Curious what you guys think. It seems to me charged bolt is the most popular but I tend to go with fireball instead for a few reasons.
The major one is Leaf (runeword). Going to get +3 warmth on that and +3 to fire skills. It also offers plus three to firebolt, so you get a total of +6. These fire buffs get wasted using lighting.
The beauty of fire bolt is that it doesn’t increase in mana, so you can use it to focus fire boss kill to conserve mana, or when you simply run out of mana pots have a back up. Not to mention, you will already have put three or four points in firebolt. So you would have a 9 or 10 skill without much commitment that costs like 2.5 mana.
Also, charged bolt is easy to over use and deplete mana. Fireball is quicker. Although charged bolt has a much larger radius for area of effect, fireball can take out three or four or five mobs at a time. It’s a lot quicker for a reaction.
What do you guys think?
of the two options id still choose charged bolt. its easy to use right out of the gate. you only need to worry about grabbing the appropriate items to sell for gold. if you dont run out of mana potions who cares if you waste a little mana now and then. its super easy to kill even in a 8 player game. enough said.
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Yeah I suppose that charged bolt would be faster in a speedrun potentially. I suppose if the play style is to load up the entire inventory full of mana pots, it’s the better choice. Tbh, I just can’t stand that style leveling process.
It would be really interesting to compare two different speed runs when using fireball and the other using charged bolt.
Minus the time to find the proper runes at countess.
yeah im not fond of chugging mana pots like your in a beer drinking contest either. it is easy though and you get to insight pretty fast. then you can do whatever you want mana wise.
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Fair point. If it was that big of a difference in speed to insight, I would use it. I think the difference is pretty minuscule though. I could be wrong. For instance, I could put points in energy, and not have to worry about going back to town for mana pots much.
I know people scoff at that but the alternative is putting those points into vitality. Those points are useless if you’re not getting hit. It seems to me the speed advantage is being able to continue the run instead of going back to town for more pots.
I would really like to see comparison between the two strategies. Even with what I said about vitality and energy, I still think charged bolt might come out on top but I think it’d be minuscule.
yeah would be nice to see a side by side comparison. i have seen speed runners say charged bolt is the fastest. the main issue i have with leaf is you have to wait until level 19 to use it, regardless of how fast you find the runes. yeah i dont worry about energy. i just toss those points into vital just for safe keeping. if im not dying then i am not wasting time running back to my body.
That’s a good point about Leaf. But I’d also say, around 19 is when you’d really need it. Up until then, really you could just pick up nice sword and normal attack everything to death fairly easily. Albeit, yeah not as fast as charged bolt or fireball. 19-27 is a pretty crucial time.
But man yeah, for sure it would be very interesting to see a side by side run of this.
yeah a few good things do happen on those levels. nothing you cant deal with using charged bolt though. by that point you can clear an entire screen of enemies with charged bolt solo on an 8 player game in a few seconds.
Personally I just played what the game gave me. If I found good fire staffs early on I’d play fire, if I got a good cold one I went cold, same for lightning support.
You are going to respec around level 30 anyway most of the time, so it doesnt really matter. There will always be that ONE monster that’s immune but thats what the merc is for.
There is also no issue going hybrid right away, its not like you will lose so much if you don’t play the “optimal” way
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I usually just go frost nova, find a 3 frost nova staff from vendor. Toss tir runes in sockets.
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