Guide A Complete Guide To Lunar Spine Gaming

Hello! I've always been infatuated with a neat little item called Lunar Spine. It's a very unique weapon with a fun and interesting gimmick, and I've been using it off and on for a little while now. I've decided to make this guide to introduce others to the rather intimidating world of using this weapon. If you've never seen Lunar Spine before, here it is:

Pretty crazy, huh?
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Basically, Lunar Spine's gimmick is that every time mana regen activates, your mana is completely drained. However, you have enough mana steal to instantly refill it. But because of the way mana regen and mana steal work, you can end up in some less-than-favorable situations, which turns a lot of people off to Lunar Spine. That's what I'm making this guide for.

Spoiler: A quick run-down on some mechanics

This section is just to clear up some confusion people might have. If you know how mana regen and mana steal work, feel free to skip this.

Despite what "X/4s" suggests, mana regen operates on a 5 second cycle. You get:
1, 1, 1, 1, (1 + mana regen)
In the case of Lunar Spine, this means you have a 4 second window to cast spells before your mana is completely emptied.

The mana steal system is different entirely. Basically, every time you hit an enemy with a melee attack, there is a random chance determined by your attack speed for life steal and mana steal to activate (the chances for life steal and mana steal are separate, they won't always activate at the same time).

All that -attack speed on Lunar Spine means you'll always be operating at super slow, which has a 49% chance to activate mana and life steal on a melee hit. If you get unlucky and don't manage to proc mana steal, you'll have to wait another 1.96 seconds to try again, leaving you without any mana to heal, teleport away, or even sprint. This is Lunar Spine's biggest downfall. But don't abandon it yet! The point of this guide is to teach you some ways to avoid this situation and enjoy what this weapon has to offer.

Building Lunar Spine

Well before you can use Lunar Spine, you're gonna need a build. The first rule of making a Lunar Spine build is: USE TIME RIFT. Seriously. It's like the items were made for each other. One of the major limitations of Lunar Spine is the cooldown between melee attacks; if you get unlucky and fail to proc mana steal in a dangerous situation, you'll be completely helpless, unable to attack, heal, or even run away.

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Time Rift is very effective at avoiding this. Even if you're completely out of mana and on melee cooldown, there's a good chance for Sorcery to proc and cast a couple spells for free. Sorcery also applies to melee attacks, giving you better odds to proc mana steal. Additionally, Lunar Spine covers Time Rift's major downsides with its massive mana steal and a mana regen penalty that's already beyond any hope of repair.

Because of Lunar Spine's drastic IDs, you're kind of limited to one playstyle: spellsteal hybrid. Fortunately, all the mana steal you need is rolled right up in the weapon itself, along with some hefty damage bonuses. This means that your build can either focus on other things such as tankiness and health sustain (not needed quite as much because of heal spell), or stack on even more damage.

One thing that you should probably be sure to do is negate either the -health regen or the -life steal, if not both. If you're feeling brave and keep a close eye on your health you can disregard this, but I don't advise it.

Now for powders. Lunar Spine gives sizeable boosts to water and air damage, so you can't go wrong with them. Water is generally preferred between the two because Wind Prison, the air powder special... well, sucks. If you're running a funky build that gives more fire, earth, or thunder damage % than wind or air, those powders will work just fine. The one caveat is that if you haven't negated Lunar Spine's -life steal, DO NOT USE CHAIN LIGHTNING. You won't get any extra mana, but you will lose a lot of health.

It's also worth noting that Lunar Spine makes an amazing secondary wand if you have the skill points for it. It essentially lets you ignore the need for mana regen; all you have to do is quickly switch to Lunar Spine, melee, then switch back to your main weapon to get all of your mana back. The only downside is that occasionally you'll get unlucky and mana regen will activate right when you switch to Lunar Spine, completely draining your mana.

I won't claim to be an expert build maker, but if you need a starting point here's my best attempt (with and without mythic boots). Alternately, you could disregard everything in this guide to access the forbidden art of Lunar Spine heavy melee.

Using Lunar Spine

Now for the fun part. The most important thing when using Lunar Spine is to keep a close eye on your mana. You don't always have to know how long until your mana empties, but you do have to be prepared to melee as soon as it does. Your melee attacks are precious. Only use them when you're out of mana. I know a habit I had developed from playing more casual hybrid builds in the past was to just randomly throw out melee attacks in the middle of my spell combos. If you do this with Lunar Spine, you will find yourself out of mana and panicking. That 2 second melee cooldown can be brutal.

Another thing to note when it comes to timing your melee attacks is to be careful going for a second hit immediately if your first one fails to proc mana steal. As previously explained, you have a 4 second window to cast spells before your mana disappears. If you react instantly to your mana disappearing by meleeing but mana steal doesn't proc, you have to wait approximately 2 seconds before you are able to melee again. Then, after another 2 seconds or so, your mana will empty once more. This timing works out fine if you have perfect reactions or anticipate correctly (melee hit, wait 2 seconds, melee hit, wait 2 seconds, mana empties right after melee is recharged and the cycle can repeat). However, if you hesitate too long your mana will end up emptying right after you melee to get it back.

Something I find very helpful when using Lunar Spine is to always carry around a few mana potions. These can be very helpful to avoid a sad, painful death if you run out of mana at the wrong time, not to mention the fact that to some extent they let you ignore Lunar Spine's -mana regen while they're active. If you're worried about how expensive they are, mana potions are super common on lootruns.

Here's a handy little flowchart I put together in case you're still not sure how Lunar Spine's gameplay should go:

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Lastly, I highly recommend having a secondary wand for movement and healing outside of combat. King of Hearts works really well if you have the defense for it, otherwise Bonder is quite nice too. Don't try going about your life holding an item that has -50/4s mana regen and -250 health regen. You only break out Lunar Spine for combat or when you're out of mana.

If you're really feeling like a gamer you could even try using your secondary wand for the forbidden technique I like to call mana shuffling. The 5 second cycle mana regen is on doesn't reset when you switch weapons. This means that if you switch to your secondary right before Lunar Spine would consume all of your mana, you'll instead gain mana. Then, you can switch back to Lunar Spine and continue slinging spells. The only issue with this is that it takes a lot of counting and is really tough to do in the middle of combat. But, hey, maybe you can prove me wrong!

Conclusion

Whew, that ended up a whole lot longer than I expected. Just goes to show the depth of this one-of-a-kind weapon. It's fun to use and offers a unique challenge. Lunar Spine might not be for everyone, but give it a try! You might end up liking it.

If you need a SparkNotes version, here's the TL;DR:

• Lunar Spine offers lots of damage and mana steal at the cost of mana regen
• Time Rift covers Lunar Spine's weaknesses well
• Always negate either the -life steal or the -health regen, if not both
• Lunar Spine is a good secondary wand for mana
• Save your melee attacks for when you're out of mana
• Don't melee if mana regen is about to activate
• Mana potions can get you out of sticky situations
• Carry a secondary wand for healing and movement

Happy gaming!

 

Hope this gets more people to try it!

 

I'm sure that @starx280 will be very happy with this

 

WELCOME TO THE CULT

 

Can you send again the 2 builds since i can't open them? :/

 

Remade the builds for 1.20 and switched them to wynnbuilder, thanks for the heads up

 

I'm pretty sure Mana Regen is on 4 second cycle actually, and the ticks you mentioned happen every 0.8 seconds