Tag Archives: Artificer

Bots like Gear Too

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So I think everyone knows I have been leveling up a main account Artificer. And I really like him/ I am doing things I normally would not, like soloing 2/3s of the DQ flagging quests.

But life is not all rainbows and lollypops, gear is a major hurtle for this guy as he is not one of the super 3 (Samius, Javabot, Darth Samius). Even Samyus has fallen out of favor for Darth as the tanking role in our group has been taken over by Grim, aka just fine to me. I am hoping my Rog will turn my Super 3 in to the Fantastic Four but I don’t think it will, but maybe…

So I have been pondering the where I stop giving a shit gear list for Samiusbot. This is a magic spot for me as once things are close enough I tend to let guys slide and just make due until more things fall into place. I also need to use things that I have or will be grinding almost by happenstance. Like right now EH/EE Tor items are a safe bet as I need a few things for other more loved alts right now like int+3 helms and all that.

So this is what I am thinking, kinda in a nutshell. Keep in mind lots of gear are also this would be cool to finally use…

Main weapon: Needle, this is a no brainer clearly the best DPS repeater at the moment. Boy do we need better repeaters as this is the best and it is not amazing/uber/wonderful.

Main rune arm: I have EE Arcing Sky used the lower level verson it was okay but the range is not uber. Think I can get a EE Turmoil from someone I know we have some in the DG/HoDW. Still kinda meh like all the Tor run arms. I see people running the Corruption of Nature I assume for the rune arm int but I think a +2 some place might be fine… Idk…

Goggles: I am thinking the EH/EE field optics with Int 8 or 3 it don’t matter as I can just slot the other lesser bonus to save slots for now.

Helm: Inclined to do a White or Black dragon helm as both have Con as options so it is a matter of +2 damage and armor-piercing vs 50 more Hp and AC boost. Either is fine.

Body: As I hinted I could White or Black to match a helm OR I could stay in the Epic Blademark. I like it a lot but I think when I am ready I can move it to my Dog and be just as happy and truth the +15 trip would be huge on the dog.

Rings: A Ring of Shadows and Ring of Master Artifice would be great. Filling out the defensive channels in a non dispel able way as well as helping with slots and self repairing…

Belt: EE Seven Ideals is the way to go, potency and slots hello. They seem to be cheep so I think I can pick one up easy enough.

Bracers: Wind Howler seems to remain the best for DPS don’t know if I need to swap them out. Maybe a twisted shade would be better in a group but if I get a EE one Darth has first dibs.

Gloves: Right now I am rocking the Epic Bramble Casters. One because it is cool and two because If I am shooting someone odds are good they are shooting me back if they are hitting me so it is an easy way to fit in 10 piercing DR. Did I say they are cool? But a set of epic charged gauntlets would also hit the DPS boost list.

So in the Cloak, boot slots I have room for GS SP and HP items.

Okay I need to run, but if you have thoughts as always please let me know.

<3s

134 mins, Slow and Steady Completes the Quest

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Last night after watering the plants and doing some light reading I logged in with the goal of rocking the rest of the DQ flagging quests. I grab a hire, Luna the Halfling Fvs and head out to Chains of Flame.

Now Samiusbot is not what I would call super geared up, but he is on his way. I know Chains is a long quest for the xp and doing it solo on a not real dps alt will make it even longer but I figure an hour or so maybe a little longer. My Slaver’s Hand Crossbow is not amazing dps but the Epic Storm is so much slower that they are about the same vs trash.

Pew Pew Pew

Did you know that epic Hard Chains of Pain is filled with traps? I did, but I don’t have the quest down like I do a lot of other quests.  So there was lots of oh snap there is a trap here, move move move! Luckily I tried to keep myself healed up and fire shielded so most of the “Surprise your on Fire!” traps weren’t too bad. Took me about an hour to get to the first shrine. I was tapped out but the hire was in good shape, she like a real person didn’t like to heal a robot. But she and I had a good working relationship when I was rocking some of the other epics solo… Maybe she was just mad at me…

At the 90ish min mark the wife says she is hungry and goes to make food. It is not something I can eat with out cheating on my diet so I start thinking I should find a save place to take an afk. But I press on.

She returns and asks if I am ready to watch a show with her. I say I just want to finish this quest atm and that is when she realizes I am still in chains I am about at the 2-hour mark. So we keep the Netflix at my desk running for a while. About the time I clear to the end fight she is done waiting which is fine I am mostly trying to stand some place safe with auto attack on auto charging my rune arm/firing it off and forcing the hire to heal with mass heal. So I am not super busy.

Finally clear the bosses and the trash that followed me. I have to clear a few more caster trash mobs that didn’t follow me as I back peddled to the ladders on my way to the chest and the orb… 43k xp….

But one more until I am DQ flagged by the weekend. See if I can do the next one on eNormal with out breaking my streak, otherwise I foresee talking about some of my anger issues in tomorrows post.

<3s

Melee Weapon for a Ranged Build

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So Monday afternoon, on twitter, I started asking about rogue builds and was debating pausing Samiusbot for some other easier to level sans invis build. I have been really inspired by a few of the Brits to try my hand at a full time rogue. But I was mentally building and gearing out this for fun build I started wondering if there was something I could do to push Samiusbot on into the post BB/Recon levels. And I started thinking about pasting on some mild melee skills for some encounters…

So I started looking at weapons, focusing on the Sora Katra stuff at first. I had a few reasons; first I had a ton of the different items clogging up my TR cache on more then one alt making it hard to find items in said caches. And second I know that at some point real soon I will be ready to go back to more of a ranged arty (maybe) and I want to be able to throw everything away at any moment.

So after much debate with myself and looking at the mats I had on hand I made a Maiming Rockspliter and a Petrifying War Axe. I wanted both a one handed and two handed weapon, my thought was the Rockspliter would be good for most of my melee needs, leaving me a trail of numbers behind it and using insightful weapons an elemental d6 as needed for monster type the force rune arm it would be good enough for solo work. Where the War axe would be more for times when I have one or two guys to clear and I want to use the axe for more of a CC weapon. If I could have made a Petrifying Rockspliter (which you can’t) I would have made one of those. But over all I really liked how they handled.

What was funny was I took all that time and made those weapons and half the time I ended up using the xbow for the quests I was doing. (Attack on Stormreach chain) but when I did use them they worked as intended. Well enough I have even been thinking about making a main one handed dps weapon for this guy.

Now that I am 14 and Tome turn ins are both so much better/ easier to get I am thinking about making Samiusbot one of them for leveling. No one a Skiver, believe it or not there is more then one option in Tome weapons now depending on your needs. I am leaning towards making a Phosphor.

+5 Heavy mace (1.5[2d4], 18-20×2): Sun Burst, Righteous, Coruscating, Red Slot

I can add a spell power boost to it and make a fairly solid melee/caster stick or go more damage and add an d4/d6 of some other element. I also really like how it has an extended crit range with out being keen so I could work in IC:B and have a simi solid dps simple weapon that can grow with my guy. Also the artwork is Bad Ass!

But I will hold off making anything that is not super easy to replace for a little bit as I have lots of old Reaver loot to look at and possibly use as a make shift melee weapon… although none of them are as smexy as the Phosphor….

And yes I would just try making a green steel xbow, but I hadn’t picked which one to make before TRing but I did check that I had everything to make a double shard green steel weapon before TRing but the middle shard is either hiding in the TR cache or got lost in the TR possess. I have lost many items in while tring, but most of the time missing items are just hiding in a full cache and as the bot had all my scrolls/dragon shard stockpile his cache is super full. Much time will be wasted soon digging through the bank…

Anyway back to work,
<3s

I am Really Missing Invis

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So as I think most of you know, Invisibility is mostly broken as in not working. And there are builds at places that count on invis to maintain a healthy xp/min ratio. Case and point Samiusbot is now level 13 and is doing some sands/Attack on Stormreach work. I don’t know how you run those quests but the way I do them uses invis to skip a few pointless fights.

And while I can do the quests on Samiusbot solo on elite because I have been but the just take soooo long the go from amazing leveling quests and become once and done quests maybe walk them down quests.

It is just a pain.

That said I took the hour or so I got to play last night and just did rare/explorers in the sands and Gh can’t say it was good xp for the hour but it was really fun. The power of a ranged build in the open areas of an explore zone is unmatched by clearing room by room that is most dungeons in this game.

Shooting a mob at the edge of your draw range and watching him run in at you only to die waaaaaayyyyy over there is completely great.

Any way back to complaining that invis is missing again for a min.

Over the weekend the DG/HoDW did its normal team up for raiding and our normal questing. Normally we all just invis and run to the DQ 6 man for flagging but with invised some people just ran threw red skulled and others cleared the way for their piking accounts. Not an issue or a problem really more of an annoyance. Why should level 25s bother killing their way around a level 8-14 explorer zone? Doubly so when they all have access to invis of some sort.

I guess I just miss it not working, as it should. I don’t expect a bug free environment I know like every developer that bugs will happen and they don’t want bugs floating around anymore then anyone else. But man I hope it is fixed real soon.

I am almost to the point where I should just TR someone into a bowonk aka a build that doesn’t care if it can’t invis because it will just smash through the content anyway.

Well lunch time.

<3s

Please join…

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Last night I was just running a couple of sand walkups over and over again. Level 12 now is a little try for my soloing (streak) tastes, but I have been getting by. Any way I get a tell along the lines of “about to start elite Von5 for streak, what to come?”

Now I didn’t finishing my flagging but I looked at his lfm and I remembered a few of those names and guilds so why not. Let him know I need a few mins to flag for the raid. I skipped running von2 because I am dumb. So on casual it should take about 8 mins at most.

The leader replies that they can wait just “PLEASE JOIN”. Warning bells start to go off. But as I was already in von2 I thought what the hell. Four to five mins later I was about to finish Von2 when I get that typical “how much longer?” tell which I replied any moment get started with out me.

Finish up and join in. There were 5-7 others. We had one guy run into a trap, die; get rezed and then recall/drop in the first min of being in. Thanks, guy?

Anyway I learn why I was so badly needed; I was the door opener/trapper with my one level of artificer and my hopefully good skillz. I told them I would try but I make no promises as my few skill points are spread fairly thin but I have a fair search… But I don’t have any issues. Even rolled a 1 on to disarm once and didn’t blow the box so that was a good feeling. But I was running back and forth unlocking this door, working traps, opening that door and back on the traps. I need to refresh my von5 workings.

We keep moving and we get ready to head north. The leader asked who can solo right? I let him know that I could. What I am strong, wise and have a bow. Not to forget my killing/healing skills. But he reminds me of locked doors on the left so I have to go that way… No one can go left I guess so I get the voice and ring and I get assigned the task of handling that side and the raid leader will go the other way. Sure.

Skip to the puzzle/ wheel room and I ask Hey four turns right? And I get a yep. Make the turns and talk to the face. Go threw the first option. And then the second and we are off. I pass back the voice and ring and go on a killing spree. Before long the leader goes something is wrong. Shit, what did I screw up? But after we send the leader up north to check my work turns out that I was fine and the quest bugged out. But he didn’t want to put in a tix and I was burning xp pot and hungry so I bugged out as well.

But it was good to be needed while it lasted. After dinner I checked the LFM panel and saw that he most of that group had a tempest spine run up but was asking for only a healer I almost sent a tell but I decided to bust my balls and run some of the Necro 3 quests and call it a night. Rwar.
So how was your night?

❤

My Dream Rune Arm

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As you know I am having a bromance with the artificer class. I am not planning to leave my wife for Artificer class. But if I hosted a dinner party and she and the artificer class got a little too drunk, dirty smexy things could happen.

That said I still don’t know if it is the final class to build with for Samius over the 18/2 wizard/rogue. One of the main reasons I am holding myself back from becoming the artificer guy is pure removal spells, ie finger, wail, implosion. The ruin arm goes a long way towards making up the lack of removal, but it is not the same, yet.

So how would I fix things? A true removal focused rune arm of course. First of all when I think removal I think PMs so I would think making it few pm like would be easy. Use the necro blot and blast animations for firing off the rune arm. Maybe change the colors just a little and make it more redish over purple over tones, and have the rune arm itself look like it is made of bones. It would need to have a level 5 charge of course.

Have it imbue with say vorpal or manslayer to weapons. The main powers would be a slay living or neg level guard. I like the neg level guard when combined with the second main power, which is when the rune arm is fully charged it would trigger an ability that casts an implosion or the new wail of the banshee spell (add a timer of 30ish seconds before it can be retriggered).

This does two things. One gives Artificers a straight up removal spell/s with a solid DC (rune arm DC are level and Int based), and gives an artificer a reason to stop kiting as stand still in heavy trash combat.

All I know is the arty capstone is real nice but as it does not work with scrolls there is no way except via damage an arty can remove trash mobs.

And once the teck is in place to trigger an event when a rune arm is charged to a given point something happens can make all kinds of fun does X on charge Y events. Like mass repair spells at tear 4 charge, or fire shield % proc at a given point or even different kinds of guards are active at different charge levels say crushing wave while holding a stable charge and freeing ice once at stable+1 level or greater charge.

Lots of possibilities is all I am saying. And to me rune arms are the most fun items added to the game well ever.

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How the Pug Snatched Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Elite VoD

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Saturday morning I am on Samius and sitting on the last rank to cap out. No guildies or channel people are on. Guessing the domain issue is holding some people at bay. I know Phlor is pissed off and refuses to “hack” his Host file. But I luck out and I don’t have to edit my host file and get on right away. Going to say my ISP is not as shitty as his, although Turbine really?

Okay back to the story. Post people check I hit the LFM panel, hey you never know. I might pug something. Low and behold there is a 1 from full Elite VoD looking for something or an artificer with silver weapons. I have silver weapons and even with out the first time bonus Elite Vod is a ton of XP and is worth doing. The group looks fine. I know a few names, as fair to alright players. And I jump in thinking this is going to make a dent in that last pile of xp.

I get in and the path to the raid is clear, win. And the chest is unopened even. I short wait for someone that didn’t make it into the sub yet and we go. No one types out buffs. After I ask for them 3 times both over mic and in chat. So I start giving out deadly. If someone wants silver they better ask. I am about to shrine when someone hits me with GH and blur. I am only down a little sp so why not just go.

As we start to zone in I start getting tells from people asking for silver…. Great…. There is a time for request people. And that is when the rest of the buffs are being handed out. But I go ahead and hand out silver to people that asked via tells. And we start.

The Orthons go quickly, as the leader starts to tank. For the record I don’t think that the leader should tank in pugs unless that leader has a clear second that can give orders for times the leader is busy.

Any way the raid is going nice and smooth. Sully is falling and those HPs are falling off. The healers are healing nicely and all is well. Until the second wave of Orthons hit at the same time a wave of trash devils hit. And there is no clear trash tank or a second to get people focused. People spread out the healers are over taxed and the CC is shitty. And people start to die. I start to give orders (not that it mattered) and rez people. My stack of scrolls started to drop quickly. Some people started to rack up the deaths. And one guy at least that most Sarlona people would know if I typed it out went afk dead and didn’t say anything in chat so I wasted 4 or 5 scrolls on him (btw he never returned).

But we got things under control and started moving again. And sully dropped and dropped. BBs started going up and I said let me BB as I still have 400 sp and the healers claimed to have drank a pot or 2. But still BBs that were not mine kept going up. And we took a few waves of bats and all was fine. Sully dropped and dropped we had some losses but we still had fair dps. And I started to notice that mine were the only BBs. And that I was siting kinda low. But I saw one of the clrs right behind me casting. Then bang took chain lighting to the face and died and then I saw the mass go off. I don’t know if the clr didn’t have quicken on or was trying to use a scroll or what but the heals just slowed to a crawl and people started to die. Right after I died it was the tank, the bard and an healer. And the take fell. Sully was at that sliver of life that you can’t even see. Someone threw the tank a rez and he he retook agro for a bout 4 secs as buff less and at half hp he didn’t get any heals. The healer died right after and the bard ran around like a little girl and died screaming. Or that was my take on it anyway.

After a moment I got a tell from the leader asking me if I knew what happened and I gave my quick summary of the heals slowed to a crawl and we died. Back on the boat and after I dropped group filling up as I let the auto attack kill the training dummy I got a few follow up tells from the former leader. He said that the healers refused to use pots.

I am cool with that but if they said something I would have healed myself and I could have scrolled the tank I think long enough to finish it. But no commutation kills groups more then any raid boss. Also in hindsight if that one dps (who had an Esos) would have returned I think we might have had the extra dps to but us over but like I said it was right there. Hell if one of those divines doted sully vs throwing BB after BB on top on my BBs it would have been enough.

I don’t know. There were a lot of things that could have fixed things. But I think if there was more helpful commutation and less unhelpful chitchat I think we would have won.

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Raiding as an Artificer

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Raiding as an Artificer is a lot different then normal questing and challenge running is a lot different still. This weekend I got to try both raiding on my artificer and challenges (both epic and none epic).

Things I learned:

Even my sorc felt less squishy. In a raid group where there are people assigned to heal the party often over look the artificer. I guess, they are over looked as WF arties are so good at healing themselves and I guess the fleshy arties are rare monsters. I learned to life with a heal scroll in my hand any time I was not standing with the melees. The killer is the only time I died in an elite Vod we ran over the weekend I was both with the melees and standing in an healing aura and died waiting for a mass that never came….

Preping all the weapon damage buffs kills your other spell options. I don’t know about you but on my lvl 18 arty losing Radiant Forcefield and Prismatic Strike for silver and align weapons really hurts. And pulling a six level spell for Deadly often means putting your healing in someone else’s hands when it comes to that red bar.

Also you need to expect that people are dumb. Yes even other arties. At one point I heard, “Sam, can you re silver me?” I say sure and cast silver on that person (happened to be Fopo). Before too long Fopo sends a tell “Silver plz not cold iron”. I don’t even have cold iron prepped. So the other arty (who didn’t buff anyone that I know of) had to cast over my silver. With what happed to be a useless buff, almost harmful buff at that.

Sooner or later everyone wants something, just try to be super clear and flexible to giving buffs. People will have the wrong weapon out when they ask for a buff or die and need rebuffed. And you need to be able to help them out when it happens.

As for challenges you are great. The things that make you needed and wanted in raids weaken you in challenges. But swapping in to a casting, soloing layout is pure gold. Don’t get me wrong weapon buffs are important, but a good BBer that can also heal a tank while not burning SP to dps bosses is huge. More then one run I went after and killed the dragon and then ran back to the group in time to help fopo tank and kill the boss spawn. Then returned to clearing trash with the remaining sp.

The last big thing I think I learned this weekend is a pure arty is a lighting rod set on fire and doused in an acid bath aka no evasion so so at best reflex saves is a killer. Find room for more then just the normal 30 fire/cold/elc/acid/sonic and pro of the same. Find room for those 33% fire and elc absorption item/s.

But I really love the class, to the point that I am thinking of returning to it and not the Wizard post Completionest feat…

❤

Scatter Shot of a Night

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I started off last night with the wife and Stiner doing elite Acid Wit and being asked to help finish it off as they had been working on it for almost an hour. It is easy to forget how long that quest can be. So I jumped in buff less but ready to go. Luckly for me they had all but the end fight done so it took me 5 mins to get 11k. For them I bet is was not as nice. Then they split up. Stiner needed to go and the wife after the drag on she just had wanted to get her get gear on. She had just greatered her very first alt she created one that has been left forgotten since the level cap was 16 until now.

So abandoned, I sent out the Fopo signal. And waited. Turns out Fopo was out with the wife and would be a while. So I got a jump start on my dual boxing/Wednesday project of leveling both a TRed Wizard and dragging around a new Arty on my son’s account. Level 3 now in about 2 hours of work. Not to bad.

Finally, Fopo logs on and we knock out a few Litany runs before it is time for him to go. Inching towards taking level 18. Must be strong and wait but man I am ready to burn threw the levels.

When he goes the guild decides after some chit chat to do a Vod real fast for xp for the wife. Tobril even gets me a Artificer. And that was a double edge sword. On the good side I got good on my weapons. On the bad he wouldn’t shut up. To the point where I sent tells to Tobril asking him to say something. But he didn’t he just tried to talk over the artificer and did some times. Others not so much. All I have to say is if you think that you can more or less solo everything then stop grouping and do it. Else let the others play too.

After words I was talked in to doing some challenges again for xp. Unlike most challenge runs I stayed on my tank and did some tanky things. Have to say I like playing him out side of raids more then I should.

So there you have it. A night with a little bit of everything. Tonight however had better net me some xp and level 18 or else.

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Artificer Spell Stuff

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So last time I said I would talk about spells a little as I finally found a little wiggle room in my spell list. Okay so a second 6th level spell slot to play with direct damage spells: Tactical Detonation and Blade Barrier. For a while I was using BB. I love BB. I feel it is one of the best spells in the game. Yes better then Wall of Fire.

But running around with mobs following me is not how my artificer plays or at least that is not how I mean for him to be played. So I started playing with Tactical Detonation.

Tactical Detonation if you know know the spell breaks down as follows:
1d3+3 fire damage per two caster levels @ level 16 8d3+24 (33-47 range with 40 points average )
knockdown
1d2+2 force damage per caster level (no save) @ level 16 16d2+2 (50-62 range with 56 points average)
Reflex for half fire damage and Negates knockdown.

Thanks http://anydice.com/ for some quick maths.

The area of effect is a little bigger then say fireball and handles a lot like Lightning Sphere. Guess the idea is artificers make little grenades and throw them. The height is lower so it doesn’t hit the ceiling and ruin the cast, but it also has issues getting to targets above you, win some loose some. Also like Lightning Sphere it breaks breakables, but doesn’t knock down doors or light torches in Inferno like a fireball would and I hopped.

But how does it feel?

I like it a lot. Enough I made both Superior Impact and Inferno clickies. And boy I love having those clikies around because they hit my newest favorite spell Prismatic Strike. Prismatic Strike is still holding up. Although I don’t think it will last too much longer as an removal spell 30d+30 for 90ish point base is not going to last, when you take out a 3rd because it is fire damage and we are about to encounter a ton of fire immune mobs.

Any way back to Tactical Detonation, toss a TD and most of the mobs get knocked down and I can melee safely.

Tonight, first think I get to level to 17. Woot! But then I get three more spell slots fill 1, 4 and 5. 1st is an easy grease, 4th Cold Iron I think, but 5 has some options. Align Weapons, Silver Weapons or Repair Serious Damage, Mass are all fair options. At some point I will want both Align and Silver Weapons will be musts in a few levels. But for now.. As long as I am using the Dog and Tobril is leveling his WF artificer with us a mass repair spell would be helpful. But idk, I might just start carrying Silver now and get used to it. Thoughts?

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