UAC vs OHW/TWC

[Raliver]

Looking for any advice concerning the two paths in the title. I enjoy the UAC route but not sure how it fairs in the longrun. Also, originally created the character with DW/TWC and do enjoy the whirling dervish aspects so not likely going to be doing any polearming or archery. I enjoy both of them, but not sure if there will be a point in the game where one or the other excels/fails as I've never played either play style. Ideally I wanted to do brawl/OHE/TWC with the thought of mainly using dual katars and then UAC for fun or throwing different weapon compositions together - just not sure I have the TPs to do it effectively from the getgo.

If it matters, elven bard in GoS currently 12 trains with a week and a half left of my entry 30 days.

[Cereal Killer]

Yeah, points are going to be a little too tight for you to do katars from the start as a bard. You should have reasonable success using UAC or TWC, though you won't be as good at them as other classes. Your DS will be lower than a "typical" bard, but as long as you have outside spells augmenting you there's really no way to fail in hunting pre-50. You'll be using the same techniques to survive and kill the enemy as any other swinging bard.

I'm not really sure what advice you're looking for, but there aren't any pitfalls that you're going to run into. Are you asking for a viable training plan? It feels like you already have that figured out.

[Raliver]

Not sure what advice I was looking for either...more just wanted to see if anyone had had encountered pitfalls with either path along the way. I guess a few of the training related questions I had...

Lores...I've been focusing on telepathy as of now instead of Air. From what I've read, this is the recommended training path. However, to get the lores at all I've dropped dodging and have been relying on outside spells (which have been fairly easy to come by) and being selective with hunting. This still the recommended thought?

Air flares - I was playing around with UAC with flaring gloves and holding a sonic weapon and seemed underwhelmed at the flare procs on the weapon. Does it proc less frequently with UAC? I didn't do extensive hunting with it, just felt like it procced a lot less.

Thanks

[Enuch]

From what I have heard both weapons flare at %50 of their frequency when wearing flaring gloves and having a glaring weapon, both can flare at the same time by chance but both lose their potential to flare by half

[Cereal Killer]

It would help if we could get a peek at your current skills, but it seems like you have the right idea. Holes in your training path (like not getting enough dodging in) can be made up for with outside spells. As you gain levels, your stats will increase and you'll be able to catch up in your training by the time it will start to affect your hunting. This is a standard stage of development for all Semis early on, since we benefit so much from training in everything.

If you're going with UAC, definitely focus more on Telepathy than Air. The reasons to focus on Air are air flares from sonic weapons, haste bonus from Tonis, and decreased sonic shield size. None of these will affect you at a lower level UAC since as mentioned earlier the Sonic Weapon flare effectiveness is decreased when you have a held weapon and gloves, you don't have enough mana to keep Tonis up, and you probably aren't using a shield because of the MM hit. Telepathy on the other hand offers you some good early bonuses including increased AS from Kai's and longer spellsong duration.

If you end up going with Dual-weilding, then you'd probably want to sink a few early points into Air for increased chances of the second flare going off, but I would still favor telepathy heavily.

[Raliver]

These are my current skills. I've been trying different things - experimenting with no CM/Dodge for increased spell learning.

Tahlshavin (at level 12), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Two Weapon Combat..................| 114 28
Armor Use..........................| 40 8
Edged Weapons......................| 114 28
Multi Opponent Combat..............| 25 5
Physical Fitness...................| 62 13
Harness Power......................| 58 12
Mental Lore - Telepathy............| 30 6
Perception.........................| 62 13
Climbing...........................| 30 6

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 6

Spell Lists
Bard...............................| 12
Training Points: 19 Phy 0 Mnt (218 Phy converted to Mnt)
(Use SKILLS BASE to display unmodified ranks and goals)

[zennsunni]

Firstly: Katars aren't just 'not viable til later', you can't really do dual katars on a bard until post-cap. Maybe if you utterly gutted your spell training.

Second: Favoring telepahty over air lore is a mistake for TWC bards imo, just wanted to voice a dissenting viewpoint. Lots o' flares is why you do TWC as a bard, and air lore is how you get lots o' flares. So I would suggest getting 18-25 ranks of telepathy and then focusing on air lore as much as possible, trying to hit the -3 second mark somewhere in your 60s.

[Raliver]

The 25 ranks of telepathy was my goal and then switching over to Air. As I understood it, sonic weapons weren't as recommended until a bit later on as carrying that song and the enchant don't make it as beneficial.

I've given up on the katar idea and think I'm going to stick with TWC over UAC for the moment.

[Cereal Killer]

Personally I would drop MoC for now in favor of more core things, like Dodge and CM. You already acknowledged the glaring issue I saw, which was that distinct lack of Dodge and CM, but like you said you're experimenting - which is good. Do that as much as you can within your 30 days, and I'm sure you'll come out of them on your feet and sprinting.

Going more than 1x spell research is pretty expensive and hard to justify if your main form of attack is swinging. I don't know what your spell goals is, but my preferred early spell plan is to get Bard to 1011 for Song of Peace since that helps with search, forage, and rescue bounties, then minor elemental to either 425 or 430. I may go more than 1x, but only if my core skills are already taken care of. 1012 is expensive mana wise at your level, and is inferior to a cheap, possibly player-forged (very easy to get superior which is one step lower than perfect for cheap) 4x weapon or even 5x weapon until you have a lot more spell songs and air lore under your belt.

[Whirlin]

Echoing what others have said:

I would not do MOC until you've finished off Armor use... TP are way too tight early on, and there are better alternatives.
Dodge and CMAN at 1x are a must for any melee bard build.
Finish Telepathy to 25 ranks at 1x per level early on... 25 on Telepathy is great early on for renewal duration, and 1007 potency. 1 rank of Manipulation is good once you finish that off... just because of the lowered threshold for 1002... subsequent ranks have drastically reduced benefits compared to just hte first rank.
I wouldn't start air lore until after you've unlocked both 1020/430... just invest those TPs into fast-tracking spells to realize those benefits. A sonic weapon is relatively useless early on due to renewal costs and relative ease of obtaining a physical alternative. If you had previously fast-tracked MTP towards Spell research, your TP reclaiming from 2x to 1x will help give a boost to initial air training

[Raliver]

Thanks for all the comments and help. Settled for this for now:

Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Two Weapon Combat..................| 114 28
Armor Use......................... . | 82 18
Combat Maneuvers................... | 62 13
Edged Weapons...................... | 114 28
Multi Opponent Combat..............| 25 5
Physical Fitness................... | 62 13
Harness Power...................... | 58 12
Mental Lore - Telepathy............ | 58 12
Perception......................... | 62 13
Climbing........................... | 30 6

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental.................... | 1

Spell Lists
Bard............................... | 11
Training Points: 9 Phy 0 Mnt (62 Phy converted to Mnt)


Kept the MOC for now, has come in super handy in warcamps so far. Also had some cuirboulli armor sitting around so went ahead and overtrained to get in to that. Will probably stick in that armor until a later day and then I'll train up to brig.

Thoughts on Cmans? Original plan was to focus on the passive ones to reserve stamina for GoS. Getting Focus first to help with TD issues. Anything else that's helpful in the early on?

[zennsunni]

I think people are giving good advice, but I'd personally make 30 ranks of MoC a goal, not early on, but perhaps around level 50-60. The recovery time on mstrike with TWC is very fast, and getting those big quadruple swings is so much fun - worth a few sacrifices imo.

Also if you are in GoS, I strongly suggest dropping everything, stopping your leveling, and mastering it before you hit level 20 so you can spell tank and just go clean up solo. It is much harder to do later on as a bard, and in the range where you'd really be working on it - say level 20-40 - it is really quite difficult to solo camps. I was able to do it, but I have an entourage of support characters and a high level sorcerer to burn camps down to 5 left for my bard to raze. Even then it was a pain.

[Jeril]

Something you might want to play around with is TWC/brawl/UAC. I see 0 dodge in your training plan as well. Probably not a big issue now but it will be later on down the road. If you camp a lot cdef will be useful and anything that they use on you frequently to help you defend against them.

[Raliver]

I think people are giving good advice, but I'd personally make 30 ranks of MoC a goal, not early on, but perhaps around level 50-60. The recovery time on mstrike with TWC is very fast, and getting those big quadruple swings is so much fun - worth a few sacrifices imo.

Also if you are in GoS, I strongly suggest dropping everything, stopping your leveling, and mastering it before you hit level 20 so you can spell tank and just go clean up solo. It is much harder to do later on as a bard, and in the range where you'd really be working on it - say level 20-40 - it is really quite difficult to solo camps. I was able to do it, but I have an entourage of support characters and a high level sorcerer to burn camps down to 5 left for my bard to raze. Even then it was a pain.

My goal was to get to the 30 rank ASAP without sacrificing too much.

As for GoS, I'm halfway to rank 10 at level 12 and my goal was to push quickly (struggling to solo with my lvl 40 ranger and didn't want to get in the same boat). May be even more deliberate to complete it quicker. I've got at least 2 or 3 razings in the books so that I can blow past that step as quickly as possible.



As far brawl/twc/UAC - I tried that and it was fine. I may give it another go before the end of my 30 days in a week or so. I have 0 dodge just for the time being. I figured the DS it was giving me could be masked by getting spells at this level. I will be pushing that to 1x ASAP. I also pushed to get my 18 ranks of armor early so that I could wear heavier armor sooner. So as I get those TPs back they'll be going into dodge.

Thanks again for all the help. Any other thoughts/comments are always welcomed. I have played about 4 different bards and this is the point I start to get bored (not just with bards, with any char I level) so hoping to push through as I think I'll enjoy the class.

[Enuch]

I thought 35 was the price point for focused single attack? Or did I misread?

Yup it's totally 30

[Raliver]

And by the way...is there anything that can be done about something like this?

[Warcamp, Outside]
A campfire burns in the center of a small nexus of paths surrounded by several makeshift tents. Spits of meat, some with fur and hoof still attached, cook over the fire, casting a contrasting aroma to the foul air of the encampment. A flagpole rises over the tops of the huts and tents to the west, marking the center of camp. The beaten earth of the warcamp is littered with ragged bits of cloth. You also see a Grimswarm orc fighter, a gas cloud, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc raider, a Grimswarm orc warrior, a Grimswarm orc archer, a Grimswarm orc marauder, a Grimswarm orc pillager, a Grimswarm orc cleric, a Grimswarm orc crusader, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc soldier, a Grimswarm orc warchief and a Grimswarm orc ranger.
Obvious paths: east, southwest, west, northwest

I find I'm pretty much Grim bait trying to get that warchief lol. Do they swarm worse with the chiefs? I think 14 is a bit excessive but if it's only with chief then I'll pretty much skip those every time. Can't seem to whittle them down fast enough with TWC. I've been using Short sword/gauche, should I be changing this up for these guys? I like the speed and flares - although the acid flares I have currently don't seem to be all that nice in here, trying to find a pair of fire flarers.

[Jeril]

And by the way...is there anything that can be done about something like this?

[Warcamp, Outside]
A campfire burns in the center of a small nexus of paths surrounded by several makeshift tents. Spits of meat, some with fur and hoof still attached, cook over the fire, casting a contrasting aroma to the foul air of the encampment. A flagpole rises over the tops of the huts and tents to the west, marking the center of camp. The beaten earth of the warcamp is littered with ragged bits of cloth. You also see a Grimswarm orc fighter, a gas cloud, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc raider, a Grimswarm orc warrior, a Grimswarm orc archer, a Grimswarm orc marauder, a Grimswarm orc pillager, a Grimswarm orc cleric, a Grimswarm orc crusader, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc guard, a Grimswarm orc soldier, a Grimswarm orc warchief and a Grimswarm orc ranger.
Obvious paths: east, southwest, west, northwest

I find I'm pretty much Grim bait trying to get that warchief lol. Do they swarm worse with the chiefs? I think 14 is a bit excessive but if it's only with chief then I'll pretty much skip those every time. Can't seem to whittle them down fast enough with TWC. I've been using Short sword/gauche, should I be changing this up for these guys? I like the speed and flares - although the acid flares I have currently don't seem to be all that nice in here, trying to find a pair of fire flarers.

Go with heavier weapons. Try two handaxes if you can or two falchions, maybe two longswords. Speed and flares can be nice but for a bard they don't get good until much later on. They do tend to swarm more once you enter the room with the warchief/shaman and skipping those tasks isn't a bad idea.

[Raliver]

Think I may sell out and stick with sword/board to help give a bit more defense while I finish mastering GoS. Once I don't have to worry about I may switch back to TWC as I do enjoy it.

[Raliver]

Something you might want to play around with is TWC/brawl/UAC. I see 0 dodge in your training plan as well. Probably not a big issue now but it will be later on down the road. If you camp a lot cdef will be useful and anything that they use on you frequently to help you defend against them.

If I was to do this, is it any different than my current build, just subbing in brawling for edged? Do you need 1x TWC for UAC?

[Raliver]

Also, anyone able to toss out recommended starting stats for my elven bard? I do plan on swinging and likely will want to give TWC a solid go at some point. I don't anticipate planning for much past 50 at this point.