Tamer Thief Help

[TheScoundrelRico]

*waves*

Howdy folks...it's been ages since I peeked in here. Not sure the search functions are still working so I figured I would just ask

Ok, so I am back visiting during the RtB campaign. I am playing on Siege exclusively and play a stealth thief.

I am working on a tamer thief while I am back and wanted to get some template advice.

So I have an 86 month old account so I have 720 skill points to play with. My base thief template includes:

• 120 Stealing
• 100 Snooping
• 100 Hiding
• 80 Stealth

So as you can see, I have 400 points tied up in my thief skills. Here is where I need your help.

How would you spend the remaining 320 points for a tamer thief?

I have GM (with a 120 scroll cap) magery, and am working up animal lore (102 something) and animal taming (78 something). What levels would you look at for these skills, or would you get rid of magery?

I don't see myself as one that will take the time to train my pets, so for the most part, they will be throw aways. I do use magery to gate around (no recall on Siege) so I can use GH to heal the pets if I need to...I don't want to waste any time working skills that don't seem to make sense..

Thanks in advance...la

 

[Tomarke]

I am highly intrigued so I'm going to apologize up front because after giving your question some thought I generated a few of my own for you. I'm also to apologize because I have never played a thief nor have I ever played siege so I have some question on mechanics of the template as well. My background is Mage/Tamers and Bard/Tamers.

1) What are you looking to do with this character? You can stealth into just about any place a tamer would need a pet to get into. As I see it, your pet will be your primary means of offense as well as defense. But you have the added bonus of being able to hide/stealth if your pet goes down.

2) I understand that your pets will be throwaway which means they will not be that great offensively or defensively. What does your mana pool, LMC and MR look like? If you are fighting with a defensively weak pet your mana will be devoted to keeping your pet alive and chain casting GH can devastate a mana pool in a prolonged fight.

The advantage I can see to this template is your survivability if your pet goes down as you can stealth away but you will have a vested interest in keeping him alive so if it was me I would still carry some vet and enhanced bandages with me to rez and as a primary means of healing with GH as a back up.

3) Can you vet while hidden? Another tactic would be to hide and let your pet draw agro and heal him while hidden if it is possible, so again you would need vet.

If you have 320 points to play with I would go 110 Lore/Taming and GM Vet. If you have room on your jewels you can always kick Taming and Lore up to 120 for better high end pet control and healing.

I know I raised more questions than I answered but I'm having a problem understanding the ultimate purpose to the template. Maybe if I had that I could answer better.

(do y'all have balls of pet summoning on siege?)

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

The primary focus of this character is to steal from other players. The problem with being a thief on Siege is finding marks to steal from. Many of the current population run around with stealth so it can be awhile between steals.

I played this type of character on Atlantic over 10 years ago and had a blast. I would steal from someone, then run to the location where I had a couple of mares or a pack of ossies parked. Once I was attacked, they would be grey and I would sick my pets on them.

As far as Siege rules...it's a tough shard to play.

• There is no recalling.
• There is no insurance (a reason why I play Siege as a thief).
• Siege players have a Siege bless we can use (similar to a bless deed but it can be removed and put on another item).
• Shop prices are 3x higher than production shards.
• Passive detect doesn't work on Siege (this is a pro)
• There is no Trammel facet (so basically half the land mass)

There are a lot of other differences but it's been so long since I played (6 years), I've forgotten them.

Basically, I want a character that I can steal with but during the slow times, make some gold while farming. I just found out about some of the items I can steal from monsters so, having pets to tank will give me a chance to steal without getting hit.

Being a stealther (80 stealth) I can stealth around but need to wear medable armor to do so. Building good suits is tough because it seems most players on Siege will dry loot you in a minute (besides the fact that as a thief, my corpse is usually grey). No insurance and the Siege bless pretty much gives Siege players one item we can hold onto, so I suppose I could use it on a summoning ball ( I found a pouch with a bunch I stole the last time I played ).

I don't believe you can heal while hiding, but you can place a bandaid and then hide, but you reveal once another bandaid is applied.

I think that answered your questions, if I missed one, let me know...la

 

[Tina Small]

Rico, one other thing to add to your list of differences on Siege is that you can't make yourself invisible by any means while you attempt to tame something. (I'm pretty sure you can't even have someone else try to inviz your character for you while making a taming attempt.) That means it's a little bit harder than elsewhere to tame something that is already aggressive or becomes aggressive with a taming attempt.

One other challenge you will have with that character is keeping both hands free for stealing. So no carrying a spellbook with mods (you'd have to use your Siege bless on it anyway), no boomstick, etc.

A barbed leather suit imbued with LRC and a few other properties shouldnt be too terribly expensive, even on Siege.

You'll need 80.1 vet skill and 80.1 lore skill, at a minimum to rez your pets. As you might lose your skill jewelry periodically, I would try to have "real" taming and lore skill of around 100 each just to make sure ridable pets you might use (and hide on while mounted) don't go wild on you. You should probably keep a really good set of taming/lore jewelry in the bank as well for stabling and unstabling purposes as a precaution, especially as with your template and reputation you could easily end up being inadvertently pulled into VvV and suffering temporary skill loss if your character dies while orange.

 

[Tomarke]

ah ok, no PVM for you. In that case you can completely disregard my suggestions from my last post. I am used to prolonged PVM fights and tend to think in terms of long sustained battles rather than quick ambushes. I would suggest that you only need as much taming and lore as is required for 100% control of your pets (which for nightmares is around 94.1 if I remember correctly, haven't looked it up in a long time). And you can forget about vet, since these are going to be quick ambushes I'm guessing it is in your best interest to be long gone in the case that your pets go down and your attackers can turn their attention back to you.

So from the taming point of view I would say a minimalist attitude is the best, at the most GM in both taming and lore if you are sticking with mares, if you plan on moving up to GDs you will want to think about at least 110 in each and don't even worry about vet. Based on the points you said you had to work with this should leave you with another 100 - 120 points to put towards augmenting your primary profession.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

One of the handy features of being a tamer thief is that if I choose, I can raise my karma/notoriety, throw on a disguise kit and pretend to be a full fledged tamer. It let's me get close to unsuspecting people and usually surprises the hell out of them.

When was the last time you had something stolen from you from a Lord ?

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

ah ok, no PVM for you.

Oh, I will certainly PvM...things can get a little boring on Siege with everyone seeming to have hiding and stealth, so being able to grab some gold and even steal from monsters while my pet is keeping them busy will help keep my vendors with fresh items...la