Advice For a Serpent

Phillias

Hey everyone,

Here's my situation: I want to hunt efficiently, as my goal is to attain Dragon in a relatively timely fashion. Maybe not a Penwize-type run, but somewhat quickly. I also would like to start getting into combat a little more, now that I'm getting to higher levels. I've tried a few classes- Blademaster, and Serpent mainly, but a little bit of Paladin as well. Blademaster was great, but I found that I ran out of endurance super quickly. Even with Ox tattoos and learning Fitness. I also couldn't really take a hit very well. Then I tried Paladin, and discovered that not only was I not a fan of Devotion, but doubleslash was incredibly slow and missed fairly often (I was using a longsword and a shortsword, with a little below Virtuoso in Chivalry, if I remember correctly). I finally settled on Serpent, which didn't at all help my can't-take-a-hit problem. It's still somewhat slow compared to Blademaster, and I do less damage, but I don't hardly use any endurance, which is great. My main problem is that I'm unable to hunt larger things hardly at all, resulting in slower experience gain. I understand that I shouldn't always try to hunt harder creatures, since I could die and that would set me back further.

I'm level 76, Atavian, 3796 health, 12 str, 12 dex, 12 int, and 14 con. So basically what I'm asking is if I screwed myself by going Serpent with these type of stats and based on what I want from above. I'm also to switching classes again, and with the changes to hunting, I'd like to know if Blademaster or Runewarden are worth a second shot. Lastly, if I shouldn't stay Serpent without reincarnating or resetting traits, if there's a sort of in-between class that will balance speed and durability.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, guys!

Florentino

I'm a con-specced atavian, now level 89. You're fine for hunting. You should be able to take reasonably strong creatures given that you have the Scales ability in Subterfuge and the ability to get good scalemail. Serpent hunting got buffed just recently, too. 

Cynlael

New changes made Serpent hunting great. DPS is most definitely not lower than a Blademaster's.

Work on Transcending Subterfuge and not focus too much on how long things take, because then you're not going to have much fun at all. Once you get that, hunting should be a breeze, so long as you don't go around trying to hunt really high up places.

Edit: DSL is gonna be pretty bad with longsword/shortsword combo.

You viciously jab an ornate steel rapier into an orc soldier.
Lightning-quick, you jab an orc soldier with an ornate steel rapier.
You have slain an orc soldier, retrieving the corpse.
[3047(78)|3366(100)|62 98][B D K  E|14%]
You have recovered balance on all limbs. 2.128s

This is with pretty average speed rapiers, with above average damage that costed me 8.5k all up.

Phillias

Those rapiers are about twice as fast as my garrote. 176 speed and it still takes about 4 seconds to recover.

Lodin

Everything is based on dexterity for serpents now, is it not? 
But the reason you're missing with your swords is because you need your chivalry at trans, then you should start hitting everything.
For the extra oomph and bringing down dsl speed by .100 is transing weaponry as well.

But sometime in the next 10 years, we should have a weaponry rework down.

Santar

I do not think that transing weaponry affects dsl speed?

Terra

Phillias said:

Those rapiers are about twice as fast as my garrote. 176 speed and it still takes about 4 seconds to recover.

I think 176 is actually really slow. Garrote speed also scales with dexterity and your Dex is low.

Sena

Santar said:

I do not think that transing weaponry affects dsl speed?

It seems like knights with trans chivalry and trans weaponry get a tenth of a second faster balance times than someone with just trans weaponry (because of getting 10% of the speed bonus from the second skill, with the speed bonus from trans being 1 second). So knights can get 6.9-Speed/50 instead of 7-Speed/50.

Sena

Terra said:

Phillias said:

Those rapiers are about twice as fast as my garrote. 176 speed and it still takes about 4 seconds to recover.

I think 176 is actually really slow. Garrote speed also scales with dexterity and your Dex is low.

It also sounds like you have less than trans subterfuge, learning more subterfuge will speed up your garrotes as well.

Phillias

Terra said:

Phillias said:

Those rapiers are about twice as fast as my garrote. 176 speed and it still takes about 4 seconds to recover.

I think 176 is actually really slow. Garrote speed also scales with dexterity and your Dex is low.

176 is faster than a level two artefact whip, though.

Sena

Artefact whips have fairly low speed (and not particularly great stats overall). The artefact lashes are more what you should be aiming for. Although with low subterfuge (I'm not really sure how much you have) it might be a better idea to focus on to-hit more than damage or speed.

Phillias

Ohhh, okay. I do have up to Darkbows in Subterfuge, and I don't think I've ever missed yet.... Strength doesn't do anything for Serpents, does it? I had picked up a major trait to increase strength when I was a Blademaster, but I don't know if it would be worth it to reset my traits and go for an extra point of dexterity. Not sure how much faster that would make me, or I could spend it on Constitution.

Sena

Strength won't help you at all as a serpent (it does increase backstab damage, but that's not really important). A point of dexterity will probably reduce your garrote balance by 6-7%, but I'm not 100% sure of how it works yet.

Phillias

Do you think it would be worth it to reincarnate and/or reset my traits? I mean, I -do- want combat to feasible for later