(06-16-2013, 01:56 PM)Fire Olive Wrote: OK, well thank you all for the clarification. I have no knowledge on the debuffs such as astral fire or something, but I am assuming it lowers resistance to that element or something!
I guess I don't have to play with my characters preferred element, though it would have been a nice touch =)
Also, as long as being a BM feels like I am blowing people up, then I am good.
Thank you all so much! Much love!
No problem, as an additional note, the effects known as "Astral Fire" and "Umbral Ice" are actually buffs applied to yourself as the result of casting damaging spells.
A quick point before going into how they work, its beta so everything subject to change.
Astral Fire: the result of casting a Fire Spell (or elemental switching, more on that below). A buff that lasts for 10 seconds (iirc, maybe 12?) makes further damaging spells cost more mana and do more damage. It also stops your in combat mana regen. As a note, the counter Ice spell actually costs less mana while this is up.
Umbral Ice: also the result of Ice aligned spells, 10 seconds as well, makes additional spells do less damage, and cost less mana. In combat mana regen is in effect. Fire spell does cost less mana with this effect up.
A few things to keep in mind:
The casting of a spell outside these two types does not consume or alter the buff (yet, maybe some additional types further down the line
?).If you want to gain the opposite buff you have two options either cast the opposite spell once to remove the buff to return to neutral then cast the one you want. Or you can use the Transpose ability which, while it only has effect when of the buffs is already up has the added bonus of resetting the timer on the buff.
The result (at least for me) was a cycle between regen phase and a damage phase, kind of like the thunder/thundra/thundaga cycling in 1.0. I usually started with Ice for the slow, followed up with the Thunder Dot (since the bulk damage comes from the tick its not a huge waste to cast it with Umbral Ice up.), Used Transpose to get Astral Fire, Fire enough to get the enemy below 10% while keeping Thunder up if on a longer fight, then Transposing to Umbral Ice for Regen.
Best of luck!
