AcornStory -- Playing a Magician

http://maplestory.nexon.net/FunStuff/Art...ageIndex=1

Welcome to AcornStory, our ongoing feature where we help you get started in Maple World – everything from choosing a class to finding friends to understanding combat to tips for account security. MapleStory is easy to learn, but once you learn the basic game mechanics, where do you go and what do you do? That’s where AcornStory can help.

Playing a Magician

In a previous AcornStory, we discussed how to pick an Explorer type that fits your play style. This time, we’ll be focusing in on a specific Explorer character class – the Magician – and talking about what to expect when you play as one. We'll also talk about the three advanced Magician classes in the game.

In terms of sheer power, almost no other class can compare to the Magician. Unlike many of the other classes in MapleStory, Magicians prefer to attack monsters and defend themselves using magic rather than weapons and armor. While they have the ability to attack with a staff or a wand to defend themselves, their physical frailty makes this a poor choice for most magicians. Depending on how they choose to advance their class, Magician characters may become damage dealing Wizards who use fire and poison, crowd-controlling Wizards that use ice and lightning, or even Clerics that can use their magical abilities to heal themselves and others!




Magicians begin their journey in the same way as every other Explorer class, as Beginners on Maple Island where they learn the basics of the game. That lets you make some friends and kill some monsters. Once you reach level 8, travel to Lith Harbor and speak to the statue shaped like a Magician, that will teleport you to Ellinia. Inside the town, you'll find the Magic Library where you'll find Grendel the Really Old. Once accepted, Grendel will get you started on your new career as a beginning Magician.

Once you are accepted as a novice Magician, Grendel will give you a level one skill book called "Introduction to Magic." Once you acquire it, you'll see a list of basic Magician skills you can learn. Select the ones you want and assign Skill Points to acquire them.





Magician and Skill/Ability Points

Characters in MapleStory grow stronger in two basic ways. As a character kills monsters, they acquire "experience points." When they attain a certain number of experience points, they'll rise in level. For each level they attain, they'll receive a certain number of Skill Points and Ability Points that they can use to acquire new skills and powers that can be used to fight monsters as well as improve their basic abilities. (Click here to learn more about Skill and Ability Points)

Skill Points -- Magician

Skill Points are used to learn new powers that help Magicians kill monsters or to increase the power of an already learned skill. Many MapleStory players on the Internet have taken it upon themselves to write detailed guides that recommend various Magician "builds." This simply means that they give lists of skills they believe make for a skilled and useful Magician and tell you how many Skill Points you should put into each ability.

If you would like to get some recommended builds or discuss it with other players, you can get started on the official MapleStory Forums.

The guide below won't recommend a specific build, but will point out a few sample Magician skills.

Note: Certain skills will not be available until you reach a certain level.

Magic Guard: This skill temporarily deducts a percentage of damage taken from your Magic Points rather than Hit Points when you take damage. Once you run out of Magic Points, you will begin losing the full amount of Hit Points.

Magic Armor: Temporarily improves your defenses against weapons by shielding you with magic.

Magic Claw: This skill allows your Magician to use magic to attack an enemy twice.

Ability Points: Ability Points are used to increase a character's basic abilities. Abilities are inherent characteristics that affect a character's abilities to perform Skills and other actions. "Strength," for example (abbreviated STR) affects the amount of damage a character inflicts when striking a monster. The most important abilities for a particular class are sometimes referred to as their "primary attributes."

Primary Attributes -- Magician

Intelligence (INT): Intelligence is by far the most important characteristic for a Magician. It's not a measure of how smart yoour character is, but how well they're able to use magic. Most of your Ability points should go into INT.

Luck (LUK): Luck is a secondary characteristic for Magicians because certain pieces of equipment require a certain level of LUK in order to use them. LUK also determines the accuracy of your magic attacks.

Pro Tip: The distribution of Ability Points is very important for a Magician and there are many opinions on the proper way to distribute Ability Points. It's recommended you seek out the advice of fellow players when building your Magician.

Pro Tip: If you make a mistake allocating your Ability Points, you can reallocate them by purchasing an AP Reset Coupon in the Cash Shop.

Job Advancement

Once a character reaches level 30, they have the opportunity to begin to specialize in their chosen class. This is called a "job advancement." For Magicians, that means they can choose to follow the path of a Wizard that uses fire and poison, the path of the Wizard that uses ice and lightning, or the path of the Cleric. Wizard that use fire and poison specialize in dealing massive amounts of damage. Wizards that use ice and lightning do slightly less damage, but make up for it with the ability to freeze and attack large groups of enemies. Finally Clerics do the least damage, but are very welcome in parties for their ability to heal themselves and others.

In order to get your job advancement, return to Grendel at level 30. He will give you a quest to prove your worth. Once you finish the quest, you will be able to select which path you wish to follow and your job title will change from "Magician" to your new job.





When your character reaches level 70, you should return to Grendel again for your next job advancement. Your final job advancement is available at level 120.

Wizard (Fire/Poison)

The Wizard (Fire/Poison)'s abilities revolve around the ability to inflict massive damage via fire spells or do damage over time using poison. As might be expected, the Wizard (Fire/Poison) is one of the most powerful damage dealers in the game, though this is balanced out by their physical fragility. Fire magic is also not as effective against fire-based creatures. If the ability to just destroy through massive damage appeals to you, you'll love being a Wizard (Fire/Poison).

Sample Wizard (Fire/Poison) Skills

MP Eater: This allows your Magician to siphon away an enemy's Magic Point after every successful magic attack. Stops working if your enemy's mana points reach 0.

Fire Arrow: Create a fire arrow with the power of magic and fire it at enemies. Applies one and a half times the damage to ice-based monsters. Fire-based enemies receive only half damage.

Poison Breath: This skill lets you create a poisonous water bubble and shoot it at an enemy. There is a chance that the enemy will be temporarily poisoned and its HP will slowly decrease.


Wizard (Ice/Lightning)

Like his fire-based counterpart, the Wizard (Ice/Lightning) wields ice-based spells that do great damage to enemies, though not as much as a Wizard (Fire/Poison). The tradeoff for doing less damage is the ability to use spells which can stun and freeze creatures and can attack large groups of monsters. Ice magic does more damage to creatures made of fire but does less damage against ice-based enemies.

Sample Wizard (Ice/Lightning) Skills

Slow: This skill temporarily slows down the opponents around you. It can't be used on the same creatures more than twice in a row and only affects six enemies per attack.

Cold Beam: This spell creates a sharp piece of ice to fire at an enemy. The ones that are struck temporarily freeze. The spell does one and a half times damage to fire-based enemies. Ice-based enemies only take half damage.

Thunder Bolt: This spells strikes any creatures around the wizard with a lightning attack.


Cleric

Playing a Cleric can be difficult because of all the Magician classes, the Cleric has the lowest damage output. That's more than made up for by their primary abilities -- being able to heal and buff themselves and their friends. Most of the big boss monsters in the game require a Cleric in the party in order to defeat them and a Cleric is always welcome no matter what you're doing in MapleStory.

Sample Cleric Skills

Heal: Restores the HP of all party members in the area. The amount of healing depends on the number of people being healed. Undead monsters in the vicinity will receive damage.

Bless: Temporarily increases the offensive and defensive abilities of all party members around the area. Can't be used if combined with a skill or a potion.

Holy Arrow: Fires holy arrows at an enemy. This spell does tremendous damage to the undead and evil monsters.

Gotta love what they said about LUK. Other than that, I don't really see any flaws.

Pro Tip: If you make a mistake allocating your Ability Points, you can reallocate them by purchasing an AP Reset Coupon in the Cash Shop.

Too bad it's expensive.

Magician characters may become damage dealing Wizards who use fire and poison, crowd-controlling Wizards that use ice and lightning

That is until the fourth job where for some reason we get it backwards.

They forgot to say "Max out Improved MaxMP Increase right away".

This isn't as laughably bad as the Thief one, but I guess they get their info from expanding on the little 5 year old blurbs on their website about each class rather than actually playing the game.

I think everyone should frame this line:

Wizard that use fire and poison specialize in dealing massive amounts of damage. Wizards that use ice and lightning do slightly less damage, but make up for it with the ability to freeze and attack large groups of enemies. Finally Clerics do the least damage, but are very welcome in parties for their ability to heal themselves and others.

Since it was one of the most hotly contested points in the bishops being able to use elemental wands/staves glitch whether or not bishops were "supposed" to be the weakest offensively.

>F/Ps being the best damage dealers

Nice way of encouraging people to bandwagon one of the least played classes.

Sure I might have hit the f/p route as my first character on Broa, but I wound up going the poison first route. Only downside to it; was having to deal with massive amounts of kill stealing due to a few morons that couldn't get it through their heads that it's a little different than the spray & pray of the assassin route.

In terms of sheer power, almost no other class can compare to the Magician.

I lol'd

Bless: Temporarily increases the offensive and defensive abilities of all party members around the area. Can't be used if combined with a skill or a potion.

Sounds like post big bang bless to me.

First off, I throw a resounding metaphorical "LOLFP" at the entire article in Nexon's attempts to make Magicians seem all-powerful and appealing. Sorry Nexon America, but if it wasn't for Nexon Korea's strong development of the Big Bang patch, these Magician statements would be even more laughable.

The Wizard (Fire/Poison)'s abilities revolve around the ability to inflict massive damage via fire spells or do damage over time using poison. As might be expected, the Wizard (Fire/Poison) is one of the most powerful damage dealers in the game, though this is balanced out by their physical fragility. Fire magic is also not as effective against fire-based creatures. If the ability to just destroy through massive damage appeals to you, you'll love being a Wizard (Fire/Poison).

The (admittedly) nitpicky issue I have with the above is like what many others may have with other sections: while the information is "correct," it is only to an extent and only within a certain frame of reference, and thus is very misleading. I've bolded a few sections in particular:

Bold #1: If the context of "massive damage" refers simply to "big numbers," then yes, our fire spells Meteor Shower does just that. Of course, with a 30 second cooldown on the skill come Big Bang, telling people that our abilities revolve around a skill you can only use twice a minute is pretty ridiculous. Oh, and about that DoT: we use our end-game poison skill for "massive damage," Nexon, not DoT, so please express that fact a little better next time.

Bold #2: Similar to the first bold: if you're referring to "BIG NUMBERS," then yes, with Meteor Shower alone we are "one of the most powerful damage dealers in the game." That's not really saying much, especially when paired with your sweeping proclamation that we are "one of the most powerful."

Bold #3: Again, be specific: we can only "just destroy with massive damage" with one skill, technically speaking. Plus, that "just destroy" doesn't apply to single-target boss mobs. In other words, inb4 LOLFP bandwagon of people excited to "just destroy" everything with massive damage, only to discover that big numbers don't kill everything the best, smaller, faster numbers do.

tl;dr: Nexon's reasoning for LOLFPs being "one of the most powerful, massive damage dealers in the game that use such power to just destroy" lies in the hands of one skill (Meteor Shower), which becomes useless come the Big Bang patch. What's most annoying to me is the fact they focused on the skill so exclusively in this little summary of the class when the aforementioned changes are only a few weeks/months away.

I think they're actually referring to Fire Arrow, not Meteor Shower.

I'm going to agree with you on that Dusk. However I'll also toss in the fact you can somewhat count explosion in the fun as well. On the other hand, I'm just wondering what the poison spells will play like when the Bang goes live. I know we're also getting our own title spell turned into a ranged version of savage blow. Now that should be interesting to play around with.