Tag Archives: Power leveling

TR Weekend Report, Milking the XPs.

by

6

Yep, we did it. We did the TR to cap thing rocking an Otto box’s leveling stone to make a huge level jump, have to tell you it was very sweet. Levels 1through 8 took about 7 hours so a little slower then I would like but there was some little sister action, you know when you have to wait for your little sister to catch up, but that was 3/4s due to someone waiting until the last min to decide what to do. But wanting to partake of the TR Train. Hey I am all for leaping with out looking as long as there is a team of people willing and able to help you as you get your footing, which we all had.

I want to say I was death free until we were doing Elite Jeets, and only then I died when the kitter dropped and I rushed in to take kiting duty while the kiter got back on her feet. I took a finger of death and my DW had just run out…. But I had placed myself in a place were I could self-res via the shrine and took one or two more deaths while buffing/helping the kiter get control back. Over all for all the crazy that was fling around at the time I think we did fairly well. Tobril’s parents were punking him right at the moment claiming that they were mins away from a surprise visit when he was happily chilling in my basement 7 hours away from his house… The wife and I were trying and failing to not bust out into laughter. His frustration at his parents joke was complete. Don’t think things would have been that bad had they not actually surprised visited him once or twice…

The chest (via Tobril) was good enough to leave me a Terror, which I had just added to the gear list I should have moved over for post stone pre epic gear.

In the very next quest I just plain messed up and didn’t have quicken set up for all my repair spells and failed an important concentration check and fail to -1. Thought I would recover but the melee mob that I had been fighting ran off when I went down and then turned and finished me off…. Grumble. Followed not long after with death by slipping onto spikes to rescue a party member. I apologized to everyone and promised to stop being a fuck up while I rebuffed. Thankfully we had a few deaths in that quest and I was not the only one that needed to rebuff.

The rest of the afternoon went very smooth, including the back end of IQ and elite Kobold and Monastery. Then I needed to try and be a good friend and called it a weekend. Tobril had a 7 hour drive after all and it was already around 3:30 my time or 9:30 for the brits. Looking at twitter the brits kept going and hit 20+ last night. The wife is also at 20 on her fighter, so looks like tobril and I will need to rock a few things on Wednesday to put us all ready for epics this weekend.

Will save how I feel about the Jug build for later in the week. But I do have a lot of mindless Challenge grinding to do in the next few weeks I want to make a Master Artifice Ring and maybe a few of the Elemental weapons…

Also I will be swapping a feat or two and maybe working in the two weapon chain and or the Shuriken Expertise just to see if I can get the Stance/s proc % rate per min equal to or grater than my Evoc Archmage Wiz….

Well

PMs Rule! AMs Drool! Or Do They?

by

2

I have been a fan of the PM longer then I think most people know. I was on the PM bandwagon from day one. Before live even, lets say Lam day one. You can go back and check the tapes, but I back on DDocast I described Lich form (back when it was a clicky) as god-mode.

But back when epics were a hold-fest I took on of my wizards and reset him to be an Enchantment AM and it was fun. Not the most amazing build I ever had but fun. Then we had the change to Mass hold monster vs SR and later the change to allow removal spells in epics and I no longer have an AMs.

But I think that might be wrong, at least during the heroic levels. Or I should say pre Lich form….

My break down of PMs:
Undead Forms, are really just a way of saying I will take care of myself until Lich form when being undead becomes more then a self healing perk. Sure each one has an upside and a down side beyond use Sp to get HP. But you don’t see many level 20+s running around in Vamp or Zombie form do you? Before I leave forms I want to rank them from best to worse real fast. Lich, wrath (almost a tie with Lich), zombie, vamp. Some of you might have seen that coming, but others maybe not. But wrath form is really under loved atm, if you have the feats and the points take them both and think about what form would be best for a given quest. I will bet a lot of the time 2 less dcs will be over powered by 25% incorp and +20 to move silently and balance, if your looking at shorting the time in quest. Also getting wrath at 12 vs 18 is huge bonus.

Pets, they have a time and place. But I have a hard time finding points to spend on them. However, the thrill of summing a normal skeleton in a quest with mob skeletons and watching your party members try to kill it is amazingly fun times. Otherwise they are mostly for times when you can perch them and have them range things with out getting hurt while you afk.

Necro Stuff, to me other then the self-healing in form the best part of the PM is Nerco attacks. I use them more then any other attack spell. They are like 4-6 on my quick bar and often I just cycle them when I am in damage mode. More then once I have had to leave form so I could be fleshly healed by a party member while I cleared the room with these attacks.

AMs on the other hand have the ability to be extremely flexible as there is not a clear set path you have to take. You can just run up the line netting you more Sp at each AM tear.

Quick aside: Speaking of those tears there are 5 tears of AMs (every 3 lvls after 6) vs 3 for the other PRE. Mening that you get those tears much faster with splashes then the other PREs. Example, with the PM if I do 18/2 at level 18 (16/2) I still only have PM 2 but with AM I could have 4 tears of the PRE.

Arcane Booms, The AM only gets 2 low costs spam attacks Blot/Blast. They use sp vs hp for their cost but with out the aura doing the constant healing you wouldn’t want to be burning hps anyway. I think the Pms might have it a little better in the cheap spam attack department but I think the AMs being force damage are good too. Hell some PRE’s have run on water as a tear 2 power, force blots are a huge step up.

The Meat of the AM PRE, spell like abilities. Some Schools are better then others at different levels. But over all I think they are mostly good but not worth going too deep into. Do you really need a Pk or a DD SLA at level 15? Not really. That said some of the schools really have some good ones depending on play style.

What am I going to do? Think I am going to try leveling up as an AM. Last time I leveled up a PM I skipped to 16 and while I found 1-9 to be fairly easy as normal. Trying to use the forms just as the mobs really started in on the light damaging spells in a 3-4 party group keeping an elite streak running to be crazy. Opps here is 400+ points of light damage, Splat!

Will I switch back to PM post lich form? Most likely. Also I think I will do evocation focus while leveling with a plan to play a little more aggressive. But keep in mind I have all the toys and all the perks of completionest so I can handle my healing with out having to use my SP.

If this was my first arcane/wizard I would say be a PM. But I would warn you that you don’t always want to be form.

In any case I am sure I will talk about how things are playing as we relevel and into the post 20 endgame, so things might change or not but either way I will let you know.

❤

Just Like Everyone Else

by

3

Just like everyone else I am debating on how to best use my Stones of skipping levels.My first thought was to jump a huge amount of XP the next time Samius TRs again. Level 8 is not hard for Fopo and I to knock out in a day. But if it is just him and I then it doesn’t take very long to cap anyway. We slow down with more people. Not because more people slow down the questing, but because we don’t want to loose people on the chains and/or strand people in places they can’t solo/pug out. Example we spent all night last night trying for the last sigil piece so we can hit Litany hard and fast, as it is almost a level on its own, last life we had 4 people to grind out sigils for and they were not always available when we were hitting those quests for xp. Anyway I think I have ruled out using it on Samius as I am always willing play him, alts are not so lucky. That said I have a few capped guys that I have been thinking need a TR to help them out.

Samiusbot is a first life WF PaleMaster. His gear is not bad, but not great either. And for a first lifer his Dcs are fairly good, 43-44 wail 42-43 for most everything else. But he has no Spell Pen to speak of and his HP wearing his “DC” docent is laughable and his Sp is horrible but he has no Sp items so it is not as bad as it looks. I could easily do a junk Barb life to 8 skip to 16 and then round it out to 20 and then go back to 20 solo as a wizard. Leveling casters are easy for me, barbs not so much.

As400 is a lot like Samiusbot but he is in a ton better shape gear wise, having his Torc and no super special docents to make him stay WF. But I thought he might become my permanent Artificer as it aligns with his original build goal of a CC/Xbow build. Yes I had a Grease casting WF heavy repeater build for a long time before the artificer was a dream in the Devs eyes. And yes he got morphed into a melee Wiz but his core gear is still there. I could also shift gears with AS400 and go pure DC wizard even though when Samius is done he will be king of my DC caster hill. That is a few lives away yet and it wouldn’t suck to have a big DC guy for epics as Samius wraps up completionist. But having him go DC caster and then Samiusbot

Butterz my Bard could also use another life. I want to change her race and make some adjustments to her build that only a TR will allow. But I don’t want the down time on her from epics to recap her with out another major epic runner.

I also have Mcgoggles a Fvs that can become anything, HealzYouNot a Clr that is a few raids short of a nice set of 20 completions and would make good fodder for a clr 2.0 as well as a clunk that will be turned into my permanent Bowonk. Or SamiusJr my Monk that can use a quick TR back into a monk…

But here is the thing, whatever I do it needs to be able to handle 2-4 pikers as well as become a popular alt to me once recapped. I want to get the most out of my skip 8 levels stone to net some guild renown, give an old alt some renewed purpose and bypass a large chunk of leveling that is not all the great on alts.

What am I going to do? I don’t know. I do know will power up an alt on my son’s account. Rolled him up a ranged wf artificer last night. And he loves the idea of having one. If he can keep himself ungrounded for a few days this summer he might even get to play it himself. Also I have at least one friend’s account that hasn’t played in over a year. I want to roll up a new alt on it and power it to 16 for him (maybe that will entice him into logging on again…) and if it happens to net the guild a few K in renown so be it. 🙂

How are you going to use your stone?

❤