Maximizing Persistent Stacking
A guide on optimal Persistent Spell stacking by Dirich.
Introduction
This guide can be useful if you are playing catch-up in persistent casts when switching T2 class, or if you want to focus on persistent stacking during Persistence Week (whose weekly bonus doubles the stacking of Persistent Spells).
Note that in most cases you completely forego the chance of profits when you employ these strategies, and that spell casts are related to FPS, as such stacking on Kongregate is way worse than stacking on Steam (by about a factor of 2 if you have a good PC, at least for what concerns casting evocations).
Preparations
This guide focuses on how to maximize stacking in terms of equipment, spell bar, pet to use and Attribute points distribution. Still, upgrades are useful (e.g. Pet Experience ones if you use 
Spellhound, Character Ability Power for 
Collar Of Obedience, etc), hence you should start from what is specified in this guide and use any remaining Attribute Point, unassigned Spell or Item slot and any other free choice you are left with for the purpose of maximizing profits (and thus maximizing upgrades bought).
Simply use the relevant class guide to complete the run preparation and perform the setup up to the first small burst and source maximization via 
Simulacrum. Afterwards perform a second burst to complete the run setup.
Spell Caveat
The spell order matters. Never modify it.
Pet Caveat
To anybody with access to T3 pets, it should be obvious that anywhere Spellhound is suggested, 
Greater Chimaera should be used instead. Albeit in most cases the advatange is mainly in farming dust, since we already are at maximum stacking speed.
Arcanist
Updated as of V1.40 "Fall From Grace"
To maximize the casting rate of 
Jas'Aham's Missile Storm as an 
Arcanist, run the following set of spells. The order of the spells (left to right) is important. 
Conjure Manabeast can be substituted with 
Conjure Primal Elemental or 
Conjure Greater Elemental if lacking levels.
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The remaining three spells should be set to: 
Ritual Of Power, 
Radiant Pools, and 
Arcane Infusion, and should not be set to autocast.
Use the following items:
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The Magnifier: Doubles the castrate for the active portion of JMS.
The Rubedo Engine: Doubles the castrate for BOTH the active and passive portion of JMS.
Collar Of Obedience & 
Whiplash: Increases pet charging speed which results in more shards being applied to the pool.
Easymind Hat: Increases wisdom by 50, ergo providing more shards passively to the pool. Better early on when you don't have a lot of Attribute Points to spare.
Pet options for JMS casting
Spellhound: Gives shards that go directly to the Shard Pool. Use if Arcanaworg is unavailable.
Arcanaworg: Charges up an ability to give shards once per second for 10 seconds. Best available pet for filling the Shard Pool.
The Numbers
The maximum JMS Cast Rate is 240/second with both Magnifier and Rubedo engine equipped. JMS eats through about 8-9e5 shards at 240/s cast rate, Once you reach the The Rubedo Engine you will already have all of the available Shard Pool Capacity upgrades (Last one is at e642 mana). At max Shard Pool capacity, you'll have ~18 seconds of JMS casting at 240/s before it starts to diminish.
Since JMS has two separate portions (Active and Passive) calculating them is a bit strange and is as follows:
The Magnifier doubles the active portion from 60/s -> 120/s.
The Rubedo Engine then doubles both the Active and Passive portion giving us 120/s -> 240/s & (60/s -> 120/s) with the Active being outside the brackets and Passive being inside the brackets.
Adding in the Week of Persistence, this goes to (120/s -> 240/s) with them now both being 240/s castrate, you will no longer see any brackets at all.
Archon
Note: any profit run will guarantee you to maximum stacking. This section is mainly for those that are too lazy to even setup a proper profit run for 
Archon.
The Archon class is the easiest to setup for maximum stacking. In fact, you don't even need to perform the mini bursts and the source maximization phase.
What you absolutely should not do is to ever put 
Tempered Arcanomancy on the bar: it needs to stay at 0 (fake and real) casts!
Indicative expected casts per minute: 3.6e3 Jas'Aham's Missile Storm (as soon as 
Syphon Power has been stacked a bit).
Note: you can achieve the same result by playing Archon normally, but with this guide you are immediately at maximum casts per second, while when playing normally you will need a pet of high enough level (to generate enough Autoclicks per second to ensure that Jas'Aham's Missile Storm is never lacking charges).
Attribute Points Distribution
- 150 Intelligence (necessary for
Concealing Shroud) - 0 Insight
- 0 Spellcraft
- 200 Wisdom (gets up to 250 thanks to Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Dominance
- 0 Patience
- 0 Mastery
- 0 Empathy
Pet
Soulstealer is enough. No need to level up to 
Psychic Cacophony.
Equipment
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No upgrade is really relevant.
Spell Bar
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Necromancer
With the advent of realms, especially if you follow my Realm Rush guide, you will find yourself at e550, i.e. with Greater Chimaera available, and no stacks in 
Nightfall.
The best thing you can do to initially stack Nightfall is to use 
Necromancer. After a certain threshold, thanks to Greater Chimaera, you can switch to 
Shaman without losing Nightfall stacking speed, so you can start to efficiently stack 
Rules of Nature too.
Attribute Points Distribution
For most Attributes the distribution is fixed.
- 150 Intelligence (necessary for Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Insight
- 200 Spellcraft (necessary for
Perfected Kata Bracers) - 0
- 0 Dominance
- 175 Patience (to get perks up to 175)
- 175 Mastery (for Collar Of Obedience)
- 175 Empathy (for
Hollow Eye Pendant, but it's not really that critical)
Equipment
Before reaching the Nightfall threshold (check the Shaman section), of circa 3e7:
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After reaching the Nightfall threshold (check the Shaman section), of circa 3e7:
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Only Character Ability Power matters, and you don't even have to worry to but more than an enchant level 1 or 2 to get Greater Chimaera shard generation interval to 0.03. Even at e550 mysts!
Spell Bar
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Realm 2+ Shaman Prestacking
If you have bought all 10 levels in Forefathers' Work memory upgrade, you will be able to reach 1e8 stacks on Nightfall in 4 days. Still, this is way too much: you should switch to Shaman stacking after 2d.
Shaman
The Shaman class is the only one with two persistents: Rules of Nature, whose purpose is to help level up the pet, and Nightfall, whose only purpose is to massively speed up Rules of Nature charging time.
Keep in mind that in the beginning the issue is charging, over time it will switch to discharging, but for a long time it will be an issue of balancing the two.
The consequence is that there are two item sets (and pet choices): one for when Nightfall stacks is not high enough, and one for when it is. This Nightfall threshold value is currently unknown exactly, but we know it is between 2.27e7 (the value at which, when using Simulacrum, you will finally be stuck at max charges all the time when using the equipment with 
Spell Helix) and 3.2e7 (note that getting from 2.2e7 to 3.2e7 is a matter of less than a week if you use Arcanaworg, while getting to 2.2e7 is more like a couple of months).
There are also two spell sets, depending on what you want to optimize the stacking of between Rules of Nature and Nightfall.
The suggestion is to focus on stacking Nightfall until you reach the threshold previously discussed.
Note that Shaman is definitely worse than Necromancer at charging Nightfall, especially at lower mysts and casts count, where you have less Autoclicks and less self charging buff respectively (later on Shaman catches up thanks to really high Autoclicks, alebit Necromancer remains better for all reasonable mysts). It is highly suggested you start with Necromancer if your Nightfall is far from the threshold.
The following values are from tests where Nightfall persistent cast count was 2.4e6 (which means I'm still not charging fast enough to reach full stacking potential).
Indicative expected casts per minute (optimizing for Nightfall): 835 for Rules of Nature, 246 for Nightfall.
Indicative expected casts per minute (optimizing for Rules of Nature): 1.01e3 for Rules of Nature, 180 for Nightfall.
After the Nightfall threshold is reached, you can maximize Rules of Nature and Nightfall at once. The results are for 4.02e7 persistent casts of Nightfall.
Indicative expected casts per minute: 1.69e3 for Rules of Nature, 771 for Nightfall.
Attribute Points Distribution
For most Attributes the distribution is fixed.
- 150 Intelligence (necessary for Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Insight
- 200 Spellcraft (necessary for Perfected Kata Bracers)
- 175 Wisdom (to get perks up to 225 thanks to Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Dominance
- 175 Patience (to get perks up to 175)
When Nightfall stacks are over threshold or if you have Greater Chimaera:
- 175 Mastery (for Collar Of Obedience)
- 175 Empathy (for Hollow Eye Pendant)
When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and you are optimizing for Nightfall:
- 175 Mastery (for Collar Of Obedience)
- 0 Empathy
When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and you are optimizing for Rules of Nature:
- 0 Mastery
- 0 Empathy
Pet
If you have Greater Chimaera, use it.
When Nightfall stacks are over threshold: Spellhound.
When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and optimizing for Nightfall, especially if the stacks are at or over 2.27e7: Arcanaworg.
When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and optimizing for Rules of Nature: Irrelevant (there is difference between pets, but it is minimal).
If you are under threshold and optimizing for Rules of Nature you should use the pet you prefer for whatever other purpose you might have, like using Simulacrum to collect more crafting dust. Still, if you really want to know, in order from best to worse it is:
Greater Chimaera > Spellhound > 
Herald of Rot (if properly leveled and after 2 days) > 
Pixie (if properly leveled) > 
Risen Giant, 
Zombie, 
Ent, Arcanaworg (if around level 200) > 
Ebonsand Behemoth > 
Shadow Stalker > others.
When under threshold the issue with Spellhound is that it needs both Collar Of Obedience and Whiplash, but until you are under threshold sacrificing Spell Helix to equip Whiplash results in a stacking loss. With only Collar Of Obedience the shard generation interval of Spellhound will not go under 1 second, and as such it is worse than (a properly leveled) Arcanaworg (which explains why the latter is the pet used when optimizing for Nightfall while its casts are under threshold).
When over threshold Spellhound is way better than Herald of Rot (comparison made at 6d of pet time) and doesn't require days to become effective, only some minutes of levelling, unlike the latter.
Greater Chimaera, only needs Collar Of Obedience to be better than Arcanaworg, as such it makes you bypass all the issues.
Equipment
When Nightfall stacks are over threshold (enchants for Character Ability Power are important):
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When Nightfall stacks are under threshold but you are using Greater Chimaera:
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All that matters is the shard generation interval on Spellhound, and for that you need a lot of Charater Ability Power. Greater Chimaera has the same issue but it doesn't need as much Character Ability Power.
When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and you are optimizing for Nightfall:
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When Nightfall stacks are under threshold and you are optimizing for Rules of Nature:
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The interesting bonus, in preference order, are:
Pet Experience (depending on pet) > Summoning Efficiency > Character Ability Power.
Unless you are over the Nightfall threshold, then only Character Ability Power matters (you should use a Pet Experience set to level Spellhound before starting to stack).
In practice, time is what will bring the best results. Because of scaling from accumulated Autoclicks or direct time scaling (for class and, potentially, pet).
Spell Bar
When Nightfall casts are over threshold:
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When optimizing for Nightfall stacking and Nightfall casts are under threshold:
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When optimizing for Rules of Nature stacking and Nightfall casts are under threshold:
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Note: if you do not have 100% crit with the last spellbar, depending on the exact amount you have it might be ideal to replace Conjure Manabeast with 
Summon Spider Swarm, to increase your crit chance (Rules of Nature charges with crits).
Temporalist
This 
Temporalist is the weirdest class when it comes to stacking persistent.
A surprising fact is that Time Distortion is irrelevant for this stacking, you could run with 
Stabilize the Flow to keep it to almost 0 and nothing would change (granted you would need Spellhound or Greater Chimaera with Collar Of Obedience and Whiplash to ensure you always have more spell charges than you can cast).
Indicative expected casts per minute: 4.88e3 
True Sorcery (at the beginning it will stack slower due to 
Habitstone bonus being low, so I measured this number after the first 4e3 stacks, when the stacking speed in the short time frame finally saturated for me).
Attribute Points Distribution
- 150 Intelligence (necessary for Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Insight
- 200 Spellcraft (necessary for Perfected Kata Bracers)
- 175 Wisdom (to get perks up to 225 thanks to Concealing Shroud)
- 0 Dominance
- 0 Patience
- 0 Mastery
- 0 Empathy
You can put 0 in Wisdom if you accept that you need to use Spellhound (or Greater Chimaera if you have it) with Collar Of Obedience and Whiplash to generate the spell shards necessary to maximize the stacking.
Pet
Irrelevant.
All pets provide the same stacking.
Equipment
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No upgrade is really relevant.
Spell Bar
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Note: 
Magic Missile can be substituted with 
Kelphior's Black Beam, but having them both does not provide any additional casts, as you can already reach the theoretical maximum.
The additional two incantations are not necessary, but you need Accumulated spell casts to improve the ability of Habitstone, so they need to be on bar at least until your total incantation duration reduction makes True Sorcery duration go at, or under, 0.5 seconds, so that each real cast counts double. This happens once you have 1.77e5 casts (check the item description).
Quirks (irrelevant section, just a for fun read)
If you use a level 200 Spellhound , on a character level 247 (
Singularity Beam generates 75 Compressed Time per cast), add 
Refined Wormhole to the Spell Bar, the suggested items but switching Perfected Kata Bracers with 
Nomadic Wrists and adding, Collar Of Obedience and Whiplash, the 
Chronomancer items (except for the ring) and filling the rest with Character Ability Power items, while also adding Kelphior's Black Beam to the spell bar, the following inexplicable things happen:
- Using both
Temporal Distortion and Refined Wormhole results in faster stacking than just using the former, even though if you think about Compressed Time generation it would look like this souldn't be the case. - When using Spellhound as pet, you an achieve way better stacking than with other pets, unless your Evocation Efficiency is too low, or unless it is too high! If you are not within this 'sweet spot', the stacking will be very similar to the other pets.
In #2 I am not sure if there is only 1 sweet spot or multiple ones. While using a lot of Character Experience items, I have found a lower and a upper bound:
- Evocation Efficiency Upper Bound: between 2.27e59% and 2.63e59%.
- Evocation Efficiency Lower Bound: between 3.74e56% and 5.92e57%.
When satisfying all these conditions stacking with Spellhound results consistently in 2.3e3 True Sorcery casts per minute, while with any other pet the amount of casts is 1.83e3 casts per minute.
The setup in this example is faulty as it doesn't use Perfected Kata Bracers. But it shows that there's weirdness going on.
In fact, from time to time I've been able to achieve 4.35e3 casts of True Sorcery per minute when the test outcome would usually be 3.7e3. I did it with multiple pets and using many variations of equipment. Even with the exact setup currently suggested (while also casting Kelphior's Black Beam though)!
In short, from time to time we get more casts per minute than we normally get, but I have not been able to identify the cause of this, and, as such, design a setup to consistently increase the cast per minute.
Oni
YO, ok. This ain't Dirich. Dis is Amocia, AKA Swordeater. Y'all better be happy. I was told to take credit for this... so, here you go! Big giant board of text to credit me.
Oni's setup is pretty complicated... There're multiple phases of efficiency. I did a lot of testing back when our lord and saviour 
Shadow-Scryer's Crystal Ball, praise be him, came into our humble wizard lands. And as such! There was already a perfectly well-made guide on the discord... which I'll now convey to all of you. I also made a smaller additional guide and testing for when defense stance was added so that'll be in here too, that's phase 2 and phase 3.
DO NOTE: This is also the exact setup on how to best start the 
Furious Strike grind train a-going to get 60 casts.
Note: You'll want to get some incantation casts going to buff up your class ability first! Either via the use of Shadow-Scryer's Crystal Ball or 
Berzerker
Attribute Points Distribution
- 150 Intelligence
- 0 Insight
- 200 Spellcraft
- 0 Wisdom
- 0 Dominance
- 175 Patience
- 200 Mastery
- 200 Empathy
Pet
Interrogator is our first pet, use the pet maximization set from the Oni guide to skyrocket him to high levels to get more Furious Strike, cause we're so angry that this takes forever. And as soon as we can't level it more switch to 
Archivist cause we ain't no stinky sub-e60 myst wizard here, we're the cool bois. Ok, so, this will sound weird to y'all, we won't use Archivist after 180% Furious Strike charging on 
Temper The Steel we'll switch to Simulacrum/Greater Chimaera.
Equipment
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OKAY, so, a lot of y'all be like "what is this mess". Ok, so, sit down. Relax, take a snickers. You're you when you're hungry. Ok, so, Spell Helix is replaced by 
Frosty Ring WAY too late for us to care. We'll be in phase 2 and it doesn't matter in phase 2 at all, it's better for profit though. When you switch to Simulacrum switch to 
The Amplifier back cause you get more from it. 
Light Of Eighth Star would be good for when you're sleeping or something. 
The Great Journey use these boots after Simulacrum switch.
Phase 1 Spell Bar (Meditation Stance)
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Once you reach 120% Furious Strike charging on Temper The Steel switch out 
Possessed Blade for 
Synthetic Entity.
Continue to Phase 2 once you get 826,098 (8.26e5) casts of Temper The Steel, this equals 20% charge per evo cast.
Phase 2 Spell Bar (Defense stance)
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The reason why we no longer have any other evocations other than Temper The Steel and Furious Strike is due to the charge per evo cast being divided by amount of evocation spells on the spell bar. This way we can maximize the profit (in Temper The Steel casts) in defense stance, do note, it won't be a smooth casting rate, though, it'll be faster than phase 1.
NOW, onto phase 3 once you get 40% charge per evo cast at 6,422,688 (6.43e6 for rounding) casts of Temper The Steel
Phase 3 Spell Bar (Defense stance)
Now, this is real simple. Just begin to swap out useless incantations... WHO NEED them anyway?!
Begin with adding Synthetic Entity at 40% evo charge, then 
Fire Ball at 60% evo charge, 
Force Of Will at 80% evo charge, and 
Hellstorm at 100% evo charge. I'll list out the casts for the different charges here:
20% - 826,098 (8.26e5)
40% - 6,422,688 (6.43e6 for rounding)
60% - 2,1316,620 (2.14e6 for rounding)
80% - 49,930,995 (5.00e7 for rounding)
100% - 96,625,702 (9.66e7 for rounding)