Runs for Mages - What works and what do not

[Andy]

I know this has been discussed in other threads but there are conflicting answers so I thought that it would be best to have one thread dedicated to it until we can figure out what Rune abilities benefit Mages. This is what I gave been able to gather so far:

• All defensive abilities (HP, Physical Defense, Skill Defense, Magic Defense Resilience, Dodge, Block) benefit Mages,
• Magic Attack (of course) benefit Mages.
• Physical Attack, Skill Attack, Critical, and Initial Morale do not benefit Mages.
• Hit Rating and Break benefit Mages.
• This is not related to Runes but it is something that every one needs to know about Mages. Embedding sapphires on a Mage's Spirit does nothing. If you do you are just wasting them. See http://bbs.tynon.com/showthread.php?3565 for details.

The following is some detail on the more controversial Runes when used on Mages.

Critical

• None of the Mages have Critical as an inherent ability.
• I look at the Mages of the top players in my server I see that most of them have a Hit Rating rune, including one that said it does not work in the forum
• I believe that the consensus in the forum is that it does not benefit Mages but I have seen some discussion that it does.
• When I look at the Mages of the top players in my server I see that most of them do not have a Critical rune although one does on Smoulder.

Taking the above into consideration I conclude that Critical does not benefit Mages.

Break

• Mages have no inherent Break abilities.
• There are conflicting opinions in the forum on Break. Some say that it improves accuracy because it counters Dodge and some say that it does not specialty for Mehvidan.
• When I look at the Mages of the top players in my server I see that about have of then have a Break rune.

Note: See the August 17 Update below. Mages can be blocked so Break will work for Mages.

Hit Rating

The following quote from Dawnseeker - Tynon team on this tread.

Hit works for mages.

Disclaimer

None of the above is from personal experience, so I urge any one that does have experience in this area to share it.

I also request that this thread does not degenerate into a discussion of other games and how Mages work there.

Updates

August 17

​It has been verified that Mages can be blocked so it is conceivable that Break will work for Mages. Has any one experimented with Break runes with Mages and see if they do help? Please post if you have any information on this. The following quotes are from this tread.

can be blocked, and mages can block attacks. Both cases, though, result simply in a reduction of damage with no counter-attack.

Just saw my Shayd get blocked by Calvin.

[Carchero]

Critical

• Shyad has Critical and an inherent ability but the other Mages do not.
• I look at the Mages of the top players in my server I see that most of them have a Hit Rating rune, including one that said it does not work in the forum
• I believe that the consensus in the forum is that it does not benefit Mages but I have seen some discussion that it does.
• When I look at the Mages of the top players in my server I see that most of them do not have a Critical rune although one does on Smoulder.

Taking the above into consideration I conclude that Critical does not benefit most Mages. I am not sure if it does benefit Shyad.

Sorry, but can you give screenshot with critical from a mage? Iam playing now for 3-4 weeks and never saw one comming from mage

[Andy]

Never mind on Chyad. The critical was the result of a useless Saint upgrade. I will edit the post.

[princeziduja_8811987]

Some say that it improves accuracy because it counters Dodge and some say that it does not specialty for Mehvidan.

Break reduces the chances of being blocked by the enemy.

[MrB]

a critical rune does increase a mages power, although critical hits dont appear to happen by them. Hit rating allows attacks to land more frequently, so would be beneficial to everyone even mages. Break prevents you from being dodged, so again would benefit anyone

[Mmerri007_8923928]

If I remove the critical rune from the mage, I loose lots of power.

[Benzin]

Has anyone seen it already that a magical hit got blocked or dodged? Even with bossfights I only see MISS when a magical hit fails. If I saw this correctly, a break should have no influence.

Correct me if I'm wrong

[kenneth.obrien25_9301395]

Has anyone seen it already that a magical hit got blocked or dodged? Even with bossfights I only see MISS when a magical hit fails. If I saw this correctly, a break should have no influence.

Correct me if I'm wrong

i second u benzin, i also i have only observed 'miss' arrising from mage strike. and hadnt even considered the ramifications of this so thank you for opening my eyes.

[Gwyndolyn]

Mage attacks can't be blocked, and after spending some time paying attention to my fights I'm beginning to think they can't be dodged either. In which case both Break runes and Hit Rate runes would be useless on Mage characters like Shayd, Catherine, Mehvidian, or Smoulder.
Since Mages have the most powerful single attacks in the game, and always use a "skill" hit rather than an auto-attack I think the terrible accuracy rate they have naturally is a way to compensate for their massive damage when they do hit.

It's kind of a lazy way to solve a balance issue, but I'm getting the impression that might be the reason they were created that way, and why there is no rune that actually helps them hit their skills more often.

[Dawnseeker]

Hit works for mages.