Major change for Fin!
As the title of my blog indicates, I have been and consider myself a water elf. However, I have been intrigued by earth ever since entangle and earth bind were added to the game. So on a whim I decided to switch lines for maybe a week or so and see how I like earth.
For those who have done this before, you know that the first thing you need to do when you go see Ellyone on the 2nd floor of Ivory Tower is to rid yourself of your old line.
So after ridding myself of my waterly powers, I took upon myself the sacred power of the earth.
Here's a pic of my spell window with the new spells.
Having made the switch, I went with pledgemate Ebony up to TOI 41f to go try out my new earth spells on some lesser dragons. All I can say is...hmm...takes a while to get used to how to use them effectively.
:-( Yep, death #7 at lvl 49, for those of you counting at home.
Anyhoo, after a good night's sleep (aided by the extra hour due to "fall back" on the clock), I woke up refreshed this morning and decided to try to gain back some of the experience of the last few days. Spent some time hunting on 24f and experimenting with my new spells on some slightly less dangerous mops. Had a good hunt, here's the drops from my hour or maybe 90 minute hunt.
Having feeling like I had gotten it down, I went back to 41f, this time alone, to try things out again. I must say, I have been less than impressed with earth bind. It tends to work almost always, but from my experience, things only stay frozen for 4-5 seconds on average...barely time to make a difference. In fact, only real use seems to be on pledge hunts if a pledgemate is getting creamed, you can bind him and he will stop taking damage, giving mages/elves an opportunity to heal the person. Anyways, here is the one pic I was able to take of an earth bind in action, and even then, it's not the best pic in the world.
Now entangle, on the other hand, is a fabulous spell. I love it. Extremely useful in helping an elf to kite mops. If a mop (or a person) is hasted, then the first cast of entangle cancels the haste, and you need a second cast to truly slow the person. I must say, seeing fire eggs entangled is hysterical, they are SOOOOO slow. Anyways, here's some shots of entangle in action.
I spent maybe 90 minutes up on 41f toying around with all this. Didn't die (which is good!), but it takes SO long to kill these darned things, I didn't exactly gain a whole lot of experience either. However, had some real good luck with drops.
After that, spent an hour up on 34f/35f to get some experience.
So, I've only been earth for a day, but I have a feeling this is not going to be a permanent switch. While it is true I love entangle, overall I found myself having to stop and regen a lot more often than when I was water, which means overall killing everything slower and gaining experience slower. It's great for hunting for drops (no way I could solo lesser dragon's without entangle), but right now my main priority is trying to hit 50, and I just don't see earth being as useful to me for accomplishing that. Look at it this way: with Nature's Touch being +15 hp per tick, and a con elf getting a hp tick every 6 seconds while hunting (some ppl even say every 5 seconds), that means being water means an extra 150 (or 180) hp per minute. Considering my average hunts last 90 minutes, being water translates into potentially an extra 13,500 (or 16,200) hp of damage I can take.
SO...we'll see. I'm gonna give it a few more days and see.
Well, here's the experience. See you tomorrow, hopefully the boss part of this event will finally be something all of us can enjoy. Ciao!
For those who have done this before, you know that the first thing you need to do when you go see Ellyone on the 2nd floor of Ivory Tower is to rid yourself of your old line.
So after ridding myself of my waterly powers, I took upon myself the sacred power of the earth.
Here's a pic of my spell window with the new spells.
Having made the switch, I went with pledgemate Ebony up to TOI 41f to go try out my new earth spells on some lesser dragons. All I can say is...hmm...takes a while to get used to how to use them effectively.
:-( Yep, death #7 at lvl 49, for those of you counting at home.
Anyhoo, after a good night's sleep (aided by the extra hour due to "fall back" on the clock), I woke up refreshed this morning and decided to try to gain back some of the experience of the last few days. Spent some time hunting on 24f and experimenting with my new spells on some slightly less dangerous mops. Had a good hunt, here's the drops from my hour or maybe 90 minute hunt.
Having feeling like I had gotten it down, I went back to 41f, this time alone, to try things out again. I must say, I have been less than impressed with earth bind. It tends to work almost always, but from my experience, things only stay frozen for 4-5 seconds on average...barely time to make a difference. In fact, only real use seems to be on pledge hunts if a pledgemate is getting creamed, you can bind him and he will stop taking damage, giving mages/elves an opportunity to heal the person. Anyways, here is the one pic I was able to take of an earth bind in action, and even then, it's not the best pic in the world.
Now entangle, on the other hand, is a fabulous spell. I love it. Extremely useful in helping an elf to kite mops. If a mop (or a person) is hasted, then the first cast of entangle cancels the haste, and you need a second cast to truly slow the person. I must say, seeing fire eggs entangled is hysterical, they are SOOOOO slow. Anyways, here's some shots of entangle in action.
I spent maybe 90 minutes up on 41f toying around with all this. Didn't die (which is good!), but it takes SO long to kill these darned things, I didn't exactly gain a whole lot of experience either. However, had some real good luck with drops.
After that, spent an hour up on 34f/35f to get some experience.
So, I've only been earth for a day, but I have a feeling this is not going to be a permanent switch. While it is true I love entangle, overall I found myself having to stop and regen a lot more often than when I was water, which means overall killing everything slower and gaining experience slower. It's great for hunting for drops (no way I could solo lesser dragon's without entangle), but right now my main priority is trying to hit 50, and I just don't see earth being as useful to me for accomplishing that. Look at it this way: with Nature's Touch being +15 hp per tick, and a con elf getting a hp tick every 6 seconds while hunting (some ppl even say every 5 seconds), that means being water means an extra 150 (or 180) hp per minute. Considering my average hunts last 90 minutes, being water translates into potentially an extra 13,500 (or 16,200) hp of damage I can take.
SO...we'll see. I'm gonna give it a few more days and see.
Well, here's the experience. See you tomorrow, hopefully the boss part of this event will finally be something all of us can enjoy. Ciao!
posted by Finarfin at 10:55 PM
5 Comments:
For a very long time I also considered myself a water elf for life... especially after I got to 50 and spent 18 million on NB. However, being a sword elf, NB, and overall, water, has not proven to be as effective for me as it once was, and as I want it to be. As a result I switched to fire. For the first few hours I had many near death experiences (it's hard to target when you're so used to just pressing nb nb nb). Overall though, I like fire a lot more.
However, to each his own. If water works for you, good for you. I'm glad some people still find it useful. But I've got to say, you sure picked a heck of a floor to test your new line out on. Hehe. =P
Well something else I have been thinking of is the fact that with ep4 we (water elves) get "Water Life." In my mind, once that spell comes, there is no way I could *not* be water. That would mean ~ 160 hp gheals and ~240-300 hp NB's.
Of course, for the melee types (especially 50+), ep4 will bring Elemental Fire, which is an uber melee spell. Plus earth getting buffed with higher ac and Exotic Vitalize, and Wind getting Wind Shackle. Kinda nice to see, all four lines improving with ep4.
Woah, listen ive been earth for a long time and besides the drawback on the earthbind, entangle can help like in your examples, however, dont you like the earth skin with +4ac bonus? (or +5 if u have bless of earth) I mean i think the ac bonus from earth is a great help along with the entangle part. What do you think should i, a level 48 con/earth elf, try water?
Well the thing about the extra ac is that between pledgemates who are earth (including two 50+ who can iskin) or just other random nice earth elves at momma tree or whever, even when I was not an earth elf, I would say probably 2/3 or 3/4 of my hunts I am hunting with eskin (at least) anways.
And though I do see a slight difference in damage I take when skinned, it nowhere amounts to 13,000+ hp per hunt less. Not even in the ballpark. So as a water elf, you might be taking slightly more damage, but you are regenning hp from that damage way faster.
Episode 4 certainly will make being an elf interesting. I have yet to decide what I want to do. I'll wait until the episode comes to figure it all out. Good luck and I hope you enjoy whatever line you choose.
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