Tamer/Archer

Looking to try something new. I remember seeing a player names Keza that was doing this. Not looking to make the most money per hour. Just looking for a different challenge in the game.

Template would be me switching my Provo Archer to a Tamer archer. Probably most likely use scorpions or spiders.

Taming (?)
Animal Lore(?)
Vet(?)
Healing(?)
Magery(?)
Archery(100)
Tactics(100)
Anatomy(100)

Thoughts?

This is a place holder post so i can be the first to respond to you.
On my way home now and wanna do it from my computer.
Love the idea...
Have played this character before on this shard.

HOME!
ok so...
I played with pretty much the template you have listed only WITHOUT healing... but the first version was also without anatomy.
I didn't have a need for it without healing and didn't figure it would factor in so much [20% pffft who needs it].
the version without anatomy was doing a pathetic level of damage so it was obvious that anatomy would be needed.
with anatomy, I still found the damage to be pathetic unless using a heavy x bow or a slayer.
here is the rundown on what you can expect...

* mobs like executioners and below can be done with the grizzly pack.
I like to add a scorpion in there for the poison which is very useful even against casters.
though any caster you face with the grizzly pack probably shouldn't exceed the difficulty of a dread spider.
as long as you have enough vet to cure poison, the dread spiders can easily be farmed with grizzlies.
this will probably be your money maker along with the single gazer spawn near bloods in Shame.

* a frenzy pack will righteously handle arctic ogre lords, titans, gazers, executioners, etc you get the point/things of that nature.
I have even used this pack to bring down a colossus [yes, fo' real].
it took about 30 minutes, lost one of my five towards the end, and was veting NON-STOP along with mage heals in emergency times.
I tried an Efreet Sultan with the same pack and all but one were killed within two minutes.
grizzlies HP tops around 155 while frenzy HP tops around 185.
that extra 30 points makes all the difference.

* controlling five pets at once is annoying.
in dungeon corridors they WILL box you in.
in wooded areas with lots of trees they WILL box you in.
moving around hedgemaze will be a nightmare as they will get stuck constantly.
it's a balance of not running so fast that they get stuck and you have to go back for them...
as well as not moving so slow that they are able to surround you easily...
mixed with constantly telling them to follow something that isn't you and/or teleporting your way to freedom.

* stats will be a bit of a nuisance with this build.
either your dex will be low enough that your shots will be painfully slow so you have the mana to do more than open a single moongate.
or you will be shooting reasonably but suffer the fate of running out of mana constantly.
since you plan on doing packs... you will have some left over points from non-gm lore/tame/vet/magery/whatever to pump into meditation [which I suggest].

* its hard to find slayer bows, let alone good ones!
this means you will usually not have a great weapons suited for the mob you're after.
you will either have a decent shooting bow doing crap ass damage, or a slow as all hell heavyx doing better damage.

* controlling a group of pets like that without max taming means they may struggle to respond to you sometimes.
this can be inconvenient when a PK rolls up and you can't get your ossy pack to follow you into the moongate.
but if it's just one PK maybe put them on him instead and go for broke!

the negative parts above aside...
it can be a fun build to play and for sure you will be the only one in the group with it.
unique always has a rewarding factor to it.
for sure you won't be as effective as you could be if you were staying with your provoke build... duh.
but it seems you are aware of that and aren't scared away by it.
and riding around on a cool looking blood red frenzied ossy with a shadowy orc bow looks pretty mischievious too!!!

EDIT:
I also wanted to say that this is a great build [regardless of doing archery, or melee, or magery on it]
because it lets you have an 8 skill temp that is relatively very fast to put together by tamer standards...
that also is not a bad money earner.
this temp will let you do stuff that 7x warriors will struggle with and fail at.

- END [for now] or is it??!?

Thanks for the reply. I'm aware it will be a pain at times. I have a full tamer etc and I'm just bored. I can't play enough to really get in with a group so most of my play is lone wolf. I hadn't considered grizzlies but I had considered raging grizzlies. Those frenzie parades require somewhere around 70 taming to control? I'm going to do it and see what happens. Provo/Music are to easy to retrain if I don't like this build.

I think it's like 71.something to tame a frenzy.
Definitely the pinnacle of normal single slot tames for pack pvming.
Unless you have the xmas guardian polar bears...
I've seen them with up to 355hp.
Good tanks.
But not worth risking unbonded unless you wanna play super hardmode

If you wanna get into some weird tamer adventures irc me @Bayara

Oh! And raging grizzlies are just red named grizzlies.
No special powers...
Not to my knowledge at least.
Correct me if needed.

I don't get it. Why not use dragons or a mare pack? Grizzlies are weak. Just because you are doing archery doesn't mean you have to use weaker pets?

You can fully control a frenzy pack with 100 Animal Taming and 0 Animal Lore, but since Animal Lore is a big part of how much damage you heal with Veterinary it shouldn't be skipped.

My suggestion would be something like this:

Animal Taming
Animal Lore
Veterinary
Archery
Tactics
Magery
Meditation

For stats you'll want more INT than DEX. The idea would be to stand behind your pets and fire arrows at the enemy while continuously vetting your pet. Fire off an emergency heal or cure of your pet when needed, then re-equip the bow and keep shooting.

While the pack bonus tops out at 5, you will get more damage output from more animals. So having 8 Frenzies, assuming all can reach the monster, you will do 60% more damage than with just 5.

If you're facing off against weaker monsters and want to provide more help via weapon, you could try:

Animal Taming
Animal Lore
Veterinary
Archery
Tactics
Anatomy
Magery

...and something like 40 INT and 85 DEX. That will allow you an emergency heal/cure from the magery as well as gating.

Finally, you might find large hellcats ("predator hell cat" in the bestiary) to be fun. They have about 25% more HP than frenzied ostards but deal about 25% less damage. So they're a little easier to keep alive against poisoners and magic casters and other hard hitters.

I use a mare with macing, but you could easily switch out for archery and be just as effective.

100 dex give me 3 sec vets, and with 40 mana 70 magery/30 med I usually have enough mana for greater heals/cures/recalls when needed.

I enjoy playing him because I don't have to gate around dragons and he can solo almost anything I would want to fight.

http://www.uorenaissance.com/player/44676

Raging grizzlies have insane Dex and hp.
http://www.uorenaissance.com/info/RagingGrizzlyBear

I will be looking you up after I get this build done.

I clearly stated in the original post I'm aware this template can't earn as much as two dragons and a mare. I also stated why I'm wanting to the this. I'm simply looking to try some different stuff and see how it goes. It's not always about making money in UO and buying deco rares for a fortress. Some of us actually just like playing the game.

@Dalavar thabks for the tips. I'll be going to the one with meditation first. See how the mana situation works out. If I can drop it later in favor of anatomy for the damage I will.

That's a nice build! We threw should get together and go to titan valley or something. We could probably handle some serious shit. @Keza has some videos on YouTube using similar templates. Looks fun as hell.

Sorry I misread your post I thought you were talking about using scorpions to train up your taming. I didn't make the connection that you were looking to use low power animals to add extra challenge. I was wondering why using archery would mean you're stuck with bears or ostards.
It wasn't clear.

I would challenge the contention that the only reason to use mares is to get deco rares though. I know one guy who successfully pvps with mares.

Mare pack with trained magery is suuuper dangerous in a pvp situation.
I will screen anybody i see with this if i'm solo and don't have monsters nearby to distract them.

Anyways...
Yeah, the idea is to turn up the difficulty and play around with pet combinations.
Like how PS guild does their hardmode dungeon crawls.
Or how some people pvp with archery...
(I am one of them, so save your hate mail)

I second the idea that the three of us should get into some lowbrow taming adventures!
Azure dragon vs 2 grizzly packs with a raging grizzly tanking dmg?

EDIT: i had no idea that raging grizzlies had that insane health till you sent me that beastiary link.
Thanks for that!

Holy crap has anyone confirmed those ridiculous stats for the raging grizzly?

I used to have one bonded.
Don't remember it having any stats out of the ordinary.
Now i'm gonna seek a few out!

I also have an scribe/archer I use for CTF. Hadn't really tried full pvp but I do fairly well in ctf with it. We are going to have to get a raging grizzly to lore it and check the stats lol. I'm telling you if that's correct a pack of those will maul some shit quick

I have to say, I love the idea of playing a RP character who is a Fencer fighting alongside a trusty pet bear.

Hmm... what taming would you need to 100% control a raging griz if you had GM lore?

There's no way the stats are right on the website. A grizzly with those stats would tear apart any tamer trying to tame one for a scroll. 1500 dex? That would be like 10 bites per second. And the str/hits are much greater than a dragon? Ya I don't think so.

At 1,000 DEX it would actually be around 2 swings per second. The swing rate formula really gives diminishing returns to higher dex.

I guess one of us is just going to have to lore a raging grizzly and confirm it.

@Dalavar what lore/taming combo would I need to control Freznies?

100 Taming and 8.0 Lore gives you 97% command success, which should be sufficient. I think you can have 8% animal lore just based off of your stats so that's essentially 0 real skill points invested in it.

On the other hand, you could do 77.0 Taming and 100.0 Lore to have that same 97% control chance. If you go with a Vet build, that allows you to get full bandages and gives you 23 extra points to work with (maybe in Anatomy for some extra bow damage).

I'll be going with the Vet build. I'll need to heal my pets.

Taming 77
Lore 100
Vet 100
Tactics 100
Archery 100
Margery 70(minimum needed to gate 100% with scrolls?)
Anatomy 100

That's 547 skill points. Maybe 53 meditation or 53 healing for me? I'm hoping to be away from the damage for the most part hence the archery and was planning to use mostly pots to heal or Margery in emergencies

53 Healing is pretty frustrating and terrible - I think one yellow potion every 10 seconds probably gets it done faster. So I'd go with Meditation.