Get the basic info on Aion's manastones and recommendations for your class!

Manastones are the little wonderful blessings that allow for players to customize their character and manipulate their stats.  You really don’t want to waste those slots though and it isn’t always clear which stones will benefit your class the most.  At lower levels, having a nice arrangement of manastones can make survivability easier and at higher levels, it can make or break your PvP experience.

This guide will cover what manastones are, what they do, and which ones you should be using for your class.  However, nothing beats out experience so if you've found a great spec for your class, please share it with us mail to editor@top1gaming.com!

The Basics

Manastones are nifty little socketed items that you can add to your gear to boost your stats.  Which stats to boost are completely up to you but you’ll find a guideline for each class at the end of this tutorial.

Using manastones is fairly simple.  Starting out you’ll likely only be socketing one or two and you may not realize that failure is an option until you are trying to add your prized manastone to a piece of gear and you get the awful message that it failed and your stone has been destroyed.  If you are socketing more than a couple of manastones, save the best ones for last so you aren’t just wasting good stones to failures.

Manastones are not permanent and they can be removed.  There is generally a manastone removal NPC in every major town.  Removing a manastone will destroy it, but it leaves the gear intact and allows you to place a new manastone in that slot.

Manastones come in varying potencies of specific types which get better the higher level they are.  Most stones are related to combat stats while there are some that add spell stats, resistances and even flight time.  Here are the manastones that you will find in the world and what that particular stat does:

• Attack – The physical damage you do with weapons and skills
• Accuracy - The ability to hit and chance of critical hit
• Evasion – The ability to dodge melee attacks
• Hit Point (HP) – Adds to your health (HP) bar
• Magic Boost – Increases spell damage
• Magical Accuracy – The ability to hit a target with a spell
• Magical Resistance – The ability to resist spells cast upon you
• Mana Point (MP) - Adds to your mana (MP) bar
• Maximum Flight Time – How long you can fly before painfully hitting the ground
• Parry – The ability to reduce damage per melee hit
• Physical Critical Hit – The chance of making a critical hit
• Shield Defense – The ability to block and reduce damage with your shield

You’ll find that most pieces of armor and weapons can use manastones with the exception of accessories.  The quality of your armor piece will dictate how many manastones each piece can receive.  The following shows the amount of manastones you may add to a type of armor:

• White (Common) – 1, sometimes 2.
• Green (Superior) –2, sometimes 3.
• Blue (Heroic) – 3, sometimes, 4.
• Orange (Fabled) – 4, sometimes 5.

Making Manastones Work for You

So now the question is, when should you use manastones and which ones will benefit you?

First, manastones are insanely common so there is never a reason to not use them.  Get into the habit of imbuing your armor early on, and know where your manastone removal NPC is for when you want to update your stones.  These NPCs sometimes offer quests that allow you to trade in manastones that you can’t use for those that you can use.  A mage, for example, can turn over combat manastones in exchange for magic focused stones.

As for which to use, here is a rundown of the classes and which manastones would best benefit them.

Templar: If you are tanking with a sword and board you’ll want to focus on avoiding hits and taking as little damage as possible.  Evasion, HP, Parry, and Shield Defense will all help keep you alive so that you can be a successful meat shield for your group and your healer will be grateful for the extra help. 

If you are solo and not using a shield, use a combination of Evasion and Parry coupled with Attack and Physical Critical Hit will add to your defense as well as beef up your damage output.

Gladiator: Gladiators should follow the same rule as Templars for tanking, but for solo or duo play, take advantage of your damage potential and go all out Attack, Physical Critical Hit, and Accuracy.  You can do great damage, don’t waste it by missing!

Ranger: If you are getting hit then you’re doing it wrong!  The goal is to get things dead before they touch you so choose Accuracy and Attack.  I wouldn’t worry too much about your defense in a group, and if you find yourself getting hit a lot when you play solo, add to your Evasion and Parry then learn to kite.

Assassin: Melee damage is your specialty and you want to do as much as you can as quickly as you can.  Attack and Physical Critical Hit should be all you need.  Assassin can do scary amounts of damage with crits, so load up on those and forget the defense.

Cleric: These super healers should rarely be worried about doing damage, so if you play with a group, focus on survivability.  Use Evasion and Magical Resistance to fortify your defense and toss in some Magic Boost so not only can you save everyone’s rears, you can do a little damage too.  If you play solo and go with a mace and shield, then you should include Shield Defense but also give some attention to your damage spells with Magic Boost and Magic Accuracy.  You can heal yourself so being able to do damage is a bit more important than avoiding taking it.

Chanter: If you choose to go with a mace and shield, then follow the advice that we have given the cleric.  Many Chanters choose to use a staff which makes melee combat and defense more of an issue.  If you play with a staff, focus on Attack and Accuracy and add Evasion and Parry for your defenses.  With your mantras, you should be able to create a nice solo or duo spec.

Spiritmaster: Being able to survive is sometimes a real problem for the mages.  Adding MP will help keep your bar fuller and should be added once you’ve fortified your Magic Boost, and Magical Accuracy.  Because you have a pet and a full arsenal of ranged spells, you don’t need to worry too much about defense or melee.

Sorcerer: Just as with the Spiritmaster, you’ll want to fill your slots with Magic Boost and Magical Accuracy but because you don’t have the benefit of a pet, you can also add to your HP as slots permit.  Having a bit more health on your bar can sometimes make the difference between your death and your opponent’s death when it gives you enough time to get off just one more spell.

Manastones such as Flight Time and Hit Points are fairly universal for any class.  If you have an open slot and nothing to put in it, either of these make great filler and can always be removed to make way for a better manastone later.  Do you have your own manastone suggestions?  mail to editor@top1gaming.com or post it to our forum .