Hey I've been thinking... With Aqua Road due to be released in OMS soon (I hope), I've been toying around with the idea of dusting off my Poison Mage (to be)... I kinda never got around to getting past lvl 25 with this mage because I got disheartened by the fact that there were NO monsters which were weak to Poison.

HOWEVER, have a look at this: http://www.hidden-street.net/monsters/mons_eleweakness.php#weaktopoison

It seems that a bunch of fish in Aqua road are weak to Poison. Theres 11 monsters between lvl 23 and 43 which are weak to it. What would be ideal would be if there were some more over lvl 43, however this is still a reasonable situation.

At the moment there is probably so few Poison-First mages around that you could count them all on one hand. Which means that the ideal training grounds for Poison Mages will probably be fairly empty once the fuss around Aqua Road dies down. Which means people who max Poison first will probably find that levelling between around lvl 37-50 will now be fairly effective and easy.

Thoughts?

yea...poison would be good when AQ comes out...however, during the meantime i dont' really think poison would be an effective attack on other monster....

i remeber a similar thread at the old onRPG, and how peopel were tellign the person that it would be more affected at lvl 7X+...since they get poison gas....

Wow. Also, If you do posion, you will master it by lvl 40. There are a couple of lvl 40 monsters that are weak to poison. SO by lvl 50 you will have max fire arrow, ( assuming you do, posion, then fire arrow) you will go back to elnath to train. That does make sense, because no 1 likes to use the same skills for 50 lvls. Nice thinking,

Good point of view.
Then again, look at it this way.

Would you have the patience to level a Poison-only mage to 37+?

Yeah what I think I will do is get my Mage up to around lvl 35ish (with 15 points in Poison) and then wait for Aqua Road. As soon as Aqua Road comes out, I'll bring the Poison out again, and the plan is pretty much max Poison from 30->40, then max Fire Arrow from 40->50. Once I get to around lvl 46-47, I'll go train in Nath using Fire Arrow.

Good point of view.
Then again, look at it this way.

Would you have the patience to level a Poison-only mage to 37+?

It's no harder to level a Poison-first mage from 30->37 than it is to level a Fire Arrow-first mage in that level range, since both skills are not worth using until they are at least 50%-75% maxed... Which means both type of mage will probably be using Magic Claw until at least lvl 35-37...

Yeah what I think I will do is get my Mage up to around lvl 35ish (with 15 points in Poison) and then wait for Aqua Road. As soon as Aqua Road comes out, I'll bring the Poison out again, and the plan is pretty much max Poison from 30->40, then max Fire Arrow from 40->50. Once I get to around lvl 46-47, I'll go train in Nath using Fire Arrow.

My thoughts exactly. But lvl 47, you will have 21 into fire arrow. And leattys and penguins would give to little exp. I think you'd have to stick with posion because I don't think 21 into FA would kill a jr.yeti fast and efficiently.

Well what a councidence, I'm a pure poison mage...Well Fire after poison. I know it;s stoopid, but now it ain't. :)

My thoughts exactly. But lvl 47, you will have 21 into fire arrow. And leattys and penguins would give to little exp. I think you'd have to stick with posion because I don't think 21 into FA would kill a jr.yeti fast and efficiently.

Yeah you may be right, but then again, maybe by using a combination of Poison and Fire Jr Yetis may just be a possibility... I'm thinking something along the lines of running across the map, poisoning yetis as I go and "farming" them to follow me. Then by the time I get to the other side of the map I have a large bunch of yetis following me, most of which will probably be near death due to poison. I then finish em with FA.

Could work... Then again, might not work at all. I guess I'll find out :)

http://www.sleepywood.net/forum/showthread.php?t=212265

Look at the part where dream talks about poison brace. Additionally I had a poison Mage in Windia, I got him up to 40. To compare, I got a Fire Mage up to 40. The Fire Mage, with no doubt, did tons more damage and leveled a hell of a lot faster. My curiosity led me to level my poison Mage to level 50, I did so. Then, I leveled my Fire Mage to 50. The same results, the Fire Mage was victorious. That combined with Dream's statment, I'm 100% convinced that poisen isn't worth it in 2nd job. Also, you'd have to sacrifice MP Eater or Teleport for it, which is completely insane. Dream explains that too.

Overall, Dream's pretty much a god at writing guides and stuff, he knows his shit.

I feel like living on a norma build now.

But can anyone figure out if Aquaroad is comming REALY soon?

http://www.sleepywood.net/forum/showthread.php?t=212265

Look at the part where dream talks about poison brace. Additionally I had a poison Mage in Windia, I got him up to 40. To compare, I got a Fire Mage up to 40. The Fire Mage, with no doubt, did tons more damage and leveled a hell of a lot faster. My curiosity led me to level my poison Mage to level 50, I did so. Then, I leveled my Fire Mage to 50. The same results, the Fire Mage was victorious. That combined with Dream's statment, I'm 100% convinced that poisen isn't worth it in 2nd job. Also, you'd have to sacrifice MP Eater or Teleport for it, which is completely insane. Dream explains that too.

Overall, Dream's pretty much a god at writing guides and stuff, he knows his shit.

Your points are valid HOWEVER they don't take into account the new Poison-weak monsters in Aqua Road... That is what makes Poison-First mages a possibility IMHO.

As for giving up a skill for Poison, well thats true, but I've never really been a huge fan of MP Eater or Slow anyway... Either of those skills could go and it wouldnt bother me. Teleport is a MUST however.

While I agree that in terms of raw damage, Poison-first mages might not seem as effective as a Fire-first mage, but theres more to levelling than raw damage. I figure that if going Poison-first makes the journey more fun/enjoyable during the lower levels of 2nd job, then why not. At higher levels Poison-first mages have FA anyway, and so are no longer at a disadvantage raw damage-wise.

Well, I have a level 50 fire mage. Fire mage is to strong for it's own good. It gets old fast. I started to wish I did posion first, because I will see monsters uffer to death, no just plain die flat from Fire arrow.

Back at Zadam. I highly doubt PB will posion the monsters all the way accross the map lol. Though I have a feeling it was just sarcasm, it will work if you used them both. Why not just try it out, it wouldn't kill to try. You may start a new trend.;)

Erm

"4) Max MP Eater? Does it work with all 3rd job skills?
Get this ASAP. It is the skill every other job want to have~ Maxing this skill saves countless number of pots. In fact, if you go to places where magic guard isn't necessary (jr yeti, zombies, dark unicorn, etc) MP eater will let you train without use of a single mana pot. This is one of the best and most important skills for all magicians. MP Eater works with all magic spells that do damage to enemies, this includes 3rd job skills."

By Dream from SW.net

And also, the AquaRoad thing won't make much of a difference, Fire will still remain supreme

I don't know, but that would be pretty sexy.

I never really thought it would be practical, but I saw someone with maxed poison in beta, and it was crazy.

Anyway, go for it.

Well, I have a level 50 fire mage. Fire mage is to strong for it's own good. It gets old fast. I started to wish I did posion first, because I will see monsters uffer to death, no just plain die flat from Fire arrow.

Back at Zadam. I highly doubt PB will posion the monsters all the way accross the map lol. Though I have a feeling it was just sarcasm, it will work if you used them both. Why not just try it out, it wouldn't kill to try. You may start a new trend.;)


I think you misunderstood me... I said you run across the map from one end to the other, poisoning AS YOU GO.

Erm

"4) Max MP Eater? Does it work with all 3rd job skills?
Get this ASAP. It is the skill every other job want to have~ Maxing this skill saves countless number of pots. In fact, if you go to places where magic guard isn't necessary (jr yeti, zombies, dark unicorn, etc) MP eater will let you train without use of a single mana pot. This is one of the best and most important skills for all magicians. MP Eater works with all magic spells that do damage to enemies, this includes 3rd job skills."

By Dream from SW.net

And also, the AquaRoad thing won't make much of a difference, Fire will still remain supreme

While I agree that MP Eater has some benefits (ie saving money on pots), I personally prefer to take damage dealing/support skills over money-saving skills. The same argument could be made of the Endure skill for Assassins (since it increases the MP recovery, it saves em pots) but most Assassins will give Endure the lowest priority out of all their skills, in most cases only taking it up to 3 to unlock Drain.

Fire may still reign supreme in terms of raw damage, but I still suspect that I would personally give up on my Fire Mage out of boredom before even getting to 3rd job due to the monotony of shooting FA after FA for so many levels straight. Theres something to be said for skills which make playing the game actually more fun.

OsirisXx: I hope you don't mind, but I stole your idea with the sig showing old forum stats...

Ahh, missed that part, ahah, that would make fire mages more interesting, playing games with the jr.yetis :D then when they are almost dead, you blast them to a deadly fire arrow. Amazing. Better then just using fire arrow forever and over killing. So, again, I think you should try it out, start a new trend, and have followers copying;) I'd probably try if it turns out right, of course, we would need Aqua Road.

poison mages soo rock xD

I think you misunderstood me... I said you run across the map from one end to the other, poisoning AS YOU GO.



While I agree that MP Eater has some benefits (ie saving money on pots), I personally prefer to take damage dealing/support skills over money-saving skills. The same argument could be made of the Endure skill for Assassins (since it increases the MP recovery, it saves em pots) but most Assassins will give Endure the lowest priority out of all their skills, in most cases only taking it up to 3 to unlock Drain.

Fire may still reign supreme in terms of raw damage, but I still suspect that I would personally give up on my Fire Mage out of boredom before even getting to 3rd job due to the monotony of shooting FA after FA for so many levels straight. Theres something to be said for skills which make playing the game actually more fun.

OsirisXx: I hope you don't mind, but I stole your idea with the sig showing old forum stats...
Erm, not a very good analogy. As Dream stated MP Eater can cause you to train without using A SINGLE MP pot. Endure doesn't save even close to that much money. Also, it's a fact, you'll train faster with FA then PB, the extra attacking skill isn't fun IMHO. You'll regret not getting MP Eater but oh well, time will tell.

Erm, not a very good analogy. As Dream stated MP Eater can cause you to train without using A SINGLE MP pot. Endure doesn't save even close to that much money. Also, it's a fact, you'll train faster with FA then PB, the extra attacking skill isn't fun IMHO. You'll regret not getting MP Eater but oh well, time will tell.

It IS an effective analogy... One might be more effective than the other, but they are still doing essentially the same thing.

As for training faster with FA than PB, that may be so and don't make the mistake that I'm saying PB is MORE EFFECTIVE than FA. What I AM saying is that PB-first has now become a viable option. Not necessarily a FASTER option than FA, but its still viable, thats what I'm saying.

As for whether it is or isn't fun is obviously up to personaly preference, but personally I would find a char with 2 useful attacking skills more exciting than a char with only 1 useful attacking skill. But yeah each to his/her own.

Actually I just realized after maxing all essential skills, you have 21 points left to split up between Slow and MP Eater... I would probably do something like 10 MP Eater and 11 Slow, or 11 MP Eater and 10 Slow...

MP Eater with 10 SP: For every attack, 20% success rate, absorb 30% of the enemy's MaxMP
MP Eater with 20 SP: For every attack, 30% success rate, absorb 40% of the enemy's MaxMP

I'd say that 10 in MP Eater is still fairly effective. It will still save you a heck of a lot of cash. Maybe you cant train completely Pot-less, but your pot usage will be absolutely tiny.

Slow at lvl 10 is fairly decent also... It wont slow your enemies down as much of for as long, but by the time it expires your enemies should be dead already anyway. In fact, I don't even know how effective Slow is at all, even when maxed... Do people even use it regularly during training? I would rather kill or poison an enemy than slow it down. I can always teleport away from it if I need to rather than running away.

poison...is just good for attking higher lvl monster until they die...

if you have the patience go for it but i would suggest going with fire arrow first. i know it is more common but you will level faster.

also instead of maxing poison right after fire arrow, you can max med which will help you level faster. max poison after that then

well...not sure if anyone will read this but i DO have a pure poison mage
but it requires a lot of time, dedication, and hard-work.
you dont get to kill anything as fast...but its fun and unique...
i quit after a while since im not a very patient person...but if you do decide to go poison first...or pure poison
best of luck to you.

As for whether it is or isn't fun is obviously up to personaly preference, but personally I would find a char with 2 useful attacking skills more exciting than a char with only 1 useful attacking skill. But yeah each to his/her own


Yes, but if you wanted to have a lot of attacking skills, why not go with a bandit? I understand about being unique and all, but it's not worth it.

In 3rd job, you get 3 attacking skills, and 5 active skills that you will use often.

Attacking
F/P Comp
FE
AOE Poison

Active
F/P Comp
FE
AOE Poison
Seal
Booster

Now, to the point, passive skills.

11 Slow
10 MP Eater
AMP

Now, if you subtracted that uneffective poison skill in 2nd job:

20 slow
20 MP Eater
AMP

I understand from your POV it's viable and you think it'll be effective, but I know from expierience, it's not, AT ALL. You'll find yourself not even using poison due to the crowded maps. NOW, if this game didn't have hella crowded maps, then yes, Poison in 2nd job would be effective, but as it is, no. You can either listen to my expirience or try it yourself, either way, I'm pretty sure you'll come to the same conclusion.

And also, no hard feelings dude, I like trying things out myself too. In fact, if it wasn't for my dumbass cousin, I would let you try my pre-existing Poison Wizard.

Yes, but if you wanted to have a lot of attacking skills, why not go with a bandit? I understand about being unique and all, but it's not worth it.

In 3rd job, you get 3 attacking skills, and 5 active skills that you will use often.


Actually I completely disagree with you about the bandit thing. COMPLETELY. IMHO Bandits are probably the worst class in all of MS with regards to lack of variation in attacking skills. Yes maybe in 3rd job this changes, but in 1st and 2nd Job, this fact stands. And since I have never gotten a character up to 3rd job yet, I personally don't think picking a class based on benefits in 3rd job is a valid option for me. Its taken me a YEAR to get my Fighter up to lvl 60! Its probably going to be another 3-6 months before he gets to 3rd job!

...I understand from your POV it's viable and you think it'll be effective, but I know from expierience, it's not, AT ALL. You'll find yourself not even using poison due to the crowded maps. NOW, if this game didn't have hella crowded maps, then yes, Poison in 2nd job would be effective, but as it is, no. You can either listen to my expirience or try it yourself, either way, I'm pretty sure you'll come to the same conclusion.


Your missing my point... My point is that although poison-first is not a viable option right now, as soon as Aqua Road comes out I think it will be. The problems you have listen, crowded maps, low damage for Poison, all go away with maps in Aqua Road containing monsters with Poison weakness. By being Poison weak they actually take a decent amount of damage from Poison, and you benefit from the DOT (damage over time) aspect of Poison which means you no longer have to kill enemies in a consecutive order. As for being crowded, well I'm sure that during the first couple of weeks after Aqua Road is released it will be crowded, but after that I suspect that the maps with Poison-weak enemies will be pretty much deserted.

So yes... Right now Poison-first is not effective. When Aqua Road comes out, I think it WILL become effective. Maybe not as fast as standard build, but still totally doable and valid. If nothing else it will give you more variety in levelling your character, since a standard build pretty much uses Magic Claw from 15->37, then FA from 37->70+. At least this way you get to slot PB in from around 37->47ish. I don't know about anyone else, but if I had to see nothing but FA after FA for 35 levels straight, I would go nuts... :P

...And also, no hard feelings dude, I like trying things out myself too. In fact, if it wasn't for my dumbass cousin, I would let you try my pre-existing Poison Wizard.

No hard feeling taken... This is the kind of discussion I love, where people are discussing things logically and calmly, and peronally I don't think people should ever get offended when people have different opinions to them, as long as everythign is debated intelligently and calmly.

What level is your Poison Wizard can I ask?

Actually I completely disagree with you about the bandit thing. COMPLETELY. IMHO Bandits are probably the worst class in all of MS with regards to lack of variation in attacking skills. Yes maybe in 3rd job this changes, but in 1st and 2nd Job, this fact stands. And since I have never gotten a character up to 3rd job yet, I personally don't think picking a class based on benefits in 3rd job is a valid option for me. Its taken me a YEAR to get my Fighter up to lvl 60! Its probably going to be another 3-6 months before he gets to 3rd job!

Erm, sorry about that dude, I was thinking you said something about 3rd job in this thread, but you really said it in another topic, I got confused. It was that thread that Infamous made asking what sub-class you prefer.

Let me clear that up right now. When comparing sins and bandits you listed bandit attacking skills only in 2nd job- but you listed 3rd, 2nd, and 1st job skills for sins, that was extremely biast. Also, you said bandit's don't have enough variety in attacking skills while for the assassin you listed supportive skills too. Allow me to lay it out for you.

Attacking Skills for Assassins
Lucky Seven
Drain
Avenger

Attacking Skills for Bandits
Double Stab
Steal
Savage Blow
Assaulter
Pickpocket
Band of Thieves
Mesos Explosion

As you see, Bandits have over double the attacking skills as sins.

Now let's say you meant Active, supportive, and Attacking skills.

Bandit
Double Stab
Steal
Savage Blow
Assaulter
Pickpocket
Band of Thieves
Mesos Explosion
Meso Guard
Chakra
Dagger Booster
Haste

Assassin
Lucky Seven
Drain
Avenger
Flash Jump
Claw Booster
Haste
Meso Up
Copycat
Shadow Web
Shadow Meso

Whee, bandits still win. I'm not saying this means Bandits are better or anything, I'm just saying that what you said wasn't true in any way.

Anyway, back to the main idea.
__________________________________________________ __________

Your missing my point... My point is that although poison-first is not a viable option right now, as soon as Aqua Road comes out I think it will be. The problems you have listen, crowded maps, low damage for Poison, all go away with maps in Aqua Road containing monsters with Poison weakness. By being Poison weak they actually take a decent amount of damage from Poison, and you benefit from the DOT (damage over time) aspect of Poison which means you no longer have to kill enemies in a consecutive order. As for being crowded, well I'm sure that during the first couple of weeks after Aqua Road is released it will be crowded, but after that I suspect that the maps with Poison-weak enemies will be pretty much deserted.

No I didn't, Kazoo already made the point about training on the pepes at level 47, and I can tell you, it won't be effective, at all. Also, keep in mind that Dream plays JMS, which already has AquaRoad, thus when he made the guide, he took that in to account.

What level is your Poison Wizard may I ask

My Poison Wizard WAS level 50.

I say go for it. I'm trying the same thing sort of. I got a lvl 52 fire mage and i started raising poison its about lvl 16? Its doing about 300-500 dmg without having the monster poisoned. And I've went to Jr. Yetis and i've poisoned them and they get hurt like 160?-190 damage every second if poisoned. And I've seen a maxed Poison mage do about 800 dmg on a stone gollem without having it poisoned. I say go for it. You never know, you might end up liking it.

Not wanting to go into too much length about this, but about the numebr of attacking skills thing... Again, I have very little likelyhood of ever reaching 3rd job personally on anything other than my Fighter, so I would like to restrict this to just 1st and 2nd job.

I don't really want to compare Assassins and Bandits either I just want to look at Bandits in the general scheme of things in terms of variety in attacking skills.

OK So yes, lets go with a 2nd Job Bandit, we have: DoubleStab, SavageBlow, Steal, Disorder.

First thing I realize about this is, Steal is a useless skill. No Bandits actually get this skill as far as I know, and if they do, they don't actually use it once they realize its pointless.

Next up we have Disorder. Again, every Bandit I've talked to pretty much ignores this skill and doesn't even max it out, prefering the other 1st job skills instead. Those who do max it only use it on bosses, because whats the point of Disordering a monster, then using 1 or 2 Savage Blows to kill it when you could have just killed it with 1-3 Savage Blows in the first place?

That pretty much just leaves DoubleStab and SavageBlow as useful attacking skills for a Bandit. Now look at these skills closely, what exactly do they do? DoubleStab is a raw damage dealing melee attack. Whats SavageBlow? A raw damage dealing melee attack... :P As far as I am concerned, appart from a different animation, SB is just a stronger form of DS! You use only DS until u get SB, then you use only SB, because it does the same thing just more damage.

That is why I think Bandits have the least amount of variety for attacking skills, in 1st and 2nd job.

As for your comment about my response to the "which sub class do u prefer" being biased... Well yes it is biased... Because I'm giving my own opinion! The response also wasnt meant to be a scientific proof of something, just a brief "off the top of my head" reason why I prefer Assassins to Bandits. It was like "the reason why I like Assassins is: X. Now the reason why I don't think Bandits are that great is: Y", I didn't want to make some kind of connection between X and Y, they are just 2 separate reasons. If I missed some info about Bandits that you feel was unfair, its not because I purposefully missed it to try and be biased, its because I don't consider it enough to change my mind about whether I prefer Assassins or Bandits.

Erm, you ignored the Poison part.

Anyway, that's not fair. While comparing sins and bandits you included sins in THIRD JOB, but Bandits in only SECOND JOB. Also, notice that I never put disorder on the list.

Erm, you ignored the Poison part.

Anyway, that's not fair. While comparing sins and bandits you included sins in THIRD JOB, but Bandits in only SECOND JOB. Also, notice that I never put disorder on the list.

Sorry, I didn't ignore it, I just thought theres not much left to discuss... Someone made a post and they think Poison is not a valid option, and I respect that. I personally disagree but I'm willing to conceed that I haven't tried it personally and so this person knows about it better than me and I could be wrong. On the other hand, they could be biased because they personally couldn't make Poison work, while another person with a different playing style (not as worried about raw numbers on the screen) might be able to make it work... Who knows.

Again I re-itterate what I said before... My comments about Assassins vs Bandits in the other thread are not meant to be a comparison or an unbiased investigation... It's meant to be me saying what my opinion is about which I prefer, and I listed a couple of the reasons which came to my head first about why I prefer one over the other. I don't like playing Bandits because their atatcking skills are limited in 1st and 2nd job. Maybe in 3rd job this changes, but I wouldnt want to have to slog it out all the way up to lvl 70 with only (essentially) one attack in my repetoir in order to get to the "good stuff" at lvl 70+.

yea...poison would be good when AQ comes out...however, during the meantime i dont' really think poison would be an effective attack on other monster....

i remeber a similar thread at the old onRPG, and how peopel were tellign the person that it would be more affected at lvl 7X+...since they get poison gas....

AQ? you mean that crappy game adventure quest :p (jk jk i no its aqua world)

dunno about poison, ive seen fire mages easily killing thantos's with just poisoning them, but first we have to wait until aqua road actually DOES come out