[X] My Assistant

I've been on the lookout for decent Shade Fleet armor, but I obviously haven't been looking hard enough. Besides, I'm keeping my Shadowdancer leggings on because of the ADM, so unless I find some awesome Fleet leggings, I'm not gonna be having a full Fleet set.

This post has been edited by HaliZorat: Sep 4 2011, 06:38

So does everyone hang out at 80+ stamina at all times?

Somehow, I managed to mess up a maze and got knocked under. I'm sure I got the answer(s?) right too.

As much as possible. Seems like a bit of a punishment for playing though, since I haven't been doing all that much today and I went down 20 Stamina.

I usually stop playing once I get to 79 stamina. Doesn't help that trying to do all the arenas takes me under 79 now... So I have to choose between credits and possible equipment (early arenas) or tons of EXP (later arenas). Given my difficulty with this patch, I'll likely opt for the former.

@HaliZorat: Out of curiosity, what is your current Agility at?

@HaliZorat: Out of curiosity, what is your current Agility at?

190. I moved a few Strength points into it and Dexterity today after realizing it increases my Offhand hit chance. (Went from 37% to 39%)

Recently, since I've been grinding to catch up, I've been hovering around 70-90 in stamina. Do some high level arenas in Heroic (well, Normal since the patch QQ) to make use of the experience bonus, and then once that's drained I get four times as much done with the remaining stamina, completing most of the rest of the arenas, and leveling up some items.

Sucks that you missed a Riddle, but unless you're playing 2000+ rounds (1000 for grindfest) a day, it'll recover itself.

I do all the arenas in a backward order now.

Heroic from Dreamfall all the way down to Fresh Meat, then Nightmare for Blazing Field through Test of Faith, then A New Beginning on Hell, then Graduation on Nintendo, then Schooltastic and Learning Curves on Battletoads, and finally Baby Steps and First Blood on IWBTH. That way, I get most of the hard stuff out of the way while I still have great status, and I still get some major experience for the early arenas.

190. I moved a few Strength points into it and Dexterity today after realizing it increases my Offhand hit chance. (Went from 37% to 39%)

You're going to want to increase it a LOT. Having higher Evade/Parry is essential at the later rounds of arenas; not to mention the action speed bonus. What is your action speed currently?

My PL 45 Sprite won its first battle with a killing blow. They grow up so fast.

You're going to want to increase it a LOT. Having higher Evade/Parry is essential at the later rounds of arenas; not to mention the action speed bonus. What is your action speed currently?

163.2

My burden and interference (since I hate to see my Curative/Deprecating proficiencies go to waste) are a lot higher than I'd like them to be. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Given that I should increase it so much, what should I take points from? INT is already my lowest stat, so taking points off it won't give that much spare EXP anyways. I need WIS more than ever because I'm casting curative spells more often this patch, and DEX is for offhand hits and criticals. Is reducing STR worth the AGI boost? (STR is at 186 right now)

This post has been edited by HaliZorat: Sep 4 2011, 07:02

163.2

My burden and interference (since I hate to see my Curative/Deprecating proficiencies go to waste) are a lot higher than I'd like them to be. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Given that I should increase it so much, what should I take points from? INT is already my lowest stat, so taking points off it won't give that much spare EXP anyways. I need WIS more than ever because I'm casting curative spells more often this patch, and DEX is for offhand hits and criticals. Is reducing STR worth the AGI boost? (STR is at 186 right now)

Absolutely. I keep my DEX as my highest stat, followed by AGI and then STR.
With all of my equipment/aura/whatever bonuses, my DEX is currently 270, followed by AGI at 260 and STR at 250. My END is 220, by the way.

Absolutely. I keep my DEX as my highest stat, followed by AGI and then STR.
With all of my equipment/aura/whatever bonuses, my DEX is currently 270, followed by AGI at 260 and STR at 250. My END is 220, by the way.

Hm... Guess I'll take some points out of STR and split them between DEX and AGI over the next few days while keeping my END as it is right now (170) for a while.

Hm... Guess I'll take some points out of STR and split them between DEX and AGI over the next few days while keeping my END as it is right now (170) for a while.

If you're going to remove STR points, at least keep it at a multiple of 10. That way, you get the slight bonus from every 10 stat points.

Tjeh well I'm gonna find that out.
I still say that ethereal estoc of slaughter is the best weapon eva, without testing.
Buuuutttt..
I'll post some info about maces somewhere. There's a chance I has the best there is since I use all my daily trophies in 2 handed weapons.
Or NOT !
Some fruitcake got a ethereal estoc of slaughter in combat, something I have never gotten, offering thousands of trophies to the faggot known as snowflake.

I've used maces all along, and I'm not so sure this patch has been all that beneficial to them.
Yes, double-damage to stunned targets is nice, but you are killing the mobs pretty fast anyways with this new patch. At the easier difficulty settings (harder is suicide without spark of life or spirit shield) the stun lasts for the rest of their lives,
But removing perma-stun is a bit worse, it used to be that the main reason I went with maces was not due to damage, but to reduce the return damage.
Kind of like going with parry-heavy weapons when dualwielding. Mace was the most defensive of the 2-H due to the stun.

The changes to stun is both good and bad. More damage is nice, but damage is not a problem in the new patch. perma-stun removed is bad when dealing with the big nasties but normal mobs don't really need to be stunned more than once, since they die from the changes to damage in the new patch.

The main problem with maces still remains, namely that they do crushing damage and there are lots of giants out there with heavy resistance to crushing.

Of course, an ethereal mace, now that would be something truly amazing....

And of course, with changes to damage, bleeds are now way nerfed in comparison, since the damage from a bleed is pretty piddly with the new damage you are dishing out.

So, does DW really have anything going for it at this point? 1-H can block and counter with a shield and can cause Stunned along with the weapon's proc as far as I can tell and 2-H has Domino Strikes that can affect multiple monsters with a proc.

The only thing I can see is the extra damage from the offhand (which is how much compared to a counter? I don't know...) and the possibility of PA + Bleeding Wound, which seems outclassed at this point. I really don't want to switch fighting styles, but if DW is just that inferior... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

DW is still good.
DW does far more damage then just the off-hand hit.

You get bonuses to your damage, hit and crit from your weapon. And you get that no matter which hand it is in.
So comparing 1-H vs DW you will have the same bonuses from your main-hand weapon. Then the 1-H gets some extra "armor" and block chance from his shield, together with a little stats bonuses.
With DW, you get the additional damage, hit and crit from your offhand, which is added to you total.
Meaning your standard main-hand attack, will hit with the bonuses from both your weapon, so your damage will be increased even if you never ever get a off-hand attack.
And then comes the off-hand attack, which also hits with the bonuses from both your weapons (altho decreased to 50-75% of what a main-hand hit would do, the exact value depending your proficiency).
So with full proficiency, a 75% damage off-hand crit would due to the bonuses from both weapons hit harder than a main-hand hit from someone going 1-H.

So already there you have increased damage.
And then, as an additional bonus, you get the stats bonuses from both, and stats on weapons are generally better than from shields. And you get the added hit chance, which is nice, and added crit chance, also really nice.
And the weapon proc from the weapon type (bleed, stun, PA) are added when they are similar, giving your main-hand attack a increased chance of applying it, instead of having both weapons have their own separate chance to apply it when they hit.
Which means that you will apply it more often, since your main-hand attack will hit a lot more than your off-hand (due to off-hand attacks not going off all the time).

So going with rapier+club might seem nice, due to getting PA and stun, but the chance to stun is not that good, since you need to get a off-hand hit to have a chance to proc the stun.
If you instead used rapier+rapier or club+club, the off-hand would have no chance to proc it's normal effect (suffix procs work separately) but your main hand would almost get the total of both weapons chances (if both have 21% chance to proc, the mainhand would have a 38% chance to proc) and have a much higher chance of getting a proc.

And also, you get 150% of the parry value for your off-hand.
There are daggers of the nimble with parry chances upwards of 20% parry, which would then effectively be 30% parry, when in your off-hand.
A 20% parry dagger in your main-hand and a 20% parry dagger in your off-hand, and you will have a similar chance of parrying an attack than a 1-H would have to block it (altho I think you can block magical attacks too, but not parry them).

So DW is not dead.
1-H gives defense and damage through counters.
2-H gives damage and spreads damage and procs to multiple enemies.
DW gives high damage to single target, and with higher hit chance and is versatile due to choosing between high proc chance, high parry chance, high damage and high crit.

I imagine it'd be especially useful against the Ring of Blood enemies, but my main concern is if 1H Rapier + Shield can also stack PA and Stun, along with the ability to block attacks, is it the better option as of this patch?

I'm probably just overreacting to all the 2H users jumping with joy at the fact that maces are powerful right now and seem to be having the least trouble with the harder hitting enemies... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif)

Both of my Parry and Evade just a bit above 20% at this point, so I suppose it could be worse.

Think people are gonna get over that joy of maces, or Tenboro will nerf it.
Giants are far too common and crushing damage is bad.

An ethereal mace would be really awesome tho.
Bad thing is that I will now get lots of competition over getting such a thing. I had some hopes of finding one in a auction, when everyone considers maces to be bad.....but no chance of that now.

And with the removal of attack rating and shield rating, I'm unsure of how PA really works now. And I'm not certain that Tenboro really knows either, so that might get tweaked.

But swords, daggers and scythes got seriously nerfed since bleed now sucks.

If you're going to remove STR points, at least keep it at a multiple of 10. That way, you get the slight bonus from every 10 stat points.

Something I'm not familiar with here?
What bonus do you get every 10 stat points?

Since stats and proficiencies give fractions for every point, he's just typed it out like it is giving 1% of evade for every 25 points of AGI, when every point of AGI gives 1/25th of 1%.

If you're going to remove STR points, at least keep it at a multiple of 10. That way, you get the slight bonus from every 10 stat points.

I think those kinds of bonuses are continuous, not discrete (that is, "10 points of X raises Y by 1" usually means "1 point of X raises Y by 0.1").

And with the removal of attack rating and shield rating, I'm unsure of how PA really works now. And I'm not certain that Tenboro really knows either, so that might get tweaked.

Yes, but they work in different ways. Stun simply doubles the damage, but PA halves the mitigation of the target - which means it gets more efficient the more heavily armored the target is. For example, PA on a target with 80% mitigation would triple the actual damage.

So PA is still good against monsters with very high mitigation (ala Bosses and Legendaries), but against the run of the mill monster who has probably less mitigation than you, you won't be noticing much more damage. I'm only noticing about a 25% increase in damage.

PA+fusions is still the best for ROB (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But maces are better than estoc now, for arena and IW.

PA+fusions is still the best for ROB (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But maces are better than estoc now, for arena and IW.

If PA halves mitigation and stun doubles damage, that means PA+fusions is worse than stun+fusions, unless, the monster in question has 50% mitigation or more against the specific damage that you do.

or wait, fusions still make you do physical damage, just that the type of damage is changed?
Sp physical mitigation still applies, it's just the type-specific mitigation that you bypass?
Hmm. Means you gotta know monsters physical mitigation to know if PA is better than stun.

But it is a fact that fusions really improves maces, considering the amount of monsters with crushing mitigation.