Anyone running a tank-mage? Back on OSI they were good. Personally ran a halberd-mage I've yet to see a tank mage since I've been here. Anyone with any advice / insight?
I've always liked the romantic idea of a tank mage, but never found them practical. Tried a few times back in the day and once here on UOR. When you start splitting skills, you always end up leaving something lacking. It's best to focus on either pure magic or pure dex, to be able to expand into pvp eventually later on. Unless you're looking for "just for fun" char, in which case I'd recommend a macer/mage. Max hits in all categories, and fits best in rounded out category.
If you make a tank mage on this shard, remember we have a special magical modification for accuracy with weapons that give you bonus tactics instead of melee skill. Tactics does not give anything beyond 100.0. This means you don't have to run with gm tactics. You can opt to run with 75 tactics and wield supremely accurate weapons since they give +25 tactics and still do max damage for that weapon. Archery is the exception, as those weapon's magical enchantments do give melee skill bonus and not tactics
Ah, you're right Meradin. I didn't know this happened last Halloween. Twas patch 73 Thanks for the heads up
On OSI (during UOR) they were "good" but I think a better description would be that the players choosing that template were good and accustomed to it from T2A, or the template had a "legacy" that other's wanted to emulate making it popular. Another thing to consider is that connection speed can very well have a lot to do with the utility of a tank mage when you consider that a time with slower casting/moving speeds left more time in between actions for equip delays (or just weapon delays in general) to elapse. In T2A, the tank mage was unquestionably good. But this was due to a bug more than anything. Early in UO's history the damage from a swing did not occur until the animation played out. As people moved up to 56k connections, it became more possible to simple "walk out of the way" making weapon use pretty pointless really. To combat this OSI released a patch allowing "insta hit". That is, if a weapon is ready to swing, and target is in range, the damage is applied instantly, and THEN the animation plays out. Making evasion impossible. There was one lazy mechanic that was introduced here though. Weapons have 2 delays. There is an "equip delay", the time it takes from when a weapon is equipped to when it is able to swing, and a "swing delay", the time it takes for a weapon to swing again after a swing. Both of these were based on stamina. At this time I suppose the easiest thing for them to do to add this "equip delay" was to make it's time based on the swing delay of the previously armed weapon. It wasn't well thought out because that delay will in all cases belong to wrestle. The "can I swing" state was carried over from the previous weapon as well! If you equipped a war hammer and waited X seconds so that it's ready to swing, you could then swing the war hammer, OR drop the war hammer and wrestle instantly without a delay. This worked the other way around as well. You could ready the wrestle swing, and then arm a halberd or other sufficiently slow high damage weapon, and swing instantly. Basically this could be exploited to get a swing-speed of about 3 seconds from any weapon by "cycling" that weapon. Arm, hit, unarm, wait ~3 seconds, repeat. Not really an advantage for a fast dexer weapon with a swing speed faster than 3 seconds, but definitely an advantage for heavy slow weapons. And so the tank mage was born. These characters were 5x mages (usually) with swords/tactics, and able to drop the halberd, and cast spells in the 3 second window while the wrestle timer elapsed, and then arm the halberd and immediately strike. This was clearly an exploit and was fixed rather quickly. The "tank mage glory days" that everyone loves was only a few months long. This "weapon cycling" is not possible on UOR. So is being a tank mage pointless? No, I don't think so. I'll give you two scenarios where it has a benefit: 1.) In a leetpvp duel. I think dueling really comes down to three possibilities: a.) Doing enough damage in a time window to kill someone before they can heal b.) Tricking someone into being unable to heal (interupts, stun, poison, etc) c.) Winning the battle of attrition. However unlikely, it may be possible to do tactic A with things like earthquake, but also something like pre-casting explode then waiting out the rather long delay on UOR only to hit with the weapon drop explode, lock with poison, or interupt, use purple pots, or in some other way utilize a combo to win. That weapon damage in the initial attack certainly can help. Tactic C is more reasonable, and more along line of what you see play out here. If you can avoid being hit with tactics A and B, and are winning the battle of attrition, you will win the duel when the opponent eventually runs out of mana. This is a real "crooks" style of pvp. Healing/defensive spells always consume less mana for the HP they "save" than offensive spells consume for the HP they "take". For a 5x mage duel, this can be a hard fought battle vs an opponent who just heals as the result will be they have more mana than you, allowing them to start the offensive and possibly win. But a weapon, however slow, is going to give that player a slight advantage in that they have some damage they can do, without expending the mana. It's certainly a benefit right. 2.) In a "field fight". I'm going to assume here it's a PK trying to PK someone. As mentioned above, pre-casting a spell then arming the weapon and waiting out the swing delay before running in to start the fight might be worthwhile. Being hit with a weapon then dropped on with the spells and interupted etc might be just what is needed for the PK to win before the target recalls or manages to run away. It's basically impossible to kill someone who wants to run away. They can apply bandages if they use them, drink heal pots, but unless you're a dexer, you're going to need to stop to cast and they will out distance you (if your connection speeds are equal anyway). To combat this, players use lightning wants, toss explosion potions, but these things can also be out distanced or line of sight can be broken enough. In these situations a weapon would certainly come in handy as the swing delay could be waited out while waiting to catch up and hit the opponent. So that's all well and good, but I think it's obvious that a stun mage still has the advantage here. They can cause someone to pause for 4 seconds, and become unable to heal with a spell. That's plenty of time to kill someone. They can stop someone from running away, and the timer is shorter than that of a weapon swing. At some point the definition of "tank mage" changed here, and now I think people use it to refer to what OSI UOR people would have called a hybrid. Character's like Iago's Deimos. Basically mage/med/eval characters who skip out on wrestle/stun in order to take advantage of defensive wrestling, use the UOR custom (HP = 50 + str/2) formula and need to balance stats to their advantage and function like dexer-mages. The other "tank" mage you see is like the aformentioned crooks. He's a 5x mage with swords and anatomy, no tactics. His damage output from using a weapon will be low, but it's better than no weapon in a duel using "battle of attrition" style tactics. Also has the benefit of using stun to setup combos to kill people. The fun thing here is that even without tactics he can use the weapons special move. In this case it's concussion, lowering the opponents mana allowing him to further win the battle of attrition. Additionally, that huge loss in int means he has better use of mindblast (especially vs dexers). It does more damage, and takes less mana. The downside here is that stuff doesn't help much vs a fleeing opponent, but his template can still act as a working 5x + stun mage outside of the duel pits.
It's pretty informative @snap dragon . The history you provided was nice as well. I never fought crooks but I have spied the templates of the top pvpers on the main UOR website, the ones that are visible that is. crooks doesn't have healing, but I guess he makes up for that by using stun AND concussion like you said. I've been thinking of making a tank mage on this shard. I don't have any experience with this unfortunately. Please critique this and tell me if its a good tank mage build or not str 90 dex 65 int 70 (adjustments from field testing needed) gm magery, gm swords, gm eval, gm spell resist, gm anat, 80 tactics (exceedingly accurate weapons will bring this up to gm), 60 heal (gives 35-60hp self-heals every 10.75s w/ cure ability), 60 meditation edit* the heal stats are probably off since I've fiddled with the dex value since coming up with the idea
Fencing tank mage 1v1 is okay here because of the two handed fencing weapon stun. Heavy weapons take too long to swing (for a lower dex tank mage build) and vs an opponent with wrestling is frustrating. +1 to Snap for the history and making me want to log onto SA. Insta hit and weap cycling with combos is a ton of fun when you get it right (during that era). Mount fatigue is also something we should have here even though it was easy to negate. Crooks and "top pvpers" used in the same sentence?
60 No matter how you look at less than GM tactics, it's always sacrificing damage, no weapon modification is going to make up for it. But there's always sacrifice in making a tempate due to 700 skill points. I think what you have there is a character that is a less than average dexer and a less than average mage. You're overlooking that 60 healing means you will fail healing the remaining percentage also, not to mention if you take damage you're going to "slip" and heal less damage. I play a mage character that never casts offensive spells usually, and I settled on 70 meditation. I think 60 is just not going go be enough, especially with a limited mana pool, and slower mana regen due to lower int. I think more viable templates are: Fence Tact Anat Mage Med Eval Resist This kind of generic one will be okay vs dexers because you can still resort to magery which is enough for them, and you have defensive wrestle. and Fence Tact Anat Resist Healing Mage Eval No meditation, but you can heal when you need it and get a nice spell combo off after a para blow. This is more of a dexer. or Fence Tact Anat Resist Healing Mage Med Going to need to use things like mindblast, poison, meteor, etc.. but you will have some good mana to heal with. This is mostly a dexer
Yeah, 60 healing was one of the big doubts I had about that template. Thanks a lot I'll try to adopt one of those examples in the future.
I can agree to everything Snapdragon said, and I personally enjoy playing Tankmages the most for the broad spectrum of Tactics they can use. Tankmages here are a viable field build, but they are also very predictable compared to a regular Stunmage (thats due the more or less "insta stun" that template has to offer) My Main Tankmage Erza uses Swords for example (http://www.uorenaissance.com/player/389216) Swords are the most defensive Option for a Tankmage in my opinion, thats due to the Conc blows, which temporarly lowers the Mana of your opponent. Use for weapons would be: fast axes for conc blows and good sustained damage, a Halberd for huge hits or a poisoned Sword (Katana is the fastest) sometimes i carry a 2nd sword (one pre-DPed one and one to reapply lesser poisons [note the 10 poisoning in my template] to wear them out of Cure Potions) There arent many people around with this build, a mentionable one would be @Meradin I also run a fencer tank, similar to Deimo's Build. Fencing offers Parablows, which is propably the best Weapon special attack (4 second unbreakable stun, similar to handstun) I use Longspears are heavy hitters, where short spears are fast (offering you more parablows in a certain amount of time IF you can stick to your opponent) 1H Weapons can also be Poisoned, which is quite nice. Downside: the stun is predictable (equip the spear, which is an obvious sign and then run up to your opponent) where Stunmages can pretty much "stun on the fly" Macing is more of a "Happy-Go-Lucky" build which is VERY suitable to go all-out on your opponent. Crooks's Drub uses this build. The Special attack are crushing blows, which can lead to INSANE damage spikes on Warhammers (Drub once oneshotted me with a warhammer for like 60% of my total HP, i was shocked). The Stanimadrain is also a neat mechanic to play around.. once you wear your opponent out of red pots, its most likely a win for you (i like to compare them to poisons, kinda) also screws with stunmages. The 1H Waraxe is a pretty solid weapon too... Downside: no poisons Archery: ive only tried it on test yet, and i dont have a toon for it (its planned however) There are people suggesting to play an Archer tank and i believe its funny as hell too. If you can time XBow shots with Purple pots you can apply a ton of damage on the run. They are somewhat weak against poisons though (poisoned 1h weapons are pretty effecitve since they ahve to unequip all the time). Im under the Impression that a group of Archer-(Tank)Mages could dominate the field completely IF used right. Hope that helps you to pick the right weapon choice! They are all fun!
Weren't tank mages made extinct on OSI during Ren because precasting was removed? Is precasting a thing here on UOR?
