Template decisions

So I created a character after reading on the forum and being inspired by those that have talked about tamer / melee templates. My ultimate goal for this character was to have a lone Nightmare to ride in on, hop off at whatever monster, and slash their faces while my trusty mount helps make short work of them!

Well, I became a little too ambitious with my skills while leveling to 700 real skill points and now I'm not sure what to choose. I started with 50 magery and 50 taming (figured the magery would be useful and could be dropped down later).

Next I trained up and am at *roughly the following: 85 tactics, 95 anat, 80 healing, 70 animal lore (still have a lot of work to do on my 30 Veterinary), 70 hiding, and I used an axe to train 95 swords, so now I'm at 60 LJ.

I'm 100% willing to drop hiding ( just lightly macroed it with animal lore and anatomy a bit) but I've grown quite fond of wielding axes. That's 8 total skills, though, and doesn't even count any magery at all.

Should I: a. Give up LJ beastly damage and just do swordsmanship - b. Give up taming (still only at 50) on this character and keep Lumberjacking? If I do "b." what should I do with my other 2 slots? Resists and magery? Music and peace? (Already have a provo fencer)? Do a Keza-style ozzy tank with just vet and animal lore? (I feel I would be disappointed in this, as my initial plan was a Much stronger nightmare mount.

Anyone have ideas or suggestions that may have tried one or more of these templates?

Thanks a ton!

I'd urge you to finish what you started.

GM anatomy, animal lore, animal taming, (weapon)
90 tactics, healing, veterinary
30 magery (recall with scroll / goal of blessed runebook)

Is a very tight template that compromises itself to use a nightmare. The shame of it is, with these skills you can field
the traditional 2 dragons and a mare. I feel that this defeats the purpose of the OssyTank.


By using ostards, it affords you 90 taming so that you may GM veterinary

I think you might be making the mistake of comparing this character to others on a meta scale.
That might leave you always disappointed.

I run a disco tamer, gm disco music magery med lore taming vet, I frequently hunt with a single mare. Disco takes a ton of umph from harder hitters. It's not always the fastest kill but I generally walk away the victor. Also the versatility of gm mage helps a ton. Just my input gl

@Ikibahdm

I ran a Macing then a fencing tamer with:
100 weapon skill
100 magery
100 anatom8y
100 veterinary
100 tactics
100 animal taming
100 animal lore

thats 700 skillpoints.
I like macing for the crushing blow and against high HP mobs you slow their stamina down making them hit your pet slower,thus easier to heal the melee damage of tough high end mobs or mid level boss mobs.
I kept my stats at :

225 total divided as:
100 dex for swing speed and 3 sec veterinary bandage timer
50 int for gate and magic reflect
85 str (Gives you like 93hp) But if you are taking damage you are doing something wrong,if its not a PK. But see below for that:

its a PvM template anyway and also with those stats mindblast even without resist will just tickle you (always have magic reflect up though!)

anyone wanna weigh in on this with more experience than me?

my experience, i cut through balrons like carving a cake. Took down the Balron boss twice too with a little help cross healing my pet

I too turned my tamer into a discordance/enticement tamer and it beats the melee tamer ,since you have to position yourself also in melee to not draw aggro and get hit,but also be in range to hit the mob and heal the pet thats taking the damage. Its not hard by any means at all its just a minor annoyance at times. With disco you can literally put on some disco music and watch that balron prance around like a puny daemon lol. Any thoughts on my above post? You or anyone else with experience with tamers? @Prison Bound ?

Archery works well with this style of build

Yes and no in my opinion,yes for when another persons pet is tanking and yes for champ&certain special circumstances but compared to a warhammer and crushing blow your archer will be doing less than half the DPS compared to the Warhammer, or a short spear. Assuming all weapons are slayers and archer is using a bow or Xbow(not heavy). See Kezas DPS test to confirm archery DPS to be the lowest of all weapons,but useful like you say for certain situations.

Love your avatar by the way..
Im so hungry i could eat a baby!!
I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back...ribs.

@That Guy Fat bastard ^^ I bet you eat boss mobs even. "GET IN MY BELLY!"

I am going to jump in on this!
not because I necessarily know everything about taming (currently making my first tamer ever)
but because this seems fun and I wanna problem solve with you.

first lets look at facts.
this is what I count your skill situation to be based on what you listed...

tactics / anatomy / healing / lore / vet / swords / LJ / magery / taming / hiding
that's 10 right there.
for pvm you're spread too thin, so lets widdle it down based on your opening statement and what I believe your true sense of purpose for this temp is.

taming 100
lore 100
vet 90
swords 100
tactics 90
LJ 80
magery 80
anatomy 60

strength 85, dexterity 80, intelligence 60

you're 8 skilled so you can brag about not 7Xing
you will want to use gate scrolls to get your pet out should too many monsters swarm it or pks come and you won't be able to hop back on it while it is fighting, so for this reason i view magery as a must (this is rarely the case for me)
your mare will be your dmg tank so all bandages should be focused on it, not you, hence no healing.
any healing you will need for yourself can be done via magery.
vet should work like healing does and not fail at 90 (except for curing a high level poison like DP)
the difference between 80 and GM LJ is very tiny so don't feel like you're sacrificing massive damage loss here, you will still hit hard.

EDIT: why 60 int? because you don't want to need to gate ASAP and not have the available mana to do it. 80 dex will keep your axe swinging and those vet heals going just fine.

A simple macro that says all follow me then double clicks the mare will Insta mount you unless it's poisoned, even with a group of mobs on the mare

You can also easily use a single macro that will mount you if dismounted or dismount if mounted:

Assistant.Macros.IfAction|6|-1|0
Assistant.Macros.HotKeyAction|1473|
Assistant.Macros.ElseAction
Assistant.Macros.DoubleClickAction|1839852|179
Assistant.Macros.EndIfAction

Just re-record (re-target did not work) the action of double clicking your mount to replace the one in the macro.

80 LJ and 60 anatomy, kind of defeats the purpose of lumberjacking.
If you truly want lumberjacking crammed in on a tamer template, GM all skills put magery at 20 for scroll recall and use another char to gate you around. Remove 20 points from tactics if you have a GM weapon or 10 points from tactics and 10 from Lumberjacking or Veterinary. GM everything else. With little need for much int to recall you can go with 100str for maximum carnage though i would go with 90str, 100 dex, 35 int. This is totally a PvM template so worrying about how youre gonna deal with 2 reds doesnt matter,you either escape or die if they arent clueless and inept and target your pets and each other.

also the cutoff for 3.5 sec vet timer is 81 dex not 80. See the healing skill section for all dex bandage timers on self,pet or other players. 3 sec at 99+ dex.

Im bringing this back up,you need to get back to basics my friend, the LJ template i suggested will work but if its your first tamer you may not be used to having a gatebot char for traveling and hunting on a character that has to gate,for his pets,but cant.

Go with warhammer rather than fencing if you plan on killing strong,high hp mobs that hit your pet hard in melee aside from their spells.
@Prison Bound what do you think of this or the LJ template above? To keep it basic and effective for a new tamer.

I mean there are pvp tamer templates and Disco+provo full bard tamers..i think he should stick to the basics on his first attempt. I did and it worked extremely well with macing and more than okay with fencing. With LJing you cant gate yourself but it would do INSANE damage if you had a gatebot char with hiding and stealth, gate in, switch to tamer and go in gate with pets. Hide gatebot char,and he can recall out with loot every 15-20 min. Then he gates you out. Keep him 1.5 screens away so if your tamer dies you can recall out with any loot you may have from being hidden and far enough away (And magic reflect always up on this char). They likely wont know you were there or care.

Most of it comes down to personal preference and making sure your build is adequately-suited to your playstyle and hunting conditions. As a primary (or solo) tamer, LJ is not worth it, in my opinion. To make effective use of the LJ, you're consuming 400 skill points. With taming and lore, that leaves only 100 points and lacking resist and/or the mana to open two gates (in case you lose mana on a blocked gate) because you have to take into account the unexpected like PKs, additional mobs, pet deaths, etc.

If you want to do a melee tamer for your primary, go with @Cordelia Black 's build and leave off the LJ. Like he said, crushing blow is nice for the extra damage but my wife has a fencing tamer which is handy to keep from having to chase mobs all over the place when they're low on HP.

Personally, I'm still a big fan of eval tamers, especially as a primary character, because they can do anything by themselves and you have the ability to mana dump into a mob with good results. With secondary tamers, where you have additional tamers (either yours or other peoples'), you have more room to play with when picking a build. With most fights and mobs you're likely to encounter, all you need is one solid tank pet and one vet. Feel free to forgo the vet or med or even magery on the secondary char. The LJ build works well for this because you have another character to gate you around or heal pets.

@Prison Bound
i Agree with 100% with the above provided help/info and only going to add:

Not only crushing blow for macing (warhammer only).
But on boss mobs or strong mobs like shadow wyrms or the elder wyrm (ancient wyrm boss) you will sap their stamina down to 0 making their melee attacks come in slow motion,thus reducing damage taken by the tanking pet SIGNIFICANTLY. But that is mainly noticeable when youre taking on something bigger than you could solo on your own. Like the balron boss or the ancient wyrm boss (elder wyrm) or a shadow wyrm (normal mob but hard to solo)

i had two ogres attacking my frenzied ostard in Ocllo dungeon and I kept trying to bring him away and mount him but getting a message similar to "you cannot do this when he is fighting"
i finally just had to invis the ostard and then all follow me remount.
but never had a mare

all follow and mount should always be enough,and get a tile or five away from the mob/pk if ya can,even if your pet has aggro aslong as IT isnt fighting back you should have no trouble mounting it. Theres a setting in options though that may interfere,it toggles wether you can mount/dismount while in war mode. Check that out to be safe,i doubt thats the issue but its a quick thing to take a look at.

That's why it's handy to have a macro like @That Guy suggested with an "all follow me" followed by mounting. You may have to spam the "all follow me" and mount quickly because if the pet gets aggro again, it will fight and is not able to be mounted.

Whatever allows you to have fun is what you should look into. If you like going into an orc fort with just a nightmare, then by all means, HIT IT!!

If you like going for boss monsters, then go tame/lore/vet/music/disco/magic/(provo or eval or med or taste id).

I'd drop healing completely, which I think others have mentioned. And I don't think archery is that far behind the war hammer in DPS, particularly since it essentially never misses when you're 1-2 tiles away and standing still.