What's Better?

[jimbobsonofgod]

Just curious but has anyone tested Dirge/Sirvente with Ghorn? Also has anyone figured out if it is cumulative or volatile enmity?

Since when do bards have more then 2 songs ?

[thetruepandagod]

Every time i get forced to play and give them minne and sirvente

[Argettio]

Every time i get forced to play and give them minne and sirvente

Your a Ghorn BRD and you LS have you playing Defence and Enmity songs?

Come play with me, I will let you play Marches and Ballads and all kinds of fun stuff.

[LilWhmMan]

Question for WARs out there, my current KJ set is...

Heca/Soil Gorget/Brutal/Hollow
Heca/Alky's/Rajas/Flame
Foragers/Warwolf/AFv2/Heca

My question is, would a Triumph Earring be better instead of Hollow? I know it's a 3-hit WS, but it's also strongly based on STR...

[Callisto]

Swap that Heca body for a Haub+1 and Triumph.

[LilWhmMan]

Swap that Heca body for a Haub+1 and Triumph.

Thanks! Was wondering that about the body too.

[Tulun]

What are the best cat 1+2 merits for Paladin?

[Khalil]

Sentinel recast and Rampart. However, some will do SB recast as well. For T2, Guardian cap, then depends.

[Vito]

Swap that Heca body for a Haub+1 and Triumph.

So ~4acc > 4 str for KJ? I'd have thought it would be the other way, but i don't mess with the math.

[Vodou]

Sorry - search didn't catch your abbreviations and stuff. My opinions on each of your points:

Htr. Beret +1 vs. Maat's Cap: I don't have Maat's so I can't say for sure. I know a lot of RNGs with Maat's who basically full-time it, but Htr. Beret +1 is great and gives the Rapid Shot bonus which is noticeable. However, I think this is all moot because Zha'Go's Barbut is superior to both. (Unless there's a snapshot cap which I'll get into later.) Just the stats alone w/o the Snapshot make it worth using, so if you can get your hands on one do it ASAP.

Skadi/Scouts vs. Hachiryu for STP set: If you have Skadi available to you I'd go with those. I'm 0/60+ on the damn 5FN frog, so I can't tell you from experience, but you're basically comparing +10 STR +10 AGI (and +5 R.atk +5 r.acc) with +15 R.atk +4 r.acc. I've always felt that STR doesn't have a substantial effect on normal ranged attacks vs. using R.atk, so I'd stick with the Skadi/Scout's combo.

Crimson vs. Skadi: Crimson all the way. Skadi's great for WS's when you can manage the accuracy properly but it's no contest for TP. I used Skadi hands for TP for a while when I first got them, but I'm glad I came around - accuracy and damage are much better when using BFG. For Slugwinders though, absolutely use Skadi as long as you're not shorting yourself on r.acc in the process.

Snapshot: I've been trying to do some testing of Snapshot but it isn't going so great, mostly because there's about a .1-.2 second variance for every shot which makes pinpointing times very difficult. However, my preliminary results say that if the ACP body with Snapshot+5 is really Snapshot+5, then Zha'Go's Barbut is +3 Snapshot and Ebon Jerkin is Snapshot +3. I don't have Commodore's Gants or a Snapshot+ belt from MMM to test (though I hope to soon, gotta get on that). It's getting harder and harder to test as I approach higher values of Snapshot though - I'm not sure why this is.

In any case, right now I'd assume there is no hard cap on Snapshot, and even if there was I wouldn't expect Snapshot from merits to factor into that cap. For my TP build right now I'm rolling with Snapshot+18 (10 from merits, 5 from ACP, 3 from Zha'Go's if my testing is right) and I'd consider using a Snapshot belt, especially if it had any R.acc on it.

If anyone knows more about any of these things feel free to chime in. Also thanks for the replies on Sidewinder feet - I'll probably give Sune-ate a try soon.

IIRC Vzx did a fair amount of work on ranged attack and posted it to Alla in the rng forums about....4 years ago. He used some frame by frame studies to determine the actual components and timing of the ranged attack functions and had some comments on possibly snapshot, but certainly and rapid shot.

[Kidnoftle]

Sentinel recast and Rampart. However, some will do SB recast as well. For T2, Guardian cap, then depends.

I personally went w/ SB/Sent capped. I don't find rampart to be as useful for the majority of things that I do.

For cat2 I did Guardian and Chivalry capped. Here is where I'm hesitant to give advice since, obviously depending on what you do, guardian isn't exactly groundbreaking. It might be wise just to go w/ fealty and chiv capped since there are so few mobs in game that can't really be tanked where shadows would be down a large majority of the time or where you would be /rdm or /war.

Not to completely knock guardian but it's definitely not as useful as some people make it out to be >.>

JoP is actually the only mob that comes to mind atm that people normally do and that benefits largely from guardian. Otherwise its use is basically popping sentinel and selfcuring while taking dmg so as not to waste sentinel time on keeping shadows up.

[BerenTebogo]

Sentinel recast and Rampart. However, some will do SB recast as well. For T2, Guardian cap, then depends.

Guardian is silly and only situationally useful depending on what you do as PLD. 5/5 chiv and 5/5 fealty is also a fantastic combo.

[Khalil]

Guardian is silly and only situationally useful depending on what you do as PLD. 5/5 chiv and 5/5 fealty is also a fantastic combo.

And 5/5 of Chivalry isn't silly? When you're using Atonement for 90% of the mobs, when your WHM has cap devotion, putting 5/5 does seem a bit weird. While Guardian is useful every time you use plus w/ the fact that most PLDs have Sentinel recast, it further increases its importance.

I'm not one to judge Chivalry as I have used it from time to time however it has drastically gone ever since they implemented Atonement. Then again, I do have a Ghorn BRD most of the time.

[Kidnoftle]

And 5/5 of Chivalry isn't silly? When you're using Atonement for 90% of the mobs, when your WHM has cap devotion, putting 5/5 does seem a bit weird. While Guardian is useful every time you use plus w/ the fact that most PLDs have Sentinel recast, it further increases its importance.

I'm not one to judge Chivalry as I have used it from time to time however it has drastically gone ever since they implemented Atonement. Then again, I do have a Ghorn BRD most of the time.

Yes of course chivalry is useless when you have support with capped merits and ghorns.

When you don't have a metric fuckton of support is when chivalry is nice, such as low man situations, holding parties etc etc.

Capping out an mp pool for little TP is far greater then any use guardian has. For instance, you're taking a beating, you're losing hp and you're losing mp putting hp back up. I would rather have that mp restored than my emn kept intact for 30seconds since the restored MP will keep me alive longer.

But of course that's moot if I have a phalanx of whms and a ghorn for support.

[Khalil]

Yes of course chivalry is useless when you have support with capped merits and ghorns.

When you don't have a metric fuckton of support is when chivalry is nice, such as low man situations, holding parties etc etc.

Capping out an mp pool for little TP is far greater then any use guardian has. For instance, you're taking a beating, you're losing hp and you're losing mp putting hp back up. I would rather have that mp restored than my emn kept intact for 30seconds since the restored MP will keep me alive longer.

But of course that's moot if I have a phalanx of whms and a ghorn for support.

I'll concede to your points however having chivalry capped just because your mages can't afford to cap theirs is a pretty horrid excuse.

[Callisto]

So ~4acc > 4 str for KJ? I'd have thought it would be the other way, but i don't mess with the math.

It's for the Attack, KJ always performs best at/near capped attack, if you aren't getting a 2nd Attack buff on top of Berserk such as Chaos/Minuet you should most likely be using Raging Rush.

[Fottiti]

Chivalry is pretty useless. If you don't have a rdm and brd for support then urdoinitwrong, and if its just a holding party with 2-3 people you definitely don't want to be engaging and feeding tp. I'd put 1 merit in it because it does have uses but I can't imagine any situation where I'd be needing it more than once every 20 minutes.

You can tank all the regular stuff with just a rdm and brd for support (whm helps on shit like khim where you can get petrified), no idea where you got this notion that you need excessive support to not die to ancient content.

All that said, guardian is completely fucking useless because you already get 100-70% damage reduction (if you haven't gotten shadows back up by the time its degraded past 70% reduction then you are doing something wrong). Iron Will is underrated and I'd deinitely consider a few merits in that as you can cap spell interuption with a few additional pieces of gear + merits without sacrificing much/any shield skill.

[drwaffles]

Chivalry is pretty useless. If you don't have a rdm and brd for support then urdoinitwrong, and if its just a holding party with 2-3 people you definitely don't want to be engaging and feeding tp. I'd put 1 merit in it because it does have uses but I can't imagine any situation where I'd be needing it more than once every 20 minutes.

You can tank all the regular stuff with just a rdm and brd for support (whm helps on shit like khim where you can get petrified), no idea where you got this notion that you need excessive support to not die to ancient content.

All that said, guardian is completely fucking useless because you already get 100-70% damage reduction (if you haven't gotten shadows back up by the time its degraded past 70% reduction then you are doing something wrong). Iron Will is underrated and I'd deinitely consider a few merits in that as you can cap spell interuption with a few additional pieces of gear + merits without sacrificing much/any shield skill.

If you have no need for Chivalry with just RDM and BRD (assuming no Gjallarhorn) then you're not trying hard enough to keep hate.

[ZhiGaruda]

Chivalry is pretty useless. If you don't have a rdm and brd for support then urdoinitwrong, and if its just a holding party with 2-3 people you definitely don't want to be engaging and feeding tp. I'd put 1 merit in it because it does have uses but I can't imagine any situation where I'd be needing it more than once every 20 minutes.

This is the only point you made that I care to respond to, just because I want to say, why are people so afraid of holding with PLD+RDM and engaging?

By the time your group gets there, with Atonement, can normally have taken most HNMs down a solid chunk

[ZhiGaruda]

If you have no need for Chivalry with just RDM and BRD (assuming no Gjallarhorn) then you're not trying hard enough to keep hate.

In most situations, the 200+ TP needed to get a full pool of MP will be better used on Atonement's.