SK question

[lime prairie]

Sure this has been answered a bunch why is SM and SK the same price in HESS .. what’s the mechanical differences? Thanks

[hardy meadow]

The sk are tattoos and thus character attuned.

The SM are items you can move around.

[shadow peak]

Other big differences, sk counts as knowing the spell for spell sever, sm does not, however sm has no armor check penalty like miu/imbed items

[lime prairie]

So certain instant spells like 1107 would be better as SM

[tawdry glade]

The thing with 1107 is it has an application for it using lore benefit alongside a GoS sigil. This might encourage someone to vastly prefer the SK version.

I’d say something like 1109 in its current state makes sense as SM over SK because there’s no lore benefit to consider.

[thorn pendant]

If you're going to buy it you may as well buy sk so you can use in sever it's the same cost

[mental steeple]

Major factors, some are pros, some are cons for each:

• SK spells enable all lore benefits of a spell (many have scaling benefits to them. Even 1107 has spirit lore blessings benefits)
• Some spells have a different cooldown if cast natively (SK) vs. non natively (SM).
• SK are used like a spell. You CAST it. This could have implication depending on what armor you wear and potential spell hinderance
• SM are items, that are MIU activated. That means they bypass any spell hinderance issues
• SM Items can be sold if you move on from them (assume you didn't buy them with account attuned discount)
• SK Items are applied to a tattoo. You must charge them.

Some people get both a SK and a SM of an item, if they want the SK benefit but want to bypass spell hinderance by being able to activate them via MIU.

That covers most of the big things I can think of.

[tawdry glade]

Great summary Kontii.

[bold notch]

One other note - 1700s are not subject to spell sever

[celest veldt]

Another consideration for me when choosing between SK and SM is phantom spell ranks. The wiki states MIU and AS grant phantom spell ranks that can increase spell power (CS, maneuver bonus) . I bought a 709 SM for this reason and so I can share it between my characters. I didn't care for the lore benefit as much as much as I cared about having boosted spell power when activating 709.

However, I am unsure if SK spells get that phantom spell rank bonus through AS or MIU. Anyone know?

Lastly, I observed that activating a self mana MIU item cannot be sped up like casting a spell. I've tried rapid fire, haste, and celerity. So that's another con for SM items.

[bold notch]

Bag of trixx helps with that but only if you are activating multiple at once, and still had the 3s floor

[celest veldt]

I considering the bag of trixx for reducing the RT but wasn't sure how it worked as I never owned one. I kind of thought maybe if you put only 1 item in the bag and had tier 7 unlocked you might be able to get 1 second activation RT, but I didn't have one to test. Good to know! Even so, those are really neat bags and I'd want one if I had more SM items.

[bold notch]

You still have the 3 second cast RT in the case you cited

And then a parallel 1s hard RT