Offensive Skills

[sigma20xx 0]

What are your thoughts on offensive skills? I know that most people play the game to the point where all they have to do is use their Combat Art's to dispatch of enemies. Sometimes I like to be normal and actually get my hands dirty so to speak. So I'm working on a Dryad and I want to give her the offensive skill ranged weapons. Evey time I see a build, I usually see the same offensive skills. They vary between dual wield, sword weapons and tactics lore. I already plan to give her armor lore and I'm thinking, how much damage mitigation and protection could you need? I know you can never have enough, but I want to use bows and I very well can't do that with a shield in one hand. I know I'm missing out on the chance to have socketed stuffs in both hands, but their is such a thing as overkill. So, what say you?

 

I know that dexterity raises the damage of bows, so I was also thinking that I could go with tactics lore and just use a lot of points in dexterity later on. I'm still kind of new to sacred 2, so I'm doing a lot of experimenting right now.

[sam6555 1]

Here try this build: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=10143

Got me through silver at 37, Went through doing only the story+class quests and got a real nice 4 star bow for doing the class quests.

 

Have fun!

[colif 36]

I would have thought there would be builds for Dryads using ranged, its just that they are the obvious ones. People probably post the melee builds to check they aren't missing anything obvious, since Dryads seem to be a ranged class (yes, I know, any class can be ranged or melee, but some are better than others), like the Wood Elf that follows them.

 

I don't play a dryad (I played a wood elf in Sacred, I needed a change) but I do use left click attack (Not combat arts) all the way through game. I use both kinds of attack. It all helps.

 

Offensive skills add to your damage with combat arts, so they help all builds.

 

Edit: 6 minutes too slow

Edited January 18, 2010 by Colif

[sigma20xx 0]

sam6555, that build stresses the use of dexterity to raise the damage of range weapons. While that info is useful, it still didn't answer the question I was asking. I've looked at the charts on the sacred wiki that shows the increase of damage and attack speed from chosing an offensive skill. I was wondering if someone had a more indepth explantion on dexterity vs ranged weapon skill.

Edited February 10, 2010 by sigma20xx

[sigma20xx 0]

Wow still no discussion in here huh? I could really use some info on this. I'm considering making a 3 aspect shadow warrior and giving him the sword skill or hafted weapons. I want to use 2 handed weapons to attack. Doesn't choosing a weapon skill increase chance to hit? Or should I just forgo that in lieu of using jewelry that increases chance to hit or -enemy chanct to evade? Do these trinkets outweigh putting hard skill points into a weapons lore? Would the mastery of a weapon that gives you double hit stack with the double hit chance of a Combat Art that gives double hits?

[claudius 104]

Speed lore and damage lore while still providing nice benefits are pretty poor comparatively..

 

Tactics is a must have if you focus on melee... Shadow Warrior it is near mandatory

 

Weapons Lore is good for melee not so much for the attack speed and attack rating but I always want it for a melee (I should be saying physical,, I mean ranged here too) build because then I can use the high level stuff that starts dropping when your survival bonus is in the 70s 80s and 90s.

[gial 2]

At very high levels you really need the extra attack bonus from Ranged. Besides, it unlocks weapon capabilities as well. I almost exclusively play ranged Dryads, and take ranged as one of my last skills - you really don't need it early, but in my opinion, it becomes essential late.

Edited February 10, 2010 by gial

[chattius 2,543]

No easy answer:

It has many many variables.

Do you play hybrid and want the weapon hit to recharge your main spells with RpH (regeneration per hit). In this case a weapon miss would mean that you can't use your spell right again.

Do you play a class which has no weapon Combat Art's?

Do you need something unlocked on a weapon you really really want?

 

Most of my new characters (after AddOn) don't use a weapon skill anymore except two:

My Sohei-dragon mage: The Sohei (see dragon mage guide section) is a mentalist who recharges mind strikes with his polearm. To spam the mind strikes I need a high hit chance and so I gave him a weapon skill.

My deadly spears Temple Guardian (Dampfläufer, on Temple Guardian board): he/she or it uses knives to recharge deadly spears. Knife normal attacks have fastest animations. The Temple Guardian weapon Combat Art have a terrible long animation which is slowing down my spamming of deadly spears. So I use normal knife attacks to recharge deadly spears. I look for knives which have -enemy chance to evade scaling with sword skill. So I don't need to socket hit chance jewelry at higher levels.

 

Why do my other characters have no weapon skill:

Hit Chance arguement

Most weapon Combat Art's have a base x attack values which scales with the combat art level. So if I play a build based on RpH I have Combat Art's near the malus and therefor a quite high hit chance, even without a weapon skill. (See Spidergirls in dryad guide section: they play melee without a weapon skill)

Attack speed

Several classes have Combat Art's which boost attack speed for a while: acute mind, ... . Also you can socket attack speed.

Unlocked modifiers

Most uniques single hand weapons have no modifier which has to be unlocked.

Free choice of weapons:

Since the hit chance is optimized to hit without a weapon skill: it dosn't matter for these characters which weapon is used to hit.

 

You can neither say no or yes if you generally ask if a weapon skill is useful.

[sigma20xx 0]

I'm planning on making a ranged dryad that will use the CH and NW aspect. I know that in a lot of builds, they only using the Combat Art to attack, but I'd actually like to use my bows and have access to the skills that are unlocked. Also, this info will help me with this Shadow Warrior build I'm working on in the link below.

 

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=14032

 

I'm not to smart about this regen per hit thing. I'm in silver and I only come across stuff that has like a .03 RpH. So not having and item that produces that effect or traying to stack a bunch of ammys and rings to make it viable is out of the question. I just want to walk around with a 2 handed weapon of my choice and whack stuff.