Sampire-Fence/Mace?

[gbftats]

I have an old PvP warrior type guy i want to turn into a sampire. He has 100 fencing/mace fighting. Which works better all around? Or should i just drop them both and pickup sword?

 

[Farsight]

Any works well.

I like fencing, but it lacks in overall power. But the leafblade makes up for it with the feint special and the one-handed-ness.

The only mace weapon with feint (off the top of my head) are the tessen, which lack in damage potential, but I've seen it work. On the other hand, if you get a good war hammer with swing speed, mana leech and stamina leech, you have the most powerful whirlwind weapon out there.

They all have plus points and minus points, and you could make it all work.

Or you could just switch to swords and have the best of all worlds with the Daisho (feint, same speed and damage as leafblade, but two handed), rune blade or ornate axe (harder hitters than fencing offers) and radiant scimitar (good all around whirlwind weapon).

 

[[JD]]

I was not happy with Fencing. The weapons are all so fast that when you consider in all the dex/sta/SSI they cap out at 1.25 speed too easy. So all that extra dex/sta/ssi "goes to waste".

You could look at it another way, you need LESS dex/sta/ssi, and can instead use those mod spots on your armor/weapon for other things. But you would have less DPS than larger, slower, heavier hitting weapons which are sped to the 1.25 cap

 

[Teardrop]

I have yet to find a better weapon than Leafblade for my sampire. And I tried everything. Daisho is good, but I prefer one-handed for potions. I like the diamond mace too, but its specials are useless.

I'd much rather have a good Leafblade for toe-to-toe with tough monsters and a UBWS Twinkling Scimitar with fewer mods for clearing low level spawns.

 

[[JD]]

On the other hand, if you get a good war hammer with swing speed, mana leech and stamina leech, you have the most powerful whirlwind weapon out there.

Farsight, I was just curious what lead you to believe this. Why do you like the War Hammer so much, is it for the other special?

Plug in 180 dex/sta, 20 lumberjacking, and 40 SSI to the stratics calc link below.

I checked it out and the Double Axe produces 46.x DPS at the 1.25 swing cap. The Black Staff comes in at 42 DPS at swing cap. However even 180 dex/sta/40ssi still leaves the War Hammer at 1.5 swing speed. Kama is pathetic at 28.x DPS

Now if you pull a connor and rock an assassins suit and have 60 SSI total, the War Hammer comes into its own and produces 50.x DPS at 1.25sec delay. This type of getup is the exception rather than the standard though. Is that what you meant by "Best"?

I also like the Hammer Pick specials - AI and Mortal - Pretty damn nice combo for PVP imo.

You'd have to use UBWS Leafblade though for bosses. It comes down to is it better to have more weapon mod slots on your Leafblade for crazy tough bosses, or to have them on your whirlwind weap for trash monsters?

http://uo.stratics.com/content/arms-armor/arms.php


Also I saw something the other day which made me think Fencing was actually still an option. Someone was runnin around with Kamas that were 44% each to Hit Area, Leech Mana/Hit points/Sta, and DI. I realized the weapons swing fast so you dont need SSI on most of them, which leaves a mod open on your weapons or can make your suit much easier to swing at speed cap. I dont think you will do as much damage as someone who takes the heaviest hitting weapons and accelerates them to cap through insanely hard to obtain/expensive items, but it does make it easy on your wallet when it comes to building a suit and just getting out there.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight, I was just curious what lead you to believe this. Why do you like the War Hammer so much, is it for the other special? I checked it out and it seems sub par to the double axe. The double axe produces more DPS, you get the advantage of JOAT lumberjacking for damage, and it swings at the speed cap. Plug in 180 dex/sta, 20 lumberjacking, and 40 SSI to the stratics calc link below. I keep going back and forth between the different weapons. Currently I'm mace, but that may not last..

http://uo.stratics.com/content/arms-armor/arms.php


Also I saw something the other day which made me think Fencing was actually still an option. Someone was runnin around with Kamas that were 44% each to Hit Area, Leech Mana/Hit points/Sta, and DI. I realized the weapons swing fast so you dont need SSI on most of them, which leaves a mod open on your weapons or can make your suit much easier to swing at speed cap. I dont think you will do as much damage as someone who takes the heaviest hitting weapons and accelerates them to cap through insanely hard to obtain/expensive items, but it does make it easy on your wallet when it comes to building a suit and just getting out there.

Actually, I don't love the war hammer. In fact, I think it kind of stinks. But it does do 17-18 damage per swing as opposed to the double axe's 15-17. The problem is getting it to the max swing speed.

And it's quite possible, if you play on Catskills, that you ran into me with that kama. I'm now a firm believer in that weapon because the kama with 44% hit area, hit mana, hit stamina and damage increase is the perfect throwaway weapon for heavy spawns. I came to this conclusion when I was doing a cavern of discarded spawn with my soul seeker and ran into a guy with that in a black staff. He killed three sets of 8 rat-men in the time it took me to kill one... and he had no slayer property imbued!

I ran away and made the kama immediately.

With those stats, you need no relic fragments, no special ingredients and if you enhance it with dull copper afterward, you can avoid using powder of fortification. Just use it until it's done and make a new one just as cheaply.

You go through them like water, but at that price, you can't argue with the results.

 

[Obsidian]

JD, I tried using a Kama with UBWS DI, HSL, HML, and HLA. It didn't have enough punch for my mace fighting sampire and, at 140 intensity, UBWS ate too much of the available intensity of the weapon. But I do have a sampire fencer in development that will use the following Kama for clearing low level spawn:

30 DI (60)
50 HML (110)
50 HSL (100)
50 Hit Area (100)
Super Slayer (130)

With my DI at 30 (caps him at 100 DI), this weapon is a perfect 500 intensity points. I will try to match my damage types and area effect (phys, fire, cold, poi, en) with the desired mob's weakness like fire for undead and cold for demons. It will be a spawner weapon.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[[JD]]

How is the performance of a UBWS Leafblade?

 

[Teardrop]

I use leafblade as primary and ubws scimitar. Primarily because I use Leafblade on 1v1 against tough monsters and I need every intensity point possible to remain alive.

My boss weapon is a non-exceptional Leafblade:
66 Hit Mana Leech
63 Hit Life Leech
50 Hit Stamina Leech
30 Hit Lower Defense
30 Hit Lower Attack

And radiant scimitar:
UBWS
Hit Mana Leech 50
Hit Stamina Leech 50
Hit Area 50

I have 100 DI on a suit and 5 SSI on a jewel, hence nothing on weapon.

 

[Obsidian]

How is the performance of a UBWS Leafblade?

I haven't tried that because my mace fighter sampire uses diamond maces. If you go with a UBWS leafblade it would have to look like this:

UBWS (140)
20 SSI (74)
38 DI (76)
50 HML (110)
50 HSL (100)

That equals exactly 500 intensity, but you could tweak your DI, HML, HSL as needed. There is no room for a slayer or HLA on a UBWS sampire leafblade unless you were using an assassin's suit.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[[JD]]

I use leafblade as primary and ubws scimitar. Primarily because I use Leafblade on 1v1 against tough monsters and I need every intensity point possible to remain alive.

My boss weapon is a non-exceptional Leafblade:
66 Hit Mana Leech
63 Hit Life Leech
50 Hit Stamina Leech
30 Hit Lower Defense
30 Hit Lower Attack

And radiant scimitar:
UBWS
Hit Mana Leech 50
Hit Stamina Leech 50
Hit Area 50

I have 100 DI on a suit and 5 SSI on a jewel, hence nothing on weapon.

This is good food for thought. I had planned out a great UBWS Leafblade and hadn't even considered HLA. I was gonna use Mace and Shield glasses for HLD. How badly do you think you would get pummeled without HLA?

I was considering non exceptional Leafblade though so I don't get stuck with unecessary DI.

 

[Teardrop]

HLA will help immensely with any monster who uses physical attacks. 30% is all that's needed because it lasts 10 seconds and you should be able to get at least 6-7 hits in, which will be more than enough to trigger it regularly.

Daisho is pretty much the same weapon, except 2-handed. I don't know how much you rely on potions, but with my 50% EP setup, I can chug cheap NPC-bought str and agility potions and be at 150hp / 190 stamina for 3 minutes, which I've grown to like a lot. 190 stamina would technically enable me to use slower, harder hitting weapons like Diamond Mace, but I really like feint...

Mace&Shield are great if you get 45% DCI from other items, I just rely on Folded Steel for that as I happened to have one spare. Much cheaper options would also be Fey or heart of the lion.

100 DI is very easy to get on a suit. I use 4 heartwood armor pieces, 2*25 on jewels and 20 on Primer.

I also find Life Leech at that intensity useful - try going out of vampire form to test it against a 100% physical critter like Swoop. If you deal enough damage and critical hits, it heals quite nicely.

This is my favorite sampire equipment so far. Not expensive either = easily replaceable.

 

[Teardrop]

Another affordable option for headgear is an imbued Daimyo's helm, especially if you don't have a good 5% ssi jewel. Resists are terrible but woodland armor is fairly easy to get to 70s, and there's something to be said about having 198 stamina

 

[[JD]]

Thanks for the info on HLA. Definitely worth having. Is wood armor made by a fletcher, or carpenter? I will ask the crafting boards if you don't know, but do you know the process to create it? IE craft armor, imbue certain stats, enhance with some wood type, imbue more stuff?

Daimyo's seems low on intensity. Is it imbuable? At least you could make the resists up that way if so!

 

[Teardrop]

Oh, I know armor inside out It's carpentry > Armor > Woodland (not Darkwood). I'm surprised more people don't know about wood armor because it's by far the best if you're elf and don't need med.

Heartwood gives random bonus, the two useful ones being 5 HCI or 10% DI, plus better resists than any metal or leather. (+16 points)
Bloodwood gives +2 HPR and +18 resist points, 8 of them in fire.
Frostwood also gives +18 resists, 8 of them in cold.

The key to an optimized suit is to plan and pre-craft a lot of armor before you get to imbuing. This is how I approach it:

Most of my pieces are exceptional heartwood because I need the 5% HCI or 10% DI. I'll look for pieces with one low resist (example, 10-5-10-15-11) and imbue that resist to max, leaving the others alone. That way I get a lot of total resists on one piece, only using one imbuing slot. 5 hci / 10 di also takes up one slot, so there's 3 left, usually 8 Stamina, 8 Mana, 5 HPI or 7-8 LMC.

I spread out different resists on different pieces, so I imbue fire on a few, cold on one, energy on one... poison doesn't need imbuing because heartwood imparts +7 poison points, so you'll very rarely see a piece with less than 11-12 poison. Neither does physical.

Sampire needs more fire resist so I'll also have to throw in a pre-imbued post-enhanced Bloodwood piece:

Craft an exceptional piece with normal wood, again look for one with low fire and imbue that one to the max, post-enhance with bloodwood for extra +8 fire and you're left with a piece with 24 fire resist (without using boura pelts). Bloodwood will also impart +2 HPR which is also a mod, so you're left with 3 slots. OR you can pre-imbue 4 mods and post-enhance w/ Bloodwood for a total of 6 mods, but you're risking wasting resources on a break...

I even used frostwood on occasion when I needed to fill in some Cold resist but didn't want to waste an imbuing slot, so I crafted a few frostwood pieces until I got one with 18 Cold and imbued 5 properties (stamina, mana, hpi, lmc, MR) to that.

Daimyo is imbuable with one mod and people usually put 8 Stamina on it, but it could be anything.

Anyhow, it's much easier if you pre-plan in Excel. That way you'll end up with exactly what you need. I can upload a sample template somewhere...

 

[[JD]]

Thanks for the awesome writeup! There is actually a faction earring which allows humans to....... wear elf only items! Human wood armor sampire here I come. The trick will be getting and keeping enough faction points to wear the necessary items.

On the Daimyo, with there being only one imbuable slot that means you can't raise resists.. only one. Bummer

 

[Teardrop]

I think earrings don't require any points, so you're good, but as a human do make sure your mana is in the 40s.

I used Daimyo's successfully in the past but suit had to be built around it. Namely, I spent more imbuing slots on resists, so I didn't have as much HPI and Mana increase (could have also sacrificed stamina, who needs 198 - I was planning on taking up archery...), but it worked out just fine. Now I have a perfect turq ring so I use that for SSI. Again, 5% ssi and 150 stamina is all that's needed to swing a 2.75 weapon at 1.25s, so no need to imbue ssi on weapon, which also means your mana & life leeches can be 68%, not 50%-ish like with 120 stamina and 20 ssi. It does make a difference.

Get a very good carpentry talisman though

 

[Obsidian]

Anyhow, it's much easier if you pre-plan in Excel. That way you'll end up with exactly what you need. I can upload a sample template somewhere...

This is exactly what I do too. I have a master excel sheet per shard where I use a worksheet for each of my chars. Before I even start crafting armor to imbue, I build a plan to ensure I get my requisite DI, DCI, DEX, Stamina, and resists. This gives me a good idea what properties I'm going to imbue, and which ones I'm not. For the resists I am not imbuing, it tells me what the min value I need to for that piece's resist to still hit 70. Once I have a full view of the suit, I start crafting. I pull out all of the pieces that hit above the mins for those resists. Sometime I craft a beauty where the arms lore bonus goes almost completely into one resists. When I that happens, I go back to the spreadsheet and readjust and see how I can use that piece best. Sometimes I can add in an entirely additional mod I wasn't expecting.

As for the fire resist with Sampires, I don't do any post-imbue enhancing. I find it too frustrating to watch my hard earned POF go poof. So I acknowledge up front that I will devote one mod on my ring or brace to +13 Fire Resist. I usually find a way to get my full 100 DI out of one jewelry piece, the weapon, a talisman, and via armor (stormgrips and one heartwood piece with 10 DI if needed).

Anyway, that's how I approach suit building. Very similar to Teardrop's method. I just don't risk the enhancing even though I know it has the potential to make my suit even better.

-OBS-

 

[Teardrop]

Maybe I should've mentioned that my success rate is about 25% when post-enhancing with bloodwood. I try to imbue as few resists as possible when enhancing - usually only fire. It is indeed very frustrating and wasteful to break, so it's up to the individual to decide.