FranOhmsford wrote on May 29
th, 2016 at 2:30am:
I know you weren't making a deliberate personal attack - It's just the wording you used wasn't specific and a number of other people have made deliberate personal attacks along those lines.
I just wanted to clarify the issue.
Well, I'm glad you didn't take it as a personal attack.
Quote:The amount of stacking of abilities and take this that looks utterly useless because it makes some other thing that also looks utterly useless actually useful.
This I don't really understand. Are you saying you struggle to read the descriptions of two abilities (either enhancement or destiny) and understand how one impacts/boosts the other? I can see where this might be harder for some people when it comes to enhancements since you can pull things together from up to 10 different trees (1 racial, 9 class). However, with destinies I would think this would be considerably easier since you can only have one destiny active at a time and, at most, 4 twists of fate. And from what I've observed, the twisted abilities mostly stand on their own meaning they don't boost anything in your active destiny, though something in your active destiny may create conditions where the twisted ability comes into play more often. One example of this is if you're in Shiradi and have Sense Weakness (from Fury) twisted, then Nerve Venom can make the mobs helpless and this enables you to do more damage to them via Sense Weakness. That kind of stuff is pretty limited, though.
Quote:The number of activated abilities, cooldown timers and stacks {I really hate the Blitz system!}.
I don't have characters that use Blitz. In fact, I've only had one that did. So, to me this is a fair criticism of Blitz. Otherwise, active abilities are one of the things that makes the game fun. Cooldown timers are necessary to limit resource availability (specifically the resource of active abilities) in order to make you choose when to use them and when not. I'll give you that I'm not a fan of stacks of this or that, either, and that they are a system you have to learn and they are unique to each destiny that uses stacks. So, that would mean there are at least four different systems within destinies that use stacks (Divine Crusader, Exalted Angel, Grandmaster of Flowers, and Legendary Dreadnaught). I think Draconic has a stack system in it, too, but I don't recall with any certainty. Now, that all said, the only ones worth anything are Divine Crusader, Grandmaster, and Legendary Dreadnaught. The other two are basically worthless. So, why bother yourself with learning them?
Quote:And remember that I'm still over multiple characters running through Destinies to build them up {a lot of the time on a Class or Build that doesn't gain much from that Destiny and I don't know the perfect set up for any of them yet!
Here again, you are not alone and you are not special. I only have three characters that you could consider to have their destinies "done", where "done" means they have all the Fate points and twists they want/need and their preferred destiny|destinies are max'd. All my other characters still have lots of work to do. However, with the exception of one of those characters, I have parked all of them. The reason they're parked is simply because of the amount of time required to get anything done on each of them. I have less time to play than I did a few years ago and there is a lot more experience to earn in the game now than there was then. Most of those characters really got parked when the level cap went to 25 and I saw the effort required to eke out the last bits of power from the destiny system, and they remain parked due to time constraints.
Quote:As for MotU - The Epic System being changed to E/H/N, 5, 8 and now 10 extra levels, A tonne more Feats to learn, Gear that used to be amazing now pretty much useless etc.!
That to me is a "system change" though maybe not the single definition of system that you're thinking of {shall we say a paradigm change in the game itself rather than just a system of the game}.
Ok. I'll go with "paradigm shift".
Quote:Actually a lot of the time it's still kill casters first!
The Champs are far more dangerous if that fuckin' caster hits you with a Disco Ball!
Only because your dps is low. I've noticed that on my characters who have low dps, I need to focus on casters first. So, I've stopped building that way.
Quote:What Champs did was up the difficulty of the game! Apart from widening the gap between Normal and Hard - which isn't a problem in Heroics because in the main I can solo Elite but is a problem in Epics because all of my characters when Champs came out were barely capable in EHs as was and Champs set me back!
I've got used to Champs now but they did represent a big change!
They haven't made the game appreciably more difficult. What they did do is require people to use some tactics and thought again, which we had all gotten lazy about and were accustomed to just steamrolling the mobs. When I'm soloing, I go a bit slower and actually take time to inspect champions to see what their buffs are. I also make sure I have some kind of ranged attack so I can pull things to me one at a time. Of course, that works for the older content where you can actually do that. In newer content, this isn't possible as much, but I'm not generally trying to solo that content.
Quote:I wasn't talking about it like that but about the sheer amount of extra xp needed!
Remember that when MotU came out I had exactly one character that had TRd even once! And one more Character at Lvl 20! Both on different Servers!
I didn't have a bunch of Past Lives already earned!
I wasn't ready to blast through a bunch of ERs when cap was 25 either and had only done maybe 5 over 3 characters at cap 28!
I'm not just way behind on TRs anymore, I'm way behind on ERs too!
And the amount of xp required for me to get them now {well 2 million extra per ER is a lot!}.
Once again, you are not alone and you are not special. I've done only three or four epic reincarnations and three of them happened during the time when you could get right back to cap by relogging after getting back to 20th, but before leaving the reincarnation bridge place. As for heroic past lives, I haven't focused on them really, either. I have one character with a druid past life and four ranger past lives. Most of the rest of my characters have either one or two past lives, each character has different past lives from every other character, and the past lives are all of the class that matches the character's current class. The only other exception to that is the flavor character I created a while ago that was centered while using longswords. He has one monk, one ranger, and one fighter past life, and he is working on another ranger past life, but I've completely abandoned the original idea for the build because it was terrible, much like your turn-spec'd cleric.
Quote:Good job there on restraining yourself but think about what you just wrote....
Yeah, well nobody's perfect. And this post of yours that I'm responding to does give me some hope both that I'll understand the way you think better and maybe actually be able to help you in some way.
Quote:No I don't think I'm the only one - In fact I've said over and over again that I'm not alone in this!
I know you
say you're not the only one, but you seem to act like it in spite of your protestations to the contrary.
Quote:I've taken plenty of advice over the years but when that advice = the character you want to play sucks, play this instead well would you take that advice?
Yes. I would and I have. The fact is, as others have said, you cannot fix a broken mechanic. You cannot make something to not suck when it simply inherently sucks. The fact is that a charisma-based cleric sucks. Should it be this way? No. Turn undead should be useful. The fact is that it is not and you're better off accepting that fact and abandoning making that a focus of your build. There's no reason why you can't still make turn undead work for you on weaker undead, while still improving your character's dps, utility, and survivability. Other people have made the point that it's pointless using turn undead on weaker undead since the party can mow those down anyway. However, I would argue that if the cleric can mow down a swath of undead using turn undead, then the party can get to work taking down the more powerful (and more dangerous) undead faster than they could otherwise. Personally, I like having a lot of turn undead uses per day, but I like using them to do healing bursts instead of actually turning undead.
I have had several characters that sucked. The most prominent is that longsword-using, centered monk-multiclass. Another one, more recently, was going to be a 12 wizard/5 cleric/3 fighter. That character's dps was so low that it was boring. I actually managed to get it to 10th level before I parked it. Then I LR'd it into 12 wizard/6 bard/2 fighter using SWF and spells/SLA's. It was more fun and I managed to get it to 20th or 21st levels, but it's dps in epics is terrible and so I've parked it for now. It'll get TR'd again when I'm ready to dust it off.
The point being there are some build ideas you can come up with that look on paper like they should be fun and effective and yet, when the rubber meets the road, they aren't. Turn-spec'd clerics are one of those.
Quote:I was playing a X-Bow build so was getting the Arti Lives done early {I did the Druid life with my free +20 Heart to get it out the way}.
I take your point about Ranger, Paladin and Monk {Ftr/Rog Mech shouldn't be too difficult either} and with Arti in the doldrums right now {My 18/2 Arti/Rogue Crafter is fucking atrocious - Lvl 20 and can barely make it through EH VoN 3!} I might leave the other Arti lives on my Rogue Mech for a bit in favour of Ranger {A Repeater Build to work with would be nice?}.
Well, I'll agree that it's a shame that artificer hasn't had its enhancement trees updated, yet. I'm looking forward to that, too. From my observations, it seems like rogue mechanics are better suited to using a great crossbow rather than a repeater. They get a lot more raw damage from them, better criticals, and more sneak dice. On the other hand, artificers seem better suited to repeaters because they have extra damage from their rune arm and there are several repeaters with useful/interesting proc effects, such as Epic Doublecross Bow (neg levels). These are things that are more effective with a greater rate of fire, while the rogue's stuff are better with a lower rate of fire so you can hit harder. (Plus, great crossbows can knock enemies down, which is very handy.) Both benefit from ranger past lives.
Quote:I've done that so many times but I do have trouble memorizing stuff and I find I take more in from asking these questions on the forums than from reading the wiki.
Well, I'll try to keep this in mind when I read questions posted by you. Personally, I don't struggle to read the wiki and memorize/organize the information available there. In fact, when I used to play Magic: The Gathering (I quit playing just after Tempest was released in 1997) I had every card released up to that point fully memorized: casting cost, type (instant, enchantment, etc), color, attack/defense (if it had those stats), what its abilities were (or what it did if it was not a creature), and what expansion|s it came from.
Quote:See - This is the sort of advice I'm simply not going to take!
Why shouldn't I be able to make a Turn Specced Cleric? I know full well the Devs messed up Turning but if I can make a Full Cha Cleric that can cope up to Lvl 16 as bad as I am surely you could make one that could cope at Lvl 30!
The point is that turn-spec'd clerics are not viable builds. It's too narrow a niche, based on a broken and mostly useless mechanic, and these facts are what sucks the fun out of those builds. Should the niche be less narrow? Sure. I think it would be great if turn undead were more useful. Clearly, the developers don't know how to fix it without making it ridiculously over-powered because if they knew how, then I am sure they would've made those changes long ago. The fact is that nobody can make a turn-spec'd cleric that also has worthwhile dps that can be effective from first through 30th levels. Can someone make a cleric capable of turning undead at 30th level? Sure. And that's about all it'll be able to do. Boring!
Quote:I don't dispute this!
For me a Cleric = Sword+Board - If I wanted to play a Barbarian I'd play a Barbarian, If I wanted to play a Monk I'd play a Monk! {I have multiple Barbarians and Monks just as I have multiple Clerics!}.
The thing is there is no reason you can't make a fun and viable cleric according to your preferred archetype. However, that is not the only archetype that makes sense nor should it be the only one available to people.
Quote:I've said over and over again that I'm not capable of EEs and not looking to run EEs any time soon - I'm not getting in your way in your EE runs or causing you any problems!
I know full well where I am and have even given up on my EE Sagas despite still needing another 18 million+ renown to get my Guild to Lvl 150!
The problem is that if you'd give up on some of the broken ideas you've got and just accept that those choices lead to ineffective characters that are not fun to play, then you'd be able to get into groups that are perfectly capable of running epic elite quests. Frank's line about "play to the victory conditions" is spot-on and an excellent observation. Making a turn-spec'd cleric is not playing to the victory conditions. Just as my making a monk-multiclass that could stay centered while wielding longswords was not playing to the victory conditions. I actually spent three lives investigating whether I could make the build work or not. I also spent time planning a fourth life to see if there was anything I could learn from the first three that would make the fourth better. As you can see, since that character is now 15 ranger/3 fighter/2 rogue, I could not and have consigned the build to the scrap heap. In my opinion, it's absolutely worth building weird characters like that and trying to make them work - even if you do it over multiple lives. However, you've got to be able to draw lessons from your experiences and recognize when the build is just not possible.
Quote:It's still annoying having to die and lose 10% xp in Vol and cargo hold buffs right at the start of the chain!
First, 10% experience is almost nothing. In that quest, you're only talking about roughly 4k experience. There is so much experience in the game now that 4k is nothing. It's so insignificant that I don't care whether I die or not anymore, whereas I used to care very much (and even then it wasn't really significant). And cargo hold buffs? Really? I haven't used those in at least a couple of years. We had them on our ship for a while after the changeover, but we quickly got to the point where we were too lazy to go to the cargo to actually get those buffs. And when I realized nobody was using them, my coinpurse puckered up and refused to slaughter any more platinum for a lost cause.
Quote:He can kill stuff fine - It just takes forever!
These are contradictory statements. If it takes forever, then he is not killing stuff fine.
Quote:And if he gets 3 or more mobs on him in EE he's going to die first!
This is one of only two characters I have at this time who is actually on the cusp of being EE capable.
These are also contradictory statements. If he gets aggro'd by 3 or more mobs and can't manage to stay alive for a bit, then he isn't "on the cusp of being EE capable". I have a 25th level monk with 2 monk past lives who, when I used to play him, could manage to keep himself alive even when fully surrounded. Of course, he relied on those active abilities that you seem to dislike so much.
Quote:It's the only AOE!
Not the only THING!
What other AoEs could I have as a Wraps Monk {No I'm not counting Whirlwind Attack which he does have}.
A Scattering of Petals is a very effective AoE, actually, but it doesn't deal damage of course. I spent some time playing around with that Cauldron ability from the Henshin Mystic core. That's actually a really fun ability. It could be quite effective with some serious fire spellpower and the ability to survive being surrounded. I just haven't spent time trying to figure out how to make best use of that, in large part because it feels like I would be building the character around one ability (a la your turn-spec'd cleric) and that would limit the character's effectiveness and the fun of playing it.