The importance of combat art modifiers?

[TowelWarrior 0]

I was wondering what the community thought of how high a priority combat art modifiers are for a early toon, because I was thinking of starting my toons with the skills in order 1.Armor lore (for Damage Mitigation) 2.Concentration (CA cooldown reduction) and 3.Combat Discipline (CA Damage Increase and combo efficiency)

Thanks for any replies

[essjayehm 58]

I was wondering what the community thought of how high a priority combat art modifiers are for a early toon, because I was thinking of starting my toons with the skills in order 1.Armor lore (for Damage Mitigation) 2.Concentration (CA cooldown reduction) and 3.Combat Discipline (CA Damage Increase and combo efficiency)

Thanks for any replies

 

It really depends on the build, and the operator. I do always mod my buffs before the attack spells or semi-buffs. I do not think that any are really NECESSARY before your toon gets to the Orc lands in Silver difficulty, say levels 12-20 ish. Others will differ with their opinions, of course (foreshadowing?)

[wolfie2kX 528]

First off, Welcome to Darkmatters..!

 

Like Scott said - it depends on the character you're playing, what CAs are available and what you plan on doing with your build.

 

I generally tend to go for the FOCUS for a given aspect (when available) before I worry about Concentration. The FOCUS has the effect of dropping your Combat Arts regeneration time as well.

 

Combos can be useful, but early on, while you're building your character, you probably won't have a full set of CAs to work with and your choices in building a combo will be limited. Two combo slots early on are more than enough for the most part.

 

Additionally, you can generally find armor early on that has a negative or nearly neutral armor penalty. Getting a good bit of kit and hanging on to it until you find something better is generally the way I like to go with it. Wearing a piece of armor with a 20+ penalty on CA regen is madness. It's far better to keep it as low as possible. Unless that piece of armor has something really special - such as say, life leech; which is fairly unlikely - there's not that many compelling reasons to wear armor that will slow your CA regen and you down. Some pieces have a negative effect on character movement as well. The only exception to this would be armor blessed with Chance to Find Valuables +XX%.. If you can find something like that, a temporary slowdown might be worth the effort. Then again, you can generally find weapons that also have that mod and those don't have the CA penalties.

 

I generally like to add mods to my CAs early to give them more teeth. Keep in mind that as you level up, the distance between levels (the amount of XP you need for the next level) increases, making adding mods take that much longer.

 

This is not to say that those skills don't have their place, nor that your build idea is a bad one - just that you might consider the alternatives.

[chattius 2,539]

My new elves start with concentration (regeneration buff and crystal skin), armour (unlockable modifiers on early armours are quite useful early on) and combat discipline (to boost all 3 aspects in damage and regeneration). I play mainly the old regeneration system and use whatever spell is recharged.