Confused about Bushido + Parry

[Portlis]

Hi there, I'm trying to make myself a Bushido/Parry swordsman based on all of the templates that I've seen people posting.

But I'm extremely confused about how Bushido and Parry work together. Why does everyone seem to think that they go together when it seems like using a shield with bushido is actually not effective? Do people with bushido and parry just use two handed weapons? Which weapons are the best for a bushido parry swordsman (or other melee character, if you prefer something over swords). Am I better off using some sort of axe of some sort rather than a katana for example? Or do people just use 1 handed weapons and such with no shield and just use the free hand to chug pots?

Also, I'm only at 70 Bushido right now so maybe I'm not getting the full potential of the skill, but it doesn't seem too terribly useful at the current moment to be honest. Lightning strike doesn't seem too powerful, yet it seems like its really the only skill worth using so far. Im honoring my opponents, and I get the little message telling me that my precision is increasing, but that doesn't seem to do ANYTHING at all. What am I missing here?

My account is newish, so unfortunately I only have 700 skill points to work with. What should my template be? My current goal is:

120 Swords
100 Tact
100 Heal
100 Anat
100 Parry
100 Bushido
80 Chiv

Should I aim for something different (such as lowering tact/anat or something to scroll other stuff up?) or is this a solid goal?

Help is appreciated! I want to use bushido skill and melee to its max potential. I don't want to be a lame archer like 98% of the people out there that I see.

 

[imported_Farsight]

Read the stickies

That post will give you all the information you really need about Bushido and Parry, including the formulae for how effective parry blocking and bushido + parry blocking are.

 

[Portlis]

I've read the stickies. They don't answer the majority of my questions in my post, and I added the stuff that was in the stickies because the VAST majority of information in stickies and on stratics is out of date. Plus, like the sticky says, it doesn't make judgements or tell you how to make a template. It just provides a limited amount of info. I'm asking for individual people's opinions as well.

I appreciate you taking your time to respond, but why is it SO difficult to ask a couple of fairly simple questions on stratics and get a legit answer instead of someone always just posting links and telling me to read?

Also, I've now thought of one additional question that I forgot to add to my original post. How should a person go about training parry if they also have bushido? With shield or without? 1 handed weap or 2? Or does it not make one bit of difference?

 

[Guest]

To train parry just use a 2 handed weapon that you have no skill in, and take off your dci. The sheep pen in Yew is a great place to train it up fast.

You really do not see the true power of Bushido unless you take it up pretty high, like 110-120. With 120 parry and 120 bushido you can build a beast of a fighter.


The stickies here are fairly up to date.

 

[Portlis]

<blockquote><hr>



You really do not see the true power of Bushido unless you take it up pretty high, like 110-120.



[/ QUOTE ]

Why? I'm just trying to learn here. Nothing in the stickies says anything about any special bonus for having bushido over GM.

 

[Guest]

Mostly just because the math works out that way. A lot of Bushido skills are tied to parry, such as Confidence and Evasion so as your chance to parry rises so does their usefulness. Lightning Strike has a 20% chance of a Critical Hit (basically like Armor Ignore) at 120. I know that from an anecdotal standpoint I really didn't see huge benefits until I was well over 100 in each.

 

[Trukx]

<blockquote><hr>

Lightning strike doesn't seem too powerful, yet it seems like its really the only skill worth using so far. Im honoring my opponents, and I get the little message telling me that my precision is increasing, but that doesn't seem to do ANYTHING at all. What am I missing here?

[/ QUOTE ]

Lighting strike per say is not that powerful, as someone mentioned, the chance of a crit hit even at 120 is extremely low. WHere lightning strike makes its money is in the hit chance increase that allows you to further perfection......if you dont see the build up on damage as you achieve perfection, then most likely, you are missing too much and not gaining the added bonus. Try it w/ a low damage weapon on an earth ele.....it'll look something like 7/8/9/10/10/11/12/13/13/14 (now you scoff at 14, but thats double 7, and simply apply that equation to massive amounts of damage when coupled with Eoo, CW and Slayers). At "Perfection", you are essentially doing double damage. If you miss a single blow along the way you start back over. Lightning strike and the HCI it gives for a single hit, gives you a Great chance to connect w/ that strike (also helps to have 120 melee, max HCi and some HLD gear).

Max benefit from parry + bushido is applied to 2-handers. Lots of people also use 1 handers and no shield and the chance to parry w/ a shield when you have bushido is substantially lower than just parry.

 

[Jolt]

Hit Lower Defense is also vital for honor I find. A decent HLD and HCI means you can be quite slack with your LSing and not worry too much about losing perfection. This is also useful as it allows you to use other specials if the situation calls for it.