I might have missed the nuance of the debate so my apologies in advance.
With a SK, the case for mana comes down to stunt/named kills that summon and can’t be feared. At this point you are likely proccing Avatar off an eye so STR and Dex are capped. Roughly every 18 INT is another drain soul, to a point.
For this rather narrow definition of “solo”, a 338 DD and heal is pretty solid stat optimization even if you don’t have Avatar. You could instead have about 18 attack, or 93 hps. It’s really one of the few situations where an erudite or DE might be matched to an ogre or troll. In the extreme situation, an erudite loses Slam, regen, and strength but picks up nearly 700 mana. That’s three extra Drain Souls as a reward for struggling to carry fine steel for 59 levels.
Still, most people are going to loot and equip gear that has a variety of stats and there are only so many pieces of gear with preset stats. I wish we could mess with stat sliders…I’d trade agility for damn near anything
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