PvM Frustrations of a dexxer guild.

Disclaimer: I really like this shard, and i appreciate all the hard work. I just want to express my own opinion.


Background: I am guild-master of Dungeon Guards, a primarily dexxer based guild which focuses on dungeon hunts and helping new players. I have only been playing on this shard for a month but I have extensive experience playing as a dexxer.


Problem 1: Playing as a dexxer PvM on this shard is not very fun

I ran Dungeon Guards on the Second Age shard and had no problem keeping players playing as their dexxers. However here, most new guild members have switched to bards or tamers for PvM. I have been wondering why, and i have narrowed it down to these reasons.

1) Monsters poison way too much
PvMing as a dexxer is an exercise in frustration as you are constantly poisoned. Bring any new player out of Occlo and as soon as they are poisoned they are finished. Fight a lich and you are poisoned several times per fight. All magical monsters love to cast poison way too often. Carrying 10s of cure potions to use on basic pvm is not really enjoyable or pratical for new players. Couple this with monsters healing and you have a frustrating experience.

2) Monster healing
As mentioned above, fighting monsters that poison, you often need to back off to heal, but monsters are able to cast heal to heal themselves very quickly. Fighting a lich can be a battle to the death for a mid-skill dexxer player. You get poisoned, you back off, the monster starts healing itself and it feels like you are back to square one.

3) Spawns
Many popular hunting spots have certain spawns that make life incredibly difficult for dexxers, but not so much for other classes. For example, silver serpents in Deceit, scorpions with strong poison in Shame, etc. Weaker, but high spawn monsters such as shades cast poison on you often while trying to fight something else.

4) Mind blast
Monsters love to cast mind blast which is particularly deadly for dexxers. I realise this is part of the Renaissance era though, but with the stronger mind blast, it makes fighting magic monsters even more painful for dexxers when added to the points i made above.

Shame air elementals used to be a great spot for hunting for dexxers on other shards, but noone does it here. Could it be because of the poison, mindblast, healing, poison, mindblast healing that dexxers have to deal with?


Problem 2: Tamers are out of control

Bards and tamers are easy to make. Dexxers are inefficient and troublesome to play. So we have lots of tamers. That doesn't need to be said.

However, why on earth do tamers have it so easy?

1) Bonded pets - can you imagine a dexxer with 3 blessed stronger than vanq weapons that never decay? I'm sorry, but why should tamers have so much power and so little risk? They have nothing to lose at all.

2) No mass curse or behaviour problems - tamers don't have to worry about mass curse from white wryms or pissing off their pets by spamming too many commands. (correct me if im wrong this) Do tamers even need to feed their pets? Why were these risks for tamers removed? Great power should come with great risk! Being a tamer never used to be a guarantee of success, and there were always many pitfalls.

3) Insta res - Yesterday i saw a stealth assassin kill a tamer. The tamer insta ressed and was able to spam commands and kill the assassin. This is ridiculous. If you insta res there should be some timer that stops tamers commanding their pets as soon as they insta res. No other game would let players have such power after dying. No other class has this advantage.

Conclusion:

Dexxers have the odds stacked against them and tamers hold all the cards. As long as this continues, I feel the dungeons will remain filled with tamers and bards and Dexxers will remain a novelty.


Thank you for reading.

Isn't the first time these have been brought up, won't be the last.

While I'm empathetic to the plight of warriors, I do have a few counter points to make.

For all of the first half, balance your stats. You will have more mana cures if you need to rely on them in a pinch, but you should always have cure potions anyway. If you aren't at 60/60 Heal/Anat, you should not be fighting poisoning monsters. Honestly I wouldn't even bother under 80/80. The balanced stats will also lower the damage of MB significantly. The basic warrior with healing and weapon skills is the easiest template to realistically go out and make money with, WITHOUT macro training to a finished point. A basic warrior's best spawns are basic spawns. Aside from the champion spawn, is there even anything that casts spells in Despise? That is the number one starting dungeon for a reason. All that said, the very best thing for any fielding warrior, is another fielding warrior right next to him who knows how to be on point with heals. Last night we killed the dark one, the beholder and the diseased blood elemental with no bard skills applied. Only weapons and teamwork.

Shame air elementals are not popular here because we have Trammel corpses for all gaseous elementals. The drops aren't worth the cost of fighting off their magic with the buffed AI here. While on a prior shard training was still pretty easy, we've taken it to a P90X level here where people come in the door and get ushered into whatever 7x they want with white gloves and a "how'dya do". Thus, folks aren't spending 10x the time making money because they went straight for the bard and/or tamer. The simplest path when starting, without any assistance is: New char 50Magery/50(whatever pertains to your goal, that is not a bard, other wizard skill or warrior skill other than healing), get instruments, train music/provo at zoo, hit provo house, GM, bard up mobs for 10s of thousands of gold per hour. Then fund literally everything else, train up taming on that bard to make the de facto provo bard, all your pvp chars, warriors, whatever suits your fancy. That's just modern day knowledge application overriding player's tendency to RP what they 'feel like' playing.



Infinite bonding slots is a bad thing and there's nothing to be done about it now. Mass curse would be a bummer because WWs are already seldom used and that would just make them less fun to play with. However, I could get behind it anyway because I did have a lot of fun with a single bonded WW before the zookeeper's quest came around.

Anyone can insta-res with all their stuff. Farm the undead and every day use Sacrifice on the liches or some shit like that. I've never done it but damn if it isn't fancy (Trammelriffic).

It's unfortunate about this tamer thing.

This is also my first time hearing about insta-res. I don't like that at all.

I agree as I also only play as a dexxer, be it mixed with a little taming here and there . Found my solution in using a tank that requires no taming.

I think Chris has plans to improve shields/parry for PvM though. Looking forward to that!

Welcome to the shard. I'm in a very similar opinion as you and I wish I could say positive things, but I really can't. For PVM a pure warrior is not just bad, it's awful. You're pretty well regulated to battle mining.

What bothers me the most is that major content patches have been worked on and developed without any real focus being placed on balancing the warrior class up or bringing the tamer down. Ultimately, this is why I've got my accounts on refresh mode and I haven't subscribed. Some of the fixes (pet stat loss on death) can be adjusted with one number, and for some reason there seems to be no hurry to re-instate that even though the DDoS attacks have subsided.

There will be a lot of people who tell you to quit whining and play the game how you want to play, but the fact is the way that we used to enjoy playing the game just isn't enjoyable here.

With all the negativity said, Telamon is a great host and he does work very hard on this server. The community is fantastic and I believe it could all come together eventually. When that will be, who knows?

I really think this needs to be modified to not be so excessive. As it stands, you can res with whatever hasn't been looted from your body already. I think it would be sufficient to allow insta-res without your belongings. The benefit is that you don't need to find a healer or bring in an alt, etc, if you're solo.

As it stands, it's out of place for a Felucca rule set.

This is getting out of hand at this point. Dexxers are not that bad for pvm if you're built and geared correctly. For my first few months I pvm'd with my lumberjack and made my first couple mil doing so. To say that dexxers can't effectively pvm is crazy, if tamers are too strong is your argument fine, but let's not pretend dexxer farming is impossible.

Kane, was that a bard LJ or a real one?

Real one, lj with magery

Pvm is very effective as a pure warrior when done right, but at a very cost vs risk unbalance compared to a tamer. That is my biggest gripe. When you can spend a week macroing and then get a few bonded beasts, you can literly farm with 0 risk right now, where as a dexxer you farm for a few days, spend some earned cash for a slayer and go out and lose it right away to a pk....what would prompt someone to play that class more then the other?

I will start with this, you guys are awesome, promoting collective playing! I met 2 of your younger members trying to kill things together (Nyctea and someone else) and I really appreciate the playstyle. If i didn't like playing with only 1 or 2 characters, I would definitely have a toon with you.

1-) I agree with Blaise, anything that poisons via magery or can poison you lethally should not be attempted until you have at least 70-80 anatomy and healing. I suggest hanging around in Despise, because there are less (relatively) mobs that can poison you by any means.

2-) Silver weapons are by far the cheapest slayers, they do the trick for liches. However I would suggest getting someone having poisoning and keep poisoning mobs. They are not so keen on healing, when their primary goal is to cure themselves. Undead are immune to poison, so stick to silver.

3-) Again the mobs you are mentioning seem to be around poisoning (all examples you've given are related to it) so I will say see#1.

4-) Stat adjustments and get resist. Renaissance is an era that empowers magic greatly (which is why every pvper is a mage, or has 100 magery). You can't afford to run 100-100-25 in UOR and not have resist. I suggest 90-90-45 or 80-100-45 and get resist. Latter is better for dps, former is survival. But because you guys hang around as a group, I see no harm some people switching to 80-100-45.

I started this shard as a poison/healing char. I evovled it to an eval dexxer when I came back and now I'm a tamer dexxer. I made this change to follow my character's storyline, and I will make further changes (will write a story about this in Salty Dog). First of all taming is not as easy as you think. Even if you afk macro it the entire thing, which is very difficult without help from others, you ened at least 2 full days. If you don't afk, well it can take forever. (97.1 from 0 for me, and 3 weeks have gone by).

5-) As a converted tamer, I agree. I fielded 2 dragons to see what it feels like, it's boring and overpowered. I don't care what others say, but taming is overpowered here with the 8 slots. I still think we need to be 5. Skill loss in coming back with next patch, but I still think more skill loss than 2.5% is required (it's not that difficult to retrain from 2.5%)

6-) Tamers need to feed their pets to increase loyalty or the pet goes wild.

7-) What you saw is called "Sacrifice" in UO and can happen to anyone, not just tamers. It's not a power coming after death, it's a power that they already have (ability to control animals).

I agree with the conclusion, that dexxers have little power unless you turn them into a bard, which actually doesn't make them dexxers anymore. The dungeons will unfortunately continue to remain with tamers and bards, but I personally will only control 1 dragon for farming, to be replaced sometimes by an imp for adventuring with other RPers, not to overpower stuff, (and of course use my beloved spear for hunting), because I think 1 should be the number of dragons one can and should control.

When i firrst started here i only farmed with a pure dexxer, and there are quite a few points i can add to this.


Fencing with proper slayer spears worked the best for me (solo) so far, since the applied para blows help out a lot (soloing liches with silver spears + a bit of balanced stats are very easy for example)

Parrying is not a very good skill at the moment, but i believe ive been reading about possible improvements for PvM purposes in the future.

There are quite a variety of different, challenging and fun spots to farm. Some of them are quite lucrative to solo on a pure dexxer too.

If you roll a pure dexxer you might be limited, but adding peacemaking or provocation transforms every dexxer into a farming machine. I also run a peace LJ, it can rival tamers in terms of gold/hour with ease. It might also be an idea to have 1-2 characters like that in your party if you are going out to farm in a group.

I've been complaining about this for years.
Do yourself a favor and just farm with the tamer, these threads fall on deaf ears.

Melryn, so happy to see you guys setting up here!! Playing a dexxer as your main is a PITA here, it will constantly cause you frustration when it comes to earning that gold. So just make yourself a bard/mage and make that your money maker. This will allow you to finance your dexxer characters. It's unfortumate that it's set up this way but as Cynic has stated, these types of posts fall on deaf ears.

Just in case for some reason this post is being monitored by the powers that be: MAKE PARRY AND ARCHERY WORTH SOMETHING!!!!!

1-1 & 1-2:
Monsters do have some increased AI here, especially when it comes to magery. I think this is a good thing, and it does affect all classes. But yea, dexers do need some additional protection to spells in PvM. I think the answer should lie in either the Parry skill or plate armor.

2-1:
Agreed, stat loss needs to come back. I am also in favor of dropping down to 5 control slots.

2-2:
Successful commands increase loyalty. Unsuccessful commands decrease loyalty. So it is possible to get around without ever feeding your pets, but if they get too low on loyalty, you won't be able to issue enough successful commands to keep them high, so you will have to feed at that point. Ultimately, I don't think this is really a problem. There are MUCH bigger fish to fry when it comes to tamers.

2-3:
This is not a tamer exclusive skill - it is the Sacrifice virtue. You must continually build up fame and sacrifice it in order to do it, and it has a very limited amount of uses. But you are correct in saying that this benefits tamers more than other classes. Sacrifice brings you back with 10 hits and 0 mana. Warriors, bards, and mages can't do much with that. Tamers, though, could still potentially have their pets alive.

Peacing dexxer ftw...

That's called a bard, FTL.

Touché

.