30 points left over - need direction

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Nemo the bard
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30 points left over - need direction

Post by Nemo the bard »

Good morning,
I just started playing about a month ago, I am close to finishing my main solo/fun character. This is where he is now-
100 music
100 provoke
100 anat
100 healing
100 tactics
100 fencing
70 magery (showing as 72 when it's not clicked on "show real")

That leaves me with 30 points left. I know most everyone would say GM magery, but that is not currently possible due to finances and the fact it takes FOREVER to do anything without meditation. More than anything I just run around and goof off and explore. I don't PVP. Any suggestions for what to use this last 30 points on?

Was thinking about poisoning but I really don't know if I would even be able to poison anything at 30 skill.

Thanks!

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Capitalist
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Capitalist »

30 tracking allows you to track 3 screens. Good for anti-pk
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Fox »

Tracking is not bad... but 3 screens isn't going to save you unless somebody is scouting you out, which certainly can happen...

I'd probably go in this order of preference:

*30 med (even with armor, some mana regen is nice)
*30 resist (things like curse, weaken, etc., will be -7 vs -10, fighting against most things)
*30 hiding (occasional hide) to take a pee or check on something, though you can cast invis with 70 magery.
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Nemo the bard »

Right now I have 30 meditation, wasn't sure if it would actually do anything for me in most scenarios wearing full armor so I might just keep that. If it doesn't resist would be OK. Completely forgot about it.

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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Drunk'n Disorder »

what's your STR, INT, and DEX?
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Nemo the bard »

100 str
90 dex
35 int

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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Drunk'n Disorder »

Nemo the bard wrote:100 str
90 dex
35 int

I would drop magery to 65... With 35 mana you're not casting many spells and you can still get 100% of your recalls off at a lower level. So instead of 30 extra points you'll have 35. If you really wanna mix it up, you could probably drop anat to 90 and music to 95 get 50 hiding skill. Then you'll hide half the time (i think).

That's how i'd have done it, except I just GM'd magery instead.

EDIT: instead of music, maybe drop tactics to 95. Not sure of the fail rate for provocation with 95 music.
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

I see you've fallen into the tangled web of template design.

Your template tries to achieve too much and is, therefore, "spread too thin" in several key areas: it lacks focus.

Before I remark further in that direction I'll mention that 30 Tracking will enable you to know if chumbucket is hiding on your doorstep, waiting for you to let him stealth into your house, and do so from 3 screens away ...

For what I wish to say, I will be blunt.

A lot of the skill-points in this template are tied-up in pointless, indeed useless, redundancies while exposing significant gaps in utility/survivability: high Magery without Meditation, Evaluate Intelligence, or even a significant mana pool; GM Anatomy and Healing and high Magery on a "Melee Bard" (any "Fighter-Bard" will always be more Bard than Fighter: how much Healing do you need if you haven't also provided any Resist to be able to withstand PvP?); no Resist nor Hiding&Stealth ...

There is little synergy between the selected primary skill-sets.

To be helpful, I'll suggest you re-work the template into something like this:

STR100/DEX75/INT50

(Dump Anatomy entirely)
100 Healing
100 Fencing
075 Magery
050 Meditation
100 Musicianship
100 Provocation
075 Resist
100 Tactics
  • GM Healing without Anatomy means (only-slightly) weaker bandages, and no Cure Poison or Resurrection: rely on potions and Magery for Curing, and Magery for Resurrection, instead; Healing potions and "In (Vas) Mani" are also your emergency back-ups
  • @ 75 Stamina, you will be 1-tick slower with spears than @ 90-100 Stamina
  • 72.0 Real Skill in Magery is required to use the Wind teleporter; @ 75 Skill, you will cast "no-fail" Circles 1-5, and only rarely fizzle Circle 6, and Circles 7 & 8 can be cast using scrolls, for which you will now have enough mana ... (btw, a fizzled scroll uses-up neither any mana nor the scroll!)
  • 50 Meditation with 50 Intelligence will return passive Meditation of c. 1 mana/2 seconds, in no armour; heavier armours reduce the returns, and any plate flat-out kills Meditation; active Meditation will double the base rate (so, 1 mana/sec in no armour), but will be harder and harder to achieve the lower the mana pool becomes, and can't be invoked at all while wearing any significant armour ...
  • 75 Resist will blunt the onslaught from any Hally-Mage-PKer and, otherwise, will take the sting out of any stray mana that comes your way
General remarks: I wanted to save as much of your original template as I could; "from scratch", I would have selected Archery as the weapon skill (Heavy Crossbow & 100 Int), and ditched Healing completely (Magery & Meditation, in no armour, is more than adequate) to include Hiding & Tracking. I have just such a character of my own.

Have fun! I hope you get it all sorted.

SS
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Fox »

Drunk'n Disorder wrote:
Nemo the bard wrote:100 str
90 dex
35 int

I would drop magery to 65... With 35 mana you're not casting many spells and you can still get 100% of your recalls off at a lower level. So instead of 30 extra points you'll have 35. If you really wanna mix it up, you could probably drop anat to 90 and music to 95 get 50 hiding skill. Then you'll hide half the time (i think).

That's how i'd have done it, except I just GM'd magery instead.

EDIT: instead of music, maybe drop tactics to 95. Not sure of the fail rate for provocation with 95 music.
Good edit, dropping music to 95, you would fail music ~5% of the time and therefore fail provoke ~5% of the time. With 100/100, there is 100% success rate.
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Fox »

SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:I see you've fallen into the tangled web of template design.

Your template tries to achieve too much and is, therefore, "spread too thin" in several key areas: it lacks focus.
SS, I respectfully disagree (explained on next line down).
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:A lot of the skill-points in this template are tied-up in pointless, indeed useless, redundancies while exposing significant gaps in utility/survivability: high Magery without Meditation, Evaluate Intelligence, or even a significant mana pool; GM Anatomy and Healing and high Magery on a "Melee Bard" (any "Fighter-Bard" will always be more Bard than Fighter: how much Healing do you need if you haven't also provided any Resist to be able to withstand PvP?); no Resist nor Hiding&Stealth ...
His magery is not high, so the mention of eval here to suggest that the template lacks focus, or that there is redundancy, does not make sense. This template is a melee-bard, it has melee skills, and the 2 bard skills worth having. Yes, the last 100 skill points gets eaten by 2 skills, but keep in mind this template is a fast and cheap build, as I believe was intended. The choice to have as high of Magery as he does, allows the toon to cast blade spirits, mark, the occasional invis, etc., (pure utility).
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:There is little synergy between the selected primary skill-sets.
LOL... it is a melee-bard, how do you figure there is little synergy?? You don't have to answer this, you're entitled to your opinion!
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:To be helpful, I'll suggest you re-work the template into something like this:

STR100/DEX75/INT50

(Dump Anatomy entirely)
100 Healing
100 Fencing
075 Magery
050 Meditation
100 Musicianship
100 Provocation
075 Resist
100 Tactics
  • GM Healing without Anatomy means (only-slightly) weaker bandages, and no Cure Poison or Resurrection: rely on potions and Magery for Curing, and Magery for Resurrection, instead; Healing potions and "In (Vas) Mani" are also your emergency back-ups
  • @ 75 Stamina, you will be 1-tick slower with spears than @ 90-100 Stamina
  • 72.0 Real Skill in Magery is required to use the Wind teleporter; @ 75 Skill, you will cast "no-fail" Circles 1-5, and only rarely fizzle Circle 6, and Circles 7 & 8 can be cast using scrolls, for which you will now have enough mana ... (btw, a fizzled scroll uses-up neither any mana nor the scroll!)
  • 50 Meditation with 50 Intelligence will return passive Meditation of c. 1 mana/2 seconds, in no armour; heavier armours reduce the returns, and any plate flat-out kills Meditation; active Meditation will double the base rate (so, 1 mana/sec in no armour), but will be harder and harder to achieve the lower the mana pool becomes, and can't be invoked at all while wearing any significant armour ...
  • 75 Resist will blunt the onslaught from any Hally-Mage-PKer and, otherwise, will take the sting out of any stray mana that comes your way
[*]Again, this is a melee-bard, so I would not waste any points in meditation unless they are purely 'left over points'.
[*]Escaping a PK is doable with or without resist. What I mean, is if you're going to escape the PK, you don't need resist, you need to be able to escape. If you cannot escape, GM resist isn't going to save you SS!
[*]I can agree with you on 1 thing here SS, and credit you (and drunken) for a good idea, or at least food for thought, and that is dropping anatomy from to 100 down to 0, low(leftover pts), 60, or 80, could allow you to pick up GM resist, simply to take less damage on the field... and fight back with PKs if you're up for it. However, make sure that you are OK to rely on magery/pots for curing, that is a strong commitment for a melee-bard. If you do not want to sacrifice that but like the idea of fitting resist in this template, you could sacrifice some tactics, but your melee damage will suffer.

So in conclusion, if there is any re-work, which is not what the post asked for, I could support something like the below:

STR100/DEX~85/INT~40

100 Healing
100 Fencing
100 Musicianship
100 Provocation
100 Resist

(flexible pending if you want to res or not, and how much you value the magery utility)
070 Magery
070 Tactics
060 Anatomy
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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by SighelmofWyrmgard »

Everything I had said is true. Moreover, even the opinions are based on knowledge and experience, and are devised in the context of the overall scheme.
Fox wrote:His magery is not high
Um, yeah it is high: 1-100, 50 in the middle; <50 is low, >50 is high. More to the point, 70 Magery is too high for a-melee-bard-who-does-not-possess-also-any-Meditation, nor even an adequate mana pool to begin with (NoMeditation = 1 mana point every 7 seconds). So, my solution inserts an adequate mana pool and shoe-horns-in enough Meditation to make it worthwhile. What is the point of having any level of Magery that can't be usefully employed?
Fox wrote:
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:There is little synergy between the selected primary skill-sets.
LOL... it is a melee-bard, how do you figure there is little synergy?? You don't have to answer this, you're entitled to your opinion!
In a way, "Melee-Bard" suffices to say it for me: Provokers make other things fight each other and, ergo, do not need to be able to heal damage that is never suffered; Archery is a neat weapon skill to marry to Provocation, but even with a melee skill, 70Magery would provide more than adequate Healing, all on its own, provided the Magery has enough base-mana and at least a little Meditation to help sustain the pool, so that those 70 expensive and hard-worked-for Magery skill-points can actually be used for something.

So, I figure there is little synergy because there is little synergy: GMAnatomy + GMHealing gives Cure Poison and Resurrection through bandaids; you can't Resurrect yourself, and using Magery to try to keep alive against Level5 Poison while waiting-out the 18-second cure-bandage timer is simply absurd, considering that Magery/Potion can cure the poison. So, GMAnatomy (and, hence, GMHealing) in this template is completely useless, excepting only that without any Meditation, or an adequate base mana-pool, Magery usage is too limited to cover the shortfall ...

Back to the template: 270 skill points (GMAnatomy+GMHealing+70Magery) vs. 125 skill points (75Magery+50Meditation) for the exact same characteristics of playability; my math gives me 145 skill points of "little synergy" and "redundancy".

Yes, I am entitled to my opinion, particularly since it is based not only upon facts, but upon an accurate analysis of all of those facts.

Fox, you've said some other things which I would like to address.
Fox wrote: Again, this is a melee-bard, so I would not waste any points in meditation unless they are purely 'left over points'.


I see: you want Nemo to enjoy lvl5 poison for the 18 seconds that the bandage requires to cure it, and then another 15 seconds to heal the damage, and/or to resurrect himself after he dies. Yes, 350% mana-regeneration is absolutely terrible, and would be a horrible re-allocation of 50 skill points; Nemo had better keep those 200 skill-points exactly where they are, or he won't be able to use bandages to cure himself of Level5 poison and resurrect himself!

Again, I was talking sense, here.
Fox wrote:Escaping a PK is doable with or without resist. What I mean, is if you're going to escape the PK, you don't need resist, you need to be able to escape. If you cannot escape, GM resist isn't going to save you SS!
Fox, you are really stretching hard (does your PT know?)! You've said nothing to rebut my remarks about Resist, yet "wrapped it up" as if you were correcting me ...

Any character can expect to catch undesired mana, whatever the source: 75 Resist is likely a lot more useful, and more generally-useful, than GMAnatomy+GMHealing never-curing-self-and-never-resurrecting-self-with-bandages (you don't have to wait 15 seconds in order to heal damage you don't take in the first place, btw).
Fox wrote: [Reducing Anatomy might be acceptable].... However, make sure that you are OK to rely on magery/pots for curing, that is a strong commitment for a melee-bard. If you do not want to sacrifice that but like the idea of fitting resist in this template, you could sacrifice some tactics, but your melee damage will suffer.
It would require a strong commitment, indeed, to give up that 18-second-timer when suffering Lvl5 Poison, and also to abandon the facility to use a bandage on your own ghost after you have died! It might make sense to sacrifice the 50-150% damage modifier in order to keep the 0-20% damage modifier!

Nemo, consider your options.

SS
SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:
uosa44 wrote:For sale, by original owner:
1 Human Brain, never been used, only slightly damaged, still in original packaging.
$1, obo
FTFY.

SS
uosa44 wrote:The inability for this person to respond in such a crazy manner proves my point.

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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by eggmona »

I second getting tracking.

When I started here I played a melee bard and it was pretty damn fun. Tracking looks like it will compliment your template well enough; spot PK scouts and thieves and recall before they start messing with you.

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Re: 30 points left over - need direction

Post by Nemo the bard »

Appreciate everyone's input, all of y'all are far more knowledgeable about the topic than I am!

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