I need more time on Arylos
So far so good, today is looking well. Firstly, my sis nuked my online gaming experience once again. Secondly, I managed to steel my resolve in disciplining myself. In the fact, the only reason why it took me way later than 7 pm to log off was the Siege of Neverwinter event. Suffice to say, I need to run 7 daily stronghold quests because I got 7 characters in the same guild. This is excluding running Bhaasmond Taran for the Maze Engine campaign (2 more days to taking on Baphomet in order to take him down). In addition, I also want the Champion's Banner for Bhaasmond and Arylos. So yeah, it's more than a bit hectic.
Do it like Archer, roll a 20 for Will save.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't give a damn once I decide to do something. Like Lestat de Lioncourt (complete with Uruguayan citizenship). As a result, I was too obsessed in spreading out my focus like someone on a Nutella-only diet.
With the coming of Storm King's Thunder (basically, that includes Sea of Moving Ice), the player is encouraged to focus only on one character with the rest being on the substitute bench. In fact, either I'm lucky enough to survive that damn Bryn Shander weekly quest with Arylos or it's true that I have the tactical (and strategic) awareness of Emiya Kiritsugu to make the cut anywhere across the globe (and that includes Middlesbrough).
This is even more so with the devs following anema's footstep. If anema will forever be remembered for making the hunter ranger class great again, then it means the devs have done something to up the overall difficulty level. This is most evident in open PvE, where running the Storm King's gauntlet has gotten harder. I've yet to test out Sea of the Moving Ice in this context, but I've seen enough in the STK zones to convince me the game has officially been upped. Which is a good thing. Any complaints of grinding is mostly down to taking on giants, dragons, and demons with both eyes closed. This time round, closing one eye (let alone both) means this:
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| Minus the badassery of Deadpool (plus the question of who he prefers, Miss Hazell or Miss Park) |
One thing I realized about Arylos reverting to the combat tree is this: 'Tis far better to use Negation than Soulforged. Thankfully, I already got 2 coalescent wards handy via the artifact equipment coffer. Which means all I need is to get a lesser Negation for less than half the price of a coalescent ward (via the auction house), bake a new lesser Negation (because I'm no Gilgamesh, I don't belong to the super rich 1%), then use the 2nd ward to create a normal Negation.
Gone is the ability to free respawn, now comes the ability to withstand punishment. Of course, this is not to mean Kelemvor has given up on his Chosen. Just that Arylos chose to be Archer instead of Deadpool.
Note: I sold my normal Soulforged, got a whooping 1 million astral diamonds from the AH.
Marauder versus Fox
Initially, I was won over by Fox's Shift due to its multi-hitting property coupled with a Ring of Rising Precision+4 and maxed out Battlecrazed feat. However, the problem of having to close down the opponent still remains. Granted I still have the Howling Weapon set, but when it comes to any raid instance stretching from one end to another (like Master of the Hunt, Shores of Tuern, and Valindra's Tower), being in the last man dps role didn't seem attractive to me. This is due to me choosing Aspect of the Lone Wolf and Aspect of the Pack as Arylos' class features. With Marauder's Rush, the damage will have to be compromised. As a vital trade-off, this gives Arylos an equal footing with a human great weapon fighter from Tuern named Hazell Fitzmoran (note: I blame popular media culture for this).
After a bit of deliberation, I decided to go with Marauder's Rush in order to see how it goes. Problem with using this lies in this encounter power getting tactically locked after the first hit. What it means is this: Once you pull it off, chances are that you'll have to wait for the next wave to pull it off again, cooldown or no cooldown.
Luckily, the combat HR isn't that reliant on the final paragon feat unlike 90% of the paragon paths available. This allows you to spam Battlecrazed more than 5 times in a row, this allows you to pull off Throw Caution more effectively. Despite Throw Caution being nerfed in the sense that you'll need to hit any opponent ala melee hit cursed with a short reach, you still end up having enough to play a dps race since it's now counted as a damage increment buff as well instead of that crappy crit increment bs during mod 4.
Earlier on this evening, I tried it out. The result was better than I expected (read: I wasn't expecting much in the same way I wasn't expecting Middlesbrough to win Swansea 3-0 at home via a crap performance). With a control wizard (most likely an oppressor by my guess) blessed with a higher total item level (I think it's like 3.2K or so compared to Arylos' 3.1K), I still top the dps chart (the CW, however, did top the body count table). Not too shabby if I say so myself. That's for Throne of the Dwarven Gods. For Prophecy of Madness, my team got silver. However, Arylos got gold in both the body count and dps (this was despite having a trickster rogue with a higher total item level. Dunno if he's a scoundrel...).
So what this means is very simple: I'll most likely be honing my skill on Arylos with Marauder's Rush in mind.
At the end of the day, strategic understanding doesn't translate accurately to technical excellence on the equal scale unless you're willing to get 100% used to the character of your choice.
A/N: I realized that placing the AoE for Split the Sky between yourself and the mob instead of further up is very damn useful for a combat stormwarden. The reason why being that at least part of the mob will automatically zerg towards the nearest party member/tank. You're better off doing a Marauder's Rush immediately though if your mates have started engaging the enemy.
Add A/N: Burned 250K astral diamonds to upgrade the bling dawg to +3% combat advantage damage.
P.S: Originally, this was meant to be a longer post with better content. Until my sis ends up nuking the internet plus the fact that it's now 1 am, that is.
Add P.S: Forgot to add that Marauder's Rush and its ranged stance BFF are extremely deadly in the right hands during any Tiamat raid. I don't profess to see any of such performances because I can pull it off myself. The former is all about reaching (any) Tiamat herself. The latter is to jailbreak from a breath attack while protecting Linu and her BFFs, after which you can just pull off a mass nuking via Split the Sky.
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