Tag Archives: Melee

My Undead Monster?

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This is my current take on the Melee Wizard. Right now most of my gear is laughable, this is another guy that got to 20/22 and just stopped getting played much. I knocked out his third life as a rogue/figher to make soloing to cap fast and easy and for the most part it was.

How much of this do i really need to explain? 17 wiz is for Power Werd Killz, if you can live with out it then you might only need between 12 and 15 wizard levels. For me i want Otto’s and Power Werd Stun so 15 is my personal minimum for a melee caster.

Main defenses are miss chances, Wrath form, Blur/Displacement and Hps. I think i can work in a 30 -40 PRR with the right items and what not and i want to max out my dodge. Think right now it is like 8% with only feats to add to dodge.  It is also worth saying i took all the ways to get Radiant Forcefield effect. I didn’t love the idea of a triggered cast based on my live total but then i tried it and i dig it. Sure it cuts down on incoming damage so you can heal up but it is also a HUGE VISUAL CLUE! And that is huge when you are playing a super busy character, it is easy to lose track of your HPs in the thick of things.

Things that might be confusing. That one point in Int on the EKnight tree, that was an messup. I was trying to spend the 30 points for the top tear when i realized that i just didn’t have the points for it and the dwarf/Pm lines i wanted, went to hit cancel and hit Cool Cool instead…. I was too cheep at that moment to bother fixing it. I will clean it up later.  Why didn’t i nab that last level in the dragon mark? Think i will when i fix that Int point, but really the thing i thought was most important in the dwarf tree was Con to damage then the forcefield after that i wanted to get into the Class PREs and i just didn’t have extra points to take the ranged grapnel.  Lastly i really like how just those few points really sang in the Assassin tree. That is a lot of dps for not a lot of points, a really great return.

Well i hope to get some time on this character soon. But i feel that he will always feel behind until i gear him out really well and i am not sure how motivated  i am to do that right now.

 

<3s

 

 

As Promised More Gear List

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This last week in my “spare” time I have been looking at and planning a gear list for Javabot and to some extent Samius. But today I want to share where I am at on Java’s possible gear list. Let me just post the SS from my Google doc and then we can jump into the list.

Javabot gear

Okay so number one, right off the bat, what is the best way to fit in wisdom and matinee as much dps as possible? Last night I picked up a pair of Intricate Field Optics (3 Ins Wis) so that leaves a few options to round out wisdom. We could do an 8 trinket from the Demon web but I swap trinkets a lot and there is that whole cleaned Litany Java happens to already have… We can do a dragon helm and that might be one of the better options but I can’t rule out using a colorless slot like the one in the Field Optics and being 1 down from an 8 item.

Lets look at gear set-up for Spellpower, in order of importance Java needs cold, devotion, elec then the rest… Using this I want to use a 24/7 item for cold to me the least likely item to get swapped around would be the shield. So it is easy to fill the red slot on a LoB shield. But after that things get fuzzy, I could break the Claw set and make Bracers of Air and use one of the devotion trinkets then start on the rest. OR I could wear a Loth trinket, keep the claw set use the Darkstorm Helm, Rock Boots and find a EE Belt of Seven Ideals. Keep in mind that swapping belts would loose my con6/gfl back up and the Barb set… But hey Green and a colorless slot…

Any way the options are getting huge that is why I made a spreadsheet right? To try and hit a moving target…

Well as always leave thoughts or suggestions in the comments.

<3s

Build thoughts for Anne, on the Quick

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*Due to a massive snow storm that hit Kansas work closed early and i was scrambling most of the day and didn’t get this posted. I will be knocking out a proper post for today later but for now…

So I got to catch up on DDocast yesterday and on this weeks show Anne asked for build help for a soloing melee (assumed) clr/fighter/monk(?) build…. And while I should take a few more days to think things over wook is taking a snow day and I just need to put out a blog so instead of writeing about Epic GH like everyone else lets do some build talk! I think you can stay 12/7/1 Anne but you might still need a +1 heart…

First thought is if you’re doing a 1 lvl splash classes that are best are Arty, Fighter and barb. Monk is okay, but these other options are just better. Me I really love Arty for ranged feats and the +1 weapon buff. Hey +1 to hit and damage is amazing and having a lever opener that can die in traps all day long is nice that and she already has fighter levels.

Next is play style, Sword and Board is the nuts for soloing. Add in enough PRR and good self-healing and you may not be the uberest dps but you will get through almost anything. So Defender 1 for sure, taking about prestige classes we don’t want to forget Radiant Servant 2.

So I missed race, TR lives and gear specs so I am just going to be fugue on stats and whatnot and just give out lines for those things. But like many builds this one will be a big amp build meant to last in a fight not finish fast and heal when the fight is done. So Con is more important Str, Chr has double duty for Arcane buffs as well as healing and you will want enough Int for cross-classed UMD and balance, and you need just enough wisdom to cast a owls wisdom if you loose your Wisdom item.

As for a fully fleshed out build, there are just too many options for 20 mins build time to really look at in detail.

Well good luck Anne, hope you find something that works for you. Now if you want a 18/1/1 fighter/barb/arty build let me know and I can get you a few plans…

❤

Burn you Bloody War Forge!

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Okay, so I didn’t want to use bloody in the title but last time I cursed in the title I think a Dev (Jerry) changed it. So I thought why make him work???

Saturday the wife had a birthday party out of town to go to so I got the house to myself to play, have chicken wings delivered and generally not do a damn thing that is actually useful to the household. Well I did put the dogs out when I needed a drink. ☺ aka Project Dps is in full swing.

Darth Samius is now a Helf, 6 fighter, 1, arty, 1 barb and it is working out really well. I grabbed a falchion with a med guild slot and made it Keen for the first few levels. Then around level 3-4 I took a moment to slap maiming on it and life is good so far. Using the Clr dilettante feat my healing is really sweet for the level and soon I should be able to drop 3 ap in to powering up the dilettante feat and be able to use heal scrolls with a fair chance.

The barb interaction is working as expected. Having two rages (barb level + barb past life) means 3+ mins of MORE damage. And that is often the just right amount of time to be raged up for me. 90ish seconds at a time lets me clear a few rooms but doesn’t go so long that I need to pot for healing. And right now wand healing is great! Making plat on a heavy melee alt that wasn’t monk based, color me surprised.

So everything is going smooth right? Well um Tobril may have finally gotten his work RL issues cleared up. To the point where in the hour and change he got to play last night he capped and prepped for xp farming starting tonight. So I need to get Samius ready to go. Thing is I still don’t have a pally build. Sure I have an out line for what I am calling the Catholic Priest. But saying 9/9/2 monk/pally/fighter a build doesn’t make…. Oh well I will figure it out on the run I guess.

If I didn’t have a ton of leveling monk gear btc on Sam I would try more of a tanky build but after seeing the places where Tobril had issues on his sorc frame I think the monk will just do better as I know where it struggles and that is where his sorc frame will pick up the slack.

In any case go by plat sink WF melee and hello to plat earning Helf melee.

❤

Oh ps, using that keen maiming falchion first number crit max so far is 130ish all raged up (spell+feat) + great cleave on one of the priests in Bloody Crypt.

Project Big Hits, p2

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So we know fighter will be the main class in my Darth Samius build. So to me the next big call is race and splash levels….

To me race and splash levels are very close things. You wouldn’t want to splash sorc on a Horc melee build would you? Not unless your trying to be very funny…. And frankly you not that funny, so stop trying.

So options:

Horc, the clear winner in 2 handed dps, when that is heavy action boosted focused.
Helf, the clear winner with the most options…. And the strongest race right now.
Human, a very solid choice not as strong as Horc but I would say in the top 3 races in the game right now.
Dwarf, Very solid if you plan to use axes and combat skills. You could do worse also cool beards…. ☺
Halfling, who doesn’t love them? And with fighter as the base finding some feats for the healing marks might be a fair way to go. But they are not the strongest melee race…
Are there other races?
Elfs would be good if you want to use race weapons they get a falcon line, very nice but down con…. ;’-(
Drow, nope.
Oh WF…. They went from a powerhouse race to meh in one update. Sorry your heals suck, you lost your immunities, armor is shitty and more. There is just no reason to play WF unless you’re an arty right now.

So in my mind it is between Horc, Helf and dwarf with Elf maybe poking its head into the race as I am leaning at using a falcon over the greataxe. But really it comes down to who can heal the easiest and that at least for now is the Helf via the dilettante feats.

The Helf has a lot of other things going for it atm, human amp and human versatility are huge, throw in human adaptability and you have the best of the human options.

As for the splash…

To me there are 4 main options.

2 rog, skills (mainly umd) which will let us lesser at 20 to adjust the stats and let umd take over for healing freeing up the dilettante feat for something else and evasion.

2 arty, same skills as above but gives most of the key xbox feats so giving a ranged option with little work. We loose evasion however. But we can go xbow and shield when needed or rune arm for a little more ranged dps.

2 monk, we decide not to worry about umd and will stay clr dilly wise but gives fists for some fights, as well as evasion. But mainly 2 more feats to play with.

Or the one I am leaning towards atm, 1 barb 1 arty. You loose rune arm use from the 2 arty splash but gain fast movement and another rage (assuming I take the past life barb feat {I totally will}) and +1 more to power attack I will be losing do to my race and main class picks.

As always let me know what you think via the comments.

❤

Falling so Hard

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So one of my big fears of playing the Arty class is coming true. I am falling for it fairly hard. I am already thinking of doing a major juggle and switching guys in to different kinds of Arties. I was telling a guildie the other day (think it was Phlor) that they are the most complex class I have ever played. It takes so much concentration to make them sing.

The thing is even with all the things I love about them and I truly love to play this life, I feel I am busy doing all the cool thing and not really watching what I am doing. And that is leading to play error deaths. For example think I died 3 times in Tide Turns last night. WFT? Twice while getting the traps and once clearing the last room. Cleared everything but the water Ellies, while Fopo on his Pally life dropped the boss. Went to get them and took 6 shots from Frost Lance. As I had died earlier I lost my ship resistances and had so much else going on I forgot to cast them on myself so my 2 points of cold resistance from the ranger life stopped 12 points of the 204+ points of damage. Just a lot of things to keep track of over a normal caster.

I want to do a little break down, mainly for myself but you might dig it.

Casting: They have some really good spells, unfortunately they cap out at 6th level. Right now at level 9, I have three slots for direct damage spells. Static Shock, Lightning Sphere and Blast Rod. As I said they are very good. I really love Lightning Sphere to the point I even keep a copy of it unmetaed just for breaking things. Did you know its damage works through walls and stuff? So all those low level quests with 4+ breakables behind a gate can be broken with out having to stop to open things. Making racking up a ransack bonus a ton faster, and it is way nicer to make concentration check for a spell if a million little mobs are hitting for 1 or 2 points of damage vs trying to open a door/valve and being stopped every time you take 1+ point of damage. They are also loaded up with indirect damage spells, with the weapon buffs and haste like armor buff. Think I will be swapping to Lighting motes and carrying Haste scrolls however, as Armor of Speed doesn’t counter slow and at these levels the mobs spam me with that spell.

Wands: Boy howdy. Okay this is really the Artificer Knowledge feats in action but I most notice it with wands. Vendor shield, resistance (when I remember to use them), Fox cunning and other stat boosting wands are all golden. I even have been using a web wand to good effect. And I need to remember to nab an ice storm wand or two. I have the feeling that they will rock.

Melee: Okay this is a lot different now that I am level 9 and swapped out my claw set. I still do 20-30 normal numbers in the first melee slot. But I almost always hit even with power attack on thanks to Insightful Strikes but the trail of other numbers is almost sick at this level, right now I have a Icy burst, Lighting burst of Pure good scimitar from level 4 that I am still using because of this trail of numbers. Base + icy+shock+ good+ rune arm + weapon buff. Most swings of 18+ crit for icy and shock burst effects. That is a fairly impressive list of numbers. I have taken to using a race required paralyzing Sword with Icy burst and still the string of numbers is impressive.

Ranged: To be honest I don’t do a ton of ranged combat this live other then the rune arm. But I made a quick shock of pure good heavy repeater just to have around in case. And I have to say once boosted with Insightful Strikes and acid damage and using the auto reload clickly plus a rune arm the ranged damage is very nice. Did the Pit on Elite last night and I was able to stand up top during the end fight and let Fopo run around and get the mobs and it was very nice.

Pets: So the dog has issues. Mostly with weird bugs. Like if I go below decks on my guild ship I have to leave the boat for the dog to reappear, as well as how the dogs can’t use guild slotted items, or when it just decides to lock up and you have to dismiss it and re-summon it to make it do anything again. There are plenty of none bug related issues like how there is only a weapon and armor slot. They are dogs hello! No dog collar. /shakes head. And once you make a module and out grow it you can sell it or break it down for mats because there are no way to recycle that module as a new module. Oh other pets, have you seen the Flame Turret? Would like to see an something like an auto ballista or a catapult for say boss fights at cap but the flame turret is fun at level so far.

Any way thinks I am doing with my arty that is working and not in the coming days.

❤