Variants of Dryad Shoppers

[chattius 2,610]

My newest 'roleplay' character is a Kunoichi. Camouflaged as a travelling herb seller she infiltrates enemy cities for spionage. She is able to fight with every weapon, even her fists and feet. She takes good use of herbs and potions, be it for healing, boosting her combat abilities or even throwing explosives (CM-Patch).

 

For roleplaying her I did following skills:

 

alchemy

shield lore

bargaining

armour lore

hunter focus

nature focus

tactics

voodoo focus

damage lore

constitution

 

The reason I took no weapon skill was that the weapon combat arts give a nice base attack value. So by using regeneration per hit I would get high ca-levels and therefor high base attack value. This base attack value will be boosted with trollteeth trophies late game. So instead socketing enemy can not evade, minus enemy chance to evade or reg per hit I am using trophies starting with niob. Half of my sockets are filled with jewelry boosting the duration of trophies and potions: trophies lasting 4 minutes, mentors way longer.

 

Also starting in niob she played weapon-less. I do not know why many people think that weapon-less is only early game, its rather the opposite. The reason are the damage x-x rings.

In Silver you will have a shuriken with 60 base damage while a damage x-x does 3 base. In Niob you will have a shuriken with 350 base but the damage x-x does 50. So while in silver the ring is just a 1/20 of the weapon damage in niob it is a 1/7. Now add that in niob you need much less equipment to reach 50% casting speed and that weaponless does 2 hits (with dual x% life leech at full detheya). You will have a shield with near to 100% block, a barkskin with high x% defense (less chance for arrow hits) and high x% armour.

 

So the protective socketing will mainly be combat art block. Damage over time will be countered with green potions, thanks to alchemy they do a real high healing. Ravaged impact is modified for poison so executing it in a group will poison all around. This creates a high chance that a following darting assault will trigger death blow.

 

I added voodoo lore because ninja and kunoichi fought with poison and illness too. It will help in weakening bosses but also for headhunting. I am the opinion that if a dryad shopper is done to create a more powerful dryad which won't have bargaining that I can also allow the new char to not take any head hunting modifiers.

 

Why did I write variants:

Even I dislike staff dryads in the addon, if you take just 1 point in staff lore instead voodoo--- you will have a very powerful staff dryad, all the enemies in a big area will suffer from poison or fire damage (weapon socket) which is boosted by damage lore.

 

Appendix A: Hit-Chance

Gogo's hit chance calculator is for left click attacks. To calculate a niob ravaged impact hit: RI will give around 500 base attack value, and a trollteeth in niob at my skills: +1000% attack value. You have to add this by socketing to get an adjusted hit chance.

 

Appendix B: Difference to the standard staff-shopper

This character has no nature magic lore so less intelligence from acute mind and no powerful nature spells. But it has way more hitpoints (all in vitality and having constitution) and damage lore.

Edited August 16, 2010 by chattius

[essjayehm 58]

 

Hooray, Chattius' back with another roleplaying toon! Kewl, I have never heard of Kunoichi, although I now understand from the brief description.

 

Rats... My original thought to replace Armour lore with Toughness is no good, because Dryads cannot choose Toughness. Boo! I am of the opinion that Armour Lore is wrong for the Dryad, because of the rugged modifier on Ancient Bark adding % armour value. Not having Armour lore means you have to wait longer for equipment, or off-set movement speed penalties by riding a horse or unique mount.

 

Maybe take Spell Resistance for better defence against Combat Arts?

 

As-is, this is a nice variant for a "utility" dryad that can supply a "main" build very nicely. Without "cheating"

 

PS I wanna play a staff-dryad. VD just gets so boring after 100 levels

[chattius 2,610]

Armour lore is to get good modifiers on rare armour. I try to play without detheya (forest guardian and some other fast healers I still need x% life leech, but I take a shuriken then ). Rare 2 socket (well would be extremely rare then) torso and shoulder give close to 30% all channel damage mitigation. 3 armour pieces have a base modifier for longer potion duration, ....

 

She got all the goodies from the dryads we played so far. For my playstyle I need armour lore at mastery. But if you go with a full detheya set--- no real need for it, nothing unlocked from armour mastery.

[essjayehm 58]

Armour lore is to get good modifiers on rare armour. I try to play without detheya (forest guardian and some other fast healers I still need x% life leech, but I take a shuriken then ). Rare 2 socket (well would be extremely rare then) torso and shoulder give close to 30% all channel damage mitigation. 3 armour pieces have a base modifier for longer potion duration, ....

 

She got all the goodies from the dryads we played so far. For my playstyle I need armour lore at mastery. But if you go with a full detheya set--- no real need for it, nothing unlocked from armour mastery.

Yes, the Mitigation unlocked with AL mastery is probably the only reason I think Armour Lore is good for the Dryad... but generally speaking, most are using the full Detheya set when they can, so they would gain only the higher level sets without penalty from AL. But still I feel Goldenglade Touch is so powerful that Damage Mitigation isn't really needed unless pushing your toon to the extreme limits (or you cannot remember to keep GGT active 24/7)

 

Doesn't modifer for potion duration come from Alchemy?

[r00ster 1]

Chattius,

 

Something you may want to reconsider about your dryads;

 

The ancient bark mod 'rugged' is vastly superior in terms of what it provides than 'slippery'

This is a recent discovery I made while making test cases for a 'live' build.

 

At CA level 130 (bark buff), the armor value it provided was over 500%.

It is not a base addition to the buffs armor, but actually adds a % like armor lore (you can see it's % in teh sigma when the buff is on).

 

It's actually much higher than armor lore gives even. I had the skill at 300+, and it provided around 350-400% to resistances, while again, the bark buff provided over 500%.

 

It's effect also boosts all resistances, like armor lore.

Having 4000 magic resistance went to 12000 by casting the buff.

 

Total resistances on a test dummy were over 130000.

Nothing could even harm it, except combat arts and damage over time, which is where the dryad fails by game design.

 

If you were planning to wear light armor, so that you never reach the encumberance penalty of armors, you could even leave taking armor, as this mod does the same thing protection wise, better even later on.

 

Also, with no +defense etc in gear, it provided over 15000 defense, enemies all with less than 20% to hit chance without any evade etc.

 

Food for thought.

 

Cheers,

Edited August 17, 2010 by r00ster

[chattius 2,610]

Rooster: thats why I said I take armour lore for its mastery effect in this build. I have a level 180+ artamark socketed and it builds up a nice all around resistance when multiplied with the % from barkskin and armour lore.

 

As I wrote in the demi-god thread: in Niob the damage from enemies is multiplied by 3.35, while at the same moment your resistance is divided by 3.35.

 

I do not need barkskin for evasion, at boss fight I can do this with a trophy.

 

For damage over time I have green potions on the hot key, even I do not really know how they work. Anyone out there who understands the way they work?

 

Against spells: dustdevil is modified for combat block and I have no damage over time protection socketed, but combat art block.