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Warriors and spells

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:22 pm
by Aglach
As a mostly pure warrior, I have 11 pracs in spells (8 in cure light and 3 in bless). Could those practices be put into something more warriorish? Is a "pure' warrior even practical? Or is a pure warrior something that wouldn't even advance in "Tolkien's Middle Earth"? I ask because it would be super pain in the rear to solo without CL. Or maybe I would just make my endurance so high I recharge in a few steps?

Just curious.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:38 pm
by Caerroil
While 8 pracs in cure light might be a little much, some 3-4 is more reasonable IMO, it doesn't have any large impact on your warrior abilities. So decaying all your spells, and scout skills, won't really make your natural hp-regen any better and it will be worse than what you can do with natural hp-regen and cure light.

Keeping a character 100% pure is IMO a very bad idea. A warrior will gain a lot from learning a little pick, some dodge and a few easy spells like cure light and bless while the loss will be quite small. Similar for all other classes, the gains from learning a few non-main class skills/spells usually far outweighs the penalties. That said not all skills/spells work very well if your main class isn't the same as that of the particular skill/spell.
So as a warrior you can easily learn a little pick and make good use of that but you can't do the same with sneak due to the fact that it is far more dependant on that the skill knowledge is very high (close to or preferably above 100%). The same holds for spells, but there you get a rough idea of how hard the spell is to get to work from the level of the spell. However there are spells that depend far more on a high knowledge in them than others. For example you can get some 20-25% in cure light and it will still work ok but if you do the same with the armour spell you won't get a working armour spell (it just won't absorb any real damage) despite both being low level spells.

As you already seem to know you can use "train off <skill/spell>" to decay practice sessions spent in a skill/spell and that way get them back. So don't be afraid of testing out some skill/spell you are curious about.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:26 pm
by Wobbler
I've never seen a need for more than 2 pracs in cure light, even at low level.
Maxing any warrior skill, endurance included, is a horrible idea; start practicing endurance around level 10 and stop around 20-25.
I would suggest spending 5-6 pracs decayed from cure light on remove poison (you will need it above 45%) so you can run away from darkies using envenom, aswell as solo-xp on rattlesnakes and tarantulas.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 2:50 pm
by Aglach
Great advice. Thank you very much!

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 9:50 pm
by Andróg
Wobbler wrote:Maxing any warrior skill, endurance included, is a horrible idea;
Hmmm.... so.... we have a legend whitie warrior with ~250 available pracs. What would you prac then, if you don't even max your warrior skills? Warriors don't have many things to prac after all. You'd prac 3 different weapon skills or something? :P

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 10:34 pm
by Caerroil
While most warrior skills gives very limited benefits from being maxed there are some that you do gain significant benefits from. Rescue being the skill benefiting (the one you rescue) the most from being maxed, also bash does have a real and good benefit even if it isn't quite as stable as one might want it to. The rest of the warrior skills have a very quick diminishing return on the pracs spent.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:10 pm
by Wobbler
I never have enough pracs to get all the out-of-class skills I want on any of my characters...

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 4:47 pm
by Andróg
Caerroil, everything you wrote I already know. Most of my chars (fortunately or unfortunately :P ) are warriors.

Wobbler, then they're called combos, not warriors. ;)

But now, back to the subject. We have a lvl26 dwarven warrior. That's 253 pracs, right?

Lets prac him:
Bash - 43
Cleaving - 29
Endu - 45
Parry - 25
Rescue - 15
Dodge - 9
Pick - 2
Bandage - 3
climb - 8
swim - 8
ride - 8
track - 27
wilderness - 27
cure light - 2
bless - 2
------------
Something like this is, I guess, is as pure as a warriors can get in MUME. That's 253 pracs. Given that the next 10 levels can come rather easily the warrior could put more into rescue, endurance, parry and dodge, or climb and swim. But even then - the warrior is in a situation where he has maxed nearly all his needed skills. So, what to you prac then, if you're not in this situation? :)

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 9:35 pm
by Caerroil
Andróg, none of my posts above were directed at you. Regarding your prac-set I have a few issues with it. I'd like around 2 more pracs in each of bandage, pick, swim, climb and ride if not you are highly likely to get below 90% in the last three and bandage will be below 40% and that is just too annoying (and barely working). Further I'd prefer to max rescue before bash, get around 15 pracs in dodge and a second weapon skill. I am not saying that warriors are short on pracs, they do just fine if you hold back on a few skills here and there, just that there isn't really any lack of things to prac.
The only warrior or mine I have been able to just more or less max every skill I want with is a non-tracking one, for all others I have no problem finding (useful) skills to spend new pracs in. It should also be noted that dwarven warriors generally have less of an issue with pracs than elves (as the other extreme) due to more or less suited stats for warrior and ranger skills. As an example I can take 3 of my warriors (a dwarf, a human and an elf; all with good track and decent defence) and the amount of pracs they had to spend to get above 100% in swim, which was 8, 10 and 12 pracs. It is similar for most other skills relevant for warriors, with dodge, pick and track being the notable exceptions where elves have an advantage over dwarves.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:31 pm
by Wobbler
I will go further and say I want more pracs in dodge, pick (many more!), bandage, possibly climb and swim (depending on stats), ride (max!), bless, and also slashing, remove poison, cure blind and detect magic. I would lower bash, cleaving, parry and wilderness by several pracs each. Then we have the non-crucial but useful skills like leadership and create food.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 12:10 am
by Andróg
In a rather random order, unfortunately:

First, I'm fully aware of the climb-swim-ride thing. I haven't "pracced" any warrior lately so I didn't exactly recall how many would be needed for 80-90% in it, so I guessed it's around 8 or so. Secondly, while it's justified in swim and climb, then imo 70-75% in ride does just fine too. Spending extra pracs just to avoid that rare splam here or there doesn't sound like a good use of pracs. Or is there some hidden movement-cost issue involved here, what I'm not aware of?

Bandage, my experience tells me - 3 pracs is enough. It barely works, but mostly "barely" is enough anyway. Finding someone with cure critic is usually quite easy.

Now, max rescue before bash? Well, perhaps - certainly an option. The last few pracs into bash don't give much, so definitely an idea worth considering.

You have a cleaving warrior and you want a second weapon skill? I'd call that simply a "luxury", not something what a cleaving warrior definitely needs. If he were non-cleaving, lets say conc&slash, then of course there's a point in that, but second weapon class as a cleaver is not a necessity.

Wobbler,
Bless works just fine with 2 pracs in it at legend level, even with quite minimal mentals. Of course, you'll probably fail to cast it from cold mana, but spending extra 2 pracs so you wouldn't fail the spell from low mana sounds like not a wise use of pracs.

Dodge - indeed, I pointed that out as well. I placed 9 in there because of "a random guess", a guess which tried to guess the amount after which the gain in percentages becomes rather insignificant.

Climb, swim, ride - already discussed.

Slashing as a cleaving warrior? For what? How much extra defence would you get with eng-bs compared to battle axe? Sounds like a luxury, not a must-have.

Remp, detect magic - we're talking about pure warriors, pure warriors don't have those. Besides, suppose we do get them, then, first, given the (very) low mentals of warriors you'll need a lot of pracs in them just to get them working on an OK level. But that also means that your "warrior-level" will drop and so will the percentages in warrior skills. (You'll also lose in max-hps&moves.) Taking all that into account I don't see remp and detm as necessary for a pure warrior. Cure blind - here you have a point, though. Given that I don't play casters much I can ask a newbie-question for a change - can a blinded person cast?

Leadership - I heard it's useless. Or?

Parry - I already lowered it by 4 from max! Lowering it further will make you lose in pb already noticeably. And the gain you might get in return from having more pracs in dodge will be dimished through praccing it out-of-class. Thus, you won't really gain in defence. (Guessing based on my experience here, though; I don't have a warrior in retirement whom I could log on just for "praccing experiments".)

Cleaving - perhaps, depends on the specifics of the percentages. Bash, in that list I maxed bash, one could of course lower it a bit, but I think maxing bash is somewhat more useful than maxing any other warrior skill.

Wilderness - here I strongly disagree. Of course you might need "create food" if you don't max wilderness. I have and will have maxed wilderness on all my warriors. The gain in move-cost and the practically non-existent need for food (and to lesser extent - water) are very useful. Probably not so much if you always play in groups, but I wouldn't want my warriors to rely on having a group. 140+% in wilderness is really neat to have.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 7:54 am
by Thurge
I find maxing bash irrelevant. I've got some 20 or so pracs in bash (80ish%), and it seems to work pretty well for pk, xp, and bashing random doors.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:38 am
by Caerroil
Thurge:
80% bash will work just fine when you are agg bashing stuff without much defence, but if you are in wimpy mood it will fail a lot vs. most things. As far as I can tell bashing doors doesn't depend on your bash skill (at least not much at all), your STR is by far the most important thing and after that it feels like level has a noticeable impact and then OB somewhat.

Andróg:
Try riding a mule with 75% ride and then with 100% and tell me there is no difference. Also 90+% is a necessity if you want to avoid falling off certain bridges.
While 80-90% in climb can work for a warrior I always get 100+% in swim due to the fact that warriors tend to carry around more weight than other classes thus they need more in swim to be able to do that ok, same goes for climb but you can avoid climbing in most cases where your 80% won't work but it is much harder to completely avoid swimming.
With 3 pracs in bandage you will only get "poorly bound" wounds, which isn't very useful. Get 41+% in bandage or just 1 prac, I strongly recommend the first.
The difference between a battle-axe and an engraved broadsword is 6 PB (while riding), so not really a trivial amount of PB. With a second weaponskill I didn't mean that you necessarily had to get slashing, concussion or two-handed weapons are also good options.
Bless does not work fine with 2 pracs in it for a legend warrior, even at level 55 with some decent mentals I need to cast it on thorough with 3 pracs in it to not have it backfire half the time. Detect magic only takes 1 prac for a warrior, so not really that hard to learn. Remove poison however is a lot harder, some 5-6 pracs I'd guess to make it work decently. (I have a pure elf warrior who has create food, detect magic, cure light, bless, cure blindness, and shroud and it didn't suffer much at all from learning those spells.)
Yes, you can cast while blind.
Leadership is of limited use, it will never really remove the delay from leading more than 2 completely but it will lower it and it will move the limit for making noise from the standard 2 persons to more depending on how much you have in leadership. If you regularly lead around more than 2 getting some leadership is highly recommended.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:45 am
by Wobbler
1 prac in detect magic is enough, and has helped me find *enemies* on a few occassions.
Rem poison is a must have when trying to flee from a group of *enemies* using arachnia far away from any safe spot (although few places are far away from safe spots these days). The loss of 2-3 max hps is well worth it.
One does not always have time to run 10 zones to a cure critter in the middle of a pk situation.

Even bob and str on a warrior with 13 int and 9 wis is not that costly in terms of hps and ob, only in pracs (and not very useful after the changes to said spells).

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:15 pm
by Andróg
Battle axe vs eng bs - I approximated that it's about that much, it's not entirely trivial, but is it worth a pile of pracs in slashing?

Second weapon skill again. Two things - (1.) is it really necessary to have a second weapon skill as a cleaver or is just a luxury? (2.) I still don't see why cleaving dwarves should have a second weapon skill.

Bless - I also said that it doesn't work fine, but mostly I - with sub-10 mentals - didn't backfire it from max or near-max mana. Extra pracs in it are necessary for being able to cast it from low mana. Thus my question - is it worth the pracs?

Next - I don't consider that elven warrior of yours "pure". It's rather a warrior with a few extras. Certainly not a combo, but not pure either. Something like 20-25 out-of-class pracs is probably the max to still consider the warrior a pure one. (Differs in case of casters, but should be about the same with scouts.)

I've never met a group of enemies using arachnia. Honestly. Perhaps they're more common today, but only poison-using people I've met are solo scouts. Also, the warrior of mine I've played most is a dwarf. Dwarves have a natural resistance against poisons and imo it is strong enough that I can peacefully solo-exp on rattlesnakes and tarantulas - I get poisoned very very rarely. Also, remp isn't that necessary, you could just as well get antidote. (You don't even have to mix it, take the 5 minutes and run to bm and back for a safe way to obtain that little bottle. ;) )

Int13, wis9 are rather high mentals for a warrior! Probably raised to get good track? My favourite dwarfie has like wis8, int10 or so. But bob is rather useless even with int13, wis9 mentals.

Besides, Wobbler, imho you're not really talking about pure warriors, but what you're interested in are called "bobbing warriors" or "warriors with basic casting quirks" or such.

Oh and, I didn't think about it before, but when you disagreed with the proposed prac set, then it had 25pracs in parry and 9 in dodge. Max parry is 29, max dodge is 23. How much dodge would you get then? Thing is, I'm not so sure that you'd gain anything in "defence". What you'd gain in db you'd lose in pb. Sure, db is somewhat better than pb, but you'll also lose in max hps/moves and in warrior guild percentages as a whole.

-------------------------------------

But now, when I think of it - we're getting slightly off-topic. My original emphasis after all was that warriors can nearly max everything they need while that is not the case for casters. Not even a lvl100 mage could have all the useful (mage) spells at a useful level. He still wouldn't have enough pracs. Lvl100 pure warrior, however, should have enough pracs for maxing all the necessary things.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:39 pm
by Wobbler
I last saw envenom used in pk by a non-scout less than 24 hours ago. Rattlesnakes and tarantulas are low-level mobs, not level 50+.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 6:10 pm
by Caerroil
Andróg wrote: But now, when I think of it - we're getting slightly off-topic. My original emphasis after all was that warriors can nearly max everything they need while that is not the case for casters. Not even a lvl100 mage could have all the useful (mage) spells at a useful level. He still wouldn't have enough pracs. Lvl100 pure warrior, however, should have enough pracs for maxing all the necessary things.
Not really fair to compare "all the necessary things" and "all the useful (mage) spells", a mage would manage with just one offensive spell, lets say lightning bolt. Sure it is better with a few more, but it isn't strictly necessary it is more of a "luxury" than a "necessity". So to make such a comparison fair you would have to make the warrior get all the useful warrior skills to a useful level, and then you wouldn't be able to max them all, though getting them to a useful level is no problem. Besides, a level 100 mage most likely can get all useful mage spells to a useful level. (Getting magic missile and chill touch and burning hands and shocking grasp to max doesn't really count as getting all useful mage spells, it counts as wasting pracs :) )
IMO no relatively pure character has any real lack of pracs at legend level, sure there will be things you want or things you want more pracs in but those things are more of a "luxury" than a "necessity".

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:17 pm
by Rogon
Andróg wrote: I've never met a group of enemies using arachnia. Honestly. Perhaps they're more common today, but only poison-using people I've met are solo scouts. Also, the warrior of mine I've played most is a dwarf. Dwarves have a natural resistance against poisons and imo it is strong enough that I can peacefully solo-exp on rattlesnakes and tarantulas - I get poisoned very very rarely.
I feel like humming innocently when reading your first sentence there ;)

Anyhow, my puke warrior (with 8 pracs envenom) was part of a group that killed an orc with the help of venom a while back. We did it, not by hitting the poison resistant orc, but by hitting his warg in brush, then blocking windswept. Long story made short - the orc couldn't get past windswept, his warg died, he died exhausted.

You don't get poisoned all that often these days. But when you do, if you're not prepared for it and you're far from safety, you're very likely to die.

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 10:16 am
by Andróg
I agree with that, Rogon, and I'm aware of the dangers of poisons. However, I still think that warriors should rather get antidote, than remp. :)

Re: Warriors and spells

Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 10:42 am
by Wobbler
Herblore mixing has a tendency to fail every now and then, particularly with low mentals.
They are not mutually exclusive, by the way.