Final Placement 02/11/2012 12:09 PM CST
My 30-day is up on Wednesday and looking to finalize my stats. Not sure how far I'll take her, but I figure this should do well until 50-ish. Any suggstions? Sorry about the format :/

>info
Name: * Race: Sylvankind Profession: Bard (not shown)
Gender: Female Age: 0 Expr: 150467 Level: 11
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 89 (19) ... 89 (19)
Constitution (CON): 82 (16) ... 82 (16)
Dexterity (DEX): 75 (22) ... 75 (22)
Agility (AGI): 82 (21) ... 82 (21)
Discipline (DIS): 85 (12) ... 85 (12)
Aura (AUR): 65 (12) ... 65 (12)
Logic (LOG): 71 (10) ... 71 (10)
Intuition (INT): 31 (-9) ... 31 (-9)
Wisdom (WIS): 55 (2) ... 55 (2)
Influence (INF): 68 (9) ... 68 (9)

* (at level 11), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 62 13
Combat Maneuvers...................| 62 13
Polearm Weapons....................| 108 26
Physical Fitness...................| 62 13
Dodging............................| 62 13
Harness Power......................| 54 11
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 30 6
Mental Lore - Telepathy............| 30 6
Perception.........................| 62 13

Spell Lists
Bard...............................| 11
Training Points: 25 Phy 0 Mnt (8 Phy converted to Mnt)

>info start
Level 0 Stats for *, Sylvankind Bard

Strength (STR): 86
Constitution (CON): 80
Dexterity (DEX): 70
Agility (AGI): 79
Discipline (DIS): 84
Aura (AUR): 60
Logic (LOG): 70
Intuition (INT): 21
Wisdom (WIS): 50
Influence (INF): 60

~Imaera's Favorite
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/13/2012 08:31 AM CST
Looks good to me. A few suggestions below.

I wouldn't bother with air lore until 30 or so. Then start bumping it up so you hit the RT reduction threshold for Song of Tonis before 35 (30 ranks).

If you are planning to use a lance you might want to migrate a few more points into agility. Hit the 53 AGIDEX bonus to drop 4 seconds off your RT. You will swing at 5 seconds, and 3 seconds at level 35. You're at 43 bonus right now. I would put AGI at 88 and DEX at 80, increasing the bonus to 53 :D

I'd drop perception and get some climb and swim ranks. Perception isn't doing much for you until later on - or when you start to do bandit tasks. And even then, not sure it is worth it at low to mid levels.

I would migrate all your air lore TPs into mental lore Telepathy. Cheapest AS boost you can got via Kai's Triumph:
http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Kai's_Triumph_Song_(1007)

Hit the 12 rank mark to pick up 3 AS.

ML:T is also great for extending song duration (2s/rank) and raising the hard renewal duration of Song of Tonis.
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/13/2012 09:42 AM CST
And I completely disagree about EL:Air lore: get every rank you can, if you are swinging a Sonic Weapon Song/1012. Having the chance to get additional flares is worth the training points. (Particularly since a relatively modest investment of skill can pay off fairly quickly: 12 ranks gives a 9% chance of the additional flare.)
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/13/2012 10:22 AM CST
The air lore isn't necessary until about level 25 when you'd truly begin to use 1012 with some regularity. Part of that reason is because of the mana requirement to run it and the other is that you need levels to make it equivalent to a +20 weapon. So, you need a happy medium between the two suggestions. Getting the lance rt down to 5 seconds is important. If you can find some AGI/DEX enhancives for cheap, consider going that route since some of those stats grow alright. Regardless how you do it, getting AGI/DEX to a 53 bonus should be a primary concern. I would never use a weapon in which my base round time was greater than 5 seconds. Time and encumbrance (in the form of RT and raising crit susceptibility) might be the two greatest factors to success while hunting in this game. This plays out a lot later in hunting when using song of tonis with regularity, as you are in shorter and shorter rt's.

Telepathy lore is good for the reasons stated. Keep training in it. Look at stopping points with thresholds, such as 18 ranks. Going higher is great but there's a point where stopping is wise because the investment is unnecessary. Better to switch to manipulation lore, get some MMC/AS/MIU or start over training in CM. Soon you should consider getting the MMC regardless, as you should desire around 30 total ranks. Getting these ranks sooner than later is wise because both 1013 and 1040's effectiveness can hinge on the skill.

You could leave your training just like it is, frankly. I think it's effective and acceptable, while being pretty standard. It's a standard for a reason.

However, your stats don't appear to be based for growth. The mental stats are low and the physical fairly high. DIS/LOG/INT/WIS all grow pretty damn slow for a sylvan bardess. CON/STR are the slowest growing physical stats. Simply put, you can't afford to have your AGI/DEX/INF/STR as high as you began them with. Having said that you basically need to decide what's important to you just as I did. Stats at cap versus training points early versus early playability. Any way you turn it you are denying yourself mtp here at low levels and you will be converting ptp to cover that shortage either now or by the time you are in your 50's playing catch up on mental skills.

If you were to base stats purely for growth and purely to gain as many 100's at cap as possible it looks like going with the following is a good route:
CON 77
DEX 49
DIS 88
LOG 88
INT 82
STR 70
AGI 62
INF 33
WIS 52
AUR 58
This would give you all 100's except in WIS which would top at 87.

That choice is yours. As it is currently, you will be more than fine and hunting is certainly going to be easier here at your low to mid levels.

~Galenok
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/13/2012 11:01 AM CST
The other thing I am not seeing is MoC. 5 ranks are a good idea, bare minimum. I'd run it to about 20-30 ranks myself. The FoF assistance is more important than the ability to hit three critters or one twice. Offensively, using a lance, you are better off using tonis to shorten your rt to 3 or 4 seconds than to use the MoC for 9-12 second rt's even with Tonis running. Eventually, I aimed my lance for the neck because being 1.3x in CM made landing shots pretty effective and hasted it only took about 4 seconds.

However, at level 11 or 50, using the MoC to hit two critters is almost always a more efficient use of RT.

~Galenok
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/14/2012 06:38 AM CST
Thanks for the feedback. Decided to tweak the stats a bit

CON = 70
STR = 89
DEX = 79
AGI = 81
DIS = 80
AUR = 69
LOG = 50
INT = 21
WIS = 50
INF = 71

I also moved Air Lores into Telepathy for now. Once TPs stop being so tight, I'll build up both. Same goes for MOC. As of now, I'm planning to hit around level 50 with this PC, if I progress further, I'll just get a Fixstats from the AG and plan for end-game. I'm aware of the mental stuff, but it seems that Int is always tanked. Going to drop all ranks of Perception the next two days and feed the points into MOC before skills are locked and see if there's a difference.

~Imaera's Favorite
Reply
Re: Final Placement 02/21/2012 12:30 PM CST
Looks solid.

I think Krakii's notes on Air Lore are completely acceptable, but I found using a 4-5x weighted lance + slumber to be far and away a better weapon into my 30's. As Gale noted, you need the levels to make the sonic weapon decent. Prior to those levels, you'll be mostly killing things in 1-2 hit(s). Who needs flares?

Once you're swinging sub 5 seconds, and have the TPs to drive air lore way up, you've got a weightless, 7x double flaring lance of doom-sauce - a good upgrade.
Reply