25 replies to this topic

[Schot]

Here you go Barristan. ^^
Download and Play Schot's Level 140 Bolting Terror


Here's the very same HE I made a video of and posted about in January. Whew, she's an oldie.
Most Wicked Sacred 2 Combat Art... Evah!



She's an oldie but a goodie. I created the Bolting Terror about a year ago. In fact I think it's the second character that I made and surprisingly it has survived not only all the enemies in general but it also seems to have withstood all the game patches, nerfs and so on. I'll eventually go into greater detail with how I leveled her, what gear she wears and so on but for now I'm just fulfilling a request for Barristan to talk about this HE of mine. For now a test drive will have to do. ^^ One catch though... Her gear needs to be forged because all of her slots are empty, haha. I still haven't updated her gear since moving into Ice & Blood. A lot of her jewelry was changed into poo... I did buy crap loads of new jewelry which is all sitting in her backpack so she's good to go. She just needs her gear forged.

The primary reason for making her is to eventually use Shadow Step as her main attack against mobs. She's aaaaalmost there. Presently her Shadow Step cooldown, not regen, is at 6.7 without any jewelry socketed. If I can get that baby down to about 5 secs I'll be good to go! Since the only way to lower the cooldown at this point is to add more skill points to her Delphic Arcania Focus I'll need to level her up even more. Presently at level 140 which essentially makes this a Niob build. Her second fave mob Combat Art is Cobalt Strike. That one is a real kicker! Heavy Damage - Chain Reaction - Explosion are my preferred modifications. The tighter the mob the better the chain and explosion.


Attributes:
I'm fairly certain I put about 80% of my points into Intelligence. May have put 20% into Stamina but I'm afraid I didn't keep track.

Skills I chose in order (Based on a level 140 HE):

Delphic Arcania Lore Always max

Delphic Arcania Focus Always max

Ancient Magic Master this second and stop at 75

Mystic Stormite Lore Approx 1/3 of char level

Mystic Stormite Focus Approx 1/3 of char level

Concentration 20 points

Combat Discipline Master this first and stop at 75

Armor Lore Approx 1/3 of char level

Riding 5 points (Exchange this with Bargaining if you're in dire need of some bling bling)

Constitution Approx 1/4 of char level

Combat Arts I modified in order:

Grand Invigoration (Mystic Stormite Expertise - Replenish - Resilience)

Shadow Step (Shadow Step - Sanctuary - Explosion)

Crystal Skin (Glacial Mirror - Focalize - Frosty Breeze)
The Glacial Mirror modification requires a bit of explaining. The game has three different definitions for this modification which can lead it to be undervalued. Those three definitions are:

• "Increases the chance to reflect incoming detrimental magical effects" on the mod icon tooltip
• "Chance to Reflect Magic Attacks" On the Combat Art's tooltip
• "Chance to reflect: Combat Arts" on the Sigma when buff is active

Only one of those definitions can be found on items as an Item Modifier. The third, "Chance to reflect: Combat Arts". Reflecting Combat Arts in Niob is veeeeery good. We want that. Oooooh yes we do. It can reflect that nasty Life Leech bolt the Demonic Eyes do.

Frost Flare (Spell Flow - Frost - Icy Circle)

Cobalt Strike (Heavy Damage - Chain Reaction - Explosion)

Glacial Thorns (Frost - Devastation - Pierce)

Expulse Magic (Strength - Pentagram - Protection)

Magic Coup (Target Focus - Steal Mana - Stray Damage)

Ok, gonna stop there cause I can already feel myself spending the entire evening on this and I really just wanna go and shop, lol. <=(I wrote that more than an hour ago... Doh!)


Detailed version soon...

[Dragon Brother]

Sounds pretty darn fun Im working on something similar to this at the moment, with shadow step for damage, I havent gotten so far as to modify it yet, but im going without the mystic stormite stuff...pure delphic for me. So far tho, ive noticed that the cobalt strike is alright against normal mobs, one hits most stuff ive tried it against with my new gear, but against bosses...it seems to lack that necessary punch. Was your HE a little slow to start off boss wise?

[Schot]

Ah, that's something that isn't likely to be happening. On the Delphic side nothing is going to take care of bosses as well as Magic Coup. As much as I'd like to say that Cobalt can do the job it really can't. Eventually you'll kill a boss with it but well... Probably not in Niob. For Delphic Magic Coup really is the "Hard Hit" of the aspect while Cobalt remains as long range mob control. Naturally you'll want to use a Life Leech weapon with Magic Coup. Throwing stars are the perfect fit for an early level HE Dragon.

P.s.
Actually... If you chose (Heavy Damage - Electrify - Critical) you may have a chance of defeating bosses efficiently but you'd lose the Area of Effect fun factor. Better to go with Life Leech for the bosses.

P.p.s
Personally I used Glacial Thorns primarily against bosses.

[Dragon Brother]

I may have to rethink my build...lead in with a high level cobalt strike for mobs then finish off with the magic coup with a shuriken with %lifeleech, get some regen per hit and have a hybrid play style, and then the %lifeleech shuriken and magic coup would work well for bosses too...ill have to look into it...hope I dont need to restart...but at least level 20 isnt too late game. lol funny thing is I had actually been resorting to magic coup for my boss killing

[chattius]

Good job, when I posted my idea about a polearm melee elf in the german forum , melee -using all three aspects , almost a year ago everyone told me crazy. Delphic arcane was perhaps the most under estimated aspect in the game: every elf had it, but mainly for GI and expulse magic and shadow step.
Very interesting that my daughter came to the same conclusions as you in her elf without concentration 'homework' at begin of the addon. She did shadow step modifications first because it had guaranteed explosions and you could flee from a mob you gathered for a explosion.
I hope she was not emailing you for help on her build And I have to reconsider her current homework: doing an elf without concentration which combines the shield maiden and her no concentration build. She may read your guide.

There is one thing I would do: if you have a bargainer, why not add the fire focus for the fire skin? If you attack with arcane spells mainly, you could could use the fire skin in late game melee because of it's melee reflection. The reflecting gets better and better while the physical only protection of crystal skin runs in problems late game at mixed damage. But of cause pseudo permanent invisibility is to be considered too. My feeling still says: fire focus if you have already a bargainer. Fireskin, meteors modified for optimized stunning and perhaps late game even the fire demon modified for some more protection as a third buff.

Playing melee elves for a year now:
If you want a pure melee elf , then cobat strike is modified for single target damage to either weaken bosses or for tactical playing: shoot it at a distance at a single target without alerting anything in the surrounding. Melee purists want their weapons to do the kills.
But a 'bolt'er is of cause interested in as many hits as possible.

In the AddOn there is a new regeneration mode: Since you can replace mana steal by RpH (regeneration per hit) to a degree: you could choose life leech for a more melee orientated playstyle.
If you play with combinations without RpH the new regeneration system is good. For a RpH-build stuff is more complex. You do a cascading shroud and you can't do a magic coup for a while because regeneration is splitted. So you need a good hit chance for your normal attack too, because you will need it to recharge really high regeneration times. I prefer the classical regeneration system for a RpH build, especially if there is an emergency spell in another aspect than the RpH attack.
Example Seraphim: If you use an archangel's wrath with RpH and you use classic then you can till take the healing from celestial in case you can't hit your target (mainly flying demons).

This is one of the builds where you should drive the focus and not the lore to its maximum first: delphic arcane. I noticed that arcane elves were the least affected to any patches, addons from all our characters, because they had always magic coup as a reserve for a melee or hybrid playstyle if needed.

And now I have to put some thoughts in a new sadistic homework for my daughter: perhaps a WIDD-elf

Edited by chattius, 10 December 2009 - 03:03 AM.

[Barristan]

Heya,

thnx for the post and the work you've put into this Schot! She sounds like alot of fun.

I've got a slightly different setup for the same skills, but that will not be a problem.

I am going with Bargaining instead of Riding indeed.

She is ready for next sunday. Still a little slow on damage, but that is mainly because I have not been shopping.

Greetz

[Schot]

My pleasure Barristan. I hope it helps in some way with your build plans.

As for shopping I've done a bit of that for you. We'll have to hook up some time so I can pass you the things I picked up. For you I was mostly looking for Damage: Magic +%, +skills and... Hmmm, can't remember. Something else, haha. Oh some gear and weps I think... We'll see.

P.s.
If there's something you're looking for please feel free to let me know.

EDIT:
I moved a few posts about Kamikaze shopping to the Kami topic. Cheers!
Moved Posts

[Llama8]

Out of curiosity Schot, how many targets will the Chain mod on Cobalt Strike hit? Is it just one more, or will it keep on going until it "fails" the % chance to hit another target? Also, wouldn't the Combat Art reflection from CS be useful late-game?

[Schot]

Interesting you should ask that about the chain Llama. A long time ago I was tinkering with Chain and Spell Intensity against Kobolds and I could have sworn that I saw one of my cobalts chain 3-5 times. It was definitely more than the expected max 1-2 chains... To answer your question Cobalt will generally only chain for as many times as you've chosen the chain mod. The interpretation at present is that the modification Chain provides 1 chain with an 80% chance that it will occur. However, I have very strong feelings towards the fact that Spell Intensity may be able to increase the number of chains. Unfortunately I haven't even proven that to myself yet. If it's true then my downloadable HE is the perfect test character. She has lots of Spell Intensity jewelry in her inventory, a full Ancestors set with empty slots and she's level 140 which means she can go into a Gold server and test against enemies that will all have low Spell Resistance because they're Gold difficulty.

As for CS(Crystal Skin) it's exactly as you say. The reason I chose the Glacial Mirror modification was just because I figured the alternative,Freeze, would be comparatively useless since I was building a primarily ranged build. It's only since Plat/Niob and Ice & Blood that I've been enjoying it's effect. We see a lot more enemies using their combat arts and more frequently at that. I'd say that the Glacial Mirror modification is an end game + Boss farming strategy.

[locolagarto]

Interesting you should ask that about the chain Llama. A long time ago I was tinkering with Chain and Spell Intensity against Kobolds and I could have sworn that I saw one of my cobalts chain 3-5 times. It was definitely more than the expected max 1-2 chains... To answer your question Cobalt will generally only chain for as many times as you've chosen the chain mod. The interpretation at present is that the modification Chain provides 1 chain with an 80% chance that it will occur. However, I have very strong feelings towards the fact that Spell Intensity may be able to increase the number of chains. Unfortunately I haven't even proven that to myself yet. If it's true then my downloadable HE is the perfect test character. She has lots of Spell Intensity jewelry in her inventory, a full Ancestors set with empty slots and she's level 140 which means she can go into a Gold server and test against enemies that will all have low Spell Resistance because they're Gold difficulty.

As for CS(Crystal Skin) it's exactly as you say. The reason I chose the Glacial Mirror modification was just because I figured the alternative,Freeze, would be comparatively useless since I was building a primarily ranged build. It's only since Plat/Niob and Ice & Blood that I've been enjoying it's effect. We see a lot more enemies using their combat arts and more frequently at that. I'd say that the Glacial Mirror modification is an end game + Boss farming strategy.

Got see her in action tonight. very cool running next to a level 140 with a dryad half her age, level 74. granted it was against level 108 zombies and the mist monsters but still fun.

What do you think about the strange debuff that both of us caught tonight. Sub-Starting level attributes that seemed to be permanent like a glitch. This has happened to Furian's Shadow Warrior before too.

[Schot]

Well I wasn't exactly dressed for the occassion considering all my sockets were empty but I'm glad you enjoyed the show. ^^

That debuff though. Man oh man... That was some serious debuffing. When I saw that my level 140 HE had 53 Intelligence, normally 964, I knew there was something wrong BIG time. It must have been the Mist's combat art. It shoots out some little player seeking cloud every once in a while. Very hard to see actually. I'm guessing that it's a debuff combat art and that it was stacking. I think if I had been a much lower level that I would have died from it. Considering how dangerously low it was making my stats, and speed, I'm not surprised that you lost your mount loco. Gratz on surviving though!

We learned a tough lesson eh. The Mist cheats! ^^

[Furian67]

Hey hey, Actually after talking to Loco about this mist debuff, what I believe is happening is when you port into the area while a party member is fighting the mist you will get debuff bugged. This happened to me twice. Each time I ported in while a party member was fighting the mist. I would have to log out and restart to get my attributes back. Don't remember what level my Shadow Warrior was at that time but my attributes dropped down to 1-3 for all of them. It didn't kill me but I couldn't move vary fast. My attack was still at speed and damage was good. but man o man .

So lesson learned for me was to Never Never Ever port into a Mist fight.

I have also faught the Mist without porting in and I don't get the mega debuff. A normal sized time limited debuff yes but not the walking dead debuff.

[locolagarto]

Hey schot!

Was looking at this build for a fun high level build and was wondering what u thought about me rearranging some skill to get Defense in at earlier levels

I was thinking something like this?

2. Delphic Lore Keep at level
3. Armor Lore take to 75
5. Delphic Focus take to 75
8. Concentration 1 point only for 2 buffs
12.Ancient Magic take to 75
18. Constitution keep at level to 75
25. Combat discipline take to 75
35. Mystic Focus 21 points for mods
50. Shield Lore take to 75
65. mystic Lore take to 75

[Schot]

That would certainly keep you safe loco but I think maybe too safe. This HE was actually quite easy to keep alive. She's a lot tougher than my level 156 Shadow Warrior, lol. Her health regen by level 140 is surprisingly effective so if you really want to get some extra protection I would say skip Shield Lore and focus on mastering Constitution as soon as you can instead. Constituition Mastery + the Replenish mod for Grand Invigoration will be much more than enough to keep you safe I think.

P.s.
I should point out that this is a pre Ice & Blood build. You'll notice that her "runes read" for Grand Invigoration is VERY high. About 800 I think. I plan to do a rebuild of her and see how she fairs with the new rune limit.

[locolagarto]

That would certainly keep you safe loco but I think maybe too safe. This HE was actually quite easy to keep alive. She's a lot tougher than my level 156 Shadow Warrior, lol. Her health regen by level 140 is surprisingly effective so if you really want to get some extra protection I would say skip Shield Lore and focus on mastering Constitution as soon as you can instead. Constituition Mastery + the Replenish mod for Grand Invigoration will be much more than enough to keep you safe I think.

P.s.
I should point out that this is a pre Ice & Blood build. You'll notice that her "runes read" for Grand Invigoration is VERY high. About 800 I think. I plan to do a rebuild of her and see how she fairs with the new rune limit.

big diff 800 vs 200! I'll def want to master constitution. and thinking of fire focus for fire buff like chatius said. maybe instead of shield

[Schot]

That would certainly keep you safe loco but I think maybe too safe. This HE was actually quite easy to keep alive. She's a lot tougher than my level 156 Shadow Warrior, lol. Her health regen by level 140 is surprisingly effective so if you really want to get some extra protection I would say skip Shield Lore and focus on mastering Constitution as soon as you can instead. Constituition Mastery + the Replenish mod for Grand Invigoration will be much more than enough to keep you safe I think.

P.s.
I should point out that this is a pre Ice & Blood build. You'll notice that her "runes read" for Grand Invigoration is VERY high. About 800 I think. I plan to do a rebuild of her and see how she fairs with the new rune limit.

big diff 800 vs 200! I'll def want to master constitution. and thinking of fire focus for fire buff like chatius said. maybe instead of shield

Whoops @ quote above. I meant Life Energy mod for Grand Invigoration, not the Replenish mod.

Hehe. I'm hoping that in the grand scheme of things it won't really make much of a difference after Highest Skill Level Without Penalty and diminishing return on Combat Art levels is factored in. With regards to Health Regeneration I think that there won't be much of a loss. Since the HE can't benefit from the Life Leech mod she needs to rely on her Health Regeneration so in your case loco I'd suggest focusing on boosting Health Regeneration through 100-200 points in Vitality, Constitution Mastery and the Life Energy mod of Grand Invigoration. That will give you an excellent Health Regen. Your Health will fill up extremely fast. I dare say that even the Swamp spiders will be a snap.

Good job, when I posted my idea about a polearm melee elf in the german forum , melee -using all three aspects , almost a year ago everyone told me crazy. Delphic arcane was perhaps the most under estimated aspect in the game: every elf had it, but mainly for GI and expulse magic and shadow step.
Very interesting that my daughter came to the same conclusions as you in her elf without concentration 'homework' at begin of the addon. She did shadow step modifications first because it had guaranteed explosions and you could flee from a mob you gathered for a explosion.
I hope she was not emailing you for help on her build And I have to reconsider her current homework: doing an elf without concentration which combines the shield maiden and her no concentration build. She may read your guide.

There is one thing I would do: if you have a bargainer, why not add the fire focus for the fire skin? If you attack with arcane spells mainly, you could could use the fire skin in late game melee because of it's melee reflection. The reflecting gets better and better while the physical only protection of crystal skin runs in problems late game at mixed damage. But of cause pseudo permanent invisibility is to be considered too. My feeling still says: fire focus if you have already a bargainer. Fireskin, meteors modified for optimized stunning and perhaps late game even the fire demon modified for some more protection as a third buff.

Playing melee elves for a year now:
If you want a pure melee elf , then cobat strike is modified for single target damage to either weaken bosses or for tactical playing: shoot it at a distance at a single target without alerting anything in the surrounding. Melee purists want their weapons to do the kills.
But a 'bolt'er is of cause interested in as many hits as possible.

In the AddOn there is a new regeneration mode: Since you can replace mana steal by RpH (regeneration per hit) to a degree: you could choose life leech for a more melee orientated playstyle.
If you play with combinations without RpH the new regeneration system is good. For a RpH-build stuff is more complex. You do a cascading shroud and you can't do a magic coup for a while because regeneration is splitted. So you need a good hit chance for your normal attack too, because you will need it to recharge really high regeneration times. I prefer the classical regeneration system for a RpH build, especially if there is an emergency spell in another aspect than the RpH attack.
Example Seraphim: If you use an archangel's wrath with RpH and you use classic then you can till take the healing from celestial in case you can't hit your target (mainly flying demons).

This is one of the builds where you should drive the focus and not the lore to its maximum first: delphic arcane. I noticed that arcane elves were the least affected to any patches, addons from all our characters, because they had always magic coup as a reserve for a melee or hybrid playstyle if needed.

And now I have to put some thoughts in a new sadistic homework for my daughter: perhaps a WIDD-elf

Thanx Chattius. Your polearm elf makes me think of when I used to run around with my widd build in S1 haha. Good times. ^^ I can see why Delphic Arcania would be under valued. Initially it looks like it's just a support aspect. I think it was only much after the release of Sacred 2 that Delphic became more appreciated. It's a very fun aspect all in all and I think it's my favorite out of the three.

It does seem as though your daughter and I have been sharing notes. ^^ The whoooole reason why I made this build was for Shadow Step. In my opinion Shadow Step is the most interesting Combat Art of the High Elf's. I love the explosive effect it has too. What attracted me to the Combat Art at first was, as you said, the "flee" ability. When building a character I like to know I have an "emergency escape" strategy and Shadow Step is perfect for that. If I ever get into trouble I just switch to Shadow Step, teleport away and recover my health and probably run away as fast as possible, lol. The other thing that drew me to the Combat Art was that I had always wanted to make a build out of the Phase Shift Combat Art in S1 but never got around to it. I love what Ascaron did to Phase Shift in Sacred 2. Shadow Step was a nice surprise.
Oh no. I'm sure your daughter and I have never spoken before... *hides emails* ^^

I could have gone the route of Fire with my Shadow Step idea and I think it would work really well but I really wanted to play Ice. I had already had a taste of Fire during the beta and wanted to try out Ice when I picked up the retail. Plus I had already decided on calling the build a Bolter build, haha. So the build attacks with Cobalts, Ice bolts and uhhhh... Me bolts. As in throwing myself across screen to do damage. "Bolt" in English also happens to mean "a sudden dash, run, flight, or escape.". So I bolt across screen. ^^ What can I say. I'm a Bolter.

Sadly RpH won't be of any use for a Bolter build since there's no weapon attacks but I agree about paying close attention to Delphic Arcania Focus. The Delphic Focus is primarily what is going to bring down your total regen time for Shadow Step since it is the ONLY thing that can reduce the Cooldown time. Every 0.1 of a second reduced is worth it for the end game. Even at level 140 I'm still struggling to get the total regen under 7 seconds and no amount of RpH can help unfortunately.

lol @ widd elf. You're crazy! Though that would be a lot of fun.

[Barristan]

Heya,

still, I took the replenish mod.... guess she won't be going deep into the cursed forest

Greetz

[gogoblender]

hahahha Schot, this is awesome... after so long, your secret guide to your High Elf now public domain. Nice job!


gogo

[jittelicious]

Hey this seemed like a really interesting build, so I decided to give it a try. So far I've been having fun with it, but is there any way to decrease the cooldown time of Shadow Step other than the Bronze Mod? Eating SS runes don't seem to decrease the cooldown, and neither does putting points into Delphic Arcania Focus. Schot mentioned somewhere that putting points into DA Focus helps decrease the cooldown, but mine still seems to stay at 9.9 seconds. Is that the lowest it can go?

[Dragon Brother]

The shadow step cooldown reduction mod should decrease the cooldown more as the level of the Combat Art increases.