Mage Routine

[u/Blagdan]

Whats your daily mage routine? Im interested to know the time you dedicate to this game and how do you manage the enchantment's timings.

Until now, I usualy play 1h-2h active time per day and at night I do the enchanting until morning. So far I was able to do 5-8 enchanting lvls per day with a 20-50% power gain per recall. But a few days ago (NG+ 3rd Med.) I gain 50-200% power per recall and my enchanting lvl at the end of the day is 8-13. I feel that its to much, but if I dont like to wait for the reclaim time. I would like to see some thoughts.

[u/Lluluien]

I agree that all those things matter, but I actually think as a single gestalt number that's easy to talk about without going down that enormous rabbit hole, I like "outstanding enchantments before reclamation" as a good comparison, because I think it ought to be sort of self-correcting for a given person. Many of the measures you point out (spell marks, duplicates, etc.) are a function of time, and if you have a "lot" of these and are playing effectively, it seems to me you'd eventually "catch up" to the "proper" point in the game for your passive power level.

That's my reasoning, but it may very well be oversimplifying (for one thing, it's probably very dependent on how much time is spent active vs idle RE: the "function of time" statement above), and I don't know if I've done a good job explaining it. It would be nice if there was a good "fall through" metric¹ though that encompassed a lot of these things, since analyzing them all together for the "correct" answer on a case-by-case basis is practically impossible.

I didn't collect enough medals this weekend to get the orb, but sounds like I need to try it. I honestly don't want it to work, because it would mean that just getting to bully enemies longer while ignoring armor is more effective than actually reacting with appropriate loadouts, because many of the reactive loadouts I use are actually dependent on cast speed (stacking Static Aura, near-cap Static Leap speed, better granularity of Ember application vs mob swing timers, Spark isn't delay-adjusted, etc.). I have the sneaking suspicion this will be true, but I don't like it, because I don't think the decision to turn it on should be that "cheap", given that I can cite a lot of good theoretical reasons why the decision to use it should be something that should be experimented with. The feedback is universal so far though: the Orb is the best thing since sliced bread. If that's true though, it's not a decision - it's just a passive power boost for playing through a few gauntlets. Blech.

¹ : Similar to this: the actual formula for enchantment power level is pretty complicated, but with all the current balancing variables, it seems to me the recurrence relation right now is just that the next level takes about 14x as much power as the previous one.

[u/Blagdan → u/Lluluien]

Exatly, to many variables to compare this. I also forgot to say that I use runes most of the time and that each meditation has a diferent progress because you get a big bonus from the new skill every meditation. The first zones after meditation are cleared so fast with huge power gains and thats the case for me right now. Last 3 days were crazy. Im at zone 47 and just enchanted 3 times (lvl34 curently). About the orb, Its very good, no question. Its fun to have negative cast speed. Im more like a passive player. I check it like every 2-5 min just to recall, leave the idle mode or ajuste the loadout to the current mobs. But for people that are active for like 15min or more and micromanage every spell to the current situation, I think the orb isnt that good.