Tamer Mage Template

[Solikos]

I'll be starting a Tamer Mage shortly but wanted to run my Template by here first for a 'proof read'...

120 Taming
120 Lore
100 Vet
100 Magery (Gate, Heals)
100 Weaving (More Heals!)
100 Meditation
60 Chivalry (Remove Curse)

As long as I've got a pet running beside me, he can do the heavy lifting and I will basically be his little healer slave. No pet means using Mind Blast to get by with (no need for Eval Int).

Are there any pitfalls to this template?

My starting skills would be:

49 Taming
49 Vet
11 Magery
11 Weaving

Taming seems to be the toughest of these to raise. In my limited taming experience Lore seems to go up quite a bit faster (and with the use of vet and the accelerated skill gain shouldn't have much trouble catching up). I can probably get my hands on a 100% LRC suit so magery shouldn't be a problem. I don't know much about Weaving, but have heard it can really come in handy for tamers, but I suppose 100% LRC will help out there as well.

As my last Tamer Mage attempt was approximately 8 years ago, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

~ Solikos

 

[Redxpanda]

You cant start with spellweaving. You have to do a quest in heartwood to learn that skill. That is an interesting template though except no eval means you wont be able to heal alot of hit points and you may have to rely on in vas mani heavily for those creatures that do AOE damage. I would like to hear what others think about it

 

[galefan2004]

I'll be starting a Tamer Mage shortly but wanted to run my Template by here first for a 'proof read'...

120 Taming
120 Lore
100 Vet
100 Magery (Gate, Heals)
100 Weaving (More Heals!)
100 Meditation
60 Chivalry (Remove Curse)

I'm sure some will argue but there is very little use for lore at 120. Vet should be 110. Taming can be 110 also. So 110 taming 110 vet 110 lore is probably the better way to go. You will want 110 magery (added bonus to healing and better chance on resurection which if you do anything meaningful you'll be ressing allies). You want 110 spellweaving for WoD...WoD is the only real reason to get SW the rest is just a bonus. 120 meditation is a big plus because you'll be healing more with magery than veterinary with just about everything you do so either 120 or 115 meditation is a huge bonus. The chivalry seems like about normal for what a tamer uses it for. Don't forget that divine fury is your friend with all the monsters that dump your stamina.

As long as I've got a pet running beside me, he can do the heavy lifting and I will basically be his little healer slave. No pet means using Mind Blast to get by with (no need for Eval Int).

Mind blast doesn't need evaluating inteligence (if that is what you were trying to say the wording was fuzzy). You will be wanting to do more than just depend on your pet if you want to take on anything hard. Killing certain things fast relies on your SDI, your ability to cast mind blast (if you have no eval), and your ability to get those WoDs off.

Are there any pitfalls to this template?

It holds water, but many other templates hold water as well. You should concentrate less on 120 taming in your original template and count more on skills that actually bennefit you (other than stable slots having 120 taming is a total waste imo).

My starting skills would be:

49 Taming
49 Vet
11 Magery
11 Weaving

You can't start with spell weaving. You can't even do spell weaving until after you complete the quest. Veterinary is actually the last thing you want to gain because you should be working lore first. That 1.0 in taming is actually a big pain (every point in taming is a pain).

50 Taming
50 Magery

Start that way and work taming to what you want it before you work any other skills at all. You can get to 110 taming easier if you never work any other skill before you work taming and you can go to 120 taming on bulls.

Use GGS to get your taming where you want it first.

[/QUOTE]

 

[galefan2004]

You cant start with spellweaving. You have to do a quest in heartwood to learn that skill. That is an interesting template though except no eval means you wont be able to heal alot of hit points and you may have to rely on in vas mani heavily for those creatures that do AOE damage. I would like to hear what others think about it

Evaluating Inteligence has NOTHING to do with healing. It is an offensive spell only (outside of bless and related spells). Healing with magery is based completely on magery skill.

 

[Righteous]

I haven’t had much luck playing a tamer mage but I have seen plenty of them really struggling to kill the Vanguards, whereas will my Discord Tamer I have very few problems killing them. Just a thought.

Righteous

 

[weins201]

I have this temp. i will list actual skills first the shown.

Lore 105 / 120
Eval 105
Spell Weave 100
Med 100
Vet 100
Tame 102 / 120
Mage 95 / 115

I still have a few base points left which will porb go into Spell Weaving

This is a very strong solo tamer

I have a GREAT reing and use the Tomb of Lost Knowledge for the mager Bonus.

There are Marks of travesty which can be used many ways, and other items.

I use enhanced Bandis so vet is effectivly 110

The high lore and Tame are for both control and stable slots.

Removing curse on a strong pet really isnt needed, they dont take that big a loss so i cant see Chivalry as viable.

Bard Tamers are also VERY powerfulr solo templates.

As stated you need eval to make the GH from magery usefull, in doom it is difficult to vet when fighting the DF, or anything else that used area damage for that matter.

Strong pets are the key.

goos luck with taming its a boaring skill to train.

 

[Lord Drakelord]

Animal Lore 112.7 112.7
Animal Taming 110.0 103.0
Evaluating Intelligence 100.0 100.0
Magery 100.0 100.0
Meditation 100.0 100.0
Veterinary 100.0 100.0
Magic Resistance 66.4 66.4

Str 118 118
Dex 40 32 (+8)
Int 115 105 (+10)

This is my main tamer on Sonoma, 'Drakelord'

 

[Zodiac19]

Here's my main tamer

120 tame
120 lore
120 vet
110 Mage going to 120
90 Med with help
100 hiding
80 stealth

I can solo almost anything save peerless and the DF.

If you want to be able to tame and control all pets in the game I suggest

120 tame
110 lore
vet no less than GM, up to 120 for more stable slots

The combination of support skills is up to you as there are sooooo many

My T-Hunter

120 lore
110 taming
110 vet
110 magery
110 EI
100 med
100 LP swaps for carto

Seriously think about using an advanced char token. I took my main from 0 up and it was brutal.

 

[Redxpanda]

Evaluating Inteligence has NOTHING to do with healing. It is an offensive spell only (outside of bless and related spells). Healing with magery is based completely on magery skill.

Is it based on REAL magery skill because my smith cant heal worth a damn. I always thought it was because he didn't have any eval.

 

[Zodiac19]

Is it based on REAL magery skill because my smith cant heal worth a damn. I always thought it was because he didn't have any eval.

Healing is based on your modified magery. My main tamer has no eval and I heal quite fine with GH. I don't use vet that much at all.

 

[Farsight]

Something to think about.

If well planned, it takes less time to earn the gold to buy an advanced character token than it does to train taming from 50 to 85. Or it did for me. With equal time, my first attempt at a tamer was at 70 taming by the time my mage had the advanced character token to make my second attempt at a tamer.

As for your template, it looks pretty good to me. The rest is just tweaking to suit your own play style.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

The first thing that strikes me about your template is you have no melee defense and no eval which means you can't parra tame which means your lead taming will be difficult. Obvious soloution to that is to use a mage weapon -0, which uses your magery skill as a weapon skill. Why this is important is because if your trying to tame a rune beetle you don't want to be getting hit too much and to avoid getting hit you need a higher weapon skill than the rune beetles wrestling. Higher magery will also increase your success chances at gating and the amount you heal.

With that in mind I would suggest 110 or more magery.

Secondly I would suggest forgetting either chivalry or magery. The reason being having both caps your chivalry casting which is normally 4/6 at 2/6 which makes your remove curse slow and fairly pointless. Spellweaving is also 4/6 casting speed. However if you decide to drop magery you would need to get a weapon skill (to replace not being able to use mage weapons) and higher chivalry.

If you decide to not worry about that (which is fine - up to you) then you only need 55 chivalry for 100% success at remove curse. Though if you decide to drop magery you will need 65 chivalry for 100% success at close wounds/cleanse by fire/remove curse & sacred journey. Getting a non bonded non rideable pet about with no magery involves sacred journeying to the location loggging out and back in. Which isn't always safe though there are invis potions in the game. It's basically a choice of playing as a mage tamer or a dexxer tamer, the dexxer tamer suit is much easier to build though you lose some versatility that you get with magery. (or as I said you can ignore all of that and just build it as you've said) If this is the first template like this you've ever tried I would go with magery and forget chiv.

Spellweaving doesn't need lrc, nor does chiv though chiv costs 0 tithing points if you have 100 lrc.

Spellweaving is limited in it's usefulness by the level of arcane circle you can get, plus on a tamer follower slots. If you don't know much about spellweaving you may struggle to see the point of it. 100 spellweaving is either too much or not enough depending on what spells you plan on using, you will fail word of death a lot with 100. The 100% success point for spellweaving is the minimum skill +37.5, so you won't succeed 100% of the time with word of death until 117.5. Gift of life succeeds 100% of the time at only 75.5 so theres a big gap in how many points you realistically NEED in it.
Also take in to account that in order to get an arcane circle you need to be within 20 points of the other people on the circle.

With all of the above in mind, you should be able to free up quite a few points and I would pick up at least 100 resisting spells and add anything else to either med or vet. Oh and as someone else said other than 1 extra stable slot theres not much point in 120 animal lore, 110 lets you lore monsters that can't be tamed.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

To the OP

My 2gp's

Lore, Taming and Vet contribute to the number of Stable slots. Plan accordingly. Past 100, I do believe it is 1 per 10, per skill so all 3 to 120 gives 6 slots? Finding Taming Jewels to +25 should not be unrealistic for you. With those and taming at 95.0, you end up with more base skills to distribute.

Something to think about.

If well planned, it takes less time to earn the gold to buy an advanced character token than it does to train taming from 50 to 85. Or it did for me. With equal time, my first attempt at a tamer was at 70 taming by the time my mage had the advanced character token to make my second attempt at a tamer.
....

So exactly how does the Advanced Character Token work? Does it jump you to 85 from 50?

 

[Ash]

Removing curse on a strong pet really isnt needed, they dont take that big a loss so i cant see Chivalry as viable.

I always go for 55 chiv for remove curse on tamer, not because of curse but because of mortal strike. Coil can take down a greater dragon with his mortal wound and deadly poison..

 

[Kellgory]

What will you be using your tamer for mainly. Peerless, champ spawns, doom, solo PVM, group PVM, or PVP. Each of these have different templates that work well. The template you provided would work for most PVM situations. The 120 taming and lore isn't necessary unless you want the extra pet slots, otherwise 115 on both will let you tame and control any pet in game without problems, just might take a little longer to tame some of the higher end animals. None of my tamers have chiv, and only about half of them have eval. I've seen several weaver tamers with 40-80 necro so that they can get into wraith form when casting WOD for the mana drain or lich form for the mana regen. If in doubt about what to skills suit you best, just go to test shard and play around.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

So exactly how does the Advanced Character Token work? Does it jump you to 85 from 50?

You can only use an advanced token if your character is under 200 real skill points.

The taming one gives you the following:

85 Taming
85 Lore
85 Vet
70 Magery
70 Med

80 str, 55 dex, 80 int

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

You can only use an advanced token if your character is under 200 real skill points.

The taming one gives you the following:

85 Taming
85 Lore
85 Vet
70 Magery
70 Med

80 str, 55 dex, 80 int

Is that one token per skill as in Taming group or would it cover all 3.

Lore is an easy macro skill up as is Magery/Meding.

Vet and Taming on the other hand .....

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Not sure I understand what your asking.

One token gives you all 5 of those skills and puts the stats in those positions (providing you point the arrows up and are under 200 real skill points before hand)

If you go to uo.com about a third of the way down on the right is a list of all their promotions including advanced tokens and if you click on it you can see what all of the different types do for you. (thats where I got the above info from)

 

[Crow]

No one, unless I skimmed over it, mentioned the archer tamer. I've been playing it almost exclusively for over two years, and that first year was the only character on my account...till he went red and made his activities very limited...I've sense soul stoned skills to a different shard and am enjoying everything game has to offer...except the holding back on killing blues...

The template has changed a lot over the years, before the tactics change I did enjoy having chiv...even without a weapon skill I wouldn't rule that out, besides Remove Curse there is Holy Light and Dispel Evil (great for low level spawn) Noble Sac, great for multiple dead buddies (makes you feel really cool to rez your entire group with the stroke of a key) and if for some reason you didn't want magery, or didn't want to carry regs if no lrc suit, you have chiv's healing, curing and sacred journey. And if you did want a weapon skill goes without saying you have the damage bonuses.

Bear in mind I'm on a break from game due to RL circumstances, but here's the best from memory, and this template also depends on jewelry, and a pretty good suit.

120 Lore (I know it doesn’t NEED to be that high, but I like the title)
120 Archery (Obviously)
110 Vet (don’t believe there is much more damage healed over 100, but higher rez chance higher you go I'm told...I'm actually going to 120 as well)
95 Magery (I use tomb of lost knowledge for high end spells)
90 Tactics (All you need for weapon specials)
85 Taming (On it's way up...Don’t care much for taming, like I said depend a lot on jewels)
Whatever’s left in Med

Pretty versatile template, can solo just about anything besides bosses. I'm not in to farming for the perfect pet. But with jewelry it is possible. Main benefit is the weapon specials, para shot, mortal from normal bow, lightning...whatever from elven short.

Of course it's main use if you want to go the pvp angle...the dismount of Heavy Crossbow...knock the bad guy on their feet, watch them run to their buddies away from you and pets and chase them down and drop em with moving shot.

You don’t get paid if your pets get the kill, but the spite factor of them having to pay out the full 600gp rather then pvp's 300 makes it worth while.

Say what you will about pvp tamers, but its great for group and field support, while still being an effective spawn and champ killer. And of course peerless and high end monsters.

 

[zeroshade]

Heres my tamers template:

120 Taming
120 Lore
120 Vet

115 Magery
110 Weaving
120 Med

705 pts

(i currently use jewls for taming, but will switch them out for magery or maybe luck jewls when i get the skill pts)

I use weaving for:
Gift of Renewal: nice for distance healing
Gift of Life (on pets and self)
Word of Death
Essence of Wind: (I can solo a vanguard with this because it makes him slower so he doesnt heal as fast)

 

[Solikos]

Thanks! Some great information that certainly helps a lot. Make note that my character will really focus on PvM. Trying to put many of the opinions together I've come up with the following two high end templates:

110 Animal Taming
110 Animal Lore
110 Veterinarian
110 Magery
110 Meditation
100 Spell Resistance
70 Spell Weaving (Gift of Life)
(= 720 Total)

I can personally resist spells, but cannot remove curses nor cast Word of Death

Versus

110 Animal Taming
110 Animal Lore
110 Veterinarian
110 Magery
110 Meditation
110 Spell Weaving
60 Chivalry
(= 720 Total)

I am personally more vulnerable, but my pet will probably be in better hands.

Conclusion: Spell Resist vs. Remove Curse + Word of Death

How useful is spell resist in PvM? I imagine my pet(s) would take the blunt of negative spells, but can I ignore it? From my point of view, Remove Curse + Word of Death is looking best... After all, I'm a tamer and rely on my pet(s).

The Archery idea was interesting and previous to my original post I had considered something like that. However I think I would enjoy a 'pure' Archer template more, especially as my focus will be PvM.

Thanks again!

~ Solikos

 

[Kellgory]

For PVM, I would go with the 110 weaving 60 chiv template over the resists. For the most part your pet will be taking most of the damage, and most spells/curses can be removed either by chiv, apples, petals, or trapped boxes. Looks like with that template you have several ways of keeping your pet alive (close wounds, vet, greater heals, gift of renewal), so for the monsters that have area effect attacts you can stay out of range. Plus if you start to get into trouble, either invis yourself or drink an invis potion and let the monster target your pet again.

 

[WWGRD?]

Resist is nice skill. With resist your luck suit is all 40's, no matter how crappy it is. Paralyze only lasts 2 secs, if that. You won't get chain poisoned. If your tamer is human you will get 20 chiv. 20 human chiv + weaving is enough to never worry about mortal. I can solo coil with just my human bonuses to weaving and chiv.

 

[Tina Small]

I enjoy my peace tamers. Some day I hope to get discord worked up to 120 so I can swap it with the peacemaking, but that's another story. The peace tamers are fun if you like to run around exploring nasty places and maybe kill a few things along the way. They can also be fun in a group PvM situation with careful use of the peacemaking skill. In my opinion, they also make taming the nasty critters a bit more doable if you can get the hang of peacing, waiting out the timer, and then making a taming attempt. There are times when even with 120 music/peace/taming that it's touch and go, but I guess that's where the legendary running skill comes in handy.

Here is the template I generally use for real skills on my peace tamer characters:

120 music
120 peacemaking
100-120 taming
110 lore
105-110 vet
100 magery
60-70 meditation

I enjoy taming the hard stuff with my peace tamers, so they have all used 120 taming scrolls and I'm slowly working them up to 120 real taming skill. If/when they get there, it's bye-bye forever to taming jewelry.

I don't miss having eval intelligence on these tamers. If they need to kill something with magery while the pet's busy, I generally use poison and mind blast spells. It's a bit slow, but if the critter is peaced and not going anywhere, it usually works out fine. The characters also have enough magery to do rezzes pretty easily (especially if I use a 110 magery power scroll and boost the magery with jewelry or a spellbook).

The one drawback to this template is the low meditation skill. I haven't done tons of peerless with these characters, but have been doing more lately and am trying to make them all suits with high LMC/MR mods so that they pull their weight a little more with the spellcasting when killing peerless. I don't notice the low meditation skill otherwise when I'm solo hunting with a pet in situations where I can stay close to the pet and heal with bandages.

One last note: I read a post yesterday that said you can set spellweaving to 50 as a starting skill if you start your character with the KR client. Haven't tested it out, but perhaps it's worth investigating. Seems like you should still have to do the starting quest before you can actually use the skill but I guess it would be nice to be able to skip a bit of the actual skill training if you can.

 

[Lady Michelle]

115 Taming
120 Lore
120 Vet
100 Magery
100 Hiding (was 100 med)
97.4 Fishing (was 100 eval)

Im taking the taming, lore, and vet all the way to 120 for faster healing, more control over my pets, and for more stable slots.
My UO hubby as those skills at 109 taming 120 vet 118 lore and his dreaded war horse wont bond.

I put hiding on so if I get target by something I can run off screen hide then go back to heal pets. I always forget to use my magery spells LOL.

My tamer is also in factions which makes me more careful when Im out hunting on my own.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

How useful resist is in PvM is greatly dependant on external factors. Namely how good you are at not dying/healing yourself and is your suit going to have any high str requirement items in it?
Your pets may be taking the brunt but you have to lead them on to the same screen as whatever your hunting and will likely get targeted first, plus many things with auras/area/splash damage will retarget on you. If your suit has items like the vesper 1/2 shield a curse will likely make it drop in your pack.

Personally I hate playing without it, I always get mana drained or parrad at the wrong moment. I always have at least 100 for PvM & 120 for PvP.

Which is another point, your going to be lead taming with 0 resist getting parrad/poisoned/mana drained by greater dragons/rune beetles etc.

If you go with the spellweaving one I'd go 117.5 sp weave so you have 100% success with wod. You could lose 5.0 from chiv and 2.5 from med. It's a long cast time even with 4 fc to be fizzling it especially when you have to wait until the monsters under a certain % before it works, usually near death.

 

[galefan2004]

I haven’t had much luck playing a tamer mage but I have seen plenty of them really struggling to kill the Vanguards, whereas will my Discord Tamer I have very few problems killing them. Just a thought.

Righteous

I've had zero issues killing them on my SW/mage tamer. I can also do a lot of things where discord just isn't that huge of a deal. It would be much harder for a discord tamer to 2 man a peerless than a SW tamer to do so for example. Giving up med is just not the best idea when wanting to solo peerless. I'm assuming you are probably 120 music, 120 discord, 110 taming, 110 lore, 110 vet, 110 magery.

 

[galefan2004]

Removing curse on a strong pet really isnt needed, they dont take that big a loss so i cant see Chivalry as viable.

Remove curse is just part of the reason I love chivalry. I also don't have it to remove curse from my pets. Its not always my pets that get targeted for various different reasons. I also love divine fury because I hate dieing because I can't move due to lack of stamina.

As stated you need eval to make the GH from magery usefull, in doom it is difficult to vet when fighting the DF, or anything else that used area damage for that matter.

I said it once...I'll say it again. Only two things effect greater heal. One is real magery skill and the other is having arcane empowerment up. Eval has nothing to do with healing power.

Strong pets are the key.

I won't argue that point, but the skill of the actual tamer is 100% more important. Some tamers can solo DH (for example) and some can't even get the keys for him.

 

[galefan2004]

If you want to be able to tame and control all pets in the game I suggest

120 tame
110 lore
vet no less than GM, up to 120 for more stable slots

I can tame and control every pet in the game just fine with 110 taming 110 lore. I also am not wasting points just so I can have extra pets in my stable that are useless.

Seriously think about using an advanced char token. I took my main from 0 up and it was brutal.

Acutally the WORST thing you can do (if you ever want real taming skill) is to use an advanced character token. Its much better to start with 50 taming and work it up as the first skill. If you use an advance character token you hit to high of a skill cap to effectively use GGS to its full bennefit.

 

[galefan2004]

Something to think about.

If well planned, it takes less time to earn the gold to buy an advanced character token than it does to train taming from 50 to 85. Or it did for me. With equal time, my first attempt at a tamer was at 70 taming by the time my mage had the advanced character token to make my second attempt at a tamer.

As for your template, it looks pretty good to me. The rest is just tweaking to suit your own play style.

No it really doesn't. If you know what to tame when it goes VERY fast at that level. You can go from 50-85 taming in about 5-6 hours if you are taming the right creatures (polar bears till you stop gaining from them then snow leopards till you stop gaining from them then dire wolves till you stop gaining well on them then bulls). Its not until you get to 95+ that it starts to really suck and that is the point where you are going to wish you still had a 150 skill cap for use with GGS.

 

[galefan2004]

The first thing that strikes me about your template is you have no melee defense and no eval which means you can't parra tame which means your lead taming will be difficult.

Para taming is not the best way to tame period. Go work some honor (its not hard) and honor tame. You can also Etheral Voyage tame. Not to mention, short of greater dragons I can lead tame EVERYTHING in this game, with no eval and no sort of physical defense, (including dread war horses) solo.

Obvious soloution to that is to use a mage weapon -0, which uses your magery skill as a weapon skill. Why this is important is because if your trying to tame a rune beetle you don't want to be getting hit too much and to avoid getting hit you need a higher weapon skill than the rune beetles wrestling. Higher magery will also increase your success chances at gating and the amount you heal.

The second you hit it or it hits you you lose that taming attempt due to the beast being to angry to continue taming. If you are letting the beast touch you then you are doing something wrong.

Secondly I would suggest forgetting either chivalry or magery. The reason being having both caps your chivalry casting which is normally 4/6 at 2/6 which makes your remove curse slow and fairly pointless.

Funny, but even at 2/6 I can't even count the times having chivalry and being able to divine fury (full stamina refill) and remove curse (when I'm cursed) has saved me in tight situations when getting keys for peerless or soloing vanguards.

Spellweaving is also 4/6 casting speed. However if you decide to drop magery you would need to get a weapon skill (to replace not being able to use mage weapons) and higher chivalry.

Magery is still way to much of a bonus to drop. Dropping 2 fc off of SW and Chiv is not a huge deal.

If you decide to not worry about that (which is fine - up to you) then you only need 55 chivalry for 100% success at remove curse. Though if you decide to drop magery you will need 65 chivalry for 100% success at close wounds/cleanse by fire/remove curse & sacred journey.

The 60 number is so you have a very good chance of casting divine fury (you are on foot 100% of the time if you using a gdragon so refreshing your stamina is HUGE).

Spellweaving is limited in it's usefulness by the level of arcane circle you can get, plus on a tamer follower slots.

I competely disagree. Its not limited in usefulness with a level 1 (self cast focus) when you can start throwing out 450 damage wods when the creature red lines. However, it is much more useful with a higher focus.

If you don't know much about spellweaving you may struggle to see the point of it. 100 spellweaving is either too much or not enough depending on what spells you plan on using, you will fail word of death a lot with 100. The 100% success point for spellweaving is the minimum skill +37.5, so you won't succeed 100% of the time with word of death until 117.5. Gift of life succeeds 100% of the time at only 75.5 so theres a big gap in how many points you realistically NEED in it.

If you have SW as a tamer for anything other than WoD then you completely misunderstand the skill.

With all of the above in mind, you should be able to free up quite a few points and I would pick up at least 100 resisting spells and add anything else to either med or vet. Oh and as someone else said other than 1 extra stable slot theres not much point in 120 animal lore, 110 lets you lore monsters that can't be tamed.

I don't see the point of resisting spells on any character unless you are pvping a lot more than pvming and you just have points to waste.

 

[galefan2004]

Conclusion: Spell Resist vs. Remove Curse + Word of Death

How useful is spell resist in PvM? I imagine my pet(s) would take the blunt of negative spells, but can I ignore it? From my point of view, Remove Curse + Word of Death is looking best... After all, I'm a tamer and rely on my pet(s).

I haven't bothered with resisting spells on any template since AoS. Its simply not worth it. There are 100 work arounds to avoid ever needing it and remove curse is one of them. Go for WOD and remove curse. If you are getting SW without WoD then don't bother getting it (its really not that powerful other than WoD).

The Archery idea was interesting and previous to my original post I had considered something like that. However I think I would enjoy a 'pure' Archer template more, especially as my focus will be PvM.

Archer tamers are sweet, but if you are going to make an archer tamer then do it the right way...

120 Archery
100 Bushido
100 Tactics
110 Lore
110 Taming
100 Veterinary
80 Chivalry

720

With that template you would do more PvM damage in the game then any other class could even come close to. While your greater dragon is putting out 100+ damage every 2-3 seconds you would be hitting for 150+ damage every 1.25 seconds if you got perfection up.

 

[galefan2004]

How useful resist is in PvM is greatly dependant on external factors. Namely how good you are at not dying/healing yourself and is your suit going to have any high str requirement items in it?
Your pets may be taking the brunt but you have to lead them on to the same screen as whatever your hunting and will likely get targeted first, plus many things with auras/area/splash damage will retarget on you. If your suit has items like the vesper 1/2 shield a curse will likely make it drop in your pack.

Thanks for explaining why remove curse is 100% more useful than resist. Hmm? Should I wait for that curse to wear off (even with 100 resist its more like 30 seconds than 2 seconds) or should I simply cast a spell that takes 2-3 seconds to cast and not have to worry about the curse anymore?

Personally I hate playing without it, I always get mana drained or parrad at the wrong moment. I always have at least 100 for PvM & 120 for PvP.

Its a waste of points. There are many other skills that could go in the play of resisting spells that would give you much more suriviability. If you are going to waste 100 points on a skill that barely helps you then you might as well get focus or hiding.

Which is another point, your going to be lead taming with 0 resist getting parrad/poisoned/mana drained by greater dragons/rune beetles etc.

Its called honor. Its called etheral voyage. Its called running off the screen after poisoned or parried until you get healed up then starting again. Lead taming without resist is not hard.

If you go with the spellweaving one I'd go 117.5 sp weave so you have 100% success with wod.

Waste of points. Anything over 70% success rate is PLENTY. Most of the time unless you get really unlucky the RNG rolls a success instead of a failure if you are anything over a 50% succuess. There is no real reason to waste the points and the money on the scroll. It would be different if there was an actual bonus to having 120 spellweaving over 110 spellweaving other than cast success rates.

You could lose 5.0 from chiv and 2.5 from med. It's a long cast time even with 4 fc to be fizzling it especially when you have to wait until the monsters under a certain % before it works, usually near death.

Its really not that annoying. You still don't fizzle as often as you succeed at 105. It gets better at 110. I would take it to 110 but not about that.

 

[Solikos]

So many conflicts of opinion...

*Looks over that Archer build*

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

I'm not saying it's the best way to tame. I lead tame too, but he didn't ask what we use he asked if there were problems with his template.

Hitting a tame isn't a case of doing something wrong it's usually a case of lag.

Magery doesn't cap your weaving at 2 fc just chiv. It may well work but imo equipping 4/6 for spellweaving then having magery and chiv cancel 2 out for chiv is a waste.

You may use it for that, he specified RC. RC is 55.

Except with a level 1 focus and 100 weaving your likely to fizzle the WOD and as it only does the high damage when it's under 5% with a level 1 focus it's likely to die before you've recast it.

I don't have SW on my tamer at all but if someone else choses to thats up to them. There are more uses than WOD but whatever your using it for your best off having 100% success at it because it's slow casting and costs a lot of mana.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

If you get curse cast on you chances are your going to get parrad or mana drained too then you can't cast anything.

It's not a waste of points imo. Dying to chain parras or because you can't heal or some other stupid reason is a waste of insurance and time getting res'd.

It's called making it take longer than necessary, working honor, waiting for the cooldown on etheral voyage, running off the screen, none of that gets you a tamed pet. Being set up well enough that you can tame while it's attacking you makes it easier. Some pets take a long time to tame, why bother with cooldowns for honor and voyage when you could just be getting on with it.

If hes running around with a level 1 or 2 focus which most spellweavers are then fizzling wod when a monster is under 5% or 10% is likely to result in the monster being dead before you re cast. That would be a waste of 100 points rather than 7.5.

It's not a case of how annoying it is, if your using it at an event theres always other spellweavers casting wod, I don't see any point letting them get the last hit. If somethings worth having it's not worth having less than 100% success at.

 

[Loquacious Wrath]

Here is my tamer/mage/spellweaver:

You can use jewelry to rez pets devoting only 50 real skill to vet. You can control Greater Dragons using Taming/Lore Jewelry. I have a 110 taming 103 lore (enough for controling Cu Sihdes) but with jewelry, 120 taming and 118 lore is plenty for the top tamables. A quick switch to taming jewerly before commands is all I need. This way, I can devote points to spellweaving which allows many great tamer benefits such as Gift of Life, Gift of Renewal, Attunment, Arcane Focus, Arcane Empowerment, and Word Of Death. I use these spells a lot.

Enchanted Apples and Orange Petals are always carried and used.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

I have 2 Tamer/Mages, their' templates haven't changed much in the past 10-11 Years i've had them (Except for when PS were introduced).
My main Tamer/Mage has 120.0 Taming/120.0 Lore/GM Vet/GM Magery/GM Eval/GM Med/80.0 Resist. I use a +100 Luck/+15 Vet Ring on him when i want to stable an extra pet.
My other Tamer/Mage (Who i used to PvP with before AoS) has 110.0 Taming/110.0 Lore/GM Vet/GM Magery/GM Eval/GM Med/GM Resist. I use Birds of Britannia Talisman to boost him to 115.0 Taming/115.0 Lore. Both Tamer/Mages use Swords of Prosperity for defense.

Higher Lore is more useful than higher Vet. Lore mainly determines damage healed with Bandages, and secondary is control chance, 80%/20%. Vet mainly determines success rate at Applying/Curing/Rezzing, secondary is determining how much damage is healed with bandages on pet, 80%/20%. At GM Vet, you have 62% success rate at rezzing pet anyways, and failing to rez and having to use another bandy isn't much of a big deal, while the extra damage healed with more Lore could've kept the pet alive in the first place.

I lead tame everything, no Beat Downs (Unless it must be subjugated to tame it in the first place), no Peace, no Para, no Honor Tame. Which is one reason why i have Resist. Resist is real useful when lead taming Rune Beetles and Great Wyrms.

 

[uoBuoY]

The best Tamer template (imho)...110-120 in all:

Taming
Lore
Vet
Magery
Eval
Med
Resist
Music
Peace
Disco

Of course not all at the same time! SoulStones are a Tamer's best friend! I simply put together the skill set most appropriate for the task at hand.

I don't use the Magic skill set very often though. Usually it's only Magery to gate a new tame out of a bad neighborhood. My first Tamer was a Mage/Tamer. I converted him to a Bard/Tamer and never looked back. Bard/Tamer = extremely powerful! At 120 Disco, the target looses 28% of it's skills and resists which makes both Taming and killing much easier.

My advice is use Advanced Character tokens. I'm just finishing my 2nd Bard/Tamer (1st male/human, 2nd female/elf) and I just couldn't bear the thought of all that training once again. I used 2 Advanced tokens: 1 for Tamer and 1 for Bard. I then divided the advanced Bard skills between 2 chars (kept below 350 total skill points) and gained fast using 3 chars to build the skills set for 1 char. (I got a lot of SoulStones! Yah!)

Good luck with whatever Tamer template you choose. Just don't be impatient! Taming is tough to skill up and so is Disco. Sooner or later you just settle of that 0.1 GGS!

 

[galefan2004]

If you get curse cast on you chances are your going to get parrad or mana drained too then you can't cast anything.

Learn to kite when you have no mana. Not to mention even if you get drained you normally still have enough mana left to invisi and heal yourself if you are elf.

It's not a waste of points imo. Dying to chain parras or because you can't heal or some other stupid reason is a waste of insurance and time getting res'd.

The chances of actually dieing in PvM to chain paras is very rare, and normally if that is happening its because you have 2-3 casters on you at at time, and unfortunately normally when you have 2-3 casting mobs on you anymore in this game you are either dead anyways or running off the screen of the mobs.

It's called making it take longer than necessary, working honor, waiting for the cooldown on etheral voyage, running off the screen, none of that gets you a tamed pet. Being set up well enough that you can tame while it's attacking you makes it easier. Some pets take a long time to tame, why bother with cooldowns for honor and voyage when you could just be getting on with it.

Because other than greater dragons you can lead tame everything in this game naked? Or in a lrc suit so you don't have to use regs. You seem to think lead taming is difficult when it really isn't. The only difficulty is lead taming greaters and nothing other than etheral voyage and honor really makes that cake.

If hes running around with a level 1 or 2 focus which most spellweavers are then fizzling wod when a monster is under 5% or 10% is likely to result in the monster being dead before you re cast. That would be a waste of 100 points rather than 7.5.

I don't know what monsters you kill but when you are 2 manning (or soloing) peerless they definately aren't dead before you get another chance at WoD and if you are fighting something less then that you normally don't need WoD at all.

It's not a case of how annoying it is, if your using it at an event theres always other spellweavers casting wod, I don't see any point letting them get the last hit. If somethings worth having it's not worth having less than 100% success at.

Don't play with other people? Play off times? Play in towns they aren't in? There is no real event that has the excuse that you HAVE to have over 110 SW. There is no real point to taking any casting spell over 110. All they control is the success of spells being cast. I guess I'm just not a huge fan of wasted 120s and SW is a wasted 120 in PvM.

 

[galefan2004]

Ooh...those glasses look nice. If I'm figuring the price right those should only cost 1.6 mil (2 gp per reg x 800,000) to actually get from the collection. I might just have to get a pair of those.

 

[galefan2004]

Higher Lore is more useful than higher Vet. Lore mainly determines damage healed with Bandages, and secondary is control chance, 80%/20%. Vet mainly determines success rate at Applying/Curing/Rezzing, secondary is determining how much damage is healed with bandages on pet, 80%/20%. At GM Vet, you have 62% success rate at rezzing pet anyways, and failing to rez and having to use another bandy isn't much of a big deal, while the extra damage healed with more Lore could've kept the pet alive in the first place.

I am relatively certain that the ammount healed per band is determined by a formula of both veterinary and lore. Lore is still more useful, I agree, but having 110 veterinary isn't a horrible idea.

 

[galefan2004]

I don't use the Magic skill set very often though. Usually it's only Magery to gate a new tame out of a bad neighborhood. My first Tamer was a Mage/Tamer. I converted him to a Bard/Tamer and never looked back. Bard/Tamer = extremely powerful! At 120 Disco, the target looses 28% of it's skills and resists which makes both Taming and killing much easier.

Does 120 discord removed 28% of peerless and dark fathers? If it doesn't, then discord is more for just killing things quickly. It seems mage tamers would still dominate peerless. However, if it does take 28% away from peerless and dark father it might be worth looking into.

My advice is use Advanced Character tokens. I'm just finishing my 2nd Bard/Tamer (1st male/human, 2nd female/elf) and I just couldn't bear the thought of all that training once again. I used 2 Advanced tokens: 1 for Tamer and 1 for Bard. I then divided the advanced Bard skills between 2 chars (kept below 350 total skill points) and gained fast using 3 chars to build the skills set for 1 char. (I got a lot of SoulStones! Yah!)

Its kind of pointless to waste the money/gold on advanced character tokens when its that easy to work skills to that level. Working skills to that level is actually a HUGE joke. Also, you screw yourself on GGS.

Good luck with whatever Tamer template you choose. Just don't be impatient! Taming is tough to skill up and so is Disco. Sooner or later you just settle of that 0.1 GGS!

Discord is a macroable skill. Taming is not. Bard skills are not that hard to gain they are just set up so that scripters and macroers bennefit greatly while training them.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Why spend your time running away when you can just resist it.
Multiple casters aren't a problem with resist.

I don't know why this is hard for you to understand and I'm sure I've repeated it by now, I have no problem lead taming and don't think it's difficult, from what you've said you don't either. But do you really think the majority of tamers in UO are good at lead taming? Because I certainly don't, which is why I'm not reccomending doing it without resist to someone who from what I can tell hasn't played a tamer before.
I was lead taming just yesterday and some tamer came up and started saying things like 'running around like a noob' 'don't you know theres an easier way'... aside from the fact I was a dexxer/tamer they then went on to die twice while parra taming. Thats the average UO tamer for you right there, incapable.

I don't use spellweaving on my tamer and I don't use a tamer to solo peerless. I don't expect he is going to just yet either, when I talk about competing for last hit I'm talking about at events like the moonglow rift on berserkers etc. Or in doom on a dark father.

120 Spellweavings ONLY purpose is in PvM and theres no point taking the chance on it fizzling just for the sake of 7.5 pts that you don't even need other places.

 

[galefan2004]

Why spend your time running away when you can just resist it.
Multiple casters aren't a problem with resist.

Because instead of resist I chose to sink skill points into areas that actually bettered my character? Lets see...med or resist? Chiv or resist? Spellweaving or resist? I'm sorry but resist loses in all of those areas...especially seeing you can't resist necromancy spells at all.

I don't know why this is hard for you to understand and I'm sure I've repeated it by now, I have no problem lead taming and don't think it's difficult, from what you've said you don't either. But do you really think the majority of tamers in UO are good at lead taming? Because I certainly don't, which is why I'm not reccomending doing it without resist to someone who from what I can tell hasn't played a tamer before.

The difference is that you seem to make it harder than it is by implying you can't do it without resist, and I tend to point out that not having resist doesn't really hamper your game play in any area other than possibly PvP, and even then its questionable.

I was lead taming just yesterday and some tamer came up and started saying things like 'running around like a noob' 'don't you know theres an easier way'... aside from the fact I was a dexxer/tamer they then went on to die twice while parra taming. Thats the average UO tamer for you right there, incapable.

Hmm...running around like a "noobie" or crushing the creatures stats... I think I'll chose running around like a "noobie" especially when lead taming is normally easier than para taming if you understand what you are doing. I realise that the majority of players in this game anymore that won't PvP lack any an all skill in PvM also.

I don't use spellweaving on my tamer and I don't use a tamer to solo peerless. I don't expect he is going to just yet either, when I talk about competing for last hit I'm talking about at events like the moonglow rift on berserkers etc. Or in doom on a dark father.

You obviously play on a shard where Doom has actual people. What you don't realise is that just because a formula says you need 117.? to never fizzle WoD doesn't mean that is actually the case. Sure it would be helpful and if you can fit it in your template and don't mind giving some Felucca trash guild your hard earned gold for a 120 scroll then go for it. I perfer to not help Felucca trash guilds anymore than I absolutely have to, so I refuse to get 120 scrolls mostly out of principle unless I was there at the spawn when we got it. I wouldn't break my back to get a 120 SW skill just for a 10% better chance at casting WoD...90% is normally enough.

120 Spellweavings ONLY purpose is in PvM and theres no point taking the chance on it fizzling just for the sake of 7.5 pts that you don't even need other places.

You are forgetting you have to sink 2 mil into a scroll. Thats a lot of gold to sink for a 10% increase in being successful at casting a spell. Most of the time you don't even notice the fizzles on WoD at 105 because you are successful more often then not while casting it.

Plus...it is a personal thing, but I'm refusing to use ANY 120 skill scroll as long as they insist on leaving power scrolls in non-con PvP areas. Every power scroll I currently have that is greater than 110, I got myself, but after seeing how disgusting the behavior of most spawn guilds actually is I refuse to buy the scrolls. I'd rather go play something else then play a template that absolutely requires me to buy anything higher than 110.

 

[Solikos]

Hehe, thanks for all the view points Lord GOD and Galefan... Really I'm starting to think that WOD might not be worth the points for the time being... Getting it up to 120 is going to take awhile anyway; I had previously thought that the big bonuses of Spell Weaving were the heals and such.

With that said, how about this template for a starting PvM tamer mage:

110 Animal Taming
110 Animal Lore
110 Veterinarian
110 Magery
110 Meditation
100 Spell Resist
70 Chivalry

If one day I decide Weaving is where I should be, I can always change without any hard feelings. Spell resistance is easy enough to boost up, and from what I've been hearing WOD is not critical to being an uber tamer anyway?

~ Solikos

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Because instead of resist I chose to sink skill points into areas that actually bettered my character?

Running away doesn't better your character. Not getting parrad/mana drained/poisoned does.

especially seeing you can't resist necromancy spells at all.

Your not supposed to, their curses. It affects their duration. Except blood oath which does have it's effect reduced with resist.

The difference is that you seem to make it harder than it is by implying you can't do it without resist, and I tend to point out that not having resist doesn't really hamper your game play in any area other than possibly PvP, and even then its questionable.

Not at all, I consider that IF the information I post isn't relavent to the OP (because hes better than I've give him credit for) then he will be able to ignore it, I don't know how 'good' at UO he is and how hard it is depends entirely on the player, if he's fairly bad at it then resist will probably help if hes good enough that resist would be a waste of points I'm sure he can decide that for himself. The difference is I read the OP's post which says the last time he tried taming was 8 years ago. I wouldn't reccomend any player tries taming a greater dragon without resist, least of all an unexperienced one.

Hmm...running around like a "noobie" or crushing the creatures stats... I think I'll chose running around like a "noobie" especially when lead taming is normally easier than para taming if you understand what you are doing.

Yes I know thats why I was lead taming. The point is that the person saying that stuff didn't understand what I was doing. I obviously didn't care in the slightest, I doubt they even realised how stupid they looked as I continued to tame 3:1 past them.

You obviously play on a shard where Doom has actual people.

Yes, < Atlantic. Though last time I went it was empty.

What you don't realise is that just because a formula says you need 117.? to never fizzle WoD doesn't mean that is actually the case.

117.5 and yes it is. I wouldn't continue to let them affect my gameplay by fizzling a spell.

You are forgetting you have to sink 2 mil into a scroll.

600k on Atlantic, but even if it was 2m if I make a WOD'er I want to be able to cast WOD everytime without fail, low level focus's in doom etc don't get enough opportunity to re cast.

Plus...it is a personal thing

Yeah, I mostly agree, I don't buy from certain vendors because I know the guilds that run them use speedhacks/scripts/dupes. On Atlantic your hard pushed to find a vendor without dupes in Luna.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Spell resistance is easy enough to boost up, and from what I've been hearing WOD is not critical to being an uber tamer anyway?

~ Solikos

It depends how reliably you can get a good focus and what your hunting. I generally think if your new to a template play it in the most basic way first. Being uber can wait until you at least have a comfortable set up.

 

[Loquacious Wrath]

I do 500+ pts of damage per WoD. The damage I avoid by killing my enemy quickly is greater than the damage saved by magic resist. I wonder if I said that right...