The new meta

[Alashir]

1)What's the benefit of robes over double leathers? This from a rogue using uac, buckler, and full plate.

You've overtrained armor so much, the AP penalty would be half (could go to zero with armored evasion).

2) Robes cannot take warrior resistance, leathers is the lowest you can put them on (ranger resist can be used on robes or any armor now).

Conversely, iron skin (1202) is common enough in scrolls a far post cap warrior with transformation could get into scale or chain (with enhancives) wearing a robe.

Hey Rolfard,

1) The biggest benefit to using robes vs leathers would be the CvA which when trained for full plate is a max of -3 with robes and +5 light leather or +3 with double leather in your example. There's also a bonus to offensive manuever rolls and proccing evasiveness that decreases as your armor group goes up. I'm not one with the maths so I don't have those exact numbers. Of course there's penalties to dodging associated with higher armor class, encumbrance, and shields as well but most of those are fairly minor if we're discussing robes vs double leathers. I'm not very knowledgeable on rogues, but I think they get hiding bonuses for lighter armors and bonuses to certain cman's as well?

2) SK 1202 or scrolls would be a super fun way to augment yourself as a spell slinging warrior with the ability to buff yourself up before you go into the field ewaving and berserking. I'm excited to see the how the dev's further differentiate post cap monks from warriors with ascension. I really like monks and I'm in love with UAC, but berserk/ewave/shielded brawler is impressive.

[Alashir]

This is a really interesting idea. A few thoughts to better flesh out the comparison:

Encumbrance: I see this is as a big advantage for platemail. If you are full trained for full plate (75lbs) and are wearing significantly lightened full plate armor, you get a huge increase in your carrying capacity. Robes are 8lbs - really not gonna get a lot of benefit from lightened armor there.

CVA: Plate still wins out here (full plate -21, robes with light armor mastery -3)

Maneuvers: Clearly robes with LAM wins out, no question. Very cool upgrade here. But I'm not sure how much impact it will end up having on, say, bandits using maneuvers on you. Anyone have a sense of numbers here, in terms of cunning defense ranks? If it gave 15 on defense to all maneuvers too, that'd be great. I think it'll be lower. The fact that improves our offense maneuvers (maybe I could finally feint radicals consistently?) is pretty cool. Maybe I'm misunderstanding improving offensive maneuvers, though.

DS: Robes with LAM should get a big boost (AP on full plate with 280 armor ranks still -23 which decreases your dodge DS by 11.5%) but don't forget that full plate has much better AvD against basically every weapon (by a factor of, on average, 20) than robes.

Taking hits: Let's face it, you are still going to get hit. With warriors' hard RT, lack of instant nearly fool proof crowd control, bantha poo-doo open rolls on maneuvers, and general GS malarky happening, you are going to take a hit. Plate DF / crit divisors are a god send. Redux, even at cap, only hits about 40%.

Cman/armor point cost: This is such a cool part and I didn't realize - light armor mastery is an armor spec, not a cman!

Overall: This is really cool and seems like a viable pathway. I'm concerned about taking hits and encumbrance. For any non tiny race, I'd also be concerned about loss of TD. I'd love to see more discussion.

1) Heh, I was also surprised light armor is an armor spec and not a cman

2) I'd be curious to see scenarios of a post cap warrior with maxed skills going through bandits and DR with different setups: LAM/Shielded Brawler/UAC, LAM/UAC, LAM/TWC, full plate/shielded brawler/UAC, etc.

3) Without a doubt at some point you're going to get hit as you said and in those cases plate will always win out. All this does is make me more excited for ascension talk where we get to see further specializations unfold.

[LOL BRIELUS]

So I've been trying this build out on the test server and can't see how this is viable. Any hit I take in robes is almost a multiple round stun and a ton of blood compared to minors or nothing in plate. Berserk with UAC just didn't seem as good as berserk with a maul or Lance. It's interesting to use uac and ;combo but I think I'll keep current thw build

[Alashir]

So I've been trying this build out on the test server and can't see how this is viable. Any hit I take in robes is almost a multiple round stun and a ton of blood compared to minors or nothing in plate. Berserk with UAC just didn't seem as good as berserk with a maul or Lance. It's interesting to use uac and ;combo but I think I'll keep current thw build

Small shield, shielded swiftness, tortoise stance, Parry mastery (with naijins gauntlets) and triple dodge/shield should be giving you a stupidly high percentage to avoid attacks altogether (in addition to robes + LAM obv) plus 500 ish DS in offensive (this is without spells). Disablers + spells would make it that much more unlikely. Can you post a shot of what's hitting you?

[khorpulent]

This build just sounds like a shitty monk with no 1202 and 1213.

[drumpel]

New meta.

Giantman.
Maxed Strength.
Decent AGI/DEX (enough to equal +23 bonus)

2x in the following:
Armor Use
Shield Use
Physical Fitness
Throwing weapons
THW
Perception
CM

1x in the following:
Brawling
Dodging
First Aid

Do what you want with the left over TPs.

Get to level 10, put 4 ranks into Shield Bash. Drop 3-4 ranks into CMAN wspec1 for bastard sword.
Have Shield Bash be your setup for knocking things down. Then pull out your bastard sword, grip it with two hands and HURL it at the target.

Yeah! Retarded mutant build for the win!

Granted you don't need the THW ranks if you're hurling, but you don't want to be standing there with a THW in your hands, no shield and have shit for DS if something gets a chance to swing at you.

Go in. Shield Bash, whip out your big sword and throw it!

[LOL BRIELUS]

I'll post something later. but a question - tortoise appears to take away from your UAC AS along with having 102 up. that seems to affect attacks a lot. What spells are recommended?

I threw on MBP and that seems much better. instead of getting 6 round stuns, that went away.

[Alashir]

This build just sounds like a shitty monk with no 1202 and 1213.

I agree so long as shitty monk = 500 DS in offensive without spells, shield swiftness, deflection, parry mastery, tortoise, berserk, etc.

I think with the addition of new shield cman's favoring larger races you're probably better off shield and (insert favorite 1 hander here) and returning to large races with high health, str, enc, etc. This was written before shield cman's and ascension.

IMO the biggest downside is losing out on bonding. If I were a new warrior I'd be interested in shield/1hander. IMO Kerl got huge buffs.

[Alashir]

I'll post something later. but a question - tortoise appears to take away from your UAC AS along with having 102 up. that seems to affect attacks a lot. What spells are recommended?

I threw on MBP and that seems much better. instead of getting 6 round stuns, that went away.

Tortoise drops as/uaf in exchange for extra change to block attacks. Most people have a plethora of extra UAF which is why it's usually a non-sequitur.

You keep mentioning 6 round stuns and high armor is better (which is always true anytime you're getting hit), but with 500 DS, what's hitting you?

[LOL BRIELUS]

Lol! My character is not capped. So I'm just playing around on test server. Even when I cap the character I only have mid 300s DS with robes, 3x shield, 2x dodge. Only 4x gear obvi because that's what I could find.

How do you get to 500? I am not a whale so 10x gear is not realistic