Picking up where I left off fleshy arty’s with the Craft Essence feat Vs the Bot arty. Don’t know what I am talking about? Look down.

Now I am comparing apples to oranges here, keep that in mind. We have my arty, human with the craft essence feat, melee/spell casting focused, super tweaked out gear and past life wise (rune arm is more then extra damage) vs Tobril’s first life bot Xbow guy with what ever gear….

My guy has more HP, AC, and raw damage out put. And yet Tobril’s guy seems to be over all harder to kill and has less trouble in quests.

I think it comes down to the advantage of ranged combat over melee. There is a funny relationship between ranged and melee combat. Ranged has less damage and less risk. Melee is more more damage and much more risk. But he who lives wins, and often that is the ranged guy because he can run away and keep fighting were the melee runs away he is all running away.

Let me try to explain via a story that happened this weekend. Tobril and I do an OOB on Elite (to matain his streak). Fopo and I ran it easily earlier in the day. Tobril and I get started, and in the first big fight the mini boss scorp stuns Tobril’s Arty some quick repairing keeps him alive while stunned. H breaks off to heal up and I try to pull the scorp off him but he can’t cast spells due to the bewilder effect the scorp has and takes a few more hits while running away and dies. I throw him a rez and we kill the mini scorp boss.

The quest goes down hill from there. Finally ending with him carrying my stone around for 5 mins as he tries to get my rock to a shrine.

How is that an example of either one being any good as we both died and left the quest?

Well shipbuff-less, gear-less he was able to keep moving. Using what he had to stay alive and moving forward.

When I died I had just found a mana pot greater I think. Not a major for sure. And went on a blasting melee/rune arm run but it wasn’t enough. I just got pounded down. There were so many guys hitting me that sooner or later hitting that heal scroll wasn’t going happen. Damn concentration checks! And I with out my recon boosting clickly running my repair spells were not enough to keep myself up (also no quicken yet..).

So by the very nature of the beast of “stay out of line of the melee mobs” is a huge deal. And kept him running longer me.

So Samius, what should I take from this?

Well readers, unless you have a damn good reason to try and go melee dps on an arty don’t. Or don’t get angry when you get your head handed to you out of the blue. I die a lot this weekend. 5-6 times I think. And I want to say every death (save one) was due to the fact I was in melee and failed a con or Umd check to save myself.

Btw check the math on those umd checks. I think the % on the scrolls are off and are giving a higher % then you really have. Think I caught it saying I had 110% to use a heal scroll while I was around 35 on my umd score. Just saying take a look for awhile.

**That one none melee related death, Fopo and I were in Made to order. I was disarming a trap and my dog saw a box and ran over to break it. I took a hit as it ran over the trap trigger. No big deal. FinFangFoom freaks out and runs back to me (tripping the trap again) and back to another box (tripping the trap again) and back and forth 3 more times in about 2 secs and tripped the trap about 6 times in total. Lets just say once I was raised I put the ghost dog in its box for a while. Maybe the hunter of Boxes is not the best thing ever??

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** Edited to fix horribly bad errors pointed out by Mr. Tiemmothi.