Swinger vs. Caster

[Viekn]

Let me preface this thread by acknowledging I know it is all subjective. I'm just wanting to gain some insight on swingers vs. casters.

I came back a year ago and rolled a wizard. I'm level 35 now and the 2 reasons I love the wizard class is that:

1. My base attack takes 3 seconds vs. 5 seconds for a swinger, (yes, I'm pretty sure I have some level of ADHD which is why the 2 extra seconds bothers me)

and

2. I can spell myself up and have no DS issues whatsoever

I am sometimes envious though of swingers. (grass is always greener kind of thing maybe?) Yes, I know I could be a warmage and swing in 3 seconds or less with haste, but it's really not the same.

It just seems like such a grind though to be a swinger. What I'd like to know is, am I missing something about the mechanics and opportunities that are available to a swinger that make it less of a: whack, wait 5 seconds, whack, wait 5 seconds, rinse, repeat, type of thing?

I bought a level 48 ranged/sniping rogue at the end of last year and ended up selling him because I really just didn't like the combat.

Maybe my solution is to just stick with pures. But before I more or less settle on that notion, I wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything I should really know about.

[Astray]

hide
aim right eye
ambush caster

Winrar is rogue.

[kutter]

I think for you it seems to be you prefer casters. I have both and enjoy both, maybe the most interesting is my swinging sorc or my bard since they fit both bills. Having said that, I play my wizard and paladin the most, then my rogue who is strictly picking right now working on lock mastery. But I go in spurts playing whoever, the only thing that frustrates me about a pure caster is mana, I got a flesh golem task, 23 of them and it takes a while to polish off that many when you have to stop twice. Especially since they are sort of mana pigs to kill.

[Fallen]

Be a bard, do both.

[Donquix]

Be a bard, do both.

bards really are so fucking good once you get past the incredibly awful early levels.

want to play a warmage that can also 2x weapon and CM? get some air lore. want possibly the most OP attack spell in the game? get some manip lore. oh and you can 2x lockpick/disarm and know lores so you can self-pick most of your own stuff too.

and not that it matters for 99.9% of the populace but i kinda remember bards having the lowest "true cap" (maxing all skills) in the game. I'm fuzzy on that last part but it's still a fun fact if true!

[Tgo01]

oh and you can 2x lockpick/disarm and know lores so you can self-pick most of your own stuff too.

Bards can also loresing to the boxes to get the lock difficulty and I'm pretty sure it's more accurate than rogues using calipers.

Bards; jack of all trades, master of all.

[Viekn]

Bards can also loresing to the boxes to get the lock difficulty and I'm pretty sure it's more accurate than rogues using calipers.

Bards; jack of all trades, master of all.

huh, funny. I've got a level 22 bard that I haven't really devoted much time to. Maybe posting this was a blessing in disguise. I'm assuming though level 22 is still more or less within that incredibly awful early years. Not that he's a bore to play, but it's not what I would call "fun" yet. I figure for bards it starts to get a bit better around level 40 or so?

[Neovik1]

I recently started a bard myself and have found them to be a very interesting class to play. I like being able to sing up a weapon. I'm looking forward to Tonis.

[Androidpk]

I played a bard for a short while, dual wielding katanas. Was fun. I'm sure I would have liked it even more with tonis but I never got that far.

[Donquix]

huh, funny. I've got a level 22 bard that I haven't really devoted much time to. Maybe posting this was a blessing in disguise. I'm assuming though level 22 is still more or less within that incredibly awful early years. Not that he's a bore to play, but it's not what I would call "fun" yet. I figure for bards it starts to get a bit better around level 40 or so?

the general consensus is it's pretty terrible until around 30-40ish, and even then it only gets a little better. 60+ and it's like "i win gemstone"

[blanks]

Bards get fun around level..... 73

(Need 75 ranks of either lore or manip lore)

[Latrinsorm]

Wizards put the "grr" back in caster.

[Androidpk]

Do runestaff flares work with bard songs?

[Thondalar]

Bards can also loresing to the boxes to get the lock difficulty and I'm pretty sure it's more accurate than rogues using calipers.

Bards; jack of all trades, master of all.

The mechanics for the bard loresinging the lock and a rogue using calipers are very similar, neither gives you the exact lock number, but will give you the range or "classification". You're right about accuracy though, if you want to call it that...


As you sing, you feel a faint resonating vibration from the steel box in your hand, and you learn something about it...

From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the box is as a container of some kind. It has a moderately well-crafted lock on it.


Using your professional calipers, you carefully begin to measure the lock...
Roundtime: 9 sec.
R>
Measuring carefully, it looks to be a fairly plain lock.

You settle into the difficult task of picking the lock.
You make a competent attempt (d100=61).
You struggle with the box. As you do, you get a sense that the box has a moderately well-crafted lock (-400 thief-lingo difficulty ranking). Then...CLICK! It opens!

(old, LM master rogue)

[Tgo01]

The mechanics for the bard loresinging the lock and a rogue using calipers are very similar, neither gives you the exact lock number, but will give you the range or "classification". You're right about accuracy though, if you want to call it that...


As you sing, you feel a faint resonating vibration from the steel box in your hand, and you learn something about it...

From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the box is as a container of some kind. It has a moderately well-crafted lock on it.


Using your professional calipers, you carefully begin to measure the lock...
Roundtime: 9 sec.
R>
Measuring carefully, it looks to be a fairly plain lock.

You settle into the difficult task of picking the lock.
You make a competent attempt (d100=61).
You struggle with the box. As you do, you get a sense that the box has a moderately well-crafted lock (-400 thief-lingo difficulty ranking). Then...CLICK! It opens!

(old, LM master rogue)

Exactly. I didn't do any extensive testing or anything but I think I tried 3 or 4 boxes with the bard and each time the lock difficulty on the loresong matched what the lock ended up being. Even using perfectly calibrated calipers I've noticed it's sometimes wrong, granted it's not a huge difference, like one difficulty reading off so it's not a huge deal.

[Thondalar]

the general consensus is it's pretty terrible until around 30-40ish, and even then it only gets a little better. 60+ and it's like "i win gemstone"

Solo, they can be kind of a pain in the dick until 40ish, yeah...getting 425 and 430 is nice, but most builds only single in spells and you'll want at least 1019 before delving too far into MnE, imo. Casting is also pretty much out of the question until later on, so even casters will be swinging for quite a while.

It makes it a lot easier if you have alts to spell up your bardling for the first several levels. But I guess that could be said of all classes.

[Jeril]

It all depends on what you enjoy. Obviously the character I play the most is a warrior and I do a lot more then just swing, wait 5 seconds, and swing again. Warriors have a lot of things we can use and play with. There are aimed strikes, mstrikes, guild skills, combat maneuvers, and shield maneuvers, depending on the build you go with. I mostly use charge, feint, disarm, and warcries for active skills. I have two martial stances, tortoise and griffins voice that I make use of quite often. I use griffins voice a lot more but tortoise is nice to guard; other people, travelers, children, and myself during invasions. Most of the other skills I have are there for passive use but they add to my overall toughness and make me harder to kill. I rather like being the last man standing after an invasion and standing toe to toe with swarms in the scatter.

[Silvean]

You can take that to the bank, Jeril is a well-known swinger. I've only really played a sorcerer and the thing I notice is that swingers have a much wider set of options for potentially usable gear and services. I don't like entering raffles for stuff that I can't at least entertain the idea of using.

[Androidpk]

>Jeril is a well known swinger.

:lol:

[Donquix]

You can take that to the bank, Jeril is a well-known swinger. I've only really played a sorcerer and the thing I notice is that swingers have a much wider set of options for potentially usable gear and services. I don't like entering raffles for stuff that I can't at least entertain the idea of using.

that's getting better, at least. It was incredibly true for a long time. Now at least there's rune staff flares of varying types, the things like wand staves, bazz gloves, etc. It's gotten better.

[Androidpk]

Do runestaff flares work with bard songs?

So anyone know?

[Viekn]

It all depends on what you enjoy. Obviously the character I play the most is a warrior and I do a lot more then just swing, wait 5 seconds, and swing again. Warriors have a lot of things we can use and play with. There are aimed strikes, mstrikes, guild skills, combat maneuvers, and shield maneuvers, depending on the build you go with. I mostly use charge, feint, disarm, and warcries for active skills. I have two martial stances, tortoise and griffins voice that I make use of quite often. I use griffins voice a lot more but tortoise is nice to guard; other people, travelers, children, and myself during invasions. Most of the other skills I have are there for passive use but they add to my overall toughness and make me harder to kill. I rather like being the last man standing after an invasion and standing toe to toe with swarms in the scatter.

As you've pretty much mastered being a warrior, would you say that life gets a bit more interesting/robust earlier on vs. what we've already talked about in regards to bards? Or it's still pretty much a grind up until 30's/40's and that's when things get better?

[Whirlin]

I have a Wizard, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Ranger. My brother plays a paladin, so I theorycraft back and forth with him on that as well.

Mages are by far the fastest class... 1 second per attack as a warmage, or stacking rapid fire... sure... you're may not be hitting nearly as hard, but it's fun to see the spam

The CS pures tend to get repetitive. While you have a bunch of attack spells at your disposal, you tend to stick to one/two main, best damage ratio spells until you're incredibly late in the game.

I've become a huge fan of Wizards and Bards (and starting to like rangers more as I continue to study them) with the amount of different training opportunities available to them.

Bards are probably the most versatile class. However, based on my own experiences as a non-pure bard, I've found that even at 73, they're not as strong as I had been hoping (yet). This is predominantly due to the heavy use of mana through spellsongs, GoS sigils, and liberal use of 1002/1005 combat openers. I just haven't been able to use 1035 as well as I anticipated previously. And my DS isn't anything to write home about yet either! I feel strongly that bards have the highest training capacity, but also seemingly high TP costs which keeps them incredibly below capacity until their upper bound stops growing (ie: cap).

At Cap, a pure beats a bard.
At 2x Cap, a pure beats a bard.
At 5x cap, bard is lightyears ahead of a pure.

And I'm tired of writing... Follow Jeril's Advice... Play many characters. Find what you like best.

[Fallen]

And I'm tired of writing... Follow Jeril's Advice... Play many characters. Find what you like best.

I agree in spirit, but part of the problem is a lot of these professions (or builds for professions) only get fun pretty far towards cap, if not outright capped in a few cases.

[Viekn]

I agree in spirit, but part of the problem is a lot of these professions (or builds for professions) only get fun pretty far towards cap, if not outright capped in a few cases.

Correct. And I'm not expecting every profession to be a shit ton of fun right from the get go, but trying to gain some insight on some of the professions I haven't really been able to investigate, before I actually go try to commit time to one, is my intent. With wizard, at least for me, once I hit 25, I was lighting shit up and having fun doing it, because just straight up hunting is one of the things I like best about GS.

[Androidpk]

How are you people defining fun?

[Jeril]

You only need 3 ranks(takes level 11) of a combat maneuver before they become somewhat use able and at 4 ranks(level 19) they are great. You can also start working on guild skills at level 15. Only takes 5 ranks MoC to hit 2 creatures with mstrike and 15 for 3, 30 ranks for a double strike on a single target, so depending on how you train you could be doing all that as early as level 13. Depending on what weapon you are using 25-40 ranks of ambush and you could be doing aimed shots with reasonable success rates.

[Luxelle]

Thanks for the happy things to read about bards. Just knowing one day I will not utterly suck at stuff is encouraging!

~L.

[Aluvius]

I make a lot of alts and the ones that I've had the most fun with have usually been the ones that provide a helpful service to others (that can be used frequently) and those with more leeway to train non combat skills. I'd have to say an empath has been the most fun out of all the classes I've tried and starting from a very low level.

Empaths, clerics, rogues, bards, rangers ... seem to be the most fun to me with the above criteria in mind. I keep wanting to level up a warrior/paladin and I keep running into what the OP described, even with the neat new shield skills.

[kutter]

My paladin is GoS and I almost quite GS mastering him, but now that I have, he is a lot of fun. He is 39 trains and really just kind of getting fun, I am just waiting until I can get the twisted lance from EG raised to 7 then ensorcel it and bond it so it will have 4 flares.

[SHAFT]

I'm a big fan of the caster/archer dynamic myself. Suppose I owe whirlin for that. Great synergy with wizard and bows, especially ebows/self ammo bows.

[nocturnix]

IMO it all depends on what mechanics you find the most fun.

For me over the years that has been pure/caster. Some love swinging and stick to it forever. Figure out what you like best.

That being said, I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but my main is now a Bard. Used to be a sorc. But my second "main" is a Wizard now, since Bard+Wizard absolutely wrecks everything.

And yes, Androidpk, they should have been fixed to work with bard songs a year or two ago. I still use a sonic runestaff though.

[Aganii]

My main used to be a cleric but I actually found that I prefer swinging and pretty much only play my warrior now. But as others have said it all depends on the player. Really the main thing I prefer as a caster when playing as a melee class is not having to setup/stance creatures when hunting. As Jeril noted there is a lot more depth than just swinging and things like aiming your attacks and mstrikes can make the RT difference not as bad but it will never be as fast as a properly speced casting profession, though. My warrior will never be as effective as my cleric running around with 240 up blowing stuff up immediately but atleast that is limited by mana. Outside of combat all the casters have great utility too which can make the case for playing a caster/semi even stronger. In the end, I just love playing a Warrior and its not a big enough difference to matter to me. Plus, a good stockpile of haste edibles, gear, spells etc make it matter even less.