that the PP experience increases the closer to full prep you are. They did not say the experience increase accelerates the closer to full prep that you are.

If that's what they were going for, an exponential model would be the obvious way to go, so I'm going to assume that's not what they really intended, or they would have just done it. I think they probably just wanted casting to yield some PP experience, and added the gain towards full prep to compensate for the fact that slower casting = less experience.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:51 PM CDT
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>If that's what they were going for, an exponential model would be the obvious way to go, so I'm going to assume that's not what they really intended, or they would have just done it. I think they probably just wanted casting to yield some PP experience, and added the gain towards full prep to compensate for the fact that slower casting = less experience.

I was guessing that one of the reasons for adding PP learning was to encourage full preps. If the addition to PP learning just made snap casting more attractive (as your tests have shown), then either this guess is false or the goal has not been achieved.

-Durnil
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 01:59 PM CDT
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My guess for the reason was to make PP learning ever so slightly less miserable.

I can't think of any reason why they'd want to encourage full preps, exactly, as there's nothing fundamentally or conceptually wrong with snap casting.

Additionally, it just makes sense, as snap casting is more difficult, and generally in DR, more difficulty = more experience.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:04 PM CDT
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>I can't think of any reason why they'd want to encourage full preps, exactly, as there's nothing fundamentally or conceptually wrong with snap casting.

I agree on some levels, but the problem I'm seeing is that it's really hard to justify fully targeting in most situations. The benefits from the "target" mechanic don't really compare to the efficiency of a snap cast, and this seems like a waste of the system to me.

-Durnil
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:11 PM CDT
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Durnil,

Do you play some instance of DR that works differently from the normal three?
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:13 PM CDT
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Er...nothing about this change has anything to do with targeting.

The preparation time based experience is only for non-TM spells.

TM spells give some experience based on a timer since the last spell cast.

I'm not sure if that timer is short enough that taking the time to fully target a spell (what, 6 seconds?) will cover it, and the original post, at least, said nothing about a sliding XP scale for TM - just that they give some experience and it's on a timer. Doesn't mean there isn't one, of course, but the sliding scale was specified in the case of non-TM and not specified in the case of TM. If there's been a post since then clarifying this, I've missed it.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:18 PM CDT
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>Er...nothing about this change has anything to do with targeting.

Right. Got my wires crossed, thought we were talking about TM for some reason. Carry on.

-Durnil
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:21 PM CDT
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i dont think snapcasts have to be considered harder. i look at them as lazy (in an rp way). Yes snapping makes you backfire earlier, which is the limit that PM skill is there to overcome. but. There is all sorts of stuff your saposed to do to do the spell right. and just skipping them to snap off a spell wouldent make it harder for the mage, just less effective. To do something completely, useing every advantage possible to its fullest would be the most difficult and hence should teach better.

mabey if there was a syntax like

prepare fireshard 10 slow

Then the "You feel fully preared" will take longer but higher chance of success.

or

prepare fireshard 10 fast

Then the "You feel fully preared" will take less time but chance of sucess is less. and would teach more.

neither would effect spell power or accuracy. just weather it backfires or not.

but just snap casting a spell you havent finished preparing should not teach better then a spell you completed preparing.
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Re: Training PM on 08/14/2007 02:46 PM CDT
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<<useing every advantage possible to its fullest would be the most difficult and hence should teach better.>>

Unfortunately, how you think it should work is more or less the exact opposite of how it actually does, for both PM experience and, at least in xp-per-time-period (since exp-per-cast is basically irrelevant) for power perception.

<<mabey if there was a syntax like...>>

That's essentially how it already works, just without the superfluous commands.
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