Dimeron

Few things I noticed with GoW. If a mob gets stunned they don't get pushed back. So it could be a good thing or bad thing. The poison damage also stack with each cast. From my testing I think it ticks every second for 5 seconds. Poison from each cast of GoW have its own dot. I'm fairly certain it does poison damage, it does a lot less damage when used against hunting spiders compared to earth elemental. never seen the dot critical though. The stun is also pretty handy. I think it can stun most bosses, at low level it can pretty much perm stun bosses, on noib testing it seems to keep a boss in place for 50 to 80% of the time. Although some bosses like the nameless guardian are pretty much outright immune to it. Another trick I found with GoW is that the Area of Effect of the spell apparently changes depending on the position of your dragon mage. So I can shoot it out in a line, and if the Gow misses, I just need to move my DM a bit and the GoW will hit. Very, very powerful when used on a mount. You can wipe out half a screen of mobs with one cast by strafing after cast. At higher levels it can easily do 100k+ damage if it is in a line and all 10 streams hits.

Can you really get yellow dragon head from young dragons (with the addon?) I have killed a lot of young dragon, got tons and tons of white dragon head, but no yellow or blue ones. Thanks.

Hello, I'm thinking about making an utility Ice warden (with the addon), and basically come down to two builds. The first one is a standard melee devout guardian warden, as per this thread by Dobri http://www.darkmatters.org/forums/lofivers....php/t9517.html Alternatively, taking that build, I'm thinking about replacing tactical lore, Enhanced Perception, and hafted/sword lore with Source warden lore/focus and combat discipline to turn him into a source warden AOEer. Just wondering in people's general experience, which type of Temple Guardian are faster levelers and have better survivability, the devout guardian melee warden or the Area of Effect griller. Thanks.

Toughness it is then. Does this build use any other combat art from other aspects for utility purposes? if he doesn't I can see expert touch being fairly good on this build. thanks.

I'm going to try a Pryo HE in ice and blood, and just wondering if experttouch mod would be worth it? Would shadow step still be useful if it is on the same cooldown regeneration as pryo spells? or would that be way too risky. Thanks.

I don't think you can get the same amount of raw damage due to Ice & blood nerfing not only acute mind value but how much damage you get from stats. But, as Chattius has said there is a bug with staff lore where darting assault basically is treated as melee weapon (ie, no target limit, no travel time) but with range of 2 screen. So when combined with darting assaults and other combat arts like that it is even more powerful than before.

Hello, just couple of questions. 1. Would this build still work with Ice & Blood? I imagine it should be just as good if not better due to RpH items. 2. I don't really need Enhanced Perception, just trade and smith. Now, if I replace Enhanced Perception and devout guardian focus with source warden lore/focus, wouldn't this mean my shield and battle aura will be rather low in level due to lack of devout focus? Thanks.

I believe the "animations" themselves are controlled by cast speed. So at combat art level 80-ish I think you believe that DD would offer 100+% protection from Combat Arts? The math says so, but I am a firm believer that anything we can use, the enemies can also use. So if some monsters have the innate ability to bypass your blocking, you will get hit by a Combat Art at some point or another. Really? is this still the case even with Addon? I tested Dust Devil, even at level 140 it only offers something like 60ish % chance to block spells. So I guess no combat art immunity. O well. Although I don't know if there is anything that can punch through blocking combat art though.

That's true, but in Noib bosses has million+ hp even if you don't count armor and damage reductions. Unfortunately I don't think there are any ability let me hit that hard. At least not with the Addon. Never played the inquisitor, does this mean with high level pet you basically double your life leech % and then some? That could be very interesting. While GoW does do good damage, it is beginning to lose its luster in plat. I can't perm stun bosses anymore nor take out 1/5th of bosses' hp in one cast. While a shuriken does kill slightly slower, but it is far far safer, I don't even need potions anymore. After some calculation, assuming 2.7% life leech shuriken or hafted weapon, dryad should kill about 5 to 6 times faster than Dragon Mage using life leech items and impact. So that should roughly calculate out to 5 to 6 seconds to take down a boss. Which I take it is what others has experienced?

Couple questions. Are darting assault and Ravage impact attack modified by attack speed? I think I read somewhere that combat art typically have their own special animation and they are not affected by attack speed. if this is true I wouldn't need to pick ranged lore. From the wikia it says dust devil offers 20% +1%/level to block spells, that seems insanely high, does this mean you can effectively become immune to combat arts in a dust devil with enough dust devil level? this seems too good to be true. Thanks.

Doesn't ancient bark kinda offset that? I know she can't get toughness for damage mitigation. Also, so long as she can keep on leeching, she can survive so long she's not stunned, disabled, or one shotted later on. Trying to determine if I should build my temple guardian, my Dragon Mage, or dryad for Noib boss killing. Temple guardian looks pretty scary as well with haft mastery, Kahdour's legacy, and battle extension. Can your battle extension perform double attack as well? Would it be a quad attack? Out of the three it appears Dragon Mage is probably has the worst killing speed, but I guess with proper buffs and items he's tough as a nail, and I must admit mind blast + combat trance + rune of protection makes the combat art spamming stunning bosses much safer, even if he kills slower.

the sets are pretty good. the dryad can see 5% from full detheya's. the seraphim over 3% from 8 pieces of revelation of the seraphim, and the temple guardian over 3% from the CC10. High Elf has no LL% set bonus, nor does the Shadow Warrior. wow, 5%. She can dual wield on top of that... Wouldn't that basically make dryad the best boss killer in the game? I know it just means she can kill it in 5 seconds instead of 30 seconds, but that's still much faster.

Thanks Gogo. So besides set item bonus (which I think only high elf and dryad has) there is no other ways of getting life leech by % except through the few unique weapons and yellow two handed weapons/shurikens right? Just want to confirm because I heard people talking about 4, 5, or even 9% life leech by %. I have no idea how one can get that much life leech %.

Not counting the bonuses you get from full set bonus. What's the highest life leech % you can get on different weapons and in total? Are there any other items besides the rare weapons with life leech? shurikens? Two-handed swords? Pole-arms? And what's the optimal level to shop one? thanks.

What about things like, reduce attribute by %, such as weaken and maelstrom from Dragon mage. Lets say I have a DM with maelstrom that says -40% to all attribute. If I cast it, would the 87% damage mitigation now be 52.2%? and the 10000 armor now becomes 6000 armor?

I can kinda see how QA might have missed this bug. It is probably part of repression testing since staff weapon is not new or anything. And the tester probably just tested each combat art with the new staff in a testing area against one enemy. But yea, I don't think anyone actually tried to test staff lore + any of those combat art in the real game, otherwise they would have noticed it it is obviously not doing what it is suppose to do.

From my test character, it works just as well at level 190 so long as you can get 100% hit. You kill slightly slower compared to having pole-arm mastery or sword mastery due to lack of double strike weapon speed increase from the mastery . Nameless guardian took like 20 to 30 seconds to kill instead of 15 seconds, but it is much safer due to being able to use a shield.

I have been experimenting with a melee/caster DM in the last few days using single player character editor, mostly inspired by chattius's Sohai build. The primary reason is because I want to (ab)use the two most overpowered offensive mods in the game, life leech % and regeneration per hit (RpH). The third most overpowered mod is death blow, but since Dragon mage doesn't have a weapon combat art it is hard to make use of that one. Here are my conclusions Why use weapon We use weapons for two purposes: Regeneration Per Hit: This allows one to focus mainly on damage but still be able to spam all the spell we want (withing reason), so long as we can intermix it with a few weapon attacks in between. Excellent against regular mobs. Leech Life %. The most amazing mod for taking out bosses. GOW and destoryer spam may deal damage faster, but this is a lot safer since you will be draining huge amount of life every single hit. Weapon Damage Now, what Chattius said is right, your weapon damage is completely meaningless. For regular mobs, your weapon will be used to recharge your spells via RpH, and your spells will be doing the damage. For bosses, life leech and weaken will be responsible for all of the damage. Weapon hit Chance The most important stat. If you don’t hit, you are not recharging your spells or leeching life. I have found that for most part attack stat, while useful, not the most important stat. Most mobs have a capped defense. Once your attack reaches certain level it is not that useful anymore, and you can easily reach an acceptable value for attack just from socketing blacksmith arts. For example, the vendor Noib whet adds 59%+ attack in silver sockets. On my level 190 test character, just with 4 or 5 vendor whet I have something like 4k attack, for every single type of weapon. What you want are two item mods. First is Opponent’s chance to evade -%. At higher levels, they can be spawned with 30%+ on rings, and several unique jewelry also have this stat like Inquisition Token, so it shouldn’t be hard to come by. No idea how the calculation is done, all I know is socketing 2 or 3 -30% rings made huge jumps to my hit chance. The other is Chance that opponents cannot evade attacks. This stat adds straight chance you will hit your target. Ie. Chance that opponents cannot evade attacks 10% means it will add straight 10% chance to your attack, regardless of any other factor. If you can only hit a mob 30% before, you can now hit it 40%. Again, those items spawn on rare rings, but the value is typically a lot less than the Opponent chance to evade. At higher levels it is only ~8 to 11%. A few Dragon Mage set items spawn with this modifier: Torik’s Sight, Thraken’s Law, and Mavv's Winged Helmet, which is very handy. It should also be noted that rare rings can have both “Chance_that_opponents_cannot_evade_attacks” and “Opponent’s chance to evade -%.” You will want those. staff vs swords vs pole-arms Just by looking at the weapons, I would say swords are the best of the three; you can have one handed sword for RpH as well as two handed swords with life leech. But the problem is, you can’t get swords lore without getting Pole-Arm, Staff, or Tactical Lore first. Tactical lore is completely useless since we don’t care about weapon damage. So if you are hell bend on getting swords, I recommend getting staff lore. That way you can have a ranged RpH, and use two handed swords with life leech to whoop bosses. Weapon skill lore build comparison Pole-arm lore only Pro: Just one skill investment, great reach, thematically fit. Con: No shield, which hurts survivability. Magical Staff lore only Pro: Ranged RpH, can use a shield, fast attack. Con: No life leech. Meaning when you are attacking bosses you have to use a weapon without lore skill. Magical Staff lore and Sword lore Pro: Best of both worlds, you can have one handed ranged RpH or one handed melee RpH, as well as highest life leech possible on weapons Con: You need to waste two skill slots. No weapon lore, just socket a few more attack speed and hit chance increasing rings. Pro: Use whatever weapon you want, great versatility, save up on skill slots for things like Bargaining and EP. Con: No double strike means bosses will take longer to kill, one or two more slots needed for hit chance and attack speed rings to make up for lack of weapon lore. Using weapons above your level incur very harsh penalty. PS: One good argument for no weapon lore or just pole-arm lore for bosses Signet of Thunder. Just look at that thing. You can eat 200 runes for every single combat art, combine them all into a combo, and still have it all recharged with one hit.

After trying it out IMHO it is definitely a bug, but an awesome bug none-the-less. I think chattius's analysis in the other thread is spot on, the game is probably treating the staff as a melee weapon, with maxed out range possible, hence you get it hitting stuff two screen away, not having a projectile limit like the combat art explicitly states (and all other ranged weapons), not having missile animations, and not having a range attack animation but the melee one. I wonder if close combat reflection will affect this attack as well. Probably will.

Ah, even then, the build seems pretty solid, how's he's damage and survivability in 4 player LAN? Since I'm skipping speed lore, I'm curious about mentalism and its damage. Area of Effect and single target. How good is energy blaze? and does the dot it does stack? What about mind strike, is the Area of Effect large? now, dragon strike is an awesome, awesome Area of Effect, but I can't aim it worth crap so I'm thinking about about something else to complement my destroyer combo for maximum Area of Effect ownage. Hopefully something that is as good if not better than the Area of Effect staff dryad you invented. Anyways, the reason to use a weapon is simple, the three most overpowered mods are weapon attacks only, RpH, life leech %, and death blow. DM can't abuse the last one, but he sure can abuse the first two.

Elemental require an extra skill slot unfortunately if we are going for triple buff. But I do like the protectors. They do pretty solid damage, and I can get them to engage the boss first so I can get close enough and start whacking. Anyways, used character editor tested out a level 190 dragon mage. I don't think speed lore is needed, all you really need is bunch of opponent chance to evade and a Torik helm and you are golden. http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9588 I can achieve 100%+ chance to hit nameless guardians with just Torik helm and 3 rings with about -35% opponent chance to evade, regardless of the weapon I use. For bosses I used a rare pole-arm with 3.7% life leech, each guardian lasts no more than 20 seconds. (that's roughly how long my tornado lasts, and I have never seen any one of them outlive one cast of it). Best part is with the life leech I can tank right through two guardians whacking me at same time, with no shield, toughness, or potions. Regular mobs were actually more dangerous due to the fact I'm not leeching 50k+ health every half a second. With destroyer it is pretty fun. I found to have my destroyer cooldown one second or so than my RpH works the best due to destroyer cast animation. I would run up to a mob, hit it once then cast destroyer. After a while it feels almost like a weapon combat art of its own. Most normal mobs would die to one cast. Champion might live through 2 or 3 such cycles. The destroyer seems a lot more effective, first because this build forces you to cast destroyer in melee range thus making destroyer a lot more effective, and secondly you can chain destroyer if a mob ever live past one such cycle. I don't think hit will be an issue later on given "opponent chance to evade -%" mod, and the fact Torik helm comes with fairly high "Opponent cannot evade" mod. However, lack of a shield definitely hurts a great deal (not so much against bosses due to life leech, but makes it a lot more dangerous against regular mobs).

Does this trick only work for PC Ice and Blood? because I tried it and I don't think it works. It might spread if another kobold is close enough, but I have never seen it spreading outside my screen? Does it also have to be a multiplayer game? what about single player game? Thanks.

Really? I thought the focus thing is part of the GoW spell. I seem to remember being able to focus GoW into a single line even with radius. Although I didn't know about the fact that further away you are the more damage GoW does. I guess that would explain why my GOW damage varies so greatly. After reading about life leech mechanic, I think I will go and test out the elemental Sohei. If it works then it will hopefully have all the Area of Effect power of elemental dragon mage and never need to worry about focusing GOW into a stream again. In which case GoW will purely be used for CC and Area of Effect nuking.

How does squall make faster boss killing? doesn't it just make the wind travel faster?

Just wondering, for RpH, does 100% hit matter? since our dragon mage doesn't use weapon based combat art anyways. With 75 pole arm, he will attack so fast I noticed that sometimes I end up attacking 2 or 3 times before I can quickly cast the spell again. Also, double strike from Pole-Arm mastery, is it actually two hits, so does it mean you trigger leech per hit twice? I'm thinking about making an elemental version of this. The general concept is to use the amazing Area of Effect power of elemental (Dual poison Gow, destroyer and Tornado) plus the awesome boss killing ability of life leech per hit and pole-arm mastery (because of double strike, which according to the wiki only works for normal attacks so it suits our Dragon Mage just fine). I figure this build should be almost if not just as good as a pure elemental DM caster in terms of Area of Effect destruction, and much better (and safer) in terms of boss killing. So here are skill breakdown concentration -1 at first, eventually 75 for triple buff. armour -1+ polearms -75 mentalism focus -1+ dragon magic focus -1+ Elemental lore -75+ Elemental Focus - 75+ speed lore -75 Constitution -75 ancient magic -75 Equipment Helm - Torik's Sight for opponent cannot evade modifier, and IMO coolest looking helm for the dragon mage. Shoulder – Torik’s Spaulders (for DMG reduction and runes of protection buff) or Halgrim (xp and more attack). Chest – Pyx or Thraken (hp and defense) Bracer – Thraken’s law (for more opponent cannot evade) Belt – Draagen or Baker’s belt (for even more hp) Gloves – Lucky strike or a good rare glove Boots – Draagen (for destroyer) or Torik/Pyx/Halgrim (defense + run speed) Legs – Draagen or Torik (more defense) For sockets, aim for opponent cannot evade until he has at least 90%+ chance to hit and then aim for RpH, finally spell damage and regeneration. For normal mobs, get as much RpH as I can. Keep the cooldown on destroyer slightly higher than RpH value. Basically, he would get surrounded by large number of mobs, cast maelstrom and tornado. Melee attack, destroyer, and repeat, soon enough there should be gazillion destroyer running around since he should able to almost chain cast destroyer. For bosses, maelstrom and just whack away with a % leech pole-arm. If the boss summons adds, do melee + destroyer combo. The first downside is that he will need quite a few RpH and opponent cannot evade items to be effective. The other downside is that he wouldn’t have toughness or a shield most of the time, which will make his defensive abilities not that great. However, the sheer amount of defense, maelstrom, and hp will hopefully make up for this short coming. For bosses it doesn’t really matter, so long he can keep hitting the boss he will leech back so much life he can’t die unless he gets one shotted.