Melee Action Questions

[andy707]

Hi:

I just started playing friday night having learned about the game from someone I met in Second Life. Having had sworn off playing mmorpg's for few month, I sort of went on a binge the last three days and leveled up to 48 in Melee. Also, I met some very fine folks who invited me to join the Divine Council of Pyr. I really enjoy the hunting in this game, the critter AI is the best, and with gingoes and goari running around, it certainly keeps you on your toes.

I have some question about melee actions.

1) I made actions with the "on parry" and "on dodge" stanzas. My main action is made from increase power and increase aim. I use that unless the parry and dodge actions light up, in which case I use those. (Parry comes up often but not dodge, I think because the aim stanza in my main action suppresses chance of dodge.) My question is, is this a good system? It's not clear to me whether this system is doing more overall damage than just using my main action (incr power and aim). Please advise.

2) My second question concerns all the actions (I think there are 15 in total) that target specific body parts? I'm guessing that the idea here not to buy all of them, since that would use up alot of skill points. So I'm looking for advice on these, whether to use them, how to use them, how good are they etc. I haven't noticed any difference in how much damage I do vs. what body part I hit. Do mobs have weakness than can be exploited with these attacks if you know which one to use?

3) Last question (for now , how good is the bleeding stanza and the one that slows down your target? Should I invest skill points in these? I'm thinking these might be worth more at higher level against mobs with huge hit points (boss mobs?) and which take along time to take out. But for now, whether soloing or teaming, battles are rather short, so I'm thinking these stanzas are probably not worth investing in vs. other skills and upgrades. What do you think?

Thanks,
Monco
Fynos Warrior Apprentice
Member of the Devine Council of Pyr

[amitst]

1
You have a choice of trying to dodge or trying to parry, this is selectable using the window that you use to sit down and stand up and so on...

Your dodge level is equal to your highest level overall.
Your parry level is equal to whatever melee skill is active.
These can be modified slightly by weapons and armor, but is displayed when you press p for character stats.
2
The specific body part actions are rather useless at the moment. If you notice, when you perform a critical strike, whatever body part you hit suffers a condition. For example if you critical strike the head, then you stun the enemy, however at this point the stun only lasts 1 second, and the chance of a critical hit is low. The only stanzas you should be using in fight is incrase damage and accurate attack, and maybe ignore armor or bleed if you have extra credits.
3
The stanza that slows down your target only slows down the enemy attack for a second, so it ends up being like a quarter second delay at best. so its def not worth the credits
The bleeding stanza if set to the level of your weapon, and if you get a maximum damage hit, will double your damage, but over time. While you are leveling up yoru first melee all of your available hp and stamina credit will go toward maxing out your increase damage and accurate attack. When you get to extremely high melee levels, or if you are fighting creatures weaker than you, then stanzas like bleeding become incredibly efective. You can hit them no problem so accurate attack is no longer necessary.

[aelvana]

I think blunt weapon slow slows attack rate, not movement. It just wasn't implemented for the first few months of release, then was added in a patch, maybe 3 months ago.

[thurgond]

There is a parry/dodge toggle. Depending on how it is set, you will do one or the other. Heavy armor reduces dodge a lot and medium armor some. Shields increase parry a lot. A shield with +25 to parry will make a huge difference (+50%) at your level. If you are concentrating on melee, learn after parry.

Using the after parry/dodge/crit credit, you can max your damage and accuracy, or even get in a free attack. Without this credit you cannot max damage and accuracy. My basic attack uses max accuracy and the next best damage with max stamina and hp credits. In large groups fighing critters well above your level you need to hit above doing maximum damage. I've got a max damage and next best accuracy attack for solo and dealing with agro mobs below or at my level.

Bleeding is good for solo and in small groups fighting mobs with a lot of hp, e.g. kipee. You can stack bleeds, so trying for a few bleeds at the start of a big fight can help a lot. Bleed isn't good for finishing a fight.

Ignore armor is better if you are using a pointy stick. It lets you do more damage than you damage brick would allow. Not may people use maces/staves (and I never have) so experience with slow is rare and hard to judge without a stopwatch.

At your level, I wouldn't recommend any of these skills until after you have bought all the stats, accurate attack, damage, etc. available. After level 50 if you work both 2hd and 1hd you'll get enough skill points to start branching out into these skills.

[holstad]

Well, guess it's pretty clear stated here....The main rule in melee is to use as high accuracy attack as you can have from your current level combined with as high increase damage your current stanzas allow you to use (hp/stam usage).

To be honest I didn't start using the "after parry" stanza before i hit lvl 250.
But it might be very useful...
After finishing on melee tree, and doing a few levels on some others i bought all "after parry's" and "bleeding" i could get...just to see how they worked out.
With using all my highest stanzas i am able to use a 750 credit action (inc. dmg /accuracy attack/bleeding)...and it seems like the bleeding is quite effective when you count the damage it does over time.

But as i said, i did fine without any of these extra stanzas at all.

If you choose to level further on pike (level 101+) my opinion is that the ignore armor + after parry is more "a must have".
Since certain mobs have piercing resistance you are able to ignore this resistance and hit them with full power.....(this also goes for pvp)
So as a second attack for pike i would have used a max accuracy/max increase dmg/after parry/ignore armor attack.

Auto aim's (hit certain body parts)...don't even bother to spend skillpoints at them....In my opinion they are crap..

Hope this wasn't too confusing....

Ishy.

[iwojimmy]

you have to select EITHER dodge OR parry for your defensive technique..
Parry is good if you are using melee and it is your best skill, especially if you are using a shield also.
Dodge is good if you are using magic, or a lower (secondary) melee skill.. If you try to parry with magic amps on, it will be at your close-combat skill level.
If your magic is sufficiently higher than your melee, it may be better to stay with dodge anyway. Hit 'P' and look at the numbers when you are fully equiped to see which is best.
personally, I use an ~economical mix of accurate attack and increased damage at ~2/3 my capability as my standard attacking action, with a full power max damage option set for 'after parry' .. and an alternative less economical action with 'ignore armour' available for fighting armoured opponents. Dont have ignore armour in your standard attack, as not every creature has armour.

The most useful suggestion for the Aim at body parts, is aiming at human heads, as casters dont wear helmets (afraid of helmet-hair), but light armour doesnt make a lot of difference anyway.

Bleeding is supposed to be useful.. not a cutting expert myself , Slow doesnt seem to have many (any) fans, but Ignore Armour is definitely worthwhile.
You must, of course, be using the appropriate weopon type.

[aelvana]

I agree with max Accurate Attack, then Enhanced Damage, with one thing to keep in mind -- if you're soloing on lower end mobs, and hitting for good/max damage almost every hit, Accurate Attack isn't helping much. Other than soloing weaker mobs, though, I'd go for Accurate Attack over Enhanced Damage.

[andy707]

Thanks much, all of your replies were *very* helpful.

I checked my parry/dodge toggle and I had it set right, on parry.

Fortunately I only spent 10 skill pts on the aim for body parts, I quickly got the impression they didn't work, and you all have confirmed that.

aelovana: I checked Slow 1 and it does say that it slows enemy *attack*. Since nobody has recommended this, I'll shy away from it.

I made a second standard attack with max accuracey and then the highest damage my credits will allow. So I have one with damage maxed for low level mobs and the other with accuracey maxed for high level mobs.

I noticed that by putting more credits in than you need to cast, you get a bonus which increases success rate. In one case, when balanced the success rate was 80%, with all the credits I had, it went up to 92%. So another thing to ponder: is the extra sta/hp cost worth the increased success rate?

I'm going to continue using the after parry stanza. I like having an extra button to push anyway, makes combat feel more engaging, even if it is just pressing another button when it lights up.

I'll hold off on bleeding and ignore armor until I have spare skill points. I was planning to stick to 2h slashing weapons, which I've had the most success with so far, but I'll take another try at piercing as some of you appear to like them.

Thanks again,
Monco
Fyros Warrior Apprentice
Member of the Devine Council of Pyr

[aelvana]

Blunt/slow is great for ONE thing, IMO -- tanking! Your damage will suck, but you'll die less often than other tanks and give your healers more room to do other things during fights. Since NO one uses slow (it was only implemented recently), I imagine any tanks that do so may develop nice reputations too 8)

I thought of it, but personally went for piercing, which is the best damage dealer, on the other end of the spectrum.