New and Exciting!

[Trunkz]

Well not really. But i have a template for my tamer that is farily uncommon, from the threads i've read on these boards, and i wonder what people think about it.

It is sort of a jack of all trades, master at none sort of thing, but works very well in PVE and i plan to PVP with it shortly once my suit and skills finished off.

It goes like this, without jewelry:
skill/stat total
Lore 112
Eval int 120
Magery 110
Vet 90
Taming 112
anat 96
Med 80
total 720

One downside for PVP, which is obvious, is that i don't have resist spells and so i'll have to get good with macros for pots, petals, and trap boxes. However, one nice thing about this template is that I will stone off the 90 vet for 90 parry when i PVP, which will give me an extra %15 block on top of my 118 defensive wrestling skill and lots of damage with 120 eval and a caster pet.

I actively play this char with my 1/2 built suit (60% LRC, 40% LMC, 35% SDI, 30% DI, 115 or so HPs, 2/5, 125 mana, 50 + in all resists) and skills almost at the above mentioned caps. It is fun becuase i have a lot of options for pets and can go casting for fun when i get bored of saying "all kill" and looting. Mana is scarce when i go toe to toe with higher end casters, but i think i can get around that with wraith form and more MR on my suit. However, there isn't much that i can't do with this template and my current suit from what i've expirienced.

This template has been offering me a lot of variety in playing different aspects of the game. I can tank high end mobs with my greater, or stay behind him to heal spam and AOE assist at spawns with lots of low end mobs.

I can equip a slayer and cast fireball/lightening indefintely beucase of 80 med and 10+ MR on my suit while my beatle/bake tear away at a boss if someone else is tanking.

I do tend to run out of mana if i spam higher end spells spells such as e-bolt and flamestrike, but i am also trying to find necro items so that I can get into wriath form and use JOAT (human racial) to leach mana (only about %4 i think, but better than nothing). I intend for more NR on my suit as well.

Anywho, this template may be a bit newb friendly becuase it is really easy to play. However, it is very effective in PVE, and seems like it could be devistating in PVP with me casting on people and "dismount all kill" my ride if i can get close (i have nice Bane drags, mares, hyrui, etc. but no dread).

Like i said, i havn't seen anyone else mention this build specifically as i've read these forums for the past few weeks and i wonder if that's cause maybe there is a huge problem with it that i dont see. Or maybe it is just an over simplified version of another template that is more common (which is most likely the case becuase i've seen so many like itwith slight variations).

Well, im bored at work and just figured i would share my seemingly unique template with all of the knowledgable people on this forum for some interesting feedback/tips. If its just plain an unintersting, then i accept that and ill continue to enjoy my ingnorant understanding of UO becuase im having fun doing it.

Chao

 

[weins201]

hee hee ok I'll bite

what is the anatomy for there are NO skills in your template that us anatomy?

 

[Trunkz]

Re: hee hee ok I'll bite

what is the anatomy for there are NO skills in your template that us anatomy?

Thanks for the interest Weins

For defensive wrestling. Anat + Int Eval = defensive wrestling.

so 120 eval and 96 anat gives me 118 defensive wrestling.

I figured this way i can save 18 points without actually getting the wrestling skill, and since i cast everything i will never use the wretling specials. Just seemed like the lesser of a few evils to me.

edited for more detail.

 

[Luke Carjacker]

Well, I'll just say that for PvP, you'd be crazy to have a suit with resists in the 50s. People are going to light you up like a Christmas tree.

For PvM, it just don't really matter. You could randomly pick a bunch of skills to go along with taming/lore/vet and do about as well as you described. I can assure you though, that there are a better combination of skills for PvM than what you have. I'd put music/disco at the top of the list.

And yeah, not sure why you're wasting points on anatomy for PvM - which is actually the only thing in your template that separates it from a totally vanilla and completely standard mage/tamer template. Sure, I understand defensive wrestling, but it's monsters, you can just walk away from them or just invis and have them aggro your pet and cast to your hearts content. Not like they're gonna figure out they should kill you before taking on your GD.

Now PvP it makes some sense (though a mage weapon would make way more sense), but you got a lot bigger problems than anatomy if you're planning to PvP with that set of skills & equipment.

 

[[JD]]

defensive wrestle will only come into play if you are disarmed, which if you are good with positioning shouldn't happen or shouldn't happen often. the other 99.9% of the time it's a waste on your template. you may want to consider overcapping with +20 magery in items (jewels) and a -20 1-handed (so you can drink pots) mage weapon with DCI to save even more points. the 2 most popular mage weapons are an imbued greater heal wand to spam greater heal, or an imbued plansword/slow 1-handed weapon so if it does connect with someone it does damage. if you cant afford a 120 magery just roll with a 115 magery scroll for now. if you're non gargoyle and want to run with a GD, then those 100 pts you saved on anat you can spend on ninjitsu. which, when dismounted, gives you images to help survive until you can ninjaform again and speed off...

also, unless you're running a dread warhorse or bane you wont need 112/112. go with 110/110 for control over most other common things (gd, cu, beetle+mare, beetle+bake)

you cannot pvp with a 50's resist suit

make a macro to dismount from your pet, bola the enemy, all kill, and start nuking

the parry should help against archers. since you are aware of defensive wrestle, im sure you're aware of the 85 dex requirement for parry to operate. actually, the requirement is 80, but you should have enough dex even while cursed. since your int will be lower you will need to load up on +mana and MR2 on your suit.... and maybe invest in more med if you can squeeze it out

 

[Trunkz]

I will use a Bane drag to PVP, becuase its the strongest ridable pet i have that can cast. How do Hyrius do? My impressions is that they hit hard, but cant cast so as soon as the player takes 2 steps away from it, they are free from the tierny of my pet.

Mage weap is probably the direction i should go for defense. Access to gear and money is the reason i dont right now. I will obviously need good armor/jewelry to make up for the stat loss from using a mage weapon instead of my invasion spell book/sheild of invul. Perhaps i should join a faction since gear is easier to acquire that way right?

My low resists will defeintely be a problem. Should i shoot for all 70s (85 phys/fire if possible) to off set curses and corpse skin etc.?

I'll work on my dismout/bola/kill macro so that people can't just run off screen and heal up.

 

[[JD]]

if you can, its best to overcap fire and poison due to corpse skin
you may also want to consider overcapping phys if you will use protection sometimes

you also need 70 DCI or as close to it on your mage or the HLD archers will shoot you like crazy. there are some cheap artis with dci you can get to get you started (fey legs, heart of the lion, ancient samurai helm) as well as a dci mage weap. you need one hand free for pots

 

[Trunkz]

Thanks for the advice.

I'll building my suit to contain the properties mentioned here primarily, and will potentially drop anat if i can acquire a mage weapon and a suit with all the properties i need to survive and dish out damage.

This template is very vanilla, as you said Luke. I am trying to keep it generic so that i can play PVE and PVP with it effectively while having fun.

For now I see it as a good start toward getting some PVP expirience to see for myself what anjoy/don't enjoy about how i stack up against seasoned PVP templates.

 

[Luke Carjacker]

Yeah, having stuff in both hands is another big problem. In fact, when I see people carrying a spellbook & shield of invul in felucca, the first throught that crosses my mind is "sitting duck". You've definitely got a ways to go when it comes to getting equipped for PvP. Regarding the fire & poison resists, it's nice to go over 70 to protect yourself from corpse skins, but these days it's not really that critical. Used to be every mage you ran into was a necro but that's definitely not the case these days.

I would say, if you're having trouble putting together your suit, getting to 85 fire/poison isn't a top priority. Here are some other things I would say are more important. First of all, it looks like you have 60 LRC at the moment; if you're gonna PvP make it 100 or 0, nothing else makes any sense. You have 30 DI, that's useless to what you're doing. You're probably gonna want more than 115 HP. You don't need 35 SDI. Those are all things I'd address before worrying about overcapping fire/poison.

 

[Trunkz]

For 1 handed pot drinking. I use the Enhanced Client. It seems easy enough to create a macro to 1)unequip weapon 2) drink pot 3) re-equip weapon. Or make it two macros (unequip, drink and then re-equip) and hammer them back to back. Is it harder than it seems?

Yea overcapping resists will not be a primary focus of mine right now. I'm working on:

70s in all resists
enought mana and MR to cast freely
2/6 fc/fcr
as close to 70 DCI as i can get
135+ HPS

60% LRC is a bi-product of my suit in its current form, but 100% will come after i get the above stats. I understand the time involved with recovering from death and such becuase i need to go get regs from the bank, but isnt that the only downside? Annoyance?

I know UO is all about the sandbox, and i can do whatever i want. But do you think a template like this, with mediocre defence, and mediocre damage with pet for assisted damage can be affective in PVP? Or are most successful templates all or nothing.

Edit: Is 30% DCI really useless? 30% DCI along with 118 defensive wrestling and 15% block chance seems like it would be significant. I know its not 70, and im not HLD capped, but useless? Really?

 

[Luke Carjacker]

DCI (defense chance increase) is not useless. 30 is definitely better than none. But in your original post you said you had 30% DI (Damage Increase), which is useless for a mage/tamer. Looks like that was a typo, so if you meant DCI, then yeah, 30 is better than none.

It's kind of more than annoyance of running to the bank if you don't have regs. I sense that you don't have a feel for the time it takes to get to places like spawn locations in Lost Lands or dungeons. You can't simply recall in and out of these places, you have to run in and out from a few entry points. Throw in the fact that a lot of times you can't recall at all for 2 minutes because you're flagged for combat, and it could be 6-7 minutes before you can rez, run out, re-equip, run back and join the fight. That's a very long time. Now, if you're just gonna hang out at Yew gate for PvP...well people love tamers at Yew, lol.

Regarding your question about whether a mediocre template can work in PvP, I will say that people do run around with templates like that. They're known as easy targets, hehe. In fact, earlier in the thread even before you asked I was going to suggest considering a PvP template separate from your PvM tamer. With a half-hearted template you can help in a group fight, maybe sic your pet on a few people and hang back and help with some rezzing or something, but you won't be a serious factor until you select a template & equipment suited to the job.

 

[Llewen]

I actually don't think your template is all that bad for pvp. It's certainly not typical, which is a bonus in my opinion, I hate doing things the way everyone else does. What will determine how well your template does for you will be how you put your suit together. You can use a Scrapper's which gives you access to slayers, although they can be expensive, so that template could be pretty effective in pvm as well.

I think you need to take the naysayers in this thread with a grain of salt. I think with a bit of tweaking and a well put together suit, that template could be very effective. However, you do need at least 60's in resists, and at least 70 in fire, and you do need 100% lrc. Both pvm and pvp are very difficult if you are dependent on regs. I know this from experience...

 

[Trunkz]

I appreciate the enthusiastic point of view Llewen.

I also tend to stray away from the norm becuase i like to try things out for myself, and don't neccessarily enjoy "cookie cutter" templates, even though they do tend to offer a high degree of success (hense the reason they are widely used and accepted). I use them as a guide.

I always appreciate feedback, and i work the advice I recieve into my understanding of how to better accomplish my goal.

The improtance of my suit had been a resounding piece of advise that I got. I am prioritizing 70's in all resists and 100LRC, while keeping the stats i already have, before going after other stats. I have also been on the lookout for slayer books for the last few weeks, and hope to eventually find some that are reasonably priced (/crosses fingers)

I am keeping my eval/anat build for now and will be venturing into PVP once i get my pets trained up a bit more to see how things go. I just replaced most of my fighter pets with better ones since i had time recently to farm for keepers.

The defensive wretling tends to make a huge difference in my play style. I really like having defense built into my template becuase i dont have to worry about disarms leaving me totally helpless, plus when im in pve i can have a slayer book equiped, and not be 1 shotted by paragon fire deamons, and the like, if i get caught off guard. Even if it only allows me more room for error, while lowering my overall potential by a few %, it's worth it to me.

Cheers

Edit: grammar

 

[Llewen]

The defensive wretling tends to make a huge difference in my play style.

Not being vulnerable to disarm is huge in pvp, absolutely huge, and having a weapon skill as a mage in pvm is undervalued. There are enough times when you simply cannot avoid being closed in on by a mob that having a weapon skill can be a very good thing.

 

[[JD]]

I run the EC and have used automatic disarm/rearm macros to chug a pot or use a heal stone...

The half a second it takes to do so is too long in PVP. You really want 1 hand free or use balanced weaps if you end up with archery some day.

You can ignore people's advice and "try to be different" if you like but your play experience will be impacted. The people you will be playing against have been playing for years, have min/maxxed to crazy heights and know every trick and then some in the book.

I suggest you go to TC1 and try out all your ideas before you commit to them on a live server. It's much less costly and you can easily make tweaks to equipment and skill specs there until it's what you want.

PVM is much more forgiving.

 

[Llewen]

The half a second it takes to do so is too long in PVP. You really want 1 hand free or use balanced weaps if you end up with archery some day.

I use a shield and I only use pots in emergencies when I run away and the disarm/chub/rearm macro works pretty well in those circumstances. I use mini heal for fast healing. However, there is no doubt that I am more vulnerable in situations where I am being dumped on by more than one attacker. Not having an instant heavy heal in those kinds of situations has resulted in many deaths for me without a doubt.

 

[Trunkz]

Luke - Yea, my original post said DI, but i meant DCI, and you picked up on it.. Right on! Point taken about 1 template/build for PVE and PVP not being the best idea.

JD - I will try things out on TC1 with free gear and free talent points, before i commit to a build that makes me a "special snow flake" but makes me a "sitting duck" in PVP.

Llewen - do you have resist spells on your build? the build your talking about below where you wear a shield and drinks pots when neccessary (slowly, but surely ).

Do i need a free hand/balanced weap to open a trapped box and free myself from para? Or can this be done with both hands occupied?

 

[Llewen]

Llewen - do you have resist spells on your build? the build your talking about below where you wear a shield and drinks pots when neccessary (slowly, but surely ).

Yes, he has 120 resisting spells.