Update & Meta Change (Build Strategies)

[Anomandaris]

Hey folks, wondering how our master builders think the meta will change with the UMD update. Historically the 27/3 SS/Bard or something for 28 caster lvls was crucial to resist dispel. Think ppl will be playing more 23/4/3s or other types of builds? Curious to hear your thoughts on the affect on SS and other classes.

Note: This is not a rant/complaint invitation, but a technical discussion/observation of new build opportunities related to the change.

[Dr. B]

I would not even bother trying to figure this out for at least a month, because this round of updates is sure to result in more updates, and yet more updates, and yet more updates again.

For my part, I'm deleveling my main to two and shelving her for the time being.

[Jack Oat]

27 Commoner/3 Specialist (as built alongside Skullcat):

1-27: Commoner
Pre-epic feats: Expertise, Imp Expertise, SF: Craft Mastery, Toughness, Stealthy, Alertness, SF: Hide (and thus MS), SF: Lore
Epic Feats: ESF: Craft Mastery, ESF: Set Trap, ESF: Lore, ESF: Bluff.

28-30: Specialist
Bonus: ESF: Hide (and thus MS)

Skill Points: 336
Skills:
Bluff (33 > 43), Disable Trap: (33), Set Trap (33 > 43), Heal (33), Lore (33 > 46), Craft Mastery (33 > 46), Hide (33 > 48), Move Silently (33 > 48), Spot (33 > 35), Search (33), Remaining (39)

Crafting Points: 131 (including racial)
Points-per-day: 176
Gifts: Gift of Might (STR), Gift of Cunning (INT), Gift of Crafting

[Peppermint]

Play a commoner. Pick human or elf. Pick the FEMALE gender and max charisma.

So good to bring social roleplay to Arelith. Get with the meta, folks.

[Poolbrain]

Just skip rogue and bard levels and get more crazy about saves and pure damage.

Like I said in another topic, I think builds like 21 barbarian/6 fighter/ 3 blackguard are crazy.

Build like an Orog with high str and charisma, just maxing str and charisma with items you can get with a double handed weapon around 57 ac with imp expertise and divine shield. or smack on power attack if you don't need ac and have on avergage 70+ damage on hit. Get a scythe and make 300 damage crits

Your saves will be insane too. What's a mage gonna do to you? You'll have immense hp, if they keep barraging you with IGMS you can just heal out of it without stress. (you'll have plenty of skill points to spare by ignoring UMD and if you want tumble)

I'm sure people around here can min-max stuff like this even more given some time.

[Poolbrain]

You can also make a lvl 30 fighter with all lore feats and investment to suddenly get high lvl scrolls.

33 lore + 2 from int + 10 epic lore focus + 2 enchanted rings of insight = 55 lore = lvl 7 scrolls on a pure fighter.

I wonder how that's gonna rip apart a mage right?

[Misericordus]

What's a mage gonna do to you?

haste into EDK while you're trying to get close enough to start swinging, then when you're almost there,

hellball (self-cast to skip the swirling animation) for a saveless knockdown that cannot be interrupted
into cloudkill, into timestop just before you've managed to stand back up

because you are standing in cloudkill (which works fine during timestop), your next -pray will have to clear a con debuff (which a successful saving throw will only reduce, not negate), meaning you will return very little healing, because that's how pray works

while you're timestopped i'm going to be throwing down acid fog for a saveless 75% slow, followed by incendiary cloud to saveless blind and start tagging on some nice chunks of damage

at this point timestop is over, you have taken around 200 HP worth of completely saveless damage and about 6 con damage (further lowering your EHP by 90 and reducing the effectiveness of your -pray) and you can finally act. what will you do? choose carefully.

meanwhile my EDK that you can't get rid of is chewing you up for a couple of hundred damage a round, and i'm hosing you with two 120 damage IGMS every round, and you are 75% slowed and blind and taking continuous con damage

if i want to mix it up i can drop mind fog into the mix while you're struggling to get out of the gas, which maybe stuns you, but definitely lowers your will save by an average of 3 (if you make the save) or 7 (if you don't) against whatever save-or-lose mind spell i choose to follow it up with

or I can -fate 21 into Negative Energy Burst you, lowering your strength by 7 and placing 500 pounds of rocks into your inventory, the combination of which almost certainly encumbers you, the movement impairing effect of which stacks with the 75% acid fog slow

you can only pray once in a fight, and you can only use one gresto scroll per fight

heal potions aren't going to get you out of this one, buddy

i can tell you've never pvped anyone who knew remotely what they were doing

[Misericordus]

You can also make a lvl 30 fighter with all lore feats and investment to suddenly get high lvl scrolls.

if you do this, my first DC spell probably kills you, and i can -fate to tack a wrathful castigation (fort & will) onto a bigby (reflex), try again

[Poolbrain]

You can also make a lvl 30 fighter with all lore feats and investment to suddenly get high lvl scrolls.

if you do this, my first DC spell probably kills you, and i can -fate to tack a wrathful castigation (fort & will) onto a bigby (reflex), try again

How are you gonna cast when you're probably already knocked down!? If you get up and try to cast you probably fail the concentration check because I probably crit you and then I probably use a spell mantle scroll. Then suddenly you probably fall over again because your mage is drunk for drinking too much because she can't sleep at night?

Now you try again.

[Misericordus]

oh man, oh man, oh man, i forgot to account for the fact that I will completely and utterly fail to manage my spacing and allow you to get within melee range of me before i choose to do anything

[Poolbrain]

oh man, oh man, oh man, i forgot to account for the fact that I will completely and utterly fail to manage my spacing and allow you to get within melee range of me before i choose to do anything

What makes you think you're gonna get to manage your spacing and be the one who does something first?

[Misericordus]

... the rules of pvp engagement, i guess?

you can no-rp, no-hostile shotgun me, i suppose, but that's not well looked upon

[Kuma]

i see unironic use of smileys is back in the menu boys

we 2013 again

[the grim yeeter]

oh man, oh man, oh man, i forgot to account for the fact that I will completely and utterly fail to manage my spacing and allow you to get within melee range of me before i choose to do anything

What makes you think you're gonna get to manage your spacing and be the one who does something first?

Can you please just stop posting when it comes to discussing mechanics entirely? All that comes out is nonsense.

[Misericordus]

as for the thread topic, the only build strategy i can recommend right now with the information available to me is this:

S tier: play a wizard (or wizard/palemaster), sorcerer, or cleric, or find one of the above and wed yourself to them

or an abj-focused paladin, maybe, if you're feeling risky - holy sword is still good, but you'd better hope your one single WoF from paladin chain gets rid of the enemy EDK because you don't get another chance

fiend summoning blackguards and warlocks actually just got a pretty big indirect upgrade as well, because their summons are very, very strong and it's so hard/impossible for a non-caster to get rid of enemy summons now

spellsword may well be A tier now, as well as druid

if you choose to play a mundane, recognize that casters will dunk on you very easily. cherish every single greater disjunction shard you find (those little red crystals with mords single use), because they're now your only access to mords

you can build for 50 lore (big investment...) and get WoF scrolls and gr. breach scrolls in place of mords (needed to lower creature SR for WoF scrolls to have any chance of getting rid of an EDK)

i sure hope the lore req on scrolls gets reduced a bit, otherwise we probably need to disable timestop completely and probably significantly nerf the big boy summons (EDK/dracolich, mummy dust, and maybe even Gate), they're just too powerful for the only counterplay to be "try to use a dismissal/banishment book before pvp starts"

fighting a summon while its summoner focuses you is not really an option, and neither is ignoring the summon to attack the summoner, particularly if they're a palemaster

[Poolbrain]

Sorry guys! Horrible attempts at being funny! I shall re-collect my 2013 smileys, anyone offended by them can send a bill to my inbox. My secretary will handle any complaint in due time.

And I agree, this is getting out of hands. I've made more post today than I have over the last three years!

I shall henceforth try to stick within the norms.

Yeah, just make a commoner dude. Why bother with anything sub-optimal. Stick to wizards or a sourcerer.. sorceress.. sorcerer? Screw it, the one in NWN that doesn't have to mess around with their spell book and can't ride horses while searching for treasure while haggling good prices. Nothing else will be good man.

*Don't make a smiley, don't make a smiley, don't make a smiley*



*DAMNIT*

[Tarkus the dog]

oh man, oh man, oh man, i forgot to account for the fact that I will completely and utterly fail to manage my spacing and allow you to get within melee range of me before i choose to do anything

What makes you think you're gonna get to manage your spacing and be the one who does something first?

you sound like the kind of guy who walks up to an ogre barbarian's melee range and starts calling him names on your 300 hp mage, then rants in tells after being beaten into a pulp

[Test Drive]

13 at level 30 in each stat commoner 27 specialist 3. Go for the true RP build.

[Peppermint]

What a dumb side argument.

-prays is a thing.

Scrolls are still activated even if KD'd after using them. (Yes, you can Timestop scroll as a last resort. Most mundanes have no counter to this.)

Current meta allows casters to approach 70 discipline.

Lots of arguments centered around a nonsense understanding of Arelith's meta let alone a basic understanding of the game.

Casters are better than melees now. Full stop. We shouldn't need to have a discussion about this.

tl;dr

- Casters are top tier due to having spells (e.g. summons, Timestop, Greater Sanctuary) which other classes can't counter.
- Divine duilds are also decent due to having the AC to tank summons and the saves to ignore a lot of spells.

The rest is bad. Don't play it if you care about PvP.

[JubJub]

Honestly the being immune to KD for 18 seconds to me is more of a bad thing then not being able to use some scrolls. I would put KD on a timer instead of making one totally immune. If all you want to do is pvp then a caster right now is tops, but there are some smart builders out there and I'm sure they can come up with great builds to counter most anything.

[Peppermint]

Yes. The KD immunity also has me wondering whether having a friend KD you before wading into grease/thunderclaps/whatever is a viable strategy.

Or god forbid KD'ing for preparatory immunity to a friendly Hellball.

I surely hope this update does not work that way.

[Apokriphos]

You can also make a lvl 30 fighter with all lore feats and investment to suddenly get high lvl scrolls.

if you do this, my first DC spell probably kills you, and i can -fate to tack a wrathful castigation (fort & will) onto a bigby (reflex), try again

I think this just shows how ridiculously powerful well built wild mages are.

In every pvp encounter I have been in, the instigator/antagonist steps slowly closer to the mage as his or her belligerence gets worse, and then the hostile+kd gives you no time to respond. Typically no one is hasted at the point too, so if you are lucky and under the new kd cooldown, and try to cast a time stop after this action, you had better hope you can beat whatever critical hits that come raining down on you while you wait through the full round cast.

I think the overpowered mage example could be easily written to be an overpowered melee example. It really depends on who is the aggressor in this theoretical fight.

[Dalenger]

Okay though, but unironically 20Commoner/10 Specialist. Go around stealthed, gather resources, and pick pocket mobs. How viable is pickpocket as a means of getting XP in the epics, assuming you are 100% geared for it and have all the epic feats? Or are the randomly massive spot spawns still too much of an issue? Make loads of money crafting literally everything. Add Mark of Destiny and gift of humility for even faster leveling, if you really don't intend on being in danger ever. Within 6 hours of starting the character you should have all the adventure XP you need to last until lvl 20, so you can just dick around and wait for ticks. Profit.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Based on what people who focus more on this sort of thing are saying, summons likely have to be nerfed in the new world before this sort of thing can develop. And while hunting for umd items instead of just using scrolls has gotten a few complaints, I personally see that as an opportunity for pvp to be far more varied when it happens then it has been. What effect that will have on a "pvp meta" I can't say for certain, but I really do believe pvp will be more exciting going forward because there is that element of surprise waiting around every corner now.

[MissEvelyn]

Note: This is not a rant/complaint invitation, but a technical discussion/observation of new build opportunities related to the change.

Too late on that one. It would indeed be nice if people stayed true to the topic.