To SW or not to SW!

[JohnAlexander]

Okay I have been considering picking up Spellweaving on my Tamer, she has a bit of an odd template atm but I really like how she plays even though she is far from Min/Maxed. I have completed the SW quest for my basic Spellbook and I have also completed the Summon Fey quest; though I have yet to complete the Summon Fiend quest as it is quite a pain to get to.

Here is her current template:

110 Animal Taming (+10 Ring)
120 Animal Lore
115ish/120 Vet (Still training)
100 Magery
100 Meditation
100 Hiding
80 Chivalry

Basically I am trying to decide what to drop if I did choose to train SW. I mostly want SW for the HoT, the Auto-Rez, and the Monster Ignore ability so I can attempt to tame higher level beasts. I currently use an almost maxed skill Greater Hiryu (still working on Magic Resist), as I play Solo I foresee being able to obtain a high level focus almost impossible. I would like to get a Greater Dragon but with only 110 Taming that is going to be extremely difficult. I don't have the gold to go pick up a 120 Taming Scroll, I wish lol.

The way I currently play her is I use Hiding to drop aggro, it is quite useful for getting to where I want to be without having to deal with mobs that I don't really care to fight. Just mount my Hiryu run through and hide when I get where I want to be, her gear is not very good and I rely on Hiding a lot. I really like that I can heal very well and travel effectively using Chivalry w/out the need of having to worry about reagents. I rarely if ever use Magery on her, it's been weeks since I even bothered to carry reagents on her, when I do use it is for the occasional Invis when Hiding is on CD, to Mark runes to new hunting locations or back when I actually attempted to tame creatures to cast Gate Travel in order to get my fresh tames to a stable. I wear Arcane clothing for those times when I just have to get a Mage spell off. Though if I dropped Hiding or Chiv I would end up using Magery a lot more.

I currently wear a set of mediocre resist Luck armor.
So, I would say the smartest thing to do would be to upgrade her gear to be 100% LRC with max FC/FCR for Magery, drop Hiding for SW, start actually carrying reagents and simply use Invis and the Monster Ignore ability in place of Hiding. If I ever do stop using a mountable pet Hiding would become less convenient anyway.

So let's assume I can not get a Focus, and that I am only willing to invest 100 points in SW, would it even be useful? For instance would the Monster Ignore last long enough to get a Taming attempt off and Invis on a fail before it ended? What would my chance of actually succeeding at Taming say a Greater Dragon be with only 110 Taming and 120 Lore (if I remember correctly it is ridiculously difficult at that level)?

 

[Taylor]

I've helped a few people build mage/weaver/tamers that look like this:

110 taming (including your skill increasing items)
115 lore
110 vet
110 mage (wear a tome of lost knowledge for +15 magery to bring yourself to 110)
105 weaving
100+ eval
100 meditation

My pros/cons list regarding this template would look something like this:

Pros
--Very safe to play, thanks to gift of life, renewal, and attunement
--Easy to keep pets alive, due to gift of renewal, vet, and magery
--Decent amount of damage, due to eval and weaving

Cons
--So easy as to become boring
--Damage output is less than a good archer/tamer's would be
--Without your pet, you basically become a sub-par version of a mage/weaver

If you decided to drop eval, you could still hang onto your hiding skill or raise your taming/lore higher (if you plan to do a lot of taming).

As far as a focus is concerned . . . it helps to be in a guild with lots of weavers, but a focus isn't required. You can still self-rez, ethereal voyage, attune/renewal, etc., the benefits just won't last as long.

 

[Shelleybean]

This is a helpful post as I too am considering adding spellweaving to my tamer. Thanks for the info.

 

[Taylor]

I'm reachable for questions, if anyone needs: 449-310-493.

 

[JohnAlexander]

Thanks for the reply Syrus, I will seriously take that template into consideration, though I really think I would rather have Chiv over Eval, I find that I spend all of my time Vetting my pet and occasionally Curing/Healing with magic and do not have enough time to pop a damage spell... of course w/out Eval my damage spells are worthless, so maybe with Eval they would be actually be worth using and I would heal less because the mobs would die faster... so many choices... that is why I love UO so much. It just offers so many possibilities!!!

You really have to decide how you want to play your character and what your character actually does, instead of being boxed into a play style like you are in most games! I mean certain skills templates are going to be "better" than others but you still get to decide if you want to Min/Max or if you want to be more RP-centric.

 

[Taylor]

Sounds good, buddy. It is important to be true to your play style.