f13.net

I was playing MP with a buddy last night who is a 39 Summoner. He's a bit further ahead of me and he was telling me all day (on AIM) about how shitty Talos is and how badly he's going to kick my ass when I'm there. Blah blah "it's the only encounter so far that consistently kicks my ass"

Well, Talos killed me once. I had no idea that he had an attack that stuns you for 10 seconds and does about 1800 dmg. Once I knew that, he died easily. My buddy had to join a game and WATCH me do it, because he just couldn't believe it.

I fired it up again and recorded it this morning. Kinda cheezy, but shows my mmo kiting skills.

SOOFSAYER 4 LIFE.

http://content.eefoof.com/video/2292 (http://content.eefoof.com/video/2292)

It's funny how I usually end up with a totally broken build in every game I play. When I signed up with EQ2 to play on the PVP server I SPECIFICALLY looked for the weakest, most interesting class possible (dirge) because I've played nothing but overpowered shit for years and years.

The other video I have is killing the end boss on normal difficulty, which isn't too amazing really. http://content.eefoof.com/video/2160 (http://content.eefoof.com/video/2160)

Looks like I'll have fun with my assassin eventually.

Ranger is only moderately broken. Full-up puncture shot arrows decimate things if I can coax them into a straight line, otherwise I'm just a single-target moderate-damage guy who's really heavily stocked into piercing damage, so armored enemies are chumps and the undead make me scream like a little girl.

On the upside, fully-upgraded Heart of Oak means nothing's oneshotted me yet, even in Legendary mode. 5000 HP for the win.

However, melee bosses can be chumpified if I trigger my Trees ability at the right time; with good timing, meleers get 'stuck' between trees, unable to move, attack or die. They just kind of wiggle and spin until the trees go away; if you take their health to 0, they'll drop their stuff and keep spinning until the trees go away, and then they'll fall over dead.

Trees lasts 30 seconds and has a 2 minute recharge; if I trigger it too early or against ranged enemies, the enemies chop the trees down and I'm all :sad_panda:

I play a bow wielding slayer, kills pretty much any boss in a few seconds. Can't tank for shit though, so I get killed in one hit on legendary difficulty bosses. I don't even know who Talos is so I guess he died fairly fast  :-P

I hope you have study prey, it's the best skill in the hunter tree pretty much. I don't know exactly how the numbers stack up, but killing for example a zombie mob without study prey is 20~ arrows, perhaps more, with study prey on it's 2-3 arrows.

 :-o

Next level or skill point and I will get that skill. I was avoiding it because it looked crappy.

Talos took us like 5 mins to kill the other night.  That guy is crazy for a melee to even try.

Where is he? Sounds like he'll be tough.

Knossos(spelling?) - near the end of the Greek Act. Where you first see the statue soldiers in normal difficulty, you'll see a huge statue that's immobile. He's not 'active' in normal, but he is in epic/legendary.

From Nija's video, it looks like a lot of his big moves are heavily telegraphed, so it will just e a lot of "hit and run" for a melee.

Well, keep in mind I'm hitting him with some stuff that slows his attacks by 33%, so they normally go off a bit quicker.

Alrighty I did one of those epeen vids as well.

http://content.eefoof.com/video/2340 (http://content.eefoof.com/video/2340)

I'm using the dmg aura from hunting, call of the hunt and sudy prey.

haha, shit. HAX!

edit: well, I've wanted to make a bow guy for awhile. That seals the deal. I've also got enough lighting equip that I MUST make a Storm based caster of some type. I had some good dual wield melee weaps but I just can't do it.

Don't make melee. You suck later on. I'm gonna make an imba bow guy too.

Bleh, am I gonna be the only guy man enough to stick with melee?

Im a spear ranger and i think im gonna stick with it, i havent got very far yet but i think im doing ok.

I have pretty imba items on my slayer though, and are level 49 compared to the 38 soothsayer. Hunting really starts to shine on the later difficulties compared to the other classes though, since it's pierce dmg. I don't know exactly how much armor and whatever pierce dmg ignores the mobs have at legendary, but I can still kill stuff in a timely fashion.

Hunting/Storm sounds pretty cool; that was my original plan before I went into nature. Then I whined and bitched about nature until I realized the Heart of Oak & Trees! lines are pretty awesome.

Still playing conqueror on Epic, still owning everything with ease. Somebody point me to a difficult to play combination. I don't so much think that there are overpowered builds as underpowered gameplay.

Such a timeless quote in italics there.

Maybe it's just me then, because I basically get wtfpwned in Legendary.  Does everyone?  My chick @ L38 has some pretty sick equipment.  (someone should make a mod that lets you do a 1 shot print screen with all your equipment).

I'm barely hanging on in some sections of Legendary Act 1 (undead sections and archer sections, mostly) while other sections aren't so bad (melee/tight corner sections).

My juggernaut hasn't really seen much trouble though I'm only just starting Act 3 of normal. I do however have a problem with the worms from Egypt. What the hell is up with those? No matter what resists I got up they could take a hunk of my health in one hit (the greyish/blue ones.) I eventually went cheap and ran around them with my fire shield dinging them while I lobbed fireballs.

Oh yeah, the proc from the defense line that can do 20 something + healing per second is awesome. One boss wasn't doing any damage cause the healing was outdoing him and kept procing often enough for me not to have to use a potion. I'm sure that won't do much good once my health gets higher than 2000. By the way, do your skills go up as your skills points in the mastery go up? Or is the dmg and what not set in stone once you max it out? If so, Epic may be a bit tough.

Yes those worms are stupid in melee. My Conqueror always kill them with my backup bow (without skills or +piercing damage).

Reverse epeen vid. Talos nearly whooping my ass after I gained 4 levels tonight.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DyqiiUXpvh8 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=DyqiiUXpvh8)

I have an amazing new staff, but I guess the level difference is just too big. Before he was 44 when I was 38 - this time he's 50 at 42. Despite getting 3/4ths of the way through the Orient, my "strongest enemy killed" is still Talos. Egypt is way too easy.

It didn't look like you had much of a problem there; just more running around than before.

Hopefully, I'll get to make a video of an Assassin going toe-to-toe with the guy. What did you use to make the video? I've never done one before.

FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/) would probably work best.

I've been playing melee since day one and haven't started to suck yet.  This game seems much too easy, too.  I'm about to ditch it.  Righ still enjoys it, though.  His highest character is melee and hasn't started to suck, too.  I think some of you just suck at creating melee characters.

That's what I think, that is.

There may be more paying attention to damage types as a melee specialist. My character has a stack of jewelery with different resistances for certain otherwise tricky fights. The biggest jumps between the chapters appears to be the reduction in base resistances. I noticed it when silly little skeleton casters started forcing me to quaff potions in Epic. A check of my character showed me that I now had a -40% cold resistance. Changed one ring and they became trivial again.

Indeed.  I was having a little trouble with the last guy on the first chapter until i picked up a couple lightning resist rings for my melee guy, after that it was a breeze just straight up tanking him.

I made a 'big deal' out of Talos because he's messed up.

Here's the end boss on epic for comparison. The only thing that has changed between this and my longer Talos video is my helm and I gained one level. The hat just has more resists and a bit more armor. I've got max elemental resists in Epic (staff adds 60% across the board, that helps a lot) so I'll be at 40ish % already in Legendary.

However, I have -35% poison resist so that'll be my biggest weak point.

Higher quality versions are in http://nija.dyndns.org/TQ/ (http://nija.dyndns.org/TQ/) this dir but that's my home machine, so expect 40kps. (not sure why higher quality would be needed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57NNvWJtFf4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57NNvWJtFf4)

Err...could you explain what happens in that video? just looks like you wave your wand a few times and the guy dies....?

Broken build. I've got ternion attack at 13/12 (+1 from an item) which gives me +8% or +10% elemental damage.  I've got a few more items that give +% to elemental damage but I'm unsure of the exact ammount.

I use "Dark Covenant" out of the spirit tree which decreases health over time and you get incredible energy regen. I regen something like 80 energy per second while under dark covenant.

"Refresh" from the Nature tree - instantly refreshes all skills. So I can run Dark Covenant 100% of the time.

"Unearthly Power" is a child-skill to Dark Covenant which gives me +50% elemental damage, +50% damage, and +50% vitality damage. (i'm not sure I have any vitality dmg) HOWEVER, my liche has a HUGE vitality attack that you see him use twice in that video, which takes about a quarter of Typhon's health each time he does it.

Now, with that crap going I've got a staff that does about 140 base dmg with tons of mods, it's nuts. About 800 dps before I hit that mastery shrine.

I'm using Ternion attack which is 3 staff shots at normal attack speed, so 800 dps x 3

Now I hit that mastery shrine and summon the pets, they're all basically max or close to it. DC at 7/6 becomes 12/6 or something retarded with mastery, so I'm regening who knows how much power (i'll screenshot this maybe tonight if there is any interest, just to see the math) and my unearthly power at 9/8, giving more than +50% elemental damage and 50% TOTAL dmg is now at ... 14/8? 13/8? Something nutty.


That big blue guy you see me summon is normally a 30 second summon. You can get him to about 1 minute 15 seconds I think if you max him, which I might do. The key to DC and that blue summon dude is the nature tree and refresh. Refresh costs like 120 energy and makes it so I don't have to wait 5 minutes to resummon the blue guy, like you normally do. Refresh can be used every 15 seconds I think. (Not sure exactly how long) Plus, being nature, I can heal myself. So running DC for it's 20 seconds (or however long) I can heal myself back up to full if needed and keep my 30 second summon guy out, all the while doing double damage, running at 166%, and regenerating 80 energy per second. When DC goes down, I just recast it, resummon my guy, then hit refresh, heal, and continue.

Sorry for the rambling but I've got a lot on my mind these days. I can take some sshots with some mouseovers that explain it much better than I can. I'll do that tonight.

What's the signifigance of elemental damage?

Staffs are either ice, fire, or lightning dmg. You can find items that give you +% damage or +hard numbers to certain damage types. Like a "double" ring that does something like +10% fire dmg +2-8 fire dmg. If you have +% elemental damage, that just means you can use a fire staff and get a bonus to damage and have an ice staff and also get a bonus to that damage as well, without finding an item that has +ice/fire % (i've never seen both on one item)

Now, sometimes you'll find a staff that is like 70 base fire dmg, +20% ice damage +15 ice damage. It would be much more useful if it had a base of actually ice damage so the big +20% stacks with that.

The weapon I have now is a purple staff called the Chromatic staff I believe. It does one of the following things each time i autoattack - 120 base fire damage OR 105-130 ice damage, OR 60-160 lightning damage.

With my item and skill based +elemental damage that makes every staff hit, regardless of the type that particular shot is, ridiculously powerful. That silly staff also has +% bonuses for all types of elemental damage, like +25% fire/lightning +27% ice. The list of stats it gives is a mile long.

Working on a summoner myself, trying to work up Earth Enhancement and the Core Dweller ( With all it's extra skills ) added with Regrowth, Heart of Oak and Sylvan Nymph in the Nature tree. Would I do well to invest in some attack skill in Earth and/or the Wolves in Nature?

I find the wolves really annoying. They like running up to blade/ice/fire traps and autoattacking them, getting hit by 3 blades at once. I spent more time healing and resummoning them than they did kicking ass.

The dryad is pretty awesome though. Also, be sure to resummon everything after you hit a mastery shrine. The levels on the sumons will stick after the shrine effects wear off.

For buffs like Heart of Oak, however, if you recast it it'll expire when the mastery effect does.

I've built up a conjurer (spirit/earth) and between the fire buff and full ternion attack, epic Typhon drops ridiculously fast. The big Dragon Liche gave me much more of a headache.

That said, I can take about a hit and a half from anything, then it's dirtnap time. I swapped all my damage boosting equip for resist and armor, and could take slightly less than 2 hits before death.

Hunting/Earth, I w1n

well, so far so good as an Avenger anyways.  The ability to dmg buff your range attacks is nifty, but don't know how it compares to other spell range attackes

Downside to overpoweredness...

I've not clicked on the desktop shortcut in 3 days. Burnt out at level 44, in Megara on Legendary.

I picked up a Core Dweller and basically got rid of all my Hunting skills.  Things are almost too easy now.  Meh me.

I was about to give up on bows until I tried the Monster Lure skill. That decoy is totally immortal inless something starts casting magic at it. Clusters most of the mobs up nicely too so they all get hit by my Study Prey. :)

Welp, just beat Typhon on normal....the first run was THE easiest boss fight in the game. Got the Battle Marker and Mastery, dropped my Battle Standard and Fash Powdered him...he just sat there as I crit him to death.

Too bad I wasn't running FRAPS on that run. I tried to duplicate it, but couldn't really...I guess I got lucky with the stuns.

Also, for some reason, whenever I start recording....after I am finished, hit F9 again to stop recording, and go to watch the movie, it only records the first 30 seconds of whatever I wanted to capture....wtf?

Yeah, I just finished him on normal this morning too.  Didn't even use any shrines, just Battle Standard and my Ancestral Warriror war horn summons.  The elder minotaur lords gave me more trouble on the way there...

Got a piece of the Apple Bearer's Set.  Now there's a name to inspire fear in your enemies...

Xilren

I also got a piece of the set...haven't looked at it yet.

Titan Quest really doesnt play well with other programs. I had to lower it's priority to lowest in task manager to be able to access a shared drive on my main computer from my other computer. The game seems to run fine dispite the lowered priority and other programs don't stall out.

Because you didn't pay for it?

Going to test this build (although I wish I could just skip to actIII)

Corsair (L30):

Defense
Battle Awareness: (Rank: 1 of 10)
Batter: (Rank: 1 of 12)
Armor Handling: (Rank: 6 of 6)
Adrenaline: (Rank: 10 of 10)
Focus: (Rank: 6 of 6)
Shield Charge: (Rank: 1 of 12)


Rogue
Throwing Knife: (Rank: 10 of 10)
Flash Powder: (Rank: 8 of 8)
Flurry of Knives: (Rank: 6 of 6)

A few advices since I'm corsair... or was, I can't decide if I'll finish epic or stop playing (still have to finish oblivions which has allot more dept).

I strongly recommend Iron will  if you chose the battle awareness line of skills, it's a live saver in Epic.  Six ranks of focus is a bit useless if you don't have quick recovery.  You should put one point into focus and max out quick recovery, it's much more effective.

There's no real need to max out flash powder, especially not at lvl 30.  Flash is a really nice skill but the effectiveness for skill investment after rank 1 is not that great.  I have 4 ranks at lvl 36 and the skill does want I want.  I'm not planing to invest more until I reach lvl 55+

Adrenaline is not really effective after lvl 30 - invest in defensive reaction instead.  It scales better has you lvl up.

Oh snap, you have to pay for more than 30 seconds of functionality? Heh.

I'm still on my first time through the game. Just finished the Valley of the Kings.

The Telkine was laughable. I'm level 26 Earth/Nature, and my Core Dweller's health didn't move for the entire fight.
The Telkine's attacks were all fire-based, so that probably had something to do with it.

I've respecced my build to be a little more focused. I just have the Earth Enchantment, Core Dweller, and fireball lines in Earth, plus the health bonus and healing lines in Nature.

I tried a throwing knives build.  I found that the refresh timer on throwing knives really sucked and made it not really viable.

Just started playing yesterday as a Pyromancer (haven't hit level 8 yet to get a 2nd mastery). I have heavily invested in Ring of Flame, since it seems to make all the week swarming mobs go away quickly. I am starting to wonder how viable it is going to be later in the game though, since I am not going to want to be in melee range of things too often. Is that the case? How gimped am I?

It depends on the radius of the power. If it's large enough, I imagine you could just kite shit around...worked well enough for bards in EQ anyway.

I think I have it at like 5/8 now and it is under 3m in diameter.

Depends. Have you got the Core Dweller? If so, he'll tank for you, so you won't need to be in melee range of anything.

This is not to say that the ring of fire is not useful. I have Earth Enchantment, which has a low radius itself. So, I stay pretty close to the Core, so he can benefit from the EE. Ring of Fire adds good supplemental damage in this case.

But even so, you might find that you can better spend the points elsewhere.

You aren't perma gimped anyway -- certain cities (I think Delphi is the first one) have npc's that let you buy back your skill points, so you can reallocate them.

I've picked up the game and have been running around with a warrior so far.  I'm liking it a lot, but wondering if I should pick up defense or go with something else, just hit level 16 and don't plan on taking anything else for a long time.  I really like using 2 weapons, so defense is looking less promising, with storm, earth, nature, or rogue looking pretty cool.  I might try making another guy with defense and then picking up warfare (going the conquer route...but it looks harder to build).

Anyone playing any online games?  I haven't gotten the patch yet...

I have a warrior/fire character.  He's my highest level so far and is in Epic mode now.  He whipped right through Normal with absolutely no issues.  He'd one-hit everything and make enemies fly off cliffs!

In Epic?  I can't get past the damned Medusa trio.  Now I'm trying everything to update my equipment to try and figure out why I keep dieing so damned fast. 

Warrior is very sweet in Normal, but after that, not so much.  It feels like any increase in armor rating you get just doesn't do a lot.  I'm thinking I have to do something about my resistances more than anything.  I haven't done defense line on any characters.  From my experience, physical defense just doesn't do you much good at Epic and beyond.  Maybe I'm wrong.

It's definately harder on Epic with my Warfare/Storm guy.  Im lvl 31 now, and stuff like the blue cat women give me far more problems than I expected, probably b/c my resist other than fire suck and they use poison.
I'm just past Delphi, so hadnt tried the medusa's yet but thus far Red bosses have been going down really fast with my Ancestral Warriors (summons 3 orange level guys for 24 secs who just tear shit up) and a Battle Standard.  If the Warriors recast timer was less I'd be unstoppable.

I just feel disastisfied with my gear.  The blues from normal just dont hold up now, and I can't find decent blue's I can use, so most of my stuff is enhanced yellows and greens, even my main weapon and armor.  I found an Ajax sword and am trying it b/c it's fast plus +20% attack speed but it just doesn't seem to have the punch i want.  I've been perusing the Storm tree for skills to look at next nothing is calling my name.

Xilren

Hit level 8 last night and took Spirit to go along with Earth. I was really torn between Spirit, Storm, and Nature. Any advice from those of you past level 8? =)

You are close to the same boat as me.  I was doing just fine right up until the medusa.  It is like a 5 level hike in difficulty I swear.

I'll have to check out that summons.  I have my points split between fire and war.  I've been thinking about dedicating to war more and this is a good excuse to do it.  I just need something to keep those damned gorgons off my back while I chop them down.

On items, same thing too.  I've stopped looking at value lately as that was throwing me off some.  Now, I'm buying nice green items from the vendor and enhancing them up.  I'm buying based on stats and resitances mostly and that has helped quite a bit.  I actually increased my DPS by 50% and brought all my resistances to at least 0% (were a lot of negatives before.)

I think the developers of this campaign expected people to group on these higher difficulty levels though.  I can't imagine how hard it is going to be at Legendary for a melee type.

I'm pretty sure i read somewhere that you are supposed to group for legendary, which would make the problem not that some people can't solo it but that some have a very easy time of it.  My soothsayer dies a lot in legendary, but thats because im used to blindly rushing foward and laying waste to whole camps with tiernon attack while my lich and outsider mop up the stragglers instead of letting them go in front of me like i should now that i can get 2-3 shotted.

With my warrior/fire guy Medusa's tore me up in normal mode, was more of the same in epic.  Died about 3 times in that fight.  After I killed the first one, lots of running, I just stuck my core on medusa and killed the other one no problem with battle standard, then moped up last one with core.   Getting the first one killed was the hard part, thats alot of damage to soak up quickly and stone form has that damn timer :p  after that it was just cleanup. 

With a bit of running around it's possible to split the medusa's. I went up the right side, then ran back when I had agro from the nearest and the other 2 went back to their spots leaving me  able to kill the rightmost one solo. However, when you get to crete, you are in for a world of pain. The automata in front of the labrinth is basically unkillable by my war/storm hybrid. He has two stun attacks and basically keeps my guy chain stunned. He also hits for half my life often. At that point I packed in my melee guy and went back to my caster. Supposedly you can just run around him and into the labrinth but that sucks.

I have an amulet with 95% stun resist which I don for such encounters  ;)

Yeah, that exact change of pace has made me quit the game basically. You either get 2 shotted or sit back in total safety. No middle ground.

I started with Warfare, and picked up Hunter.  Planned to go with twin spears until I realized you can't DW spears.  Now I need to untrain 6 points in warfare.

Now planning to go spear/shield, with the weapon speed passives that increase offense in warfare, and defense in hunter, I should be pretty well set for melee, assuming I can find a good magical spear.  I found a blue sword recently that is pretty gross, and my shield is green, Outsider's Buckler, or some such.  It's pretty nice considering my level(9/10ish)

I feel that the demo was more than a little misleading.. the quests are the same, but the skills have changed, item prices have changed drastically,lots of things are just way different.  Game seems a bit harder than it was.

--
Alkiera

I have like 4 blue shields, among other junk, that I can drop next time someone has a game running.

I have some nice blue greaves that I have no hope of ever using, but they are probably too low level for anyone to really care about. Stats are pretty sweet for a strength based character though.

Nevermind that 95% stun resist must mean everything except for that Talos guy.  My 37 war/pyro got stomped by level 50 Talos repeatedly and even 1 shotted me with his fire attack that stunned and burned despite having around 60 fire resist at the time.  Makes me wanna just start over or quit the damn game. 

I just did the medesua's yesterday with my 31 War/Stm and they kicked my ass 4 times.  I had to split them off 1 by 1 and while that worked fine, this does not give me good feeling for the harder stuff to come.

BTW, anyone going to running some trading MP games this weekend?

Xilren

I really can't bring myself to play through this again, I got disinterested after beating the gorgons on legendary as well.  Maybe it's my slayer build.  All I do is click and hold on enemies, I should have rolled a pet class.  If they let me keep my portals so that I could go to Asia and farm the jade set maybe I would keep playing.

I started a Pyro recently, and picked up this skill eventually.  You want the child skill to it tho, which increases the range to 3.0m, and adds a 3s burn component... gets rid of annoying birds quite readily.  And with Earth Enchantement running, it ups the damage of the ring notably...  For undead areas, I've been known to summon my Core, then just run all over the place, not even casting, just gathering stuff up and then running circles around it while the core beats on it.  I'm pretty confident I'm doing more damage than he is, tho.  Stuff dies before he even gets to it, unless it's a special type undead, like the yellow 'rogue', 'captain', etc.

Then again, I've got +15% fire damage on my staff, and a bracer set with +20% elemental dmg.  With Earth Enchantment up, my lil fire ring has got to be doing some silly damage.  Currently working on gathering essences of Promethius' Flame, to make things really silly.

I'm an Avenger, Earth/Hunting.  Currently all I have from hunting is the herbal lore.

--
Alkiera

I have 6/8 points in it at level 14 (I think), and I consider it points well spent. Like you mentioned- I can just run laps around my Core Dweller and do tons of damage.

Also- I  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: Volcanic Orb. There is no end to the amusement I get from lobbing one of them into a tightly packed group of skeletons and watching them go into orbit in mutiple pieces.

YES.  Or even living things, who fly into the air in wild poses before hitting the ground with a solid 'thunk'.

I like to use it at close range primarily... gather up a big mob, and throw the orb at the leader... ideally, everything goes up at once... and then comes down dead.   :evil:

--
Alkiera

I just picked up the game about 3 days ago. I get to play it for like 2 more days and then I'm off to cali to visit my brother.

Got a level 14 Warfare/Defense guy and I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm wondering if I've gimped myself since I haven't put a single point into health or energy, just strength and dexterity. I got the defense skill that lowers armor requirements maxed out, which is really helpful.

I've never put a single point into health and energy up until the 30s with my Warfare/Defense guy, and then I only did so because I had so many of them that I wanted to use up some of them. Don't worry.

This game needs a Diablo II item stash big time. My friends are picking up the game and it's getting annoying holding the blues I find. I managed to luck out and find the Thebian Bracers and just now a Brimstone ring (Fire resists, like 4 different effects that add more fire damage in some way, awesomeness), but I have some cloth/hunterish blues clogging my bag.

Can you even get online with your offline characters? I haven't bothered with the net portion of the game yet.

I have a brimstone ring on my Avenger(earth/hunting), it is luv.

Characters from offline work just fine in online games, just like d2.

I might complain about not having a stash if TQ didn't provide a much-larger inventory.

Got the the end of Greece, got whooped by the Minotaur guy.  Ran around a bit, leveled up again, beefed up pet another skill level... and this time, when I went in, he'd wandered off to the left... so I walked right, and my pet agro'd on the fire tower, which we killed.  He then chased down the 2nd right fire trap, and we killed it.  Right around the time it exploded, the Mino got a clue, and attacked.  I tried several tactics, letting my pet tank while I staff'd it to death, some running around, letting pet die and resummoning... running around while letting the summon timer work it's way down after having pet die again...

When I came upon the most stupid tactic ever, which, of course, worked.  I had the Mino's attention, my newly summoned pet was beating on it, but not getting agro.  So, I just run around the pair in tight circles, letting ring of fire/molten metal do it's thing, and distracting the Mino... who has a hard time hitting in melee because I have a bunch of +def gear.  So my pet hit the debuffed Mino easily with earth-enchantment buffed attacks, and I ran around looking like an idiot, thumbing my nose at a giant minotaur.  It took awhile, as the Core doesn't have nearly my levels of dps... but it did die eventually.

If it's stupid, but it works... it's still stupid looking.

--
Alkiera

Welcome to EQ. A few bards would like to talk to you, over in 1998.

Actually, most of those bard tactics(charm kiting, etc) didn't come around for some time after release, often depending on 50+ level songs... with the exception of Bellow kiting, which I suppose also took forever and looked dumb, but worked(and could be done at level 12).  Eh, maybe that's what you meant.

--
Alkiera

I don't mind having to kite certain enemies.  I do mind when I have to kite ALL enemies.  There will obviously be some builds that cannot stand toe-to-toe with some creatures.  It makes sense to develop a different stategy, although silly looking, to prevail.

All the great heroes from Greek myth were cheeseballers.  Clean the stables by running a river through them?  I'm sure that's not what the puzzle designer had in mind, sploiter.

True.  It's nice that my tactics change based on enemy types.  Some I can ignore, they're so weak they'll die to my ring of fire before doing me much damage.  Others can be one or two shotted with my staff.  Some enemies I really want my pet to engage, 'cause they hurt me too much.  Then I throw AEs on top of them and blow them up.  Big Bosses seem to offer the most variety.  Some require the goofy run-around(need to record performance of that fight and youtube it with Blues Traveller in the background!).  Others I actually just stand toe to toe with depending on my regen and potions to overcome their damage while I nuke them down, like the (Spoiler) Triskene or whatever after the Minotaur at the end of the Greece section.  My -armor, -damage secondary effect on ring of fire helps alot with that.

I like that there's not the point-daught that there seemed to be in D2, where to become useful at high levels you had to carefully focus your character with synergies, and not misplace any points.  I love the ability to try stuff out, and then respec if it sucks or doesn't fit the character, and no re-roll required.

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Alkiera

Yes, respec being intregal to the game was a very good design choice.  I was amazed it was there from the start and actually sighed with awe when I saw it for the first time.

Yes, an audible sigh.