VS: [Maelstorm 10 - Stamblade 0]

Ryuuhime

Here are some tips I'd like to share for you.

- First, if you have survival issues, changing from Rapid Strikes to Bloodthirst is a great option. The damage loss isn't too big, and the healing can be 5k for every time it hits. This with vigor gives incredible healing while making sure you can keep dpsing the mobs.
- Blood Craze is also a nice heal over time + good damaging skill that you should keep up on bosses as much as possible.

- Bow bar on back bar is too good to pass on as well: Poison Injection + Endless Hail are the skills you should use from it. Keep them up all the time for maximum damage.

- The Medium armour skill Shuffle is also a helper, as well as having a minimum of 18k health.

- Mundus: Thief + Shadow for TBS setups, or Serpent instead of Shadow if you have sustain issues.

Now regarding sets:

- TBS, Hunding's and NMG are great, though I prefer NMG myself.

- If you can, try getting into a group for normal trials (Sanctum Ophidia, Aetherian Archive, Hel Ra Citadel), they shouldn't be hard to find in zone as many people farm them. From those, you should get a 5 set of Vicious Ophidian, with 3 jewelry and 2 body pieces. The fifth bonus of this set will provide you with good sustain and damage, and the third piece bonus is superior to Agility. Blue jewelry will be more than good enough, with 2 armour pieces being Vicious Ophidian (Divines is the best trait, but well-fitted can be helpful as well). You said you only had around 1h of playtime per night, but that should be enough to complete 2 or 3 normal trials, even with zone groups.

- Make sure as many pieces as possible are Divines, and that your weapons are sharpened. Gear and enchants can be purple. If your sustain is good, go 3x Weapon Dame enchant on jewelry, if not add 1 or 2 reduced stamina cost enchants. Weapon enchants should be Increase Weapon Damage and Reduce Target armour.

Lastly, it will be painful at first. But don't give up, and make sure to refer to guides if you become stuck in some stages.

malicia

Thanks, Ryuuhime. Blood Craze especially seems like a good fit to my playing style. I'll play around with it a bit and see how to fit it into my rotation.

Vicious Ophidian would be nice to get. I'll try to work in some trial time. My trading guild seems to be remarkably active in trials, so I might even do some runs with them. But I'll wait with that until I've gotten rid of my remaining pieces of Night's Silence gear.

I'm sure it will be painful. But I'm having a lot of fun preparing for it, and I' m sure that the sense of accomplishment will make up for the pain of numerous deaths per round.

BNOC

Can't remember who recommended TBS but you're much better off in Viper and VO, you sacrifice damage running TBS.

If you kill something before it does any real damage to you, that's probably better than having and then losing that 1k extra health from the extra hit the adds get in because you've gimped your damage by running TBS - It's by no means a BAD set, I just wouldn't waste your time and or money golding it out.

malicia

BNOC wrote: »

Can't remember who recommended TBS but you're much better off in Viper and VO, you sacrifice damage running TBS.

I suspect that the reason they recommended TBS was that Viper and VO are both grouped items, and I am struggling to really find time to do grouped content. TBS was quite easy to get, so I'm using it now as a starting point.

Ryuuhime pointed out that a dungeon should take 20-30 min to complete, so with a more sensible build and after practicing my rotations a bit, I'll have more confidence joining grouped content without fearing that I'll let the group down. So maybe I'll be able to get hold of Viper's Sting, or VO.

kadar

BNOC wrote: »

Can't remember who recommended TBS but you're much better off in Viper and VO, you sacrifice damage running TBS.

If you kill something before it does any real damage to you, that's probably better than having and then losing that 1k extra health from the extra hit the adds get in because you've gimped your damage by running TBS - It's by no means a BAD set, I just wouldn't waste your time and or money golding it out.

Remember he's at 200CP. He won't have the damage to go full glass cannon nuke everything build anyway. Running VO and Viper at that level he'd have what like maybe 15k health tops?