Hello again, Im after seeing those ozzy tank and scorpion fighting videos i got the itch to make a taming warrior myself. Im thinking of using giant spiders as my tames as they get pack instincts (at least on test) and only require 60 taiming to tame. The template Im thinking on using is: Taming 60 Lore 80 Vet 90 Archery 100 Tactics 100 Anatomy 100 Magery ??? Med ??? Healing ??? Im trying to decide on how Im gonna heal myself! With no resist Im leaning towards Magery at 90-100 and med at 70-80. I have a much easier time healing large amounts of spell damage with magery and med than I do with healing and magery without med. Plus the utility that Magery and Med provides is tough to ignore. The thing Im hung up on is Im ALREADY gonna have bandages on me for healing the pets as well as GM anatomy for bow damage. Healing would be nice to have just for convenience sake. Plus I wouldnt have to drop my bow to heal slow damage although I would not be able to heal my pets if Im healing myself with bandages. Im planning on fighting dragons and other high magery targets so Im sure Ill need to heal myself. Im also gonna have to defend myself from magery casting players. If I went the healing route, Id go 90 healing and 80 Magery. High enough to never fail a greater heal and cast gate naturally without TOO much trouble with a last spell macro. So anywho, has anyone done something similar to this and have any sage advice? Id like this toon to be a fairly decent toon and something I can play "as a main." Id hate for it to be a candy toon that gets stale after a while and then mothballed. Any advice will be most welcome. Thanks in advance, Zim
Here's what I'd recommend... According to the control chance calculator that Chris posted somewhere at some point, Frenzied Ostards have a control chance of 87% if you have 100 Taming and 0 Lore, but 99% if you have 103 Taming and 0 Lore. If only there was a way to get +3 Taming skill! Frenzieds have the highest DPS of any pack instinct animal, good HP, AND you can hop on one of them if needed. So I'd make a template like this: 100 Magery 100 Meditation 100 Weapon 100 Tactics 100 Anatomy 100 Wrestling/Resist/Inscription/Eval 100 Animal Taming You'd do your healing of your pets entirely via Magic, but that may be feasible due the bard skill. The down side is of course that you can't hit stuff while you're casting heal spells. However, I wonder if this would be a more effective (but still very distinct) template: 100 Magery 100 Meditation 100 Animal Taming 100 Music 100 Disco 100 Peace 100 Wrestling/Resist/Inscription/Eval You get to run 100 INT with no downside and again you'd do all of your healing via magic. The pets do the dragon-killing, and you can use Disco or Peacemaking depending on the enemy. If you find Disco and Peace to be redundant (i.e. you're only using one of them), drop the other and just put 100 Veterinary in its place. You'll get around 40 damage healed per bandage with just Vet, versus 60 with Vet and Animal Lore maxed out. Finally, I'd consider Scorpions instead of Giant Spiders. They're very similar in stats, they have slightly less damage output, but I suspect their higher level of poison will more than make up for that against monsters they can poison.
Hi Zim, I agree with much of what Dalavar said, but can offer some different options. First, if you plan on fighting dragons with any single slot tames, I recommend taking veterinary. You can cover heals with magery, but its more costly and prevents you from smoothly putting out DPS as a warrior. My scorpion archer uses the following stats/build: 85str, 100dex, 40int (100 dex because it allows for 3 second vet heals, 40 int for gates) Taming 55 Magery 55 (I use gate scrolls) Lore 100 Vet 100 Archery 100 Tactics 100 Anatomy 100 Healing 90 This is just what works for me, but I know most players prefer taking magery over healing.
OK, super extra final suggestion, because more than one bard skill doesn't make sense to me as it would be at least 10 seconds into a fight before you got to take advantage of it: 100 Magery 100 Meditation 100 Music 100 Peacemaking 100 Animal Taming 100 Veterinary 60 Animal Lore (for extra healing and curing if needed) 40 Hiding/Tracking/Animal Lore At 100 Taming, 60 Lore, with the taming mask, you can have full control (99%) over Predator Hellcats for additional fun if you like. But Frenzies are mathematically the best choice and they wouldn't require the mask. Obviously if you want to hit stuff with weapons, it's not what you're looking for. But it's very distinct and I think it would be a lot of fun.
@Dalavar Those are all wonderful templates. Sadly though, I dont want to put in the time to take taming higher than 60 :/ I just dont have it in me anymore lol. If I was going to go GM Id prolly use some form of the second template or Taming/Lore/vet/Magery/med/Eval/Resist and farm and PvP with it. When I was considering what low level tames to use, I considered scorpions, panthers, and giant spiders. Scorpions are easy to tame on a freshly made toon and have GP. Panthers were scrubbed once I found that spreadsheet that darkwing made because scorpions outclass then in everything and can poison AND have pack instincts. I was considering scorpions until I found that giant spiders have pack instinct. Im gonna do some experimenting. A combination of scorpions to actually poison high level mobs, and spiders for their raw DPS might be something to think about. @Keza I was hoping yould see this. Do you run into trouble often deciding between healing yourself or your pets? Thanks again for all the advice!
Dalavar, can you link the info for pack instinct? Not sure if I'm just having a bad day searching or what.
It used to be included in the monster compendium pages on the site, but now it no longer seems to appear there. I'm going off of memory, and a stock RunUO codebase that I believe wasn't changed with respect to pack instincts and which animals have what.
Okay I did find some other info..that's quite a damage bonus from pack instinct. Mix up 5+ of those scorpions and spiders and they'd be dishing it out pretty good.
Hi Zim, I have no problems with healing the pets and myself using vet/healing. If fighting dragons, titans, or other caster, I can easily survive with a single bandage heal when pulling mobs. When mobs are already solo or manageable, I never take damage as the scorpions go in first. The majority of the time my pets take all the damage, which is why my healing is 90 and vet is 100.
