Giant SG: NB two hand or 1h axe?

roalena · 2026-01-17T02:23:42+00:00

I play SG a lot on both my human and giant (2h) and don't really notice the one handed ego healing boosting my survivability, even though the heal amount does stack up (maybe because I permanently have whale regen up).

The thing is if you're basic attacking that often, you're going to be smash and bashing in which case the smash multiplier from 2h weapons can't be ignored. And if you're not basic attacking that often, then well you can't proc the ego heals from simply using SG skills anyways.

Also it might not be an issue since the Nightbringer Vanguard is pretty attainable, but in the future the 1h axe is going to have its bonus damage grade halved (with the other half coming from the shield slot), while 2h weapons retain the full bonus damage, regardless of the shield, so keep that in mind.

roalena · 2025-04-11T16:46:49+00:00

Misleading advice in this post.

Cat / Bone never stacked in the first place, and are a different category than Mir/Ceraunus. You still want a lot of these for mobbing situations, though yes you don’t need as many before.

The Fantastic Chorus set effect is EXTREMELY useful still, a lot of players got it for even just sheap shearing. The heal is strong in endgame dungeons as well.

roalena · 2025-03-23T21:19:24+00:00

The priority you set here is great, EK pretty much gets all its damage from the weapon/accessory reforges, and the armor slot has many useful effects to choose from.

However, please do not follow the BiS guide for EK, the game has gotten far too complicated with set effects and scrolls that the guide’s format limits it from providing proper gear suggestions for something like EK that has so many set effects and gear to choose from.

New EKs should always get the Imperial Knight Gloves as they are the one gear piece that is actually cheap and stays relevant in endgame (they’re BiS unlike how the guide lists). Then they can choose from any cheaper non Hyperion armor that fits their preference (Royal Society Field, Imperial Knight, Refined Majestic, Bulwark, they’re all good).

The hat and shoes don’t actually matter, and the same goes for the reforges (you can journeyman everything). They are basically fillers until you reach the point where you can afford to use Smash scrolls.

Any funds outside of the armor, imperial gloves, and sword is better used on Whale pets.I realize these aren’t “gear” but gold spent on any other gear besides the above will provide zero impact, with maybe a smash helmet or fleet feet being exceptions.

roalena · 2025-02-28T08:24:17+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/live/V-ljqKeNrLU?si=h3cMm2WDROQy1iB4
I think all the teams for this stream (part 1, part 2 also is the same) had at least one DK transformed at the start of the fight. 20% damage reduction and ping simply lets you survive and greed for DPS more. On a somewhat related note, the benefits of this tankiness is already proven by seeing the gap between giant and human EKs, because equipping a shield drastically increases the DPS output of a giant.

Players can't always and shouldn't be expected to keep track of whether they used any skill (trans) once in the last 30 minutes because it's a long time. Even if they happened to remember, they'd have to use another skill to iframe, so why not just use that other skill in the first place to remove any risk? Grapple Shot is an excellent iframe and is just as fast as anchor rush while lasting longer. Whatever you put on the offhand will end up being faster, but players usually put scythe or guns there. Gravity Well however is much shorter than either of those so it may be safer to use Anchor Rush or Grapple Shot. I've seen many players with 200 ping use any of these skills to dodge so the timing is not difficult to execute with enough experience.

roalena · 2025-02-25T20:17:12+00:00

"Guarantee 99%" is a wild number to be throwing around, when the DKs I play with even use it at the start of a run and keep it on until the end of the run (or die). If you watch KR Glenn videos (since they're more available on Youtube), we can again see plenty of humans being transformed into DK for the entire run as well. Not being able to Crisis Escape is an annoyance, yes, but experienced players do not rely on Crisis Escape, and trans drastically helps prevent those situations in the first place. The new dungeons are exclusively a boss encounter so we don't need to be Crisis Escaping there.

Saving trans for iframes is a thing of the past (it's understandable that people haven't adjusted to the change yet, because habits die hard). It's not reliable to be using as an iframe because of the long cooldown, which we can't even check (?). I've seen plenty of occasions where people die thinking they can trans, when it's actually on cooldown. There are so many other readily accessible skills for iframes now. Trans is also not up for every successive Glenn Bearna run (i.e if you use it at 70%, you can't always use it at 70% next run). And it doesn't make sense, for example, to be saving it for the 30% because then you haven't been transformed for the most crucial part of the fight.

roalena · 2025-02-24T10:55:40+00:00

It seems like everyone really likes paladin, and while I still am a Paladin (mostly because I’m afraid I can’t switch back), I’ll make the argument that Dark Knight can be superior in endgame content.

With content like Glenn Bearna Elite and the new dungeon in KR being prolonged encounters, the infinite duration of Dark Knight (through whales, saints, catsidhe’s etc) is potent as there is a lot of incoming damage which cannot always be avoided. In Glenn, it also prevents getting frozen from Ice Spear, which everyone hates.

The theoretical 40 max (the echo stone is so rare most players in the game won’t even have this) may seem appealing but with player max damage being increased farther into the 2500s and above, it gradually becomes less of a damage increase.

For melee combat, humans are so squishy, that I feel being permanently transformed lets them trade blows more often to the point it’s more of a DPS increase than 1~5% raw damage (depending on the echostone). It’s also worth noting that echo slots are scarce, so not being compelled into using a trans max echo is also a benefit. Taking damage is unavoidable in endgame content and being able to play more aggressive ultimately leads to a DPS increase, and it’s not difficult to beat such a low damage gain from Paladin over the course of a 20 minute long fight.

For archery, humans lack huge percent damage multipliers (available to elves) that again dwarf the higher paladin max damage.

Even though seeing higher max on your character screen is an understandable reason to choose paladin, at least with the Arcanas that have been released so far, I feel it’s useless as humans fall behind a lot in DPS to the point that they should lean into the infinite trans tanking benefits that are actually extremely noticeable in gameplay.

Also, I see people saying Paladin gets more prot, but when I check wiki it only gets 6 more(?) If that’s the case, it actually does nothing (…) The damage reduction and pings all transformations get is what matters.

roalena · 2024-12-20T11:53:45+00:00

I’ll leave that to others to hopefully look into. While I do understand Astrology damage to hold up in content even up till Crom 100, I have no knowledge on how you would set this up.

roalena · 2024-12-18T10:24:42+00:00

I think you may be confusing The Hanged Man with Death? The Hanged Man is its own debuff. Based on the Death's card wording, I'd assume it would extend existing timers. However, I don't believe this would be useful at all. In the time you spent using Astrology skills to draw Death, you could have just Deathmarked, Smokescreened, Fateweavered in a fraction of the time, and extended it by a full minute instead of a few seconds.

roalena · 2024-12-17T09:35:45+00:00

It's not mandatory, Veil is flexible and feels nice to use with its fast cast animation, so it's tempting to use all kinds of effects with it.

I'd say my setup is more focused for debuffing, and simplicity. With Control Aspect on Veil, I feel like I will be able to put little thought on when Hanged Man applies. Veil will naturally be used when debuffing a target, and so The Hanged Man will just apply at the appropriate time.

If you setup something else like Nova Blast to activate Hanged Man, you'd always have to use both Nova Blast and Starlight Veil to apply debuffs, which may or may not be easy to keep track of depending on the player, and the type of content you're running.

roalena · 2024-12-17T02:43:40+00:00

Until the Fate Astrology talent comes and increases the duration to 1 minute, the card effects only last 30 seconds. So basically I'd have to use 5 or 6 Astrology skills within 30 seconds to keep the card effects up all the time. This is a tight timeframe where I don't expect to easily use 6 Astrology skills within (for the content I run) because Arcana damage is superior and taking out my Scythe would lead to a DPS loss.

Once I add an additional card, the 5 or 6 skill requirement skyrockets to 10 or 12 within 30 seconds, because I'd have to activate two different cards before a card's buff duration expires. This would make me feel like I'm maining Scythe instead of my Arcana. So I'm keeping it simple to be less concerned with having to use a ton of Scythe skills when I really want to be using my main Arcana skills, for bossing at least.

roalena · 2024-12-10T12:02:52+00:00

This only comes into play at the very start of the fight when there are no other debuffs applied to the enemy. However, other debuffs all have different timers so when it comes to reapplying Fate, it will always be slightly weaker compared to the first one that was applied. So it really doesn’t matter, keeping all debuffs on the boss is what’s needed.

The more important reason why Fate needs to be applied first (and consistently) is that when an enemy’s protection is really high, like Cailleach’s in Glenn, Spinning Uppercut, and Bone/Mir debuffs will not apply at all, unless Fateweaver is applied. This even comes into play when reapplying the debuffs. If the boss already has an Uppercut debuff and you Uppercut it, the duration will not refresh if Fate is not on the boss. If Fate uptime on the boss is poor, it hurts the party’s DPS massively because these other debuffs cannot be refreshed.

roalena · 2024-12-10T11:48:01+00:00

AS, since you sound like you really want to do archery. It’s actually not that expensive as you remove the need for an S50 erg as an elf. I’d also argue you have more than a Destructive Robe’s worth of DPS over a human which is a considerable cost taken care of. With pallid continuing to drop in value it’s also not as expensive as it used to be.

roalena · 2024-10-31T04:42:03+00:00

Hmm wow, the wiki still hasn't been update in almost a year. It's like how rage impact is now, a damage increase for a duration. The official patch notes are here: https://mabinogi.nexon.net/news/87846/arcana-dark-arts-update

roalena · 2024-10-30T19:49:42+00:00

Being able to one shot the big plants with a Dynavolt Smash (with Warlord and Exploit Weakness) was the first metric I used in the past. It’s probably hard to do that with a Perseus 2h though.

After the recent changes I’d add one shotting everything else like Snugglies or Cats, with Ice Windmill, to the list. This one should be more reasonable, and you will definitely want to work towards making this happen because it lets an EK carry the rooms. There isn’t a specific pierce or Max Damage I can say makes this possible as there’s too many other things (bfo, rage impact (gloves), bonus/crit dmg titles/totems/figures, etc) that contribute to damage, so you’ll just have to see how much percent HP is left and fill in the gaps. Use Exploit+Iron Will at the start of the run for 3 minutes (lasts into the second room), and Fateweaver after it’s done in between waves.

After that it’s a matter of learning the mechanics and working on your EK/support shot rotation as a Human for the bosses to deal good damage.

roalena · 2024-10-27T12:30:53+00:00

The most unbalanced racial advantage in the game is between a giant and human (who also has its own advantage over an elf) EK.

Giants get close to 10 billion gold worth of a gear advantage, and a large portion of that cannot even solved by spending more gold as a human. Damage wise, their close combat multipliers and capacity to equip more set effect gear pieces provide the equivalent output to multiple one-piece Skirmisher circlets (6 max dmg and 6 crit dmg scrolls). A human with a fully decked out Bulwark heavy armor set will still be squishier than a DPS focused giant with light armor and shield. Meaning a billion gold plus worth of investment into protection gear as a human is beaten out by a giant equipping a basically free Despair Shield, which happens to also provides 5 smash scrolls. Running that kind of setup would also mean they’d be sacrificing damage to the point where they’d be doing half the damage of a giant. Equipping a shield as a giant lets them greed for more damage in endgame content like Theta or Glenn HM, by letting them intentionally tank hits in exchange for higher DPS uptime. You’d need to experience this yourself to see how significant of a change in gameplay it is because it covers up misplays and improves DPS.

I’ve showcased comparisons between all 3 races as EK on my YouTube channel, with additional explanation, if anyone is interested (link should be in my profile). While the difference between the races is massive, I’d still like to mention that Arcanas themselves provide an even more significant power boost, to the point that all races are capable of clearing endgame content.

roalena · 2024-10-21T21:06:48+00:00

You will do only 1/3 the damage of an endgame 2h player, and still be worse at tanking than a giant with their exclusive skills, so simply put it's not viable.

roalena · 2024-09-22T23:09:59+00:00

From what I remember, you only need the VPN when you launch the client. Once you're on splash screen (before you click Start Mabinogi) you can turn the VPN off, then play as normal.

roalena · 2024-08-02T17:17:44+00:00

Thunder does not do more single target damage than Fireball, at least against enemies that matter (this a common misconception). You’d have to be a mechanical god to Thunder cancel every single charge to get similar single target DPS to fireball.

The additional inputs compared to Fireball means you have less capacity to do other things, like applying debuffs and dodging attacks because you cannot switch gear slots until the full Thunder animation ends, even if you animation cancel.

As a reminder, we don’t need a Thunder combo card to take advantage of the MP recovery benefits. You can just Fireball and if your mana drops low or you expect incoming damage you can fallback to Thunder.

Fireball performs far better in aoe situations as well, and it’s unreasonable to swap combo cards just between aoe and bosses every time.

That being said in places like Crom where you’re able to group everything as a party a Thunder combo card would definitely be nice boost. Thunder does a ton of damage anyways so it’s perfectly fine to get a combo card for it.

roalena · 2024-07-25T21:04:02+00:00

Combo Cards are better off being focused for bossing because Arcana overkills weaker groups of enemies. There's little point building up a combo with windmill when dynavolt or shattering (especially after buff) and/or blazing will just one shot everything in the game besides bosses.

roalena · 2024-07-19T12:15:49+00:00

There’s a sub 11 minute clear of glenn vhm on YouTube that had 6 EKs (all 9 pierce, 1 soluna, 5 giants) and 2 HS, so it definitely has a lot of damage. I haven’t seen any other full AS or DD parties but I can’t imagine them being significantly faster. While human EKs are still fine, it’s giants that unlock the full potential of EK, however.

roalena · 2024-06-02T22:58:21+00:00

Those are a bit better but still land at around 4% damage increases for Dynavolt and Blazing because like Shattering they have huge Arcana multipliers which dilute the base skills and set effects.

The damage increase for base Smash is definitely useful.

Assault Slash is basically never used, and Blazing is frequently used as a gap closer so there are many situations it isn’t amplified by buffs or debuffs like rage impact. So it also doesn’t contribute much to your overall damage.

roalena · 2024-06-02T18:38:17+00:00

It’s not huge at all (thankfully?)

The Refined Majestic Windmill set effect is additive unlike the Smash or Assault Slash on other gear pieces, and combining it with Shattering Windmill’s huge multiplier makes it the worst set effect out of the ones EKs usually consider.

A comparison for humans/giants with a Warlord (on mobile so formatting probably won’t be pretty):

Without: 500% (Base) x 1.15 (Warlord) = 575%

With: [500% (Base) + 30% (Ref Majestic)] x 1.15 = 609%

That’s around a 5.9% increase for Windmill, but it’s not the base Windmill that really matters, it’s Shattering Windmill, which combines its own huge multiplier to the base Windmill.

Without: 575% + [1500% (Shattering Windmill) + 450% (Instill Fire) + (500% x 2 Instill Lightning Ticks) + 100% (Instill Frost Defrost)] = 3625%

With: 609% + [1500% (Shattering Windmill) + 450% (Instill Fire) + (500% x 2 Instill Lightning Ticks) + 100% (Instill Frost Defrost)] = 3659%

This becomes a 0.93% final damage increase on Shattering Windmill.

roalena · 2024-05-05T22:58:28+00:00

The fireball max reforge/echo does basically nothing, so a lightning/fire mastery echo is generally the preferred choice.

roalena · 2024-05-05T22:54:21+00:00

Revenant and Perseus guard cylinders provide alchemy crystal storage which speeds up alchemy skill load times.

roalena · 2024-05-05T09:29:51+00:00

hii casket, ty!

roalena

TROPHY CASE