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Lorem ipsum posted:IMO the main perks of VIP are being able to open all quests on elite as a first life character, getting access to some races, character slots, and bank+gold storage I did see that stuff (char slots, storage are always needed in any mmo I ever played longer than an hour 🤑), but would a first time player (100% new to game) have the ability or gear or mechanics to actually run elite-level quests? Especially as mainly solo? I know gear creep and all (another always in an mmo), but I don’t have a prior account or “daddy” to pass me gear or even know mechanics to know if that’s even possible or needed yet! Like I said, I enjoy playing story blind, but any game picadillos in mechanics are welcomed and appreciated in advance!
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Nov 21, 2021 12:25
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I could sorta-kinda run elite first life as a rogue, but I was following a build guide, multiclassed into barb and fighter for healing and toughness, and knew the quests from having played on a different server before. I'd also say that while server population is pretty dire most players are pretty okay with carrying if you ask nicely and they're capable of it. In terms of gear, Ravenloft has some pretty good items to farm and also some of the best generic weapons in the game- feywild and sharn have somewhat surpassed it but they're a lot more expensive
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Nov 21, 2021 13:52
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StashAugustine posted:I could sorta-kinda run elite first life as a rogue, but I was following a build guide, multiclassed into barb and fighter for healing and toughness, and knew the quests from having played on a different server before. I'd also say that while server population is pretty dire most players are pretty okay with carrying if you ask nicely and they're capable of it. In terms of gear, Ravenloft has some pretty good items to farm and also some of the best generic weapons in the game- feywild and sharn have somewhat surpassed it but they're a lot more expensive Ok. I had seen earlier in the dead thread about getting fighter/barb levels for what someone called “basic-tier survivability” for a rogue, and I was a bit intrigued because, and I may have stated this already, my only real TT years (specifically the TSR years) were with almost a decade of AD&D (2nd Ed.). It was very possible to play a solo rogue, as long as you didn’t try to solve every single encounter with your knives (and ran away a lot!). After about third level in a group you were nigh-untouchable, but my friend & DM put rogues, wizards, and later SR Deckers through lots of custom solo adventures because we hung out for literal days at a time , and the wizard/Decker (same kid) rules made this worthwhile and lore-appropriate. I probably spent half my time engineering thief-trinkets and fencing loot just because I was at his home (he had two half-brothers in their late twenties who collected rpg stuff, and left all their swaggy Greyhawk and 1st Ed. stuff back home), and his Mom didn’t want us to “rot our brains” with DOS video games. I just don’t have any experience with other versions of the rules, even though I still buy new books for lore reasons/reading (new Planar and Dragon lore-type stuff). I guess with video games and mechanics underneath you would spend most of the time fighting to gain xp, even on questing-heavy games it’s always been like that as a rule! Should I get a couple of levels each in Barb/Fighter very early on to make combat more survivable, or do I need to focus on rogue early (still going assassin) for traps? I’m really looking forward to jumping in, but since I have a week or two I’d rather start with both feet running so I don’t burn out at level 10 and leave what looks to be a refuge from EQ/WoW for a change!
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Nov 22, 2021 16:29
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So I went with the quarterstaff rogue build that's in the hardcore builds in the OP. Rogues are pretty good at damage, even if sneak attacks are a little iffy to trigger sometimes, but they have practically no healing and not a lot of defense. (Trapping skills are also very nice.) Barbarian is almost entirely for the Blood Tribute enhancement that gives you a silly amount of temp HP, fighter gets you some defensive enhancements and also the Kensei tree plus feats and better hit dice iirc. The path was 2 rogue, 1 barb, 1 rogue, 1 barb then alternate rogue/fighter taking the last 2 in rogue for 12 rogue/6 fighter/2 barb.
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Nov 22, 2021 16:38
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No class really needs its own healing for leveling when healing hirelings exist, imo, they’re finnicky to manage but learning how is one of the best leveling skills to learn for this game. It certainly is nicer to have your own but is by no means required even into low reapers. Also cure potions from the guild vendor will do some seriously heavy lifting on healing for someone with the lower health pool newer characters have in difficulties below reaper where there is no healing penalty. Ort fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 18:16
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Ort posted:No class really needs its own healing for leveling when healing hirelings exist, imo, they’re finnicky to manage but learning how is one of the best leveling skills to learn for this game. It certainly is nicer to have your own but is by no means required even into low reapers. Yea, outside of reaper mode (and new players should probably avoid reaper mode) this is 100% true. Cure serious pots should be all you need on elite. Heal scrolls are also a great source of healing once you make it into epics if you have enough UMD to use them.
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Nov 22, 2021 18:48
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StashAugustine posted:So I went with the quarterstaff rogue build that's in the hardcore builds in the OP. Rogues are pretty good at damage, even if sneak attacks are a little iffy to trigger sometimes, but they have practically no healing and not a lot of defense. (Trapping skills are also very nice.) Barbarian is almost entirely for the Blood Tribute enhancement that gives you a silly amount of temp HP, fighter gets you some defensive enhancements and also the Kensei tree plus feats and better hit dice iirc. The path was 2 rogue, 1 barb, 1 rogue, 1 barb then alternate rogue/fighter taking the last 2 in rogue for 12 rogue/6 fighter/2 barb. Thanks! I really, really like the style of the acrobat rogue, but not the weapon choice. I would love to be an evasive, fast fighter capable of clearing a room, but not with a staff! As an example, from day 1 of WoW all the way to 9.1 I was a combat rogue. I love the stealth, but its effect was on the base class. I could literally use 2 1H swords and through skill at knowing what to use and when for abilities, plus judicious items and healing, wade into a two minute fight with twenty same-level mobs at max and not die 90% of the time (not all twenty can wail on you simultaneously, but AoE and evasion/dodge cooldowns were a good combo). Can you be an acrobatic rogue with 2 swords or even sword+dagger?
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Nov 22, 2021 19:59
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DerekSmartymans posted:Can you be an acrobatic rogue with 2 swords or even sword+dagger? Yes that is certainly possible, but you are going to run into some game issues that will make life harder for you, so I'd hesitate to say it would be a great idea starting out. One of the signature abilities and main sources of rogue damage is through sneak attacks, which requires you to not be the target of a mob. This is harder to pull off when soloing, and while you can use bluff, blind, or have your hireling get aggro to let you do sneak attacks, that makes things a lot more involved then being a pure barbarian or paladin and you just run around and smash stuff. If you group, you can maybe get the group to stop for you to deal with traps, but they are unlikely to let you do much if any stealth stuff. Of course, the class fantasy that appeals to you is important as well, so I'd instead recommend considering a swashbuckling bard. You will be using a single 1 handed weapon, but that is fairly close to what you were describing, will give you tons of tools to work with, and you can even take a couple of rogue levels to do traps if you want.
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Nov 23, 2021 00:40
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If I were doing a 2 weapon rogue, I would swap the 6 fighter levels from the Staff rogue build with 6 ranger levels. 6 Ranger has some good low hanging fruit, including 10% more off hand attacks, a defensive cool down and 2 really good offensive skills, one that gives raw damage and another that enables sneak attacks on a target even if they are attacking you(just like bluffing but you do not have to stop attacking to do it). SWF might be better picking up bard, but SWF and Assassin do not really compliment each other.
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Nov 23, 2021 01:30
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Ghosts! posted:Yes that is certainly possible, but you are going to run into some game issues that will make life harder for you, so I'd hesitate to say it would be a great idea starting out. One of the signature abilities and main sources of rogue damage is through sneak attacks, which requires you to not be the target of a mob. This is harder to pull off when soloing, and while you can use bluff, blind, or have your hireling get aggro to let you do sneak attacks, that makes things a lot more involved then being a pure barbarian or paladin and you just run around and smash stuff. If you group, you can maybe get the group to stop for you to deal with traps, but they are unlikely to let you do much if any stealth stuff. Of course, the class fantasy that appeals to you is important as well, so I'd instead recommend considering a swashbuckling bard. You will be using a single 1 handed weapon, but that is fairly close to what you were describing, will give you tons of tools to work with, and you can even take a couple of rogue levels to do traps if you want. That sounds pretty cool, actually. I had a bard alt in EQ back in the charm-kiting days, and platinum rained for months. I wasn’t even good, as good EQ bards were actually hard to play physically, akin to flying a helicopter or non-sensical non-“musical”-but-exacting speed piano! The elite bards could regularly “twist” five spell effects in a rhythmic trail of destruction, with immediate death as a consequence of a mistimed note. No limit to # of mobs you could hit with your multiple AoE’s and debuffs and charm and direct damage while tab-targeting and paying attention to the main creature’s (the tankcharmed toughest) health to cancel a charm at 20% health to tech arm the next tankcharmed critter and AoE a group of werewolves to add because you “only” were killing forty two gnolls in the pack and 50 was more “efficient,” but not more dangerous because if you hit lag forty two mobs will kill you just as quick as 80 so this run on sentence is what watching an elite bard felt like 😳. I funded my characters by three-song kiting giants during off hours, and I could charm kill a triple or double, but I was decent and it took forever because I sometimes got tankgiant killed while he was still charmed, which wasted the time killing him because no loot dropped from a dead “pet.”
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Nov 23, 2021 02:26
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Fenris13 posted:If I were doing a 2 weapon rogue, I would swap the 6 fighter levels from the Staff rogue build with 6 ranger levels. 6 Ranger has some good low hanging fruit, including 10% more off hand attacks, a defensive cool down and 2 really good offensive skills, one that gives raw damage and another that enables sneak attacks on a target even if they are attacking you(just like bluffing but you do not have to stop attacking to do it). SWF might be better picking up bard, but SWF and Assassin do not really compliment each other. Ok. Sounds like I have some wiki-diving to do! Customizing your electronic play to fit your dream vision of a character is more mechanics than imagination, but it’s part of any change from TT to video game. You can “Wow!” your buddy the DM into fudging a save with a quick inspired out of nowhere move that awes your friends, but video games can’t do it. Learning mechanics is needed to play (sigh) “Drisst Dodourine, the half-Minotaur elf ranger” in a video game with nobody getting any advantage for sharing beer irl with your group!
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Nov 23, 2021 02:35
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Basic bard gameplay here would be entering a room, shooting out an AOE damage spell, or an AOE stun/cc spell and then finishing off stuff by stabbing things with a rapier or another AOE or a special attack. Also you would have excellent buffs for yourself and can buff anyone that happened to group with you, and heals. DDO boils down a combat game, so its more about having the right buffs, resistance, tools, tactics, etc. than anything else. The system and gameplay is way more interesting (to me) than WoW or EQ or whatever, but still its just combat. A huge part of this game is leveling characters up and then restarting them, so a lot of the guides assume some game experience, even if its just knowing the limitations of the game. You can check out the class forums on the game website if you want to see some builds, and they can be pretty good especially the "for new players" or whatever ones. That doesn't mean they are bad or lesser builds, just that they use the tools available to you as a new player. Other ones may require payment to unlock classes, tomes, or races.
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Nov 23, 2021 06:34
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Ghosts! posted:Basic bard gameplay here would be entering a room, shooting out an AOE damage spell, or an AOE stun/cc spell and then finishing off stuff by stabbing things with a rapier or another AOE or a special attack. Also you would have excellent buffs for yourself and can buff anyone that happened to group with you, and heals. DDO boils down a combat game, so its more about having the right buffs, resistance, tools, tactics, etc. than anything else. The system and gameplay is way more interesting (to me) than WoW or EQ or whatever, but still its just combat. Thanks for the input! It seems like VIP is cheaper than paying for individual races or char slots, plus the added points will come in handy for expansions if I end up staying (I have a lot of patience with learning new video games and systems, which helps with new-to-me MMOs) for more than a few months. It seems like I will, honestly, just because I love D&D and goon chat weirdness 🤪.
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Nov 23, 2021 07:02
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Hit 29 on my bear druid and I'm probably gonna pick up Sharn to get started on the epic gear from there. How difficult/grindy is getting the Nearly Finished gear completed?
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Nov 23, 2021 22:26
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Is there a reason I can’t get the game to run (I still haven’t “started,” but I wanted to glance at the store and that’s in game only (right?). My username and password are fine (login works on website), and all files are caught up now, but when I push “play” it goes to server select, and when I click “Argowhazit” it goes immediately back to username/password in a never ending loop. It happens from the DDO launcher, Steam, & GoG. I have sometimes occasionally gotten a message that it’s running and to stop the “other” instance, but if you stop Steam or GoG the whole DDO login/server loop starts. I reset settings and even deleted all the files and redl’d them (13Gb? No expansions and still a free account with a dwarf on Argonessen never played, just created). Is this a new bug? Or something seen/I’m doing wrong? I tried on my old laptop and the exact things happen. I didn’t want to bother you folks or ssgames but the fact it happens on two different Win10 machine leads me to an outside or configuration problem.
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Nov 24, 2021 05:43
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DerekSmartymans posted:Is there a reason I can’t get the game to run (I still haven’t “started,” but I wanted to glance at the store and that’s in game only (right?). You could try registering a new account maybe? Alternatively I have had some issues with the directx mode (especially the oldest one). Another thing you could try is enabling 64 bit.
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Nov 24, 2021 05:47
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i like the level progression at 20+ where you go from wiping out a drow city in the underdark and chumping lolth's generals to beating up fishmen in a mash
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Nov 24, 2021 06:22
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StashAugustine posted:Hit 29 on my bear druid and I'm probably gonna pick up Sharn to get started on the epic gear from there. How difficult/grindy is getting the Nearly Finished gear completed? Its not that bad, you might need to spend a couple saga rewards picking up the mats though. The stuff is unbound though so let me know if I can help you fill in the last few. quote:account problems I think there was some maintenance but the server should have shown up as offline in that case. I'd try again tonight and if it still doesn't work you might have to contact support.
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Nov 24, 2021 17:18
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Hardcore season 5 starts December 1 and runs for 2 months!
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Nov 24, 2021 20:56
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Lorem ipsum posted:Hardcore season 5 starts December 1 and runs for 2 months! Any sense what the meta read is going to be?
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Nov 24, 2021 23:06
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milkman dad posted:Any sense what the meta read is going to be? Not 100% sure what you mean by "meta read"
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Nov 25, 2021 03:51
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Their black friday sale has started. 60-85 % discount on the sharn and feywild previous expansions. Also otto boxes are on the store for the next couple of days.
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Nov 25, 2021 16:15
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Oh sweet glad I waited on picking up Sharn, and Feywild is a nice bonus too. Figure I'll run those epic and maybe see about doing a raid before reincarnation
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Nov 25, 2021 16:51
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StashAugustine posted:Oh sweet glad I waited on picking up Sharn, and Feywild is a nice bonus too. Figure I'll run those epic and maybe see about doing a raid before reincarnation Hah, I was hoping you hadn't caved in and gotten it the other day.
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Nov 25, 2021 17:42
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I did feywild at the heroic level and it was a lot of fun. Looking forward to doing the legendary ones when I get to 30.
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Nov 25, 2021 17:43
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Lorem ipsum posted:Not 100% sure what you mean by "meta read" What are good builds for hc this season.
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Nov 25, 2021 17:55
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milkman dad posted:What are good builds for hc this season. Oh, i'm sure the stuff that was good last HC will still be good - FvS, Barb, Bear Druid are all going to be good. I'll personally be playing a 1arti/19alch - I can post a build if anyone wants it. I'm also going to level a paladin tank to do endgame reapers with.
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Nov 26, 2021 02:54
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Lorem ipsum posted:Its not that bad, you might need to spend a couple saga rewards picking up the mats though. The stuff is unbound though so let me know if I can help you fill in the last few. Yeah, it’s working on my laptop that doesn’t even meet “recommended” for a 15 yo game, so that’s not optimal, but works well enough for BF deal searching. I might just try making a new account and re-dl’ing the entire set since I have never bought anything for this game yet. Since I’m not at my desktop, is the “adventure pack mega-free-downloads” coupon still available? I cannot remember when it expires and don’t want a new account if I can’t get them again for free  !
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Nov 26, 2021 17:33
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DerekSmartymans posted:Yeah, it’s working on my laptop that doesn’t even meet “recommended” for a 15 yo game, so that’s not optimal, but works well enough for BF deal searching. It is valid until the end of the year
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Nov 26, 2021 17:55
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Lorem ipsum posted:It is valid until the end of the year 
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Nov 26, 2021 20:00
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Since hardcore is starting **Wed, here is a spreadsheet i've been working on with Suzera's help. Basically, its a quest danger guide. It assumes a few things like: 1) You have all the basic arcane buffs: shield, spawn screen, blur, fire shield 2) You have all the basic divine buffs: freedom of motion, circle of protection against evil, deathward 3) You have a party and that party has a healer and a trapper 4) You read the wiki page for the quest https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yN4L1DcZy8LOjtrv5KH0lhYcljwhS8EQU9JiWuf5vws/edit?usp=sharing Lorem ipsum fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 05:53
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Hi, it me. Couple additional notes for that. You can mostly get away with no freedom of movement (especially in a group) until you get level 10 and can go to Ravenloft for the boots from Death House which has speed 20% and fom on them. That's only a 3 level gap between the earliest casters getting it and the base level of the quest. The boots are worth farming up for most builds unless you have someone to cast freedom on you. If you don't have a trapper, you can farm it by corner jumping the trap (practice in softcore first) and very probably get it with astral shard rerolls. There's a lot of applicable quests where you're unlikely to die without death ward/spawn screen if you don't rush it, but necro 2 is stuffed with shadows. If you don't have someone who can cast either spell those quests are A LOT more deadly, especially shadow knight which also includes dispelling mobs. Worst case for other quests, spawn screen is a level 2 spell and you can squeeze it out on scrolls with low umd with enough attempts, though it only lasts 3 minutes from scrolls.
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Nov 29, 2021 12:17
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Near end of level 4 on a sun cleric life, first time as a caster. It seems like for low level elite/reaper, you do bad damage if you don't have metamagic and if you do then your actual spells are insanely expensive, so you have to rely entirely on SLAs for damage? Hopefully it gets smoother when I get a second SLA that does twice as much damage at 5
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Nov 29, 2021 20:47
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StashAugustine posted:Near end of level 4 on a sun cleric life, first time as a caster. It seems like for low level elite/reaper, you do bad damage if you don't have metamagic and if you do then your actual spells are insanely expensive, so you have to rely entirely on SLAs for damage? Hopefully it gets smoother when I get a second SLA that does twice as much damage at 5 I suspect gear is an issue (sub level 5 gearing is hard for casters). Yes, you will be heavily reliant on your SLAs but should be able to mix in non-sla stuff reliably around mid-heroics. Basically, casters are super weak early game because its still 3.5 unless you are twinked out in gear. You should start feeling ok at 6 though. I wouldn't run reapers until you hit 6.
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Nov 29, 2021 21:04
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It's kind of rough until you get the Holy Smite SLA and can pool multiple encounters of monsters into it, but the Divine Disciple SLA of Searing Light at level 3 will go a long way towards bridging the gap. Just respec out of Searing Light from Divine Disciple at level 5 since it allegedly shares a cooldown with the Sun domain version. If you're fighting a big ball of monsters, especially lower hp stuff like kobolds, spamming Sound Burst with no metamagics is potentially better than any of your SLAs or other spells until you get Holy Smite SLA at level 6 from enhancements and spell version at level 7 (for when you need it and SLA is on cooldown). You can also get Sun Bolt SLA at level 6 from divine disciple which is radiant lightning bolt (line of damage). Having Searing Light at level 5 is nice, but the aoe divine disciple SLAs are where you'll really feel like it's picking up.
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Nov 29, 2021 22:36
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So am just about to hit 28 once I hand in the last stormhorns quest as that will finish off several saga's. Quite like the storm horn quests, the DM voice, especially when he's doing the netherese mage complaining about his minions makes me laugh. Also gently caress air elementals. Ran into one when up a cliff on the way to the netherese camp, was about half way there. Got blown back to the start. Had feather fall on an item, but took about a minute to before I landed right next to the guide. Thought bugger running back up again and paid three shards to get ported. After this I think I'll head to Feywild. I really liked the area and quests when I did them on heroic and it's got a lot of good gear for my setup. Lack of lethal traps was also a bonus.
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Dec 1, 2021 02:40
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PMB posted:Also gently caress air elementals. Ran into one when up a cliff on the way to the netherese camp, was about half way there. That one is a classic, drat I cursed SO loud when it happened to me first time.
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Dec 1, 2021 03:10
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I think my favorite is in Reavers Reach where there's a bit where you fall into a deep pit of spikes and when you manage to turn on an air jet to send you back up it shoots you into a gelatinous cube
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Dec 1, 2021 03:13
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StashAugustine posted:I think my favorite is in Reavers Reach where there's a bit where you fall into a deep pit of spikes and when you manage to turn on an air jet to send you back up it shoots you into a gelatinous cube Oh man I forgot about that one. Thats one of my favorite traps
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Dec 1, 2021 03:16
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Anybody playing Hardcore tomorrow? I was spoiled by Hardcore (first time playing DDO was last hardcore season and regular servers can't live up to it) but now that it's back I'm kinda tempted to knock out the achievements again. I got level 20 and 5k favor last time after 5 or so deaths as a typical Barbarian - if I decide to play this again I'm sorta tempted to try something that can trap so it's not completely ungabunga again. I needed to tell someone this because normally I'd tell my brother but his dog just died and bombing him with inane crap out of nowhere as usual would be kinda poorly timed. Anyway this is my first post in I think close to a decade hi hello
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Dec 1, 2021 05:20
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