I decided to play through the new content as a pure mage, just for some extra flavor over the hack n slash. I managed to solo all the new content in my mage gear, reforging all my trinkets ad nauseum until I'd gotten Warding [+4 Def] on all of them, giving me 20 more defense to compensate for the mage helm having pitiful defense. To effectively fight the bosses I needed to craft crystal storm, and the magical harp. also for completion's sake I made cursed flames and the rainbow rod. It wasn't until I completed my Hallowed armor that I started crunching #'s: Even with full defense trinkets, the melee armor's hallowed helm yielded more defense. But with the mage set I get the 15% damage from the helm, right? Though, if I had melee armor I would have more derfense, and could reforge my trinkets all to Menacing - yielding more defense and 5% more damage. Ok, ok - so the set bonus must compensate, right? 20% mana cost reduc. But I have the mana flower, and 99 mana potions.......so for all points & purposes I have infinite mana: why the hell do i want a mana reducing set bonus? I really hope in a future patch, the set bonus is converted to a velocity, cast speed, or raw damage boost. It would be fitting considering the risk vs reward of having less armor and taking more damage - as it stands now there is really no reason for any mage to use the mage sets. Now I get to farm and put a hallowed helm for melee together, and reforge all my trinkets to damage. That also gets me a move speed set bonus - so that's cool. EDIT: Putting the Calculator into the OP. See attached.
Yes, the same goes for the Ranged Sets. The Defense compensates the bonuses. And the Ranged Bonus is worhtless. A bit more damage, and chance not consume Ammo. Sux.
Right now, casters don't deserve less defense. Casters or ranged. Their bonus are -not- suddenly worth the extreme lack of defense at all. I still have no clue why would anyone want to use Jungle or Necro armor. They're incredibly useless. Defense will forever beat the small, silly bonuses they try to give to these 2 classes.
OR you could act as you are supposed to as a ranged attacker/caster and hit them from long range so that you won't need the defense in the first place. Just a thought.
IDK if its just me being a melee guy mostly (i like having some guns, magic, arrows on me as well) but i've always found the mage and archer rather pitiful. ARCHER: With a adamantite repeater and no ranger stuff, i find it very pitiful, i dont want to go with everything with archer (EG: everything increasing archer skills) to stand a semi chance in the game..... Mage: Yup, there really is no fast killing fighting magic weapon is there? There isnt good enough bonus's, less mana consumption? pfft.. find the wizard and for 5 silver you can get a large 200 mana regen pot. It takes ages and ages to run out of mana pots when you have 4 stacks. For melee theres a huge diffence, good up close and person, good ranged stuff (guns) without having to spend all your stuff getting it to a specific class. For example, core accessories and no bonus's you can take out a sword and blitz . Yet theres no pickup and go style on ranger and archer, you have to max out everything to be semi decent.
Yeah sucks that the melee set is simply the best. Comparing the Hallowed mage and Warrior helmets and their set bonuses: You get 19 more defense, 19% more melee speed and 19% more movement speed from the melee set. What you lose out on is 12% magic damage and 12% magic crit chance. (Oh and 100 mana, which is equal to one mana potion... lol)
In this case, I use ranged weapons and one excalibur. Melee set with warding accessories for 84 def and I never died.
they need to go in the direction they went with meteor armour, meteor armour had something that everything else didnt have: no mana usage of the space gun many people respected the meteor armour because of that 1 little bonus, despite the amazingly low defense it offered (less defense than the silver set) hallowed/any other tiered mage armour should head this way aswell, maybe no mana usage with the laser rifle? that sounds like a bargain
Its the mage style, glass cannon. i managed to have 53 defense with my mage set, while i have 52 with the meele set. and mage deals much more damage- you also dont need to take damage to fight.
You're forgetting that, well, it still provides a bonus. Just because YOU want maximum defense doesn't mean that it's how the set was designed, or intended to work. You're trying to do something like a jack-of-all-trades build, trying to compensate for what your armor lacks. Of course if you're trying for defense, the helmet with the lower amount of defense is going to fail! Trust me - if you focus your accessories to ALSO improve your magic damage, you are capable of dealing a MASSIVE amount of damage. That crit chance is nothing to scoff at - you can't replicate that high of a % with accessories, and you've got more damage to boot. Okay, so the set bonus is a little on the crummy side - you know what? You want defense? Okay, well, use the Melee Helmet and have less effective spells. The Melee set bonus isn't that great either. More Melee speed over cap, yay! It feels like you're griping about choices, which is a little ridiculous.
Or you could just use the melee set + Sorcerer emblem and have both good defense and attack... Really there isn't much point in using the mage armor from what I've tried. It just makes you much easier to kill with relatively little extra damage in return. I suppose it's good for PvP because defense is rather worthless there, though.
I never remove my acessories. i always use Spectre boots Angel wings Obsidian shield Shiny Red Balloon Philosopher's stone
personally i find that ranged is the best and melle is the worst due to the fact that honestly in hard mode getting "up-close-and-personal" to the enemy is a complete mistake due to the fact that say your mele fighting an armored skele... well it hits you once and theres a very high chance your extra defence will mean nothing... now take a ranger fighting an armored skele at a range with say the C.A.R. the skele will more than likely get nowhere near the ranger and therefore not do the damage in the first place.... now take the bosses for instance.... i would love to see someone try to only mele skele prime or the twins... personally i dont think it can be done.... and as for the mage armor personally i dont use mages but when i do the 20% mana reduction does help alot... and as with the defence also being low... it still doesnt matter because being a good mage i would be nowhere near the enemy to get hit by it in the first place
If we got like, 15 for archer, 13 for mage, and 21 for melee, it'd make some sense. But 5 for mage, 9 for ranged, and TWENTY-FUCKING-FOUR FOR MELEE? No Damn Thanks. Im a mage, and I STILL wear Melee Armors.
Learns to dodge and use both mage armor and menacing accessories. That way you can maximize damage and minimize damage taken.
I think +12% increased magic damage and critical strike chance more than makes up for the lack of defense. If anything, melee is the one that's lackluster because it gets the lowest end in both DPS (in most situations anyway) and ranged options. The Light Disc seemed awesome at first but I could kill enemies faster using magic/ranged endgame weapons even while wearing the melee helmet.
Boomerangs have always kinda sucked. They are fun, though! For killing power as melee try the Dao of Pow. 49 base attack and it hits multiple times. Anyway I think that part of the issue is that the set bonuses for the mage and ranged armor are just lame. -20% mana usage? Does it matter? Mana potions don't have a cooldown. 25% Chance not to Consume Ammo. ...really? And then look at the melee set: +19% melee speed and +19% movement speed. Why can't the Mage set get magic attack speed as a set bonus, for example?
