Some brief intro info:
All these values were used on my Swordmage in the CN version (like there's any other way to test them, meh). I play with 100+ms, with the highest being at 180+ms. I've suggested the same stat build to newbies in new servers on public chat, and so far there is a general consensus among CN Swordmages:
STR: Please don't add.
AGI: ~70
CON: ~20-40, but you will not be almighty invincible. Just enough for you to survive in case you mess up or lag. 30 should be fine.
SPR: Optional. Till now I haven't added any, and didn't face any difficulty.
INT: The rest
Why AGI at 70 and not lower: As Swordmage, your highest damaging skills are Lightning-type skills which are short DoTs. Their total damage is far higher than Fire-type skills (which is just a 1 damage-1 hit thing), and the damage is dealt per 0.5s. With high AGI, it ensures that each damage per 0.5s is a crit. Some CN players add it till 80, but 70 is enough for me.
PROPER SKILL USAGE:
Intro:
I have seen many Swordmages being played inefficiently, losing a ton of DPS in the process. People who continued Swordmages might have wisened up and played it correctly now, but most who just started might not be aware of something important: Swordmages stance change skill does not have a cooldown.
Swordmage difficulty is rated at 4. Why? That's because Swordmages have to constantly change stances between Fire, Ice and Lightning in order to deal as much damage as possible.
As a beginner Swordmage, you will get access to 1 skill of each element at first. Using one of these skills of a certain element, in the correct stance, will allow you to follow up with a 2nd hit if you press the skill button again. Therefore, high ping players might face difficulty in following up; there's a very short window to press the 2nd hit.
Example: Using Fireball skill in Fire stance grants you one extra instant shot Fireball. Using Lightning Orb skill in Lightning stance changes your Lightning Orb to become a stationary, high damage-over-time AoE on hitting an enemy.
How Swordmages should work with elemental skills:
Skill rotations in this game are not static, since situations might change depending on dungeon. But rule of thumb is to always prioritise Lightning-specced skills first, since their damage-over-time skills can deal more damage in total than just a simple Fire-specced skill. As stated in the example before, the Lightning Orb is a high damage-over-time skill. This is also the reason why AGI is added to 70, you'll have the chance to crit more for the duration of the skill.
Elemental priority (including first and 3* Unparalleled skill): Lightning>Fire
Ice is only used as a filler to earn back Elemental Stacks as its follow-up deals extremely little damage. It's a waste of Elemental Stacks.
The difficulty for Swordmages comes in when you need to constantly switch stances on the fly. For classes like Gunslingers, they can just permanently stay in Rifle stance and use their skills, but if a Swordmage decides to stay in Lightning stance forever, their damage will be affected. I would recommend to place the stance skills for Lightning and Fire stance into somewhere easy to reach. For me, Lightning is on RB and Fire is on R key. But it's up to you, especially those who have a programmable macro mouse.
During the time when I was playing, I constantly hit 1 aggro position lower than the tank/healer. Swordmages can be a high-damaging and AoE glass cannon class when played right.
For more info: http://play.163.com/15/0127/10/AGV98NIT00314TM8.htm
If you've already tried Swordmage, you will realise one of the unique Swordmage resource: Elemental stacks. Certain skills use all 5, certain skills use only one. So how should you generate them?
At the start, you have 5. Use it on the skill that eats up all of it (lightning version of course). For your basic elemental skills like Fireball and Lightning Orb, the first hit generates 1 stack, and the second hit eats up 1 stack.
Stacks regenerate over the fight even if you constantly use the second hit of the skills. There will be times when you are just short of 1 stack for that lightning DoT AoE, or just being empty of stacks and unable to cast F1 Unparalleled.
In that case, that's where the very first ice skill you get comes into handy. Ice skills are genrally weak in damage, so it's fine if you don't use the second part of it. It has relatively low CD, so just use it when you are just lacking one Elemental stack~
"Skill rotation" after hitting level 45 and getting the last attack skill:
Be in Lightning Stance before fight starts.
1. Star Sword
2. Elemental Attack (the skill which uses 5 Elemental Stacks)
3. Lightning Orb + follow up
4. Switch to Fire
5. Fireball + follow up
6. Freeze (no need to change stance)
7. Root, use if mobs are near to you (AoE freeze skill)
8. Starfall, use if mobs are near to you, and use Root first before Starfall(backflip skill)
Note: If you don't need to use Starfall and Root, you can use normal LB attack till Fireball is ready again.
9. Fireball (follow up)
10. Switch to Lightning
11. Lightning Orb + follow up or Elemental Attack depending on whether it's up.
Unparalleled Priority (mass aoe):
Skyfire (Skip for later if not enough stacks/resource) (LIGHTNING VERSION like Shuriken)
Shuriken in Lightning stance (F1)
Magic Tornado (F6)
Magical Blades (F4)
For single target:
Magic Tornado (F6) (Lowers enemy's MDEF) (Skip for later if not enough resource)
Blade Shadow (F3)
Skyfire (LIGHTNING VERSION)
Lightning Shuriken (F1)
Magic Blades (F4)
Reason why Ice root was used without changing to ice stance is that the damage is really really small. Not worth to spend that elemental stack into using the follow up.
Minor "theorycrafting" for speccing into Unparalleled "tree" as well as priority sequence:
Note: 3* unparalleled require different items to power it up. So you can power it alongside your 1* and 2*.
F3 (Blade Shadow): Your single target burst. Haven't had the chance to spec it, but I'll go for damage (red) and cooldown (blue). Resource isn't that critical as you can add talent points to generate it quickly enough for a 2* unparalleled.
F1 (Shuriken): Red red red red. Its unparalleled resource use and cooldown is really manageable, so spam those damage increments. After that, add the cooldown.
F2 (Blade Dance): Useless skill imo. I didn't touch it.
Wanxiang (red bar) 3* Unparalleled: Skyfire: Definitely spec it to use lesser resource (brown) and lesser elemental stacks (green). I would recommend to add more in the elemental stacks.
Add at least full damage (red) as well, since this is an extremely high damage skill. Right now it can deal a whopping total of 31k damage in Lightning stance. Useful for mobbing the crap out of trash mobs.
F6 (Magic Tornado): Enemy mdef decrease (green) and resource (brown). There is lesser skills that generate Xingluo resource, so you have to add it to use less. Maybe mix a few with cooldown (blue).
F4 (Magical Blades): Add damage (red) and cooldown (blue). I put this behind because Magic Tornado is more important. Tbh, add everything in Wanxiang first before working on this.
F5 (Sword Surfing [lol]): Didn't touch this. Tbh I almost puked while using this.
Xingluo (blue bar) 3* Unparalleled: Icy Moon: Strictly PvP skill, weakens enemies, but unfortunately not useful in PvE since most mobs have immunity to it. Info from here: http://ty.netease.com/thread-193103-1-1.html
Not recommended to spec into for PvE players.
Brief plan on talenting skills
First 10 points:
1 in increasing Lightning Orb speed by 50%
1 in normal attack for resource generation
2 in Fireball for resource generation
3 in Stance skill to regain elemental stacks quickly.
3 in Star Sword to regain Xingluo resource quickly.
I have since given up on using the skill calculator as there are a lot of mistranslated tooltips or missing ones.
Talents can be reset for free, so all these are not final.
Usually, the cycle of training Unparalleled is like that:
Unparalleled uses too much resource - Need to train unparalleled - Can't train it because mobs die before there's enough resource to get the exp for the skill - Rinse and repeat
So how do you train Unparalleled skills so you can start speccing into it?
Grinding is your answer. The Underground Palace (200 mob grind) is a good place to train Unparalleled skills because you can kill mobs after mobs.
The actual best place to train Unparalleled no matter how much resource is required is level 25 Spider. During the fight, level up the "skill" node, and you'll see that your Unparalleled bars on both sides increases even when out of battle. This means that you can use Unparalleled after Unparalleled, provided it's off cooldown. It's actually the only places where you have the opportunity to use an unspecced 3* Unparalleled. Do this everyday, and you can slowly train it up.
After all, Unparalleled are considered your most powerful skills in your arsenal. If it doesn't require long time to nurture it, I don't think it's really worth to be called most powerful
Source: http://einsofgaming.com/forums/index.ph ... ml#msg4392