Florrick: Spellsword Arisha Guide

This guide is aimed at anyone who is familiar with the game already, but wants to pick up Spellsword Arisha for any purpose, be it as a RAR alt or as a new main. This guide assumes you're starting with a fresh Spellsword Arisha for the first time, and you have no idea what you're doing, however it covers just about every core aspect of her gameplay, roughly in order of importance. Follow the steps as shallowly or as deeply as you would like. You only need to get down to step 10 to be competent in RAR and the like, though you can go all the way down if you wish.

I will not be covering the more generic character building info, such as gear order, what general enchants to use, Dark Knight vs Paladin, etc. This guide is specifically aimed at the unique aspects of Spellsword.

 

About Spellsword Arisha:

Spellsword is all about resource management. While SP management largely takes care of itself, managing stamina and mana can be very tight at times. Stamina debuffs are enemy number one, do not get marked by them unless you want to have a very bad time. Her core gameplay design is centered around building up mana and spending it on powerful smashes, while warping around like she owns all of space and time.

 

 

Why should you play Spellsword?

• She has some strong defensive options.
• Her Actions Per Minute requirements are quite low.
• You get to zoom around the battlefield.
• You don't need to worry about combo timing.

 

 

Why should you not play Spellsword?

• Managing her stamina is not fun, period.
• If you're looking for more frantic gameplay she might not be the right choice. She looks fast but she's actually quite relaxed compared to a class like Lethor or Vella.
• Her damage is not SSS tier

 

 

Important Skills:

Max out equipment masteries, Battle Respiration, etc early on, as you would on any other character.

Arcane Flurry and Diffusion Warp are your primary damage skills. These are the first attack skills you should max. These skills consume your mana points in exchange for swift and potent smash attacks. These will cause your stamina to bottom out fast.

 

Counter Drain, Ether Zone, and Ruin Blade are core utility skills with a good bit of damage attached to them. Max them immediately following Arcane Flurry and Diffusion Warp.

 

Counter Drain is an attack that functions also like a block, does a modest amount of damage, and it rewards you with mana. If you hit an enemy with it you get a small amount of mana, and you get even more mana if you successfully block an attack with it.

Ruin Blade is a very strong attack which has an unusual SP consumption mechanic. While the skill only costs 250 SP, it will drain up to 750 SP if you have any extra to spare. Use it carefully. You can also harvest mana with Ruin Blade, as you may choose to use a Counter Drain immediately afterwards which does not share a cooldown with the main Counter Drain active skill.

Ether Zone is your stamina potion. Use it whenever you're running low (which is always).

 

Mana Tracer is your only mobility active skill. It is terrible for mob grinding, but it is easily one of the strongest boss chasing skills in the game, so long as it's not on cooldown when you need it. Learning to use it effectively is very important.

 

MP Swap is a core utility skill that lets you convert some SP into mana, and it can be used defensively, as it extends your block frames significantly.

 

Once you have the above skills maxed out, I wouldn't worry too much about the order in which you rank the rest of the combat skills up, though Temporal Shift, Resonance, and Crystal Burst are somewhat low priority.

 

 

Awakenings:

Put damage on everything of course, with the following exceptions:

• Ruin Blade should have a cooldown reduction awakening
• Resonance should have a significant cooldown reduction awakening
• Temporal Shift should have an SP reduction awakening

The only awakening that not everyone would agree on is on Counter Drain. You have the option between damage and cooldown reduction. Generally speaking, the damage awakening will contribute more to your overall DPS, since most battles don't last long enough to benefit from 5 seconds of cooldown reduction. However, in battles like Taros and Eisen, the block frames on the skill are often more valuable than the damage

component, and sometimes getting a Counter Drain even one second sooner can make the difference between taking zero damage or eating 15k damage. Personally I just stick with a damage awakening, as it's marginally more valuable in the vast majority of content.

 

 

Compass Enchants:

The mana gain effect on the prefix is the only one Spellsword should consider: Concentrated / Peaceful / Meditating

The suffix is less important. Due to the way Spellsword functions, there is not a significant value difference between the two speed options. Just pick whichever is cheapest, or none at all. Don't even consider the rank 7 suffixes, the negative stat bonuses hurt more than the speed helps.

 

 

Artifact Choice:

The impact of your artifact choice on Spellsword is relatively low.

Werewolf Paw helps significantly in shorter battles, but its effectiveness tapers off significantly if the battle lasts beyond your initial mana dump.

Mysterious Cat Statue can help in battles where you want to get out a Resonance or Temporal Shift as soon as possible, however beyond the first 30 seconds of battle, the Mysterious Cat Statue is borderline useless as long as you're sticking to the boss like glue. It can help to bring one along anyway as you are learning the class though, as the SP management for Ruin Blade can take some getting used to.

Succubus Fang is the only healing option you should consider on Spellsword. Due to how rapidly her smashes come out, maxing out the healing from fang is nearly instant. A single Ruin Blade will do it, or about 1 to 2 seconds of Arcane Flurry is all it takes.

Personally, I take cat statue in Royal Army and Neam, Succubus Fang in Taros, Eisen, and Hell Redeemers, and Paw everywhere else.

 

 

Other important items:

Spellsword Arisha uses a lot of stamina. A lot. Consider keeping stocks of any of the following for use in battles:

• Stamina Potion (30 minutes): Use in town for +5 stamina per second for 30 minutes
• Festival Cookie: Use in town for +0.5 stamina per second for 20 minutes
• Exquisite Feast: Eat at the guild house for +1.25 stamina per second over 90 minutes (This even works in Redeemers and Space Time Distortion!)
• Stamina Potion: +5 stamina per second for 1 minute (Does not stack with Merc Recovery Potion Plus)
• Merc Recovery Potion Plus: +200 stamina immediately, +5 stamina per second for 1 minute (Does not stack with Stamina Potion)

 

 

Play Guide:

The following is an outline of her core gameplay. Practice the elements in order, starting with her core rotation, and then learn integrate each interrupt to the core loop step by step, adding each new step as you get comfortable with the previous one.

1. Enable Arcane Flurry with the Tab key. (This is very important.)

 

2. Core rotation:

• Throw your mana crystal at the boss with the smash button (right mouse click in KB+M mode)
• Warp through the boss with another smash. This will put Diffusion Warp on a 10 second cooldown.
• Smack the boss with Arcane Flurry. Just hold down the normal attack button (left mouse click in KB+M mode)
• Every hit with Arcane Flurry will reduce the cooldown of your warp by 1 second, which you can track with the following buff icon:

• Once the cooldown is over, warp again and go back to smashing with Arcane Flurry

 

Interrupts to the core rotation and general tips:

3. Make sure to use Ether Zone basically any time it is off of cooldown. It is an instant +120 stamina, and Spellsword can never have enough stamina. Every tick of damage it does gives you even more stamina, too. Do note that this does consume your mana crystal, so you'll have to create another one to continue warping around, or to use Ether Zone again.

 

4. Mana Swap can be used once you have 250 SP. You just need to hold the block key until you activate Mana Swap, which will then go on cooldown for 25 seconds. To avoid excessively locking yourself up, try to use it while blocking an attack you would have blocked anyway, though don't let it stay off of cooldown for too long, unless you're full on mana. You can track the cooldown with the following buff icon:

5. If you run out of mana and have no abilities available to restore it, you will need to drop out of Arcane Flurry. Press tab to go into Mana Edge mode. You can build mana by whacking enemies with your normal attack combo, just spam click normal attack. You will gain "uncommitted" mana, which can't be used until you use Drain (your block). Once you have a sufficient amount of mana, return to Arcane Flurry with tab and go back into the core rotation.

 

6. While building mana using Mana Edge, you can use your mana crystal to build mana faster. Use your smash attack to throw the mana crystal at an enemy. Successful normal attacks will increase the level of your crystal, up to level 5. Once it's at level 5, you can use the smash attack button to retrieve the crystal, which will give you a good chunk of mana when it hits an enemy. If you hit an enemy with it when you sent the crystal out, it will home into them when you retrieve it, making it much easier to collect the mana.

 

7. When Counter Drain and Ruin Blade are off cooldown, feel free to use them to hit the enemy. Don't worry about anything other than hitting the enemy with it, they will do a fair bit of damage and earn some mana. Both skills have a followup, but to start with, only worry about the key combo for Counter Drain: [S] [W] Counter Drain will flip your Arcane Flurry/Mana Edge state as if you pressed tab, however this followup will flip you back to how you started.

 

8. Once you're comfortable with the followup to counter drain, you can integrate the followup for Ruin Blade: [W] [S] [A] [D] Do not input the Ruin Blade followup too quickly though, as if you do, it will cancel some of the hits, significantly diminishing the damage done. You get a healthy couple of seconds to enter the followup.

 

9. Finally, once you're comfortable with both of the above followups, you can follow Ruin Blade up with a free counter drain with [S] [W], which can then be followed with another [S] [W], so long as you have the SP for it.

 

10. Both Counter Drains can instead be extended with the input [A] [D]. The difference is that [A] [D] will leave you in the flipped Arcane Flurry state that counter drain put you into.

 

11. Ruin Blade eats up a ton of SP, even though it only needs 250. It will eat up all of your SP, up to 750, so if you have a mana swap or counter drain ready to go, try to prioritize those before the ruin blade if you have 400+ SP.

 

12. Once you're happy with your ability to pull off the followups for Ruin Blade and Counter Drain, try to start using Counter Drain and Ruin Blade to block enemy attacks. The main attack of Ruin Blade has invulnerability frames, and both parts of Counter Drain have block frames. The first attack from Counter Drain will also restore some additional mana if you block an attack with it.

 

13. You can send and retrieve your mana crystal mid-combo while in Mana Edge mode. Typically a rotation looks like R LLLLL R LL [Repeat]. The exact combo will vary based on whether you miss any attacks and how long it takes for the crystal to return, though. Expect your basic combo to go out of phase with the crystal level almost immediately.

 

14. While retrieving a level 5 crystal, you can use Ether Zone after it hits the enemy to do more damage, as a level 5 crystal causes Ether Zone to be more powerful. Timing it can be tricky, though. It is very easy to trigger Ether Zone when the crystal has already moved far away from the enemy, or before it gets to collect mana from the enemy.

 

15. For general movement, you can move marginally faster if you dodge and then cancel the ending lag of your dodge animation. This can be accomplished with a normal attack or a mana tracer attack, which can be done by pressing grab (E) during a dash. Note that while the mana tracer attack is an effective animation cancel, it also uses a lot more stamina than the other options.

 

16. During a warp, you can cut it short with a mana tracer attack by pressing grab (E) during the warp. This will let you attack sooner, and will also let you care much less about where your mana crystal is before a warp, as you can just cancel the warp immediately after hitting the enemy with it. Even if your crystal is in a dangerous zone, like a map edge or in a persistent AoE, you can use the warp cancel to avoid having to reposition your crystal before warping.

 

17. While it is a bad habit to always cancel all warps and dodges with the mana tracer attack, it is a good idea to use it often enough to keep a raid boss marked, to avoid having Mana Tracer go on cooldown, and so you can always chase the boss at a moment's notice. I generally use it any time my stamina is relatively high to cancel warps.

 

18. When a boss teleports away (or chases after a kai) you can warp to it with the Mana Tracer active if they are marked. If they aren't, you can mark them from a distance, but It's usually not worth it to try, as the range on the ability is surprisingly short, and missing it even once wastes about as much time as it would take to just run to the boss. For big bosses that are easy to hit though, sometimes it can be worthwhile.

 

19. After a Ruin Blade, but before the Counter Drain followup, you can warp to an enemy marked with Mana Tracer using the Mana Tracer active ability, and then continue with the Counter Drain followup at the new position. This will also reset the window you have to input the followup, so if the enemy is taking longer to attack you than expected, this technique can let you hold onto the Counter Drain for just a little bit longer.

 

20. Blocking an attack with a normal block is almost always worse for your DPS than if you dodge through it. This is with the assumption that you don't get hit at the end of the dodge, though. However, blocking with Counter Drain is almost always beneficial, outside of some specific multi-hits that can lock you in the block animation for a long time.

 

21. Extending your block with MP Swap can make dealing with certain attacks much easier. Consider trying to use it with long attacks like Brigid's wing spin, Taros's Meteor spin, and Emmett's spins. So many spins

 

22. Warps have invulnerability frames and they reposition your character quickly, which you can use to your advantage. The damage per mana spent for Diffusion Warp is so efficient that holding onto your warp specifically to use it as an iframe is usually going to hurt your overall damage. However, it can sometimes be used as an emergency bail-out if the timing is right, like if a teammate drops a puddle on Taros right as you're warping towards him, you can Diffusion Warp back out. Just pray nobody dropped a puddle on your crystal, too. You can also place your crystal in a safe spot in preparation for an unblockable AoE attack that you know is coming. The DPS loss by holding onto Diffusion Warp can be offset by the extra flurries you can squeeze in where it would otherwise be unsafe.

 

23. Neither Ruin Blade nor Counter Drain consume stamina. They can be used to provide some emergency block/invulnerability frames when you're running low on stamina. Using either one does halt stamina regeneration though, which could potentially leave you in an even more precarious situation than you were already in.

 

24. Crystal Burst is not useless, but the situations where it is better than Ether Zone are limited. The key difference between the two skills is that Crystal Burst can crit, and its damage is completely front-loaded. However, Ether Zone gives far more stamina through the damage ticks, and if every tick hits, it does about 87% of the damage of a crit burst, or 170% of the damage of a non-crit burst. Each tick of Ether Zone restores an additional 20 stamina, which is a full +100 extra stamina if every tick hits, which far outweighs the little scraps of extra damage you can hope for from a burst. Generally, a burst only makes sense if you know the boss is about to teleport away, or will otherwise not remain in the Ether Zone for more than 1 or 2 ticks. By and large, you can pretend Crystal Burst does not exist. Only integrate it into your play once you want to try for micro-optimizations.

 

 

Other Notes:

Resonance:

Resonance is certainly a skill. Due to its long channel time, you need specific setups to even land the attack, and most available setups aren't even ideal, since you often lose out on time you could be using Mana Edge to build mana. Resonance does itself build a fair amount of mana if you hit it, though. Here are some places where I like to use Resonance:

• In Neam, Neit can be hit 5 times at once if you start channeling the second he starts one of the three attacks that make his back tentacles enter the main arena. In Phase 1, these are when he slams the ground with all of his tentacles at once, or when he sends the tentacles down in waves. Just sitting in the middle of the arena to channel resonance is usually fine. During second and third Neit phase, it'll be when he is preparing to put his claws into the ground that you'll want to start channeling Resonance in the middle of the arena.
• In Neam, you can also land a hit on Neam herself by channeling on yourself after Gate, or during the phase transition. I don't do this all that often so I'm not too sure on the timing.
• In Balor, during the transition to phase 2, you can start channeling in the middle of the arena after the last camera cut in the cutscene, but before the camera returns to normal.
• In Balor, at the end of the one-hit kill sequence, you can just barely squeeze in a reso before he can start attacking again. The timing is very tight though, so he might teleport away for walls or the phase transition if you aren't really on top of your timing. You are also sacrificing damage on him to channel the Resonance, so it's not an ideal setup.
• In Brigid, during the phase transition to phase 2, you can start channeling in the middle of the arena after the last camera cut in the cutscene, but before the camera returns to normal. Beware that you are a sitting duck if she opens phase 2 with a red attack, though.
• In Laura, after the checkerboard pattern attack, you can start channeling right at the start of the last pattern.
• In Special Aes Sidhe, you can start channeling the moment he starts traveling into the dimensional gate.
• In Special Ulchas, you can start channeling approximately 3 seconds after he goes invincible at bar 3.
• In Special Arcana, you can start channeling right at the last hit to destroy the prison cell. Beware that the flinch might cause a teammate to miss their hold, though.
• In Ancient Elchulus, you can start channeling after the long black fireball attack from his little island in the sky. Wait for him to make his final turn in the flight as he heads back towards the arena to start channeling.
• In Ancient Siglint, you can start channeling approximately 8-9 seconds after he enters his stone phase.
• In Irusan, you can start channeling while she's running around the stage throwing tornadoes, after the second one is thrown.
• In Taros, the phase transition to Big Taros is a good time to start channeling. The transitions into and out of the bar 2 pool phase are also good, as is the period of time when he's invincible after the 0.5 bar fireball minigame.

 

Temporal Shift:

Arisha's hold skill, Temporal Shift, has some great strengths. It comes out instantly, so you can be a lot tighter with timing compared to other holds that have a wind-up animation. Additionally, it's a large AoE that you don't even have to aim. Just press the button and it should connect. It also gives you a good chunk of mana as long as it does damage. You don't even need the hold to be successful to get the mana, just as long as the boss can be damaged and is in range at the moment the hold ends.

These strengths are countered somewhat by the fact that if you whiff the hold, you're still trapped in the animation until the end. You can use this fact strategically though, as you get true iframes during the animation. You can use it to dodge some attacks, such as Emmett's red waves.

 

General Opening Strategy

When starting a raid with a Mysterious Cat Statue, you have the option to use MP Swap before the battle even starts. If you're going to sit at a campfire, or there's otherwise a moderately long run up to the boss, this is generally a good idea so you can get MP Swap on cooldown sooner. If the battle is going to start almost immediately though, it's often better to open the fight with a Ruin Blade, which awards a similar amount of mana, but using it sooner can allow you to squeeze an extra cast in later. You may also elect to delay the Ruin Blade if you choose to instead use your SP to use Mana Tracer to approach the

boss more quickly. You would then need to farm the small amount of SP consumed by the warp before you can cast Ruin Blade.

In any case, you will open with:

• Enable Arcane Flurry before the fight starts.
• Use Werewolf Paw, if applicable.
• Approach the boss
  • With Dash+Grab chaining (the Mana Tracer dash attack), or
  • With a Mana Tracer warp as described above, or
  • If the boss starts far away, such as Taros, consider using Dash+Normal Attack as your movement option to conserve stamina.
• Throw your crystal through the boss.
• Diffusion Warp
• If you haven't consumed more than 100 stamina, use a few Arcane Flurries.
• Ether Zone
• Enter the core rotation, but delay your first ruin blade, counter drain, and MP swaps until you are below at least 400 mana, ideally below 350.

 

Misc:

In Special Arcana, if you throw your mana crystal before the kick minigame, you can get a couple free hits when the crystal automatically returns to you.

There is a "fun" bug with warps. You tend to overshoot your target temporarily when you're on a laggy connection. The laggier the connection, the worse the overshoot. This can and will kill you in battles like Taros with the stage edges which kill you if you walk over them. Even worse is that you can accidentally Diffusion Warp at the same time that you detonate your mana crystal. This will cause you to go very, very far past where your crystal had been. This typically happens on laggy boats if you burst your crystal with Ether Zone or Crystal Burst and then immediately try to create another crystal when warp is off cooldown. The worst part is that this bug can even happen to you as host, though it's very unlikely.