Combat Reflexes vs Spell Resistance

[Numerii 1]

Ok so one of the more "interesting" things about Dryads is that in order to gain access to Armor Lore and Constitution(arguably "must-have" skills) they must decide between Shield Lore, Combat Reflexes or Spell Resistance.

 

Now we're not going to talk about Shield Lore, I feel rather secure in saying that Dryad builds that use shields are in the minority. For most builds it's a decision between CR and SR.

 

So let's discuss these two, post which one you think is better and most importantly why you think it is better.

 

Consider the following if you haven't really thought much about it:

 

1. The Combat Art Dust Devil offers quite a bit of +Evade if your build includes Capricious Hunter Focus and you mod it with Concealment for the bronze mod. However, you can also mod it with Spell Shield for the silver mod so perhaps Dust Devil negates either argument and let us not forget that the silver mod for Goldenglade Touch adds a boost to Willpower which translates into Spell Resistance.

 

2. Ancient Bark adds lots of Defense Value(making you less likely to be hit) as well as HUGE amounts of armor. Now if you use an Ice, Fire and Arcane relic(or 2x each of those for console) then with the Rugged mod and Armor Lore mastered you will have all 5 forms of damage covered by a lot of armor. Basically, even if you do take damage it's going to be for relatively small amounts compared to most characters. Again, both arguments seem to be negated.

 

Now after considering those two points in what a Dryad already has to mirror the two skills let's examine the skills in question.

 

Combat Reflexes is better than Dust Devil because it's "always on". Small advantage but there nonetheless. What exactly does it help you evade? Tooltip states that it increases the chance to evade hostile weapon attacks and reduces the chance to sustain critical hits. But then it adds to your evade chance and states that the reduction in chance to sustain crits is only affected by weapon attacks. Is Dust Devil also limited to only those attacks made by weapons? Furthermore is even that useful in the first place when you have a high level of Ancient Bark modded with Rugged?

 

Spell Resistance simply adds Spell Resistance as a stat. It's basically evasion for spells. Now one of the more interesting things I've ever read is that all Combat Arts are considered spells and therefore Spell Resistance actually gives you a chance to avoid Combat Arts AND a reduction in the chance of sustaining a crit from a Combat Art. I'm not sure how anyone arrived to this conclusion but if someone knows where the proof of this claim can be found please enlighten me. Now the one awesome thing I find about this skill is the added bonus of mastery where it reduces the duration of detrimental effects. Supposedly this not only means a reduction in the duration of debuffs but DoTs as well.

 

Well that's all I have to offer so please, discuss...

[locolagarto 15]

Great topic!

 

It's one I have been waiting to see. So the question becomes which do you need more? A chance to evade a combat art Crit? or a Close combat Crit? As those are gonna be the Silver bullets with your name on them! the ones that the laws of chance say that one day your gonna get hit no mater how good your defense is. Its the Golden BB in Military terms, that we want to avoid right?

 

So then the next question will be, are you on Classic version( Console and pre Ice and Blood) or on the 2.65.1 Ice and Blood. there is where you have a fork in the road. As the two version have different damage worries.

 

That being said, My choice has been Spell resistance lately. I like that it should help with dot and opponents chance for additional effects.

 

 

And since we are talking about a dryad in this example. being that we hope her to be a very strong Ranged build. it may be more likely that you get casted upon before swung upon.

[chattius 2,526]

After eye surgeries I play zoomed in in half distance. So my weapons of choice are shurikens. All my dryads are multiaspect ones and using shurikens because of their x% life leech. Halfdistance is a good compromise for hybrid builds which use regeneration per hit to recharge high regeneration spells. So I would say:

 

Caster dryads: Shield

You will have acute mind for high Intelligence and put all points in vitality. Take a rare shield with scaling defense value or blockchance. If it has sockets: socket block combat arts. Your attack spells will get the block chance in their affect list. In areas with a lot of casters I have a special shuriken/shield slot were all 4 sockets are filled with block combat art. It will exchange a bit damage for better spell protection.

[Numerii 1]

Great topic!

 

It's one I have been waiting to see. So the question becomes which do you need more? A chance to evade a combat art Crit? or a Close combat Crit? As those are gonna be the Silver bullets with your name on them! the ones that the laws of chance say that one day your gonna get hit no mater how good your defense is. Its the Golden BB in Military terms, that we want to avoid right?

 

So then the next question will be, are you on Classic version( Console and pre Ice and Blood) or on the 2.65.1 Ice and Blood. there is where you have a fork in the road. As the two version have different damage worries.

 

That being said, My choice has been Spell resistance lately. I like that it should help with dot and opponents chance for additional effects.

 

 

And since we are talking about a dryad in this example. being that we hope her to be a very strong Ranged build. it may be more likely that you get casted upon before swung upon.

 

I play console only. I actually chose Spell Resistance for my shopper dryad. I based my build off of Putrescine's hybrid build, modifying it as such:

 

2 - Tactics Lore (195)

3 - Capricious Hunter Focus (75)

5 - Nature Weaver Focus (75)

8 - Concentration (1)

12 - Spell Resistance (75)

18 - Armor Lore (75)

25 - Enhanced Perception (75)

35 - Bargaining (200)

50 - Nature Weaver Lore (75)

65 - Constitution (75)

 

Now I pose the question of CR vs SR because I see most ranged Dryad builds going with CR and I'd like to know exactly why everyone feels as though CR offers more of a benefit.

[Schot 407]

And since we are talking about a dryad in this example. being that we hope her to be a very strong Ranged build. it may be more likely that you get casted upon before swung upon.

 

This is my thinking as well. I'd basically sum it up as using Combat Discipline for melee builds and Spell Resistance for ranged builds.

[locolagarto 15]

Great topic!

 

It's one I have been waiting to see. So the question becomes which do you need more? A chance to evade a combat art Crit? or a Close combat Crit? As those are gonna be the Silver bullets with your name on them! the ones that the laws of chance say that one day your gonna get hit no mater how good your defense is. Its the Golden BB in Military terms, that we want to avoid right?

 

So then the next question will be, are you on Classic version( Console and pre Ice and Blood) or on the 2.65.1 Ice and Blood. there is where you have a fork in the road. As the two version have different damage worries.

 

That being said, My choice has been Spell resistance lately. I like that it should help with dot and opponents chance for additional effects.

 

 

And since we are talking about a dryad in this example. being that we hope her to be a very strong Ranged build. it may be more likely that you get casted upon before swung upon.

 

I play console only. I actually chose Spell Resistance for my shopper dryad. I based my build off of Putrescine's hybrid build, modifying it as such:

 

2 - Tactics Lore (195)

3 - Capricious Hunter Focus (75)

5 - Nature Weaver Focus (75)

8 - Concentration (1)

12 - Spell Resistance (75)

18 - Armor Lore (75)

25 - Enhanced Perception (75)

35 - Bargaining (200)

50 - Nature Weaver Lore (75)

65 - Constitution (75)

 

Now I pose the question of CR vs SR because I see most ranged Dryad builds going with CR and I'd like to know exactly why everyone feels as though CR offers more of a benefit.

 

 

This is interesting as my current shopper dryad is similar. I buckled at level 65 and took Ranged weapon. I don't think I really needed it. but my gut said I would find some blow pipe with a killer RW modifier and regret not having it.

 

I am at level 72 with no +all skills and only Smith Art Whet in all sockets with Regen per hit of 1.8s and deathblow of 50%. Set piece bonuses are at Silver. with a bargaining suit full of all skills I should be able to shop nicely. Sinister predator and Acncient Bark are on the way to having 200 runes each.

 

2- EP level10 5 points

3- Tactics Lore level 77 at level

5- Bargaining level 101 at level

8- Hunter Focus level 56 75 points

12- Spell Resistance level 10 5 points

18- Concentration level 6 1 point

25-Armor Lore level 18 75 points

35-Nature Focus level 35 75 points

50-Constitution level 42 75 points

65-Ranged Weapon level 6 1 point

 

I am shoot to have Tactics, bargaining at 75 by 75 and Constitution soon after if not at 75 then Ill work on armor and my focuses so I can increase max Combat Art levels without Penalty.

[Numerii 1]

According to a post I read where someone actually went into the coding on the PC version:

 

http://www.darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9250

 

Now, if you scroll down to Zinsho's post he explains that the only modifiers you can get on blowguns are:

 

Chance to slow enemy

Chance for Secondary Effect

Chance for Secondary Effect (via mastery)

 

None of these seemed very appealing to me, at least not enough to go with Ranged Weapons. The bow modifiers are quite nice though but can be replicated through mod choices for a Dryad. I'm not sure at what level I will need to get Sinister Predator up to in order to achieve 150% attack speed through just the buff alone(if it's even possible).

 

In the end I simply felt that Nature Weaver Lore offered more to the build than Ranged Weapons Lore. I don't feel as though it's a gamebreaking decision though and I almost went with Ranged Weapons Lore "just because" but my min-max mentality wouldn't allow it.

 

I hate building shoppers just because I know I'm taking two skills that I otherwise would never consider and in this case those two skills were Combat Discipline and Ranged Weapons Lore and man, I'm actually having fun playing this build and I can only imagine just how much better this build would be with those two skills.

[Numerii 1]

A bit off-topic but here's a more detailed table made by Zinsho on the modifiers for each weapon type:

 

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/User:Zinsho

 

And one made by Moander:

 

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/User:Moander

[locolagarto 15]

According to a post I read where someone actually went into the coding on the PC version:

 

http://www.darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9250

 

Now, if you scroll down to Zinsho's post he explains that the only modifiers you can get on blowguns are:

 

Chance to slow enemy

Chance for Secondary Effect

Chance for Secondary Effect (via mastery)

 

None of these seemed very appealing to me, at least not enough to go with Ranged Weapons. The bow modifiers are quite nice though but can be replicated through mod choices for a Dryad. I'm not sure at what level I will need to get Sinister Predator up to in order to achieve 150% attack speed through just the buff alone(if it's even possible).

 

In the end I simply felt that Nature Weaver Lore offered more to the build than Ranged Weapons Lore. I don't feel as though it's a gamebreaking decision though and I almost went with Ranged Weapons Lore "just because" but my min-max mentality wouldn't allow it.

 

I hate building shoppers just because I know I'm taking two skills that I otherwise would never consider and in this case those two skills were Combat Discipline and Ranged Weapons Lore and man, I'm actually having fun playing this build and I can only imagine just how much better this build would be with those two skills.

 

 

I was there too. At level 64.5 I was really trying to talk myself into another aspect lore. My "try not to screw this on up" mentality made me go with the ranged weapon, just because. Honestly with enough runes in Sinister Predator and modded for chance that hit and criticals. The only thing RW might to is increase execution speed on the Combat Art's of Hunter aspect. since I play pretty much single Combat Art. DA and it fires really fast already. I'm thinking I should done different.

 

Chatius keeps posting these builds with no weapon lores and I ( among others) just can't seem to get over the idea that you have tohave a weapons skill.

[Numerii 1]

If anything you get the benefit of using weapons at a higher level without speed penalty, which is a big boon of the skill, so it's not completely a waste.

[chattius 2,526]

There are different builds from me:

There are the weapon-based spell Combat Art's: magic coup, archangel's wrath, shadow hand where the attack speed comes from the magical lore and not the weapon skill.

Then there are builds which use life leech weapons to kill bosses. I use normally alchemy to replace a weapon skill in this case for tempory +attack value, attack speed, ....

If I use a weapon skill then its normally not for the attack speed or double hit but to unlock modifiers like chance to hit more enemies on polearms.

My sohei for example uses polearm skill and speed lore because I was too lazy to shop for equipment.