old macer/peacemaker/healer character needs help

Rock

My namesake, Rock, is my first character, dating back to 1999.  His current skills and attributes are:

• Anatomy: 96.8
• Chivalry: 48.7
• Focus: 59.8
• Healing: 93.7
• Mace: 107.4
• Music: 107.1
• Peace: 106.5
• Tactics: 100
• human
• 96d/45i/104s
  

I added the Chivalry fairly recently (basically just for Sacred Journey), but now I've tentatively decided to shift to a 6x template with neither Chivalry nor Focus.  But he seems to be underwhelming in team play.

For example, yesterday evening several guild members, a friend, and he went to Wrong, 2nd level, to fight Fezzik the Ogre Cook.  We fought him several times, and our purpose was met, getting Three-Tier Cake recipe scrolls for everyone's accounts.  However, in the 4 battles, Rock never did enough damage to even gain looting rights.  He was using a fairly nice mace, though not a slayer weapon. It included, among other things, 41% Hit Life Leech   His peacemaking was insufficient to work on Fezzik, although area peace could calm down the attending mobs.  The one useful thing I think he did was drag away a number of the mobs, peace them, then head back to Fezzik.  They were out of range to re-aggro.

The first attempt did not go well, with multiple deaths.  After that, one person changed his character to a tamer and added a 2nd cu sidhe to the mix, and another character frequently cast Cleansing Winds (area heal, cure, remove curse).  This worked well, though there were still occasional deaths.  (Fezzik hits hard -- I think Rock received 83 damage in one blow once.)

Overall, though, I am underwhelmed by Rock's performance.  His other recent battles were less than stellar as well.  I am considering doing a more drastic template shift than eliminating chiv and focus.  Dropping Healing and possibly Anatomy would give him some skill points to play around with.  He'll be keeping Mace, Tactics, Music, and Peace though; everything else is open. How would you improve this character?

Arroth_Thaiel

A bard/warrior hybrid could be interesting, but I'm wondering how effective you'll find it in the long run?

I guess the first question would be, what exactly are you attempting to turn Rock into? You mentioned team play, so you could think of this template as a support character? Or are you trying to just experiment and try something different for fun? (I know, just playing for fun? Who would have thought!)

Since you have music/peace and mace/tactics I guess technically you're trying to build a pacifist fighter? You might be able to peace some things while focusing damage on one, but you're not putting out all that much damage without another skill (Chiv, bush, etc.)

It seems as though you are following three different paths, healer, warrior, bard. Cramming all that onto a template might be tough.

If you were going for team support you could keep healing/anat for cross healing, curing, and ressing, use music/peace for crowd control, and help out a wee bit with mace/tactics/(anat) for damage. This might be an interesting support build if you could keep the mana up for one of the peace masteries (mana leech weapons maybe?), but you'd be at a fraction of full bard power.

I don't know what to tell ya. That's a very different character you're trying. It will be interesting to see what you come up with.

Rock

@Arroth_Thaiel, in an earlier age he was almost an ideal character to lead the training offshoot of a larger guild.  On guild hunts his peacemaking could avoid disasters, and his healing proved very useful.  Virtually any monster could be peaced; "Super bosses" had not yet been added to supplement end-game play.  We would often spar on a guild rooftop, using our practice weapons to train up fighting skills to GM level. (Fighting characters began the game with a "practice weapon", which barely did more damage than wrestling.)  GM was the cap back then, and for a while the total of one's skills was limited to 700.

Once things begin to change from what he was designed for, I played him less often, and didn't even play him much when I came back to the game earlier this year.  Now that I have spent some time with him, it is apparent that the Dev's assurances have been forgotten. As things start changing they assured us that that "characters would still be as effective as they ever were, you've just got more options".  That ... no longer is the case.

He does still do some guild play, but guildies aren't around as often on Baja as they used to be.  He can solo a normal ogre lord, dragon, or lich lord okay, but all the newer "end-game" foes probably laugh at him. As I described above on a team hunt he was barely useful.

That all said, I appreciate your input.  "Pacifist fighter" is probably a good description of his design.  I knew his skills were somewhat incongruent, which is why I loved his guild name, "Imperterritus" (undaunted -- or as an Italian friend told me, "stubborn, but in a good way").

Arroth_Thaiel

I remember when powerscrolls were introduced and many dev statements were something like, "Now you'll have 2 ways to build your character. You can choose to have 7 skills at 100, or focus into just 6 skills at 120. Either way will be just as viable!"

Then all the skill curves got changed so that to have a decent chance at success you needed 120 skill. There went the 7 skills at 100 idea.

Honestly, with all the +skill stuff out there now, you can just have 7 skills at 120. Problem solved!

Like you, I have a couple of older characters that I am having to completely rethink. I am most of the way done with the organization, but rescrolling everything is a real drag.

Rock

... thinking out loud ...

Assume Rock has 480 skill assigned, 120 each in Mace, Tactics, Music, and Peacemaking.  That leaves 240 points to tune his template  Note that the loss of Anatomy is in itself a loss of damage potential, affecting all the below templates.

Paladin: 120 each in Chivalry and Focus.  Nice toolkit for a warrior, including healing, curing, curse removal,, rez, weapon customization to foe being fought, and Enemy of One to add significantly to damage.Even with Focus, he would need extra MR and likely LMC.

Necromancer: 120 each in Necromancy and Spirit Speak.  Primary problem is no skill points assigned for mana regeneration, which must then come from his outfit and Necro abilities to sap or generate it.  Second problem is that it doesn't really augment his damage potential in any direct way.  He can have followers and summons to add to his damage potential, but at the high end, these are usually quickly dispelled.  So I don't think this route would work.

Samurai: 120 each in Bushido and Parry.  Rock would get hit a lot less often, but other than some secondary healing and stamina regen via Parry and Confidence, he would have to heavily rely on potions for healing.  Damage potential would be greatly aided by the Honor/Perfection mechanic.  He would need a lot of MR from his outfit.  Special move costs reduced by 10 mana.  Long distance travel limited to runebook charges.

Mystic: 120 each in Mysticism and Focus. In some ways a lot like Chivalry, although with the eventual addition of the Rising Colossus summon. Since he would have high Tactics, Animated Weapon would do decent damage earlier in the build.  Adds ranged attacks, and Enchant improves damage output in melee. Long distance travel limited to runebook charges.

Weaver: 120 each in Spellweaving and Meditation.  Lots of survivability boosts.  Natures Fury operate as multiple tanks distracting the enemy.  If have formed an arcane focus, they do significant damage as well.  Will need significant MR and LMC.  Long distance travel limited to runebook charges.

Mage or Ninja: Both are basically 3-skill sets, and fitting them in template probably would not work.

Poison Speaker: 100 each in Poisoning and Spirit Speak.  It would add an extra damage vector against many foes, and provide some innate healing capability.  40 skill points available for some other skill.  Since there are no native mace weapons that can deliver poison, he would need very specialized "Use Best Weapon Skill" weapons that could deliver poison.  Long distrance travel limited to runebook charges.

Out of the above set of possibilities, Mystic seems the most appealing right now. 

Bilbo

Anat and healing might be needed.  Are you going to run peace mastery?  What is your gear going to be?  Why mace why not archery or garg and thrower for ranged attack so no parry needed.

Arroth_Thaiel

Bilbo said:

Anat and healing might be needed.  Are you going to run peace mastery?  What is your gear going to be?  Why mace why not archery or garg and thrower for ranged attack so no parry needed.

I think that he wants to stick with Mace/Music/Peace because he's scrolled for those to at least 110.

@Rock, my understanding is that you can effectively use poisoning in place of tactics (Just for special moves? Or does poisoning replace the tactics damage bonus as well?)

If you keep Macefighting, you're definitely trying to do damage with the weapon and keep everything but your main opponent Peaced, correct? If so, then I would absolutely take up additional damage (Chiv/Bushido). Chiv seems the easiest way to get there. Without Parry, no reason why you couldn't use 2-handed maces. Or you could go Chiv/Parry, skip the focus, and use 1handers and a shield.

Mystic/Focus seems good as well, but you're going to take a lot of damage staying in melee combat and have little defense (no parry or resist). Would Stoneform help out at all?

The major challenge I see is that you need high Hit Points to stand in melee combat, high Stamina to keep your swing speed up and do damage, and high mana to use your specials or keep a bard mastery running. I think you're headed for 60SSI and 100% HML weapons.

Honestly, unless your dedicated to trying this, I would just accept that the times, they have seriously changed, and drop music/peace to make a more standard fighter. Or drop Mace/Tac and go to a pure support character (by drop, I mean soulstone). Something like music/peace/anat/heal/magery/med (EV's would still be max power without Eval, I think???).

You definitely have a lot of options.

Rock

@Bilbo, Yes, he has Peace Mastery (and Mace Mastery).  His current attributes don't offer much mana though, so he can't sustain either of the Peace Mastery abilities for very long.  Part of his reconfiguration will be to provide more mana. His gear currently is not that great.  Once I decide on his path, I'll optimize it.  He is a macer mostly because that is what he has always been.  He has also always been a healer, and I'm likely dropping that, so adopting archery instead could be an option.  For the foes Peacemaking works on, defeating them is not too hard; it just takes time and a lot of re-Peacing.  They are essentially paralyzed for a few seconds.

The main advantages which I see for Healing and Anatomy are:

1. not interruptable (although being hit does lower the amount healed)
   
2. no mana used
3. significant damage buff (55% DI at 100 Anatomy)

Is there anything else which led you to write, "Anat and healing might be needed."?

Switching to Mysticism & Focus would offer some native mana regen.  Not a lot, though, and he'd need his outfit to supplement MR and add LMC.  As a human, he also has 20 JoaT Meditation skill for a little extra MR.  The extra damage from Enchant will generally make up for and sometimes exceed the damage lost from no Anatomy.  Access to ranged attacks would give him flexibility in choosing whether to melee or not.  Stone Form would grant partial immunity to poisoning, curses, and I think bleed attacks, and Cleansing Winds does more than bandages (except no rez), at range and to multiple close allies.  Rising Colossus may be one of the strongest summons in the game, but some foes will be able to dispel it.  All that is why I'm favoring the Mysticism path.

Switching to Archery from Macing would make him fully ranged in all his abilities, so that is tempting as well.  I have an archer/swordsman on the same account (another of my really old characters, named Scissors).  I've also been thinking of broadening his capabilities, so if Rock read an Archery skill scroll, it would be possible to transfer Scissors' Archery skill to Rock, and stone Rock's Mace skill.

And yes, my original guys were Rock, Paper, and Scissors.    This year I added a character to the account named Janken, the Japanese name for the Rock, Paper, Scissors game.  It's sort of a theme.

Rock

@Arroth_Thaiel, (You posted while I was in edit mode.) Yes, my attraction to keeping Mace involves having already read a skill scroll for it.  The other factor is that my desire is to keep him fairly close to what he's been for almost 20 years.  As stated in my reply to @Bilbo, I'm not closed to the concept of switching to Archery, though.

I think Poisoning only substitutes for Tactics in the two poison-specific special moves, Infectious Strike and Serpent Arrow.  So far as I know, it does not include the DI factor of Tactics, so it's not a substitute.  If it were, many players would take Poisoning instead of Tactics.

Based on your other points, switching to Archery sounds better and better.  Rock is a Peacemaker.

Bilbo

@Arroth_Thaiel & @Rock TY  interesting way to look at skills/chars in a different way

Rock

In the past couple days, Rock has shifted away from Healing and Mace to Mysticism and Archery.  His current template is:

• Archery: 102.5
• Focus: 101.2
• Music: 108.4
• Mysticism: 67.3
• Peacemaking: 108.1
• Tactics: 100

120 is the goal value down the line, but he has yet to read any 120 power scrolls.

He has lost the ability to resurrect and Sacred Journey, and I especially miss the former.  Last night he took part in a champion spawn hunt with his guild, and ressing teammates would have been a very beneficial ability.  There were 4 of us, and only one could rez.  He used the Noble Sacrifice spell, very dangerous during a champion spawn.  Also, at the time Rock only had about a 1/7 chance to cast Cleansing Winds, so he couldn't even heal or cure teammates.  My team good-naturedly accepted his limitations, and in the end we defeated the spawn and its end-boss.

Prior to the hunt, a guildmate had crafted and pulled together an excellent suit including several artifacts that don't normally have properties, such as boots and sash.  Of necessity his attributes are a fairly flat 85d/75i/85s, but with all the suit bonuses it works out to 131 stamina, 123 mana, and 127 hit points.  Its 7 MR allows him to sustain a peacemaking mastery indefinately solo, but I didn't try it during the spawn.  I understand that when teammates are near, they add to a bard's mana load.  Today he read a level 2 Archery Mastery book, but he is unable to activate its two active powers, Playing the Odds and Flaming Shot.  When tried a message appears, You do not have that spell!  I know I do, because I can see the passive power, Warrior's Gifts in my buff tray (EC).  The AoE attack Flaming Shot would have been very beneficial, especially during the early phases, with bunches of Greater Mongbats and Imps about.

Also today my bowyer created a really nice bow out of ash, using an ash runic fletching tool:

(Mystic spells except Enchant would normally disarm him, so the native Spell Channeling of a Mystic Shortbow is very beneficial.  Enchant buffs the bow even with its inherent Hit effects.) It may not be the best bow in existence, but it sure does shoot fast!  His costume provides 20% more SSI and his 131 stamina all work together wonderfully.  It's secondary special move is Psychic Attack, which would have been great to use against some of the higher end foes later in the champion spawn.

If you couldn't tell, I rate this character revision a success.   Thank you for your suggestions.