Meditation....what am I not getting?

[Edie Brickell]

So, Ive been training magery a few days with absolutely no gains in meditation. My understanding is that the higher oyur meditation, the closer to 0 mana when you'd meditate you'd have to be. Right now I got 27 meditation, 100 intelligence, and 92 magery and I haven't gained a stitch of meditation even though my macro is set to meditate any time I fall below 40. fact is My mana is frequently at 0-5 when I meditate because I'm macroing FS which means whn I hit 45 or so, it casts, so shouldn't I be getting gains? What am I missing?

[Mikel123]

Meditation is based on the percentage of mana you have remaining.

Rule of thumb: meditate when the % of mana you're missing is equal to your meditation skill.

Much easier to figure this out if you have 100 INT to begin with.

At 27 skill, I'd meditate at 73 mana. Maybe a little more, because you are more likely to gain skill off of successful meditation attempts. My guess is, at your mana level, you have 0% chance of succeeding at the meditation. And generally, if you have a 0% or a 100% chance of something, you have a 0% chance of gaining skill.

[Edie Brickell]

Yeah, that sucks....sad part is I only want the mana to speed things up, it's magery for my crafter and I won't need mana in the long run. But that was a very clear picture you painted, I liked it better when meditation wasn't so complicated...glad my bard beat that clock...

[Arkon]

Ya, it's a real pain now. Started a new char recently and I knew of the changes to med prior to making him, and he's at 94 magery 78 med using the method mentioned above. Slower than before but not impossible.

[Mikel123]

If you're more concerned with raising Meditation than Magery, just throw on a suit of store-bough plate armor. That will slow down your mana gains, costing you less reagents since you're essentially only using the reagents to lower your Mana. Also, you can add a line into a macro to say something after you use the meditation skill, which ensures you'll never gain mana back a the active meditation rate (double) since speaking stops your meditation.

[Arkon]

If you're more concerned with raising Meditation than Magery, just throw on a suit of store-bough plate armor. That will slow down your mana gains, costing you less reagents since you're essentially only using the reagents to lower your Mana. Also, you can add a line into a macro to say something after you use the meditation skill, which ensures you'll never gain mana back a the active meditation rate (double) since speaking stops your meditation.

That's actually a really good idea. Never thought of that.

[SighelmofWyrmgard]

One or two things here may need clarification:

If you're nerfing your (passive) regeneration rate by wearing plate armor, you will never achieve active meditation (sysmessage: "regenerative forces can not penetrate your armor"); however, whether or not the skill-ckeck would still result in skill-gain is something upon which I can not remark.

If you haven't tried the "magic-hat" trick, you should still be able to use it to macro close to 40 (it would be higher if your natural Int were substantially lower than 100).

My mages use a razor script that casts spells down to their current "meditation-gain sweetspot", and thereafter casts/meditates to hover under and over that number; I have been satisfied by the efficiency of skill-gain, but none of my characters simultaneously possessed extremely-high Magery and extremely-low Meditation ...

If you can use the magic hat to coax your Meditation skill towards 40, you could follow that by casting EBolt (perhaps also using a lower level spell) to hover your mana over your Meditation sweetspot so that you can start to enjoy significant gains there: you won't be gaining anything in Magery, but once you achieve mid-40s to 50ish Meditation, you can revert to casting (at least some) Flamestrikes; after that, the higher your Meditation gets, the more Flame Strikes you will be able to add-in to the schedule.

Remember the sweet-spot calculation: at ~40 Med, gains seem to be best at mana =< Int-Med; at 40-65ish Med, it seemed to me to be something like mana =< 1.1*(Int-Med); around 70+ Med, it seemed like mana =< 1.2*(Int-Med). Once you isolate a mana-level at which you enjoy robust Meditation-skill-gain, do whatever you can to make your mana slide just below it every 10 seconds.

SS

[Mikel123]

One or two things here may need clarification:

If you're nerfing your (passive) regeneration rate by wearing plate armor, you will never achieve active meditation (sysmessage: "regenerative forces can not penetrate your armor"); however, whether or not the skill-ckeck would still result in skill-gain is something upon which I can not remark.

You're right, I'm an idiot. Doubly-so, in fact, because I tried this trick and took off the plate because of that message. I forget what I ended up putting on (maybe full leather?).

I am pretty sure that since plate means no chance of meditating, which means no chance of succeeding, you will have no chance of a skill gain (anything with 0% chance of success or 100% chance of success means 0% chance at skill gain).

[Arkon]

One or two things here may need clarification:

If you're nerfing your (passive) regeneration rate by wearing plate armor, you will never achieve active meditation (sysmessage: "regenerative forces can not penetrate your armor"); however, whether or not the skill-ckeck would still result in skill-gain is something upon which I can not remark.

You're right, I'm an idiot. Doubly-so, in fact, because I tried this trick and took off the plate because of that message. I forget what I ended up putting on (maybe full leather?).

I am pretty sure that since plate means no chance of meditating, which means no chance of succeeding, you will have no chance of a skill gain (anything with 0% chance of success or 100% chance of success means 0% chance at skill gain).

Correct. I tested this after you mentioned it. It doesn't work. I really should've known better also.

[Faust]

You have to use a platemail tunic and that's it.

[Pirul]

Plate tunic? I just GMed 2 mages and they both GMed med before magery, not to mention resist, and all that using a simple macro with no armor on. I'll post the macro I used later for reference.

[wgensel]

I usually get med GM'd before magery, but how the hell did you GM resist first without wasting TONS of regs?

[Pirul]

Well no, I meant I GM med before magery, and much earlier than resist. Trick is meditating in your sweet spot. Your sweet spot is: [(100-med skill)/100 * INT]. So for example, if your INT is 100, and your med skill is 30 your sweet spot is 70 mana. If your INT is 50 and your med skill is the same 30 your sweet spot is 35.

Macro is:

!Loop
Assistant.Macros.IfAction|0|1|45
Assistant.Macros.IfAction|1|1|41 (this is the tricky one, you always have to take into account where you're mana will end up after casting, and after casting you should end up 5-6 points bellow your "sweet spot")
Assistant.Macros.MacroCastSpellAction|51
Assistant.Macros.WaitForTargetAction|3
Assistant.Macros.HotKeyAction|1059|
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:01.2000000
Assistant.Macros.EndIfAction
Assistant.Macros.EndIfAction
Assistant.Macros.IfAction|1|0|35 (use 5 or 6 mana below the first if)
Assistant.Macros.UseSkillAction|46
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:01
Assistant.Macros.IfAction|4|0|enter
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:04
Assistant.Macros.SpeechAction|0|52|3|ESM|2|16|59|hey
Assistant.Macros.ElseAction
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:04
Assistant.Macros.EndIfAction
Assistant.Macros.EndIfAction