New melee character

[Thelps]

Hi all,
I was a UO player back in 'the day' (From original release up to Third Dawn') and really loved the game to bits. Problem was, in my naivety I had made a Lumberjack melee character, yet was playing on a 56K modem (!). Needless to say, my ping prevented me from ever really making my presence felt in combat, and while I could get 2/3-3/4 of a mage's health in one hit, I almost never killed them since they pretty much just had to move in order to outrun me.

Well, my friends and I have decided to return to the game at long last. My brother's bringing back his legendary thief (Sandspider, a moongate-camper extraordinaire, known for disarming, pickpocketing that vanquishing weapon and then running off into the moongate never to be seen again), my cousin's working on a new Bard, my other cousin is trying for taming and will probably attach some magery to that and, well, that just leaves me.

I'm dead certain I want to go melee again, since I'm itching to actually be somewhat effective this time (got a high-speed broadband connection, so hopefully my ping worries will be a thing of the past) but the problem is, the game has really changed in the meantime. Now there are Ninjas, Samurai, Sampires, Paladins, all kinds of melee-oriented skill adjuncts, and it's making me think Lumberjack, something I chose to mitigate my bad ping (kill 'em in as few hits as possible) is going to be a bit boring...

Essentially, my question is this: I want to build a PvP oriented melee character who won't be completely useless at PvM (we all need to earn money somehow, eh?) and ideally will be decent at killing those damned pesky mages.

From my research, both Bushido and Ninjitsu look like attractive skills. I'll obviously be taking the standard Tactics, Healing, Anatomy and Magic Resist that I understand EVERY melee class should have, but I'm wondering what would best complement them in a PvP environment. Since I have only just started my research, and the amount the game has changed is pretty daunting, I'd appreciate anyone's advice/personal experience/warnings about what other skills I should add on to that batch. If possible let me know what builds each option makes me most effective against, whether I'll be a hard-hitter, a damage absorber, or whatever.

Obviously I'm researching the skill guides as we speak, but you can't beat first hand experience and advice.

My thanks in advance.

 

[Kellgory]

Only advise I can give you is to find a PVP guild on your shard that you enjoy being with and work with them getting template(s) figured out. There are just so many variations of melee chars nowdays. One of the biggest problems with melee chars is that you have to catch them to hit them unless your an archer.

 

[Lynk]

Anyone who tells you lumberjacks are worthless in PvP are stupid. They should tell that to the guy I 2 shotted last night!

I have a LJ character that incorporates Bush/Parry with 120 tact/anat.

I imagine with a slayer weapon, perfection, 100 DI from items, and an ornate axe with hld/hml with damage type to the mobs lowest resistance, you would be able to chain crushing blows endlessly.

It is not the 'best' PvP character, but it is fun to play and hits really hard.

 

[Stupid Miner]

Essentially, my question is this: I want to build a PvP oriented melee character who won't be completely useless at PvM (we all need to earn money somehow, eh?) and ideally will be decent at killing those damned pesky mages.

Should probably think of the PvP aspect of you char first, then PvM, since PvM is generally easier.

This also greatly depends on what you want to be able to accomplish in PvM.

For PvM fighting you'll need Chivalry, but it will be useless in PvP unless you have some FC/FCR (ideally 4/6, but that can be tricky). With FC/FCR it will be a very good means of supplemental healing.

Bushido translate into PvM great, focused on offense.

Ninjitsu, not as good for PvM, but still useful on the defensive aspect.

Also, for PvM, get a swamp dragon with exceptional barding deeds and you'll take 20% less damage. (no good reason not to do this)

 

[Thelps]

Excellent ideas so far all, thanks, especially from Lynk, what you've suggested intrigues me... Combining Bushido and Lumberjacking could really be an avenue forward for me as an all-out lethal hard-hitter.

To clarify, my focus is definitely on PvP first and PvM second. My main fear from the old days was the way I'd get cut to shreds by any casting characters out there, what with my high ping meaning I moved quite slowly and their comparably versatile bag of tricks against my fairly one-sided smashy-smashy strategy.

Obviously this will still be the case to a certain extent, but at least the ping won't be so crappy.

One other thing, I'm not really looking for an all encompassing 'one man army' type setup for duels against every other variant out there. The intention among me and my brethren is to operate as a group anyway, so a little specialisation at the cost of versatility is fine by me.

So, assuming these basic skills :

Bushido
Lumberjacking
Swords
Anatomy
Magic Resistance
Tactics

What other skills should I add, and any suggestions as to what ratios of skills (All at 100? Some lower some higher?)?

If anyone wants to suggest a completely different build, by all means! This is a worthwhile brainstorming session for us all.

 

[Lynk]

You'll need healing. If you're going LJ you need to have tact/anat to 120. The whole point is to max out on damage.

You can skimp on healing at 90.

On my build I have:

120 Swords
120 Tact
120 Anat
120 Bushido
100 Parry
100 Lumberjacking
90 healing

That is 770 skill points, which means you need 50 total skill increase from items. You can do this a few different ways. The way I chose was to put 25 skill points on the ring and 25 skill points on the bracelet. 13 skill / 12 skill / 13 dci / 22 DI / (EP or HCI, depending on the rest of your suit).

If you *really* wanted to fit in magic resist I would drop bushido/parry and do:

120 Swords
120 Tact
120 Anat
100 LJ
90 Healing
120 Magic Resist
50 Chivalry

You wouldn't need any skill increase for this. Honestly, the first build has better survivability because of bushido/parry.

 

[Capt.E]

There are a few questions I have for you.

1. Do you plan to PVP in a group?

2. Do you own any soulstones? Or can you claim a vet reward for one?

3. What is your opinion of archery? Or would you prefer to keep melée?

4. What type of PVP do you plan to do the most? Open-field? Gate fighting? Spawn defence, raids? Killing miners? Choke point faction fighting? I realize that ideally you would be doing all of these things but what is the one or two things you will be doing most?

5. Do you have SA?

Depending on your answers to these questions I think the experts here should be able to come up with an answer for ya.

 

[longshanks]

well i would say u need healing unless your going to rely on pots and confidence to get by.

i have the following guy built

120 all skills
sword
tactics
anat
parry
bushido
healing

for pvp he has flwg weapons- all have high hit spell hld or hla
bokuto - nerve strike
cleaver - bleed
bone harvestor mortal
genl invasion broadsword - ai
ornate axe - for disarm

he rides a lesser hiryu which is o.k. for dealing with the archer tamer. tactics vary but i like to start off with a bleed and nerve strike.

tailor a suit to include spirit of the totem fey leggings for the 20 dci and u
can pretty much imbue the rest. have the pieces include
mr, lmc, si

jewelry should have ep hci/dci and str / dex bonus.

 

[Thelps]

So would the general consensus be that I should drop Resisiting Spells in favopur of Parrying, given that I'll be GMing Bushido?

 

[Kellgory]

There are ways of getting around not having resist on a char such as trapped boxes and enchanted apples. Even with 120 resist you can still get evil omen para ganked so you'll still need to carry a box anyways.

 

[Thelps]

There are a few questions I have for you.

1. Do you plan to PVP in a group?

2. Do you own any soulstones? Or can you claim a vet reward for one?

3. What is your opinion of archery? Or would you prefer to keep melée?

4. What type of PVP do you plan to do the most? Open-field? Gate fighting? Spawn defence, raids? Killing miners? Choke point faction fighting? I realize that ideally you would be doing all of these things but what is the one or two things you will be doing most?

5. Do you have SA?

Depending on your answers to these questions I think the experts here should be able to come up with an answer for ya.

Answers to your questions:

1) Yes, I plan to PvP with my friends. They haven't finalised their builds yet either, but broadly speaking we'll have a Tamer/Mage, Thief/Ninja, 'Pure' Thief with god-knows-what combat skills, and I have no idea what the other guy will take yet. I'm aware this of almost no help whatsoever but... yeah... definitely in a small group. I don't have a massive amount of interest in just dueling, although I'm sure it'll happen once in a while.

2) I currently own 1 Red Soulstone, and since I only just reactivated my account I still have 4 rewards left to choose. Obviously I'd like to choose a few other things than just Soulstones, but I could see my way to getting 1 or 2 more if the forum members here think it's worth it.

3) I'd definitely prefer to keep melee. Thinking of making an archer as well, but not on this character.

4) My friends' primary concern is open-world Felucca PvP, most likely mixed in with some Faction fighting. Those are our priorities. However, I have no fear of specialisation, as I realise open-world PvP generally begs a high-survivability, high-versatility build. Hopefully we can mitigate this with group behaviour.

5) Yep! Just got Stygian Abyss a few days back. \o/

Hope that gives people more info to work with.

Where I'm at currently is dropping Resisiting Spells in favour of Parry as Bushido adds the spell-parry benefit anyway (I know, it isn't for status-ailments, and it barely ever procs from what I hear, but at least it's a cross-benefit).

Any more input more than welcome!

 

[Connor_Graham]

2) I currently own 1 Red Soulstone, and since I only just reactivated my account I still have 4 rewards left to choose. Obviously I'd like to choose a few other things than just Soulstones, but I could see my way to getting 1 or 2 more if the forum members here think it's worth it.

You need to have at least 2 soulstones in order to make proper use of them. 1 to store a skill and 1 to swap a skill onto in order to move the stored skill to the char.

 

[Capt.E]

This is my interpretation of what might work

120 swords(any melee) swords works great with bushi
100 tactics
100 anat
120 bush
120 parry
90 heal(use enhanced bandies)
100 lumberjack

it is +30 skill from 720, which means you are only losing 2 mods on your ring, bracelet combo. I would do +15 heal on both. Since you are at 710 available points you could lower tactics to 90. In addition you can soulstone lumberjack and healing onto an unused character and add 100 necro and 60 chiv to make him a sampire(for pvm), it becomes versatile and for the sampire you dont need skill increase jewels. There is no longer a timer for using a soulstone, so if you have an unused character you dont need more than 1 soulstone. As far as gear goes, you NEED Enhance Pots and 100 DI as well as 45 hci and 70 dci for the lumberjack build. If you are not 100 DI you are wasting the 10 % increase you get from LJ. I will say that link's build is far better as far as damage output, but it is a little less versatile. Also with 120 parry and 120 bushi you will be very hard to hit, and that translates to survivability. Happy Hunting....E

 

[Lynk]

I disagree Capt E, if he is going to stop at 100 tact/anat, and be happy with that damage, he is better off not doing LJ at all and taking tact/anat to 120.

 

[Capt.E]

Yeah, you make a good point. I am not sure of the exact numbers but I think his concussions will be better with LJ. The bonus you get from LJ is unfortunately only 10% and tactics and anat at 120 are around 10% as well. Im just trying to work out how he could save LJ, and be competitive. I wish they would increase the bonus to LJ to something more like 15-20% because then it would be a worthwhile skill to keep. As it stands the Boktemp or some varient is far more deadly IMHO.

 

[BeefSupreme]

Yeah, you make a good point. I am not sure of the exact numbers but I think his concussions will be better with LJ. The bonus you get from LJ is unfortunately only 10% and tactics and anat at 120 are around 10% as well. Im just trying to work out how he could save LJ, and be competitive. I wish they would increase the bonus to LJ to something more like 15-20% because then it would be a worthwhile skill to keep. As it stands the Boktemp or some varient is far more deadly IMHO.

When they first started out giving a damage bonus based on lumberjacking skill, it was 25% I think. In that day, the warrior/lumberjack was today's sampire.

 

[Thelps]

Many thanks, especially for the equipment recommendations from Capt.E.

As it seems Lumberjacking only gives a set 10% increase to sword damage (or is that the crushing blow bonus..? ) I may haeve to reconsider that skill.

I'm still in the process of leveling my available skills, but the current information I'm going with is:

100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
100 Swordsmanship
100 Lumberjacking
90 Healing
100 Bushido
100 Parrying

I do, in fact, have 720 skillpoints to work with, as well as 230 Stat points. I've also invested in 2 Soulstones.

I have yet to move to the stage of acquiring all the correct gear as I'm training up Bushido at the moment (it's the last skill on that list to not have the stated value).

If results are very dissapointing from this setup then at the very least I'll swap out Lumberjacking and rejig the entire build, but it's too early to say at the moment.

Any recommendations as to what stat balance I should have? At the moment it's 100 STR, 100 DEX and 30 Int but that's fairly crippling as far as abilities are concerned. I suppose it could be mitigated with gear. What are people's thoughts?

 

[Capt.E]

It is a flat 10% damage increase above cap. So if you have 100 DI from items and 120 tactics and 120 anat you will do 10% more damage than someone without LJ. (and only on axes)

Gear requirements:

A good combo is

Fey legs
Rune beetle carapace
Stormgrips
Folded steel or mace and shield glasses
Gladiator collar or medable collar(no focus and or med means you need joat mr and medable armor) PVP is very specials orientated which is a huge mana dump
Arms with mr lmc and high fire and poison

For final stats you should be somewhere around:
5-8 Mana regen
30 or so lmc
45 hci
70 dci
25+ enhance potions(the more the better up to 50 which is cap from items)

Your stats look ok, I would invest in a +20 scroll with enhance pots and strength and agility potions you should be ok for now. It's a prefence thing but I like 110 strength natural about 147 dex after potion. Then put the rest into intel. Some people go 105 str some 100.
All 70's or very, very close. I run dexxer suits with 65 poison as my lowest resist. Happy hunting. E

 

[Lynk]

The comments I'm about to make are based purely on the LJ build that I posted before, may not apply to other builds.

If you are going LJ the whole point behind it is to hit hard. Everything needs to be designed around maximum damage output.

For that reason I would go about 120 STR so you hit 150 str after a str pot with some EP. You get damage increase bonuses from strength.

Dex you're going to want to be at least 140 for the fast bandaids. This is after the pot, but I would not have lower than 120 dex. Your stamina should clear 150 so you can swing at a decent speed with an ornate axe.

Int doesn't really matter, it is more about your mana pool. You will want at least 60 mana so you can have enough for three specials in a relatively short amount of time.

For your suit mods, I would shoot for the following:

45 hci
45 dci
40 lmc
25 HPI
stam increase on every piece of armor
mana increase on every piece of armor
100 dmg inc

EP should be considered a luxury, it's not necessary. If you have the room get what you can but I wouldn't go out of your way for it.

When I imbued my suit I used the following arties as the base pieces:

Spirit of the Totem
Primer on Arms Talisman
Rune Beetle Carapice
Fey Leggings

I used a runic gorget, sleeves, and gloves. The runic pieces were all imbued with 1 resists (where needed), 7 LMC, 7 Stam Inc, 7 Mana inc, 4 HPI. Except for the gloves, on the gloves I maxed out two resists and left off the 4 hpi because i was at the 25 cap.

My jewels were 2 skills a piece, with a combination of hci/dci/di/ep for the remaining three slots.

My ornate axe is 30 ssi, 44 fireball, 46 HLD, 37 mana leech, 45 DI. (poison damage)