Where magic outclasses melee? In terms of climb speed.

E.g. What % EE charm would I need to gain a superior kill speed to a 200EE melee MQer

I'm curious if I'd need more EE or less EE to make things equivalent.

Side Question: if you had to choose for climbing melee or magic? And why?

Caster will always do more dmg than melee. I never thought about how much %ee of charm is 200%ee in weapons and what type. Dmg depends not only on the dmg of the weapon or charm, but also on the statistics of other items and the statistics of the characters add and whether you play, for example, tank or pure dmg. I don't know if your question is about solo or group climbing. As for characters, I like playing melee and caster

It's more to do with int gear.

So the question reworded is when does a caster samurai deal more damage than a melee samurai.

First of all you need a plan for early levels. Unless you pay obscene amounts for good offcast gear you're better off melee'ing 0-20. So if your budget is less than 5k for 0-20 gear, melee that section.
This is obviously just worse than melee, however this is expected, melee will outdo offcast with equal fg spent at lower levels.

20-30 depends again on investment. This is the time where you should start offcasting if that is your intention at all investment levels. This will again be weaker than melee at the same amount of fg invested.

At 45+ this is where base stats mean significantly less, also if you're using heavy armor you can buy 55 int for reasonably cheap. Mana pools in groups is also not a problem.

At 55+ is where offcasting truly takes off. There is a reason warlock is regarded the best class, even considering samurai has 95 melee stats compared to 10 int, equal ee will do reasonably similar damage.
Add onto this that prof is gained faster for casting and depending on how many classes you offcast on you can gain significant amounts of it.

For solo I'd specifically choose to offcast a monk/ninja if my mq charm has 30ee more than my dagger. This is partly to do with dex robes being absurdly expensive and hard to buy. For samurai personally I'd want 40-50 more ee.

For groups I'd offcast if the mq charm is 50ee higher than my dagger. Or do it it the group specifically needs a healer.

In short it's entirely gear dependent, for how much does a dagger, axe dex robe, dex charm, int staff, int robe and ee charms compare to just int robes, int sword or dagger, staff and axe and ee charms.

A final point is Mana fish cost/supply. If you offcast you should have a supply of Mana fish if needed. This is one of the reasons I stopped offcasting is that in "bad" groups it's immensely frustrating having to either shrine or consume loads of fish due to the rest of your group having an issue.


I used to offcast all dagger classes and personally I'd like to avoid going back. Decent daggers are somewhat accessible thanks to significant amount of mutes, doesn't make them cheaper seeing they're high demand but they do show up

I was personnaly doing melee till lvl 40 and then caster from 40 to MQ for the reason expressed above.

And after going fully melee, fully caster, hybrid, now I'm back to full melee because it's more my style and not speaking about efficiency, it's a game so play it to enjoy it.

There isn't a definition based on your questioning.

Caster vs Melee % damage output for Best results.

Well you fucked up with the Melee vs Caster % EE already.

Melee has two(2) types of weapons:
... Normal Attack Speed (1 handed) = 1 sec delay action.
... Heavy Attack Speed (2 handed) = 1.8 sec delay action
... Note: ... a caster casts at 1 sec delay action, they do NOT have a "Heavy" cast charm that requires a 1.8 sec delay.

Charms have a "Mana Cost", thus you have to rely on a "Mana Pool" to keep casting or healing... whereas a Weapon has NO MANA COST at all, just the action.

Weapons at 1 sec delay are NOT Heavy Weapons.
Heavy Weapons have an INNATE 100% damage (excluding STATS & EE)

Now, everything above that I have mentioned, THEY ALL have an AVERAGE Damage output based on their attack speed (1 sec or 1.8 sec delay).

The best example is if you have a 100 % Enhanced Effect level 55 weapon (Outside of a Heavy Weapon) ... the Average Damage is IDENTICAL based on the same Stat Criteria and Ratio.

This also applies with Charms and the same amount of Intelligence... the Average damage is the exact same.

I just love Heavy weapons because they start at 100% enhanced damage without stats.

These Links may shed some light to your questioning:

Weapon basics: https://ladderslasher.d2jsp.org/index.php?g=3

Charm basics: https://ladderslasher.d2jsp.org/index.php?g=11

Now... look at the basic damage that excludes Stats, Class and Enhanced Effect and you will see that the average is identical... the only odd ones are Heavy Weapons that have double damage during 1.8 sec delay... (Action is either 1 sec casting / melee etc vs 1.8 sec melee with Heavy Weapons).


EDIT: Actually... when selling HEAVY WEAPONS with EE%... they should be 3x the amount of their counter part... example: Dagger vs Spear ... if you pay 5k fg for a 150% ee level 55, you should pay 15k for a 100% ee level 55 spear MINIMUM.

This post was edited by izParagonzi on Nov 13 2024 05:00am

Ty all for the very useful and technical answers.

As a follow up, hypothetically speaking what do you think the budget would need to be to successfully cast solo climbing from feeder to alch without being slower than melee for most climbs and how high of an EE set of charms would be required?

I have a significant investment in items already and I'm beginning to question if it wouldn't be more worthwhile to consolidate my fg into high level charms and gear for one character than splitting it between multiple if I have an appropriate fg amount.

Depends on your definition of "successful solo climb"

Some people do it with dumpster gear sets that are sub 30k. Some people have millions of fg worth of caster and offcaster gear and wont do it because it sucks.

Well I'd be forced to solo due to the nature of my climbs. I did a solo mage feeder climb and didn't mind it too much even with only moderate gear.

melee to 30, if you had any issues with mana with a mage solo for the first 20 levels, this is about 5 times more shrining needed or mana gear which is just slower than melee.
"good" int/mana gear is in short supply and isnt that much faster than the melee option.

at 30 a dagger/sword with 40-42 int should be around 500-1000, 43+ or with side mods will be more.
lvl 30 medium/heavy with 40+ int armor will be 200-400 and plentiful in supply
Level 50/55 dagger with 50-52 int should be available at around 3-4k
level 50/55 medium/heavy armor with 50-52 int should be about 500-1000

For a samurai, i'd personally want a 240ee charm to use over a 200ee sword. There is a significant difference to casting on a mage with 3 decent blue abilities and 80 useful starting stats and a samurai with no useful abilities and 60 "useful" starting stats but takes ages to get online. Paladin is more commonly offcasted due to 20 starting int and decent vitality which saves you putting points there later. It's arguably a better caster than mage for solo due to access to cheaper int weapons/armors.

Definition of "Moderate Gear" is dependent on the player.

Personally speaking, this is my definition:

Tier III items (usable at level 1) with 20% EE is Moderate to get to level 5 (or 10 depending on other modifiers), now using White Tier III items will get you from level 1 to 5 easy.

Tier IV items (usable at level 5) with 20% EE is Moderate to get to level 10 easily (or 15 depending on other modifiers), now using White Tier IV items will get you from level 5 to 10 easily (maybe a couple of minutes slower than 20% EE weapon / cast charm)

... Skip the rest of chatter and start from level 35+

Any item @ level 35+ with 100% EE is mediocre or whatever to get to MQ. Also, this is working within 10 levels from level 35 with 100% ee, then upgrade to a level 45 item with 100% ee and of course level 55 item with 100% ee ... these are mediocre items, however will get you to MQ easily.

Hope this helps, however, you, yourself needs to test it out for yourself and be comfortable with the results.