Some general magick archer questions (weight, daggers, etc.)

[A]

Do MA dagger skills use physical? Are the dagger skills worth it? I'm switching over from a pure sorcerer so i'm wondering since I don't have the physical stat growth. I'm somewhere around level 34, but playing as a pure sorcerer while amazing is also getting stale, from switching around items because you have the need to stay below light and such, it just gets tiring.

What equipment weight are magick archers comfortable with?

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

yes and yes and weight doesn't matter because BBI gear > any kind of stats or min max or theorycraft or supposed database internet armchair expert.

[zadymek]

MA do has Strength growth, just tiny, just like Sorcerer.
And pick any equipment weight that will work for you, duh. It's not like you have to drag with
you a pair of each equipment piece, a ton of periapts and curatives. Maintaining, say, light encumbrance level should be easy. At least if your character weights above 70kg.

If you have a problem with it (or want to stay very light like certain person ;) play Fighter till rank 5 to get access to Sinew augment.

BTW Switching around items?

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Basic yellow vocation dagger attack skills are all physical. Then for MA specific dagger skills, they mostly rely on magic with the exception of immolation (blunt physical). But now why would you want to rely on a physical attack set-up on a caster vocation ? And why would you want to attack with daggers when your best weapon is your bow ?
On MA you need to consider your daggers as an utilitary secondary equipement, your main weapon is your magic bow.

Best daggers for MA is a pair of dragon forged rusted and golden daggers (for debilitating), and one pair of powerfull physical dagger (for golems).
Then for the dagger skills: instant reset (mandatory for yellow vocation), magic rebalancer (MA 101), and either thousand kisses (niche use, mostly for golems, but simple physical attack are usually enough and golems are kind of a rarity) or ensnare (no match lock guaranted against anything that isnt a boss, slowdown effect on bosses).

MA is basically a sorcerer with a bow shaped staff that can use dodge roll, double jump and instant reset.
Mobility is important for all vocations, not as much for a magic archer than it is for a strider.
Also you dont need to carry as many consummable as a MA, because magic rebalancer is a weightless free demon and angel periapt, and you cant use special arrows anytway. Eventually carrying a staff can allow you to use a couple mage spells, but for utility purposes, not for dps (you cant use magic rebalancer with a staff...).

Now I'm wondering what you call a "stale" with sorcerer ? The only thing sorcerer bring is boredom at some point because his gameplay is all about strategy and not much about tactic...

[A]

Originally posted by Guh~hey~hey~♫:

Basic yellow vocation dagger attack skills are all physical. Then for MA specific dagger skills, they mostly rely on magic with the exception of immolation (blunt physical). But now why would you want to rely on a physical attack set-up on a caster vocation ? And why would you want to attack with daggers when your best weapon is your bow ?
On MA you need to consider your daggers as an utilitary secondary equipement, your main weapon is your magic bow.

Best daggers for MA is a pair of dragon forged rusted and golden daggers (for debilitating), and one pair of powerfull physical dagger (for golems).
Then for the dagger skills: instant reset (mandatory for yellow vocation), magic rebalancer (MA 101), and either thousand kisses (niche use, mostly for golems, but simple physical attack are usually enough and golems are kind of a rarity) or ensnare (no match lock guaranted against anything that isnt a boss, slowdown effect on bosses).

MA is basically a sorcerer with a bow shaped staff that can use dodge roll, double jump and instant reset.
Mobility is important for all vocations, not as much for a magic archer than it is for a strider.
Also you dont need to carry as many consummable as a MA, because magic rebalancer is a weightless free demon and angel periapt, and you cant use special arrows anytway. Eventually carrying a staff can allow you to use a couple mage spells, but for utility purposes, not for dps (you cant use magic rebalancer with a staff...).

Now I'm wondering what you call a "stale" with sorcerer ? The only thing sorcerer bring is boredom at some point because his gameplay is all about strategy and not much about tactic...

ah lol, no. I wondered how much dagger use I'll be doing if I go for MA. Of course, I'm in it for the magic damage. So I was worried if by focusing on sorc from 10 to my current level, it'll be problematic to get better scaling if daggers (despite being secondary to an MA) would scale on physical.

When i said stale for sorc, I guess it's the need to always maintain my weight to light at least. So i had to shuffle items around, don't get me wrong dropping meteors from the sky or summong tornadoes is fantastic. I just wanted to break the tedium by checking out MA. Although, I've read that an MA's best stat growth is on magic def, so i'm kinda worried if wasting levels going for MA is not at all a problem since those levels could be spent getting more magic damage from the sorc.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

It's simple. For damage dealing purposes, none.
Only purpose of daggers is to explode the rivets you shot at ennemies, so using debilitating daggers to do so is the most usefull since damages wont come from the daggers themselves but from the rivets, so you might aswell try to apply debilitating effect while doing so.
MA is a caster, trying to set it up for physical damages or trying to dps with his weakest weapon (daggers) are both the same as swimming against the current.

Only exception, and that's the reason why you need to carry a pair of physical daggers in your inventory, is against golems which are "immune" to magic (not really immune but their magic defense reach a level that make it negate all magic attack damages).
All other ennemy with very high magic defense will still get rekt by your magic bow attacks once you stack magic rebalancer 4 times.


You should get yourself the sinew augment. Sorcerer arent supposed to travel heavy, they have no mobility skills, no iframe, so their movement speed is their only mean to avoid damages.
But now sorcerers carry light clothes armors, archistaves arent especially heavy weapons (and they dont have secondary weapon) and also, they arent supposed to expose themselves to harm...
No matter the vocation you're playing, if you need to cary tons of loot and consummable, get yourself a packmule pawn to do so for you. Make it acquisitor if possible, make it a vocation that carry a light gear and a single weapon, and make it a vocation that doesnt jump around the batllefield to get killed (best imo is a support mage).


Yes, it's magic defense. MAgic attack would have been a bit unecessary anyway (because magic rebalancer) and it was already taken by sorcerer....
That might sound useless but... magic rebalancer also buff your magic defense. Caster armors, which MA can equip, also buff greatly your magic defense.
This means that once fully buffed and equipped, your magic defense becomes so high that you no longer have to worrie about getting hit by most spells, they simply wont damage you anymore (and often wont even be able to knock you down or stagger you).
As you might imagine, ranged and magic attack attacks are the biggest threat for a ranged vocation...
But this also have another effect: magic defense is the stat that decid how much health you get back from holy attacks special effect. So with a high enough magic defense, holy effect can be efficiently used as a self heal (probably designed that way so you can outheal damages from using immolation with holy attacks/enchant).

[A]

Originally posted by Guh~hey~hey~♫:

It's simple. For damage dealing purposes, none.
Only purpose of daggers is to explode the rivets you shot at ennemies, so using debilitating daggers to do so is the most usefull since damages wont come from the daggers themselves but from the rivets, so you might aswell try to apply debilitating effect while doing so.
MA is a caster, trying to set it up for physical damages or trying to dps with his weakest weapon (daggers) are both the same as swimming against the current.

Only exception, and that's the reason why you need to carry a pair of physical daggers in your inventory, is against golems which are "immune" to magic (not really immune but their magic defense reach a level that make it negate all magic attack damages).
All other ennemy with very high magic defense will still get rekt by your magic bow attacks once you stack magic rebalancer 4 times.


You should get yourself the sinew augment. Sorcerer arent supposed to travel heavy, they have no mobility skills, no iframe, so their movement speed is their only mean to avoid damages.
But now sorcerers carry light clothes armors, archistaves arent especially heavy weapons (and they dont have secondary weapon) and also, they arent supposed to expose themselves to harm...
No matter the vocation you're playing, if you need to cary tons of loot and consummable, get yourself a packmule pawn to do so for you. Make it acquisitor if possible, make it a vocation that carry a light gear and a single weapon, and make it a vocation that doesnt jump around the batllefield to get killed (best imo is a support mage).


Yes, it's magic defense. MAgic attack would have been a bit unecessary anyway (because magic rebalancer) and it was already taken by sorcerer....
That might sound useless but... magic rebalancer also buff your magic defense. Caster armors, which MA can equip, also buff greatly your magic defense.
This means that once fully buffed and equipped, your magic defense becomes so high that you no longer have to worrie about getting hit by most spells, they simply wont damage you anymore (and often wont even be able to knock you down or stagger you).
As you might imagine, ranged and magic attack attacks are the biggest threat for a ranged vocation...
But this also have another effect: magic defense is the stat that decid how much health you get back from holy attacks special effect. So with a high enough magic defense, holy effect can be efficiently used as a self heal (probably designed that way so you can outheal damages from using immolation with holy attacks/enchant).

thanks for the pointers, I switched to MA yesterday and so far it's nice. It feels pretty nice to get out of robes and wear medium gear. As much as I want to "maximize my magick growth to get the most" I got tired of doing this and switched my 32 arisen to an MA. Hopefully it's not a big deal to lose out on potential magick growth. But I guess i go for whatever is fun. I guess magick rebalancer should "balance" it out by still giving me enough to dish damage.

Regarding my misleading question about daggers, i had thought that MA is a class that's like 80% magick bow and 20% daggers and I was worried I'd onlty be at 80% power since i focused on sorc levels and no strength growth, but upon browsing the scaling of a lot of the dagger skills, i'm surprised there's magick scaling options in there--again, it's not about wanting to main daggers but more on if i'm not accessing the full range of an MA's skill set.

Kinda funny that I got used to the 6 spell slots of a mage/sorc that I was scratching my head if the MA is gimped by only having 3 spells on the magick bow while the other 3 is for the main weapon, then i realized that the fighter at the prologue shares it between shield and sword lol.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Well, there's a few of hybrid vocations, but it's a bit misleading because hybrid doesnt really mean mix of anything (or maybe only for mystik knight).
Ofc you can still try to play some of these vocation as a mix of different damages source (magic/strength) or a mix of different gameplay (ranged/melee, sword/dagger, etc...), but the optimal set-up is usually most of the time pretty straightforwardly focused on one weapon and type of damage, and shifting from it immediately leads to sub-optimal or even completely inefficient (with the exception of very niche usages).
MA is pretty close to ranger, the bow is his weapon and the daggers are just a gimmick to get access to utility skills.
In the case of MA it can sometime become pretty usefull to switch to staff to get access to generic staff core skill (focus bolt, levitation) or specific MA staff skill (high perdition is devastating against ennemies not immune to curse, since you don tuse your staf for damages, doin git with a rusted/golden staff is also advised so you can also silence/torpor in the process).
For the staff, relying on a buffing pawn (with holy affinity) to use holy focused bolt against some ennemies can also be a suprisingly efficient tactic.... especially if that ennemy is resistant to all elements except holy (daimon)... even if that mean giving up on magic rebalancer for it.

The optimal set-up is simple: ninefold bolt (ice), explosive volley (fire) and riccochet hunter thunder), the last one can be replaced with hunter bolt for outside maps. Because like all caster, what's important is to have one attack for each basic element so you can always exploit the elemental weakness of an ennemy, or at least avoid his elemental resitances.

So now the important part is to get yourself a skill ring (magic bowman band) with both explosive volley and ninefold bolt, along with one that unlock shadowsnare (magic archer ring/band), which is optional but pretty nice to have too.

Oh and if you wonder how to get ride of a metal golem as a MA, the easiest way is to learn and equip great sacrifice (only magic bow skill that deal physical damages), along with some ammos (pawns).

[A]

Originally posted by Guh~hey~hey~♫:

Well, there's a few of hybrid vocations, but it's a bit misleading because hybrid doesnt really mean mix of anything (or maybe only for mystik knight).
Ofc you can still try to play some of these vocation as a mix of different damages source (magic/strength) or a mix of different gameplay (ranged/melee, sword/dagger, etc...), but the optimal set-up is usually most of the time pretty straightforwardly focused on one weapon and type of damage, and shifting from it immediately leads to sub-optimal or even completely inefficient (with the exception of very niche usages).
MA is pretty close to ranger, the bow is his weapon and the daggers are just a gimmick to get access to utility skills.
In the case of MA it can sometime become pretty usefull to switch to staff to get access to generic staff core skill (focus bolt, levitation) or specific MA staff skill (high perdition is devastating against ennemies not immune to curse, since you don tuse your staf for damages, doin git with a rusted/golden staff is also advised so you can also silence/torpor in the process).
For the staff, relying on a buffing pawn (with holy affinity) to use holy focused bolt against some ennemies can also be a suprisingly efficient tactic.... especially if that ennemy is resistant to all elements except holy (daimon)... even if that mean giving up on magic rebalancer for it.

The optimal set-up is simple: ninefold bolt (ice), explosive volley (fire) and riccochet hunter thunder), the last one can be replaced with hunter bolt for outside maps. Because like all caster, what's important is to have one attack for each basic element so you can always exploit the elemental weakness of an ennemy, or at least avoid his elemental resitances.

So now the important part is to get yourself a skill ring (magic bowman band) with both explosive volley and ninefold bolt, along with one that unlock shadowsnare (magic archer ring/band), which is optional but pretty nice to have too.

Oh and if you wonder how to get ride of a metal golem as a MA, the easiest way is to learn and equip great sacrifice (only magic bow skill that deal physical damages), along with some ammos (pawns).

Thanks for these!

Nice to know that MA can deal with golems better than sorcerers (i figured the daggers can do it but apparentlym there's a bow skill that does it), I actually whacked the golem in the witchwood with my fist but I didn't bother with the other golem encounters and just ran away as a sorc lol.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Well as a sorcerer, all nuke spells (maelstrom, seism, glicel and bolide), deal some physical damages. They also light up golem's medals to trigger the de-activation mechanic.
You deal less damages than a purely physical attack, but the AOE of your spells will damages all medals at the same time.
But the best option to handle golems as a sorcerer is to first light up one of his medal with your magic attacks, then unequip your archistaff, climb and punch the medals to death one by one (punches are blunt attack, medals are weak to blunt).
You can also make use of magic bilow (archistaff heavy attack), which is physical.

There's specific mechanics to golems that let you knock them down or de-activate them temporarily, depending on in what order you destroy their medals. Also breaking the medal on his butt will systematically knock it down on his face....

There's also a couple items that makes this even easier by boosting your punch attacks (bloody knuckles), increasing your climbing speed (gloves of might) and ofc boosting your strength with conqueror periapts.

Once you know the golems pattern, it's very easy to take one down no matter your vocation and level. Check on youtube the channel "nihil 0.0", it has videos for all type of monsters tactics and patterns including golems.

There's another monster against which the punching tactics work pretty well: Wyrms. They are basically sorcerers in dragon form, so their magic defense is very high, but they are kinda weak against physical attacks.
Only difference with golems is that you need to silence them first, but they also have only one weak spot that you need to punch (the heart).