10 replies to this topic

[Hiban]

Fire Pillar is said to ignore mdef and int. Does this mean that it ignores both hard and soft mdef? Is it worth getting? I've never really tried it enough to see what it is capable of.

[Krispin]

It says it ignores magic defense, but the damage seems to be just terrible, or that's what various sources say.
It's likely magic defense ignoring because without that it's not very hard to resist it altogether, and it wont hold them if it does zero damage.

[GuardianTK]

Though I have seen some wizzies stack Fire Pillar upon Fire Pillar with sight...I wonder if it stacks with MA.

[CocaCola]

Fire pillar is useful for pvp/and hit locking speed potters onto your ME's or barricades. Ive seen it drop people in woe with FBH carded HW's in one shot so it can be useful, but not worth losing out on other skills for.

[Hiban]

I'm a very pvp/woe active person and well since I recently found out that Fire Pillar ignores mdef I thought it'd be useful and some-what worth getting since every time I run into pvp and seem to fight someone they usually stack up in mdef gear thus making my magic really weak. I thought of Using Fire Pillar with a combination of other skills to overcome that problem but that's why I'm asking first if it ignores soft or hard mdef or both. I don't want to get it and find out it does not pierce hard mdef and only soft-which if true, Yeah very useless skill.

[Hiban]

It says it ignores magic defense, but the damage seems to be just terrible, or that's what various sources say.
It's likely magic defense ignoring because without that it's not very hard to resist it altogether, and it wont hold them if it does zero damage.

I don't think it don't think it does that of terrible dmg. I've seen it used by a Hwiz a bit long time ago in pvp and it did 400 a hit, which to me is pretty good dmg considering how many times it hits.

[Truly]

FP is useful in some PvP/ WoE situations but not worth the amount of skill points required to get it.

[Sefier]

It's decent.

You can staking in on top of the traps to add more flinch.

It isn't much of a killing skill, but defense. Unless you get it to lv 10.

Then the damage is actually noticeable

(SkLV+2) x {50 + (MATK / 5)} Each blow of the fire pillar will deal damage of 50 + (MATK / 5).

That's the damage formula from irowiki.

At lvl 10 it does 12 hits. but that's a lot of skill points to loss into that.
.

[DrAzzy]

It's not horrible damage, but it's nto really that good. Not good enough to be worthwhile imo. The truly epic things you used to be able to do with it were nerfed because you could 1-shot MVPs with it and crash zone servers.

[Anko]

It's not useful for damage anymore but in pvp/woe it lags ppl like skills like blaze shield.

[LethalJokeChar]

Fire pillar does ignore all mdef. Just not reductions, and it is also reduced by elemental modifiers.

The primary use for pvp (read: WoE) situations is hitlocking people. You should never really expect to kill anyone with just fire pillar. But still this hitlock can be very valuable anyway. By forcing a player to be stuck in a bad position in a precast, chances are the fire pillar will cause them to die indirectly. Most precasts need to use either fire pillar or blaze shield to attempt to keep people from simply speed potting out. Even traps seem to not be so effective... Fire pillar, in my opinion, cannot stop so many people as blaze shield however, unless you are somewhat lucky and the trigger hits multiple enemies.

The other thing you can do is stack the fire pillars with sightblaster. It's very useful right after you stone curse a target. With maxed fire pillar, you maximize the damage and minimize casting time. This will never happen in WoE because the pushback doesn't work, but for the pvp arenas it can be lethal (115 int doing roughly 10k damage to a person using thara + poopoo, but no other type of fire resistance). You can do the same kind of tactics to annoying mobs like gold acidus or loli ruri.

Also, fire pillar just by itself is useful for PvM purposes. It's great to kill Dark Illusions and Maya Purple with. My wiz has also killed dolor and maero of thanatos using fire pillar. Monsters I have not tried but would probably work as well would be incarnations and Elders. Well, I have agi, but still it helped. You essentially just slow them down with quagmire, then keep laying fire pillars and running. They keep chasing you and running over the traps, and of course, their huge mdef means nothing and they can end up dying quicker than you expect.

Well, all this info has been from my recent experience. My wizard was mainly agi based with no dex, so I did pick up fire pillar, if only because it was able to get off really fast when maxed. I still do think a normal wizard could get away with kiting with fire pillar as well, it's just that they would constantly need to make sure they have increased walking speed. You will probably need shadow/undead armors though, in case the dolor or maero try to use their darkness spells.

Edited by LethalJokeChar, 12 September 2010 - 02:53 AM.