I used to have a celestial staff bound, and it was definitely annoying (not only for me, but for my teammates) to have to stop to make runes. Took forever. :/

 

Ya, I'm not sure what bind now, since I basically picked back up +1 from the box fix.

 

1) I could bind a celestial cat staff, which would give me 30% on air surge at the start dealing 286 damage (basically a free fire surge without fire runes). If I made fire runes and used fire surge it would boost up to 364. But making fire runes is time consuming and the spells use them up very quickly.

 

2) I could bind a empowered fire staff. Excellent for alching, and the 10% bonus would give me an instant firewaves, hitting 308's at the start of the round. But emp-fire staves are not hard to make as you usually find at least one Entang, Corp, or gravecreeper in the first 3 or so rooms.

 

3) I could rebind my melee weapon to hybrid melee again and simply use magic on warriors. This would likely be the best option, so i'm not stuck with one combat type again. I really wanted to bind a Primal Long @ 95 anyways, so this would be ideal for me. The only issue is having to make a firestaff every map, which is not too hard, just annoying.

 

I would likely go with number 3, as it makes me slightly more versatile, but not 100% sure yet. Either way, I am VERY happy with the decision they made on this.

 

OR you could bind a melee weapon and cast staff free or make a fire staff if it's VERY convenient. If you're casting on mostly warriors, magic accuracy will hardly be a problem. Their magic defense is FAR in the negatives.

I used to have a celestial staff bound, and it was definitely annoying (not only for me, but for my teammates) to have to stop to make runes. Took forever. :/

Ya, I'm not sure what bind now, since I basically picked back up +1 from the box fix.

 

1) I could bind a celestial cat staff, which would give me 30% on air surge at the start dealing 286 damage (basically a free fire surge without fire runes). If I made fire runes and used fire surge it would boost up to 364. But making fire runes is time consuming and the spells use them up very quickly.

2) I could bind a empowered fire staff. Excellent for alching, and the 10% bonus would give me an instant firewaves, hitting 308's at the start of the round. But emp-fire staves are not hard to make as you usually find at least one Entang, Corp, or gravecreeper in the first 3 or so rooms.

 

3) I could rebind my melee weapon to hybrid melee again and simply use magic on warriors. This would likely be the best option, so i'm not stuck with one combat type again. I really wanted to bind a Primal Long @ 95 anyways, so this would be ideal for me. The only issue is having to make a firestaff every map, which is not too hard, just annoying.

 

I would likely go with number 3, as it makes me slightly more versatile, but not 100% sure yet. Either way, I am VERY happy with the decision they made on this.

 

OR you could bind a melee weapon and cast staff free or make a fire staff if it's VERY convenient. If you're casting

on mostly warriors, magic accuracy will hardly be a problem. Their magic defense is FAR in the negatives.

 

Hood, weapon, box. Make a staff that takes 5 seconds while your team is still [bleep]ing around figuring out who will key and who will tool. It's that simple, lol. World 117/148 and 138, I think, teams take a good 2 minutes to even get out of the start room, you have time.

Not 138, no. Usually they've already started the first GD before the slowest guy finishes making runes. I don't see a staff being useful enough to bother with, usually, unless your team is very slow.

What runes can the box hold? I know it can hold bloods and airs, but can it also hold fires? Or does it only hold 2 types of runes?

The blast box holds air blast casts, the surge box holds air surge casts. So, in the case of the latter, it holds bloods, deaths, and airs. If you use it with an appropriate fourth rune/staff type, you can cast a different elemental surge.

And as a note, the blastbox/surgebox ALWAYS uses the same amount of airs per cast, which means you SAVE air runes per fire spell cast. :thumbup:

So the surgebox can hold runes for wave spells if you want it to?

Found this out by accident, but if you run out of charges on your box you can log out and in to refill it.

To charge the surge box you need

 

7 air

1 death

1 blood

 

That means you should be able to cast Blast, Wave AND Surge spells with it.

To charge the surge box you need

 

7 air

1 death

1 blood

 

That means you should be able to cast Blast, Wave AND Surge spells with it.

 

But you can't, it only gives you the option to wave and surge, not that blast was useful anyways.

Eh, oh well, still answers this question

 

So the surgebox can hold runes for wave spells if you want it to?

 

^ Yes

So if I wanted to mage only, would it be better to bind an empowered fire staff or an empowered cat staff? Would it be worth it to make a million fire runes every floor?

No cele cat staff yet.

So if I wanted to mage only, would it be better to bind an empowered fire staff or an empowered cat staff? Would it be worth it to make a million fire runes every floor?

No cele cat staff yet.

 

fire surge with empowered fire staff = 280*1.1 = max hit of 308 (assuming no potions)

air surge with celestial cataclytic staff = 220*1.3 = max hit of 286 (assuming no potions)

 

Just remember, you could rc and use higher-level spells, or get runes from drops, but either way, you're not going to last too long with those spells before you revert back to air surge.

 

So, even if you were considering celestial staff vs empowered fire staff....if your goal is to do as little rcing as possible (which is why I assume you're considering binding surgebox), and still hit high with mage, you're better off with binding an empowered fire staff.

 

However, if you did do some rcing, the picture changes a bit. Assuming you will not rc the bloods/deaths/airs needed for surges, meaning you'll be limited to 125 surges a dungeon, you would need about 500 p ess to rc the 1250 fire runes that 125 fire surges requires (I guessed you get around 2.5 fires per essence), which would cost you 25k gp. Not unreasonable for sure, but getting the cash then spending a little bit of time rcing is going to be annoying, but then you can mage very effectively (max hit of 364, assuming no pots).

 

So if you plan on getting that 25k gp and rcing those fire runes every dungeon, I'd say you should get celestial staff. Seeing as you asked for empowered catalytic staff though, which is +15% magic damage, which makes fire surge max out at 322, I'd say the extra 5% damage that empowered catalytic staff gives over empowered fire staff staff, considering the time lost, is just not worth it.

 

long story short: unless you're going to rc 1250 fires ASAP in every dungeon, and then mage with celestial catalytic staff, I say stick with binding the empowered fire staff.

Another thing worth noting, is the usefulness of the surge-box for keyers now that it only counts as ammo.

 

1) You can bind a Hood + Box + Emp-Fire Staff/Other Weapon. Keyers don't use combat anyways except for GD's and Bosses. GD's ushally contain at least 1 warrior or NPC weak to magic, so the bonus of the keyer having magic casts is he/she can start clearing high def level melee NPC's before the rest of the team arrives to start.

 

2) The Surge-box has a +7 magic defense, which is fairly small, but enough to slightly help add some defense against shades and mages.

 

3) the Surge-box also counts for a shield, and tank ring can be used with it. This means a keyer can use a tank ring combined with hood to block 10%+ of damage that the hood dosen't block. this would certainly help the Keyer's food supply last much longer over the course of the entire map. It would be ideal to QS between tank ring for keying and blaster for GD's.

Lol tank ring...

Surge box is decent with people without 77 rc or w/e, but with it you might as well bind laws to eliminate hassle and speed up c1s.

You cannot honestly say crafting laws takes longer than crafting combat runes... though you're right about the c1 thing.

 

As for binding a staff, empowered fire if you're lazy, celestial/empowered catalytic if you're not (though that's been stated above already).

Crafting 60 laws 60 cosmics= 60 ess

crafting 125 blood 125 death 1k air or w/e= a lot more i cbf counting

Crafting 60 laws 60 cosmics= 60 ess

crafting 125 blood 125 death 1k air or w/e= a lot more i cbf counting

 

I am confused as to why you pointed this out.

Crafting 60 laws 60 cosmics= 60 ess

crafting 125 blood 125 death 1k air or w/e= a lot more i cbf counting

And that is why I would take surgebox/blastbox over laws/cosmics.

If you don't bind it, don't bother maging is what I am saying.

If you don't bind it, don't bother maging is what I am saying.

 

Well, there's only three good ammo bind options: laws/cosmics, surgebox, or sagittarian arrows.

 

Generally, when combined with melee, magic > ranged in dung, so it's really a choice between laws/cosmics and surgebox. Laws/cosmics are easy to craft, like you said, so...well...who wouldn't bind surgebox, even if they didn't mage very often?

You cannot honestly say crafting laws takes longer than crafting combat runes... though you're right about the c1 thing.

 

As for binding a staff, empowered fire if you're lazy, celestial/empowered catalytic if you're not (though that's been stated above already).

It has nothing to do with laziness. If you don't bind a fire staff, there is NO WAY you should have the spare time to make a giant pile of fire runes. The point of this thing is to make maging effective without wasting time on it.

 

Of course, I'm still against binding a staff at all. Seems like a waste of a bind when you can just mage without one.

You cannot honestly say crafting laws takes longer than crafting combat runes... though you're right about the c1 thing.

 

As for binding a staff, empowered fire if you're lazy, celestial/empowered catalytic if you're not (though that's been stated above already).

 

Actually, empowered fire vs celestial catalytic isn't really about laziness or not, its about efficiency, and finding the best course of action for your team (if you're in a perm team that is). It's a choice between a faster start to the dungeon, or higher dps.

 

Personally, I feel that empowered catalytic offers too little extra damage from what empowered fire staff gives, considering the time wasted rcing the runes and the money wasted. It's just not ever worth binding over empowered fire staff IMO.

Yeah, barehand maging is another option, but only for the first few rooms or so. After that, make a fire staff.

 

I agree, in members it's not worth binding a staff. Better off binding something more useful (hood, platebody, hexhunter).

 

And isn't the purpose of magic in dung is to kill off high melee/range def monsters, like warriors?

You cannot honestly say crafting laws takes longer than crafting combat runes... though you're right about the c1 thing.

 

As for binding a staff, empowered fire if you're lazy, celestial/empowered catalytic if you're not (though that's been stated above already).

It has nothing to do with laziness. If you don't bind a fire staff, there is NO WAY you should have the spare time to make a giant pile of fire runes. The point of this thing is to make maging effective without wasting time on it.

 

Of course, I'm still against binding a staff at all. Seems like a waste of a bind when you can just mage without one.

 

I agree, unless you're 120 dungeoneering and you can have hood + 2h/primal battleaxe + torso armor of your choice + staff bound.