Best usage of a PVM warrior's 29.9?

[Clockwork]

Thinking about making a PVM Warrior with GM Weapon, Anatomy, Healing, Tactics, Parry, Resist and 70.1 Magery. What's your favorite skill to put the 29.9 on?

[Ragancy]

Tracking

[Soma]

Tracking/Detect/Hiding/Wrestling are all useful.

With 30 tracking you can track across 3 screens making it handy to find out if PK's are coming, but if it's purely for PvM I'd suggest hiding in case you need a few extra seconds for the bandage timer to tick, and the hiding fail rate isn't too bad when stat boosted on a dexxer.

[Malaikat]

I'm with soma on a pvm. ~33% to hide is probably more useful than tracking. Most things you'll be killing on a dexer have a high spawn rate, but still the option to hide between kills in order to increase your chances to avoid being pk'd is going to be more useful than the ability to find a particular mob.

TBH, I'd recommend flipping magery and either hide or wrestle and just recall with scrolls. You should never have to cast heal against the AI. The 4th circle success rate is 100% in the 30-35 skill range, and at that point wrestle may become a life-saving pk escape factor.

[WarmApplepie]

^^^ agreed. When chasing down a farmer the ones that can get a hide off and make me throw a purple can usually get recall casted before I can hit harm. Without wrestle I can hit for 50+ dmg. So horse a piece

[Clockwork]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I think I'm going to go with lowering my magery to scroll casting levels for recall and put those points into hiding.

[morgan1109]

I'm with Soma. Those four are probably the best options.

tracking is useful if you are trying to target/avoid specific prey (Reds, Blues, silver serpents, poison elementals, dragons, liches, you name it). I find it more useful in the wild rather than in dungeons, but is useful in both. There’s a PK that’s been staking out the ancient wyrm lately. Being able to know when he is there and when he isn’t before my gate closes would be invaluable, heh heh. Tracking will tell you that. You won’t be hunting the ancient wyrm with low magery, but the same logic applies in other hotspots.

I love high hiding, but hate low hiding. It never seems to fire off when you actually need it. It's still useful to park for a minute for a bio break. At a low magery it is far more useful than a high level mage who can just cast invis. If you went with 30 magery I could totally get behind this option. You have access to the invis spell though and 100% success chance with invis scrolls. So the only benefit is if you need to hide for more than 2 minutes, as invis has a 2 minute timer and hide is infinite.

If you are out in the world, make sure to use house foundations to vastly increase your chance of hiding if you go this route. You have to be right next to the foundation to get the additional hide chance. This trick makes your low hide skill far more useful. I’m just not usually hunting in areas with housing, so I don’t find it very useful. If you hunt in areas with housing, then it makes a lot of sense.

Detect hidden at 29 will expose any invised mages who have zero actual hide. It’s best use is unhiding mages who throw on invis jewelry so you can finish them off. So its value really is in the PVP world more so than PVM, but useful in both.

Any level of wrestling is good if you intend to cast occasionally during battle. With 70 magery and at least 25 mana, you should be casting some. As soma pointed out hiding might buy you a few seconds for a bandage to tick. You could just as easily take 30 wrestle and use Gheal spell for those times when you need a little help. If your damage is going down too fast, just back up a few tiles and hit the greater heal macro before the mob starts moving up. Casting teleport onto a ledge is just as beneficial to get that bandage tick as relying on hide as well.

The real advantage to taking wrestling is the greater chance of getting your recall macro off when in the process of being pk’d. It will make the difference often enough that it will be points well spent. You have less chance of your spells getting interrupted with it, so the more casting you plan to do the more importance it plays.

Always carry greater heal, and greater cure potions as well. Gheal pots are more useful for getting a quick health boost, than hide/bandage or run/cast Gheal. A few red pots will keep your weapon hit speed up to full, and allow you to push through if a group of mobs have you trapped in a corner. Malakait mentioned boosting stamina. Those greater agility potions are great if you haven’t maxed out the speed of your weapon already (I am looking at you katana). Strength pots are good if you are going to enter a tough fight. Pop the potion, and start your bandage 5-10 seconds before you engage the mob and you’ll get that first bit of sweet sweet health 5-10 seconds earlier than you would have (plus extra hit points). That technique works best against casters. They typically cast their biggest spells early and cast low level spells late as they run out of mana so their damage spikes early and trails off, while melee based mobs are pretty steady throughout.