suggestions plz

[Cado]

Right now I'm building toward a Warrior/Healer:Swords 60's, Tactics 60's, Healing 50's, Parry 30's, Magery 30's, Wrestling 20's....are my main skills. Currently my stats are roughly: 74/47/18. I'm really shooting for something of a Pally build with magery for heals/cures/buffs and utilities...the occassional vortex is nice too Anyway. I was thinking at least this much: 100 swords, 100 tactics, 100 magery, 100 healing...then there is wrestling, anatomy, meditation, parry, and others to consider. Here's my questions/issues: Swapping weapons is a pain..when I cast spells in combat atm I manually drag weapons back onto paperdoll..is there a better way? If I go with Mace would i still have to drop my weapons to cast? Does a shield really help that much or better to do two hander? What about Dex?? I was thinking 100/25/100 as final stats....that make sense? Or, should I opt for more combat and go 100/100/25 if melee is main thing? I want to be able to tank/heal well as i often play with my sons who are mostly archer types...plus I need to be able to solo. I envisioned something of a plate mail warrior/healer but how does that affect magery? I'm very open to suggestions on builds...I'm not necessarily looking for cookie cutter, and see melee and healing as primary role to complement ranged players. Is there a point where I can bandage myself in combat with out the "your fingers slipped!" everytime or is self-healing during melee not a good idea? Right now I'm teaching my boys how to cross bandage...that seems to work but they get aggro sometimes and we don't have much in the way of armor atm. Sorry for the wall o' text...just trying to make some decisions as it seems to take a bit to level skills at our pace Thanks!

[benny-]

Hey Cado! I too prefer not to play cookie-cutter builds. However, in the t2a era there were sort of some standards for having a character that can pvp. I'll go over the basic t2a templates...

Tank Mage/Swords Mage/Hally Mage

Swords (Determines chance to hit)

Tactics (Determines damage)

Wrestling (Determines chance of being hit while casting)

Magery

Meditiation (Determines mana regeneration)

Resisting Spells (Decreases spell dmg from offensive spells)

Evaluating Intelligence (Determines Spell dmg for strictly offensive spells such as Energy Bolt, Explosion, Flamestrike, Lightning, Fireball, etc)

100 str
100 int
25 dex

This is the most common pvp template. As such, your build has to be prepared to take this one on, as the majority of pvpers you encounter will be using this build.

The idea of this template is to have the full effect of playing a mage with all the bonuses, but to use the slowest/heaviest hitting weapon: the halberd. As weapons' swing times are recharging even when not equipped, the tactic of the mage is to hit with the halberd, cast spells in between, then when that slow halberd is ready again, equip it and hit.



Dexxer/Warrior

Melee Skill (Fencing, Macing, or Swords) (Determines chance to hit)
Tactics (Determines damage)
Healing (Determines chance to heal with bandages)
Anatomy (Increases your dmg and determines how well you heal)
Resisting Spells (Decreases spell dmg from offensive spells)

str 100
dex 100
int 25

This is the core of any warrior build. I often tell members that if they plan to play any type of warrior, do not deter from this.

The idea is simple, do as much melee dmg as possible, while being able to use bandages to heal, so that you can stay on the offensive at all times.

Is there a point where I can bandage myself in combat with out the "your fingers slipped!" everytime or is self-healing during melee not a good idea?

The fingers slipped! message only let's you knw when you've been struck while trying to heal. At lower levels of healing it will hurt your chances of healing successfully. However at higher healing, near gm, you'll still get these messages but you'll always be able to heal anyway (you'll seldom receive the message "You apply the bandages, but they barely help...")

Bandage healing is the norm for warriors, as it allows you to heal whilst in the middle of combat without trying to breakoff or drop your weapon to cast a spell.

As for equipping weapons and shields....

Equipping weapons is pretty simple. If you want to use magery with your build you can check "Auto Unequip hands before casting" in "More Options" in Razor. However you'll still need a hotkey method to toggle your weps, as dragging means you have to stop to arm/disarm.

The best way to do this is to go into Razor, under the tab Arm/Dress. On the left side hit "Add..." and put in the name for the type of weapon you wish to use, such as "Broadsword" then to the right hit "Add(Target)" go ingame and target a broadsword. Then go back to the Arm/Dress area and you should see a broadsword in the box, rightclick that and select "Convert selected to TYPE" so that it will then use any broadsword you have in your equipment (saving you from setting this up every time you get a new broadsword). Now go into Hot Keys, open Dress and find "Toggle: Broadsword" and set it to a key. Now ingame, whenever you hit that key, it will either arm or disarm a broadsword.

Now the type of weps you should use will depend on how you want to play your warrior. Shields can be very effective, but if you plan to use any magery on the fly, know that you'll have to disarm both your shield, then your weapon, then cast a spell, then reequip your weapon, then your shield. Making magery hard to use.

When fighting mages, you want to be as quick as possible. The idea is to be able to disrupt his spells as effectively as possible. When using a quick weapon with high dex, he'll constantly be on the move, trying to evade your hits. If you have low dex or are using a slower wep, he'll be able to cast with ease. You really want to have 100 dex to be able to swing as fast as possible. Likewise, most warriors do not use platemail armor as the lossed dex is not worth the handful of additional armor points.

I always look for only the faster weps, generally something at least 40 speed or higher, tho you may want to look at only weps of 45 or higher. Here's a chart with all of the wep stats..

http://www.uosecondage.com/stratics/arms.html

While this may seem like playing a warrior is beginning to look like a cookie-cutter build, it is far more flexible than the tank mage, which requires all 7 skills to be used up, the dexxer only calls for 5, leaving you two gm skills to choose in order to customize your build a bit.

If you want to play an archer, take the same build and add archery as a 6th skill. If you want to use a shield, take parry, etc.

Personally, I like to have magery as a skill for the same reasons you stated. Additional heals, buffs/protection spells, utility spells like recall/mark, etc. Some people disagree with taking gm magery on a warrior build, but I find that for a single skill, there are none as useful and versatile as magery. I do not use any other mage-related skills, so I'm left with no med, no wrestle, no eval and only 25 int.

While this might seem like you're not getting the most out of having gm magery, your non-damage spells will work at full potency (such as heal/greater heal and debuffs like weaken and clumsy.) However damage-based spells, such as fireball or energy bolt are utterly useless.

Anyway, I know I rambled on about a few different areas, but I hope that helps.

[Cado]

That helps tremendously! I think I need to decide on a direction...to go dexxer warrior or the tank/mage route. I can see how the dexxer/warrior type has a bit more flexibility with room for other skills to GM and seems to be more "tanky." Seems that most gankers are using mage skills to paralyze then nuke.

So dexxer/warrior is effective against tank/mages in pvp? I know player skill matters a great deal...which i like, but I'm also guessing there is a reason that pvp'ers opt for the tank/mage build you described. It seems also that the build would rely a lot upon magic resist when gankers get the drop on ya. How effective is magic resist against crowd control and debuff spells?

Thanks for your responses!

[benny-]

Dexxers can run toe to toe with mages easily so as far as template vs. template I don't think there is a better choice, simply different.

There's a number of reasons why tank mages are still so popular. During the era, they were undoubtedly the best template imo, but there were a number of factors that made them more lethal back then...you couldn't use pots as easily as you can here...trapped pouches weren't as effective, making paralyze more lethal and characters all around had less resisting spells, meaning mages with high int and eval did massive amounts of damage.

They're still very effective mind you, and they're great for burst damage which is why they're still the most popular build for pks, but I think a number of changes in the game has made the dexxer right on par with the mage....tho this is, of course, subject to debate amongst many pvpers.

As for resist, here's a link to a full description of what all it does....
http://www.uosecondage.com/stratics/UOS ... igence.htm

Again, hope that helps!

[Cado]

Again, very helpful...thanks! I think I'm moving the "dexxer" direction. I'm deciding on what else to skill beyond the basic warrior skills you described above, but I"m pretty sure I'll go Magery as I don't see any other skills out there that has all the utility in combat and out of combat. I was also thinking:

-archery (already will have high dex and anatomy..so seems natural fit, plus nice to add ranged attack to arsenal)
-Taming (In Warhammer Online I played a White Lion; dps with pet class..was a lot of fun)
-Peacemaking or Provoke (a form of CC, but not sure if would work well w/o musicianship skill..of course, could go musician instead of magery....just a thought)

but some non-combat skills would add flavor and versatility
-lockpicking (seems like a needed skill for dungeon crawls)
-Hiding/stealth (definitely see the benefit when outnumbered by pker's...I wonder if invisibility spell works as good though)
-armor lore (to id those drops and player vendor items..and I think there is a chance for a small damage bonus?)
-Fishing (to hunt those treasure of the seas...)

The nice thing is the ability to change...

I'm sure there are others...but I'm already planning a T-hunter type alt, a Bard type or a Mage/Tamer type...so this one will probably stick with combat related skills.

[Pirul]

I would recomend to stick to a more warrior type build. It will not only be more useful in PvP, but also in PvM.

Taming is great for gold, but utterly useless unless you have MANY other skills (musicianship, animal lore, peacemaking and vet for starters).

Lockpicking isn't really something so useful unless you do t-maps. You might find an exceptional item here or there, but for the 100 - 300 gps you get per chest, it's not really worth it. It's better to go hunting with someone who has it for t-maps (me ).

Provo, peacemaking are not useful without music.

Hiding and stealth are not really useful for PvP, since most of the time one of the pkers will have tracking and you're toast. Hiding might buy you a bit of time to get a recall off, but not much more. You can get that same effect with magic invis.

Arms lore and item ID are pretty useful, but I'd keep em on a crafter (smith, tinker), no need to ID while hunting, they'll be plenty of time to do it back at the bank (home).

Some people like fishing because it's a moneymaker (MiB's, T-maps and chests are worth nice coin). I personally find it boring, and don't know another use they might have.

Archery is a bit trickier, since it is currently not very useful in PvP, unless you're a bot, which I'm guessing you won't be, but can be nice to have while PvMing in a group.

T-Hunters, bards and tamers are lots of fun to play. If you need a guide template for a T-Hunter, look at Von Drake's skills, that's more or less a regular template (some would drop stealth and/or hiding for eval int and/or wrestling). The only thing is, that when your on a t-map hunt, you rock, but not so much for regular hunting. If your looking for a mage-bard for dungeon crawls, definitely drop lockpicking and carto from that template and add eval int and wrestling. You might also want to drop hiding and stealth, and pick up two other skills.

These are just some pointers on what cookie-cutter type builds look like. At the end of the day, as benny said, the beauty of this game is that you can do whatever you want with your character. So when building up skills think about what you would lilke to have in order for your char to be fun to play with.

[Cado]

I think I'm down to the following:

Swordmastery
Tactics
Anatomy
Spell Resisting
Healing
Magery
Parry or Wrestling

Not sure which direction, but I think both have advantages/disadvantages. I can see wrestling working nice when being disarmed and still able to cast spells w/o interruptions..heals, etc. Shields could be effective too...GM Parry blocks 1/3 incoming blows...so against Halberds that might come in handy too

Anyway, getting closer...thanks for all the input!