How to fo, how about this tree and what about rods?

[Achelousaurus]

I haven'd done much casting yet and thought I'd try it a bit more seriously with more than junk 7* weapons while doing dailies in hard mode.
My fo is lvl 51 and my te is 53 and before I know if I like fo enough for multiple trees, I'd rather try a generalist tree and a single good rod:

Photon Flare build

No Flare

Which would you prefer? or rather a different generalist build?
And what weapon? I thought about Rabbit Wand for flare build but not sure what to get for other builds.

Also, any tips for casting?

[lnvisible]

The no flare build looks good for a safe no need to reset build. It won't be as much damage as a specialized build obviously but you won't need to keep resetting depending on currently spammed content.

For a good allround rod go for something that has the boost to elemental weakness latents like esca hermes or whatever if you're running a general build. I'd go for an element like light on that since there's darkers everywhere so you would at least get full damage for that.

As for casting tips just try to get used to the timing of charging and JA'ing. I personally find jumping helps alot because of the differing charge times of techs. Try to keep distance if applicable, I've seen so many forces be up a mobs ass casting a tech they could cast from miles away. Also, force isn't all about pewpew and screw everyone else. Use resta and buff frequently, it helps everyone around you. You can literally resta carry some groups while still doing some damage. As someone that plays every class, when I'm on a class besides FO or TE it really helps when there's a caster healing frequently. I see less deaths and I'm able to be a bit more reckless to push out some more damage.

[illidelph]

imo: as a force you are either optimal SOME of the time, or sub-optimal ALL of the time

generalist force will be adding static boosts to all elements, but that 400-500 t-atk will not amount to much later on since each mastery is multiplicative and multiplies with itself, so 120%*120%=144% or 1.44 damage modifier and if you have say 2500 t-atk an extra 400 will only be a 16% or 1.16 modifier. so if you only want to get only techer elements or squeeze in ice and spam them as a force main, then photon flare is awesome since it will make your masteries and shifta that much better. otherwise matching elements for mastery and weakness is always going to be the way to go. especially so when you consider force's element convert that gives a 1.25 modifier if you have 50 wep attribute in the element you are casting.

so this brings us to the rods and other force weps. since element convert will be contributing A LOT to your matching element, it makes sense to go for the elemental potential rods and talises or wands for casting techs ALWAYS. the problem with ancient oath that i see is that if you cant match an element to the enemy, you will lose ancient oath, but will still retain the % element damage bonus of an element boosting rod. for example:

if i bring the new 12* dragon rod with ancient oath and 50 ice and nepto rod with 50 ice and 16% ice damage boost potential to the facility and start spamming ice all around they will be about even. however if darkers show up i will lose the ancient oath if i keep spamming ice on them, while retaining nepto rod's ice boost, so overall nepto rod and other elemental rods will have higher damage over time. i could cast light techs with the dragon rod but that will cut my element convert from 1.25 to 1.125 and also by 1.44 if i dont have light mastery. so then the best fo/te weps by element are:

fire: bert rodan rod and koushousen talis
ice: nepto rod and bio talis (since there is no ice boosting talis) or elysion for il/nabarta or Rikauteri bow for ice fo/br (banish arrow + ilbarta with full weak and ice mastery is yummy, but the ancient oath potenital means non-ice enemies wont be as weak)
lightning: satellite riser and bio talis (no lightning boosting talis, ja bonus is next best thing or can have lighting Rika bow for fo/br as well, like lighting bow falz killer?)
wind: stark katze or green duel gaze
light: caduceus or gadianna
dark: weddle park or seimei kikami

i mention the talises even though i never use them because the talis bonus is so good that it will outdamage rods although its harder to play with and im horrible with them

so IDEALLY you would have 4 trees for fo and 3 for te, 1 for each element and 1 generalist force photon flare tree. you then would play your ice force tree with a braver sub for Rika bow fo/br and ice/wind fo/te with elysion or something like that. thats why the joke is that forces are for rich premium kids, since they are LITERALLY better with multiple trees and elemental potential rainbow of weps that are super annoying to find and convert to the right element.

i would go as far as say that for force its worth it to spec your trees around your available elemental weapons since force's damage more than any other class is dictated by your wep and its element. if you ever cant afford or find a rod, get a haze processor since it caps at 885t-atk and can be easily bought with tons of affixes and right elements to make it a 50 element. you can even unlock it for a cheap, cool photon flare potential if you want

for trees you always want to fully max a single mastery since that is a bonus you will get for spamming that color tech no matter if it matches the enemy's weakness or not. i used to have a budget light/dark only fo/te build with a generalist force photon flare side, but i was also lucky enough to have a caduceus and weddle park to rely on giving me an unconditional 16% damage for those colors so i could spam light on darkers and dark on literally everything else

a 3 element fo/te is generally regarded as a good bet and this build below lets you have the full photon flare with 110 proc rate in all elements with full ice for ult/facility, light for darkers and dark for shironia and massive namegids, giving you a very nice planetary coverage. just activate photon flare before you get shifta'ed for a massively better shifta since it works off your base t-atk which p.flare boosts:

http://pso2-skill.pwnedgalaxy.net/sk...008doIb0000008

for weps just get 3(or 6 to max out their element) haze processors with awesome affixes and make a 50ice, 50light and 50 dark one to maximize your element convert until you find a nepto rod, caduceus and weddle park to replace them accordingly. for the 6wep pallete just make 2 of each rod, 1 set-up for mobbing like: attack-gibarta, barta-rabarta and 1 set-up for bossing: attack-nabarta, ilbarta-sabarta and do that for light and dark too, letting you switch on the fly between all 3 elements and tech ranges.
if you ever want to swap element skills or photon flare for other force mastery or talis bonus it will be easy so with that tree too

for casting just identify your favorite long, mid and close range techs and see what you like casting on what enemy. always charge and just attack and hit pp convert/ketos proi when you can safely spam away for a while. i like having lots of invulnerability triggers(since ketos proi charges fast and trigger happens on full charge) on my fo/te mag too, often hitting pp convert as soon as it activates. you dont really need zondeel but its there if you need it.

for things that are not weak to any of your elements such as mechs in the above set-up, just spam your best aoe(mob) or single target(boss) spells with the corresponding 50attribute rod, since then you will still be getting the full mastery AND element convert bonus! and the rod elemental potential if you have the rod. so if you were to take the above build into tunnels, just ilmegid/gimegid all the mobs and ilbarta/ragrants/gimegid/namegid vardha. if darkers show up then switch to light rod and spam ilgrants/ragrants/nagrants with same effectiveness on the mechs as your dark spam.

for tech crafting i followed this post and had good success with all of the suggestions:
http://www.reddit.com/r/PSO2/comment...ich_technique/

some of my faves: icefang ilbarta 3, fierce zondeel 3, concentrated ragrants3, concentrated gimegid 3, umbral na/il/megid 3 basically designate 1 spell in each element to be the heavy hitter and craft it for power and 1 to be the super-spammer and craft that for charge time and pp cost

hope this helps! just get a 50elem haze processor with the corresponding full 20sp mastery and check out the damage on a matching weakness enemy, i think you will be quite happy

[lnvisible]

@illidelph

He's looking for a general build without buying a bunch of trees. You can still play a decent force without multiple trees though it is tougher to do so.

[illidelph]

@invisible

the ice/light/dark build i provided has maximum damage potential in half of the game's elements that currently contain the toughest enemies (where you want the extra damage bonus) with a full photon flare to boot. the ones that are lacking are fire, lightning and wind.
fire is good but needs the extra charge reducing skill to excel and is currently only best in tower defense and forest/tundra which could be easily soloed with dark. even when extra hard td1 come out i doubt the 11sp in fire mastery will be good enough, making the full light mastery or even full ilmegid better for tagging mobs, photon flare again helping here to push the damage further
lightning isnt essential as mechs will die to dark fast and wind can be gotten instead of light or tech-up since it is a good mobbing element, even tho it does not have good coverage

i never advocated a multiple tree build nor do i have one, but simple truth is that they are better when you have 20-40sp to put into auxillary skills that supplement your build better
multiple trees>3 element>generalist

i personally think that if you supplement photon flare in a 3-maxed-element build you will be able to do better at higher difficulties while a generalist build will feel more and more underpowered. also since techs (and even each individual damage piece of zandion) are single mastery powered that means that a when a generalist build casts a tech he/she is not using 55 of their spent SP while only using 11 of their element's SP to boost damage. a 3-element build will be wasting 40SP while using 20SP for damage boosting and therefore is considered more efficient. when you add to this the fact that casting non-weak element techs with full mastery and matching rod with full elemental convert can beat out the extra damage from an element weakness matching tech, it becomes clear that spamming 3 elements everywhere, especially with photon flare with beat out a generalist build in most cases and put up the highest damage a fo/te can in the most difficult areas

[Achelousaurus]

Thanks.
I forgot that I can just get a rainbow of cheap rods for still lower price than one good 10-11* rod.
I'll go illidelph's build, though I am replacing techer's T-atk up with 11 points in Wind boost (25% dmg for wind sounds better than 3% general dmg boost).

[illidelph]

Yeah once the main 3 (1 force and 2 techer) elements are maxed you basically end up with 22sp in force (curtesy of ice having a crappy auxiliary skill) and 12sp in techer to round out the build and experiment with.

I also went as far as cut out pp covert since it always got me killed in lv70 onward stages but that's just me. i just cant seem to get gud with it :/ So I ended up with 22sp each and dumped them into full lightning and wind to try out a full zandion and ended up with this experimental 5 element fo/te:

http://pso2-skill.pwnedgalaxy.net/sk...008doIb0000008

That's my most recent respec and I must admit I don't miss using pp convert. I basically just spam aoe tech since the multi-hit techs fill up zandion fast, then zandion charges ketos proi and regens about 40pp during it's animation then hit ketos proi. Also having a unit set crafted for the new r-def recipe gives 10pp per piece so I just used a 10% relaxer to bring it down to 450 r-def which 75/75 fo/te can equip and get tons of pp to solve my lack of pp convert spam power. the 9* bat wing set and 11* star saiki sets are both great candidates. the 12% strike and range res and 150hp lost from the saiki hidden bonuses is ok for a force imo, since the 30pp gained for a total of 55pp gain before affixes is amazing.

My only regret with going more than 3 elements is that you cant procur more than 1 element mastery at a time, meaning that my 5-elem fo/te is wasting 80sp(20sp for each unused mastery) when I cast a tech while only utilising 20sp at a time :/ Plus the more elements you have the less efficient light mastery becomes since each darker beyond agna has a secondary weakness and you should probably stay away from agna anyways and kill mobs instead since it will kill a fo/te super fast. plus the rare darkers are usually weak only to their own element, pushing light further out of the spotlight. my case is unique tho cause my lucky ass found a caduceus somehow so im using light till i die lol

So my thinking is that even though tech-up is only 3% it's a 3% to all elements where the 26% (1.2*1.05=1.26) boost to wind has to be divided by the number of elements you use since you will only be using it for a fraction of the time. In other words if you have 4 elements it's closer to about 7% in terms of "overall" tech damage. That 3% and/or photon flare are there with you throughout all of your elements and also boost your shifta so it's a nice way to "top-off" your main elements.
The opposite argument for more masteries tho is that your elemental weak hit grows that much stronger with each mastery and also makes ancient oath potentials more viable since you have more chance to switch into another mastery element when switching techs

But as you can see I don't follow my own advice in my build and go for most elements possible for better or for worse.. Hindsight is always 20-20 I guess..

Just buy those skills last or get full wind and 11 in light if you get wind rod first since wind has better aoe and range and light's best damage spells are close range. Also I'm sure by the time you reach the level you will need to decide by, you will already know exactly what you will like from experience since everyone plays differently

Basically somewhere between the "general but smaller" and "bigger but conditional" bonuses is a sweet spot for everyone

[Achelousaurus]

Gear is no concern to me, I got premium and quite some spending money. I just got a decent Divine Amaterasu with pot 3 for light.

Anyway, I dislike the long charge times and ran out of pp super fast (only 22 cause I used some random Schlacht set from my storage).

I also like the idea of a rapid fire force, especially because I main braver and I hate being slow in this game. For example Ragrants missed several times cause the enemy made 2 steps away from the location it had by the time Ragrants started.

I also realized Flare sounds great on paper but is wasted on me, I have a severe case of FF Elixir syndrome and that extends to skills with cd, I barely use KC on braver and PBF on bouncer outside of boss fights either.

But here I came up with a new build, still generalist but I hope good.

I got points into PP up on Te cause I'd rather have a bigass pp pool (ontop of weapons and units with lots of pp) than do a bit more damage.
I'd craft techs according to that reddit post, mostly for speed and pp reduction.

Zandion is not usable yet, I am lvl 54 and I play melee more than everything else, so it's gonna be a good while before I can get it.

I got a question about weaknesses and damage though. Are there techs so strong that using techs of the element enemies / bosses are weak to deals still less damage? Even with Element Weak hit?
I know the big hitters are Namegid / Ilbarta (4th and especially 7th cast) and Ilfoie. All slow either cause of charge time and pp cost or cause I need to use them several times, so only really good for bosses I guess.

But overall do some elements have strong enough techs that they make other elements niche (Wind seems to have little use outside of Sazan utility?).
Cause if so I'd take points out of wind and if not really necessary, maybe even Element Week hit and put them into boosting individual elements.

[illidelph]

omg... wrote my reply for 2 hours and covered all the points then accidentally closed the tab... such pain...arg..

anyways regarding your build:
take full fire mastery in fire since you like fast and fire will always be the fastest. drop the lightning since you will do more damage to mechs with full fire than half of lightning because your fire is 50%(more with crafts) faster than lightning. same for ice since fire is so sp demanding to be good it leaves you with ice that will be too weak for any later ice-weak areas that you might as well do better damage with your full mastery elements. having full mastery is more that twice as good as having only 10 sp in it

to answer the question whether its better to element match or not or whether some elements render others niche:

depends on your set-up. full mastery is 1.44 modifier

2-element enemy weakness is 1.2 modifier in damage to each element
1-element enemy weakness is 1.3(i believe, but not sure)
so with el.weak hit and matching element is 1.44

BUT its 2.07 if you have full mastery AND e.w.h. and match
OR 1.73 when you have half(10sp) mastery

so see when you full mastery you can almost always match the damage from a non-mastery element plus put up crazy-high numbers when you do match. this is where static boosts/affixes/element potentials and photon flare helps close the gap further letting you spam a couple of your favorite techs EVERYWHERE with minimal dps loss compared to matching. a generalist can put up an AVERAGE of those damages everywhere BUT since multipliers are exponential that little extra jump from 10sp to full(20sp) mastery translates into 34% power boost: 2.07-1.73=.34!! and the gap only widens when you multiply by all the other modifiers like element convert and tech charge, ja, etc

in other words when you have 10sp in each element as you have, you gain a .29 modifier (go up from 1.44 matching+e.w.h. to 1.73) in each element for a total of: .29*6=1.74 of pure numerical gain

when you go full mastery in 3 elements you get a .63 modifier(go up to 2.07 from 1.44) in half of the elements for a total of: .63*3=1.89gain
in other words you will gain a .15 or 15% more damage for sticking to only 3 elements

i prefer to get full mastery in 1 element that has the best mobbing tech (fire/wind/dark) then 1 element that has best bossing tech (ice/dark) and then get light for darkers unless i took wind already since wind and fire means that only toy and aqua darkers need off-weakness elements

generally speaking tho you can always tailor a build to spam specific techs with better efficiency and dps everywhere rather than trying to always match weakness, because... SEEEGA! for some reason our beloved game creator made ilmegid and sazan the best mobbing techs and namegid and ilbarta be lightyears ahead on any other bossing tech so those elements are the most commonly tailored for. fire is good too because it can be the fastest and therefore best for mobbing but needs 30 instead of 20sp for best use, leaving no room for a second force element so its most commonly paired with dark since dark has namegid for bosses instead of ilbarta. so there are basically always going to be techs you can spam instead of other matching element techs without too much dps loss. this is better than generalist since a generalist cant max out anywhere while a full mastery force can max out in half the places, especially the ones you want to tailor for

just pick the techs themselves that you like and wanna spam and then make sure that you have all your bases covered in terms of: long-range/short-range, aoe/single-target and mobbing/bossing and then tailor your build to those specific elements trying to get the best damage multiplier, remembering that full mastery is exponentially better. then if you happen to spam your full mastery elements somewhere else, then eh, not much damage loss at all, especially for full mastery ilmegid and namegid and can always spam full light since darkers are everywhere

in regards to boss techs being slow, they might seem slow from the way they are used but if you have full mastery in them, they kill FAST! sure a namegid takes 6 secs to charge but it can kill a boss in 3-4 casts! ilbarta can be cast uncharged the first couple of times you want to just build up weakness then just charge the 4th and 7th hit. and if someone puts a wb on a weak spot its just game over for boss-man

even at 20sp pp-up only gives you 20pp which is 1 cast of a tech at best. i was always eyeing that skill myself but when i realized how much pp hidden unit bonuses give (8pp per piece of zeig's and 10pp a piece for lv10 extended r-def unit that fo/te can equip with 10% relaxer) and how much easier stigma is to affix now i would rather get pp convert and tech-up2 since pp convert will let you spam fire as fast as you can with max power and lowest charge time creating best dps. basically ketos proi/pp convert/pp restore/zandion are your pp batteries letting you non-stop spam, letting you put points into damage to push your dps sky-high

consider having free maxed ilmegid for half a minute as opposed to having 1 more rafoie. the hp loss can be mitigated with diabo soul affixes nowadays as well

also since you mention braver perhaps you might be interested in a te/br? they are not so element mastery dependent but can still tech really well and actually reward element-matching since weak element techs with a generalist boost will procur element weak hit AND weak stance, rivaling those of a fo/te. there are elemental wands for each element as well like rods and you have the benefit of refilling your pp with wand smacks. im not sure what a good te/br tree setup looks like tho since i only know about maining fo

sorry for another text, math-heavy mountain, i just wanted to inform a fellow player the best i can. personally i dont like the way sega did forces in pso2 there should be a better way to be an elementalist without having to sacrifice so many other elements or power. perhaps just have 4, 10sp, each 110% damage boosting "generic elemental mastery" skills each a pre-req for the next and then have 1 or 5 sp skills letting you apply that generic mastery to an element or swap around like boots or something along those lines, since i feel like no other class has to specialize in a type of damage that is only usefull 1/6th of the time :/

p.s. im actually selling a 50 light +40 caduceus and a 50 dark +40 weddle park with identical 4-slots: Elder, Tech3, Spirita3, Latan. if interested, just quote me a price since im willing to bargain

[Achelousaurus]

Firefox usually saves typed text even closing a tab, or even when turning off the pc and there again when you reboot and start Firefox again.

generally speaking tho you can always tailor a build to spam specific techs with better efficiency and dps everywhere rather than trying to always match weakness, because... SEEEGA!

http://pso2.cirnopedia.info/sample/v..._acman_039.swf
Middle sample.

And really, don't apologize! I'm really grateful and this is a huge help! The more text, the more info, the better force I can become

I think I'll want this tree.
Basically the same you linked but maxing fire with charge reduction instead of putting points into ice and lightning.
It has 10 points over I am not sure where to put. Maybe 5 points into Lightning pp reduction cause a friend of mine uses a lighting build with this maxed, charge or pp reduction crafted Ilzonde and is zipping around nonstop, looks like a lot of fun.

PS: Ilmegid ._.
I realize it's still good, especially so with such a tree, which seems best for my taste.
But meleeing all through Ep 2 made me hate that tech with a passion and even as Force I am reluctant to use it XD.
Either way, before I commit to a tree I will have to do a lot of testing to see which techs I like and are suited to my play style and which don't care about, so that I can make a buil around those techs and craft them properly.

PPS: those rods sound quite nice, when I found the techs I prefer and know what weapons I need, I'll come back to you.