The Complete Elemental Master Guide by Goldie: Difference between revisions

You're probably wondering why you should play Elemental Master at all. In this section, I'll be pointing out key points of both its pros and cons to help you get ready for the class, get yourself accustomed to it, and decide as early as now if you still wanna pursue playing the class after knowing its strengths and weaknesses. But first, let me share some of my wild and wistful unfiltered diaristic expression marked with brutal honesty about the class in the past in relation to now.  

* ''But'' if you wanna have fun and play around with this skill's randomness, then go ahead and use it I guess. You have a chance to use it to tame monsters and turn them into pets starting at Lvl. 6.

If you're in a small party of let's say 4 or 5 then a 9x9 LP will suffice to protect you and your small party. This gets significantly reduced when you solo on your own plus your Elementals and High Elementals. When this happens, you'd only want to use 7x7 and there'll be enough space for the both of you. Now you must be wondering why this is necessary. Simply because your skills won't hit the MVP. There will be times where you'll need to land your ground AoE skills to hit the enemy and you will have a lot of those especially when you transition to Elemental Master, and when an MVP enters your LP, you'll be left disadvantaged alongside your fellow party members that spams ground AoE spells like the Arch Mages. Furthermore when you're in a party and there are ground effects you wanna clear such as '''{{#skill:405}}''' or '''{{#skill:229}}''', you'll only need to use 7x7 so that you and your party's ground AoE skills won't get blocked.  

* Personally, I only put 1 skill point as a prerequisite skill. If I wanna condense lesser elemental ores (i.e. {{#icon:990}}{{#linkitem:990|Red Blood}} to their higher forms {{#icon:994}}{{#linkitem:994|Flame Heart}}) I'll just make a separate skill tree for it and save it to '''Build Manager NPC Lotus''' {{#navi:main_office|122|169}} and reload it everytime I need to craft.

Lastly, we have '''Lvl. 4''' '''{{#skill:2456}}''', which isn't even a mode or give anything good to either you or your spirits like reeaallyy. Don't ever use this skill as you'll only regret it. What it does is it kills your active spirits. I mean why? Just why would you want that? It's always easier to just cast another summoning skill if you wanna switch Elementals or High Elementals, but purposedly killing them is really such a questionable move by Gravity. Remove this in your hotkey or better yet don't ever bother getting it, it's a waste of skill point and a waste of space.

Furthermore, insignias provide one of the strongest debuff in the game. Each insignia has the ability to '''boost the counter element''' no matter which level you use. For example, if you use '''<span style="color:red;">{{#skill:2465}}</span>''' at any level, '''any units''' '''inside''' the insignias' 3x3 AoE will take 50% more damage against <span style="color:blue;">Water</span> elemental attacks. If EMs are standing inside the <span style="color:red;">Fire</span> insignias' AoE, they, too, will receive increased damage against <span style="color:blue;">Water</span> elemental attacks of the MVP. This rings true for the other elemental insignias. Okay this part is important, now if you use a '''Lvl. 2''' '''<span style="color:green;">{{#skill:2467}}</span>''' in a party because you have a melee class user and you plan on buffing him with its buffing effects ('''Endow weapon with the <span style="color:green;">Wind</span> property''', +10% ASPD, and +10% ATK),  and since he is in melee range and you need to adjust so both of you stand inside <span style="color:green;">Wind Insignia</span> as well as the MVP and you have a '''<span style="color:blue;">{{#skill:2466}}</span>''' placed underneath both of you and the MVP; the MVP will also have its weapon element endowed to <span style="color:green;">Wind</span> which means his attacks will hit like a truck and could possibly kill you both since you two are standing on a <span style="color:blue;">Water Insignia</span>. This could have been prevented if you just used a '''Lvl. 1''' or '''Lvl. 3''' '''<span style="color:green;">{{#skill:2467}}</span>''' instead and that way you could have avoided endowing the MVP's weapon to <span style="color:green;">Wind</span>. While a '''Lvl. 1''' <span style="color:green;">Wind Insignia</span> has neutral effect on the three of you, a '''Lvl. 3''' <span style="color:green;">Wind Insignia</span> would have boosted your <span style="color:green;">Wind</span> property magical skills like '''{{#skill:5370}}''' and you would have even received +50% ACD on your <span style="color:green;">Wind</span> skills (just be sure that the MVP doesn't use any <span style="color:green;">Wind</span> skills or else he benefits from it too). Conversely, if you wanna tank Lasgand's basic attacks, and you happen to use <span style="color:darkred;">Ardor</span> on '''Lvl. 2''' '''{{#skill:2456}}''' ('''Defensive Mode''')  you can place a '''Lvl. 2''' '''<span style="color:red;">{{#skill:2465}}</span>''' underneath Lasgand to forcibly endow his weapon attack to the <span style="color:red;">Fire</span> element so you can tank his hits head on.

Insignias can be overlapped with one another and I mean all four (4) of them. When you want to benefit from all effects of the insignias, you must be standing at least in one of the three (3) cells available. It doesn't matter which cells you stand on so long as you and the MVP are within its AoE. Depending how far apart the MVP away from you, it's ideal you place the insignias you wanna use to purely debuff the MVP underneath him. If you plan to use an insignia both offensively and defensively, you can place it in the middle between you and the MVP so that way you are debuffing him and at the same time buffing yourself. Remember that some insignias give good effects for you too (i.e. '''Lvl. 3''' '''<span style="color:brown;">{{#skill:2468}}</span>''' can give you +50 '''MDef''' and +25% <span style="color:brown;">Earth</span> property magical damage like in the image above).  

* Now secondly if this isn't your first character and you have some zeny to spare and you wanna ease the suffering part of leveling as a Sorcerer, you could purchase leveling up gears such as the {{#item:26118}} or its enhanced version {{#item:550012}}. Buy whichever is available in the market, both will reduce '''{{#skill:2449}}''''s CD by 1 second at +11. To further reduce its CD, you can purchase the costume enchant stones {{#item:25419}} + {{#item:25420}}that reduce its cooldown by another 2 seconds. In total, you'll have 3 seconds CD reduction for PW and it'll be left with 2 seconds CD. It still has a bit of CD but PW is going to be your main skill leveling up and the frequent you get to use it the better. I still suggest following the priority of skills that I had recommended and the skills in your rotation will be reduced as you will primarily cast PW whenever it's off-CD.

At this stage, you ought to purchase the {{#item:450178}}after doing Episode 18. By finishing the Episode 18 quests, you are given a generous amount of {{#item: 1000405}}for you to get one. To farm more of these fragments, you can go to [[Oz_Labyrinth#Floor_2|Oz Dungeon Flr. 2]] so you can determinedly enchant your Robe with  {{#item:310532}}, {{#item:310515}}, and {{#item:310507}}. ACD is preferably chosen over {{#item: 310510}} since EM is a rotation-heavy class and having more '''ACD''' would help you cycle your skills fluidly (about '''60% ACD''' is needed in total if you wanna optimize it). However if you value damage over comfortable rotation then you may freely choose '''Wolf Orb (Mage) Lv. 3''' instead.  

If you're looking to spice things up and wanting a different flavor in your builds, then well maybe '''{{#skill:2445}}''' is the build you're looking for! This build is more of a 'for fun' build and you can never expect it to keep up with the meta build now for Elemental Master. EMs are flexible with their choices of elements, they  use all of their elemental AoEs in a skill rotation, and even their own ultimate can be endowed. But if you wanna bonk monsters to death with the power of knowledge then this section of the guide is for you! Spell Fist won't be getting gear progression stages though as I expect that by the time you invest on this fun build, you're already done with your main build as you should be.