General

Red I/l Skill Build - First Draft

I'm bored and feel like typing something long.

This might seem rather early given that RED isn't going to come to GMS until around December, but if anyone remembers me from 2010 I made a first draft for a Big Bang skill build around this time (hell it was probably even on July of that month). And there's no such thing as too early, especially given that we already have skill tables for this. Only build I've seen so far comes from ayumilove and I think the build there is bad, sue me.

I'm not going to bother to pretty this up because I have no intention of replacing Kalemora's guide and this is just a discussion I somewhat want to bring up ahead of time.

When you look at this build make sure to scrutinize every detail. I don't know absolutely everything about what's going on with I/Ls post-RED, and there is bound to be a lot of things wrong with any calculations that might take place.

[b]1st Job[/b]

1 Energy Bolt
1 Elemental Weaken (max)
max Teleport
max Energy Bolt
3 Magic Guard
max Magic Armour
max MP Boost
max Magic Guard

everything is maxed

Anyone who only checks Orange Mushroom for our updates won't know about Elemental Weaken, which gives a 15% ot weakening a monster for 5 seconds, giving us a 20% damage boost. Since it's a level 1 passive I see no reason to not just get it right away. Other than that, Teleport being added to 1st job, and MP boost now costing 20 sp to max </3 , there's no change in this build as I see no reason to change it. Magic Armour is worse at this stage than before but it should give enough defence that it makes somewhat of a difference around these levels (maybe 1-2 damage taken off. lol) I'm also pretty sure that MP Boost's new effect is not similar to Improving Max MP Increase but if I'm wrong then we'll end up maxing MP Boost before anything meaning new Magicians will have to use 3 Snails for a few extra minutes. lol

[b]2nd Job[/b]
1 Freezing Effect (max)
1 Thunderbolt
max Spell Mastery
max Spell Booster
max Thunderbolt
max High Wisdom
3 MP Eater
max Meditation
max MP Eater
max Chilling Step
19 Cold Beam

I'm going off the notion that Freezing Effect is automatically gained and a point is put into it (also as far as I can tell this is the correct amount of SP we have to distribute). If it turns out we have to put a point into it manually, imo it would in fact go all the way to the end, as the last point we put in before we advance to 3rd job. Reason being that change to make it increase max crit damage instead of crit rate. Since we don't naturally gain any addition crit rate until Arcane Overdrive, we can't take advantage of it, making it an empty skill for the entirety of 2nd job. Add that to the fact that Thunderbolt is now stronger than Cold Beam per monster and we have the result that Cold Beam is once again the big loser of 2nd job. People can put a point into Cold Beam at the beginning for fun or if they think the now 8 second freeze will help.

[b]3rd Job[/b]
1 Ice Strike
1 Glacier Chain
1 Teleport Mastery
1 Thunderstorm if you want
max Elemental Amplification
max Arcane Overdrive
max or 14 Ice Strike
max Storm Magic
14 or max Glacier Chain
max Teleport Mastery
max Thunderstorm
max Frozen Break
max Elemental Decrease
max Elemental Adapting

Again I'm pretty sure that's the amount of SP we have in total. I think this should be fairly intuitive and requires little explanation. Last skills to max come from the notion that you shouldn't need them until 4th job. After all, what are you training on that has high MDR, is Ice/Lightning resistant and/or can status you?

I give leeway as to what skill to drop (primarily because I still hate the post-Chaos delay of Ice Strike). Ice Strike is clearly the main training skill and loses more damage than Glacier Chain from the missing 6 SP, but Glacier Chain is more likely to be used 4th job despite its nerf as it's a pulling skill and can outrange Chain Lightning.

[b]4th Job[/b]
1 Frost Effect (max) (again, assumed auto but in this case I'd max it right away anyway)
1 Chain Lightning
1 Frozen Orb
1 Elquines (ups mastery to 56% straight away)
1 Ice Dragon Thing (I refuse to call this by it's actual name)
1 Blizzard if you want (I personally wouldn't)
max Buff Mastery
max Chain Lightning
max Arcane Aim
max Infinity
max Frozen Orb
max Maple Warrior
max Elquines
max Blizzard
max Hero's Will
max Ice Dragon Thing

Actually interesting part. Notice how the build is pretty much the same build as our current. I went by a hierarchy (?) of what increases our damage most and essentially put them in that order:

Buff Mastery is a mere 10 SP and Chain Lightning requires a relatively high amount of funding that people probably didn't put in yet at level 100 in order to be a better first max.

Chain Lightning is the main skill. (essentially a 77% damage increase from level 1, not counting the crit rate increase which would make that number higher) Why couldn't they make it finally go back to hitting 6 monsters though?

Arcane Aim should give the biggest damage boost from everything else. (essentially 40% damage increase to everything)

I like having Infinity now. (approx. 18% damage boost to everything [i]this number is probably very wrong[/i])

I max Frozen Orb now because I actually think it's decent. It's damage is more than doubled by the time it's maxed (~111.1%, I don't feel like calculating the total damage increase when you're using it with Chain Lightning since I don't know the exact hits/second) and gives you something to do against a monster in dr which could make for something more useful than MW unless you want to only train right now. You can max MW first anyway, I don't think it really matters.

Elquines' mastery increase, from level 1 to max implies a ~7.7% damage increase, not factoring its infrequent and thus almost irrelevant attack (which was not buffed).
Blizzard's FA effect at max is a ~8% damage increase to Chain Lightning, not factoring any amount of crit rate which would make that number worse. (I don't know if it procs off of Frozen Orb hits)

So if anyone wants to complain to me right away about why I'm maxing our new mastery or FA skill so late, there's how little of a difference it actually makes.

Move Hero's Will to wherever it's convenient (or at least 1 point of it).

Lastly why did they make Ice Dragon Thing go from 20 second duration/60 second cooldown to 25 second duration/120 second cooldown? Disgusting.

[b]Hypers[/b]

Same

So that's what I think is going to happen. I'll put more opinions and change things around as needed.