The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

Of Healing Amp and Healing:

Last weekend, I hit the raid circuit hard. HARD. Aerii ran Demon Queen, Shroud, and Hound, while Rachail hit Shroud and Hound. Mirys meanwhile just hit Vision of Destruction(!) and Hound and DQ. I need to flag her for Shroud ASAP.

Aerii - Hound of Xoriat:
In running into HoX, I noted a few things. My aura normally hits for 18-20 points per tic, with Phurry and Peter's Paladins being higher due to human healing amp (I know Phurry has at least a couple tiers, not sure on Peter but I'm fairly safe in assuming he has at least one on both).

Contrast with this raid group; while I was hitting my normal 18/tic on myself, the numbers on my raid group ranged from a low 25 to 30. Yes, 30, on a normal tic. The highest? A Half-Elven Paladin. Possibly Hunter of the Dead, which nets a 10% amp for each tier, as well as 20% from regular racial enhancements, and possibly another 20% off of the Monk dilettante feat (yes, that means a Helf Paladin is the highest healing amp-capable combo in-game). I don't know the gear or anything.

Needless to say, this group was exceptionally easy to heal; through the Subterrea I never even used a burst; just me and a Clonk with our auras up. I actually ended up burning sp destructing high-SR mobs because I was bored. I also got complemented on my ability to actually do so. In raid, we had the smoothest run ever, with neither me or the Clonk having our sp go low enough to matter.

Mirys - Vision of Destruction on Hard:
This is a difficult raid at best; waves of devils and orthons and fiendish bats all doing more damage than a typical aura can heal. It's also level 18 on normal; 19 on Hard. Thus I was shocked to find a LFM with level 16 as the low end. I joined out of morbid curiousity; I expected a wipe.

Instead, we completed, with no deaths. I'll admit I burned through a half-stack of scrolls. However, our tank was excellent, and two arcanes and two melees made short work of the undending waves of devilish forces.

On our tank, my scrolls were landing for 249hp each. Heal scrolls, mind you, are CL 12, so 120hp base healing. I have the first tier of wand and scroll enhancement, which gives an extra 25%. This puts it basically at CL15, 150hp.

I found that player on the DDO forums, and asked what his amp % was. There, I found out it doesn't quite stack as you'd think; his 10%, 20%, 20%, and 5% didn't just add up to 55%. No, it stacks multiplicatively. To break it down, it means 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.05 * 150 = 249.48 (always round down in DDO).

To break down his gear, he had 10% on his DT armor, 20% from enhancements, 20% from a Tower of Despair ring, and 5% from a Paladin past life. Like enhancements don't stack, so a 20% ring and a 20% bracers won't stack. However, 10% and 20% on two different items will. Enhancements stack additively, meaning that the three HotD 10% would add up to 30%, while human healing amp would add up to 20-30% (Helves only get 20%, normally). Stacking amp with different sources stack mulitplicatively. (The Helf max amp Paladin would be 1.3 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 1.872 or 87% healing amp. Or 280hp on a heal scroll with that 1 tier the Mirys and Aerii both carry )

In both cases, I relied on heal scrolls for spot healing. I used mass cures to heal groups, centered on me.

It was three well-earned lessons on being a Divine caster, and on helping the Divine caster as well as the entire group.

Caster: Carry heal scrolls, and scrolls of other things with more situational use. Restoration is just as powerful in scroll form as spell, and far cheaper than an sp pot. As I have shown, a Heal scroll can land for half of Corwin's hp with just 1ap investment. Likewise, scroll things like Raise dead; Ressurection scrolls are expensive and slow, so you don't want to resort to those in-combat. Ress and True ress are combat raises, you want both in case you need to chain them to bring up several people quickly.

To help the Divine: Carry potions. Everyone in the VoD group took care of their own curses, even the tank. Since getting cursed in there is nearly instant death, it's highly important to be able to remove curses, and pots are cheap and easy, and sp free. Neutralize poison comes in potion form that lasts 7 minutes. Other status-removal pots are also cheap and equally effective as the spell. Handle your own buffs as much as possible. Rangers and Paladins as well as Divines and Arcanes can cast an equally effective Resist Energy. Rangers and Bards get Freedom of Movement, and Bards get most of the arcane's best buffs.

If you can UMD, do so: UMD-characters (which should be anyone with a high CHA like Sorcerers as well as Bards and Rogues) can fairly easily use Heal scrolls as well; I was once raised from the dead by a Barbarian who used a scroll. It took considerable burden when healing the tanks in both VoD and HoX to see a rogue (two in VoD) hurling heal scrolls at the others to help spot heal them. Rachail can hit 27 now, and can break 30 once I respec. I can tack on another 9 from DT and GS boosters. A CHA skills item and the exception CHA skills on the first tier DT are on my to-do list before TRing.

On another note: I may be working over tomorrow, as I have to fill a crate, train three people, fix the crimp machine when it gets broken again, and generally be the manager as we're extremely short handed. The crate will likely be the killer. We got over 100 in there, out of around 800. We normally hit around 400-500 in a day, so that's 200-300 short.
 
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Phuury has 2 tiers of Human Recovery now, and tier 3 is actually the next enhancement on the shopping list. Gonna be a while before I get it since it costs 6ap.

How "friendly" are the PUG raids? I know it will vary some, but what would you say the average would be? With all these uber-toons running around, I wonder whether they're willing to put up with our gear-gimped and generally less-than-optimized characters.

Kids broke my headset again (honest accident this time) so I'll probably be furiously typing tomorrow. I was smart enough to get the replacement warranty this time, so I might be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat if the store has something in stock and I can get there.
 
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I've hardly touched any game all week, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow's session. I just can't believe how little free time I've had lately!!
 
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Important Notice: I WILL be late tomorrow. I have to collect something for my daughter down on the Gold Coast at 8am. Our game now starts at 9am my time and there's no way I can get back that quickly. Hopefully I should be there within half an hour of start time. I will get there just as quickly as I safely can and traffic will allow!! :)
 
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Your safety is really a secondary concern compared to our start time, Corwin. ;)
 
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Phuury has 2 tiers of Human Recovery now, and tier 3 is actually the next enhancement on the shopping list. Gonna be a while before I get it since it costs 6ap.

How "friendly" are the PUG raids? I know it will vary some, but what would you say the average would be? With all these uber-toons running around, I wonder whether they're willing to put up with our gear-gimped and generally less-than-optimized characters.

Kids broke my headset again (honest accident this time) so I'll probably be furiously typing tomorrow. I was smart enough to get the replacement warranty this time, so I might be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat if the store has something in stock and I can get there.

Tier 3 is also Rachail's next stop for enhancements.

I've had no troubles getting into or running so far. As long as you listen to directions, and follow the pack, you should be alright. It is critical in the high level raids; in HoX if you kill a puppy you risk wiping. Killing more than one puppy can guarantee a wipe.
 
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Free to a good home:
helm - +5 CHR, +5 intim (lvl 15 min)
+5 hvy xbow - greater elemental bane (lvl 14 min)

Both passed thru the AH even with low pricing, so just giving everyone a shot before they go to vendors/brokers.
 
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Remember! Update 9 includes being able to deconstruct and craft items, so things like Greater banes may be worth holding on to. Most likely, everything will be bound to character or at least account, otherwise I'd suggest we pool our resources and let one person handle crafting for the guild.

Congratulations to Phuury for pulling the second piece of raid loot in the guild. We hit Reaver's Fate (Gianthold), a first for both of us, completed, and he actually got raid loot. :p
 
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+5 CHR is good for a Sorc, though mine is still too low a level.
 
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I got wings!

Mirys has finally gotten back on the leveling track, and quickly hit 17 after running IQ1 (Mindsunder) in a pug. Half the rewards were too high level to use! Likewise, she did some raiding, VoN and HoX, and with Peter a Chronoscope run. She's also ran two of the Shroud flagging quests, on elite(!). The pit that you have to carefully leap across was easy being able to just wing over it.

After Peter logged off, I joined a Gianthold pug group, which turned out to be a guild run needing two more. I stayed with them for 4 and a half hours, flagging for Tor, and getting 3 ranks into level 17.

All told, I pulled about 130kxp in 12 hours or so, including two raids with no xp at all.

Cruicible was... interesting. Despite two TRs, they had never ran it. I ended up essentially soloing the maze, and despite a rogue being present, had to run the agility test as well. And Insight. And guide the ranger and rogue through the swim, which I couldn't do.

The wings were the best part. Skipping across the water in Crucible was a breeze, as was leaping across the spike-filled pit repeatedly to find and guide each of my troop out of the maze. In Chronoscope I chased a purple named Orthon up onto a pipe where he had perched away from anyone else, and stood nose to belly with him until he teleported away.

Depending on what happens tomorrow, I could hit 18. If I do the rest of the vale quests, and then hit Shroud, it should be a good enough amount to at least put me within 10k of 18. That shows how fast you can level when you want to.
 
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What are Wings? Is this something new? I could certainly use a few pairs!! :)
 
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Does a Warforged FS get them? :)
 
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I finally got my first toon to level 20. My cleric Rolf Peter Manstein is now level 20 and got his capstone (divine intervention). I still have 3 level 19 toons to play up.

After I've got all 4 to level 20 I will TR 2 of them (1 cleric and 1 paladin) and select a favored soul and probably paladin after TR'ing.
 
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Does a Warforged FS get them? :)

ALL FvS get wings at 17. And Warforged are very well suited for a melee FvS build. At cap, they can have up to 15 DR/Adamantine (highest standing DR in game, and it's essentially unbreakable, costs a feat and a bunch of AP though), obscene hp (about 30 more than Mirys, who is at 431 now. That's right, they can easily break 500hp without raid gear), and can still main heal raids.

The main drawback is they need enhancements and items to bring their healing amp up to 100%, so that it can be hard to keep one up until they get raid gear or DT docents. I'd recommend building a DT docent with 10% and 20% healing amp before TRing, if you intend to try such a build.
 
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Well, depending on how long it will be before we get Druids, I could create a WF FS and eventually TR that to Druid??!! I figure that would give Turbine anything up to 5 years to get them done!! :)
 
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Or you could TR your wizzie into one, and thus be able to play with us on the TR group more regularly. You can also make use of some of your gear, such as potency items, and can build a Dragontouched docent or even try to pull a Quor-forged Docent out of Mindsunder like I have.

I hit 18 With Mirys. She is about 3 UMD and 6hp shy of Rachail, while having 1900sp. Got it by farming Gianthold favor. You can, easily, hit 150 favor, with only doing about 3 or 4 of the walkups on elite, as well as the raid. Which is something we need to do; most of us have characters not far from that mark; and 10hp is nothing to sneeze at.

With Greater Heroism, Human Versatility, and my Golden Cartouche, I can hit 28 UMD, enough to fairly reliably scroll-cast Stoneskin and Fireshield, and somewhat reliably cast Teleport. Now to flag for Shroud, so I can build a CHA skills item, and have no-fail Teleport scrolls! Stoneskin won't be useful long, as I get 10DR/Silver at 20. They don't stack, unfortunately. But it can help mitigate some damage in the meantime.
 
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If Corwin gets wings I will end up falling off the cliffs and tripping over ever rock. :cm:

You know it's got to be one of us getting our soul stones carried over the pits of spears, the lava lakes, or the three inch rock jump that no one should miss. ;)
 
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If Corwin gets wings I will end up falling off the cliffs and tripping over ever rock. :cm:

You know it's got to be one of us getting our soul stones carried over the pits of spears, the lava lakes, or the three inch rock jump that no one should miss. ;)

Heh, you're not thinking; Corwin will probably fly right into pits of spears, lava lakes, and 3 inch rocks.
 
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