level 7 perk mage off

[meowster]

Arcane Penetration VS Righteous Fury.

how do these compare, what are their mechanics [well AP's, RF is pretty obvious]

what does more damage, what equipment stats would affect theses 2 perks to make them better?

how do they synergize with the earlier 3 perks of their own class, as the primary dmg dealer. If I were to start a new playthrough [which I am going to] as a spellblade, elf arcanist, with the level 7 perk in mind, which of these would make me a more powerful killer?

Also, how does roaring storm as an encounter stance compare to charge weapon as an at will? esp for the above build. I know that at max W, RF adds 18 points of damage to each hit, but since roaring storm procs on each turn, it gets RF dmg added auto, but I have been interrupted a lot recently, which almost never happened when I last played a year or so ago so charge weapon can be activated anytime but if RS gets interrupted, its gone.

This is as much a post about RS VS CW as it is the perks, but how much does Arcane Penetration affect both? I dont know and havent tested it myself but I dont want to because I dont undertstand resistance anyway.... rf was pretty easy, just see the numbers and damage type listed, in basic attack. AND it does boost off hand damage too. So is Arcane Penetration also good? how much would 15% be?

 

[susby99]

The systems for the game can get a bit confusing at times especially since the "resistance" section of the stats page on the wiki doesn't exist but assuming it's a flat 15% boost to all damage then it would only hit the same 18 extra damage of Righteous Fury when you preform a move that does a grand total of 120 damage. Holy damage is resisted by some enemies which would lower the 18 but in my experience the vast majority of bosses and common annoyances in the field especially late game have either a 50 or 100% weakness to holy if they aren't neutral, which means the 18 is hitting even harder. There's very very few enemies that resist holy by more than 25% and I couldn't find any in the wiki that are immune. Sometimes perks can do a bit more than their description implies though, so if Arcane Penetration creates a 15% vulnerability that all allies can also take advantage of then that may make it a bit better across an average combat round.

TLDR: AP seems likely to do greater damage in conjunction with powerful skills with multi-turn recharges but for consistent damage over longer fights, fights against corrupted enemies, or multi-hit attacks I'd go for RF

 

[Euthanize]

The awkward but true answer is neither. Eye For Weakness is currently the most numerically powerful level 7 perk for all spellcasters, weapons or otherwise, because with a single exception (Thunderclap) the most powerful spells (both in terms of total damage and damage per turn of cooldown) happen to currently be ones that have significant proportions of their damage backloaded into DoTs, which Eye For Weakness doubles. This comes out to more damage gain than just adding 15%/18 Holy. Given that the high level spells added in a recent update are also in this category, barring some kind of rebalance this looks to be the way things will be for the forseeable future as well.

tl;dr If the main thing you care about is making a powerful caster, you respec into thief at level 7. This is especially the case for casters who use weapon attacks as well (spellblade) because of Twist The Knife.

Roaring Storm falls off hard the later in the game you go. More and more enemies that interrupt it as you've already learned. The damage is just okay. 25 accuracy that costs your encounter slot, stance slot, and a turn to activate is resource inefficient for the (relatively narrow, crit focused) builds that care that much about accuracy late game, and a flat 25 spellpower as a proportion of your total spellpower is just not as good when you have 125+ spellpower as it is when you have 25.

Charge weapon gives you some damage up front without costing a turn to set up, the effects all scale from your spellpower so there is no flat component that falls off as your stats get better, you can reactivate it if you get interrupted, and it doesn't cost your encounter slot (so you're still free to use a big nuke like Thunderclap or a bigger, not-knockdown-interruptable buff like Flames Within in that slot). Charge Weapon is solid.