Quick Questions

Sena

Tilly said:

Do people actually use the less known weapons in Achaean combat? Bardiches, morning stars, and so on?

Not many, but a few people have. It seems less common now than a few years ago. If I remember right, Groton was well known for using a bastard sword as a shaman, a few people have used javelins as various classes (especially once returning artefact javelins were released), some people use flails for shattering, etc.

Also, while I never used it for PvP (I did use it for bashing occasionally), I used to have an artefact halberd.

Mishgul

Also with the fact that no one is level 60 anymore and the high damage weapons are useless at stacking afflictions or keeping people still or stacking breaks or anything. Dying to damage is still a common event, but rapiers are the end all here.

Cooper

No one has used them effectively. The people that used the javelins just killed noobs with them, not in real fights.

Tilly

It would be nice if other weapons become viable for knights (or other classes), but I don't know what would have to change for that to happen.

Are blademaster swords with bands unable to be customized? Aren't they treated as artefact swords once they have bands.

Crathen

No, they can't be customised in any way whether or not they're banded, iirc

Trey

Tilly said:

It would be nice if other weapons become viable for knights (or other classes), but I don't know what would have to change for that to happen.

Are blademaster swords with bands unable to be customized? Aren't they treated as artefact swords once they have bands.

I requested once that a plural name be made singular once. They would not give me a price to remove the 's' from the end of my bladename on my alt. I don't think they're likely to let you customize them at all.

Aliath

The beginning of it reminds me a bit of the wheel of time

Synbios

Tilly said:

Are blademaster swords with bands unable to be customized? Aren't they treated as artefact swords once they have bands.

They are treated as artefact blademaster swords in that they are non-decay/resetting/unstealable. They retain the blademaster sword property of being unable to be customised.

Look on the bright side though - your sword gets an additional fire/lightning/ice description effect. That's always nice.

Eld

@Tilly As for weapons, there've been a lot of discussions on forums and in classleads about what to do about the fact that a knight using anything other than rapiers is a losing proposition (and similar weapon-related matters). The admin have stated that there's a reworking of the weapons system in the works, so we'll have to see what that ends up looking like.

Melodie

So despite hearing information in the past, I thought I'd ask one more time before spending 100 credits for a trait reset:

Lucky or aim to kill? Is it worth spending credits to change -from- lucky -to- aim to kill?

For background info, I'm a level 90 priest atavian sentry. I currently have a small smattering of artefacts, including a level 1 crit pendant.

Sohl

I doubt the difference made will be worth 100cr, but I don't have any exact numbers.

Sena, I choose you!!

Cooper

Any difference you see between the two is not going to be very much. It would take a lot of math and calculation to figure out which would be better, and I bet it would change from lucky at lower levels to aim to kill at higher level/higher crit chance.

I wouldn't spend 100 credits if that was the only reason you wanted to trait reset.

Sena

I'm not sure. Lucky seems to be +0.5% crit rate, but I have no idea how effective Aim to Kill is. I agree that it's probably not worth 100 credits, though.

Alyssea

I'd say Aim to Kill for sure. I had Lucky originally and there wasn't any noticeable difference for me. Used the free trait reset and changed it to Aim to Kill, noticed the difference immediately after using Lucky for months.

Wilhelmina

Is there a class that does not require artefacts to become "top tier"?

Zancrow

All of them. Artefacts only really become a necessity when dealing with very high damage, and even then you're generally better off transcending skills than getting artefacts. A sip ring and over level 80 is enough. However, there are classes that are better than others without artefacts that still excel in 1v1, generally:

Any of the Knight classes. 
Magi. 

Apostate. 

Blademaster.

Shaman(more for midbie than top-tier, however).

Antidas

who is Zancrow?

Sohl

Doesn't matter who he is, dude's pretty spot on.

Eld

The problem with trying to assess lucky vs aim to kill is that it's pretty tricky to figure out exactly how the increased crit damage works and the magnitude of the effect. Could be done, but it would take quite a bit of data collection. Most people's intuition seems to be that as your crit rate increases, the marginal benefit of aim to kill compared to lucky will increase and eventual lucky will win, which is plausible, but I haven't gotten around to doing the math properly (and doing so would involve making some assumptions about the mechanic). Assuming that's correct, it seems likely that the difference between the two in terms of actual bashing speed will depend on the base damage of your attack. If most things you hunt die on a crushing crit, then making your crits stronger probably won't help as much as just getting more crushings, in terms of doodz pwned per minute.

Synbios

I was hoping that aim to kill would make so that a tough critter would die to a critical when it would normally die to crushing without the trait.

Melodie

As a priest with a level one mace plus nimble, my speed and damage are both on the low side, so generally -any- help is nice. I admit I'm surprised, I thought most preferred aim to kill, but it seems decently split.

Eld

Synbios said:

I was hoping that aim to kill would make so that a tough critter would die to a critical when it would normally die to crushing without the trait.

If you kill tough critters with crushings, either your drawslash is way better than mine, or we have pretty different standards for toughness. Snark aside, though, you're right that I neglected that part of the effect in my argument about higher damage attacks. Basically, the bottom line is that doing the math right is nontrivial, especially without knowing the formulae for aim to kill, so I'm largely running on vague intuition.

@Melodie If you don't have one yet, I'd guess that putting the 100cr toward the 250 for a fire pendant would be a better investment than the trait change, if switching for lucky to aim to kill is the only change you'd be making. If you were changing other traits, too, then it might be more worth trying to work out which crit one is better.

Melodie

I do have a fire pendant (which is 200 cr). So, I suppose I'll likely save the credits, and just hope for an eventually free trait reset. Thanks all for your opinions!

Last question, which has been answered in the past, but I lost my math notes - with both lucky and the fire pendant, what are my chances of hitting a crit from level 90-100?

Velyse

Zancrow said:

All of them. Artefacts only really become a necessity when dealing with very high damage, and even then you're generally better off transcending skills than getting artefacts. A sip ring and over level 80 is enough. However, there are classes that are better than others without artefacts that still excel in 1v1, generally:

Any of the Knight classes. 
Magi. 

Apostate. 

Blademaster.

Shaman(more for midbie than top-tier, however).

Quick question! I've heard people say that priests need artefacts to compete in 1v1 past a certain point, and even then begin to struggle because regeneration/sipping from artefacts soon outpaces mana depletion and there's little way for priests to actively increase their mana depletion (other than a diadem with sap). Is this not the case?

Sena

Melodie said:

with both lucky and the fire pendant, what are my chances of hitting a crit from level 90-100?

Assuming Lucky is 0.5%, your crit chance would be about 30% at 90 and 44.7% at 100 (or 43% if it's capped at level 99).

The formula for crit chance is (level-25)^3/1,000,000.

Eld

Melodie said:

I do have a fire pendant (which is 200 cr). So, I suppose I'll likely save the credits, and just hope for an eventually free trait reset. Thanks all for your opinions! Last question, which has been answered in the past, but I lost my math notes - with both lucky and the fire pendant, what are my chances of hitting a crit from level 90-100?

@Sena posted on the old forums (EDIT: and ninja'd me here) that the base rate is (level-25)^3/1000000. Not sure what her source for that is, but it gives about 27.5% at 90 and about 40.5 at 99, which sounds right from my experience. I think it caps at 99, but might be 100; if any really cares, I can check my crit counter numbers next time I'm on my own computer. Anyway, your fire pendant adds 2%, so ~29.5% to ~42.5%. Those percentages are the rate for crits of any type; out of all crits, that same percentage will be crushing and above, the same percent of those will be obliterating and above, and so on. So for example, with a crit rate of 20%, assuming I can do the math right, 80% of your hits will be normal, 16% will be critical, 3.2% will be crushing, .64% obliterating, .128% annihilating, and .032% world-shattering. So as your crit rate increases, you'll also get more and more larger crits, which will give a proportionally larger increase both in average damage per second and in screen space occupied by words in all caps (and the attendant visceral satisfaction).

Edit again, I forgot lucky, so yeah, 30%-43% like @Sena said.

Eld

Does anyone know what determines a denizen's CONSIDER status? Is it max health based, level based, something else? My guess has been health, since if I recall correctly, werewolves, for example, are comparable in level to, say, Sidhe, but consider as "quite powerful" as opposed to "aura of overwhelming power". On a related note, also curious what determines Great Hunt points.

Nellaundra

Eld said:

Does anyone know what determines a denizen's CONSIDER status? Is it max health based, level based, something else? My guess has been health, since if I recall correctly, werewolves, for example, are comparable in level to, say, Sidhe, but consider as "quite powerful" as opposed to "aura of overwhelming power". On a related note, also curious what determines Great Hunt points.

It's purely level.  I'll grab my list when I get ingame later.

EDIT: For the consider that is.

Alyssea

What is the percent chance for arrowcatch that the arrow doesn't hit (being a serpent with aiming, snipe etc.)?

Zancrow

Velyse said:

Zancrow said:

All of them. Artefacts only really become a necessity when dealing with very high damage, and even then you're generally better off transcending skills than getting artefacts. A sip ring and over level 80 is enough. However, there are classes that are better than others without artefacts that still excel in 1v1, generally:

Any of the Knight classes. 
Magi. 

Apostate. 

Blademaster.

Shaman(more for midbie than top-tier, however).

Quick question! I've heard people say that priests need artefacts to compete in 1v1 past a certain point, and even then begin to struggle because regeneration/sipping from artefacts soon outpaces mana depletion and there's little way for priests to actively increase their mana depletion (other than a diadem with sap). Is this not the case?

You can answer that question yourself by fighting, but generally a Priest would shoot for a Diadem, Artie Mace and a Bow. Meteors alongside demons alongside sapping can quickly overwhelm, with the speed of an Artie mace and your Diadem sap forcing a difficult choice between what to sip. If they shield, you can throw purity and/or more meteors to deal with that. You won't have too much of an issue keeping them still with piety. All artefacts really introduce into the class is the tiniest bit of variety, but then as a Priest, any variety is welcome, I suppose!

Regarding artefacts, I generally think that if you don't know how it's going to be beneficial for you and you're unsure if you should get it, save your credits.