Dual synth gems advice

As usual, I did not want to make an article which just copies and repeats information from other sources about the new Wartune feature, duel synth gems. Rather, I wanted to make an article which gives practical information about how to use this feature to your best advantage.

The word "advice" is maybe too strong here: rather, let's say, I just explain how I do this. If you like, you can do the same, or come to a different conclusion following the same logic. Or just disagree with me and do something completely different :)

I already wrote multiple articles about how combat works in Wartune, and what is the effect of different stats. To know what duel gems to make, you have to know which are the priority stats for you.

ATK. Atk is the most important stat in Wartune. In PVP (player-vs-player), attack increases by 50%, 100% etc. as time passes, while defense not. Also in the most glorious PVP event, Class Wars, total damage dealt is the tiebreaker. In PVE (player-vs-environment), most bosses go berserk after a while, so it is usually a damage-race: ATK is the most important in PVE as well.

DEFENSE. Defense is the second most important stat in PVP. This is due to the nature of Wartune's combat mechanism. Damage is calculated: (ATK-DEF)/2 * multipliers. So even if your opponent has many multipliers (crit, determination, pvp medal etc), if you reduce the basic damage a lot with your defense, the result will be still low. However, in PVE, defense is not so great. Because most PVE bosses have a very huge ATK value, and no multipliers. 

There is one exception where DEF is as important as ATK, in team PVP situations. When 4 players (and maybe some eudaemons too) throw aoes at you, then 1 DEF point will counter 3-6 points of ATK per round. But in the current team PVP situations (arena, GB, XGB) the rewards are not very good, so you should still focus on ATK. Maybe this will change with future events.

HP. HP is the second most important stat in PVE. While defense wont help you that much there, big HP can help you survive a big attack, and suntoria and heal rune will heal you for more if you have high HP. 

CRIT. I made many tests on this, and I strongly believe that crit is a capped effect. It reaches its maximum somewhere at 12-18k crit (depending on the opponent's crit reducer effects like guardian angel). Many people disagree with this, it's up to you if you prefer having a 40k crit because it looks nice.

BLOCK. Block is a capped stat as well, you can get maximum proc rate with about 8k block in pve, approx. 13k in pvp (because you have to counter penetration).

So, you have 38 gem slots (8 legendary items, plus artifact and halidom), the question is, what gems to use?

I recommend still using 10 pure ATK gems. A duel synth gem gives 20% more bonus than a non-duel gem, but 100 ATK worth more than 60 PDEF and 60 MDEF.

You should also use a bunch of ATK+CRIT gems. I'm sure a lot of players will use 10 of those as well. Problem is, that way I will have way too much crit. And if I suppose I don't need half of the bonus, well, 60 ATK is not better than 60 PDEF + 60 MDEF. Personally, I will make 7 ATK+CRIT gems only, that will give me more than enough crit.

I curently have 3 block gems, I will make 4 HP+block to get the same block value as before.

The remaining gems should be HP+PDEF, HP+MDEF and PDEF+MDEF gems. The question is, what is your priority, DEF or HP? I would say, if you are a top player, then PVP is a priority for you, beating the best of the best is your ultimate goal, so you will focus more and more on DEF. If you still not in the top tiers, you should focus more on getting as far as possible in PVE content to get maximum rewards daily, so you should weight a bit more on HP.

Right now, I will keep my balance between HP and DEF, I will make 9 HP+PDEF, 2 HP+MDEF and 6 PDEF+MDEF. This way, I will have the same HP, block, pdef, mdef and a bit higher crit than before, and about 20K more MATK. Please note I prefer to have roughly the same PDEF and MDEF, I can balance this out with having less MDEF gems than PDEF. If a knight/archer wants to do the same, obviously they have to make it the other way (2 HP+PDEF and 9 HP+MDEF).

There is one last question, should you make level 12 gems (if you didn't do it yet) before the synth, or wait for a possible future lvl 12 gem event?

Currently, I have lvl 12 ATK gems, because ATK is a top priority, but the rest of my gems are lvl 11 only. Before the dual synth, I will make a few lvl 12 defense gems too, but I keep the majority lvl 11. I think there is a good chance that there will be lvl 12 gem synth events in the future, and I'm patient. But if you have so many gems that you can make all dual 12 and still have a good stock of lvl 11 for any future events, then you are safe to make them.

Surviving sky trial 3-5 and God's descent

Today I would like to give a few advices how to fight particularly strong pve opponents. I already gave general advices about god's trial strategy here. The article below is mostly about survival.

First of all, here is the sky trial 3-5 boss. Some top players could beat it already, but for most of us, mere mortals, this boss is still too difficult. Now that sky trial bosses are unslowable, it looks quite impossible. I can't tell you how to kill it now - but I can say a few things how to improve your chances.

Earlier I mentioned that with the help of Tihh, we could reverse-engineer how combat works in Wartune. This knowledge has many uses - for example, I could understand what combat stats the sky trial 3-5 boss have.

She have an attack of 335.568! Yeah, you would like to have an attack like that, I bet :) He have 2 skills he is using. one is an AE, which hits for 120%, and another is a single-attack, which hits for 250%. He uses AE, then 2 single, then AE, then 2 single. The first AE clears your troops, so after that, you are on your own.

So how do you survive this?

HP or Armor?
The first thing you can see that your defense is pretty neglectable. If you increase your defense by 5000, then it will reduce the damage by about 1000 only. This is because in the combat formulae

(ATK - DEF) /2 * multipliers (skill, god's blessing, resist etc)

So 5000 Defense is something like:

5000/2 * 1.2 * 0.7 * 0.6 * 0.86 = 1080 damage reduction (2250 vs the stronger attack).

The same is true for other strong PVE bossess too, like dragon invasion, god's descent etc.

You remember when I said don't spend mount whips on armor? The devs make monsters stronger by giving them astronomical attack values. But this means, +100 defense means less and less.  When you increase the Armor stat in your stables by 1, you get +20 defense. So to get +5000 defense, you need to increase it 250 times. If you spend the same amount on endurance, you would get 25.000 HP. So the HP is more useful vs big bosses. Not to mention that to survive World Boss final attack, you need HP too.

Note: I don't say armor is not good. It DOES reduce the damage. Just when you can choose between armor and HP, take HP. 

Damage reducers

Damage reducers are your friend in fight such as this. Effects which reduce damage by a percentage, not by a constant, like armor. God's blessing is a must. And now you can enhance it by refining it's astral slot. Just 5% reduce can be 5000 damage less per attack.

The other key damage reducer is your resistance. PVE resist checks were bugged, the monster did not take the corresponding resist, but your highest. So a Hercules was better vs a dark opponent than Hades! Now it seems this bug is corrected finally with the last patch, so Hades is your best friend here. Try to work up your resist as high as possible - so better have 5 lvl 5 electro resist and 5 lvl 3 fire, than having all of them level 4. I don't know yet if there is a cap to resist's damage reduction- let's hope there is not and it can go even higher than 50%.

If block is triggered, you take 25% less damage. If you convert all your defense gems into block gems, you will take like 6-7% less damage in average. On the other hand, you lose about 5k def, which reduces the damage by about 2%.

Active damage reducers are not so great as passive ones, but you can use them too. The archer's IS is great, since it deals damage. The new mage skill, mana shield is not so good.

Astrals

Bosses are either MATK or PATK. So if you have both MDEF and PDEF astral equipped, one of them is useless. You can easily test which is needed, run a few test battles and see which is which (write down damages). For example, sky trial 3-5 is MATK.

Enchanted regeneration is a must. At 10%, you heal 50.000 - so that's an average of 5.000 heal per round!
Even if you are a will destroyer user, I recommend Determination + Sniper's edge vs. these bosses, where you need one lucky run from several. But at Determination 9+ and critical 7k+ you are better of with critical in average as well.

Use every astral which can reduce damage somehow, enshieldment, even the nerfed Illusion. If necessary, you can even remove the second of MDEF/PDEF (at least you don't have to test around which is not needed).





Healing
Use heal rune. Using a rune takes little time. Don't forget that now you can upgrade your level 10 heal rune further with advanced runestones (available in the arena shop).

Even if you can reduce the boss damage to something like 60-70k (with a 500+ resist, god's blessing 35%, frequent blocks etc) and have 250k+ HP, you need to heal yourself fully once every 4-5 turns. For archer and knight, this seems doable only with Iris...

Conclusion. Please don't forrget that the above advices are only for big attack PVE monsters. In PVP situation, where the damage comes from skill and other multipliers, armor is still an important stat. It's justthat  in PVP, the biggest reward you get for your efforts is like 200 mount whip (in class wars). In PVE, you get much better rewards - more hoof, dragon soul in dragon invasion, more horn for sky trial, not to mention God's descent rewards.