A couple questions on how to build my BFG Seraphim

[hylin 2]

I read Dobri's guide on BFG seraphim and decided it would be fun to make one.

I want to make my BFG strong and self-sustaining, but have a few issues

which I haven't quite work out yet and need some expert help.

Here are my skills:

 

Tactics Lore

Ranged Weapons (leaving at 1)

Armor Lore

Concentration (not sure 1 or 75 for 3 buffs)

Rev Tech Focus

Ex Warrior Focus

Rev Tech Lore

Constitution

Toughness

Ward Energy Lore

 

I use Battle Stance and BFG as buffs, trying to get chain-castable Battle Alacirty/Divine Protection,

and mainly uses the Soul Hammer+Pelting Strike as my main CA combo, Flaring Nova for crowd control.

Don't really use Archangel's Wrath, seems weaker and less useful than SH and PS.

 

1) Which affects BFG dmg more, Tactics Lore or Rev Tech Lore? I am not sure which skill

I should try to keep to char level in order to maximize BFG dmg. My char is still fairly low in level

and Combat Arts regen penalty is more noticeable, so I don't want to overeat BFG runes

 

2) I'm want to get a general skill, but can't decide Bargaining or Enhanced Perception. I read that

Bargaining is useful, but requires a lot of points to work well, and not as good when you are higher

leveled (need insane amt of points to get good items in shop). I plan to to take this char to 150+,

hopefully 200. Also I plan to do a lot of boss farming and questing, so EP seems like a better idea.

If I could only take one of these 2 skills, which do you recommend in order to complete that "end-game"

set faster and easier?

 

3) I need to drop a skill from my list to take the general skill, I read Warding Energy is not as

good on console and I do have shield from DP, so I'm thinking of dropping WE Lore and not using

WE at all. Would I be ok in Niob w/o WE and Ward Energy Lore? Or is there another skill that I

should drop? I saw a BFG build that dropped both WE Lore and Rev Tech Lore in order to take

Bargaining and EP, won't dropping RT Lore lower your BFG dmg by a lot?

 

4) Assuming I drop WE Lore and don't use WE at all, is it still worthwhile to take Concentration

to mastery? Or leave at 1 and lower BFG penalty with Rev Tech Focus?

 

Thanks in advance for any reply.

[essjayehm 58]

Heya, hylin! Welcome to our humble abode... The first guide I followed was also Dobri's BFG seraphim, very sucessful until I got bored of it in Platinum somewhere. Uber pwnage with good defences, very good first toon!

 

Your skills look fine, no need to change any, IMO. But more about your WEL dilemma a little later...

 

Tactics Lore probably gives better returns for keeping at your character level for the first 75 levels. You will want to master RT Lore at some point, but Tactics first. After a quick review on the wiki page, BFG, only the mods that are affected by the Lore... but they increase base damage so are not "useless".

 

First and Foremost, Bargaining is a secodary skill for the Seraphim, so you would need EP, Divine Devotion or Riding first So, you do have a decision or 2 to make. I don't see too much issue with going EP and Bargaining in this build... leaving Concentration at 1 and dropping WEL and RT Lore. But, you do lose signifigant damage from RT Lore boosting "base" damage from the accuracy mods. You can take EP, dropping WEL, and have increased chances to find the uber allskills modifier more often. Sets/uniques come and go, but allskills are forever, at least allskills with a desireable secondary mod

Leaving your build as-is, and avoiding the General Skill Dilemma is also valid. You won't have +50 allskills or anything retardedly powerful like that, but you should be Niob-viable.

[hylin 2]

Thanks for the quick reply! I love Dark Matters, there are so much useful information here.

 

I've decided I will take EP like you said, since Bargaining takes a lot of investment and I

did not know you need EP to unlock. I'm probably going to make another seraphim or a High Elf as

a full shopper character instead. You've answered most of my concerns and thank you very much

for that.

 

One additional thing though, I'm keeping RT Lore and ditching WEL, but how will that affect

my Divine Protection? Since DP is not a buff, I plan to eat a lot of runes in it, will this character

be "just surviving" in Niob, or actually be good in terms of overall defense? I guess my question

is, how essential really is WE and WEL to Dobri's build? I'm not seasoned enough to tweak builds

and know how it will affect the char w/o actually playing it.

 

PS. I think games like these should have reset stats/rest skills once your character's level

is high enough. It sucks to sink some 100 game hours into a character only to find out you "messed up"

your build. It won't be the first time that's happened to me tho.

[Ryanrocker 200]

PS. I think games like these should have reset stats/rest skills once your character's level

is high enough. It sucks to sink some 100 game hours into a character only to find out you "messed up"

your build. It won't be the first time that's happened to me tho.

 

That's the reason the pull of the game is so strong You mess up, but you always WANT to come and make it perfect

[Mystix123 60]

One additional thing though, I'm keeping RT Lore and ditching WEL, but how will that affect my Divine Protection? Since DP is not a buff, I plan to eat a lot of runes in it, will this character be "just surviving" in Niob, or actually be good in terms of overall defense? I guess my question is, how essential really is WE and WEL to Dobri's build? I'm not seasoned enough to tweak builds and know how it will affect the char w/o actually playing it.

Removing WEL from the build shouldn't hurt a BFG build in Niob, especially if you're going to be eating a lot of runes for DP. You should be better than "just surviving".

This assumes that you can kill the mobs quicker than they can take down one of your shields (which is pretty much a given for a BFG build). Against bosses, it might be good to plan to double-stack DP (I do this by casting DP before engaging the boss, waiting until 1/4 of the cooldown has passed, then engaging), so that you always have 2 shields up at the same time.

 

My "purposely crippled" level 140 Dual Wield Seraphim has WEL. Her DP has about 76,000 HP, a recast time of about 28 seconds and lasts about 45 seconds. In context: The last NG hits for about 4,000 per hit (those possibly could be critical hits, I can't remember), but only really does 13k-17k damage per DP cast (it's gotten lucky and dealt 25k-30k on a few occasions). Also, keep in mind that this build doesn't kill anywhere near the speed that it could be, so you should be much better off.

[Graitul 0]

.

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How exactly do you NOT choose Rev. Tech. Lore? I thought you had to take this to get Focus. If there is a way around this then I would of never taken it for a BFG. The bonus damage and chance to hit isn't as big as people make it out to be (Big Fish story :-). To be honest, I would rather have something like Riding or Speed...shoot I'm not kidding. I don't see the importance of this lore for a BFG Seraphim.

 

Anyways, you should try to get as much as you can out of the game. Take Enhanced Perception and Bargaining. Get the good gear and good jewelry. I've never used toughness in anything, does it really make a huge difference at mastery like it says? I always would master Combat Reflexes instead being you seem to rarely get hit in the upper levels with it (the chance to evade critical hits is huge for me).

[lujate 578]

Welcome aboard Graitul!

 

Five points in a Primary skill unlocks all of the Secondary skills. So Celestial Focus and Rev Tech Focus are both unlocked at the same time.

[hylin 2]

so I took EP and not bargaining for my seraphim, through playing other characters, I found

bargaining hard to keep up its benefits w/o sacrificing points which boosts other

essential skills. I think it's easier to take bargaining w/ a single aspect char, like

the pyro HE, so I'll probably make that guy into a shopper.

 

RT Lore gives dmg boosts, since I like as much offense as possible, it seems logical to.

But after reading Graitful's comments, I'm now wondering about toughness. I've read a number

of guides here, for seraphim as well as some other classes, it seems toughness is often passed

up in people's builds, both melee and ranged characters, unless it's a defensive-heavy

character. Is it not that good? I have not taken a character high enough where I have its

mastery, since it's always like my 6th or 7th mastery priority.

 

Would it be better if I hang on to WE Lore and get Concentration to 75 for 3 buffs to be

able to use WE and a stronger DP? What works better for BFG, 2 strong shields (WE+DP) or

the so called all-channel damage mitigation (toughness)?

[lujate 578]

IMHO, Warding Energy buff on consoles is a complete waste, Divine Protection is just so powerful. I would leave Concentration at 1 hard point and spend those points somewhere else.

[Graitul 0]

Long wind ahead :-). First off, I play on xbox and I play pretty reckless with any character. WARNED :-)! Also, they only things I know about this game are from studying the sacred 2 wiki, not the entire web.

 

Not sure why you wouldn't take bargaining too. If, _IF_ you decide to play through on another character why not have a Bargaining character already. With characters that do not have Bargaining, you basically depend on drops or other characters for supply of jewelry. If you've played a Shadow Warrior without Enhanced P., you know this! Spectral Hand only build or not!

 

I have a die hard BGF chick now, she won't die! But she also doesn't find or buy anything good. Like lujate and many others will tell you, it gets boring pretty fast (for me it starts in gold, at about a lvl60 with like a level. 100 BFG, boredom sinks in). The good thing about having both Enhanced P. and Barg. besides +all skills and other stats is that you get even better rated XP jewelry that works with the Enhanced P. mod. The difference goes pretty quickly from about a +1.2% xp to a 5%, then to a 10%. Keep feeding points to Enhanced P. and Bargaining in the low rounds where kills are super easy. Once it becomes more of a challenge, put them in Focus to raise the level of the gun or something else until you catch up.

 

Knowing now I could of so many times just bought Exh. Focus to open the others makes a huge difference (I just thought they were collated skills per aspect before, the wiki sort of presents it like this). If I was going to make yet another Seraphim, I would take these in the order of time which they can really be utilized...

 

9_Skills {

Wranged Weapons, Concentration, Exh. Focus. (can't really use it, but if it unlocks the other Focuses),

Rev. Focus, Enhanced P., Constitution.,

Combat Reflexes, Bargaining, Armor lore.;

}

 

For the 10th skill, I'm not sure. Probably Tatics Lore (but the BFG is pretty damn powerful), but maybe Cel Focus just for the mod points. Between the three defensive skills above, 2 will add strength to your character for the times when you do get hit. Regardless, with the above skills I can enjoy the good drops, the higher valued jewelery, and of course some of the bargained armor that I can wear appropriately being I have armor lore. It's about enjoying the fruits :-)

 

Remember 1 key thing though, on consoles execution time is solely dependent on attack speed. This is really huge on buffing things like Dashing A. and Divine P. So you might be putting more points in ranged weapons than you think. This is where Revered Lore basically drops out of the picture for me. The added damage the mods bring to BFG with Rev. Lore are a static value, not a percent. Something like +4 per CA if both damage mods were taken. Then if Rev. Lore is taken to level 200 you multiply the CA value by 3.7. So if you had the CA to level 100, then the CA value is...

 

100 * 4 + 8 = 408

 

Multiply that CA value by the Lore bonus, and it turns out to be...

 

408 * 3.7 = 1509

 

1509 damage for a level 200 Rev. Lore and a level 100 BFG? That's nothing, nothing at higher rounds, not even 1 hit. So I don't see it's worth for BFG only. Only other reasons you would want it is for the other combat arts, and they don't seem to bump those up much either from the reading. Well, knowing you just multiply whatever by 3.7 then it could help Divine P. a lot, but Divine P. seems very, very good regardless. I don't think I've ever put more than 50 points in Rev. Lore., so maybe I'm missing out on it's mastery, I know without mastery the difference between like 20 points and 50 points isn't noticeable. (although I haven't tested it to notice in those other skills, as you can tell I've never _NOT_ had Rev Lore to notice :-)).

 

Somewhere at level 50'ish with 50 points in ranged weapons, the BFG is basically a mini gun shooting pelting strikes with about +4secs regen per hit (thanks to bargaining, I got high regen per hits for my level). My pelting strikes was a level 4. But then again Pelting Strikes is really to just propagate the BFG damage quickly anyways.

 

The absolute saddest thing though, no matter what skills you pick for a BFG Seraphim, is that you probably won't enjoy the other weapons like Officer Sabers or what not. This is where the boredom starts, this is why I suggest other skills. Hell, maybe my 10th skill would be Dual Weild!

 

You will play it the way you want, just consider the enjoyment factor of it too. I'm not sure, but I would bet more NON-BFG Seraphims make it to level 200 than the ones that do use BFG (Same with Spectral Hand Shadow Warriors).

Edited August 2, 2012 by Graitul

[hylin 2]

Thanks for clearing that up, lujate, it's hard to distinguish between console and pc here,

and it seems most of the players writing guides are using Ice & Blood and pc as standard.

Like I almost took blacksmith for my dual-wield shadow warrior until I read about the

blacksmith bug. blacksmith and ep would have made my shadow warrior more fun to play.

 

And Graitful, you are absolutely right about the boredom. I'm grinding my shadow warrior

in platinum right now to fund my low level characters and also test my luck with drops

(which is pretty non-existent). Boredom is actually what caused me to start this BFG seraphim.

 

Now that I've actually played the BFG seraphim more, I think I can afford to drop RT Lore and WE

Lore for both bargaining and EP. Bargaining is so useful, but I just don't how I'm going to

keep the goodies coming w/o +all-skill socket items. Other than BFG and DP, I don't use RT

combat arts at all, except maybe FN for mob control, so RT Lore now seems more like a luxury

I don't need.

 

Thanks for all the help guys, you were all very, VERY helpful!

 

ps. I need to start putting more time actually PLAYING the game instead of reading sutff on

Sacred Wiki and here on the forum