Quick Questions

Vaehl

Lol I loved just not curing asthma and confusing the eff out of some serpents (had active healing for backup ofc).

Tvistor

Dude, that is cruel. I also can't believe it worked.

Vaehl

Yeah I'd manually make it not cure it at random intervals, esp on people that used curare/kalmia to get ahead of herb bal.

(This all started when my curing screwed up and didn't cure asthma).

Peak

I randomly apply mending to my legs when fighting monks and I seem to do better.

Xith

The short story is that no class requires an artifact to succeed, but your success can be marginally increased by getting one.

When it comes to offensive artefacts, my suggestion is:
1) to learn the class's strategies and do as much as you can with a default dirk that will cost you nothing. If you're doing everything right and still can't lock a common system (Svo/omni/etc), then probably the class would need changes itself on the coding level. Some would argue that dstab already does.

2) after you're able to end about 15-20% of your fights in locks, consider grabbing any level of dirk to give you that edge

The main thing is that if you don't understand a class, no amount of artefacts will guarantee you victory against someone who understands it better, or even who understands their own class.

Vaehl

stock dstab is good enough to lock, though it's hard for newbies to get into serpent combat and they express obvious frustration (see: Nellaundra even made a thread)

Wilhelmina

@Vaehl It's something I've read a lot, Serpent combat being difficult for newbies. Since I have never engaged in combat with any of my previous characters, however, I have nothing to compared Serpent combat with.

Nellaundra

Vaehl said:

stock dstab is good enough to lock, though it's hard for newbies to get into serpent combat and they express obvious frustration (see: Nellaundra even made a thread)

I just legitimately suck at keeping track of afflictions I stack up and that they cure.  My memory sucks and I can't really make a system that does it for me, so I just stick with classes that are a bit more intuitive.  See: Paladin.

Vaehl

Serpent combat is so freaking fun though, even unartied (unartied gives lots of satisfaction on the lock). I, myself, have never been artied serpent and found stock dstab fine pre and post traits. If you can find a good tutor (unlikely) then I'd go for it for sure. You could probably do it on your own if you're really self sufficient and know your resources. It's really worth it.

It's weird because I can't think of any current good serpents. Someone name a couple to jog my memory? Really don't think there are any..

Nellaundra

Vaehl said:

Serpent combat is so freaking fun though, even unartied (unartied gives lots of satisfaction on the lock). I, myself, have never been artied serpent and found stock dstab fine pre and post traits. If you can find a good tutor (unlikely) then I'd go for it for sure. You could probably do it on your own if you're really self sufficient and know your resources. It's really worth it. It's weird because I can't think of any current good serpents. Someone name a couple to jog my memory? Really don't think there are any..

@Iocun

Vaehl

I guess I can count that baddy. He was the only one that came to mind and he's a pacifist or something. (he's actually really good though)

Iocun is #1 serpent.

Melodie

Hide yo children, hide yo wife.

Iocun the bloody pacifist is coming.

Trey

Fighting Iocun was fun, but a quote from Futurama describes how it felt losing/the tone of the fight. "I saw. You were doing well until everyone died.".

Eld

Someone posted a link on the old forums to a spreadsheet of crit rates per level, along with DPS increase for each level of pendant. I can't find the link now. Anyone happen to have it?

Maht

Eld said:

Someone posted a link on the old forums to a spreadsheet of crit rates per level, along with DPS increase for each level of pendant. I can't find the link now. Anyone happen to have it?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArcRcHHsOcapcFI1ODN4MU5WMVNkT0ZFZmFScFZGQmc&authkey=CKyHv-AO#gid=0

Tirac

Can someone post the skills that are learned at each skill rank in Weaponry?

Lothien

For a sylvan tsol'aa guard, is Reinforced or Robust better? I have a 69/30 and a 45/58 chain mail, if that makes a difference. I chose Robust because it works in general (magic, physical, etc.), but another person in my House said Reinforced was much better.

Eld

Lothien said:

For a sylvan tsol'aa guard, is Reinforced or Robust better? I have a 69/30 and a 45/58 chain mail, if that makes a difference. I chose Robust because it works in general (magic, physical, etc.), but another person in my House said Reinforced was much better.

Probably pretty dependent on whether your more focussed on bashing or combat. Robust is basically 300 extra health (3 per level, really), which isn't all that much, and many adventurer attacks also scale with max health. Decent chainmail's probably good enough for the 15% or whatever Reinforced is to be noticeable, so I would guess that reinforced might be better for combat. Robust is probably more worthwhile for bashing than for combat, since denizen attacks don't scale, but not sure if it would beat out reinforced or not. I'm assuming you already have receptive body? If not, I think that would probably be more worthwhile than either robust or reinforced.

Lothien

Eld said:

Lothien said:

For a sylvan tsol'aa guard, is Reinforced or Robust better? I have a 69/30 and a 45/58 chain mail, if that makes a difference. I chose Robust because it works in general (magic, physical, etc.), but another person in my House said Reinforced was much better.

Probably pretty dependent on whether your more focussed on bashing or combat. Robust is basically 300 extra health (3 per level, really), which isn't all that much, and many adventurer attacks also scale with max health. Decent chainmail's probably good enough for the 15% or whatever Reinforced is to be noticeable, so I would guess that reinforced might be better for combat. Robust is probably more worthwhile for bashing than for combat, since denizen attacks don't scale, but not sure if it would beat out reinforced or not. I'm assuming you already have receptive body? If not, I think that would probably be more worthwhile than either robust or reinforced.

I do! Quick-witted, receptive body, and robust currently.

Sena

Reinforced is probably too situational to be as useful as robust. Reinforced may be better for PvP against physical attacks that are reduced well by armour and scale to max health, but more health is almost always useful.

Sohl

Does quick-witted increase damage taken like nimble does?

Edit: Got my answer in game, it does.

Xith

Sohl said:

Does quick-witted increase damage taken like nimble does?

Edit: Got my answer in game, it does.

Wait, it does? They do?

Sena

Nimble and quick-witted reduce the effectiveness of resistances by 10%. So 20% damage reduction becomes 18%.

Eld

Sena said:

Nimble and quick-witted reduce the effectiveness of resistances by 10%. So 20% damage reduction becomes 18%.

Really? I thought they straight increased damage taken by x%. According to this, I should see a reduction from 10% blunt and 20% cutting (horkval with toughness) to 9% blunt and 18% cutting, so about a 1% increase in blunt damage taken or a 2.5% increase for cutting. I could swear when I tested it when traits came out it was more like 5%. Always possible I'm making that up, though; I didn't really do any more testing than was required to decide that it was worth taking.

Xith

Wow. That makes everyone just a little bit more like a jester.

And makes jesters a little bit more like an oyster.

Wilhelmina

Which Achaean class would be equivalent to a heavily-armoured, AoE (or just room-wide effects) machine? I was playing a bounty hunter in The Old Republic earlier and got curious.

Eld

Wilhelmina said:

Which Achaean class would be equivalent to a heavily-armoured, AoE (or just room-wide effects) machine? I was playing a bounty hunter in The Old Republic earlier and got curious.

No idea what AoE stands for, but not many classes really have serious room effects. Magi probably closest, I would think (can't wear physical armour, but pretty tanky with diamondskin and the like from what I hear).

Ourania

AoE = Area of effect

Sena

I'm not familiar with the game/class you're talking about, so I'm not sure what sort of AoE you're looking for. Paladin is heavily armoured, and priest isn't far behind (and probably tankier), both have some room-wide passive effects with rites (paladins also have arc, which hits everyone in the room with your weapon). Runewarden is also heavily armoured, and has arc and hugalaz (there's also othala, which hits all enemies in the entire area, but it's not very strong). Magi doesn't wear actual armour but is pretty tanky, and has crystalism, which is also room-wide passive effects (more than rites). For active room attacks, blademasters are the best with their elemental attacks (annihilation, thunderstorm, blizzard), but they're lightly armoured. I can't think of many other active AoE attacks.

Maht

What all does a band speed up (or not speed up) for Blademaster? I'm particularly interested in if it speeds up pommelstrike, bladetwist, or impale.