ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Being meaning to play as an Arcane Blade for awhile, but realized that I still have two pretty fundamental questions, that could seriously chance the potential charter builds and if I have them, then it's possible that some other newbies might have them too, now or someday, so I decided to present them:

1) Crystalline Focus from the unlockable Stone tree.

The description says that it will increase all my physical damage for X percentage and allow me to ignore X percentage of enemy's physical resistance. Does that "all" only apply to all to my Earth and Stone spells or to melee physical damage too? Meaning, does it also give an X percentage bonus to the physical damage portion of my melee attacks and does the ability to ignore some of the enemy's phys. resistance then apply to my normal attacks to, theoretically enabling me to damage a hypothetical monster 100% immune to the phys. with a normal plain weapon, if I have that sustain on?

2) Arcane Combat.

It gives an X percentage chance that my melee attack will deliver a Flame, Lightning or Earthen Missile (if you have Stone unlocked) on strike once as a free action, without triggering that spell's cooldown, but that free strike will only happen if that spell is already not on cooldown.

So..

a) Does the X percentage apply to each of the two or three spells separately, meaning that when the, for example, free strike percentage of the Flame triggers, but the Flame is on cooldown, then the free strike chance is wasted, or...

b) The X percentage applies to one pool composed of two or three spells, meaning that if the free strike triggers and you have two spells on cooldown, then the remaining one will automatically be used, or if you have one on cooldown, then one of the remaining two will randomly be used. That way, only using one or two spells for ranged attacks and keeping one at reserve for free melee attacks, would potential be a good strategy. Even just firing the Flame at nothing, when facing just Fire Drakes for example, to force it on cooldown and make your extra attacks happen as often, but to only do lightning or physical damage.

My apologies, if those questions turn out to be obvious to even other newbies, but the descriptions seemed unclear to me personally, so thanks in advance for any helpful explanations!

Re: 1: All is all. Crystalline focus -- all of the archmage-style mastery talents (uttercold, etc.) -- applies to absolutely everything you do. Spells, melee, retaliation damage, whatever. They literally just increase your %damage and %element penetration. S'nothing fancy.

2: A: You get an X percent chance to proc one of any you've got off cooldown. There's not separate chances per spell, it just calls one of the three at random when AC procs, choosing from whatever you've got currently available. So it works as per your B. It's only "wasted" if all of the possibilities are on CD or unlearned, otherwise it'll use what it can.

It's pretty standard on the ABs I run to not put any points into anything that arcane combat can proc besides flame for a long, long time, so the AC procs will stick to flame (allowing me to focus in on fire damage/penetration instead of having to be concerned about lightning or physical). And yeah, once you've got others it can be a decent idea to fire off whatev' to make sure AC's only proccing lightning or physical spells, if you're up against a fire elemental or what have you.

Frumple wrote: 2: A: You get an X percent chance to proc one of any you've got off cooldown. There's not separate chances per spell, it just calls one of the three at random when AC procs, choosing from whatever you've got currently available. So it works as per your B. It's only "wasted" if all of the possibilities are on CD or unlearned, otherwise it'll use what it can.

You sure of this? I'm pretty sure I've gotten the message: "flame is on cooldown" when I've had lightning avaliable & vis versa.

Here's a snippet of the code from SVN: Looks like it only checks if you have the mana to cast the spell, not whether or not the spell is cooling down.

Odd. Never noticed, before. Probably should be fixed, then.

I never really noticed because you don't use the spells much, anyhow(and when you do, it's out of melee range).

Having said that, I don't know that it needs a change. It works pretty well as it is, you don't see a lot of ABs wandering around killing everyone. Maybe it just needs clarification.