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Swashbuckler time!

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Core Abilities

    1 AP, class level 1: Swift Strikes: Passive: +1% Dodge.
    5 AP, class level 3: Swashbuckling: Defensive Stance: You gain 1% Doublestrike and Doubleshot as well as +1 to the Enhancement Bonus of the weapon in your main hand. Swashbuckling requires wielding a Finesseable or Thrown weapon in your main hand, wielding a Buckler or nothing in your off hand, and wearing Light Armor or no armor. (Druids cannot Swashbuckle while in animal forms.)
        Passive: In addition, while Swashbuckling, [*]Passive: While Swashbuckling, the following weapons receive Competence bonuses to their critical profiles:
[B]Dagger, Shortsword, Throwing Dagger:[/B] +1 Threat Range, +1 Multiplier
[B]Light Mace, Sickle, Dart, Shuriken, Throwing Axe, Throwing Hammer:[/B] +2 Threat Range, +1 Multiplier
[B]Kukri, Rapier:[/B] +1 Multiplier
[B]Handaxe:[/B] +2 Range
[B]Light Pick: [/B]+1 Range

    10 AP, class level 6: Uncanny Dodge: You gain the Uncanny Dodge feat. Passive: Swashbuckling grants an additional 1% Doublestrike, 1% Doubleshot, and +1 Damage.
    20 AP, class level 12: Panache: While Swashbuckling, you gain +1% Dodge, 1% Doublestrike, 1% Doubleshot, +1 Damage, +1 Reflex Saving Throw, and the weapon in your main hand gains an additional +1 to its Enhancement bonus.
    30 AP, class level 18: Roll with the Punches: While Swashbuckling, you gain +5 Insight Bonus to Character Dodge Cap, the Slippery Mind feat, +1% Doublestrike, 1% Doubleshot, and +1 Damage.
    41 AP, class level 20: Evasive Maneuvers: +2 CHA, +2 DEX.While Swashbuckling, you gain the Evasion feat, +1% Doublestrike, 1% Doubleshot, +1 Damage, and the weapon in your main hand gains an additional +1 to its Enhancement bonus.

Ultimately, not bad cores. Boosts damage output, saves, and even grants evasion. Much much better than Warchanter, though WC works with all weapons and not just finesseable ones.

Code:
Tier One
    On Your Toes: +1/2/3 Dodge
    Blow By Blow:
        Multiselector: Melee or Thrown Attack: Make an attack with +(1/2/3) critical threat range that deals extra Sonic damage, and reduces your threat with nearby enemies. This sonic damage scales with Spell Power.

    Multiselector: Insults
        Scathing Words: Activate to reduce the Fortitude saves of nearby enemies by 3. (Costs Spell Points, moderate cooldown)
        Cutting Jibes: Activate to reduce the Will saves of nearby enemies by 3. (Costs Spell Points, moderate cooldown)
        Appalling Diatribe: Activate to reduce the Reflex saves of nearby enemies by 3. (Costs Spell Points, moderate cooldown)

    Tavern Shanties: +1/2/3 Bard Songs.
    Limber Up: +(1/2/3) to Balance, Jump, Swim, and Tumble. 3rd Rank: When you Tumble, you gain +3 to saves against traps for 6 seconds. 12 second cooldown.

Again, solid. Limber Up won't see much use unless you absolutely need points dumped into something, and Shanties is a bit lazy, but a dps clicky and a debuff is useful. I can see all Bards dipping for both.

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Tier Two
    En Pointe: Melee Attack: Make an attack with +4/8/12 critical threat range, but -1 Critical Multiplier. Costs Spell Points to activate.
    Deflect Arrows: You gain the benefits of the Deflect Arrows feat, knocking aside one incoming projectile that would have struck you every 6/4/2 seconds. (Antireq Tempest Deflect Arrows)
    Aqua Vitae: Gain 3 Temporary Hit Points per Bard Level for 9 seconds. Heal 1d6 HP every two seconds while the temporary hitpoints persist. (Long cooldown).
    Sword Dance: While Swashbuckling, when enemies miss you in combat, you deal 1d10/1d12/1d20 Sonic Damage. Scales with Spell Power. (This triggers off of various miss chances, including Dodge, Armor Class, Displacement, etc.)
    Multiselector:
        Action Boost: Doublestrike: You gain +10/20/30% Action Boost bonus to Doublestrike for 20 seconds. Usable 5 times per rest.
        Action Boost: Doubleshot: You gain +10/20/30% Action Boost bonus to Doubleshot for 20 seconds. Usable 5 times per rest.

A bit weaker here. Sword Dance is only useful if it works off Blur/Displacement as well as Dodge, because a Bard isn't getting AC to useful levels. Aqua Vitae is worthless; if you stand still you get a mere 4d6 healing (or 4-24 hp back, over 10 seconds). A Cure Serious potion will stomp that, instantly. Deflect is meh, worth taking if you need points. I'm on the fence about En Pointe. In the end, it would probably be a wash.


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Tier Three
    Elegant Footwork: When enemies miss you while Swashbuckling, they have a small chance to be knocked down with no save. Cooldown: 12 seconds.
    Swashbuckling Style:
        Dashing Scoundrel: While Swashbuckling with nothing in your off hand, you gain +1 Damage per 5 Character levels and 7% Doublestrike/Doubleshot.
        Skirmisher: While Swashbuckling with a Buckler in your off hand, you gain 7% Dodge.
        Arcane Marauder: You can now Swashbuckle with an Orb in your off hand. (Does not count as a Buckler for Buckler-specific abilities). Requires Magical Training.
        Cannoneer: You can now Swashbuckle with a Rune Arm in your off hand. (Does not count as a Buckler for Buckler-specific abilities). Requires Runearm Proficiency.

    Resonant Arms: While Swashbuckling, the Finesseable or Thrown weapon in your main hand deals an additional 2d6/4d6/6d6 Sonic Damage on critical hits.This Sonic damage scales with spellpower.
    Fast Movement: You run faster. Additional Bard levels increases the speed bonus.
    CHA/DEX

Nice. The Style line gives nice dps vs defense options, more dps from Resonant, and everyone like Fast Movement (one of the most fun things about Monks).

Code:
Tier Four


    On the Mark: Passive +1/2/3 to attack rolls to confirm critical hits and damage on critical hits (before weapon multipliers)
    Multiselector: Swashbuckling Style II
        Slap in the Face: While Swashbuckling and wielding nothing in your off hand, activate to deal 1 Bludgeon damage. Damaged enemies can't cast spells for 3/6/9 seconds and are stunned for one second (Perform + d20 saves for the Stun). 18 second cooldown. Costs 10 Spell Points.
        Low Blow: While Swashbuckling and wielding a Buckler in your off hand, activate to perform a shield bash with +2 Critical Threat Range and Multiplier. On hit, briefly knock down affected enemy (Perform + d20 saves for the Knockdown). Costs 10 Spell Points.
        Loud & Clear:Toggle: While Swashbuckling with an Orb in your off hand, +10 Sonic Spell Power.
        Tune Arm/Music Box: Toggle: While Swashbuckling with a Rune Arm in your off hand, your Rune Arm Weapon Imbue deals an additional 1d6 Sonic damage.

    Battering Barrage: (2 AP, 2 ranks) While Swashbuckling, critical hits inflict Destruction/Improved Destruction.
    Wind at my Back: +1 to the Enhancement Bonus of your equipped Throwing Weapons, plus an additional +1 for every five Bard levels.
    CHA/DEX
I like the first style 2 clicky. Barrage is nice, Wind only if you bother with throwers (unlikely).

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Tier Five


    Thread the Needle: While Swashbuckling, +5 Damage while the Precision feat is active.
    Exploit Weaknesses:While Swashbuckling, every time you damage an enemy but do not critically hit, you gain a stacking +1 Insight Bonus to Critical Threat Range until you successfully critically hit.

Both worthy of being tier 5.

I can see reworking my Bard to fit these in.
 
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She's just an innocent robot... Bad dog!
:p

In other news, as most of y'all already know, we've taken lvl20. At this point, we need to think about what heroic content we still want to run. I know Corwin wanted to run Harbinger2 (building boats) and IQ1 (Jeets). I believe Savage Dragon wanted to take a swing at Shavarath. We also have some raids we were supposed to go back and pick up but never did. XP won't really be an issue as long as we keep the toon levels fairly close, so we're basically in the position of running whatever the heck we want. If anyone has specific requests, please make them known here so I can do my assigned plottin-n-plannin.

For now, my intent is to get us flagged for the Shroud and then probably roll into the GH raid. Beyond that, who knows.

I have to travel for work in two weeks, so I might miss the session 9MAY, depending on when I get home.
 
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I think we were to do the raids, at least the ones that are doable. Meaning we need to hit Piker's Fate, preferably soon. We also need to hit Litany, since Corwin has been chomping at the bit to do that one. A run in Vision of Destruction and Hound of Xoriat will finish those off. Shroud isn't a critical one, since most of us will run it a few times regardless. Still, we all know Corwin loves that one as well.

Quite honestly, we will likely be 21 and well into our ED's (for those of us gaining xp there) by the time we will finish up the heroic stuff. Even if we skip Heroic High Road, Druid's Curse, and Stormhorns (which can be run Epic). Though there's some Stormhorns stuff I'd like to have.
 
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You forgot Cannith for another set of Boots!! :)
 
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I will be out this coming Friday. (May 2nd) So if you run the lowbies let me know what you do so I can make it up at some point.
As for epic, I am game for whatever we do. As has been said, xp and content are not really issues now.
 
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I think we can probably run our level 20's and finish off the Vale quests if only Cm is out.

My monk and artificer are just at the level where the Vale quests is next on the list. So one of them can help Kerriakan finish the Vale quests when she is back. Jm and Aletys also have toons at level who need Vale quests.

After Vale we could for example do the rares and explorers in Amrath or Cannith.
 
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That was up to level 20 so nobody got left behind.

We have reached level 20 and decided to play epic quests togther too. But we have also discussed doing different quests. E. g. Corwin wants to run IQ1 and IQ2. Aletys and I want to do the Amrath quests and flag for the TOD raid. Some want to do Reaver's Refuge and eventually Stealer of Souls. Some want to run Vision of destruction, Hound of Xoriat, Litany, Abbot etc.

Since the core group is 8 people we have to split regardless of what we play. So it should be possible to create groups with different agendas. One group goes into IQ1 and 2 while the other group runs into Amrath. I don't see a problem with that at all.

We have different preferences when we hit epic. The XP you get is so high so you can't do everything unless you want to Epic TR. So we have to make choices.

The difference between heroic and epic was that the XP requirement for a TR2 was so high so you needed almost all of the main quests. At epic level we have advance at the same speed regardless of lives. You have more content that you can pick from if you want to stick together level wise. So some choice must be made regardless of how we organize things.

E. g. I will for sure run as many PDK favor quests I can so I get to 375. That means the level 18 eveningstar ones on elite and all quests from MOTU on epic hard. That should just be enough for 375. I would like to run the Amrath quests for a change and also the Cannith ones to flag for the 2 raids there. I will also hit epic Gianthold to flag for Fall of Truth. Stormhorms and Thunderholme epic is also on my agenda.

So I might probably skip quite a bit of content like IQ1, IQ2, Reaver's Refuge, Druid chain, High Road etc. At least until I hit 28 and ETR.

If we make 2 teams with people with approximately the same goals then that's probably best. They can stick together through several playing sessions if we can't get all quests in a chain in one go.

I know that some people are not very fond of Epic quests, but I actually prefer them to the heroic quests. I don't know the agendas of which epic quests the others want to do. Why not make an analysis of what each person wants and then see what can be done together (all 8 playing the same thing) and what can be separated into 2 groups doing something different.
 
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We finished the Catacombs chain and the first two parts of Water Works, with everyone taking level 5.

Swashbuckler got a couple upgrades in the preview. The first core now scales with the other cores, netting +6 Dodge, Reflex, and Max Dex bonus to your armor. The stupid temp hp thing is gone, and a new tier 5 which grants a huge boost to reflex saves.

If my mind is working, which it usually isn't past noon (before noon, I'm asleep), the tree grants up to 17% dodge and +18(!) Reflex Save. I do not know if the granted Uncanny Dodge feat gives a dodge bonus, so that may be higher. Meaning that it should be very easy to hit the 25% Dodge cap. This should work in light armor as well, since the armor dodge cap is based on the max dex bonus of your armor, and the tree gives up to +12 to that.

The last I saw on the Single Weapon Fighting feat tree (three feats, as per normal) was a 10% attack speed increase per-tier. In addition, Improved adds 150% ability score bonus to damage, Greater 200%. Much better than the original +1 damage per feat.
 
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We finished the Catacombs chain and the first two parts of Water Works, with everyone taking level 5.
Well, not quite everyone. I've got a rank and a half to go, as expected. Since we're running level 3 content, those that qualify can take lvl5 if they haven't already. We'll have to take a look at what content we want to tackle going forward, keeping in mind that this group will be more flexible than previous ones.

When they run again, the 20's will finish Shroud flagging and then run the GH raid, as already planned. Still taking requests on what chains people want to run. Although Peter is correct about having the option of running splits thru different chains, it's been my intention to keep that group mostly in lockstep as we agreed long ago.
 
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Well, not quite everyone. I've got a rank and a half to go, as expected. Since we're running level 3 content, those that qualify can take lvl5 if they haven't already. We'll have to take a look at what content we want to tackle going forward, keeping in mind that this group will be more flexible than previous ones.

When they run again, the 20's will finish Shroud flagging and then run the GH raid, as already planned. Still taking requests on what chains people want to run. Although Peter is correct about having the option of running splits thru different chains, it's been my intention to keep that group mostly in lockstep as we agreed long ago.

I want to hit the VoD and HoX raids as a group. They're not as familiar as others, so they should be fun. L18, so no rush on them, we still have Piker's Fate and Vale flagging to do before.

I also want to try for a Archmagi Ioun Stone out of Dreaming Dark, and upgrade it once I have it. So that means IQ2 for certain.

A Wall of Wood would be awesome for my Druid, but the chance of getting one is about as likely as world peace. I still haven't gotten a Torc or SoS after all.

*Edit* I am 11 tokens short as of this writing for my next TR heart. It'll be a bit, since I plan on trying a SWF build (maybe or maybe not Bard, having ideas) with Suisaidh. News at 11.
 
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Although most of us might not be in the market anymore due to our token farming, TR hearts are on sale this week.
 
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It's been awhile, but I did finally find a functioning, freeware video recorder. Not too shabby either, though I'd like a better filename system. At any rate, I intend to record our next raid night, so we can make fun of Corwin forever. :p
 
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RhoGu got and took level 5 yesterday to catch up with everyone else. He basically topped out Tangleroot outdoors to get it. He's got 800-some slayers, so there's still one tier left there, but everything else is complete.

We need to get a feel for what's on tap for that group. Content-wise, there's STK (yippee), the Cerulean quests, a few house quests, and the beginning of Tangles. I believe most of the group needs half a level worth of XP so we'll have to do some of that stuff. Looking forward, the bulk of level 4 content available is Sharn which we'll all want for Coin Lord favor anyway.

As far as the 20's go, next up for them will be Harbinger2 (Corwin's request) followed by a Shroud raid (not Corwin's request). I think we've got a decent shot of completing that in a single session if we don't dawdle. I actually wouldn't mind farming the crap out of Piker's Fate until all of us get some raid loot, given that the raid is very short and fairly easy now that we know what's required, but that's up to the group.
 
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I'd be happy to help farm Reaver's Fate to get folks their gear. There is some nice stuff in there.

When we get around to doing Litany, we need to have a strategy session & make sure everyone understands the tricky parts. I ran it over the last couple of days on Jhianna, & it was interesting.

You have to run it four times, one for each boss. First one can be elite or hard, but then the rest can be on normal. There is at least one trap where there's likely to be a lot of deaths if you don't go through it fast, and it is not a straight run (no, not disarmable), another that requires jumping to the middle (also not disarmable), and at the end, if you simply finish out as usual, you won't get completion. There are also a couple of points at which if you don't get into the room with everyone else, you will be locked out & won't be able to continue.

It may be worthwhile to do a partial trial run or two on casual, just to get practice on the traps. They're relatively close to the beginning, so we can abort after going through them & then do the real run. I'd suggest that if possible, have at least one person in each group who has run it, preferably recently. Let's not put it off too long, or my memory will get fuzzy. We can discuss it on Friday.
 
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Ship Amenities are Expiring

Oh, ship amenities are running out. Apparently we decided to let them expire before renewing them, because it's cheaper that way, but we're going to need a layout to be sure they go back in the right place (well, I do, anyway). I have some hand sketches that I will turn into a diagram in a few days & post.

JM & I renewed a bunch of them today, so if you find any gone when you next log in, please update them. If you don't remember what goes where, let me know & I'll pull up my notes.
 
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Update 22 will bring big changes to guilds. New airships and amenities are just 2 of the changes. See here for the list of amenities:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/441927-List-of-the-new-Guild-Amenities

The existing ship buffs will go into the cargo hold of the new airship. These will work as long as you have the old airship extensions. These can NOT be purchased after U22.

However they can be extended with extensions purchased BEFORE U22. So maybe it's time for us to stockpile a lot of those extensions and park them on mules? This way we can keep the cargo hold buffs for a long time. This come in addition to the new airship amenities.

E. g. the resist 30 shrines will disappear so it will be very good to keep those in the cargo hold. The Greensteel altars will require a large slot to get so by keeping the old ones alive we save a large slot.

What do you think? Do we have enough mules to store extensions or should be just let the cargo hold buffs die when the current extensions run out of time?
 
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