Racial Balance

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Iqloo
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Joined: Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:31 pm

Racial Balance

Post by Iqloo »

Something that always makes me a little tepid about returning to Anarchy Online is the relative power of the different races. I mainly played shortly before then a long time after the Alien Invasion expansion, when the relative balance of the different races seemed to be pretty out of whack, maybe that was just perception though. It seemed to be if you weren't Atrox for most classes, you were probably doing it wrong. Solitus and Opifex had some good classes as well, but picking Nanomage was just asking to play from a handicap.

I know when Dreadloch came in they introduced a really sweet HUD (or was it a Utility? -- irrelevant) item that helped Nanomage out a lot. Also the power creep seems to have made it so anyone with a sufficiently heavy wallet can equip whatever they want. In the latest patch they also reduced some gear and nano requirements as well as changed up Mongo Rage (for the better? for the worse?).

Basically, a lot has changed since I've really been serious about Anarchy Online and I'd like to know how things are on the racial balance front now. I'm especially interested in Nanomage Bureaucrat and Opifex Shade. I'm not too interested in PVP, but if whoever answers this wants to include that for someone else who might have the same questions I do, please do so. Mainly I'm interested in solo boss killing and relative group play power contribution.

Thanks!
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noobas
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Re: Racial Balance

Post by noobas »

opi shade + NM crat are good choices.

Broadly speaking, the HP gain on atrox can be helpful for a shade, but the tradeoff is swapping off/def spirits on the fly (atrox can't do it).

That said, both opi and atrox shades are exceedingly empowered by the overall shade toolset.

Both aver very very good choices. Soli is also fine. NM is not a good choice.



As for crats, NM is probably the best choice, but solitus can do very well in both PVP and PVM.

You'll have no problems with NM crat. The only thing you have to watch out for is HP. If you're playing PVM primarily, you'll want as much max HP stuff as you can get, and I'd recommend not spending IP in body dev at all, it's just too expensive. If you want more HP than what a standard endgame setup provides (~13k), swap out CS/CSS armour for stuff like DB armour or even Enhanced Moly jathos which can boost HP a fair ways. Your maxed out setup for HP for PVM crat will be about 16k.

No matter how you cut it, 13-16 simply isn't "tanky" even remotely, so basically the crat playstyle always and irrevocably limits opponent contact. For PVM this means constant aggro management, pet trimming for maxed taunt, and simply holding off DPSing in solo play until you pets have established sufficient aggro. for Team PVM play time division is basically 90% DD, 10% debuffing - assuming you have a dedicated tank or significantly stronger taunter (i.e. soldier/enf/MA/advy/shade/DD trader/agent/NT)

Crats are still one of the best Team players in AO and that team contribution is toolset specific, and is unaffected by breed. solitus crat could, potentially add a bit to the team play factor by perking soli alpha (sphere) but it's non-essential.
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