How do you use guardian beam?

I can't really see a use for it outside farming weak monsters and it's more or less useless in parties unless you have aggro and even then, the knock back chance is iffy and the damage is garbage.

In solo situations, it's horrible because it ruins magic proration.

How exactly do you use this skill?

 

Mainly farming. Helps against strong mobs and preventing some of them breaking brave aura/high cycle. It also makes more easily for mages farming minibosses with lots of mobs around. Not a must, since mages were playing all this time without it, but it makes their life easier.
Tho, it's pretty bad outside farming, bc like you said, it does magic proration for EACH HIT (probably first multi-hit skill that does proration multiple times) and I think knockback on bosses isn't working properly.

 

Would be great if the damn skill prorated neutrally at least but NoooOoOOoOO it had to be a multi-prorative magic beam that sends your magic damage to crap.

Screw knock back. Magic wall does that already.
Make it mana-explosion, weaken or any other ailment >.>

 

I can imagine it could be good for staff fu if you wanted to do some more magic damage when you hit your target with impact. Asobimo probably intended for it to be a skill that causes a lot of magic proration since mages don't spam a large amount of magic skills anymore, and just sit at the back with their slow, heavy hitting skill that is light on proration capabilities. Asobimo really doesn't understand their playerbase, many people have complete disregard for proration, and most certainly wouldn't spam spam something if it made them more likely to do less damage, even if it helps out the party.

 

Then that'd be really good for staff Fu that use impact a lot in their combos in which only javalin and impact can truly be used in melee range.

The crucial problem tho is that the damn skill requires that you have agro. What sane mage or DPS tries to steal agro from the tank!?

....

Wait.

Maybe it's not so bad.

 

wall has much shorter range and you would have to cast it constantly, potentially luring more mobs.
guardian beam will only activate when needed.

i like it very much, because it really helps to cast finale.
not only solo but also in parties, since nobody cares about minions and they always come after me.
and when i don't have much mp left while being chased by mobs (unable to mp charge) but still have some beams left, i can just initiate magic arrows and the beams kill all my followers.

 

You casting finale, cmo n! Almost done!
Boss minion that just arrived *poke* knocks you back "yey! I did something!"
Boss minion died after some other dude's aoe skill.

 

I usually test out new build concepts by myself, the aggro problem slipped my mind while testing. I can imagine a staff fu build could go STR>VIT since they get most of their damage from STR, but I probably wouldn't try it because that would take the fun out of it for me.

Prior to this thread, I had never heard of anyone using it to help with farming, so I decided to try that out as well, and that definitely changed my mind on it some. I might be able to get rid of my HB farmer, which is nice because I am using most of my character slots.

 

Truth be told, it's amazing when farming, even at higher level Mons, if not for the bug it'd be perfect for a 1 MP farming combo.

Baring that, staff Fu... I prefer a monk style build tbh but it's really hard figuring out how to work with two main stats as opposed to one where in this game you only truly need one dps combo and one finisher combo.

Tho tbh, I'm still not sure how to make a hybrid magic martial build @_@ it's been hell working out possible stat builds on that front.

Going Knux MD with INT + AGI means martial damage falls to thrash and all your finishers have to be magical due to the higher growth of magic from INT. In this instance, martial skills are only there to prorate and for proximal battles, your only option for finisher is magic burst which is horrible on MD and half INT stat.

Honestly, I like knux/MD because it feels like the closest thing to a DBZ build (chariot = kamehameha, finale = spirit bomb) but it's near impossible to make effective right now unless I'm missing some key facts with stat allocation and skill combos z.z

Staff/Knux (Monk, INT focus)... Is... Hell. They have the added part of being able to use priest skills and their way of using martial skills is rather hard to figure out. I tested a combo on this build VS a pure AGI knux and the martial damage was abysmal.

Where on a pure AGI knux (no STR) I can get 100k rush damage easy, on staff/knux I'd be hard pressed to go over 10k tho that's with INT/STR. Chariot is good damage on the build due to fast execution and motion speed but it just doesn't seem worth it.

Add to the fact that you have a permanent magic damage reduction, it's basically a physical attacker.

Otherwise, for both builds, they seem to be wonderfully geared for defensive support if you combo chakra and stone barrier together.

 

With the way that I did it, because staff fu is STR > AGI, I figured I could try replacing my AGI with INT and use magic as my sub damage. my combo was impact > chariot(smite) > finale(smite), so if I got guardian beam, impact + gb would make up for chariot's multiplier loss. Because of this I could also use bless for support, but I decided to scrap the build because I wasn't interested in at anymore. Of course, like I said earlier, I only tested the build while playing solo, so it probably would have worked out too well.