INT-DEX Staff feels underwhelming...

Does INT-DEX staff really sucks?

The new update for magic skill tree is cool and all, damage increase and at least a help for your cspd. I think INT-STR benefits a lot more, they can just kill the bosses very quick with very high dmg and poof, the boss is gone, and yes, it can be limited to what kind of bosses, but it's most of them... like come on, you'll use the same thing and you'll just kill them. INT-DEX feels easier to use that INT-STR atleast. you care less for stats that cr mages needs to look out for, casting skills quick is good as well, but the new update seems to favor critical mages far more, more damage, casting buffs (especially the cast tine reduction from chain cast). and limited but guaranteed crit from qadal for your skills. INT-DEX feels underwhelming in a way that nothing that much changed, i still having issue with prorating and the bosses are just gone after i cast my buff skills. even having close-to-maximum motion speed. I still feel slow, about the dmg, it also feel underwhelming, even having maximum magic pierce and good other stats. Are INT-DEX Staffs really just weak or im seeing it the opposite way, other classes are just too overpowered? i know DEX for staffs sucks. it gives not enough cspd and tiny matk. Im just confused now, if Ill focus on speed (as in trying to reach enough cspd for me to not rely on high cycle so i buff less things), my below average dmg for a high budget build will get lower even further. if i'll go damage-focused. which doesn't give much due to lack of huge multipliers. i'll suffer being slower and cast high cycle plus high cycle is annoying, 1dmg at you, you lost it, youll cast 1200mp cost of buffs again just to keep going. I tried many kind of builds now for INT-DEX, focusing on some part that might help me. but nothing seems to make it on par with others, or again, im thinking of it the opposite way? because for me INT-DEX really lacks something. Also im new here, so... Hi there!

 

Chain Cast is good, but Overlimit decreases casting speed. and if you don't focus on critical damage you definitely want element damage for offensive play.
support oriented builds benefit greatly from cast speed, since Chain Cast only works on attack skills from it's own skill tree.

the game is probably balanced around regular equipment, so there is always some way for players to break the system by using extremely specific setups.
especially since the strongest player-crafted equipment is created at max level while the latest regular equipment is always a bunch of levels below that.
short battle duration comes from abusing fast-kill loopholes. bosses up to lv250 were designed without 5th tier skills in mind, but they will get tougher after that. we had the same situation when 4th tier skills released.
Qadal is a newly added skill, so it's unaccounted for everything released before.

critical damage was always the strongest power in the game.
+50% damage on critical hits is more powerful than 200+ matk, which probably makes up only 10% of the total.
to take advantage of the increased speed you'd need enough battle time to land a significant number of extra hits. we will likely get there when post-5th-tier content arrives, but for now there's nothing you can do about it.

 

it's just so annoying, i do use all ele 2s non-cr focused staffs, int-dex can barely do anything especially in the new event, they make suck bosses that are easy to kill, some classes even ruin magic proration. good for me. magic: knife sure do help, for my teammates, i buff while they attack and i
prorate for them, i do cast alot of buff skills, and it's taking me time because asobimo doesn't want to help, i know it's because it can make the game not balanced, but int-dex is still suffering, i'll use neo wandering wheel if it's not made for MW, i still need to use a lot of cspd on my equipments and rely heavily on high cycle, i definitely agree with the new boss things, there's just not enough time for me because the boss is dead before i even start attacking, but it's just most of the bosses or farming sites will or always favor others or cr mages, it's so stupid for me, speed doesn't even matter, i have max motion speed and insta cast burst build, reasonably high pierce as well, i don't think 100% pierce is also ideal due to magic attacks having high constant on skills. so i'll just invest on powerful stats like lrd/srd or big numbers of matk, idk why they can't make bosses challenging, like literally so not all people just focus on dmg but also focus on surviving. There is also something weird on guild raid, my dmg reduced to 25% of my old dmg (pre-qadal) on bison, like literal low dmg, magic cannon can't even hit 5m total with qadal's help. meanwhile my weaker build can reach 13-14m non critital m.cannon hits. Idk, the game is just broken probably; qadal not critting skills sometimes, now this big dmg reduction. im losing sanity playing the game, regardless of your equipments or speed, it seems useless now you think that you can't even do good on newly added boss, yes, mage filecia, my dmg is bad, meanwhile ds just spams and everything is fine. Im so frustrated, i don't even know what about im typing about. (im constantly changing strategies and equipments, i might've said something different from my first post.)

 

One of my guildmates used a mage during our raid and their damage was also crippled. Asobimo probably did something behind the scenes and broke stuff without realizing it.

 

it seems so, but a cr mage along in the guild raid gets fine dmg. Goodjob devs for making int-dex far more incompetent, the only reason people went for cr mage playstyle because they designed mages to be sucky, and also drive me to use cr mage long time ago. These things are forcing me to stop playing, literally, i badly hate relying on high cycle, but if i'll invest my equipments to cspd, then i'll lose huge amount of my dmg, considering int-dex has below average dmg compared to other dps classes. I reported the dmg thing to them like a month ago now, still no changes.

 

EDIT:
I'm really sorry, my judgement was very wrong.

As a INT-DEX Staff User, you kind of got screwed over the moment Qadal became a thing. This made it so STR is better overall due to how quickly it ends fights. Without it, the gap shouldn't have been that big. However, I kinda feel like avoiding critical stats and Element Slash might actually gimp you a bit.

I would funnily enough say that Magic Device might be the better option in terms of what you're looking, especially after seeing the video & your posts lmao.

With Auto Device & good attack speed, it can help with proration. With good cast speed, you could easily spam Burst or the other skills quickly with the exception of Finale & Vulcan.


Too bad I can't really recommend it due to how most Toram players see the weapon.

 

maybe i should show my build or maybe no, i have an old build roadmap which i use for soloing, the concept is still similar to my current one just more improved. I should stop comparing classes capable of flexing to a more generally capable classes, i can barely see cr mages which tells the truth. This is probably also a way for people to not look down on pure mages, i've been working for it since a year a go or probably less, to compare with cr mages, pure mages are like you playing a rhythm game, you cast less in terms of time means you cast more and means more skills to use per time, my dmg is not bad but can be easily overshadowed so i optimized my skill rotation so im not just spamming mp charge or buff skills and waste time not dealing dmg.



my current dmg with new equipments are pretty good and pretty expensive, but then pretty quick (can reach 50% motion speed), enough cast speed while being dmg focused.

that build on the vid uses:
YEE OL' PURE MAGE STATS ON STF AND ARM, STF IS ALL ELEMENTAL AND BOTH ARE 2S
*FUR BALL ACCESSORIES 2S (FORGOT THE XTALS)
*PRAJNA CHARMSTONE 2S (TEER/STAR WIZ)

The big ups from before is i use less consumables which is a good thing, i hate relying much on those

 

How much MATK, M. Pierce, & CSPD do you have? (Normal stat without skill buff/item buff)

 

get additional melee on your basic attacks and kill the melee proration if they're killing your magic proration.... maybe put up nemesis, so regardless of what happens you get stacks and it will do damage of either source..

 

additional melee/magic does not prorate.
Nemesis deals physical damage on the first hit and magic damage on secondary hits, the effectiveness of either depends on your weapon type and stats. maximising the physical damage hit requires a shield and str stat.
in order to properly utilise both damage types you'd need a hybrid build, for which critical damage is more effective than element damage.

if proration from Impact affects you negatively you can counter with Spike Dart. it's quick, costs only 1mp, and is boosted by dex. Slow is useful to trap enemies inside Storm, and on boss monsters it can stack with Stop for a 75% move speed debuff.

 

ow okay i thought it prorated well then that's useless, stop taking 5 minutes to cast 1 spell lol

 

if in that vid, it's respectable 8.5k?? (it can do 9k+? with buffs i really can't remember anymore exactly but that is according to what i remember)? since all equipments are raw-dmg-focused, m.pierce is not an issue too, that build is meant to have high pierce like 75% as i remember buncha pierce xtals, cspd is 4.5k? raw, with buffs, 7.5k+ with maxed chain cast, i can do insta burst.

 

tbh high cspd pure mage is very viable pre-qadal, it's just now everyone don't need to rely much on buffs and still do dmg, cr mage build is popular with that update, faster casting due to chain cast, like speed-to-damage- cr mages can outshadow this funko mage, when it comes to bosses, it's like majority of them are 20s-able it'll just die before you can do major dmg, if they can just make int-dex to not rely on high cycle while still keeping the dmg will be very beneficial, when it comes to raid bosses, yea, int-dex sucks a bit when it comes to dps, not by a lot but there will still be people with lesser power to outshadow you. pretty much my build it a perfect non-critical int-dex, it's just that devs are turning the raw damage away a bit, i feel like they also want int-dex to become semi or fully cr, which i hate, int-dex is stilll slow regardless of your cspd and motion speed. I really don't like critical on mages, like for me it doesn't really make sense, but that's how it is, rn im doing semi cr int-dex, and thanks cr resistance. It's kind of reliable, minimal raw dmg loss with better cr and cd, not consistent but freak, i really have no other way, still retaining high cspd, m/pierce, and motion speed. i am seeing some non md subs out that does huge dmg, wondering what those are.

 

about skill choices, i have everything except finale; crash, burst, m.cannon, nemesis and even the bible with holy light. Proration is i am concerned too, so i do regulate it. Rn idk the status of int-dex a bit because i stopped for some weeks, but ill expect nothing much changed.

 

Alternatively magic device is great with int dex...

 

In a way, I'm kind of curious what would happen if they nerfed Qadal so that it gives less or no charge for Magic Cannon...

 

I think it's time they gave Staff INT-Dex users their Magic SPAM dream........they could atleast make it so we have pierce if we can't have high CSPD/

 

Or maybe they asobimo could grant dex to have an additional feature like dex granting 1% motion speed for each 90 cspd after 1,000 cspd which translates to 6,000 to 7,000 cspd for maximum motion speed of 50%, which is lesser than the requirement for agi in non magical weapons because of the fact that 10,000 cspd is impossible compared to 10,000 aspd which can be much easier attained by agility based weapons, so if mages could attain maximum motion speed without god speed wield via just having high cspd they would be less gimmicky and could then just focus on acquiring 6,000 to 7,000 cspd to perform optimally, like instant casting burst while fast casting most other magical spells that are close to instant at the fastest motion speed without any other augmentation aside from having very high cspd from stats and cspd equipments and weapons etc that results in maximum motion speed, the result would then be that int dex mages would be much more accepted as being worthy of being regarded as a meta mage build alongside int str mages as a build that doesn't require god speed wield to perform optimally, so dex as a stat for mages would ultimately get the respect it deserves claiming its rightful place as being a meta stat alongside str!!

 

I really think it could have been a potential build for magic device dps only if it doesnt suck that much, like chronos shift would have been huge potential as a core skill, but alas, its just another finisher skill because of its long animation and removes the active skill

If things like reunion sword is allowed, then why not make magic device to actually persist 2 active skills at once

 

Actually now I'm curious.

For any Staff users with INT-DEX builds:
How do you usually fare in things like guild raids, or event bosses?