f13.net

Any of you have any early feelings on the power sets?  It's a bit overwhelming trying to decide.  Seems that there are 3 categories: Hand-to-hand, magic, and arsenal.  One of the three in each is a heal secondary, the other two support.  Beyond that, It's tough to know what will work best out in the world and in pvp. 

Can you strip skills and relearn new skills or once you pick something are you stuck with it?

You are stuck with it, but believe me when I say that progression is ridiculously fast. I am actually worried about how quickly you can "finish" a whole weapon line. And there is only nine.

Also, no idea on sets and builds so far. There were a few OP things but they got nerfed and so lots of confusion about it. Seems like there are so manh combination that everyone is still into figuring out sinergies exploits, and hoping they won't get nerfed fixed too soon.

personally I am investing in one weapon and keeping all the points until I start feeling ineffective, at which point I'll invest wisely based on what I feel I'm missing. But be careful, there's a cap of SP points you can save, I think it's 50.

Getting the first spammable AoE in blade seems really useful.   It builds resources and hits everything around you and can give you a hot.   I've mostly been leveling elemental but it feels pretty blah so far.

If you go to your faction's training room you should be able to refund any points you spend there until you leave. It's not much but it'll let you at least get an idea if you like an ability before committing to it.

As for weapon combos, I've been doing very nicely with hammer/fist. Single target builder from hammer (with weaken from a passive), blast finishers from both it and fists, Stonewalled, Nurture and the passive that gives a stacking HoT on attack plus the HoT on penetrate from blades. There's more that I can't remember right now but that's a pretty solid base for early Kingsmouth. I'm also working on an affliction build using Ele/Blood for when I need ranged damage or come up against physical resistant mobs.

Being OCD number junkie I ran some extensive DPS tests on testlive  using FATE's green QL10s and pretty much dps wise best builds come within 100 dps of each other ( 500-640). Which is actually not that much considering there are many other factors in combat beside dummy dps.  BTW best builds so far are either multhit proc based ( 550ish but very easy to use and ranged) either consumer based ( fast resource builders + all % dmg boosts for consumers and weapon lines - those can spike to 650ish). I also completed every elite dungeon in beta and really you need ranged dps if you are dps. As a tank you can go pretty much anything which is tanky(defensive cd, hate consumers), personally I prefer blade/chaos, but you can go pretty much one survival weapon line+anything.

You can actually unlock every single skill so I wouldnt worry too much about "gimping" - you never gimp , but explore  possibilities :). For begginners blades are solid choice - great for soloing ,easy tanking . U can do blade +one another consumer from other line for long time

Also, by being able to get every skill you are technically never nerfed. They screw with your build? Ok, let's just make another one right away. You can go FOTM at any given point if you feel like it.

Early on I'm wondering what the point of being ranged is.  Mobs are on you so fast that it really doesn't seem to matter.  I'm guessing that it's a much different story in pvp and the late game?

Yah early one being ranged doesnt give you much. Point is in dungeons you dance around evading circles and cones constantly and mobs are on tank who is typically moves boss around all over the place (many boss have "need to move him there" mechanic). If you are melee your uptime on target is abysmal

PvP wise .... well pvp is garbage :) But really ranged aoe has obvious advantages especially in laggy clusterfucks. Though tanky melee  builds with lots of CC and pbaoe have its place in pvp, possibly even on top of the food chain ATM.

Kiting is as useful as in any other game, there's plenty of big, slow mobs you want to draw circles around.
That is even more obvious due to the "attack designated area" effects from mobs, which kindly suggest to get away from them.

You'll sometimes find you need to move away from mobs because they are about to do a nasty AOE. If both your weapons are close range, this can mean you actually have to stop damaging them and wait for the AOE to finish. If you are able to shoot them instead while they do their move (which usually means they are rooted for a second or two as well), it's nice.

Mobs also sometimes do dash attacks where they move away from you (assuming you got out of the way - otherwise they dash into you and knock you down).

Do get a second weapon as soon as possible. You will definitely be stronger with two than with one. Apart from anything else, the attacks which "builds 1 resource" usually do it for both weapons, so you can then use two "consumes all resources" abilities if you have two weapons equipped.

I've been having a lot of solo success with pistol/elemental. I'm almost all the way to Gunslinger status at this point.

I think one of the best tips is to find what passives work across specs (such as pistol's +10% crit when you hinder a target)

As for sets, I think shotgun/hammer or shotgun/chaos for tank, rifle/fists for healer, sword/blood or elem/pistol for dps are pretty easy and basic. Otherwise, hit N and on the left side of the screen there are decks that can give you some basic setups to aim for (and some badass clothing)

As for range vs melee - range is much easier in pve and even in pvp with the right range spec it makes life a bit easier in most of the areas of these battle grounds (melee have it a little easier in stonehenge then they do elsewhere, but otherwise I find it easier on range).

Am I hallucinating or are the decks unique across factions? Also, it seems like pistol decks are rare...

The clothing and the setups are different.  Templars don't have an ele/blade setup for instance.

I was trying Pistol/Blood, and while I think it could be an amazing pure healer choice, I was underwhelmed with it for offensive purposes.  It probably gets better later on.  It's really hard to say how the power sets really are until you actually start unlocking the deeper skills and creating legit builds, which you can't do for quite a while (sadly).

Anyways, I've since switched to Shotgun/Blood which I think is somewhat better.  Buckshot+Finisher is good single target DPS.  I've got a penetrate/impair/barrier build lined up that I'm hoping will be incredibly survivable and very effective.

I think some factions even have different decks using the same weapons. Eg (off the top of my head because I am not in-game at the moment) one faction might have a fist/assault deck for healing and another might have a fist/assault deck for DPS. Same weapons but different abilities used.

Only the rewards are unique. The outfits you get. So if me (Templar) and you (Illuminati) have the same identical set of Actives and Passives, the same deck, I might get a reward and you don't (or the opposite).

But efficience-wise, they are absolutely the same. So yeah, different factions reward different decks/sets. But you can still obviously have the same "deck", just not the Deck Outfit (Reward).

This is highly important.  If a passive isn't tied to a specific skill, it can be used even if you are not using the weapon line it came from.

For example, Lick Your Wounds gives you a passive HoT for a 1 point investment in Fist.

I found this somewhere so cut and paste:


The AP must really flow in later.

 :awesome_for_real:

And I felt grand for earning 7 AP at once when turning in the PvP quest.

A number of active 'elite skills' (the yellow border, last ability you buy from the basic set) put either root or snare on the mobs. There's also some other skills which cause either knockback to the target, or send your own character backward. Overall that means you can spend decent part of the fights out of melee range, but still able to deal damage if you have a ranged weapon.

Yeah, like in SWTOR, if you are a melee you should equip yourself with gap-closers and with on-hit snares to prevent enemies from getting away from you. Vicious.

So what power sets are people using?

I'm going for a hammer & shotgun DPS build using some passives from the elemental tree too (the ones involving critical hits and strike attacks). The aim is to use "strike" attacks and a range of passive skills which boost your crit chance and crit damage, so that I'm consistently doing massive crits. Don't know if that's actually feasible but I'll find out. I'll also be applying weakness (reducing the mob's damage output), to increase survivability.

Then I aim to get some chaos magic skills to create a chaos/hammer tank (giving bonuses to both block and evade from the QL weapon skills) as well as pistol skills, so that I have a pistol/elemental glass cannon for PvP zergfests.

I am building a Puritan (Shotgun/Hammer) for the outfit at the moment, so more than being efficient I am focusing on getting there as soon as possible. THEN I'll work on a better build. But I must say, even without paying too much attention to everything, and only with skills from the Shotgun and Hammer trees, I am more than satisfied with my solo playing so far. It's mostly based on penetration, which cascades in more penetration with every penetrated hit. Fascinating.

That said, I love our basic weakening shotgun attack which stacks up to ten times for a massive 30% damage debuff to all monsters (bosses too). I really like that I have to choose how to build my finishers, if by using the strike attack which generates the penetration cascading effect, or weakening the mob to make it pretty harmless.

Seems like hammer/shotgun is pretty popular with us.  Can't see I've seen in a lot walking around.

I'm going for the bodyguard outfit at the moment and have been pretty hammer focused only using one active shotgun skill.  I do need a gap closer or ranged pull at some point, but I haven't felt the need yet.  I haven't even put together a tank build yet, mostly focused on my own mob clearing proficiency.

See, opposite for me. I have 6 active shotgun ones so far, and only 1 hammer. It's amazing how different characters can be even with the same weapons setup. And that's only going to get crazier the more skills we unlock.

Also, of course they are popular! The shotgun's sounds are really satisfying. And big giant hammers, what's not to love?

Right now I'm using a section of pipe for a hammer.  :awesome_for_real:  It sure is a lot more visceral than swords, that's for sure. 

There are definitely different faction builds. I went blade/chaos when I played Dragon for a little bit in beta. During release, I wanted the same thing, only with Templars and there is no corresponding deck. I'm not sure if I like chaos on the Templar side. It feels different somehow. (Either that or I'm misremembering the magic skill I took during beta).

Right now I'm doing mostly Shotgun/Elementalism. My build right now tears single targets up and I can generally kill in AOE pretty well too. That said I really, really need a self heal or for my wife to heal me more.

I've experimented a bit with sword/AR on my Illuminati and it is very,very satisfying. I AOE like a mad man and still hardly get hurt due to self healing.

Lick Your Wounds passive from Fist.  It's a start at least.

Alright. I bought it and equipped it. We'll see how helpful it is. :)

Wow. It helps a lot. Thanks for the tip!

Is there a way to guarantee penetration hits?  Elemental has a couple things to allow you guaranteed crits but I haven't seen anything similar for penetration.

There's something like 40% penetration buff in the basic shotgun skillset (that's group-wide iirc) but i don't remember anything fully guaranteed. That is not to say it isn't there -- i didn't look too much into the outer wheel skills, and it's quite possible there's something to such effect either in shotgun or blade skillsed (since those seem to be oriented the most towards penetration)

Blood (maybe Fist) has a penetration boosting power of +30 for each stack of affliction done.  Only useful for DoT builds, but quite handy if applicable.

Same in one of the shotgun external cells. "Body piercing", 21 AP in Close Encounter cell. Whenever you penetrate you gain a stack that gives you +30 penetration, up to 5 stacks for 150 penetration. That works well with "Beanbag rounds" that gives you 10% penetration for 8 seconds if you open with Kneecapper, and "Strike force" which boosts by 7.5% the penetration chance of your strike attacks, like the "Striker" builder. This is all in the Shotgun tree.

Think there's a passive (Mind over Matter?) very early in the elemental basic set which sets affliction state (with tiny dot) whenever you crit or smth. So with some decent crit abilities that could be nice base to keep the penetration buff(s) up, i suppose.

edit: another trick, elemental set has also ability to guarantee critical every 8th succesful hit. If you take that one and keep eye on the counter to unleash your high damage skill at that point, you can tear stuff quite spectacularly -- early shotgun+hammer setup would allow ~3k worth of burst with ql2-3 gear pretty much every time the crit buff went up.

The trouble with this game is you always want to try something new. I've done some theorycrafting and I reckon pistols and blood, built around focus attacks and crit, and using some of the passives from elemental, could be awesome. So now I want to spend my skillpoints on that.

I went with sword/AR for starters. Kind of thinking of a tanky thing, I liked that in TOR. It's very difficult for me, since the skill screens don't scale with the UI  :oh_i_see: So I have to keep moving closer to the tv to read the minute text, ditto for mouseovers like item and hotbar text.

Anyway, pulling with the AR healy shot and using the aoe sword stuff mostly, popping martial defense for tougher fights. Seems fairly survivable, only been killed once though I'm still in newbland for the most part, a few quests into kingsmouth. Mob difficulty seems to be all over the place, guess I'm not good at conning them, heh.

The con is based on the color of the icon beside the name, not the name itself.  The color of the name indicates their aggro radius.  This gets confusing because as you get better gear the color of the name will change but not because of the con but because they seem to implement the idea that you shouldn't be pestered by trivial enemies aggroing you as you walk by.

The icon can also mean group mob, single mob, tough mob.

A long explanation. (http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=30520)

That helped a ton, thanks! Guess I better focus on talismans for the next dozen SPs...

Well fuck me, I didn't realize that about the talismans. Very good to know.

Dumb question: Is it better to follow one of the prebuilt decks or can you be equally good making your own combo?  Do they have some synergy in these sets that surpasses anything that you can build on your own?

Haven't dug that deep into the outer circle yet but the decks are more to get you started, they work well but reading through Yokai's guides and using that neat deck builder tool you can do better.

You can make as good or better on your own.

Good to know.  Thanks!

God damn, if there is something that will suck me into a game is talk of builds.

I'm afraid that you're in hell then.  Lots of tinkering to be done here.

500 skills that can be gotten by anybody, no set classes, 9 different weapon sets that can combine to make different pre-built decks or your own, and the decks are different per faction.

Yeah, it's a building wet dream.

Its also good to remember that on the right side of the abilities screen is a tab with a search function. You can open that up, put in the search term "Penetration" (someone was looking for that earlier, I think) and then choose either All, Active or Passive skills and also weapon type. It'll then spit out a list of all the abilities in the wheel that cause, or trigger from, Penetration.

Having done a few dungeons (well, three so far), I have discovered that groups often prefer you to be a ranged DPS, if you are a DPS. Melee characters are not always welcome if they are not the tank.

If it's because of aoe stuff, having  backup deeps should suffice, yeah? I use my sword up close, and then dodge out of aoe while using the rifle until I can get back in.

It's much easier to spread out / switch to adds / etc if you're ranged (melee need to spend a lot of precious time repositioning). My biggest problem as a dps (before I invested in an ele/shotgun build) was the really short max range of shotguns - that, combined with the 'point blank' damage bonus pretty much forced to fight like a melee dps'r anyway.

edit: I strongly recommend to choose a healing weapon (assault rifle / fists / blood focus) and keep its skill within 2-3 of your 'main' weapon skills and keep a healing weapon in the inventory even if you're pure dps or tank spec... a random green weapon is fine. There are some missions ('rogue agent' f'rex) with very tough 'attrition'-style boss fights where you need some way of staying alive for a minute or two. It *is* possible to do them without healing skills if you're really good at kiting / have no lag / got the enemy attack patterns down to a science, but it's infinitely easier if you have some sort of sustain.

I've been playing shotgun/hands and agree that shotgun feels very much like a melee class.  Melee seems to have a rough go in this game.

Personally I think it's best to focus on dps.  Just max dps gear with a little health so you can survive for a while.  My build become much better when I just focused on doing as much damage as I could without worrying about self heals so much. 

For sustainability, because you will still need some on tough fights, pop a consumable.  Make a few.  No shame.  Finally, there is also a self-heal in one of the misc trees that is a godsend for dps classes as well, since it doesn't scale with healing gear.

Well, you don't need to actually use the heal weapon, just keep it in your inventory as insurance (and learn - but don't equip - a weapon skill that heals you based on damage done, ie. anima shot... stuff that scales based on your heal stat is useless past kingsmouth without heal gear). I'm using a 100% dps setup with no tank gear, and it works fine for most of the content. It is just that there are some missions ('Rogue Agent', second faction storyline) where even a single shot of a consumable won't give you enough survivability... you either need to be able to avoid incoming attacks from 2 enemies at once (without cover), or have some insane burst to one-shot one of them and then focus down the other while running to cover... and then deal with the boss without resting. I couldn't do the second option even with my bursty ele/shotgun spec - I'd only get down the first guy when I was already more than half dead (with a consumable already used, active dodge used, getting to cover to avoid most of the other guy's attacks, etc). From there they could wear me down slowly and I couldn't do much. So I just switched my shotgun to a random QL5 AR (didn't even switch out my dps gear) and replaced the three shotgun skills with anima shot / AR finisher / random elementalist elite skill, and won the fight easily by weaving in anima shot between my attacks to keep that green bar up.

I agree though that the 'Turn the Tables' skill (in the pvp 'misc' tree) is a good alternative to the healing weapon, but it is a fairly deep AP investment.

Bogeyman (awesome to have something like that in solo play btw) made me switch from Blade/AR to Blade/Blood. I just couldn't kill the bastard without the extra healing blood gives. Now I take longer to kill each enemy but I can easily survive stuff that was a big threat before.

After playing Polaris, I'm completely paralyzed as to what I want to play. 

I could play DPS, but there's a lot of DPS out there.
I could tank, but it doesn't seem like there are any healers.
I could heal, but no one seems to be able to NOT stand in the fire.  Plus, there are a lack of legit tanks.

 :argh: :psyduck:

For one group I ended up using all of my saved AP and a weapon drop I got in instance attempting to heal them for the last encounter.  It wasn't doable, they were all way too squishy.  Did I mention I was the only person that could tank?  Or get out of AoEs? Heh.

Second group we had a blood mage, two fist guys, and everyone (except the guy with sub 2k HP) was pretty sturdy.  I'm not sure who was even healing, but it was a 20 minute stomp compared to the healer-less 1 hour long slog. 

Bodyguard is definitely tanky or I could melee range DPS.  Dunno, I may end up just grinding AP and picking something else entirely.   :|

I haven't hit Polaris yet, but I'm kind of in the same boat. I just filled the inner circle of both rifle and sword and feel that specializing a bit at this point would be a good move. I like tanking from TOR, but I'm set to be a decent off-heal deeps with AR. But I also worry about the stupidity of humanity, my fiancee is always smirking when I play TSW, she's waiting for me to get fed up with retards and move on to something else.

Going to be another few days before I can really play much, but it would be nice if we could coordinate something with the f13 folks. I may not have a great build or be some leet player, but I think not being stupid counts for something  :grin:

Thinking of starting a Templar and going deep into one tree (pistol?) before spreading out like I did with Komoto.

And did you say sub-2k hp? How is that even possible?

Sky, I'll be glad to join you and anyone else for a Polaris group since you haven't hit it yet. I am QL3-QL4 at the moment so I am a little over its intended level but in no way able to overkill it. If we can find another 2 or 3 that are up for it we could have lots of fun there.

I've tanked Polaris a couple of times, and have been building a dedicated tanking spec rather than dps (which will probably screw me over for solo play). Happy to run it for folks anytime I'm around.

I also haven't gotten a Polaris run yet either. Since I haven't really been playing that much while waiting for the chat fix and first major patch I'm still only QL3. I have a couple of DPS builds or a healing build (with a set of healing gear to go with it) that I haven't actually tested out yet but could give it a try if people are willing to be guinea pigs for me :grin:

Polaris is Ql3 - most of the groups I have done it with have been 2.5 really. The hard parts are either non-stat related (HIDE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HIDE) or the stat burden is solely on the tank / healer. There's a number of bosses where it falls on the tank to keep the group alive from AE things and if their gear isn't up to it the healer won't be able to keep them up.

Hmm, not sure my healing build would be up to the task then. It's mainly inner ring abilities and doesn't have any AoE healing yet so I'd probably be better going as DPS.

The cheap healing build for Polaris is to get Hematic rites, it's outer ring, but 9 pt first tier in blood, it gives an AOE shield/heal. You can pretty much heal with just spamming a builder and that and occasionally dropping angelic aegis to catch up.

Oh thanks for that, I have blood outer ring unlocked already so I'll grab that next.

It's surprisingly functional, but incredibly spammy. I got it from tswguides

I wouldn't mind doing Polaris even though all my gear is QL5/6.  Just changed my spec around last night to focus more on strike abilities in hammer and shotgun (going for Puritan build atm) and I'm really liking it so far.  Single target dps is very good and survivability isn't bad with the weakened effect and the defensive buff from Aftershock.  Anyway, if you see me on tonight I'd be up for a run.

I imagine at endgame, once people have plenty of sp/ap to play with, most people will have a DPS spec and either a tank or heal set.  Healers definitely seem to be the rarest judging by lfg spam right now but I chalk that up to the fact that it is a slower way to level so most people are avoiding it right now.  I will probably wind up a healer but I'm not going to do that while I level.  It is pretty easy to go from a dps spec to a tank though so that role is easily filled.

As for the sub 2k hp it's actually pretty interesting.  Since it was the first dungeon the guy probably just didn't know what he was doing but later on, even at QL10, the same thing can happen.  Blue and purple pieces only have one stat, but a lot of it.  Health for tanks, heal rating for healers and attack power for dps.  So if you are dps/heals and wear nothing but blue and purples dedicated to your role you get zero increase in hit points, will be floating around 2k and can get one shot by any boss.

A long explanation. (http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/guides:talisman-mechanics)

Healers seem plentiful on Arcadia. Groups form quickly and we're rarely waiting for any particular class.

I can probably do something tonight. It might be a bit early for me to hit Polaris (don't know anything about it, including its whereabouts) and I'm in pretty shaky gear. I do have the blue QL 3 AR from the Venetians, and my sword is either 2 or 3 green. Most of my talismans are 2, though. Haven't yet done crafting, but I might have enough mats for a talisman or two but I;d have to look in the bank to see if I have the kit for it...

Anyway, I'll probably grab Shot of Anima (1st AR outer ring heal) so it might help a bit with things.

I'd love to do some Polaris.  I refuse to PUG, so I haven't done it yet.

It'll just be a matter of if I'm on Latency (Blood/Fist) or duoing on Stheno (Pistol/Chaos) with Min.  I'm better as DPS, but can try and heal if absolutely positively necessary and only have to worry about the tank.

Well let's try and meet in the f13 chat channel whenever we are online and see if we can do it. Would be lovely.

This is when I wish I had a monitor I could plop on the desk in the library (mine at home not The Library at work etc). Guys are tromping through my living room for the rest of the day, but I'm home and could totally jump on and play right now (posting from the old lady's laptop which might be able to handle minecraft).

Does anyone else have chat right now? Just logged in and all public channels gone again  :oh_i_see:

Has worked fine here all day, last two hours or so even get to keep #f13 when zoning. Though my faction chat keeps unsubbing.

My dps might be a little too high for Polaris if its a QL3/4 dungeon.  I have all but three of the Puritan abilities and I'm able to solo mobs in Blue Mountain with 10k+hp, with my dude having under 4k, and finishing the fight with around 75% of my hp left.   I can still try and do it if people are available.  Also, if anyone wants to try and run Hell Raised (Savage Coast) or The Darkness War (Blue Mountains) let me know.

I think I'm cursed. Every time I talk about doing Polaris my chat dies. Maybe the gaming gods are trying to tell me something...

I'd be down for a Polaris run. Most of my gear is QL3, though I'm starting to get QL4 in Savage Coast and I just bought a QL5 blade from a vendor.

My problem with the healing is it doesn't seem to be very good. Of course, I haven't tried to specialize in it, mostly focusing on DPS type spec. Using Angelic Aegis seems to do almost nothing for me when I'm soloing, but not having really focused on building my gear for it is probably why.

There is one self heal in a green misc wheel that does not use heal rating, any other heal is near useless without +heal gear on.  Maybe some of the damage based leeches work okay but I'm not sure.

The game is interesting in that if you are overgeared for an instance you can either just become the tank or remove some of your dps gear so that the tank can keep aggro.  You can even slide in a bit of healing gear and keep yourself up so that the dedicated healer has one less person to worry about.

Ah, didn't even think about gear. I haven't seen a ton of good gear yet, but I'd been building toward a survival (solo) build and early on my inventory was getting so full (before I made the slog to find a bank), I got into the habit of breaking down anything I didn't immediately wear.

I've only healed Polaris a couple of times. Healing requires a nearly full heal set and even then the amounts healed per cast are tiny. Most other games, it's about mana efficiency and waiting for the right time to cast the right heal. Here you're just spamming constantly. I don't think any of my damage shields last more than one or two hits and you barely ever notice any real jump in the green bars. In that, it's more like DPS.

It also makes it next to useless for soloing. I keep blood shield on my bar and if I get into trouble I kite in a circle while spamming it to build my health back up--usually takes a couple of minutes. It feels and I'm sure looks idiotic.

Yes. Absolutely. The blood barriers from Angelic Aegis last no time against any threat of worth, even with a passive added to increase the barriers effectiveness. And that's not even against boss mobs, just normal tougher mobs in Kingsmouth. Either healing is broken, or it's just so different from what we've come to expect in other MMOG's, we just don't know what to do with it yet.

Like it was mentioned, and I don't know if you're doing it or not, you really have to gear for it.  And you seemingly need a lot of it for it to matter.

For what it's worth, I think I'm going to stick with tanky/melee DPS hammer/shotgun until I'm done with a build I like.  Then I'll work toward something ranged or healerish.

I am in game now and the f13 chat lists only myself and occasionally someone else. I guess it's broken to the point of uselessness. This sucks majorly. By the time it will work we won't be doing low level dungeons anymore. Sadness.

Yeah it seems very temperamental right now. I've had it drop 3 or 4 times in the last hour or so and the /chat list f13 command is taking about 10 seconds to complete. Guess they haven't worked out the load issues yet as it was fine today during EU daytime.

I'm perfectly happy to have you QL8 guys drag my slow arse through dungeons. ;D

I started making QL3 talismans based around the "Heal" rating. Making one gives me +90 heal rating. Looking at the QL3 drop talismans I've gotten, all the drops are better than what I can create with crafting (4 stat bonuses as opposed to 2 plus whatever I can get with glyphs). Looks to me like to be a dedicated healer requires you gearing in ALL heal rating.

Just did a test. Switched out the two talismans I'd created (both QL3's) that each had +90 heal rating on them - so an extra 180 heal rating. I went into combat and used Angelic Aegis - I saw about a 20-30 point difference in healing amount (usually heals for about 154/barriers for 134 - went for about 174-184/164 with the extra 180 heal rating). Barrier didn't seem to last anymore time than it did before. My healing Blood skill is 4. The mob I fought was I think white to me. Full set of +heal gear might net me about an extra what 100-200 HP per heal, with an extra +100 or so on the barrier?

Really not seeing a lot of difference there, but that's about as scientific as I get about these sorts of things.

Doing the easy math here, that seems like quite a bit of improvement in full healing gear.

At 0 Heal Rating Angelic Aegis gives me 129 heal and barrier. In my healing set I have 573 Heal Rating and it's 232 heal and barrier. So 573 HR yields an extra 206 total healing or ~80% increase if my back-of-the-napkin maths is correct.

As you level up, the difference becomes a lot more pronounced with unscaled heals. When I was starting out, Lick Your Wounds [1ap passive from fist, small stacking HOT when you hit stuff] was pretty good at mitigating incoming damage since it was a constantly ticking heal for 5-6... but in Savage Coast it was better mitigation to switch in a passive that did slightly more damage (and caused enemies to die faster).

If you don't have heal gear, the static heal 'Turn the Tables' (16pt skill in the pvp 'misc' tree, instantly heals for a decent amount of hp on a 35sec cooldown, it reminds me of GW2 self-heals) is as good as it's going to get, unless you want to use one of the skills that leech (heal you based on damage done), which obviously scale decently with damage gear.

For instance healing you NEED a full set of +heal gear. I've been keeping one in my bags, and funneling +heal random drops to it... it's roughly on par with my main set QL-wise.

If you think about it, this makes sense. There's no mana. There's nothing to prevent you from spamming your most powerful heal constantly. So they balance the game on you spamming your best heal constantly.

On Polaris: probably going to have to wait for the chat server to be fixed  :oh_i_see: I managed to get on for a little while last night, was able to join f13, see a couple people in the list and that was it for the night.

On power sets: I know folks have been talking about melee dps being undesirable, and I see some reasoning even in Kingsmouth. Annoying to have mobs that keep separating to range, tough to manage aggro, nice to have my 2 AR skills (anima shot and fire in the hole) for that. And at this point, anima shot is a decent heal; to get the misc I'll need the full 16 (or whatever) AP, as I have just enough AP banked for the two skills leading to it...and I am wary of buying skills I don't see myself using.

I tried a couple AR-heavy builds last night - just the full inner rings of AR and blade as I try to chart my next moves. I just don't care for it...and I kept getting chopped up by groups (with a couple aoe options in the rotation). Went back to my blade-centric loadout (gear mgmt didn't save my passives...) and back to kicking ass. Current loadout:

Delicate Strike (b) - single target dual builder, increased Pen with passive; looking to replace
Blade Torrent (b) - aoe dual builder, adds Aff dot with Perfect Storm; my Aff state mechanism
Stunning Swirl (b elite) - aoe plus 3s Imp state
Anima Shot (ar) - single target ar-only builder with leech; my main 'heal' with anima boost
Fire in the Hole (ar) - single target consumer, delayed
Dancing Blade (b) - single target consumer, channeled
Martial Discipline (b) - defensive buff, adds heal with Regeneration; my ohshit button

Lick Your Wounds (f) - regen on hit
Sharp Blades (b) - +10% blade dmg
Immortal Spirit (b) - regen on Pen
Perfect Storm (b) - adds Aff dot to Blade Torrent
Anima Boost (ar) - +dmg +leech to Anima Shot
Experience (ar elite) - +leech
Regeneration (b) - adds hot to Martial Discipline

So barely using AR, four skills built around maxing the leech of AS and a consumer to use up the resource. The downside is, when I'm leaning on AS (due to range restrictions or needing healing), no blade resources are built (though I currently only use the single target Dancing Blade to consume them). Thinking of building something around Aff/Pen and letting Immortal Spirit knock Lick Your Wounds out of the lineup. So as much as I was considering moving into the healing side of AR, I just don't group enough to dedicate the next week or two to it; while there is some decent Aff/Pen stuff I could grab out of blade (with maybe Dark Potency from blood magic)

Anyway, this build kicks the snot out of Kingsmouth content. Decent aoe, decent single target, good melee and some ranged options. No issues moving out of enemy aoe while maintaining dps, the scrapyard is a lot of fun with this build.

One suggestion: when we post a build, it might be useful to add things like the total AP spent on it, which once multiplied for 40k tells you roughly how many XP it costs.

I am gonna post my hammer and shotgun build later, which I am sure is far from great but it's giving me a very easy time in Savage Coast, and I am going to try to add those information. I think it's useful to give people an idea of how feasible it is given the AP they have, or how many they need in order to get there.

I finally finished the Assassin deck last night. It has a sweet looking clothes reward but the set itself was really good at killing but squishy as heck. The next thing I tried required massive aoe skills which killed me 10 times and several rebuild before I got through it then I had to switch to single tgt dps for the Black Pharaoh. I guess I'll try to develop a healing build next.

Anyhow I'm up to QL9/10 so if anyone needs any help with dungeons and I'm on I'll be happy to help if I have the time.

My problem with using any of the guns for secondaries is that they're tough to use for resource dumps, as those are tracked on each target.

Magic at least builds up on you, so if something dies, you can still dump on the next target.  Melee is the same, but also builds over time, making it nice for an early hit then more through combat.

Because of that, guns really seem to need to be a primary weapon and/or you have to use AoE resource builders.

I usually have a single target and an aoe resource builder.  Is everyone else mostly running just 1 resource builder?

On my blade 'n rifle build I usually try to go with something like this:
1 - single target blade builder
2 - single target blade finisher
3 - aoe blade builder
4 - aoe blade finisher
5 - single target rifle builder (anima shot if needed)
6 - aoe rifle finisher
7 - cc-ability/defensive ability

The aoe rifle finisher can be used on each individual target (after a short cooldown) if needed.

I am using both AOE and Single Target builder right now, but it's only because I am not needing the extra slot for anything else. Otherwise I would just run with single target builder and switch to the AOE one out of combat if the enemies or the area I am in it require it. That's what the Gear Manager should be for, but since it's not working well I am lazy and I keep both at the moment.

My setup (slight variation on the ele/shotgun cookie cutter dps build):
- ST builder (ele because of the longer range)
- ST ele finisher nuke
- ST ele finisher nuke #2 (boss build) -OR- ele AE finisher (normal build)
- ST shotgun finisher
- self heal (I use Turn the Tables, but anything with a leech like anima shot would work here)
- DPS cooldown #1
- DPS cooldown #2

Works fine for almost everything. I mostly use the shotgun finisher for added burst when needed, and save 5 shotgun resources for when my DPS cooldowns are up.

I only run with a shotgun consumer on my bar, and I just make sure to use that up before using my Elem resources. I started doing that because I agree they are less friendly, but it has worked out okay. I'm considering using a Chaos finisher though in place of shotgun, but the damage of Out For A Kill in shotgun is just so nice with only having a 4s cooldown (ele dual weapon builder with .5s cast makes me almost able to use OFAK on cooldown too so it adds up nicely).

Though this is speaking from a primarily ranged playstyle, if I was melee I don't think I'd really touch guns as I'd use Ele as my back up

I'm currently running (Blade/Blood):

1 - Single target blade resource builder that exploits Afflicted state
2 - AOE blade stun w/ a cooldown that doesn't build resources
3 - AOE blade focus attack that consumes all blade resources
4 - Single target blade focus that consumes all blade resources
5 - Boiling Blood - builds resources for both weapons
6 - Angelic Aegic - single target heal/barrier consumes 3 blood resources
7 - Blood focus attack - does damage + damage over time for 2 blood resources - if I hit it a second time while the DOT is still active, do a shitload more damage

I forget my passives but I know that I have a bunch that cause afflicted state so that my #1 blade ability can be more effective as a resource builder and one that makes my blade focus ability stronger if the target is impaired by my #2 blade stun. Plus 2 passives that increase the damage of my blood and blade skills respectively. I think I just replaced the #6 heal with another damage ability though. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Hmm, so are you running something like this (http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,561,544,139,1003,1038,137,571,545,138,136,132,572,402,553) ?
Blaze
Combust
Thor's Hammer/Electrical Storm
Out for a Kill
Turn the Tables
Anima Charge
Short Fuse

I'm asking since I'm curious why you'd save your shotgun resources when they are limited to each target and ele builds resources (not counting cooldowns) possibly faster than any other spec

I'm kind of lost what else the 2nd dps cooldown could be, since I won't go anywhere without Molten Earth.

From memory, it's something like

Ignite
Thor's Hammer
Flame Strike / Electrical Storm
Raging Bullet (same as Out for a Kill, but has a point-blank bonus)
Turn the Tables
Anima Charge
Do or Die

and I have a ton of passives that improve (and exploit) crits and strikes.

Yeah, I do use the shotgun consumer when I can. It's just that a lot of bosses have melee-unfriendly phases that also happen to be shotgun-unfriendly (dat 6m range!), and in AE situations I typically want to ignite/electrical storm spam instead... so I weave in Raging Bullet at the tail end of electrical storms to add some damage to a target.

Well, I did mention it's only using inner circle AR/Blade :) I think it's maybe 29 AP worth, I've been running with most of it for a while now.

Decided to dump points into Survival for the self-heal while I ponder advancement. The dump for one skill (plus the two skills leading to it) cost about what my posted build cost  :ye_gods:

Do you know which ability this is?  I run primarily an affliction build.  Since I only use one Fist consumer for my secondary weapon, this might give me another possibility.

Grass Cutter, I think. I'm horrible with the names. It's a 9AP ability on one of the outer circle of Blade abilities.

Okay that makes more sense, I thought you were just saying in general you don't use it unless needed which was just very odd to me. I agree about AE situations, I love electrical storm and generally only switch out for that in AE situations, though I'm trying out Inferno and enjoying that a bit more when I have a tank around since mobs will be centralized making the ground targeting easier to ensure hits as mobs won't be moving around as much.

I kind of dig the build (forgot about Chronicle site and just looked it up finally).

Yep, that's going in the slot Delicate Strike is living in right now.

I went with Chaos/AR. The latter works just fine as a grenade pull, but the mitigation in the former just...isn't there. Really hard to build any meaningful synergies for Chaos.

Chaos and AR I can't imagine doing well, but Chaos is actually really easy to syngerize with a number of other weapons (shotgun, hammer, blades, possibly fist and pistols)

Yeah, I'm a bit annoyed at possibly having to respec so early just because the skill sets were so opaque in the beginning.

Just completed 2 last bosses in NM (polaris and DW) , inferno is bugged to hell . Basically you need 3 dps who know what they doing  (1k+ dps)  plus good tank and healer and its faceroll. Any other scenario and its a horrible horrible wipefest :/

Segoris wants my impair/spike dps fist/elem dps build so he can tell me what I'm doing wrong:

Active:
Prey on the Weak
Savage
Go for the Throat
Ignition
Electrical Storm
Thor's Hammer
Anima Charge

Passive:
Renewal
Concussion
Elemental Force
Restraint
Killer Instinct
Brawler
Elemental Precision

I open with ignition and build elemental force charges until I'm at 7.  If the mob is in my face around 3-4, I do my go for the throat/savage/prey on the weak combo.  At 7, I anima charge into thor's hammer for a massive critical (2-3k).  I'll likely have impaired the mob by this point also through restraint.  I start building charges again, and if I haven't burned go for the throat, I use that as a follow up for another big hit (1-1.5k) plus impair.  When impaired, I blow my fist charges in a savage, then two prey on the weaks and another savage.  

Electrical storm is for when I need aoes, and I can build up 5 charges, toss one, throw an ignition, throw another storm, then anima charge into a third.  Savage anything that's still stnading.

Things are impaired enough that renewal keeps me in the green usually on single target.  I'm pondering replacing it with a more dps focused passive though, just not sure what.  I'm also pondering replacing prey on the weak with muzzle and removing a fist builder entirely, but this will make the post-impair burst slower.

For players, I just anima charge into thors hammer, then hope they're running at me so they can die to a go for the throat.  There's no real grace to how I kill people.

I'm also currently mostly in blue dps gear.  My health is shockingly low right now (below 2k), and this might be a problem.  Segoris suggested possibly slotting in some tank gear for health.

OMG YOU'RE DOING THIS ALL WRONG! :why_so_serious:

I like the build. It's pretty interesting, and as we've figured out we've got some of the same ideas.

Your Build (http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,82,411,84,561,137,139,131,136,132,71,423,81,421,412)

The only changes I would do would be change to this (http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,411,84,561,137,139,131,544,136,132,71,423,545,402,1015).

The main changes are based on my not seeing the point of a 2nd builder, and ignition is fast enough (and ranged) that I've found no reason to use any other builder if using Ele. Also, TH has too long of a cooldown when you could add in Blaze (which crits 100% here) every couple seconds doing ~80% of the damage of Thor's (like I've said before - I've actually dropped Thor's and Anima entirely in most instances, but will pick it up for a burst build) and only costs 60% of the resources.

As for gear, Yokai's Blog (http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/guides:talisman-mechanics) has a great write up of talisman mechanics. Basically what I was saying before, is if you wanted more hp then you can lose 1 slot and almost double your hp (since you have less than 2k) at higher levels.


The main thing - you've been finding quite a bit of success by the sounds of it which is all that matters until you need to worry about doing more than just dps in dungeons (cleanse/purge etc).

Actually I mostly heal in dungeons.  When I dps, I tend to die because I'm not used to dodging at that position.  Just ask reborne, I noobed it up nice last night.  I do fine solo though.

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I never did explain why I've got the Prey on the Weak fist builder in there to begin with.  It has two major advantages over Ignition for a very specific purpose.  I use it to exploit the impaired state from Go for the Throat (or the incidental ones from restraint, but those are harder to work with).  For the duration of the GFTT impair, I can use exactly 4 instant cast abilities where I could only really get off maybe 2-3 ignitiions, which do nothing special to impaired targets.  

I almost always have a full load of fist charges built up, so I open with Savage, since it gets me feral regrowth during an impair (and also the renewal HoT), helping to keep me alive.  Then I pop two Prey on the Weaks, because while impaired, it builds double fist resources.  I then immediately follow up with a second, mostly charged Savage.  It gets a decent amount of burst that seems to add up to around the same amount as the GFTT.  At that point the impair is over and I'm back to doing things as normal.

The other potential benefit is that they can build restraint, elemental force, and killer instinct counters faster than anything with a cast time.  The downside is that due to being multi-hit, prey on the weak loves getting random glances, which kills the restraint counter.

Like I said though, I've been contemplating removing prey on the weak entirely, but this is at least an explanation of why it's there.

edit:  I did some testing tonight.  I was lying about the number of ignitions I can get off, I can still do the same number as the prey on the weak/savage combos, but for lower damage and none of the side effects.

Even though I'm not a fan of 2x builders (or multi-hits even), it does make quite a bit of sense, with the only advantage and point of ignition now is for some range without a cooldown.

I use ignition to pull and kite.  It's also technically an aoe due to the elemental skill.  This is sometimes a bad thing though.

So I'm moving to a completely non-synergistic build now.  Elemental Chaos!  Designed around ranged DoT affliction with hindrance (ele) and then finishing off with mitigation, weakening, and impairment (chaos).  Thiscanwork, I know it.  Fuck synergy!  I wanna light shit on fire just before they eat my melee anima.

My decks that I have been using have all been template builds that I then gutted some abilities and replaced with others. On the Templar Paladin build I was using, I stripped out the Pistol and Focus abilities and replaced them with Assault Rifle abilities, and swapped out the Charge for the Sling Blade thrown sword ability that puts an Affliction on them. I also replaced the sword 45s cooldown Impair ability with the sword ability that gives you 30% of your health back.

It ends up being a beastly solo build, since most of the time you are in melee range anyways. It just involves you applying buckets of afflictions and penetrating a whole lot. I use penetration glyphs on both my weapons.

EDIT: here's the build: http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,248,246,375,1012,1010,252,377,249,1015,1017,361,1013,1021,1009

Pretty expensive, as I bought the entire Paladin build, then the Illuminati Goon build (so I had Sling Blade already) then bought my way up through assault rifle for Red Mist. You could also not use Red Mist and just use the Master's House ability, also a pretty good one.

I dig that affliction build more than the normal blood/ele ones that people haev been running. I've never seen Point of Harmony, sword may replace hammer for my tank build just for that ability alone, especially when combined with Karma from the Chaos line

On Latency I'm going for a build such as:  Blood and Blade (http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,101,103,505,1008,1012,107,109,102,400,402,134,510,500,1013).

I have all the Blood abilities, but need to work on the Blade ones.

Stheno is going for a Chaos/Pistol build, but I'm choosing abilities as I go along.

Just to report back, my hammer/shotgun build using elemental passives is working well.

I'm using the "strike" abilities from the two weapons, and passives based around improving the chance and power of critical hits (which come from hammer and elemental - shotgun has passives which boost penetration, but I am ignoring them). There's also an active skill which boosts penetration chance, but the build is really based around doing massive crit damage.

I am also using a passive which causes strike attacks to weaken opponents, lowering their damage output, and some hammer abilities which boost my "block" chance and mitigation. In other words, while it's a DPS build it has some survivability.

This has worked out fine, even for Blue Mountain at the appropriate level.

I'm looking now at building a shotgun/pistol setup using both crits and penetration, which I am hoping will be a high-DPS glass cannon build.

Actives:
Breaching shot (boosts penetration)
Trucker (boosts block)
Furnace (boosts mitigation & weakens)
Striker (strike builder)
Aftershock (strike finisher)
Raging bullet (strike finisher)
Point blank (elite damage ability)

Passives
Punisher (strike attacks weaken target)
Punishment (hitting a weakened target gives a buff increasing crit damage)
Brawler (increases crit damage)
Wrecking crew (increases crit damage of strike abilities)
Violent strikes (increases crit chance of strike abilities)
Social dynamo (every crit gives a buff increasing the chance of critting)
Violent strikes (elite, large extra damage on every fifth crit hit)

Needs crit chance gear as you can probably tell.

I finally discovered what seems like a good synergy in Chaos/AR: frenzy attacks and procs. Basically the build will have perpetual evasion bonus and the mobs will heal you when they hit you. Now all I need is some evasion gear, haven't found any in 25 hours of gameplay.

You can make your own evasion glyphs if you want. You'll need runes (easiest way to get them is to disassemble Anima - Evasion Rating pots) and a glyph toolkit.

Unless they've nerfed it since beta, there's a chaos ability called Cry Havoc which will destroy any mob that's impaired. Only issue is making sure you fire it off at the right moment, because impair effects don't last long.

Mentioned it in the Things You Like thread, been playing an alt with pistol dps lately. It's amazing how much better this seems than Komoto's Blade/AR survival tanky build. I think the only mob Komoto had an easier time with was Deadeye, because of the tank gear and heals.

Newbie pistol DPS build (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?56=0&56=2&57=1&56=4&56=6&40=2&57=3&56=1&56=3&56=5&57=0&57=2&57=6&41=0):

The Business (p) - Pistol builder, adds Weakened with passive
Shootout (p) - Focus consumer, single target nuke
Above The Law (p) - GTAoE DoT, more dmg to Hindered
Drone Kit (p) - DoT
Dirty Tricks (p) - GTAoE, Hinders for 3s
Combust (e) - just added to get an Ele consumer
Deadly Aim (p) -Crit buff

Magnum (p) - Adds Weaken to The Business
Coup de Grace (p) - When enemy dies with pistol resource on it, TAoE heal
Straight Shooter (p) - 10% pistol dmg
Hothead (p) - Applying Hinder gives Crit buff
Vigilante (p) - + duration for Above the Law
Rapid Getaway (p) - Activating consumers gives run buff (kiiiite)
Mind Over Matter (e) - Crits add magic Affliction DoT

The Elemental stuff is new, replacing a pistol chain attack I kinda liked for kiting multiples.

Pretty straight rotation: drop Above the Law and immediately use Dirty Tricks to hinder them in position. That should pop a resource for Drone Kit, then circle kite until you can use Shootout (and Combust, but I hate the cast time). When just circle kiting, it's not really avoidance of dmg as much as aoes, but can linear kite if needed to avoid melee but you'll need to hit Shootout more often to keep the run buff up and you lose the benefit of Above the Law.

Using the 2 golem types by the junkyard/airport as test subjects (they are still yellow skulls to me); I can take out the melee golem with almost no health loss and the ranged golem will sometimes get me to 50% health. Two ranged golems will usually put me to 30% health. Ranged/melee will be about like a single ranged. Melee golems...I've circle kited three and only been down to 75% and that's just me being sloppy.

Awesome newb build. Also got into a mess when I was mostly QL1 with some Draug, took out 4 yellow dots, mixed pack of impalers, drowned and broodchick without dying. I was amazed, since I was around 1.8k hp at the time.

If I have two passives that add Penetration Rating, one stacks to 5 and the other to 10, will they combine?  Specifically I'm looking at Dark Potency (Blood) and Fatal Flourish (Blades).

As far as I know, they don't stack. Identical effects don't stack and the one that lasts longer or is more powerful takes precedence. So you get to ten stacks and that should be it.

My build is not that interesting. It's shotgun/hammer and it's very close to the "Puritan" templar build. (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?48=4&55=0&52=2&13=2&11=3&11=1&52=6&11=4&13=3&48=3&49=2&52=3&52=1&55=3) I charge enemies, I knock them down, I hammer them and get a beneficial defensive ward in the process, and at that point I they are one consumer away from dying. The rotation is not that interesting though.

What *is* interesting though is that I am running only +attack talismans. I have all blues and only 2 greens (which are the ones that add a little bit of HP). My point is that I have only 2054 HP, a ridiculously low amount, and I still destroy the mobs before they even have a chance to retaliate. I am sure this won't fly in later zones, but so far I am impressed by the sheer potency of a full (literally) DPS build. Not only I have close to no-HP on any item, but I have absolutely zero defensive bonus of any kind. I am as vulnerable as a freshly made character, but I kill stuff so fast they can't even dent my life bar.

Again, I am sure this won't last (I'm only in Blue Mountain), but the simple fact that I can play such an extreme build efficiently and go around in the third zone of the game with the same amount of HP of when I started makes me appreciate the freedom of the system so much more.


UPDATED: My weird Offensive/Defensive stats:

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3584773/TSW%20off%20def.png)

Also, I am pretty sure the 99.1% Crit Chance is just a visual error.

I don't know if they do stack, it's possible since I believe the buff icons and names are different, but I'm not sure either way. Though, Fatal Flourish has as bugged tooltip and should read "only stacks to 5" as I've found, and is being fixed as posted on the test patch notes

Bah.  Then I'll stick with the cheaper version.  Having a more expensive one makes me think they might actually stack though.

Nope. I just tried with both passives slotted, there's still just 5 stacks of the buff there. I was really hoping that it was just a bug with FF, but it seems no such luck.

Really idiotic to have 2 completely identical and non-stacking abilities like that. They could at least have turned one of them into a higher power/lower duration type deal like they did with some other similiar abilities.

Usually the buffs trigger in a different way though. One will trigger from applying infliction while another applies from hitting an impaired target (just as an example, I don't have applications memorized)


That's why it's not really idiotic (unless there are identical buffs that are triggered through the same applications, then I'd agree)

They are identical.  Unless they both apply so you can get 2 stacks with each hit, then Fatal Flourish is completely pointless, especially since Dark Potency costs 5 AP to get.

Am I missing something? Dark Potency is a low cost ability in the Blood tree and stack up to 5 times. Fatal Flourish is a more expensive (to get) ability, higher in the Blade tree, that stacks up to 10 times.

Basically, you can get a cheap but less effective version of Fatal Flourish for 5 AP spent on the Blood tree, or you can get a more powerful version of Dark Potency (Fatal Flourish) if you invest 51 AP in the Blade tree.

They are pointless only if you equip them at the same time, but while the one that costs less do its thing up to 5 times (total Penetration rating bonus 150), the one that costs more does it up to 10 times (total Penetration Rating bonus 300), so you gotta decide how to invest your AP in order to get what. Needless to say, this totally contradicts the whole: "skills in the outer rings are not supposed to be more powerful than skills in the inner rings". Obviously _in this case_ the one in the outer ring is more powerful.

All that said, I think they might overlooked something here cause Dark Potency is, in the long run, absolutely useless.

Ah, I guess that's where I enter the stacking discussion because I was using both Fatal Flourish and Dark Potency on Komoto's Pen build.

How come?

Well, they said multiple times that even "starter" abilities are supposed to be potentially useful in any deck at any point. If a certain passive ability ("Dark Potency"), can simply be replaced/upgraded with a 51AP investment (Fatal Flourish) to the point you will never ever have a single reason to use it anymore, I think it's a flaw in their design idea. No matter how few reasons you might have to prefer one over the other, one skill should never be just a flat upgrade to any previous one with the only difference being in the AP cost (again: given the design they quote all the time).

I didn't check before if they were applied in the same way, and they are. That said, they are two perfectly identical abilities (neither is an upgade or downgrade). Remember - Fatal Flourish just has a bugged tooltip which is being fixed (as stated on the test patch notes) since it currently only stacks to 5 stacks, as intended.

Oh, the "10 stacks" is not true? Then it's really silly. It made little sense if they were 10, it makes no sense at all with 5. I assume they'll fix it at some point. Anyway, since the tooltip is wrong, I'd say it's the result of some nerfing/boosting they did in the beta and forgot to update the text. Clearly something is still off.

While Dark Potency is a nice low hanging version, you're going to end up with Fatal Flourish if you're blade...and even if you aren't Incision is just way too awesome of a synergy not to get after Fatal Flourish.

FF using Aff to buff Pen feeding into Incision using Pen to Afflict....

Otherwise, yeah...just get Dark Potency.

Wait, they don't stack? I am using both :/

I wonder if they both trigger, so you can build up 2 stacks at once?  Seems wasted, but at least that'd be something.

Yeah, would be completely wasted imo. Maybe if they stacked to 10 and had a chance to fall off if you glance or miss or something, but neither ever falls off (except when their duration runs out) so there's no urgency to rebuild them quickly

Yeah.  And since I've got the passive that causes every hit to apply affliction, all my attacks trigger this, too.

I just tested this...It's true (one hit applies 2 stacks of penetration buff), but kind of pointless as you reach your max 5 stacks on the 3rd shot already.

I've been playing around with the Witch Hunter build (sword/hammer) and I'm liking the damage it can do.  Single target dps seems higher than with the Puritan shotgun/hammer build.  Only downside so far is engaging ranged targets is very limited due to using only melee weapons.

Nice, that was an important component of my Pen build along with Incision.

Dammit, now I want to play my sword guy again :) Guess I could add in blade to Bryn, I've found Elemental kind of underwhelming for her crit build; I'm mostly just using Thor's Hammer to dump the resources I'm building. Maybe time to put in some sword/pen. Which is mightier?

Oh ho ho!

So of late I've been getting discouraged with my ele/chaos build.  It's just lacking the punch of something like my blood/fist build and isnt as survivable as I'd like it.  Solution?
Passive skill-bridging via non-equipped weapons!  I didnt realize this was even possible until I checked on it today.

In theory I could apply a hindrance state that'd trigger from something that gives a weakened state or vice versa.  Here's a good post on the theory:

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=27633

For instance I could bridge say pistols to apply a weakened state (for chaos) via crit trigger, which applies afflict/hindrance for elementalism.  You then pop actives accordingly.  So on a chaos hit I'd get a weaken/impair, and if I happened to crit I'd get an afflict/hindrance.

Ideally you'd go for say a hit trigger off a ranged ele ability that'd trigger the states for chaos... which looking at the table seems like Fist would work for the impairment.  Crit definitely gives more bridging opportunity, but then of course you'd need the gear to pull that off.

Assuming you find a route that works, you then dump the crap actives necessary to apply the states directly.  For chaos this would be escalation.  Leaving a slot open for something else.

edit: yah, the above isn't gonna work with ele/chaos w/o dipping into the outer wheel.  Fail.

This is so Segoris can yell at me again before I start stocking up the 380 ap I need for this build.

Elem/Blood affliction chain
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?28=0&42=4&26=4&24=4&30=3&40=6&41=3&42=5&43=2&44=5&43=0&19=0&28=3&27=0

The core idea of the build is a constant blast of aoe chains that reapply afflictions and do mutliple dd's to every afflicted target. 

Use Open Vein as a builder, which chains and applies an affliction to every target, which also gets hit with a dd from salt in the wounds and I hope molecular explotation.

Blaze is used to touch of criticality chains, which should touch off a chain reaction chain also.  Wiith luck, vital fluids might allow you to mass spam Blaze without having to continue reusing a builder, due to all the afflcitions being reapplied.  Anima Charge is there to jump start Blaze without builders.

Molten Earth is strictly there to pin things in one area, and can be followed up with Liquidation for afflictions, with all the perks.  They're both insta-cast, and don't require builders, so it's kinda reasonable.

Infection is interesting for corpse explosioning things, but it has a cast time.  Bloodshot I'm iffy on, but it's an instant cast blood consumer.

I considered Phantom Purge and Grounded for pvp to add in a chain purge and additional dd in each chain, but I don't have room for the passives the way it's set up right now.

I have no clue if any of this will work the way I think it will, or if it'll even be better than a raw aoe build.

Since you're already going for Salt in the Wound, consider swapping something like Vitality out for Bloodsport.

Gross Anatomy is one I'm considering eventually to pair with Bloodsport.  Its affliction duration is short, so it should trigger that frequently.

Bloodsport's place is taken by Chain Reaction.  They do effectively the same thing in this case, but chain reaction is better since everything activates off of chains and it does more damage, and doesn't break off of glancing.

Gross Anatomy I looked up, and it looks like it's a massive underwhelming mess.  I couldn't get a clear answer, but it looks like it only procs on a DoT ending after it's full length, and not on it being reapplied, which more or less means it never goes off.  I still plan on testing it at some point, but it's at the end of a tree i'm not currently planning on going down, and I'm already in a 380 ap hole for this build.

Vital Fluids is there so I can potentially spam Blaze non-stop to burn down a single target faster while maintaining a massive aoe.  If Vital Fluids ends up not working out, I'm probably going to replace it and Molecular Exploitation with Phantom Purge and Grounded for Fusang.

This is false.  The builds/decks are different between factions.  For instance, a Dragon "Wu" concentrates on afflictions whilst an Illum "Thaumaturge" concentrates on penetration; though both are blood/fist. 

It's a nice touch that adds a bit of polarity between "classes."

That's what he said. If he's a Dragon blood/fist with an affliction build, he gets a Wu outfit, where your identical Illuminati doesn't get a reward for the same build.

What Sky said. Builds are the same. The only difference is that some builds get you an outift reward if you are with certain faction while you can do the same build with other factions and simply not get the (cosmetic) reward. I can make a Templar "Wu", it just won't have the Wu outfit, but will have the same identical set of passive and active abilities.

Every build is a "deck". Faction Decks are just guidelines that get you a cosmetic reward.

Here's a build using passive abilities from a range of weapons:

http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,4,25,203,209,197,199,187,149,302,116,200,553,1015,1017

To work, this basically depends on getting a penetrating hit or two in. Then it just becomes a buffing machine with me getting stronger and the mob getting weaker every shot. When Deadly Aim and Breaching Shot are both up, it kills things quickly (only single mobs though - although I would imagine the exact same passive setup would work for ranged abilities if I just swop them in). Without them, it depends on me getting a lucky penetrating shot or two.

I could make it more reliable by swopping Incision for Bloodsport (so that I "inflicted" an opponent on every hit, not just on penetration), but Incision does more damage and you seem to penetrate a fair bit.

I'm pretty sure this is Bryn's current Pistol/Ele build, crit-based.

http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,197,17,23,21,19,139,25,20,22,198,200,227,71,134

I'm slowly phasing out Above the Law, but it's nice easy aoe slow burn for triple-dots and adds. I'm also very close to dumping Elem as an active, which I'm mostly using for Thor's Hammer to have a secondary resource dump. Drone kit also on the fence, it's again mostly just some passive dot with a tiny bit of heal (I only dumped maybe 2 or 3 skill ranks into the support/survival/heal/whatever line of pistol: 5 ranks into dps).

Self-healing was decent in Kings, but I've dropped most or all of my self-heals and right now going to grab the Survivalism self-heal to replace Drone Kit. The little dribbles of self-heal on crit and pen + drone kit just aren't cutting it anymore, I end most fights half-dead in SC.

I've been playing pistol with two heals from the fist line.  I'm starting to think that self heal specs really kill dps and just aren't worth it. It does help a great deal in minimizing downtime between fights when I solo, but I'm pretty conflicted about dumping any and all heals from my hotbar.

Any thoughts?

Turn the Tables, third ability in the top misc category.  Okay self heal that doesn't scale with stats at all, so it's usable in a dps build.  There's also potentially Expulsion in the blood line that scales off of attack rating, but it's elite, and deep into blood.

IT'S TIME TO YELL AT ARD!

So using bloodsport in place of chain reaction could cause you to lose critical damage bonus from Blaze (ONLY if Blaze is used after the previous attack glances) and one proc of molecular explosion. However, I'd be curious about the dps loss/gain compared to applying afflicted over the course of a fight when applying affliction from the use of Blaze, Molten Earth, and Bloodshot considering how rare it is to glance a target later on. It could be close and I'm guessing BS would be an increase (small, but still an increase). Quite possibly so marginal it's not worth debating to a point where it comes to personal preferance of choosing A) Apply affliction less or B) apply affliction more with a chance of having it be canceled for one attack on a rare occasion

The changes I would make would be switching Vital Fluids (depending on how Molecular Explosion and Salt in the Wound play off each other and how they scale as they may be less valuable than VF and if VF can proc more than one on a single chain cast) and Splatter for Live Wire and Dark Potency/Fatal Flourish (DP in this case as you won't need to invest in Blades which I doubt you have at this point based on our chats). LW is a 1500+ hit we'll average it out to be about once every 10s or faster since this is an AE-chain build, and DP will add penetration which as long as you're hitting a mob pen is the best stat to have imo. The reason I've switched my mind on Splatter is that I thought chain abilities only hit 3 targets for some reason, but on the deck builder website linked they show all chain abilities hitting 5 targets. Outside of the last boss in Darkness Wars I can't recall a time I had more than 5 enemies. If chains hit 3 targets then splatter is a must have like I thought last night

I don't see much value in Anima Charge when using consumers that only use 2-3 resources given how fast resources are built (and it's value is even lower if VF can proc multiple times on a chain attack even with your intended purpose for having it). It may be worth it for a full 5-target chain finisher, but I'd give it up for some option of a different finisher (such as Electrical Storm for an Ele Chain finisher which gives you 2 chain finishers, or Magnetic Wipe for a purge when needed). Since this is an AE build, I'd also drop Molten Earth and pick up Cold wave. Longer cooldown and slightly shorter duration but it hits 5 targets (just as your chains do) as opposed to 1 target.

Here's what I've come up with (again, this is only if Vital Fluids can not proc more than once on a single chain, if it could I'd keep that in place of Dark Potency. It's also based on the +dmg on affliction application and what not being worthwhile instead of placing things like +15% crit damage bonus)
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?28=0&42=4&26=4&24=4&30=3&40=4&43=1&42=5&43=2&44=5&43=0&19=0&24=3&43=6


I'll take a second look at this when I'm home and can see how these abilities scale though. Overall I really like the build for AE Leveling/AE Instance Trash

Basically - healing skills scale off the +healing stat, dps skills scale off the +attack stat. This is why if you want to hybrid a character you need to use a hybrid gear setup to go with the hybrid skills you're using. I started as Ele/Blood so I could use a couple heal/shields to lower downtime, what I realized was that Tacos are cheap as fuck and killing things fast enough brought about much less downtime than trying to have any healing abilities or gear compared to straight DPS build that is equipped to do Single Target, some AE, and a little CC

However, as Ard points out - Turn the Tables is an ability that doesn't scale on anything, it just performs it's healing as stated. If you have a spare active ability it is the best heal for dps/tanks (outside of things like Karma and/or fuel the fire)

Yeah, Turn the Tables is what I was referring to earlier, because of the whole lack of +heal talismans on Bryn.

And what's all this talk about tacos?

There are tacos for sale in the london darkside that increase out of combat healing regen.

Also, Seg, every single normal hit in my build adds affliction in an aoe due to chain reaction.  Blaze + Criticality trigger it, as does the builder Open Vein.  There's no real gain with bloodsport over it as far as I can tell, and only a downside.

Tacos are found in London in the Underground or something like that. There is a demon vendor who sells tacos for 100<coin> each. They are usable outside of combat and increase hp regen to basically give a complete heal in less than 10s or so

Currently - they only stack to 10, next patch they can stack to 100 which will be awesome.

I didn't realize that's what tacos did.  I thought people were just eating them for that absurd achievement.  The health regen itself seems okay I just think it takes too long after combat ends for it to kick in.

On heals for soloing, I think the only ones that are really useful are things like the AR leeches that heal you while you inflict damage. The big problem with healing is its meant to be spammed and more or less keep up with damage as it happens, so tossing one in here or there isn't really all that helpful.

I'm running an AR/Blood DPS/Solo build. What are people using for A Blood DPS finisher? I've been using the entry level DOTs but they don't seem all that exciting.

Exsanguinte can work decently as a consumer, especially if you're built for impairs (cardiac arrest or anaesthesia), or if you're doing something that builds counters on hits, since it counts as multiples since it's a channel.  I know some people like using it with flight of daggers from deep in blade.

Seg, turns out that somewhere in the middle of my build and your version of it, there's already a dragon deck.  So apparently we're already on the right track.  It does bring up blood bank, which I hadn't considered previously, but given all the afflictions every single hit, is probably worth finding a slot for.

http://thesecretworld.com/world/decks/8

You're right, I didn't make that connection. So only your CC doesn't apply affliction the times that it doesn't crit. Yeah, smart move then


Personally, I'm not even a fan of the AR leaches. I tried using one when our healer in a Polaris Elite was having a hard time keeping a [not-so-good] tank alive. The finisher was healing the tank for something like 200 hp and gives the tank a leach effect. When I tried that leach effect on my dps build, it was healing me for something like 5-10hp per hit so for a tank that is likely down to about 2-3 per hit. That is because the leach % scales with the +healing stat to a point where even doing X amount more damage doesn't allow it to scale enough to be worth using. It's similar to any other ability that gives +healing of any kind (outside of turn the tables) in a dps build where it just isn't worth the loss of dps. So far,a the best way to reduce downtime as a dps is to just kill faster or use some CC (impair, root, etc).

And for the finishers, in addition to what Ard said, I like Blood Spike. The first one isn't too poweful but if you use it every chance after that it hits hard.


I'd almost consider saying scrap it entirely if it's close to one of the awful premade decks :D

Well, I more meant that someone had already at least tried parts of this combo together, so I'm less concerned about how bits of it will play together now.  The version they have is still awful, but it did make me look up Blood Bank.

My strategy:

Spend points in shotgun. Mash buttons.  :grin:

Yeah. I was just joking though as the decks that FC gives rewards for were from a previous version of the game when a lot of the abilities in them were much better (or so I'm told)


Your strategy is fantastic! (add a second weapon for another finisher and you win the game!)

Infection and Blood Spike currently.  There's a higher level instant I plan on replacing Blood Spike with, but will likely play around with this some.

Exsanguinate seems a decent dump, but I tend to use Blades for a quick dump, and Blood as a more situational one.

I feel left out, posted my build and totally didn't get yelled at.

On AR healing, though I only used it for solo healing I found the same thing. It's nice that you can dish dps while healing, but Komoto was in tank gear, so his dps sucked and so did his heals/leeches. So I don't think it would be all that great unless you went into heal gear, but then the dps would tank.

Just doesn't seem to be a very solo friendly game after Kings. I'm still enjoying it, but since I hit SC every time I log in, I'm a ghost...because I finally got fed up with dying so much.

All I can say is that it IS totally and easily soloable. Just not with every build. I am by no means saying that you have to use one of the "good builds". I am saying that there are dozens of good builds, you just can't sit on what worked up to that point as you would in other games. The system is so very flexible with builds and there are so many viable ones that cannot be gathered in one post. At the same time though it's unforgiving with those who don't adapt or evolve, and makes their gaming experience pretty crappy. you have no idea how many threads on the official boards have been "GAME IS TOO HARD! BLUE MOUNTAIN IS BROKEN! WHAT WERE YOU THINKIN FUNCOM" and so on. But this is no EverQuest, there's no grind and there's no smashing your own nuts. Just, slightly harder than the average DIKU.

Bottom line, neither Savage Coast or Blue Mountain are hard AT ALL in solo. But you might have to get a few more AP and items before you get there, or you might have to take a second, third or fourth look at the skill wheel. As noted somewhere else, it's not a hard game at all, but it's way more challenging than what we've been trained to in the last 8 years or so.

I've used a variation on the cookie cutter "crits and strikes" ele/shotgun build (http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,561,131,139,164,1038,137,1049,186,136,138,543,163,564,553) for almost the entire game and it's worked really well, even when soloing hard missions in the lategame areas (only exception was the 'Rogue Agent' mission where I had to switch to a shotgun/AR build with Anima Shot). The build kills crap really quickly, has very good burst to deal with healing mobs / "you can only damage me for 2 seconds every 10 seconds" kind of stuff, crits like crazy, has good range, and stacks up 10 stacks of weaken [-30% damage] on harder targets in a few seconds - which gives it a lot more survivability. I did have to use consumables occasionally on tougher pulls / unexpected adds... the Turn the Tables heal is nice, but it isn't going to keep you alive forever.

Variations I've used:
- Kneecapper instead of Do or Die before I got the 13248975 AP together for it (left it for last, as it is a LOT of investment in the pve dps misc tree for basically one elite skill... but it's worth it) and against enemies that get weaker when crippled
- Flame Strike instead of Electrical Storm for more singletarget deeps against bosses
- that 'deal x damage when you apply weaken' passive shotgun ability instead of Live Wire until I got halfway through Egypt (that's also a pretty hefty AP investment)
- Under the Radar instead of Punisher in groups for aggro control (assuming that someone can apply weaken)
- a half-ass shotgun-only build for that one mission that disables your secondary weapon, since ele focus can't go in the first slot (love ya, Funcom!  :why_so_serious:)

Blood has a nice finishing combo with Blood Spike. You have to build up 4 blood resources first, then you toss Blood Spike twice. If you hit the second blood spike while the DOT from the first Blood Spike is still going on the mob, you get a serious bit of extra damage (like 2 or 3 times normal damage, even more if you crit and/or penetrate).

While I'm currently something of a fanboy for this game I think saying that it doesn't get harder after Kingsmouth is somewhat untrue.  It's just that there are things you can change and do to match the next zone's difficulty.  Savage Coast is a little harder than Kingsmouth but you can negate that by using two weapons that work well together.  Blue Mountain is a leap in difficulty but once you get a build that focuses on doing one thing well with matching passives and stick that self heal on your active bar it's doable.  Quite honestly I found Blue Mountain to be more difficult than the next zone which is Scorched Desert.  There are some nasty damn places in Blue Mountain with tons of hard to see mobs all over the place.  You will die a lot in Blue Mountain, don't worry about it.  Once you make it through Blue Mountain you will have a very good idea of what you're doing and there are no more sudden jumps in difficulty in my opinion.  By then you will also probably be specialing in your two chosen weapons and train both to level ten, this helps prevent glances.  Once you get to Translyvania you should have enough AP to do a nice outer ring build.

Also remember you can buy QL6 blue weapons from a vendor in Blue mountain for quest tokens.  50 for the weapon and another 15 for a nice blue glyph to put in it if you have spare tokens.

Edit: Oh and if something just seems way too hard then take a look around and see if there is a better way to do things.  Sometimes you have to drag mobs through the environment or smash a red outlined thing to kill them.  If you are given a quest item to debuff them/buff you you had better use it.  As an example I was knocking myself out killing this tough group of enemies for one quest to get to a certain npc.  Turned out I didn't have to do that at all, there was a sniper rifle across the street which smarter people were using to one shot the quest...

It DOES get harder after Kingsmouth! Just... not hard to the point that you can say it's not solo friendly.

I'm not good enough to say much but I'll try "yelling", first I moved you build over to the flash based wheel (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?58=0&56=2&57=1&56=6&56=4&41=5&57=3&56=5&57=0&58=1&58=3&62=2&9=0&41=0) because I hate that other one.

- I don't like that you have two builder abilities, I would drop "Above the Law".
- Light blue abilities affect a whole group and are really only useful there so I would drop "Deadly Aim", 8 seconds of higher crit chance which can only be used every minute and a half isn't good.  I would buy the self heal and put it there.
- You have a lot of group focused attacks, I have found that tha AoEs are only useful if facing at least three enemies.  If you are fighting two just burn one down with harder hitting single target attacks then kill the other.
- I don't like that you have two Ground targeted AoEs, the time you spend aiming the ground effect is time which would be better spent firing off another ability.
- I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?
- If you do "Dirty Tricks" does the "Hothead" passive give you a stack for every enemy hindered or just one?  If it's just one drop that passive.
- Most of your passives are based on crit so your gear is going to need a lot of crit rating on it to make that work.  You would probably have to craft your own crit glyphs because that many won't drop naturally.
- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

You can interrupt it, but yeah, it has a small amount of damage for just one hit.

Personally, I'm a fan of this character builder: http://www.badomens.net/calculator (http://www.badomens.net/calculator) as I usually work out of a flat list anyway.  Doesn't export out to the gear manager mod though like the Drakkashi or SecretSandbox ones do if you're using that.

Is there one of those that has all the Funcom decks built into it already? I looked at a couple and haven't found one that does that yet.

EDIT: Why yes, the one right above my post.  :uhrr:

I don't even have to look at your previous post, I just look at your avatar and know YOU MMO WRONG NUB!

Better? :why_so_serious:

That Bad Omens one does.  Looks really nice, too.  I'm going to play with it when I have a chance.

Completely agree with Miasma. A couple things:

Hothead is limited to one buff as it is not a stacking buff (if a buff stacks multiple times then it will say it stacks X number of times)
Pistol & ele do work pretty well together later on, but early on not so much imo


One of the reasons I like Blood Spike (one of the rare things I do like in Blood for DPS) is that if you wanted to you could actually do 1 builder and then 1 Blood Spike (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?26=0&26=4&n&n&n&n&n&5=5) using a focus attack.

- I don't like that you have two builder abilities, I would drop "Above the Law".

Above the law was just to soften up groups, the only time I used it as a builder was for my initial drone. Anything else was a bonus. My rotation was Above the Law, Dirty Tricks, Drone Kit, then build with Hair Trigger, dump Elem with Thor's Hammer, dump Pistol with Shootout.

- Light blue abilities affect a whole group and are really only useful there so I would drop "Deadly Aim", 8 seconds of higher crit chance which can only be used every minute and a half isn't good.  I would buy the self heal and put it there.

I can trigger it every couple of combats, and with the crit passives I have I'm loath to dump it because I crit like a mofo. I also don't currently have a ton of good replacement options. I do plan on adding the Misc tree heal, it's what I'm building to right now - plan is to slot it where Drone Kit is now.

- You have a lot of group focused attacks, I have found that tha AoEs are only useful if facing at least three enemies.  If you are fighting two just burn one down with harder hitting single target attacks then kill the other.

Working on a new setup for this. Part of the transition from Kings to SC, in Kings I would often take on 4 single dot mobs (I was also running with a pistol chain attack).

- I don't like that you have two Ground targeted AoEs, the time you spend aiming the ground effect is time which would be better spent firing off another ability.


Never really spent a lot of time aiming them until I ran Polaris. Very easy to drop it in the right spot solo, and both were mostly openers anyway.

- I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?


Yeah, no shit. My main beef with Elem. The reason my primary builder in that build was Hair Trigger was due to HT being a focus ability, ditto Shootout, having a crit passive based on focus attacks (Increased Focus). HT I could interrupt to build, but at a reduced damage output.

- If you do "Dirty Tricks" does the "Hothead" passive give you a stack for every enemy hindered or just one?  If it's just one drop that passive.

I'd prefer a stacking passive, but as I was opening with Dirty Tricks it was nice to get the 7.5% crit to start every combat.

- Most of your passives are based on crit so your gear is going to need a lot of crit rating on it to make that work.  You would probably have to craft your own crit glyphs because that many won't drop naturally.


All my gear is oriented to crit, hit and attack. Mostly still green stuff, QL3. I have crafted a couple blue talismans and glyphs, too.

- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

I had some ideas, but they kind of dried up. I'm open to suggestions for a secondary weapon skill before I dump too much more into Elem. I kind of wanted the Paladin deck outfit, but blade is so much more pen-based and the conditions don't seem to match up well.


I did some rejiggering last night, however my abilities list got borked and only about half of them (the passives, of course) are showing detailed info. One big question I have - for abilities that consume all resources, is there any benefit to stacking the resource or is it ok to use the consumer with a single resource for full effect?

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?56=0&58=2&57=5&40=6&56=4&n&57=3&56=5&58=3&9=0&56=1&1=0&62=2&41=0

It's a total mess because I had been building in support of that old deck.
- So this one returns to the original pistol builder and using the passive that grants weakened to it; maybe build off that (gnosis for starters 1AP).
- Swap in Start & Finish, my current best pistol single-target consumer; 1s activation but it does play a bit off the weakened thing, too; decent dmg (esp with crits).
- Then I put the chain Wanted back in, does decent single-target dmg and gives me some "AE" damage, mostly used when S&F is on its short cooldown or 3+ mobs.
- Molten Earth, I like this a lot. Similar to Dirty Tricks, a wee bit more dmg and wee bit longer hinder but single-target only.
- Drone Kit just kind of hanging in there waiting to be replaced with self-heal (I get a very minor self-heal from DK)
- Forget what went in slot 6, would be nice to have an Elem consumer here, since ME is resource-less
- I like the +crit until I find something better for this slot in this build

For passive, I added in gnosis just to see how much things would trigger off Weaken; Magnum goes in for the same reason.

I forgot to run dps meter with the old one before I changed it around. The new transition build was doing 200-350 dps on random SC mobs, with a couple higher spikes.

You do get more damage out of all consumers when you've built up 5 resources, is the difference worth building all the way up? Probably not but I still tend to do it unless it's half-dead trash mobs...
And the thing Elemental and Pistol shares is it's crit triggers which you're already going for, the following is my own crit based passives but it might give you some ideas:

Mad Skills, you already have this but for us can't ever get enough +crit...
Insult to Injury, third ability in Hammers Brutal Force, triggers on crits, reduces targets dmg by up to 30%, sets Weaken.
Punishment, first ability in the same tree as above, triggers when hitting a weakened target upping crit power rating by up to 150.
Paradigm Shift, 5 AP into Chaos to get, +Hit up to 150 rating whenever Insult triggers a Weaken. 'cause Glancing sucks.
One in the Chamber, Pistols Crossfire. Just a little extra dmg on crits. Not always in my deck either.
Magnetic Variance, Elemental Resonance. 33% chance to Purge a single buff off target. Put this in to try and handle Transylvania mobs better, ought to be good in the dungeons as well but before Shadowy Forest nothing you'll need.
Live Wire (Elite), Elemental Altered States, every 5th crit gets a large dmg boost in the form of an extra hit. Mine's up to 1400 extra with the current gear which is pretty darn nice to have.

Before Live Wire and being a Fist/Chaos build I used Empowerment for survival, (critted hots heal an additional 100). Also tried From the Abyss, similar to Live Wire, but hits 5 targets near you for less dmg.
And tinkering with a Exploitation/Tough Luck from the Pistol Trajectionist tree for a hinder/cleanse combo after talking with Njal the other night.

And why use Immortal Spirit instead of Advantage Me as a Pistol crit build? Can't really do enough crits without sacrificing any +Pen gear sadly.

Here's my solo/duo questing build that I'm using right now:
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?32=0&33=1&5=0&0=2&32=2&32=6&1=3&74=1&33=2&1=4&33=0&38=0&32=5&38=6
I mostly pull 2-3 mob spawns and AOE them down with Escalation and Balanced Blade, dumping Call of Eris on my main target. Since the foes are perma-Weakened from Escalation, Minor Ward and the Hit Rating buff are both always up. Domino Effect is a decent Impair (and using BB right after builds 2 Blade), and I've got Martial Discipline (with it's healing passive) for when things go tits up. I'm mostly in tanking gear, with a few DPS pieces that I added recently since things in Blue Mountain take forever to kill.

My actual tanking build is similar, except I swapped in a second defensive CD instead of the Impair, and a taunt instead of the AOE finisher. Ideally I'd like them to get the gear manager working better, so I can run an AOE tanking spec for trash and a single target tanking spec for bosses, but it's still pretty finicky right now.

I honestly don't think I understand elemental enough to talk about it much, it's odd in that has a lot of skills that only use two or three anima points, but if you're running with it you should defintely use a consumer or else you are waisting the five anima points in the weapon.  If I were to guess I would say their intention is for you to use a builder to five then use a two anima ability then a three.

I see a lot of people using elemental in translyvania so I'm sure it's good but I don't know how to use it myself.  Of course maybe I just think a lot of people use it because it makes such a giant pool of lights and effects with every ability.

I personally run hammers/shotgun and love my weakened effect and have a lot of passives that trigger off it.  The hammer weaken causes the enemy to just do less damage which is great and always useful, the pistol weaken is only directly useful against the handful of enemies that self heal or barrier themselves (although it would be great against those enemies).  The passives that exploit weaken will still all be just as good for pistol.

What's your hammer/shotgun spec, Miasma? I am sure we run a very similar one based on what you say, but I am curious about the little differences.

This is my solo Shotgun/Hammer one. (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?55=0&52=2&11=3&51=3&8=4&52=6&11=1&11=4&55=3&49=2&13=3&48=3&52=3&52=1)

Touchdown is a charge and it's always good. It even allows you to skip certain areas and get away from certain mobs. It also just feels right.
Point Blank is a good opener, it alos applies Impaired which I can instantly exploit with Haymaker, then build with Striker and consume both resources with Raging Bullet and more Haymaker. Takedown is extra damage without the bother of a casting bar or having to pay attention at resources (I am looking at you Buckshot) and the Hindering effect is good from fights where I want to start with a bit of an advantage. Finally, Beatdown is great instant damage but especially useful when I just need to interrupt outnumbering mobs.

For passives, I still debuff 3%/stack of mobs damage but I do that through shotgun (Punisher) instead of hammer. Tenderising and Gunsmoke are just a little nice extra damage with each hit, and Improved Strikes and Dead on Target are simple DPS boosters. For penetration purposes, Body Piercing and Strike Force, with this one in particular being the whole point of the "strike" build.

I gotta say, I kill everything really really fast. But I am just at the end of Blue Mountain, and having all DPS equipment (and fairly good weapon) might be part of the reasons, reagrdless of the build.

What's your spec like?

My build seems similar it's just that I use Hammers as my main and you use Shotguns.

This is my standard questing build, Hammer/Shotgun (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?10=0&12=2&13=2&12=6&50=2&52=2&72=2&55=3&54=2&60=5&11=4&8=5&48=3&14=6):

Actives
1 - "Strike" builder.
2 - "Blast" multi target hammer consumer.
3 - "Strike" single target hammer consumer.
4 - Elite.  Long cool down ability which impairs/interrupts and does good damage on anything in front of me.
5 - Multi target shotgun consumer (currently bugged and only doing single target...).
6 - "Strike" single target shotgun consumer.
7 - I play it safe and keep the self heal, I like ending fights at almost full life.

Passives
1 - My three "Strike" attacks all put weakened on the enemy which cause them to do 3% less damage, up to 30% less at full stacks.
2 - Now since all my "Strike" attacks weaken they also buff my physical and magical protection by 30 each hit up to 150.
3 - Straight 7.5% damage increase for all four of my consumers.
4 - All the "Strike" attacks cause weaken which cause an additional small hit.
5 - Straight 10% increase in hammer damage.
6 - Straight 10% increase in shotgun damage.
7 - Elite.  An awesome passive which will heal 40% of my max health over ten seconds if I drop below 50%.  It essentially gives me 40% more hp so long as it's on cooldown.  It only triggers during boss fights or when I screw up so it's usually on cooldown.

I like it a lot, I get stronger and my enemy gets weaker with every "Strike".  Does a lot of damage to single and pairs of mobs but against swarms it's only mediocre, I don't see a lot of swarms in the later zones though.  I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm critting or penetrating.  It uses weaken which doesn't seem to be countered a lot in the end zones unlike hindered or impaired (most any build based around those two conditions are either made useless or can actually get you killed later because so many mobs have protections against them).

I notice you use the 7.5% more "effective" Strike passive instead of the straight 10% more damage.  What does "effective" mean, does it mean 7.5% more damage and stuff like weaken and impairs also last 7.5% longer?

Why not swap in Run Rampant for Hand of Change?  It's fairly cheap Chaos and adds a little Evasion.

I use 7.5% more effective Strikes AND 10% more effective on Shotguns (Dead on Target). What I don't use is the 10% flat damage on Hammers cause I only use the hammer finisher, while the 7.5% I get from Improved Strikes (assuming is more damage) is ON TOP of the other 10% when it comes to shotgun abilities. If I read the game correctly, my shotgun abilities fo 10% more damage and THEN another 7.5% additional damage as long as they are strike (and both my builder and consumer are). That boosts my hammer consumer too since that is a strike. So in short, I give up 2.5% damage from the hammer consumer (1 ability) for a 7.5% increase on my shotgun builder and consumer (2 abilities). This is assuming I read the system right and bugs are not messing with me.

About "effective", I think it just means it does x% more damage, and they've just been goofball in naming it that way.

Hmm that's interesting.  We both use tenderising which does a small additional hit but if it stacks the way you say it does then it might be better for me to replace it with "Improved Strikes" and you to replace it with "Closer".  Both stack another 7.5% damage which at that point would have to be more damage than the small extra hit tenderising does, I think.

Edit: The small extra hit doesn't apply weaken too does it?  I don't think so.

Yeah, closer is really nice. It would make my finisher really, really happy. I might pick that up. Tenderising is not that great and I swap it out in PvP. Same with Gunsmoke. Those are definitely waiting for something better to take ther place.

And no I don't think the extra hits actually apply anything.

I'm 1/3 - 1/2 or so done with Savage Coast now, and "put shotgun abilitis on bar, mash buttans" is still working fine.  :why_so_serious:

Can anyone recommend a good healing build/deck?  I see a lot of healers using fist/blood, at least on the runs I've done.  Seems a bit more reliable than fist/ar or blood/ar.    Bonus points if it can be worked into a mostly ranged dps build. 

I have a couple goals for my next builds: I'd like to possibly be able to heal, and I'd like a solid ranged DPS build.  Melee DPS can be a bit of a pain in some of these instances.  When I'm solo, my already completed hammer/shotgun build (similar to Falc/Miasma works just fine).

Yeah, that's why I had been avoiding it thus far, it's rarely useful beyond setting the state to cause other effects. Funny how quickly this character went from awesome OP off the rails insanity to 'meh'.

I don't like the bizarre "dash backwards ten yards" sub effect that is on so many shotgun abilities.  By the time the first fight was done I'd have aggroed half the zone with my absurd backward dashes.  Never mind my other weapon is melee so I need to stay up there.  Never mind that quite a few shotgun abilities do more damage the closer you are.

I'm planning on replacing Hand of Change once I grab Brandishing Support; I'm not sure if I want to use Run Rampant or Matador. Any idea which would be more effective?

The backward dash is awesome in PvP. Especially when coupled with the always snaring "Close Quarters" elite passive. But at the same time PvP at the moment is an Assault Rifle fest, and there's no place to hide from that bullshit range and the stupid Red Mist nuke.

Yeah I don't use any of those. Right now I have:

builder thingy that is a cone attack, blam blam best animation (pump action, maybe?)
finisher thingy that is a cone attack
builder thingy that is a single shot attack and does more damage if they're hindered (powder burn, this is the only one I remember the name of for sure)
finisher thingy that is a single target attack, the icon looks like the ghost rider skull kind of
an elite cone attack that hinders everyone
a single target attack on a cooldown that hinders people and looks cool
a pistol chain attack finisher thingy because I might as well do something with the pistol combo points

I used to have a penetration buff on there but I found I wasn't remembering to use it much.

Ooh, start using it again, my character has a couple of things that fire off when she penetrates with an attack (hot).

I don't think it matters unless you grab some of the passives that have an affect after a glace, evade, or burst.

I'm still working on the final build, but I'm actually planning on using both.

Couple things now that I messed with both loadouts a little (vs a track team zed in SC while praying a GM would unbug taking the purple). With the second posted loadout, I was doing 170-260 dps with around 24 seconds ttk the two mobs (one single dot, and a summoned triple dot).

I rejigged the passive to a hybrid of the two builds I linked, but put the original active lineup back for the 'third' loadout. This one was giving me solid, repeatable results: 240dps, 19s ttk.

Two things about the quoted abilties:

Thor's hammer does a pile of dmg. All Elem consumers seem to come with activation times. I don't like it, but it does fit a role.

Shootout, though channeled, can crit on every tick of the channel. Since the alternative is still a 1s activation with only two shots, Shootout ends up doing more reliable damage.

Still stumped for a way to make it faster, or give more opportunities to crit. Seems a crit build needs to avoid big nukes (like Thor's Hammer) in favor of multi-hit stuff like Shootout to get in as many crits as possible.

Yesterday I was messing around trying to make a pistol/element deck and some of my earlier concerns proved false, including the casting time.  Thor's hammer takes two seconds to fire off but funcom was smart enough to balance it as it turns out, it does twice as much damage as two one second single target abilities.  So that's fine, I'd keep it and not worry about casting/channeling time since it looks like if an ability takes 2.5 seconds it does 2.5 times as much damage as a one second ability.

I couldn't make a deck I really liked though, there seemed to be some promise using the elemental builder with a passive that causes an affliction DoT, then building off affliction but I still couldn't get much synergy.

Ramblings from a mad man. Feel free to yell at me about things I'm not doing right or things that could be improved on that I'm not seeing

Last night's (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?45=0&65=5&42=4&40=4&64=2&73=6&73=0&52=3&67=2&43=4&2=1&40=5&42=5&43=6) Ele/AR build I ran (another dps was reliably applying afflicted, so I didn't need bloodsport).

It feels odd because the build is rotation was a clean 3 resource finisher usage (even for AR abilities). This kept Highly Strung's 10% bonus damage up at all times. So basically, I always have +19% damage (Highly Strung + Twisting the Knife) and up to +29% with maxed Lethality (which was normal), and then up to another 25% with Do or Die and 15-25% additional if someone else was using Short Fuse, not even counting anyone using Breaching Shot for +pen chance, though since I'm geared for pen/crit dmg I was penetrating plenty last night.

Rotation of 3x Ignition->Blaze->Fire in the Hole->repeat.
There are two alternative rotations.
1) this wastes 1 AR resource and using a rotation of 3x Ignition->Blaze-3x Ignition->Blaze->Fire in the Hole->repeat. This I think would be about equal to what I'm doing now.
2) 3x Ignition->Blaze, 2x Ignition and queing up FITH to fire immediately after firing Ignition->1x Ignition->Blaze and repeat while firing off FITH upon reaching 5x resources. Not as clean as firing both finishers off at 3 resources, but may increase dps. I don't know if it will since it's a flat dps finisher based on # of resources. I'd like to find a finisher that is single target dealing X dmg + Y dmg for each resource, as using both finishers at 3 resources would probably increase dps since I'm getting the base dmg more often and receiving the same amount of bonuses per resource spent. The reason I prefer to fire FITH with Blaze is I need to test the global cooldown since that is why I prefer clean rotations here while using abilities that have a cast time.

Adjustments if needed:
If affliction was needed I'd drop Body Piercing for Fatal Flourish/Dark Potency and Lethality or Live Wire for Bloodsport
If Short Fuse/Final Fuse was needed, I'd drop Lethality or Live wire as well as Do or Die
If purge was needed I'd drop Electrical Storm for Magnetic Wipe

I may switch the AR part for Blood, but I need a few more points for Finish the Movement. That build will look like this (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?26=0&24=2&42=4&40=4&24=4&73=6&73=0&52=3&5=5&43=4&2=1&40=5&42=5&43=6).

The rotation will be 2x Bloodline->Blaze->Bloodspike->1x Bloodline-Blaze (procs Highly Strung at this point)->Bloodspike (procs the bonus damage, now with highly strung added as well), repeat.

Mostly the same adjustments from the AR/Ele build work here as well. I'm just not sure if the full bloodspike damage is worth losing Lethality (probably is, but need to test). Another option is dropping Live Wire, but I need a better parser to be able to see if that is still worth it in either of these builds. I also want to test Explosives Expert and see how much damage that does. I'd really like a true test dummy here, as the semi-dummies in the starting area where you pick your first weapon die too easily =/

Yah Thor's Hammer is gonna get the nerfbat I think.  Typically I pop shotgun's penetration active grp buff (with the passive I think it's like 55%), then either toxic or molten earth (shot/ele elites) for the hinder with the AR passive that makes hindered targets unmissable (this costs like 3ap to buy into;  MUST HAVE if you Hinder).  Then pop the active ele ability that makes everything free (so... free thor's hammer) and throw in an automatic crit.  And voila...   near 2000 dmg sometimes even with only QL3 gear and enough hindrance to pop Combust for only 1 resource for a few secs.  

I've bought mostly into Hit instead of attk since Elementalism relies on accuracy more than anything else.  Casting times can be high, so missing/glancing is NOT an option.  The raw dmg. more than makes up for it.   Secondary consideration is crit of course with this build.

Later on as I get closer to 'Grifter' I'll start relying more on turrets, which is what the build ultimately calls for. Otherwise not much synergy.

Bug:  Also, lawl that 1.0s ele ablities fire at the same rate as instant shotgun abilities reliant on animations.

I'm not so sure about that. The ability itself isn't so strong it requires nerfing, and your example requires a 45s cooldown active and a passive to improve said 45s cooldown active.

The only place that Thor's and Red Mist are overpowered (kind of) are in pvp due to massive burst against glass canons and people with minimal hp. In PVE these abilities aren't overpowered, but feel that was in regular questing since if you fight a group of 2-4 then one mob is basically taken out almost immediately. I also think Thor's seems OP and due for a nerf because it's an inner circle ability, and people still aren't connecting that inner and outter circle abilities aren't supposed to be measured differently in terms of power or being upgrates (save for elites I believe).

For me, I haven't had Thor's act as a dps increase in dungeons, and don't have Red Mist to test yet (I'm hearing mixed results, meaning it is quite likely subject to one's build, which is awesome).

Red mist actually has an advantage of not being a damage type, and supposedly never misses, glances, etc. Costs no resources, but has a 30s cooldown instead of Thor's 15s cooldown.

HELP!

I've been playing Pistol/Fists using pistol for dps and fists for self heals.  I'm thinking of abandoning fists in favor of something with more dps synergy.  That being the case do you all think that shotgun or elemental has the best synergy with pistols?  I'd like a primarily single target crit build, but have been looking at maximizing focus (channeled) synergy.

Any thoughts welcomed.

Shotgun doesn't really have anything for crits.  I couldn't come up with a build I liked for pistol/element like Sky uses so someone else would have to talk to that.

Shotgun is all about causing/exploiting hindered, and also has a lot of penetration stuff and some stuff that works off weakened.

EDIT: It looks to me like hammer has a bunch of crit stuff.

Synergy chart: (http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6047/7021875435_1eb27d7358_o.png)

(http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6047/7021875435_1eb27d7358_o.png)

So to answer your question Nebu, for crit synergy with pistols, pick hammers or elementalism.

Yeah, review the last bits about my build for where I'm at. When I get a while to play, I'm hoping to tweak what I've got some more. It's definitely triggering a ton of crits as is, and it's to the point where soloing in SC is pretty easy (crown mobs notwithstanding).

Not tonight, though; Sunday looks pretty well shot and that means Saturday is projects day...so maybe Sat night if the old lady is all facebook gamey instead of hangy outy (sadly I still prefer hangy outy). I don't know how people play mmo and maintain a normal life.

edit: looking at the chart, I'd favor elem: there is a bit more synergy due to hinders especially. I still vacillate between the aoe pistol elite hinder and the single-target elem hinder, they're both nice in different ways.

Are the guys with crowns supposed to be harder than the single dot guys? I can detect no difference between them.

 :crying_panda:

Crowns should be harder, you should defintely notice it because they generally have twice as much health as a single dot.  Are you sure the crown and dot were the same colour?  Because a red single dot could be harder than a blue crown.

Anyways, on to my no doubt terrible theorycraft for a weapon combo I have never used for Sky and now possibly Nebu.  I see a lot of pistols and elementals in the end zone so I'm sure they're both good once you can afford the outer ring stuff.  Allthough I can't say if all the pistols and elementals I see are using both together.

This is the only stab I can think of for an almost entirely inner ring Pistol/Elemental build and it probably sucks. (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?40=0&57=5&58=2&56=6&44=2&41=5&72=2&40=5&56=5&40=1&58=3&24=3&9=0&41=2)  You would need fairly high crit chance gear.

It works on crit and mixes in some affliction dots and a nice penetration buff.  The only things that are outer ring is the pistol single target consumer "Start and Finish" which is only three deep into an outer ring so not too expensive and the passive "Mad Skills" which is four deep, it could be switched out with "Mind over Matter" in element for some extra affliction until purchased.

It has a standard single builder ability with two multi target consumers and two single target consumers, one for each weapon.

Actives
1 - Builder.  It is elemental because it has a better passive match below.
2 - Multi target pistol.
3 - Single target pistol.
4 - Elite.  Use as an opener then start building five anima points.
5 - Multi target element.
6 - Single target element.
7 - Self heal to save yourself.

Passives
1 - Straight 10% more element damage.
2 - Straight 10% more pistol damage.
3 - Builder now also stacks an affliction DoT.
4 - Crits cause a higher crit rating.
5 - Every affliction stacks a penetration buff.
6 - More crit power.
7 - Guaranteed crit every seventh attack.

1) I would open at range with "Dirty Tricks" to do some damage and stop them from getting to me while I apply my builder.

2) Apply my builder to five anima points.

3) If three or more enemies pop "Wanted" then "Inferno".

4) If less than three pop "Start & Finish" then "Thor's Hammer".  Note that if done exactly in order as "Dirty Tricks"->5 builders->"Start & Finish" you now have your seven counters from the "Elemental Force" passive guaranteeing a critical strike for "Thor's Hammer" so it will do a hell of a lot of damage.  After the five builders you will also have +150 penetration which is strong dps.  If possible try to time "Thor's Hammer" after you have your seven counters of "Elemental Force".

5) Use the self heal liberally.

I don't like that the elemental closers must have five anima points to fire so you won't be able to use them to finish stuff off at three anima points, you'll have to use the pisto closers.  I also don't like the lack of an elite passive but couldn't find a good one on the inner wheel.

Edit: If the counter to ensure a crit from "Elemental Force" works the same as the others it will actually persist between fights meaning it could fire before "Thor's Hammer".  You could either right click off the buff or alter your rotation to fit.

The crown guys just seem to be normal dudes, but with names. Although upon reflection maybe I am comparing them to the skull guys like the golems over by the airfield? I dunno. They definitely don't stand out to me as hard so far.

Mob power is something like this (repost from the h8 thread). You can mostly tell how tough they are from their hp.
- swarm mobs with little hp (three circles next to their name) in groups of 3-8 OR 2-3 with a normal mob
- weak mobs with moderate hp (one circle, but noticably less HP than normal) in groups of 2 [sometimes 3 in 'hard' areas]
- normal mobs with normal hp (one circle) solo [groups of 2 in 'hard' areas]
- strong mobs with high hp (skull, flag, crown) solo

Crown mobs are sometimes as strong as skulls, sometimes (much) stronger. If there's a little + next to the crown (or it's a crown+skull), it's even tougher.

The little plus also means it's a rare and can drop a blue.  There used to be a good write up by yokai on the forums but I think the post has been archived since they changed their forums.

Yeah I definitely don't mean the crown+ guys, I saw Lutefisk wandering around and he had like 12,000 hp, so he was obviously in another category.

The crown with a plus is usually a rare that is worth an achievement too. The simple crown guys are named and as such are guaranteed a green but that's it. In this game the ONLY way to get blue items is from dungeons, not counting the very few blue items you get from a handful of big quests. So no random cool drops. To get the blues, run dungeons, or stay "average" in your greens.

At least they made the dungeons really awesome and worth doing besides the rewards, but yes either you do them or you stay green.

Thanks.  The chart was wonderful.

Tinkered a bit with AR/blade again. I'm currently using this one:

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?1=1&4=4&64=2&69=0&7=2&64=0&1=3&1=2&1=0&1=6&64=5&0=5&69=1&1=4

Very simple AoE rotation on the blade side with guaranteed penetration on the main damage dealer, AR offering flexiblity between extra damage and self-heals. No cast times except for the mandatory pull ability. It's fast, fun and quite sturdy in case I pull too much.

I'll probably throw out Eagle Eye for another ability that procs on penetration (Sudden Return maybe?), since my blade damage output greatly outweighs AR.

Okay, so I got my Elem/Blood affliction chain build going now, and it makes me giggle every time I use it.  Still not sure how it actually compares damage wise to other builds, but it's higher dps than my old one, and has some better crowd control tools in it.  It's a really expensive build though points wise, since it goes deep into a bunch of trees.

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?28=0&42=4&24=4&27=1&40=6&43=1&72=2&43=2&44=5&43=0&19=0&27=0&28=3&42=5

I'm probably going to swap out vital fluids for live wire, as suggested by someone else earlier.  It does currently help some with getting off more blazes, but it just doesn't seem to do enough.  I'll swap out infection for misdirection for dungeons so I can help cement aggro on a tank since everything I do aoes.  Everything that isn't open veins or wildfire is neither a builder or a consumer, and is mostly insta-cast, for burst damage and crowd control.  I'm having a lot of fun with this so far, and am taking things easily now that I wouldn't have been able to before with my impair build.

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?72=0&1=1&4=4&39=2&7=2&37=6&38=1&68=3&19=2&1=2&3=2&19=0&43=0&3=6
This is my fairly standard cheese pvp deck.

I'm still standing by The Business/Shootout for crit builds. That elem builder is a single hit vs 3 hits for The Business; Start & Finish is only two hits vs the channeled Shootout. You can crit all those extra hits, more average crits per fight vs hoping you crit on a couple slightly bigger numbers. I saw much more reliable dps with The Business/Shootout combo.

Still need to make time to improve the build, but for now that's the solidly performing part (again, for a high crit build).

Ele/AR build I'm fiddling with:
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?40=0&42=4&40=4&43=1&64=2&65=1&40=6&40=1&42=5&40=5&43=0&24=3&41=6&65=2

I'm pondering alternatives to AR or improving the AR side of things.

3x Shock (w/ Volatile Current) to build and Afflict
Molecular Exploitation to do extra damage per hit on Afflicted targets
Dark Potency to +30 Penetration Rating (5x stack) for 8s whenever Afflicted is applied
Toxic Earth to Afflict with 4s DOT when Hindered
Molten Earth for Hinder (20s cooldown)
Coldwave (45s cooldown) for PBAoE Hinder for oh shit situations
Electrical Storm
Fire at Will
Anima Shot

EDIT: I see that using Bloodsport to get Afflicted, 3 round burst to build (over 2x the dps of shock, it looks like, when combined with extra bullet) is more common for this sort of thing...

Yeah, Bloodsport or Chain Reaction is probably your better bet for affliction than using a passive slot for shock.  You're probably better off using Salt in the Wounds from fist instead of Molecular Exploitation since you'll constantly be reapplying affliction then also, unless you use them both.

I'd personally only use toxic earth if you're going to throw in at least one more hinder, otherwise you're probably better off using Live Wire since you're using Blaze for auto-crits.

Chain Reaction is nice in that it doesn't cancel if I glance -- actually does Bloodsport cancel affliction on glance or just the Bloodsport DoT?

Glancing with Bloodsport cancels the Afflicted state, which of course can be quite inconvenient. Bloodsport's still the best bet for single target builders though unless you use a combo like Shock and it's passive and don't mind the extra cast times.

I feel like a dope, but I don't understand that chart.

For example, looking at the Blood Chart, under Fists it says Impair (in the crowd control color), Afflict (in the Rng Support color). What does this mean?

I can't make heads or tails of the chart either.  I just spend a lot of time surfing the in-game AP assignment UI.

This (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?7=0&4=4&19=3&17=5&1=3&21=0&0=6&19=2&24=3&1=0&58=3&19=0&68=1&22=6) is what I've been running with the past couple of days. Was able to handle most of the missions rated hard in the Shadowy Forest (changed to an Ele hinder build for the hell mobs near the entrance to Carpathians, removed affliction from it for fighting those Fungal mobs after a very nasty surprise on my first encounter with them  :grin:) and after a very rude awakening can handle those thermal mobs at the start of the Carpathians (had to throw on one piece of tank gear to give me enough buffer).

Actives:
Forking Paths - AoE builder with a small heal for hitting afflicted targets.
Clearing the Path - Ridiculous blade AoE finisher with auto-pen on afflicted targets (ensures Immortal Spirit is running almost constantly)
Cage Fight - Fist AoE finisher that also applies afflicted (used if fighting groups and I don't need a heal) (decided to add that to the build when I was typing this up but didn't realise it's not a consumer)
Hog Wild - Fist blast finisher. Will probably replace it when I get something better.
Wild at Heart - Fist ST finisher (more burst against single targets)
Martial Discipline - +50% chance attacks against you will glance. Sometimes the RNG gods don't like you and this gives you a bit of breathing room. I didn't really know what else to throw in there and already had the skill.
Surgical Steel - Fist burst heal finisher with HoT. Can heal for a lot thanks to Empower.
Stunning Swirl(E) - AoE impair.

Passives:
Bloodsport - Adds affliction to every attack.
Salt in the Wound - Deals extra damage whenever you apply afflicted.
Dark Potency - Adds 30 pen rating whenever you afflict, max 5 stacks.
Immortal Spirit - Gain a 5 second HoT every time you penetrate.
Mad Skills - Adds 30 crit rating whenever you crit, max 5 stacks.
Sharpshooter - Adds 30 hit rating whenever you crit or pen, max 5 stacks. This might not be needed but I hate glancing.
Empower(E) - Whenever a HoT crits the target gets an extra heal.

I can't check my stats right now since the game is down but from memory I have one blue heal piece at around 350ish HR, one blue tank piece which brings me up to around 3.5k health and the rest are blue/green QL10 DPS pieces. Everything is glyphed for crit and pen. Empower is what gives you your survivability. With a high crit rating it procs a lot, for around 175 HP from what I remember. I've had occasions where I've gone from around 50% HP to full on a single application of Surgical Steel thanks to the HoT from both it and Immortal Spirit critting a lot. The DPS isn't shabby either thanks to all the crit and auto-pen from Clearing the Path.

Edit: fixed actives.

It means both blood and fist use teh Impair condition for CC and Affliction for DoT; either applying it or causing effects from the conditions or both. Other than that, the attack types and conditions don't synergize. So using blood/fist, you'd want to pick skills that play off Impairs and Afflicts to synergize between the two lines.

The first column tells what each weapon type uses for various things, like Chain vs Frenzy for AE type attacks. If both weapon types use that for AE, it will show up in the chart as a synergy.

I'm wondering if paired with Gross Anatomy if cancelling through a glance causes it to trigger.

Using a pretty standard, ele/ar build. Why do I always forget in a MMO that I prefer playing ranged DPS when I end up doing group content?

Actives:

Ignition -  this seems to be the most solid builder I've tried.  Plus, it's a strike so it has additional options based on that.  It's pretty easy to get in a good cadence with this ability.
Blaze - Your bread, butter, steak, and dessert. Combined with Aidelon and an affliction state, you're going to put out a lot of dps.
Three Round Burst - AR consumer. 
Fire at will - AOE AR consumer.
Red Mist - Nice single target damage. 
Anima Charge - What's better than Blaze? DOUBLE BLAZEUUUUUUU.
Cold Wave -  It's nice for peeling adds off your healer.  This is really a flex spot and you can put whatever here.

The nice part about these actives is that really only blaze is required.  You can put in Arc Flash for AE fights really easily or when you need to purge.

Passives:
Aidelon - Free Blaze crit with affliction.  Egg roll cost extra.
High Strung - 10% damage if you can time your blazes right. 
Elemental Precision - 10% to elem.  This perhaps could be replaced, but I'd have to do some math.
Bloodsport - Apply affliction with every hit.  Can be replaced in instances if someone else is applying affliction (and isn't an idiot).
Call your shots - hit buff that's removed on glance.  Good way not to worry about having hit on your gear.
Lethality - increased damage until you glance.  Combined with the above, it's usually fully stacked (10%) damage.
Live Wire or Forged in Fire - Live Wire for deeps.  Forged in Fire if you're solo, your healer sucks, or you can't seem to dodge shit that's wrecking you.

If someone's applying affliction and weakened, you can put in Punishment.  This'll give you scary burst. Since you're also using a strike, you can apply weakened with Punisher (if by some way you don't have someone applying).

I don't necessarily like having 2 passives built on one ability.  But there are ways I can exploit affliction better, perhaps by switching out some different consumers and changing passives where I can.

Once I got my blue elemental focus (just a generic lucky drop in Polaris), I started doing enough burst damage that pulling aggro was a simple matter of an early crit/penetrate. Easy build to execute, very flexible outside the core, but not very creative or active with exploiting states.  It just has crazy burst damage that ramps up rather quickly.

I might have to rethink my build since I am starting to get my ass kicked every time the game sends me into a solo instance. Unfortunately I can't remember the names of any of my skills or exactly what passives I'm using at the moment, but if anyone has any tips I'm shotgun/pistols (and will be until I hit the bounty hunter deck fully.)

The faction and story line solo instances can be brutal if you're not running a really tanky or sustain oriented build.  Even then, rogue agent is really hard and the one after isn't much easier (there's zero room for fuckups). 

Something that can help are:

1) The heal from the PVP misc line (never used, personally).  

2) The ability to apply weakened. You can apply weakened with shotgun strikes or blasts with certain passives. I believe there are also passives for crits or penetrates that add weakened as well.  

3) Tanky passives. I'm a big fan of the stacking magic and physical protection.

4) Sustain of any sort. I think pistol as some built into it.  Blade has a lot.  Blood/AR have sustain as well.

5) An "ohh shit" or "my deeps goes way up" button.  Shotgun has the penetrate active ability which allows you a ton of burst on a fairly low cool down.  

Of course my ele/AR build really only had some sustain in form of an elite hammer passive I leave in for soloing. Toward the end I could just burn through a lot, but dual skull mobs were an impossibility in the second to last main quest instance.

Pistols has a MOAR CRIT active ability, btw.

Yep, that's been on my bar for a long time. Really works for the oh shits.

I also use the self-heal, with a pretty strictly limited situational weaken from pistol I need it. I'm sure the pistol weaken is awesome for that handful of encounters, but compared to shottie's weaken...RAEG

Pistol/Shotgun that I liked in theory based on a convo with someone (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?56=0&58=4&55=4&57=3&49=3&73=0&73=6&9=0&11=0&18=5&56=5&2=1&43=6&37=5). Basically, my plan for gearing would be 400 crit/pen, about 150 crit power and then hit glyphs on weapons and that should bring me close to an effective rating of 350 or 400 on each stat and a shitload of +dmg from passives and then adding in group buffs.


Options for when needed:
I may drop one of the buffs if another in the group has them available to add in a shotgun turret or some sort of debuff (purge or cleanse)
Possibly drop Brawler for Lethality (which could bring me up to +38% damage with Lethality fully up, total of +68% then since every tank uses exposed).
Another option would be dropping Brawler for something Coup De Grace (if pistol resources are left on a target when it dies then it causes an explosion) or Magnum (reduces shields/heals on target up to 50% though with proper purging and impairs I don't know how useful this is as shields/heals haven't been much of an issue).
I have Sureshot as my shotgun finisher (basically just because I was messing around with different purge/cleanse options), but would otherwise be Out for a Kill.

I haven't picked up the cooldown reductions on any group buffs since I can't remember the debuff which prevents people from having the buff on them again for X duration (I believe it's 90s as well, so cooldown reduction seemed pointless unless I'm not remembering correctly).

edit: saving an idea I have for amelee impair build here for later use/thoughts http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?16=4&18=4&10=2&19=5&16=6&17=3&73=0&18=1&43=6&11=0&37=5&16=5&18=5&2=1

Short Fuse is the only one I've seen that adds a debuff like that, I don't think there's any reapplication restrictions on any of the others.

Thanks, and that may be it as I'm not used to seeing buffs used besides SF. So now it may rely on if others are using the CD reduction or not (most probably will in NM) which may cause me to drop one buff and let someone else cast it while I pick up a different active, and replace passive with a CD reduction.

I don't want 2 group buffs and 2 cooldown reductions, it's a bit too crowded for passives already and that would drop me too much outside of casting those buffs.

I also just noticed The Business says it's a multi-hit ability but doesn't state being a burst ability, meaning Ferocity might not work. :rabble rabble: Might have to rework that and find something else, or just slot in Lethality permanently

The pistol tree crit ability (Deadly Aim) definitely works with its passive. I've been using it to help overtaxed healers in dungeons for a while now.

Segoris - Ferocity only works with Burst attacks. Unless I'm missing something (you don't seem to have any Burst actives), Lethality seems the better choice.

As a side note for a Pistol/Ele build; the pistol consumer Shootout counts as 5 separate attacks for the purposes of calculating on-hit triggers, so if you like to run a crit based build with Elemental Force and Livewire (like I do!) one use of Shootout will complete a full cycle of Livewire (if it crits on 4 out of 5 hits) as well as giving 5 Elemental Force charges. If anyone can explain to me why Shootout works this way while other abilities like Hair Trigger don't, they are better at Funcom than I am (not hard).

Edit: Seg noticed it too  :awesome_for_real:

I'm kind of torn on multi-hit abilities and things such as Livewire. I was testing this stuff the other day with Tressa, I found them inconsistent at best and believe she had better results. Though she linked me a thread on the official forums which had one person saying they had a LW proc every 2-3 seconds, meanwhile I went times where I had 4-5 burst attacks with a single crit in each burst attack and only received 1-2 stacks of the Live Wire buildup buff. I think a lot of it has to do with the 1s internal cooldown with on-hit abilities, and I wonder if the first hit in a burst attack will allow for the next burst attack's crit to proc Live Wire, but if I crit with the 3rd or 4th attack in a multi-hit then the following attack couldn't proc on the first or second hit


That said, I'm still giving multi-hit a chance with The Business (it's not a burst attack but it is a multi-hit) and may try out Shootout if I can get Live Wire proccing as fast as some other people have been (thanks for that suggestion, if doing multi-hit may as well go both builder/consumer).

As I understand it, multi-hit abilities should only be able to proc on-hit effect once per second (this was added near the end of beta as multi-hit builds with a bunch of on-hit passive were just wrecking people in PvP from what I read). Since Shootout is channeled over 2.5 seconds I would have assumed that the max it could proc would be three times at 0, 1 and 2 seconds (assuming it doesn't damage on activation). Sounds like it may be bugged if it's doing more than that.

That sounds about right.

In pen/crit power ql10 blues (Blaze build gear basically) I was testing out that pistol/shotgun build and it did pretty well even while very incomplete. this is all I was using (http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?56=0&56=2&48=2&n&n&n&n&9=0&n&n&56=5&2=1&43=6&67=2) and it was still pull close to 1k dps or so without weakness from chaos being on a target dummy. Once I re-adjust my gear and get the rest of my passives (and Do or Die) I should be able to pull closer to the current Blaze build (probably within 10% of Blaze, potentially higher for sustain)

This could have some potential to be a good base for later

Even with the upcoming change to Aidelon, I'm not sure I'm going to change my build much, if it at all.   Could possibly work in Violent Strikes/Social Dynamo.  

Search panel.. why did I not know this existed before.  :facepalm:

The 'burst' and 'strike' and whatever else abilities could benefit from being a little more clearly marked. Tooltip should have a subheading for that, like card type in MTG or something, instead of hiding it in the text of the ability.

Templating like:

<Sample Shot>
<Shotgun Blast>
<Description text...>

instead of the current:

<Sample Shot>
<Sample Shot is a Shotgun Blast that description text...>

That's something I'm still a bit confused over. For example, are all cone and column abilities classified as "blast" or only those where it specifically says so in the ability description?

I think they have to specifically say it.  Seems like many of the abilities that aren't builders or closers don't have specific types of attack, they usually do high damage and have a long cooldown.

So with the impending nerf, I completely retooled my chain aoe build to remove elemental and use pistol instead, and I'm really really pleased with the end result.  

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?28=0&60=2&24=4&27=1&56=6&59=1&72=2&43=2&44=5&46=2&59=4&28=3&57=0&43=6

The first cavaet before I get into how this works is that my dps gear set has a really crit rating (441).  I probably need to find a sweet spot with crit power for max damage, but this is a lot higher than most people, and this whole build is very crit reliant.

Basically you open with Dirty Tricks, which roots everything, and applies hot head to you to increase crit chance.  You then use open veins 3 times.  
Every time you crit, you cause another chain from criticality, extra damage from one in the chamber, and building up a tick on live wire.  After 3 open veins, if there's enough still alive, you apply infection for another aoe dot, as well as a corpse explosion that should chain react the whole group down.  Open Veins two more times, and use Semi-Auto on whatever has the most health left, to make sure the channel goes the full duration.  Usually everything in a group pack is dead by this point, but if you need to reapply the hinder, that's what Shake and Bake is for.  If you end up in an even longer fight, Dirty Tricks recycles pretty fast.

Anaesthsia is there because I like having an emergency impair, but there might be a better utility active, but I couldn't find anything I personally liked.

Other things I tested:
Salt in the Wounds - Did not come out to higher damage than Damage Control.  Was about 200 dps lower with my gear.  Salt in the Wounds might trump Damage Control with enough targets.  It's hard to test that on the dummies though.
Chain Feed - tried this without damage control, and it did less damage, even if it's not crit and hinder reliant


Note, this build will suck balls on Lair mobs, or anything immune to hinder, since you won't get the crit buff.  It can still work, but you won't be anywhere near full damage.  If up against those, I'd swap back in salt in the wounds for hothead.

I'm slowly but surely getting into this turret-aoe, purge build via Grifter.  Purge is one of those conditions that is VERY buried within the skillwheel (it's not tooltip-underlined at all) and doesn't even show up on the synergy tables.  Yet, there's a million finishers that rely on it in the shot/ele trees.  I haven't mathed it out yet but assuming all this stuff will stack I could just throw down my killing field, smoke a cigarette, and watch the world burn.

note: the above sux ass during lvling for single target  :oh_i_see:   And there's very little in the way of viability on the way to the deck it seems.  Anyone have any suggestions?  

selfedit: gonna have to be the usual hinder-crit-strike build with some cc until I can make a purge-penetration-dps build viable near the end of the deck.  The latter being an oxymoron since DoT aoe is more suited to crit.  :oh_i_see:  The former has too many built in crit passives to ignore.

Been messing around with blade/fist, adjusted Tyrnan's build a little bit and have been bored with pve more than usual from spamming 1,1,1,1,1,2,3 repeat even down in the Roman Baths.
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?1=1&4=4&16=2&21=0&22=5&1=3&7=6&2=1&19=2&0=5&7=1&19=0&5=3&22=6

Might switch in a charge or something, but for now with a tank helm, healing minor tali, and the rest DPS (I'm using very balanced crit/pen/crit power stats right now as well, this works with just about any stats as long as you can hit the mobs) the build is just easy mode

If you're asking for suggestions, link your build. There are a few things I don't agree with just on what you're saying already

-DoTs don't crit or penetrate (which is why I don't know why you say a purge/pen/dps build is actually a DoT build and more suited to crit in this game, I'm guessing purge/pen/dps should be purge/pen/dot and I mostly just answered as such)
-Purge is awful until you're running Elite or NM dungeons (very very few exceptions until that point). It doesn't show on synergy tables because there aren't a million finshers which rely on purge (not one single finisher does better if it purges a target or does better if the target does not have purgeable buffs on), there are some that will purge but not improve if the target is purged. In elites and nm it's still awful, but unfortunately it is somewhat mandatory for some bosses.


The way to find purges in the abilty wheel is to hit the bar on the right side which brings up a search/filter function, and type purge in the text box. Should this be underlined? I think so, as should cleanse, but I think since they don't do anything but remove buffs or debuffs, respectively, it is not as important. I wouldn't mind them being highlighted though

By request here's an AR/Shotgun build I used for Polaris Nightmare:

Weapons: shotgun/assault_rifle
- Cost: 948 AP (Link to Deck (http://www.tsw-builder.com/#79v900742920713756g10g00p714901555421121325636))

Actives
1. Safety Off
2. Raging Bullet
3. Three Round Burst
4. Breaching Shot
5. Cleanup
6. Confuse
7. Sleight of Hand

Passives
1. Breach Party
2. Extra Bullet
3. Fever Pitch
4. Iron Maiden
5. Twist the Knife
6. Ferocity
7. Live Wire

Viper's Deck Manager Import:

Rotation is 4 Safety Off followed by Raging Bullet and 3rd Burst, rinse and repeat, Usually pop Breaching after the the builders for the second rotation. Keep in mind it's made for the usual group where Palmer applies Weaken for my Fever Pitch and it might be worthwhile replacing Live Wire and Iron Maiden with say Eagle Eye and Seal the Deal, haven't had time to test it yet.

New challenge: viable chaos dps build. This one is frustrating me to try to create something with chaos that might be within 10% of ele/x or pistol/shotgun/ar combos

DPS is all you care about for it?  It's got lots of things I like, but building for pure DPS isn't something I've tried yet.  Hmmm.

Yeah, only for DPS. It's the most used tank choice afaik, but I don't see viable dps builds using it and wanted to try to challenge myself to come up with a viable (hopefully competitive build) using many of the unused abilities. It's proving much tougher than I thought it would even using the obvious connection of burst attacks.

I was giving myself a 2nd requirement though - must be able to apply exposed which made it more of a burst/hinder build, I may need to remove the 2nd requirement for now

Have you found a decent way to apply Exposed outside of Escalation? I assume that's the only reason that you see so many tanks with it. Everyone expects them to spam Escalation to increase the groups DPS.

Ok so this isn't as much a Chaos build as a Fist burst one but you can probably work in some small expose into it through Uneven/Discord without difficulty. It does fit the within 10% of Ele/AR atleast...

Weapons: fist/chaos
- Cost: 828 AP (Link to Deck (http://www.tsw-builder.com/#35v304322522g16331531g10p305323325121555721336))

Actives
1. Prey on the Weak
2. One-Two
3. Four Horsemen
4. Do or Die
5. Reckless
6. Amor Fati
7. Confuse

Passives
1. Predator
2. Follow Through
3. Ferocity
4. Twist the Knife
5. Fever Pitch
6. 12 Gouge
7. Adrenalise

Viper's Deck Manager Import:

Open with a one-two and then the rotation becomes 2 prey, one-two, 2 prey, one-two and four horseman repeat 'til it's dead...

That was another reason why I was thinking about a chaos dps, but the most non-tank ways to apply exposed are Uneven Ground (45s cooldown, AE 3 stacks of exposed), Discord Rising (30s Cooldown, single target, 3 stacks of exposed), and Breakdown (passive, applies exposed when hitting an impaired target).

I remember hearing either UG or DR was bugged and applies more than 3 stacks (something like 3stacks per second as both have effects that last a certain duration), but am trying to not plan for that in the builder, but may adjust in practice. Still, combined they could apply 6 stacks which will last for up to 60s (depending on which order you stack them I think, since one has a 8s duration per stack and the other has a 10s duration per stack which would have to go 2nd I think). With Breakdown passive being utilized when a tank impairs a target (or the Chaos dps could even take over impairs if the tank goes heal/tank spec) and keep the exposed buff up until UG/DR are off cooldown

All that, while also trying to stay at a minimum of around 850dps with 10/10.1 gear.

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?37=0&34=2&10=2&38=3&35=5&35=3&8=6&35=0&n&37=5&26=1&32=5&2=1&18=5


That's what I came up with earlier before I got sidetracked of thinking of a new AR build and ended up almost exaclty with what Seraphim posted a couple posts back.

Fake Edit: yeah Sera, that is more of a Fist build than what I was looking to try and do, though I do like that build for a melee that isn't involving Blade
Real Edit: yeah I know my build only had 6 passives, that was due to considering other passives but kept going back to weaker ones, so left that open while brainstorming.

Just abusing this thread to save some links to some fun builds that might be worth trying while questing
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?64=0&66=0&24=4&64=2&64=6&67=1&29=4&64=1&64=5&51=6&28=5&18=5&26=1&2=1
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?26=0&24=2&56=2&24=4&62=3&56=6&59=1&5=5&24=5&51=6&26=5&58=3&26=1&2=1
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?50=0&53=2&55=6&61=4&62=3&56=4&53=4&50=5&60=1&59=4&51=2&61=3&46=6&53=3