Gargoyles and Gear

[Khayman]

I am thinking of making a Mystic/Weaver Treasure Hunter and it would be nice to be able to have a Gargoyle since I can flap instead of ride. It would be nice to move at mounted speeds with RC or other summons out. I am worried about gear though since there is a lot for elves and humans but finding good stuff plus artifact gear for gargs is not so easy.

If you play a garg, how easy is it to get around the gear issues?

 

[Nero]

Not that difficult for a caster. Try to get and factor-in crystalline ring when you build a suit. You can also get an antique one with an extra mod if you join VVV.

 

[Pawain]

Some things things can be converted, If you are just doing magic then it is easy to find items. Making a Mystic/Thrower is more difficult to get max speed and lots of Mana. But that is why there are not many human Warrior Mages either.

 

[Nero]

I also recommend getting a super slayer spellbook set as well as a dragon slayer spellbook (which work with mysticism spells). You can get cheap juonor grimoire sets on vendor search.

Also eat a magery vol 3 primer and select magery mastery. This way you have a high damage magery spell (death ray) without investing any skill points in eval int. So you will have a a decent-damage energy spell (death ray), physical spell (bombard), cold spell (hailstorm), random damage spell (neither cyclone and spell plague) with just 240 points into mysticism and focus.

 

[Pawain]

Yes, I can get Tabards on a fresh made toon that has 100 magery and Death Ray. Great damage!

 

[mihali]

I also recommend getting a super slayer spellbook set as well as a dragon slayer spellbook (which work with mysticism spells). You can get cheap juonor grimoire sets on vendor search.

Also eat a magery vol 3 primer and select magery mastery. This way you have a high damage magery spell (death ray) without investing any skill points in eval int. So you will have a a decent-damage energy spell (death ray), physical spell (bombard), cold spell (hailstorm), random damage spell (neither cyclone and spell plague) with just 240 points into mysticism and focus.

Are you kidding? So you can cast high damage death ray with NO EVAL? Would be awesome if it would work with FOCUS or IMBUING 120!!
My impression was you need Margery III mastery, Magery 120 skill, and Eval 120 plus proper slayer / supers layer spell book? And I was informed it HAS to be REAL imagery 120 and real eval 120 to count for the max awesome power.

Need clarification on this, will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nero]

You do enough damage using death ray without eval int. Depending on the mob's resistance to energy damage, I see 100-200 real damage, which is more if I cast an ebolt with 120 eval int. FYI, death ray also debuffs energy resist.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

This makes me think about resurrecting my mystic mage garg. I kind of got bored and gave up on him due to gear and I did not realize you could convert gear at all.

 

[Nero]

You need slayer spellbooks and SDI gear and primer vol. 3 though to do decent damage with death ray without eval int.

Also, if you use a set of juonar grimoires and bloodwood spirit, you can stay in wraith form (without joat) and leech mana (need jewels to get in form and then unequip). The slayer books got SDI, LRC, amd LMC, meaning you can compensate for the loss of the talisman mods (wizard's curio or so). Just need to keep the spellbooks and talisman equpped. My t-hunter is a gargoyle too for the ability to move at mount speed with a 5 slot summon. However, if I need more mana, I switch to wraith form (e.g. for a long fight with a slow monster such as an allosaurus).

 

[mihali]

You do enough damage using death ray without eval int. Depending on the mob's resistance to energy damage, I see 100-200 real damage, which is more if I cast an ebolt with 120 eval int. FYI, death ray also debuffs energy resist.

You got me thinking.. I know that with mag/eval 120/120 plus disco plus cond blast from pet, plus spider slayer, plus m.mastery III, I do 550-650 damage to Navery, that has pretty beefy resist to energy. I will need to try and see what damage happens with DR with no eval or less eval and similar debuffs otherwise.
So if 200 without slayer, then I wonder if with a slayer and no eval.
I might dust off my SW/Mystic mage gargie and see what happens.

 

[Nero]

This is the suit of my "seeker" character (male gargoyle) which I convert to treasure chest hunter, sunken chest hunter aka fisher, honesty-lost item hunter, dungeon chest picker etc. with soulstones. It is not optimized for t-hunting specifically but for the "seeker" character (i.e. aforementioned "seeker" templates I am converting this character into using the very same suit and equipment).

I am using a 50 SDI book from a "treasures of event" for non-slayer mobs and a set of "invasion event" super-slayer spellbooks (and alternatively a set of juonare grimoires with bloodwood talisman in wraith form) or a balakai staff (wand version) if I am taking damage. I also carry a dragon slayer spellbook for the ancient wyrms and cold dragons/drakes which spawn quite often. I do not do many maps in Eodon and Ilshenar because of the general spawn and because you cannot mark runes there. However, I do carry a set of anon spellbooks for Eodon as well as a shadow wyrm costume (with the polymorph totem) for the changelings in Ilshenar (so I can use my dragon slayer book to do triple damage on the changeling). The totem also allows me to keep on "flying" as a gargoyle, thus moving at mount speed to outrun the changeling or a paragon ("flying" does not work with the equipable costume, you need the totem for it). Note that I do not want luck on the suit because I prefer clean items with a few "right" mods over brittle or antique with many mods.




When I was starting this character, I was doing t-maps using the deluxe armor suit (for gargoyles) from the store and the blue jewelry set from the cleanup reward vendor. I do not see much of super-huge difference between this expensive suit and the suit from the store (which is fairly easy to replicate with common loot), that's why I said it should not be difficult to get gargoyle gear for a caster. Also, as I said above, while invasion super-slayer spellbooks are difficult to get now, you can just use a set of juonare grimoires (some books I bought for 50k on VS). One good thing about the old suit is that my other gargoyle character, which is a fighter, can still use it to get into form or cast buffs like protection (as it got 100% LRC, is blessed, and light in weight) after resurrecting or soulstoneing as well as do shard transfers with it (as it is not shard bound or character bound). On that note, as Pawain posted above, making a gargoyle suit for a dexxer is a completely other story.

 

[Khayman]

I ended up going human but this gives me a lot to think about. I have always wanted to try a Gargoyle so this may be good. I can always try and get some soulstones or fragments and stone skills to a Gargoyle once I get gear assembled.

 

[mihali]

You need slayer spellbooks and SDI gear and primer vol. 3 though to do decent damage with death ray without eval int.

Also, if you use a set of juonar grimoires and bloodwood spirit, you can stay in wraith form (without joat) and leech mana (need jewels to get in form and then unequip). The slayer books got SDI, LRC, amd LMC, meaning you can compensate for the loss of the talisman mods (wizard's curio or so). Just need to keep the spellbooks and talisman equpped. My t-hunter is a gargoyle too for the ability to move at mount speed with a 5 slot summon. However, if I need more mana, I switch to wraith form (e.g. for a long fight with a slow monster such as an allosaurus).

"You need slayer spellbooks and SDI gear and primer vol. 3 though to do decent damage with death ray without eval int."

Another super nice point if true: I was under the impression that SDI has no effect at all on death ray! Will have to check this plus imagine if level 6 arcane focus makes a difference for deathly intensity/damage ! That would be awesome! Going on testing, TC1 here we go testing.

 

[mihali]

From uoguide:
" The mage focuses a death ray on their opponent which does damage based on magery skill, evaluating intelligence skill, and mastery level as long as the mage has mana and the target is in range. Death ray applies the energy damage type to the target. SDI is not considered when using death ray. Death ray damage is dramatically increased when an applicable super slayer or lesser slayer (preferred) spellbook is equipped in hand. "
Unless this has changed more recently, sdi supposed not to count for DR.
Of interest would be to check arcane focus.

 

[Nero]

I think SDI impacts death ray. Just did a brief test: In the green bar that pops up for death ray (in the EC client), it says the following if I attack the same wyvern twice (I didn't kill it, you have a few secs before the first tick, enough to check the green bar) with a dragon slayer cultist tome at 0 eval int:

672 damage at 63 SDI
714 damage at 98 SDI

Note that this is pre-resist damage, so the actual damage is much lower. Admittedly, the difference is actually not that large.

Edit: RNG might also be a factor. Somebody will have to re-do the experiment a dozen of times and report back. In any event, you need SDI for mysticism spells on the t-hunter template, so pack on as much as you can.