how to properly UAC bard

[Khelbaen]

Hi,

want to go the UAC bard path, but want to make sure i have everything in order before fixskilling.

regarding itemization...for optimal performance I should have a pair of flaring gloves, a sonic brawling weapon and and flaring brawling weapon? or just the flaring gloves and sonic brawler? does it matter which is in the primary and off-hand?

do any UAC bards use sonic shields? I assume the MM penalty is too high.

any other points of advice? the training seems straightforward, i want to make sure i have my itemization in check mostly.

[khorpulent]

You shouldn't need flaring gloves if you're using a sonic chests. If you use a flaring brawling weapon with flaring gloves, you get half the flare rate from both the weapon and the gloves. I'm pretty sure it works the same with sonic weapons.

And using a shield is generally not worth it with UAC.

[Khelbaen]

thanks for the response. so it looks like a sonic <brawling weapon> with some decent enchanted T5 gauntlets would be the best bet? Does an offhand brawling weapon contribute anything?

[khorpulent]

The DF bonus and MM penalty of using a second brawling weapon just stacks on the first. So if you use one cestus, it's .25 DF and -5 MM, if you use two it's .5 DF and -10 MM. There's a chart on the UAC page of the wiki that shows all the bonuses and penalties:

https://gswiki.play.net/Unarmed_combat_system

[Maerit]

If you have a support wizard for elementals, you can also go straight to 1035 since you won't suffer the AS handicap, but without easy access to wizards spells you'd be at a significant DS disadvantage.

Khorpulent is right about the flares too except in the case of script flares. KO is the best script flare for UAC, but parasite is more accessible. If you go with script flaring gloves with sonic flaring weapon, then you're golden.

[Donquix]

If you have a support wizard for elementals, you can also go straight to 1035 since you won't suffer the AS handicap, but without easy access to wizards spells you'd be at a significant DS disadvantage.

Khorpulent is right about the flares too except in the case of script flares. KO is the best script flare for UAC, but parasite is more accessible. If you go with script flaring gloves with sonic flaring weapon, then you're golden.

ko being better than off the shelf paraiste or do you feel its better than even some of the higher unlocks?

[Maerit]

ko being better than off the shelf paraiste or do you feel its better than even some of the higher unlocks?

KO is just plain better, in my opinion. It has no drawback. KO flares will 1-shot targets pretty frequently. It almost always knocks them over, unconscious, or immobilizes the target. Parasite flares do a lot of damage when you unlock them (because unlocks boost the threshold up and frequency), but you have to maintain them with blood and they're just not as reliable. I sold my T1 parasite gloves after a while as my UAC bard just wasn't up for maintaining the blood (pray) and losing HP from the flare.

I love my KO flaring gloves. I need to have the earth flares stripped so they can be blessable and not interfere with held weapon flare rates.

[Leigo]

Parasite don't have those issues when you take them beyond T1, other then a couple bites of acantha when you pray them once before you go hunt, your good to go. (specifically once you tier2 and affinity lvl 5 "Level 5 25,000 The weapon will no longer do the occasional blood draw while swinging")

[Khelbaen]

there was an lnet convo recently about how the flare rate for sonics will be affected even while wearing non-flaring gloves...is this a confirmed mechanic?

sounds odd to me that flareless gloves would affect the flare rate of sonics but gloves with KO or parasite flares wouldnt...

[Dantx]

Parasite don't have those issues when you take them beyond T1, other then a couple bites of acantha when you pray them once before you go hunt, your good to go. (specifically once you tier2 and affinity lvl 5 "Level 5 25,000 The weapon will no longer do the occasional blood draw while swinging")

This is a pretty annoying upkeep, but I wrote a script for my bard to get around this annoyance.

Basically, it just checks every so often while in a node (or predefined room id) to see if your gloves / boots need a pray upkeep, and if so, removes them, prays, then wears them back.

Then if blood is below a certain threshold, sign of healing, or whatever society power you'd want to use.

If anyone's interested, I could post the code.