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Pyros

Pyros

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Yeah giants and orcs and all these elvia spots are only good if you have species damage to go over the cap(or well they're much better if you do). Doesn't matter too much during weapon phases but outside you notice it a lot.

Giants ap cap is the same as orc even though it's a higher end spot, but the "trick" is it's human damage, which you can get more of on crystals+the addons(which half of it is "lost" from the lightstone set being 6 lower than demi/kama but still is a bonus). The result of replacing all your damage crystals with human crystals though means you effectively need better gear than orcs to hit the normal ap cap and still use species damage. Once I move to giants I'll upgrade some of my crystals, I have a decent human set but it's like the cheap version with stuff like +5 instead of +7 and +8 instead of +10 version of crystals and stuff like that, on stuff like biraghi it doesn't show much of a difference but for giants it probably will matter.

There's even crazier optimization you can do by using a green main hand weapon with species damage(Ain or Seleth) on awakening classes if you have enough gear to reach the monster AP cap even with the huge loss of your blackstar. I saw Pawell run that at orcs on his awa nova top farming video thing where he gets 37k trash with yellow scroll only at marni orcs(rng carried by boss spawns too though but that's still a crazy amount).
 
Kirun

Kirun

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Yeah, you have to be highly geared to hit AP caps at Giants/Orcs. I'm at 292 Succ AP, with full BIS crystals, and I'm at 846 monster AP with villa, frenzy draught, simple cron, and church buffs. If I throw on a perfume or house buff I can just sneak over the cap and swap to a bit of human damage. I really need to get to 297 and gain a couple brackets, but goddamn is it a slog to save for a PEN Blackstar. The influx of silver from selling my TRI Godr will be nice for the next slog of PEN neck, belt, and earring.
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Kirun said:
Yeah, you have to be highly geared to hit AP caps at Giants/Orcs. I'm at 292 Succ AP, with full BIS crystals, and I'm at 846 monster AP with villa, frenzy draught, simple cron, and church buffs. If I throw on a perfume or house buff I can just sneak over the cap and swap to a bit of human damage. I really need to get to 297 and gain a couple brackets, but goddamn is it a slog to save for a PEN Blackstar. The influx of silver from selling my TRI Godr will be nice for the next slog of PEN neck, belt, and earring.
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You sure you didn't forget some stuff? It is pretty easy to hit the ap caps in my experience. Like assuming you have done all your setup on garmoth with crystals/food/potions/passives(this one's less obvious need to tick all the passives), if you go to the AP cap page you can also select your addons and skill buff amounts which are not counted normally(even if you select addons in the garmoth setup, that's just for reference and doesn't count any of the addons in your displayed stats).

In my non bis crystal setup(no girin, no garmoth so missing a slot), I have 826 monster ap with 286ap. But I also get 20AP on my AP buff and 30AP on my addons, and both have 100% uptime so effectively I have 876 but that only shows up when I'm in the monster ap cap page not on the standard gear builder page. Enough to shed a fair bit and still hit the cap in orcs or giants(although as I said for giants I can't use the full human setup and keep that amount).

Edit: Forgot the BSR ap, that's +30 with almost 100% uptime, I believe it overwrites the 20AP from skills though so it's only +60 total with addons, with sometimes a drop for one pack to +50).
 
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Gravel

Gravel

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Pyros said:
Yeah giants and orcs and all these elvia spots are only good if you have species damage to go over the cap(or well they're much better if you do). Doesn't matter too much during weapon phases but outside you notice it a lot.

Giants ap cap is the same as orc even though it's a higher end spot, but the "trick" is it's human damage, which you can get more of on crystals+the addons(which half of it is "lost" from the lightstone set being 6 lower than demi/kama but still is a bonus). The result of replacing all your damage crystals with human crystals though means you effectively need better gear than orcs to hit the normal ap cap and still use species damage. Once I move to giants I'll upgrade some of my crystals, I have a decent human set but it's like the cheap version with stuff like +5 instead of +7 and +8 instead of +10 version of crystals and stuff like that, on stuff like biraghi it doesn't show much of a difference but for giants it probably will matter.

There's even crazier optimization you can do by using a green main hand weapon with species damage(Ain or Seleth) on awakening classes if you have enough gear to reach the monster AP cap even with the huge loss of your blackstar. I saw Pawell run that at orcs on his awa nova top farming video thing where he gets 37k trash with yellow scroll only at marni orcs(rng carried by boss spawns too though but that's still a crazy amount).
Click to expand...
So what crystals do you replace with human ones? I don't really have any that are just pure AP, they all have something extra.

Untitled.png
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Usually that'd be macalods and rebellious since they're mostly just AP. Decimation have 1% back, corrupted have crit dmg, ahkrad speed, you need fang for crit.

Macalods are basically only 5.5ap and 1 accuracy and some stamina which is kinda whatever, and rebelious are good AP but nothing else(well hp but that doesn't matter that much). That leaves room for Glorious Olucas, RBF Viper and RBF Carmae/Addis.

Jin Vipers can also be removed if you're good on accuracy since you can get the speed from the human variants anyway. Might also cut the fang since you get 2crit from RBF Carmae/Addis.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Hmm, yeah, I guess my concern would be dropping accuracy. Although it looks like the Olucas would replace that well.

I'm wondering if it'd be worthwhile to fall a handful of regular AP (2-4 under cap for Giants) to stack more human AP? I'm super close if I use an exquisite cron meal. With simple cron I can probably do whatever though. Not including accuracy.

The other side of this is I'd be dropping like 2b+ silver for all this human damage in order to make maybe 100m an hour more. That's quite the steep cost that will take a long time to pay back.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Well depends on how much, have to remember that species AP only counts for .85(or something like that), so 10 human dmg is effectively 8 normal ap, but yeah if you replace 3 ap under cap with 10human ap then it's still a gain.

And yeah it can be high cost, it has some other uses though(pvp, pit of the undying) but that's kinda whatever, that's why my current human set uses budget options instead and is missing some damage. I would get at least the budget stuff done though as that still adds a fair bit of dmg, normal Olucas is basically free, RBF Hystria is only 150m and RBF Cobelinus is 150m too(bigger drop though since it's only 5 instead of 10 for viper).
 
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Avatar of Nyx

Avatar of Nyx

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Good info. I admit, I dont min/max nearly enough for grinding so I dont perform as well as i could, dunno if its because im lazy or if there just seems to be too much to take in, but it's something i need to step up for sure. I picked up a few crystals I was lacking but hopefully the big boost to human damage will help me recover the spending quickly enough.
 
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Kirun

Kirun

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Pyros said:
You sure you didn't forget some stuff? It is pretty easy to hit the ap caps in my experience. Like assuming you have done all your setup on garmoth with crystals/food/potions/passives(this one's less obvious need to tick all the passives), if you go to the AP cap page you can also select your addons and skill buff amounts which are not counted normally(even if you select addons in the garmoth setup, that's just for reference and doesn't count any of the addons in your displayed stats).

In my non bis crystal setup(no girin, no garmoth so missing a slot), I have 826 monster ap with 286ap. But I also get 20AP on my AP buff and 30AP on my addons, and both have 100% uptime so effectively I have 876 but that only shows up when I'm in the monster ap cap page not on the standard gear builder page. Enough to shed a fair bit and still hit the cap in orcs or giants(although as I said for giants I can't use the full human setup and keep that amount).

Edit: Forgot the BSR ap, that's +30 with almost 100% uptime, I believe it overwrites the 20AP from skills though so it's only +60 total with addons, with sometimes a drop for one pack to +50).
Click to expand...
Yeah, didn't realize you could input passives and guild buffs. I already had the +30 monster AP from addons. Also forgot my Girin's for some reason.

So, I'm at 870 now. I'll probably grab some Olucas today and swap to Indignation elixirs. The elixir alone brings me back under cap, but the Olucas will be good to have once I add a couple AP brackets.
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Avatar of Nyx said:
Good info. I admit, I dont min/max nearly enough for grinding so I dont perform as well as i could, dunno if its because im lazy or if there just seems to be too much to take in, but it's something i need to step up for sure. I picked up a few crystals I was lacking but hopefully the big boost to human damage will help me recover the spending quickly enough.
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Yeah I spent on these a while back for the budget set and easily made the money back out of biraghi, it's obviously not very noticeable during weapon phases, but inbetween weapons it's very obvious how much faster you kill with them on than without and that adds up to a fair bit of money every hour I grind there. All it takes really is a click on a different crystal set and switching artifacts(which can be done in a click too) and then I'm ready, it's just part of the buff routine before I start grinding I check my crystal/lightstones along with pets on red, tent buffs+repair, fairy autobuffing, activating alch stone and using lootscrolls. They should try to streamline that shit a bit though.

On a different note, the reworked Grand Prix stuff is pretty nice, although it adds another weekly thing. You do a few races(depends on how many you win or lose) and get 3 mythical feathers and 90ferns for T10, and also a bit of T9 mats if you want. There's also a stonetail meal(which I'm sure will crash in price now but currently are worth like 30m on EU) and a potion to make the super celerity draught so overall you get a bit of silver too and it doesn't take too long.
 
Avatar of Nyx

Avatar of Nyx

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I had been wondering about the new horse racing stuff. I abhor racing content in pretty much any game so I was immediately put off by the idea of having to do it, but....feathers. If its quick and not horrible to do, I may give it a try. No bites so far on my Desperate Labreska Helm, i figure something like that might be tough to unload so we'll see. Some asshat keeps undercutting me by 100k, so i undercut him by a billion. Not the most sound financial move, but it makes me smile.

Also, what's the next earring upgrade past Distos? Would it be Debo earrings? I dont wanna lose the AP boost that come with Distos but man does that -4AP hurt
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Avatar of Nyx said:
I had been wondering about the new horse racing stuff. I abhor racing content in pretty much any game so I was immediately put off by the idea of having to do it, but....feathers. If its quick and not horrible to do, I may give it a try. No bites so far on my Desperate Labreska Helm, i figure something like that might be tough to unload so we'll see. Some asshat keeps undercutting me by 100k, so i undercut him by a billion. Not the most sound financial move, but it makes me smile.

Also, what's the next earring upgrade past Distos? Would it be Debo earrings? I dont wanna lose the AP boost that come with Distos but man does that -4AP hurt
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It's not like, THAT fast either, but queue usually takes a minute, loading+waiting to start ironically might take the longest at like 3mins, and then the race is about 2:30, so overall 6-7mins per race. You need between 2 and 7 races, depending on if you win first place then 1st/2nd place or lose 6 times, or anything inbetween. For a weekly I'd say that's a reasonable amount of time but I'm sure I'll get tired of it like how I got tired of doing the Panokseon weekly right quick(this week was the last though I'm done, granted I'm nowhere close to having the actual boat since I need 100k crow coins for that and I'm making about 500 a day from pit and nothing else). You can pick a different race, although so far my experience is no one does Calpheon(which is the worst race so kinda make sense) and Stonetail is hardly a race and more just a training ground, so that leaves only Velia having some interesting bits.

And for earrings yeah debo for pve it seems like, unless you camp at gyfin underground forever then narcs are great.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Does it still have that stupid catchup mechanic? That's originally why I stopped doing the races and it seems like the concept kind of died out because of it.

It's pretty infuriating to actually get a good start, do everything right, and then some clown shoots past you because he was half a mile behind you and the game gave him a super boost.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Gravel said:
Does it still have that stupid catchup mechanic? That's originally why I stopped doing the races and it seems like the concept kind of died out because of it.

It's pretty infuriating to actually get a good start, do everything right, and then some clown shoots past you because he was half a mile behind you and the game gave him a super boost.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's still there, they nerfed it but still there, HOWEVER they're removing it in 2 weeks(they added it to today's global labs update) for position 1-5, which is basically all the races since they kinda start as soon as you have 5 people so you rarely get more(sometimes 6). Currently it indeed works like that where most of the race is pointless as long as you don't fall hopelessly behind and it's all about the last spurt, which is why Velia is kinda nice cause you get the hill Z part(like where you fish on the beach) right before the final sprint, so you can actually make a good difference from using your skills smartly during that part. The rest of the race is basically pointless though yeah, at least until they patch that change in.
 
Kirun

Kirun

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Pyros said:
And for earrings yeah debo for pve it seems like, unless you camp at gyfin underground forever then narcs are great.
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Narcs are also great for Turos, Dhekia Thornwood, Olun's, etc. But most people use 1 debo earring because of how good the set bonus is.

It figures that as soon as I roll off of Awake Witch she gets insane buffs, which is just lulz considering how good she already is. I still don't love her movement so I'm fine with keeping her as a tag, but I found it funny. Succ Zerker is another class that is already really good and is also getting some crazy buffs as well.

Also, Succ Guardian is getting buffed pretty nicely. After PA said they weren't going to be buffing Awake Witch, Succ Guardian, Succ Nova, and Succ Woosa, they're already buffing 2/4. This is exactly why I said this whole, "buff everybody!" idea was so retarded, because just like I predicted, they're going to be stuck chasing their tail perpetually now that the precedent has been set.
 
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Avatar of Nyx

Avatar of Nyx

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The class buffs are getting crazy. Im just gonna stick with the Lahn, for better or worse, at this point. I miss my Nova but im not sure my fingers do.

Amazingly my Desperate helm sold today for a good chunk more than expected and hilariously there's zero Silent helms on the CM now, so Im kinda stuck doing not-fighting or Season stuff until someone lists one. On the plus side, I have enough surplus silver to finish the Garmoth heart after buying the helm (or get the Nouver outfit...the dilemma returns...)
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Avatar of Nyx said:
The class buffs are getting crazy. Im just gonna stick with the Lahn, for better or worse, at this point. I miss my Nova but im not sure my fingers do.

Amazingly my Desperate helm sold today for a good chunk more than expected and hilariously there's zero Silent helms on the CM now, so Im kinda stuck doing not-fighting or Season stuff until someone lists one. On the plus side, I have enough surplus silver to finish the Garmoth heart after buying the helm (or get the Nouver outfit...the dilemma returns...)
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Can't you just use a tuvala/narchillian? Obviously that's a big drop of DP but you can probably do some elvia spot with that anyway.
 
Avatar of Nyx

Avatar of Nyx

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Pyros said:
Can't you just use a tuvala/narchillian? Obviously that's a big drop of DP but you can probably do some elvia spot with that anyway.
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Yeah, I stole a tuvala hat off my Offin boss alt since she only sees use once a week and it got me through the evening. The hat pre-order filled overnight so Im good now. I put up a pre-order for a Flame of Resonance with some of my leftover silver. Ill let it sit for a few days before I get grumpy and just finish the garmoth heart quest probably. I did discover there's a few new AP/DP quests and logs that were added sometime when I wasnt paying attention, so there's another tiny bump out there for me with little investment but time.
 
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