Ansgar

Yes exactly, Works for the regen of all combat arts not just buffs. Edit: moved a comma

I think you may be misunderstanding how the technique works. You cast the buff at the highest level that you can using +combat arts from your equipment (socketed runes work just fine). When a Combat Art level is increased by gear you get the full benefit of the level increase but only half of the regen penalty. After the buff is cast it stays at that level until it gets dispelled by an enemy or you cancel the buff so you can change your gear and still benefit from the improved buff. This way you can get a higher level buff without as much of a regen penalty as you would if you had eaten enough runes to get the same level buff. Not sure what you are seeing with combat discipline but it will increase the damage of combat arts such as deathly spears. Maybe look at the damage of a combat art before and after putting a point in combat discipline. @moo moo: Yes this trick works on consoles as well.

1) if you want to buy good stuff from merchants than yes 2) There is a technique to have a set of gear (or just a weapon) that boosts a Combat Art (usually a buff) so that you wear that set of gear to cast the buff then switch to other gear with other bonuses while retaining the higher level buff benefit from the initial cast. 3) As far as I know there are not relics that boost combat art levels 4) Yes you should if you use the energy shield. It will boost the "hp" of the shield tremendously. I recommend taking armor lore at least to mastery (75 hard points) to benefit from all armor modifiers you find on gear plus you get mastery bonus and armor value boost. 5) Stamina is a good attribute for Source Warden and maybe lost fusion TGs because they have Combat Arts with long regen times. Int is also an option for source warden or lost fusion to boost damage and spell intensity. Strength or Dex is good for devout guardian TGs depending on your weapon type. Vit is good if you want more hp and hp regen. 6) Combat discipline does increase the damage of combat arts. They do not need to be in a combo to get the benefit. 7) Up to you -- do whatever seems like the most fun for your play style and have fun!

Actually on PC you can only have 3 relics active at one time. There are twelve slots to hold your relics in four groups of three but only one set of three relics is "selected" at a single time and providing bonuses to the character. The console player is actually at a advantage because you can have 6 relics providing bonuses to your character at the same time.

+all skills will help increase the modifiers dependent on sword lore. As your character level reaches 75 you will find sword weapons with modifiers that require sword mastery for which you will need 75 "hard" points invested in the skill.

Nice policy addition. I am impressed by your speed. You should be a lawyer Gogo!

The bonus to attack and attack speed do not stack. Not sure about whether the mastery bonuses stack but my guess is that they do not. The only real benefit to having both is to unlock the modifiers on some weapons that require sword lore or sword lore mastery.

My temple guardian snorts pure T-energy then gnaws on skeleton bones! I love the topic by the way Bondbug.

As the title of the topic says, I have a temple guardian that guards my house for me. Here is a picture of him. His name is Carter and we adopted him from the humane society about 6 years ago. This little guy is the reason that I make so many temple guardian characters. He likes to sit in my lap when I play and occasionally tries to use the keyboard himself. I thought I would share the muse behind my avatar. What inspires the character that you play?

UK xbox users got a patch to their game that fixes blacksmithing? This is the first I have heard about this. @elderago I see from your profile that you are in the US. Do you know someone with the UK xbox version? I'm just curious about this patch.

On PC the blacksmith skill allows you to socket things into weapons without the use of the town blacksmiths (break the monopoly!) anywhere in the world that you want. You can also insert amulets into silver sockets and rings into bronze sockets. The cost of using a town blacksmith is also reduced. On console you cannot blacksmith "on the fly" without going to a town blacksmith so the usefulness of the skill mostly eliminated. I am not sure if you still get the other benefits of the skill on consoles maybe the original posters knows?

I am fairly certain that if I rinse my pasta the butterfly effect will occur and an earthquake or tsunami will be triggered on the other side of the world. I do add oil or butter to the pasta after draining but this of course does NOT count as rinsing.

Blacksmithing does not work on xbox 360 or on PS3. What are you using blacksmithing for? To answer your question you can raise the level of a skill above 200 by finding gear and socketing gear with the modifier +all skills or +blacksmithing or +general skills.

My xbox build is DG only. I do have SW focus to raise the level of untouchable force. For offense I use battle extension passives and deathly spears while being buffed by castable combat alert and protected by T energy shroud. I also have untouchable force buff to do some stunning. I do not use dedicated blow or battle extension actuall executions much at all. Sometimes I use dedicated blow when I am unmounted in caves (modded for increased elemental damage conversion) to get one shot kills of normal mobs or when I do not have the proper element socketed in my weapon for the enemies that I am currently fighting. I do not use the cast of battle extension at all so the modifications don't really matter to me (they do not affect the passive bonus) but I modify it from double hits for when I activate it accidentally. Zinsho is correct that the damage mitigation mod is overall a better mod especially at higher levels because you cannot boost the amount of in combat regen very much at all. Because I have a large hp pool from constitution and vitality I do not boost the absorbance of the shield to 100% so the incoming damage is shared (60:40) between my large energy shield and my large hp pool. I can rely on in combat shield regeneration and in combat health regeneration (from constitution mastery) to help keep both topped off against all but the very hardest hitters. I finished Niob with this build at level 135 if I remember correctly. He is currently level 145 I think (been playing PC version more recently). Achieving 100% mitigation is pretty gear dependant so you may want to have a dedicated shopper or EP character to help with the hunt.

Ascaron is gone so you would actually be supporting Deep Silver at this point.

Some answers for you 1) the sword lore and dual wield skill bonuses do not stack 2) riding will reduce the regen penalty to CAs incurred by riding a mount and the mastery improves mount speed. I does not provide other benefits (well bonuses to horse CAs if you ride a horse) that I know of. 3)tactics lore can unlock offensive skills as well

Ok I think I can help with some of this. The battle extension and dedicated blow passives work only on regular weapon attacks. The modifications to these CAs only have an effect on the execution of the CA and not the passive bonus. I tend to mod my T-energy shroud for power - recharge - power. I like to see a very large number for my shield energy. I pick recharge for the silver mod because otherwise the shield does not start recharging for 5 seconds after combat is over which can feel like an eternity between groups of enemies. The other mods are actually very good and you can't go wrong picking those instead. I mod Combat alert for increased defense and reflect. If you convert to a buff you will lose 1/2 of the bonus the CA provides so I do not recommend that unless you really, really hate recasting. Either of your final skill choices would be good. I use constitution in my builds instead of toughness but I am a high hp junkie. I would use the shield regen mount. Have fun! Edit: I took a DG TG all the way through Niob on xbox and TG became my favorite class because of it.

Hardcore mode works just like it does on Diablo. It does not change the game except that death is excitingly permanent making you love and care for character that much more!

Wow that is good news that you have not started on silver. It sounds like you have a bugged game file as I have not encountered these problems on my console characters including a level 50 shadow warrior. Because the campaigns are saved separate from each other it is possible that you will not have the same problem at another difficulty level.

Did you accumulate followers over time or did you get them all from a single quest? There is a quest in Thylysim involving gladiator slaves that can give you a group of followers of mixed race. Are the followers still there when you power down and reload the game? A picture may help us to identify the followers if you have the capacity to take one. Try talking to the followers to identify which quest they came from and see if you can still complete the quest (sometimes the quest log does not update properly and you may think that you have completed a quest when in fact you have not.

If you go over the level without penalty for a buff combat art awarded by the focus in your aspect you will recieve the full regen penalty for eating additional runes but not get the full benefit from another level in the combat art. Wow that has to be one of the longest single sentences that I have ever written. When you add skill points to your focus you will be retroactively awarded the remaining bonus to your combat art. Edit: Grand Invigoration is the exception to this rule and can be pumped with runes without any penalty at all.

Hah! I made the jump from xbox to PC myself recently. Takes a little getting used to and its wierd not having my Niob toons anymore. Hardcore mode is awsome by the way. Good to know that I am not the only person addicted enough to make the jump! See you on the servers.

I'm on Ice and Blood HC servers leveling my TG slowly and carefully. All my toons have Ansgar in their name. See you all on the servers!

You need a headset to communicate there is no other in game chat. Subscription is 1 yeart to date not end of calendar year. If you set up your payments with a credit card than it will not expire. I had to call to cancel mine took about 10 minutes. If you use the prepaid xbox live cards than it will expire. I was pretty easy to get an online game going on xbox as of about a month ago when I make the jump to the PC version.

Only the fire lord is in the console version.