Quote (NazT @ Mon, May 19 2008, 04:45pm)
Just a little opinion on playing casters, if anyone cares to read. This is mostly for john though, since I see he's finally done his mq and rolled a caster.
Well here it is.
Mana Efficiency:
One thing I realized is that for charms EE basically equals mana efficiency since every charm upgrade requires you to dish out more mana. So just because you see more damage on a higher level charm, doesn't necessarily mean you should buy it if the EE is lower, because it will drain your mana alot faster.Although at some point higher burst damage begins to outweighs mana efficiency when monsters start to hit you harder.
The same concept holds true for healing charms, a higher EE healing charm will heal more for a fixed amount of mana compared to a lower EE healing charm. But again at some point EE can be sacrificed for a bigger heal, because you end up wasting time by having to heal multiple times, which could be used for regen/fighting time.
10 Vitality vs 10 Intel:
Starting off with 10 vitality allows increases your MAX life and helps armor a tiny bit. It also allows you to make better use of mana efficiency because you can endure longer fights(not necissarily kill more monsters, but last longer in a fight). On the other hand, using 10 vitality in the beginning detracts from your main attribute, int. I find vitality more efficient when you are under geared, due to the fact that you can't drop monsters really quick and you will have to endure more attacks.
By starting off with 10 int as a rogue, you still have a substantial amount of HP(more than a caster), a bigger mana pool, and more damage(yay damage! and lets not forget better healing). When it comes to deciding whether having 600 hp is more "efficient" than 600 mp, consider this: You can heal more than 600hp with 600 mana using healing charms, infact it's about double, depending on the EE of your healing charm. The only problem you run into with having less HP is when monsters damage you for almost all your hp over 1 fight. Althgough most times this isn't the case. As a magician I found my hp could sustain 1-4 battles on average before I started needing to heal and that was with only 20 vit.
If you really can't decide, go with 5/5
Post your comments if you guys disagree with any of this.
On my current char, I went with the first 20 into vita. Mana is a slight problem right now, but I think it'll really be worth it later on. Only think I wish i did differently was alternated 1 vita and 1 int for the first 20 after the initial 10, instead of 10 more vita, then int.