It's taken me 5 years, but my Fixer is edging closer to 220
I think(!) that she's in a decent-ish place as a starting point for the gearing up process that I'm starting on now:
A. Fully set of QL300 Penultimate OFAB will be done very soon
B. Able to cast all Pande nanos without OBs
C. Alien levels and research in line with what the excellent guide in this section outlines too!
The sticking point for me is currently weapon choice. I'm still using a QL260 Conflagrant Syndicate Messenger Gun. Is this going to be adequate to begin end-game raids and such like, or should I take the plunge and start preparing for the dual-wield path now?
I'm tempted to sell the CSMG and buy a 300 KMP5 and the highest QL Hawk offhand I can get, would this be more effective than the CSMG for starting the gear up process? The last thing I want is to have teams pissed off with me for not pulling my weight!
You want 2 envy guns , when use a wu on them they will turn into 1h weapon . Both will need a wu and second one needs a upgrade more but that can be bought in tradeskill shop
armor i would say mostly ql 300 css but that will cost a bit . The ofab gloves upgraded are better then css gloves if i remember correct .but going full ofab is nice also. There is no use buying the ofab back item just use sws XI
soon as you have done all abillities research can get ahlpas on , i use arty and eoe, only support i have is brain i think. The eoe is mostly for pvp as i use onehander
lots of nice gear to get from db , escape modul and buff gear sleeves and pants .
the ability bracers are nice to have if you dont already have them , i will be doing some db1 when i get home to get db chest, so if your online we can try get a ap team to do it.
think you can get bracers for 200m now if want to buy all of gmi
Well if start next week with regular city raids , you could get lucky but all loot of bots are sold to highest bo order but if a player wants its just to deduct his part when he buys it
well, I have upgraded nearly all my symbs, 1 is still sub-200 (waist I think). all the rest are minimum 220 and a few 240s.
OFAB is all ql300 and Penultimate, except the boots at the moment, buy order set up for 2 more lumps for those.
dual kmp's are in - 80 more MR and I can use a 237 untyped with the 300 typed, so I'm quite pleased with the progress!
Most endgame fixer setups only use Penultimate Ofab in Chest (Full auto/HP), and special edition hat (full auto/AAO/HP).
All other slots you want to fill with CSS. That's probably nothing new.
If you're sitting at 220 with a SMG people are going to raise eyebrows so you definitely want to be getting your Envy's ASAP, CSS you can hold out a bit on, but you definitely want to start attending S42 for your chance at supples, saving all your spare cred and start working towards supple sets.
FYI, a 228 supple bot can make you a QL 285 CSS piece which is only missing 1 point of offensive modifier (it's missinga few points of evades/inits but those are less important.
For Fixers you probably want mostly artillery alpha symbs + support brain/foot (for ND/HD). chest support is probably best. Leg you'll want a support alpha since it's getting dodge range next patch. Also, depending on breed, 280-300 EOE (eye slot).
" I Don't Like That Man. I Must Get To Know Him Better." -Abraham Lincoln
I'd really try to avoid working on two endgame toons at the same time. From what it sounds like you're more focussed on your advy, and that's not a bad thing.
18.7 will result in advy being more versatile than they currently are, and 18.7 will see a much broader demand for secondary support toons (DPS/heals, DPS/mitigation) where 18.6 has much broader demand for specific roles.
Advy will fill the secondary healer role incredibly well and as such, it's not a bad idea to focus on him.
It sounds like you're melee on advy and that's good for PVM and it's cheap. To flesh out your PVM setup on melee advy you can really start to go cheap as chips with a heavy focus on crit to flesh out your DD.
DB combat chest
Aquarius calculator
Obitom's calculator
Dreadloch sniper's friend
QL 296-300 Viral targeting subunit
goddess boots
predator circlet
Shoulders you can use pads of brawn but you'll really want your collatz pads because the nano bonuses are "needed" for top dog
Setting up for hard DPS on melee advy can utilize lots of nice melee damage items too like a 5/5 arul saba bruised brawler, (in contrast to the Tier 3 DB bracer), and cloak of the wandering knight
As you get richer with time played, there are obvious upgrades, some cheap, some not so cheap.
But the basics are simple:
choose the biggest upgrade for the cheapest price, and work your way to the most expensive adding the least.
So the best slots for expensive upgrades are:
Head: Pred circlet -> gannondorf combined commando's hat
Since you only need a QL 250 hat, you only need a QL 200 supple bot, which only costs 120m that's the cheapest upgrade to QL 300 commando's you can possibly do.
If you choose mercenaries that's ok too, but trust me on this, it's ALWAYS better to make QL 300 commando's than any other armour in game. If it takes you twice as long to farm credits for, it'll be 5x more usable in the end. That's because:
1. CC has both ranged and melee skill bonuses
2. CC has add damage
3. CC has evades (as AAD)
4. CC has AAO
5. you can use it on melee chars or ranged chars for PVP
All of those things mean that it's fundamentally the top armour. It's the most versatile and will give you the greatest happiness to own a set. That and it is, generally speaking, the only way to build top DPS setups.
AR based crit rating is BEST boosted by CC. I don't know exactly how much AR differential you need in order to produce an increase of crit that is noticeable (>1% +/- rounding error) but I do know that CC gives the best chance of getting that rounding error up to 1%.
The AR differential is calculated as follows:
your AR/(your AR + targets def) = %
A lot of work has been done to understand how these differentials work, but there is no conclusive evidence on how the crit % is affected by AR differentials. HOWEVER, it is absolutely certain that at extremes, 100% crit is not only achievable, but enforced by mechanics.
Take a stroll in a backyard, for example and try killing a few level 1-5 leets/reets and you'll notice that you cannot land a normal hit, they ALL crit. This is based on the AR differential, not on your personal crit rating.
As mobs evades (and players) get higher, the chance for a crit decreases, but, the principle remains, and therefore, AR is a significant player in Raw DPS setups.
" I Don't Like That Man. I Must Get To Know Him Better." -Abraham Lincoln
I'm starting to arrive at this advy-first conclusion myself - and I have a slight "pulled-in-too-many-directions" feeling, so your comments on this are bang on the mark.
Advy has 300 CM Head and Jacket, DB Sleeve, DB Chest, Legs and Boots and 2 x Mongoose mk 6. 1 x Brawn shoulder and 1 ofab I think
I'm thinking that 18.7 could be a good time to stop flitting between my higher chars and concentrate on getting sheep geared before moving on to my fixer.
This kind of completes the circle too, Adventurer was my first char - although I had one before Worrier, he still dates back to 2005
A final thing to note - I wasn't intending on madly rushing all my chars to 220 and leaving them hopelessly gimped and reliant on other player's charity - it's just that I've felt so overwhelmed with the depth of detail in AO again that I was struggling to remember what I had and hadn't done on Sheepworrier - so my plan was to go thru the whole process on Zandramas to re-learn it all.
I guess it's just reading after all, so I'll probably come up to speed in time!
