Tag Archives: AC

Ac Changes and Me (P2 – Lvl 20 Samyus)

by

0

Samyus is/was my AC build. I was able to self-buff to over 85 long term with only ship buffs and class/race abilities/feats. With a few other buffs from other people I was able to get a 92 or more fairly simply.

So how did the Ac changes feel last night? Irritating and infuriating.

Last week doing just normal stuff I felt amazing, sure casters can be a problem but if you charged them and imp sunder/stunning blow – trip you can avoid some spell damage. Last night I didn’t feel untouchable. In fact I all night long I drank and drank pot after pot just trying to keep my health bar at a fair level so the healer might feel sorry for me and throw a heal my way a little bit but I had to yell at him a lot for heals. At one point even I ran to him to just stand in his aura while there was some plot story happing and he moved away so I followed him and he moved again taking his aura with him and I said if I am not allowed to use the aura for healing then you damn well better heal me or I am about to barb out and then I will scream for HEJLS nonstop. The healer went “What?”

Head Shake….

So some details, or what I can remember of my details. Samyus’ Ac is now about the same maybe a little higher over all. I spiked to 100 at one point but I don’t remember exactly what I did to make it happen. But I think my normal non- tanking mode AC was around 90-95, which according to the % calculator is a 69% (Sexy if not great ☹). Switching to my epic Swashbuckler from my +5 mitral tower shield cost me 3 or 4 Ac and I went to a 68% but gained double strike and the rest of the Swashbuckler abilities. So I was sword and baby board most of the night.

Incoming damage felt all right, most numbers were in the 15-20 point range, if coming in a lot more often (that is my issue). My dodge % at about 8-9% I saw one attack missed due to dodge all night. I am thinking I need to try and boost that dodge number some and see if it saves me from a hit more then once a night. Switching to the E Dualist leathers cost me 7-10 points of AC (dropping my & to low 60s) but added a lot of dodge (taking me to 15ish% with room to go to 24%) so it is a maybe until I get my Purple armor.. But if the dodge % is not worth wild I will be freeing up a few dodge item slots.

I also felt that I missed on trash mobs a little more then normal but I was able to use cleave and great cleave to boost attacks here and there and I feel like that made those misses up. Also I felt like my hate was turned all the way up. A lot of times I could run in to a friendly AOE spell and cleave/G cleave and take all the agro. I even caught Tobril on his caster Intim trash off me trying to get his torc to proc some and I was able to regain the hate with just my AOE attacks right away. So I like that.

I also love the +x[W] damage with the cleave/G cleave. It is nice to see that 60 first number become 100+ on a non crit spin. Might look in to picking up the Whirlwind Attack as an option. Swapping is totally doable if dodge and past life ranger is not worth the feats any longer. But I will see if adding mobility on its own is worth any thing. Have the feeling those free +0 lessers are about to be real popular.

Btw I am a master of flowers. Totally helpful for my pure defender fighter to have ki effects, but it looks like I need to level it up to go Unyielding Sentinel. Which is the real destiny I want (I think/hope). More on that later when I know a little more.

❤

Ac Changes and Me (P1 – Little Samius)

by

1

Getting home to an updated client was real nice. I was able to change and long on with out hours of waiting for things to update and mad tweeting about how I couldn’t get on. So I am calling last night a win on that alone. I got to play. There are lots of people that couldn’t due to waiting for updates. And to those people I say Remote Desktop or phone your kid/wife like I did.

Speaking of the wife real fast. Today is our 13th wedding anniversary. In light of my new try to get healthy mindset I bought her a bike last Friday and now she thinks I am trying to kill her via bike riding. But really I just want her to be healthy too. If she is going to make me live a long life she better tag along or else….

Anyway back to ddo.

After spending a ton of plat reupping the ship buffs (the DG got hit with the ship wipe bug) with two rentals a buff my haggle bard became broke as shit but Samius was able to buff so worth it?

Now normally I don’t bother with AC until level 5 or so on Samius. A crafted Invulnerability outfit with a med guild slot is all the defense I need for the first few levels. But I thought lets look and see how things stand with the AC changes. At level four I had a 29 AC which the little defense calculator told me was 50% to 64% miss seems good, right? I am not sure if I was fighting mobs over the level that Turbine does its calculations against or if elites factor in to things more then the calculator can factor in but there was a constant stream of red 0s flying across the screen. Meaning I was getting hit but my DR was reducing the damage to 0 or less. I caught myself dodging once all night, but my dodge is all of 1% so that makes sense expect I have 3 monk levels and 1 artificer level thought monks were like the dodge masters??? I will say I don’t feel any different AC wise right now at level 4. I normally get hit a lot and live via the Invulnerability DR.

On the flip side I did notice a difference in my attacks landing. While no to yellow skull I felt I was missing more then before. It could be that I normally use higher pluses wraps or a staff at this level where this life I only have my +0 lesser vamp wraps boosted via my arty spell to +1. Yeah baby! Arties rule, even at level 1!

But I was missing a lot more then I normally would during normal play, however I did red skull myself in a few places and I felt that I didn’t have the normal difficulties getting out of the red skull that I normally do. So maybe there the Ac/to hit changes were helping me. Fopo will know better then I because he is always complaining when I red skull us when he can’t hit. But if didn’t like the red skulls he wouldn’t play with me, right? :p

At the end of the night I leveled to 5. And that is where I start to switch into early AC with the Jidz, a 3 piece Abishi set and shield wands. So maybe I will know more in the next day or two.

Think the guild will be hitting the new stuff to night and I plan to take my tank and that might be an AC shock! I will let you know tomorrow.

❤

Believe It or Not this is my Fighter Life

by

0

Saturday night I capped out As400 and started preparing Samius to TR. I know there is an update coming/is here. But I have to keep my eye on the ball if I am going to hit my completionist goal this year. And really I am not worried about doing the new stuff on Samius yet, give him a few levels when he can get xp out of them. For now Samyus, Butters, Java and As400 will be my explorers into the realms.

I was on the fence as to how to best level Samius this go around a few reasons.

Fopo is planning to use his xp stone to jump to 16 when he reaches level 8. And it is a great plan for him. And if I didn’t want as400 ready for this new content I would have done the same, but I did.

So I will need to be able to mostly solo from 1 to 16 assuming that Fopo waits for me at 16 and doesn’t push on to cap out. Which he could and if he did I wouldn’t blame him for doing so.

Lastly I might not be soloing the whole time, Steiner Davion, Phlor and the wife all have TRs coming up in the next few days/weeks. So depending on everyone’s leveling speed and how much time I spend on alts working on the new content I might be leveling real slowly. Slow enough that people can catch up with me. I just don’t know.

All that typing to get to here, the real start of the post. I can be long winded for no good reason.

How would you build a solo fighter build? What would the first 5 levels look like? Would people know you’re a fighter? This go around I am going 10/9/1 Fighter/monk/artificer. Level 1 artificer and levels 2 through 10 monk, aka no fighter levels at until level 11.

This is what I am calling the Heavy Bowonk build. I get skills (traps and full UMD), a blue bar (for AA) and a few helpful spells from the artificer as well as assess to a few cool wands with out umd checks. Also my scrolls get a little boost. Monk gives me well most of what I need to cap out; ToD, evasion with high saves, free heals, Amp, earth stance (hps, dps, more ac and dr (assuming that MotU didn’t break earth stance)). Fighter will give the feats for both ranged and two weapon fighting as well as more hps and the bonus to fists dps if I do Kensei 1. Not to forget the past life fighter feat once I TR again in a few weeks.

Okay time to go. Look forward to some posts real soonish as to how the AC changes affect me while leveling. You can thank Tobril for requesting them if you get tired of me talking about AC. Remember the Bowonk model can reach real solid AC numbers while leveling. Becoming almost untouchable at different points in the game with simple gear swaps.

Anyway back to work. ❤

Xpac aka the Loss of Excellence Pack

by

9

There are lots of changes coming to the game with this pack. And to me a lot of them feel unfinished. Today I want to as briefly as I can talk about how I feel about the AC changes.

To me Ac is the thing that keeps other from hitting you. And DR is how to lessen blows that land. In my mind they are two very different things. And together they make up how much damage you end up taking in a given combat.

This gives us a clear progression of how one can excel in AC or DR or anything. Want to hit guys with AC of 40 on a 2 and better you better get your to hit to a 39, but if you run in to someone with a 60 AC you need those 20s. Aka it is liner and simple to understand. Hence when DnD switched to the d20 system in 3.0 it revitalized the game as a whole.

Now lets DDO this thing.

You have an AC of 60, fairly simple to get with little effort. And you can tank/play Vod on normal no problem. Sure you take a few hits but you would say you’re a 90% miss tank.

IF you walk into the harbor for a favor run to help your pal earn some TP you are totally untouchable but the mobs that caused you issues when you were level 3, aka a clear progression.

And if you go in to An ELOP you get hit all the time, it is like you might as well not have any AC for all the good it does. Yes is a bummer. But you really haven’t progressed in to that level of AC yet.

Now lets look at the things to come.

You get to an AC of 120 real simply now. And you do that same Vod but watching the numbers and hits you are getting missed 60% of the time. But your new magic DR is taking a lot of the hits smoothing out your damage but you are taking more damage over the whole of the quest. But feels a lot smoother. And you sit aside that feeling of “I am getting hit more with an AC twice as high as before, but the quest seems easier… “.

You go help that same friend do the same favor run and WTF? Level 3 kobolds are hitting you? With that 120 AC, that is not right. But it is for a quick 3 min quest it will be fine. But it feels very wrong.

Now that ELOP your AC is working a ton better then before from 5% miss to 50% miss and that feels great.

And you think if getting hit 50% of the time feels this good what would it feel like to get hit only 80% of the time. So you work and you grind and you lose DPS for AC. And it takes a long time and lots of work but before you know it your AC is 190.

And we do those same 3 quests and in Vod your getting missed 70% of the time. Kobolds are missing 80-85% of the time and in the elob you clawed yourself to 60-65% miss chance. And you start to think all that for what? Less then 20% betterment, why did I bother?

Excellence is gone.

Will it be nice to have my happenstance AC mean something? Hell yes.

But will anyone try to be better then what is easy? I don’t think so. As it stands, there is a reason to GO AC. Once you’re there you feel invincible, and you say how it was worth it. When people ask me about AC I say go big or go home. Soon I will say why would you try to go big?

Can Turbine fix Ac? I think so I like the system as it stands right now with one change. There needs to be a point of AC compared to the attacker’s Bab that puts the defender at a set maximum miss chance. When I did my posts on leveling my SD fighter I ran down some of the raid bosses according to the ddowiki, and most of their Babs were in the 70- 80 range with the Elob being out side of the list in the 100s. But I think that if someone has 1.x-2.0 more AC then the attackers bab give a fixed AC miss chance of 90-95%. Then going big Ac still matters as apposed to get what is easy and be happy with your 50ish miss chance.

Anyway, I will say Turbine is really selling these changes. And people are buying for now. But lets see how they feel once don’t bother with AC becomes be happy with what you have because it doesn’t get any better.

Hopeful I am wrong, but knowing I am not.
❤