Now that My.ddo is allowing posts again, here is yesterdays post.

So this weekend was fairly full of win. Avengers was great. If you haven’t seen it yet, go now. I will wait….. Also both Samius and Samyus capped out. So lots to talk about lets get started.

So Avengers, after some delays the wife end up in the local theater for Avengers in 3D. I will not go into spoilers but I will say Joss is the man again. And did a great job. And I thought the 3D was the best I have ever seen. I am going to put it in my personal top 5 movies, right under Iron Man.. It is that good, if not better.

Samius is now a 10/9/1 Rogue/Monk/Fighter That last level could have been Anything really. But picking up another feat for the few days it takes for the train to get rolling again is no big deal.

Right now I am still thinking Pure Arty for the next life. But I need to get a class layout from everyone just to be sure. Think both Phlor and Fopo will be tagging along again. Fopo is going to knock out his Pally life I think and Phlor was talking about some kind of not pally divine. A FvS/Clr/Bard would be nice to have.

Thought the wife was going to bring her “main” and return to her clonk love but she rolled up a new clonk and is having fun doing the first life thing right now. Tobril I think is planing to nab some quick xp on his Arty so we/I might have some nice side by side arty talk soonish….

Samyus, I am glad to have gotten this guy capped. Did a lesser on him once I capped. Swapped the travel marks for the sentinel marks along with some for fun leveling feats for things like the two handed fighting chain and whatnots. I am slow now and will miss the travel marks but over all he is a lot tougher now then before.

With a few little gear swaps, Cove armor and my big boy sword his ship and self buffed AC is 81. 82 hasted so Normal AC tanking is ready (once I slot good on my sword). This next week I hope to do a little grinding. I want to try for my Tod ring, make my Slayer ring and hopefully nap the last seals and/or shards for my hat and shield. Once I have those then I need to start hitting epic Chronos for seals and shards…

I will give my projected gear lay out once I am 100% done with what does where. Along with what I think was easy and what was hard to come by. But for the most part, I got Samyus to a really good Ac with only a few hard to get items (one epic item so far that didn’t come from the cove). If I can do it anyone can.

Alright back to work,
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Morning, once again we will be talking about building my arty. Today I will ramble on about Stats. But before I do I want to say made 19.4 and change last night. So should cap out sometime Saturday, as long as my trip to the movies tonight for the Avengers don’t make me want to go again and again spending all weekend at the movies.

Lets keep in mind I want to focus in both Melee and Casting for this run. Xbowing is way down the list for me this run. Oh and remember these are for a Human arty with more then 3 past lives and +3 tomes in every stat…. I plan to steal some fast crafting xp along the way and with both the Repair Marks and Bonus crafting levels I think I will be able to go fairly big..

Anyway stats, having never build an arty I have to play from past experiences with different kinds of wizards to help with stats.

Average normal covering most of the bases stats:
14,14,14,18,8,10

Not really ideal here as I am looking to melee it up as well as cast. I can use buffs like Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage to use my Int as a main stat but as you can’t have both running at once I don’t think so.

More of a battle caster:
16,8,16,18,8,8
These lose Dex and Chr for +1 to hit and HP per level. Not to bad…

Ranged Caster, think Imp Precise Shot ready with a +3 tome or with a +2 and a stat point.
10,15,16,18,8,8
or
14,15,14,18,8,8

As I am not focusing on ranged even though I don’t plan to totally skip it these are not right for what I want to do.

A little more well rounded but not max DC:
14,15,16,16,8,10

These still will allow room for Imp Precise Shot and I can see more of a buffer melee/range build using them but I want to use plenty of combat spells.

So what am I thinking?
16,10,14,18,8,10

I will not be Imp Precise Shot able and I will not have those extra Hp from one more CON. But I will have more Str for Melee and don’t have to rely on Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage I can carry IS for when I need to go ranged and use that Int Mod if I need it. Doesn’t penalize AC or UMD even if it doesn’t help.

As always thoughts and comments welcome.
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Yep part two of my thought process of getting my head around playing an arty. Today’s topic I hope is fairly clear from the title, Run arms.

First of all. If someone out there is good at copying data and entering it in to a spreadsheet let me know because I am not so good at those like of things. And I have gotten into the habit lately of keeping a spreadsheet for rare items, thanks to Tobril and Fopo for more or less handing me a base spreadsheet to use. Okay it is mostly for epic ingredients but almost anything that is harder to come by or becomes BTC once you use it. And rune arms to me would fit.

Anyway, I am trying to get my head around how they work and what rune arms I am willing to “ruin” to get the full arty experience.

What do I mean by Full Arty Experience and Ruining rune arms? Simply rune arms double your trinket slot. If only at crafting level 3.. and that is huge. I have quite a few cannith crafted trinkets. And wearing 2 at once would be huge! Melee or Ranged Alacrity, Attack Bonus, Dodge are just the tip of the iceberg of good stuff. But take the same slot on a trinket. Now you can easily fit in two. I am totally going to be rocking some tweaked out rune arms. As for Ruining them, I am sure there are some that bind on equip and I think that once you craft on them they BTC (they are not cleanable so I need to be sure what I am added is what I want) as I don’t plan to say arty forever any that I make BTC are burned. 😦

So how about we look at some rune arms? I made a vet 2 arty last night just to play with some arms.

For the 5 and lower levels, aka a few hours I have Flame Warden, Thought Spike (BTC), Candlelight and Flicker or all of them. I didn’t get t play with the Thought Spike however. I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time here. I will just use the Thought Spike maybe the Flame Warden if I want a little more damage added to melee attack.

From 5- 7 you know where I can test there are some really good rune arms, I even have most of them (Missing The Devourer’s Hunger).
Chulchannad’s Claw, Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath, Coronach and The Pea Shooter.

Quick impressions, I like the ones that XXX blast or XXX Lash the best. They seem to be the easiest to hit with both at close range and further out. The Blast one are great closer up. And the Shot ones I like the second to least because of the spread out then come back in to hit the target, although I have the feeling that they will grow on me as they hit 3-more mobs at once. But the XXX bolt ones seem to have the most issues hitting at range and in melee. Slowly backing up with a hard target on the training dummy I started to shoot the ground about 30 feet.. But if I aimed with the mouse look it hit from the end of the ship so if I ever want to snip something the bolt arms are good.

Oh for effects I liked the most that I shot last night: Khyber’s Fury and Flicker

Okay looking at the extra powers the stand outs are The Pea Shooter for Superior Potency III and not a lot else. Kyber’s Fury is cool with the Fort, but I have a cove hat for that. And for some guys I can see Chimera’s Breath for the Proficiency: Bastard Sword and Diehard… I might have some good low level Bastard Swords now that I think about it… Hmmm

For the imbue I like the ones that add light and force. And below level 7 those are Coronach and Thought Spike. I really don’t want to be level 7 and still using a level 1 rune arm… The Electrical II from the Chimera’s Breath should be okay at level.

So for the first 7ish levels for the ones I played with it is Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath and The Pea Shooter.

But let me tell you something. I think you can lower the level of the rune arm with masterful craftsmanship shard. So if there was a 9 I really loved I could make it use able at 7 and then keep using it until I found a better one. As this is just a tmp life I don’t want to burn any harder to get ones like the ones from the Tor dragons so the next ones with real options are at level 15.

So is there are rune arm that stands out in the level 9 range that wouldn’t suck from level 7 to 15?

Yep the Recoyle. It is a force based Rune arm, so Force II. It has a max charge of 3 which is not bad. The level 13 ones are charge 4. Is has Anathema which reduces spell hate. Let Fopo take the hate this time. And has four crafting levels. On the down side it is a shot weapon of which as above I am not currently a fan as well as having Superior Impulse V. There are two arty spells that do force damage, Elemental Prod at lvl 3 and only damages elementals. And Tactical Detonation lvl 6 which is out side of this rune arm’s range. Oh Prismatic Strike does a little force damage and is level 5 so… win?

Anyway that is my current thoughts on rune arms. I will need to play with them some in real combat. The training dummy only is so so as a weapon test platform.

Tomorrow… Stats?

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With my question/s from yesterday answered. Thanks to everyone that had helpful information btw. I think I can start to share my thoughts and fears of playing an arty in no particular order of importance.

I might really like the arty class a lot, and I am worried might want to stay that way for a while.
How do I fit my current gear load out in to an arty build.
The strongest build is an melee/arm/caster build.
Seems strange not using as much ranged on a ranged focused class.
Are the dogs going to be a help or an hindrance?
What rune arms to use as I currently want to return to a Wiz/rog build, any crafting I do will need to be on disposable rune arms….
Lots of feats seven regular + a bonus feat every 4 levels or 5 total bonus feats == 12 feats (+1human??)
Construct Essence feels real good from a super self reliant point of view. But how great is 50% of a reconstruct spell?

So those are the main thoughts floating around in my head right now.

Lets pick one and examine it a wee bit.

Lots of Feats: 12 to 13 feats 5 which have to come off a list. Ones that I can think of off the top of my head are: (again not in an order of importance.. )
Augment Summoning
Construct Essence
Dragonmark of Making 1 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 2 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 3 (If Human)
Wiz past life
Barb Past life
Rog past life?
Metamagic Feat
Heighten Spell
Maximize Spell
Quicken Spell
Power Attack

Extend seems good but a quick look at the arty spell list and it is not good enough.
Ranged feats? Just because I am not planing to focus on ranged doesn’t mean I never want to range. This monk/rogue life has been harder do to the lack of a good ranged attack.
Do I build for AC? It seems feasible at least while leveling. There are 2-3 “needed” feats if I wanted to do that.

Lets look at one more topic, My banked gear:
I have a lot of goodies that I have from when I was a caster that will help out a lot as an Arty.
CordOp sp bracers/Torc (leveling with a both is amazing)
Stormreaver’s Napkin – a finer leveling tool/slot for int and +1 Dcs I don’t think is out there.
Int,Chr, dex, Str tod rings and some of their set pieces
My GS rapiers will make a comeback Along with most of my GS minus the Kamas and Bow.
My uber quiver will remain uber, will need to grab a stack of returning bolts forget making stacks all day long I could be getting xps.
My amp gear will help off set my healing penalty a lot if I am not taking care of myself.

It might be worth the effort to make a Ring of Master Artifice like level 12t2 super quickly leave it BtA for leveling other permanent Arties/WF blue bar people..

Well that is enough for today. Tomorrow lets look at Rune Arms…..

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Samius is almost capped, and Samyus is not so far away that I can’t finish him up with a few raids and a few runs in the IQ and whatnot.

So it is time to start thinking about the next life. Right now I think that is going to be Arty, don’t be surprised if the next few posts have a lot of thoughts and fears I have about the Arty class. But that is not the topic of today’s post.

Today I want to know more about how the bonus crafting levels from Artificer Craft Mastery and the Marks of Making work? This is what the ddowiki has to say

“Your crafting level is first calculated based on what your current experience total would put you at, then the Artificer bonus levels are added. This means you save dramatically on leveling costs and time, particularly at higher crafting levels”

That is totally clear now! No wait I am still lost.

This is what I get, it I am 100 in all schools now when I hit 20 arty levels I wil count as if I am 110 is all schools. If I take all the Marks that is 10 more levels so 120. So my % for success moves up and allows me to make higher level shards, but how is the xp rewarded? Is it with or with out the bonus levels? Will it be worth being human and taking the making marks for the bonus levels xp wise?

Okay maybe my question/s is not that complex. ;P

Even so it is important to me as my Arty life is just a pit stop on my path to completionist but if I can knock another 20-30 ish permanent crafting levels and stock up on some harder to make shards and then TR and retain a sizable amount of gain then a pure human arty might be they way to go. If that doesn’t seem likely then splashing a few “evasion levels” and choosing dwarf or halfling might be an worth wild race if just to get back into my “normal body” and feel more like Samius for a while.

So what do you know about crafting levels post Arty life?

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