Your different spella have the same duplicate tiles?
Yes. I’ve tried multi casting frost 2, they just repeat the couple symbols over and over. Same for casting fireball 2. Alternating casts of frost 2 and fire 2 repeat the symbols between those two spells, so still duplicate symbols. Icelance itself always has two of the same symbols in it. The only possible idea I’ve had that may work is to cast frost 2 and fire 2 with a different delay time between them to result in different symbols, but then that goes back to the whole altering your play style to match artificing. When my understanding of the system was its supposed to match your style.
The system assumes your play style consists of more than spamming 2 or 3 abilities. Hard to make 5 tilesets based off 2 motions. Mix up what you do, make other runes appear and you find ways of making your base rotations into sets.
Edit: the basis of artificing is to find patterns. If you repeat the same rotation you’ll get the same pattern. In an actual fight you won’t be standing still doing the same rotation with the same 2 runes repeating.
As a mage, actually you typically do. The style I usually do is spam cast frost 2 until they get close, then either fireball 2 or ice lance.
A couple general public notes about artificing:
- You can’t use the same tile more than once in a given tileset
- Having two identical tilesets doesn’t help you
- You can have as few as 3 and as many as 5 tiles in a tileset
- You can have tilesets that are subsets of larger tilesets and have them both benefit you
- You can have tilesets that are inversions of other tilesets for alternating behavior and have both benefit you
- You can have other runes appear during your tileset sequence and still proc (to some limited extent) as “interference”
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Then why dont you use that change you make when they get close and use that pattern to make a runeset?
Perhaps you missed what I said above, but I mentioned I’ve tried doing patterns between those three actions. They all have duplicate symbols.
I mean just to add my own two cents in here, there’s a difference between our desire to keep the forums somewhat spoiler-free and what you’re talking about.
It’s up to each player to decide if they want to share their hard work learning any part of the game with everyone else. I think with Artificing, one of the cool things about it is that it does have some mystery to it and it does take actual effort to figure out the runes and what they mean. Some people want to parlay that information into basically becoming known as a “Master Artificer”, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all, that’s their choice. Knowledge and the effort put forth to acquire it have value.
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So Emrys, let me ask you this… is there any point in the sequence of symbols you are seeing where 3 different runes appear in a row? They can repeat before and after that but if you are alternating fire and frost for example, I am extremely confident there will be moments where there are 3 different runes appearing next to each other.
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This is not necessarily the play pattern of most mages, in my experience.
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I totally understand what you’re saying Riley, but to me it seems artificing isn’t fulfilling what it’s intended if you have to adjust your play style to match it. Why should spamming the same spell result in duplicate symbols? Or at least not allowing duplicate symbols in the first place. Even with spamming a spell, there should still be variation enough. First hit symbol, a symbol for second hit, for getting 3 spells hit in a row without misses, etc. Even if variation doesn’t start until you get past 5 multi casts for example that would be fine.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the purpose of artificing. My understanding is it was to match your play style, if you can reliably repeat actions.
Draven, yes, now that you mention it there probably is that one occasion for 3 symbols. So I guess I could make one set for that. The rest of the things though are definitely repeat symbols.
If there a better play pattern I should be attempting then? Chain casting frost 2 is something I’m semi-decent at, and allows me to usually kill things before they get close enough to damage.
Actually, the point is to match your playstyle based on parts of it that you can and can’t control. So casting some spells is meant to be part of it, but it’s not meant to be designed such that you can just go “Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostbolt” and get a zero-interference proc every time. There are runes that are keyed off of things that you have less control over but are still a part of your unique play style that you should be including.
I’d suggest making a tileset out of that sequence, as well as it’s inverse, and that gets you practically half of the way there.
In terms of play pattern (and this is getting into Mage theory moreso than Artificing theory), depending on the target and group situation, I think things like opening with a Frost 3 or Affliction 2 can be more beneficial than a Frost 2, and then using the alternate. If you have a First Strike Wand, a Fireball 3 can have a huge impact up front. Knockback on mobs that spawn adds when they get to you (like the armored wargs) is beneficial. Alternating frost, fire and affliction on bosses can have a high impact and generate extra ultimate and maybe open up opportunities for tilesets.
Also, even though similar types of spells often have identical runes, sometimes they have secondary runes that appear depending on context that can be leveraged.
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Hmm okay, thanks Draven. As to Affliction 2 though, in my own testing, it seems I get more dps from the increased range of extra frost 2 than I do from that. I haven’t been able to cast the level 3 spells yet, otherwise frost 3 plus affliction 2 might be worthwhile. Perhaps once it gets closer, but even then I can’t reliably cast affliction 2, only level 1. Guess I could practice it more till I get to the point that it’s worth it as a runeset. Was just hoping to stick to what I’ve been good at so far.
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Agreed - forum should be spoiler free. I don’t want anyone to spell it out for me totally. Just felt lost and was asking for guidance. Dravens comment below was great and exactly what I wanted.
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if you still need the help, i can give you a pretty extensive lesson on what i know about the sets sometime in the evening today. don’t pay anybody to do it for you, its really simple once you wrap your head around it.
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That would be great. You’re familiar with sets for mages?
pretty familiar, im hopping on now if you want a party invite
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Alright, I won’t be home from work for about 2 more hours though.
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You could always start your combo with a mana shield or something.