DDO Heavy Repeater Build to 16.4 (32 Point)

Not easily played as a first main character unless you can get a friend to fund you with a few appropriate starting items and a bit of cash, and somewhat limited during the early stages by what you can carry. However, this build is easily the most powerful non-intimidate based aggromagnet that I've come across since starting the game and packs all the firepower and efficency you can need into the deal, making it cheap to run whilst fully functional and tremendous fun at the same time. Tommy gun posse all the way! :)

Benefits:

* High damage, high accuracy, giving it a high threat generation
* Excellent range, allowing it to get half the job done and apply plenty of stat damage before the mobs have closed with the main group
* Reasonable meat-wall AC
* Huge fun to play

Drawbacks:

* Burdened easily at low levels
* Dependant on a friend to get your initial weapon
* A bit monotone after a while

Build as follows;

Race: Halfling
Class: Fighter
Alignment: Chaotic Good


STR: 10 +0
DEX: 20 +5
CON: 14 +2
INT: 10 +0
WIS: 12 +1
CHA: 8 -1

4 initial points: +2 Tumbling, +4 Jump

Level 1 - Exotic weapon proficency (Heavy Repeating Crossbow) + Point Blank Shot

Level 2 - Rapid Shot (Reload when it gets fixed again), +1 Jump and +0.5 Tumble

Level 3 - Weapon Focus (Ranged), +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 4 - Dodge, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble, +1 Dexterity

Level 5 - No feat gained, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 6 - Mobility, Shot on the Run, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 7 - No feat gained, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 8 - +1 Dexterity, Improved Critical (Ranged), +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 9 - Precise Shot, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 10 - Weapon Finesse, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 11 - +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 12 - +1 Dexterity, Improved Precise Shot, Weapon Specialization (Ranged), +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 13 - +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 14 - Greater Weapon Specialization (Ranged), +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 15 - Power Critical, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Level 16 - +1 Dexerity, Greater Weapon Focus: Ranged, +1 Jump, +0.5 Tumble

Ending enhancement list based on;

Strength - +6 item and +2 Tome giving 20
Dexterity - +6 item and +2 Tome giving 34

Fighter Armor Mastery III
Fighter Armored Agility III
Fighter Action Boost: Attack III
Fighter Critical Accuracy IV
Fighter Jump I
Fighter Repeating Heavy Crossbow Specialization II
Fighter Strength II
Halfling Athletics I
Halfling Cunning I
Halfling Dexterity II
Halfling Luck (Will) III
Halfling Luck (Fortitude) III

Suggested equipment:

Initially you're kinda dependant on a friend or an alt bringing you a decent starting Repeater. An ideal candidate is Hobbles Crossbow (+1 Cold Touch Heavy Repeater, no min level) which drops in Irestone Inlet, or is regularly found in the low end brokers or Auction House. Your starting Dex bonus far outstrips the amount allowed by most armours, but given most mobs fall in one volley, cloth is perfectly acceptable to begin with, be it Robes or Monk's Outfit. The Outfit will give you a rather cool ninja-with-a-machinegun look :p

First port of call is the Waterworks for the Black Widow Bracers. Combine these with a decent set of Resistance Robes for different elements and a Robe of Invunerability for the 5/- DR during general use, and you'll fiind yourself reasonably free to melee when required, and impervious to stray arrows and rays that you've not been able to dodge manually.

Work your way through as much of the Harbour as you can stomach until you've got your 75 Coinlord favor, then head to Shan-to-Kor next for unbound items like the cloak - the extra Will Save will be important for your next stop, and although the xp has been dropped a lot since launch, it's still enough to give you a fair boost while you grind out the remaining items.

Tangleroot is next; unfortunately this is the best place for lower level stat items so you're gonna find yourself running it multiple times. The +2/3 stat items and the Cloak of Resistance are essentials so at least hang around long enough to clean up on these.

After that, concentrate on levelling up after until you can handle Delera's, which is probably around the level 6-7 mark depending on how twinked out you are. At that point run the chain and swap those Black Widows out for the Iron Bangles and their deflection AC bonus. At this point it becomes sensible to switch back to armour again, although keep an eye on the maximum dexterity bonus. A basic high + Studded or plain Leather will cover you until you can get a Mithral Chain Shirt or Breastplate of DeathBlock, and then at that point you'll have no issue swapping between tanking and kiting with the Repeater. You won't turn out a huge amount of damage and you'll be too low in level for the good stat damagers and effect weapons, but you can at least play the traditional meat shield most parties are looking for.

Then it's a case of working higher and higher quests until you can handle the Wizard King loot runs or the raid chains. Tempest Elite is also lush for raising cash when you spot something specific in the Auction House, although the dragon and titan loot isn't bad either. That Strength belt will do wonders for your encumberance minimums and the Gyroscopic Boots turn you into Sonic on drugs :D

Weapon wise, Shocking Burst and Pure Good are top nodge for DPS, tho make sure once you have a decent strength item that you carry a range of effect Repeaters with you. Crippling, Weakening of Enfeebling, Wounding of Puncturing, Paralyzing, Banishing, Disruption, Smiting and Curse Spewing all get regular use if you have them, both to solo and in a support role beside Casters and Melee. In terms of Shroud crafting, Radiance gives the most benefit to gameplay compared to cost, and Mineral II comes a close second for raw DPS, although Holy Burst of Pure Good with silver bolts has the same benefits in quests like the Shroud as you won't have any problems with +to hit ;)

Course once you have some decent Mithral, a high + shield and those bracers from Delera's, you do have the option of going total tank without effecting your to hit bonus, just expect to have to soak up a lot of damage and I wouldn't suggest using anything other than effect weapons or stat damagers as your basic DPS will be minimal.

For those that like the freedom of cloth armour; grind out module 8's Dragontouched Robe or Outfit as they're the only armour currently in the game that will give you higher AC than Mithral Chain Shirt without nerf'ing your dex skills too much. This will allow you to free up 18 action points from the no longer needed Armor Mastery lines.


A few useless bits of information;

At level 16 with a +5 Weapon, you'll be getting +36 to hit and +11 to damage, with 20% crit rate and plenty of tumble and jump to avoid having to melee. There are few mobs, even on Elite, that you won't be able to hit on a 2, and in those situations, simply standing still can get you up to +62 to hit, whilst buffed, on the final attack, solving the problem without having to resort to using the Fighter's Action Boost.

That aside, consider the worst case situation; unbuffed and having to move constantly to kite mobs, thus recieving no +to hit  bonuses for the attack chain.

Consider a character armed with +5 Supreme Tyrant Green Steel Heavy Rpeating Crossbow of Radiance

Consider a mob type with 38 AC (highest AC I can hit with a roll of 2)

100 rounds per minute at ROF cap for Repeaters.

Against an individual;

- 5 misses (natural rolls of 1)

- 75 hits (natural rolls of 2 to 16) doing;

     2d8 + 11 + 2d6 = 15 to 39 = 27 avg dmg each hit
                    = 1125 to 2925 = 2025 avg dmg per minute

- 15 critical hits (natural rolls of 17 to 19) doing;

     (2d8 + 11) x 2 + 9d6 + 1d10 = 36 to 118 = 77 avg dmg each hit
                                 = 540 to 1770 = 1155 avg dmg per minute

- 5 critical hits (natural rolls of 20) doing;

     (2d8 + 11) x 2 + 13d6 + 1d10 = 40 to 142 = 91 avg dmg per hit
                                  = 200 to 710 = 455 avg dmg per minute

 giving,

             
                                  = 1865 to 5405 = 3635 avg dmg per minute

Against a group of mobs, we would expect each round to hit 4 individuals during its flight path;

 giving,

             
                                  = 7460 to 21620 = 14540 avg dmg per minute to a group of mobs

Not something to be sniffed at ;)

Any questions, you can catch me in the usual place. Enjoy!

And you thought Trekkies were bad...

Way too much time on their hands...

Savage gone free?

Note: this was originally a news post, but I've carboned it here for linkage purposes.

With the difference in experience gains between levels in Maple becoming somewhat yawning, I figured it was time for a change of scene for a few days to break up the monotomy - so after much installing and uninstalling of stuff a single directory in my favourites list finally caught my eye... Savage - The Battle for Newerth. Whatever did become of that rather entertaining RTS-come-FPS mess from a few years back I pondered. So after a bit of trawling it dawned on me that S2Games, having abandoned live support for the game appear to be advocating freeplay of the game, having removed the auth servers and turned a blind eye to distrubtion of the download url for the game files used in the old purchasing process. Confusingly, there's been no comment or response at all from the development house or their publisher regarding the number of people using the link and playing the game with the 20 0's cd key that activates it, but obviously if they were to reactivate the auth server, everyone using that key would need to purchase a new one online. Given the game is still on the shelves, and the purchase now button is still on the website, it all seems rather odd.

But anyway, having leeched the game and installed the rather nicely compiled combined patch, we were off and back playing the game. Much work appears to have been done in the updates since the rather messy release client I played in 2003, with an improved netcode, better client reliability, higher fps, and a reworked unit balance, with the inclusion of new units such as medics like the Chaplin. Very cool indeed. There also appears to be an OSP equivilant under the name SEP, that adds a proper spectator system, clan and player structure with identifying icons and a reliably updated stats tracker. All in all, very nice indeed.



Although still somewhat reliant on your team getting a decent Commander (who btw plays the game like an RTS, with top down view, fog of war and unit order allocation and resource management, including building construction and upgrade research - cool huh :P) the player base is rather scarily competant now, with some extremely impressive team play appearing in the few games I got through during the course of the evening. The community also seems to be reasonably healthy, with at least 3 or 4 uk based servers regularly sitting at the 20-30 player mark. All in all, a very nice way of passing the evening ;)



I'm still rather confused by the dev house's attitude toward the game, but thankful that they consider it better people can play it rather than effectively killing it off as soon as they remove support, (yeah thanks Irrational, we haven't forgotten.) Overall I can definitely recommend Savage and would love to see what it's like in an active league.

So get leeching, and when you're done runing around and playing a few games, I'd also recommend a flick through this movie - most amusingly authentic ;)

CPM 1.31 Networking explained

This was originally posted on ESR in July of 2004; I've carboned it here since it's still of use.

Just a quick post as it appears there is still a large amount of confusion regarding the variables introduced into the 1.31 build. Put simply;

• cl_timenudge has been disabled and replaced by cg_nudge with slightly different functionality, and more reliable results. Remove any references to the old variable from your autoexec or cfg.
  
  
• cg_lagHax is now the core variable for controlling netcode timeframe adjustments, and it's pretty much a souped up, modern interpretation of arQ's old 50ms code that made cpm so famous from a technical view point ages ago. It provides the functionality most of you will have sort after with cl_timenudge; that is, it adjusts the display of entities within the gameworld in a manner that attempts to make it appear as tho you were playing in a 0 latency environment. It doesn't 'remove' ping, it doesn't allow you to shoot round corners if you're hpb, (like certain other games :P) or use the client to predict player's future movements beyond your ping, (like cl_timenudge with slpb's) but it does make for a much more responsive, enjoyable gaming experience. It functions normally up to a limit of 100ms, and adjusts automatically to ping spikes and fluctuations in latency.
  
  
• cg_nudge. This variable is used to 'pad out' cg_lagHax when you need to play on servers that you ping higher than 100ms to. It is not adaptive in the way that cg_lagHax is, and isn't as accurate. However, it is still better in a lot of cases than trying to guess your lead time yourself. On a server you ping lower than 100ms to, cg_nudge should be set to 0 (default) and for those over 100ms, it should be set to -(your stable ping to server - 100ms). Note the negative sign.
  
  
• cg_xerpclients. With the use of cg_nudge comes some difficulties with 'filling in' the gaps between the information your client receives about the gameworld in packets of network information, and as a result things don't update in the smooth way you will be used to. cg_xerpclients is provided to allow you to manually choose a method that best suits you when playing. On a server you ping lower than 100ms to, where you do not need to use cg_nudge, cg_xerpclients should be set to 0 (default) On servers over 100ms, there is functionality you can try by setting cg_xerpclients to -1 or 1. -1 is more appropriate, but both settings produce noticeable errors, and can result in players briefly sinking into walls and such. It should be used as a trade off between ease of viewing enemy players, (-1) and accuracy of position, (0).
  


So, for servers under 100ms:

cl_timenudge (remove from config)
cg_lagHax -1
cg_nudge 0
cg_xerpclients 0


For servers over 100ms:

cl_timenudge (remove from config)
cg_lagHax -1
cg_nudge -(your stable ping to the server - 100ms)
cg_xerpclients 0 (suttery but more accurate) or -1 (smooth, but with greater errors)


Useful tips you might not have heard of;

Remove snaps from your autoexec - the server will adjust it to sv_fps for you.

Don't mess with sv_fps when hosting unless you need to lower data traffic and know what you're doing! Default is now sv_fps 30, and removes 17ms from the network round trip latency when compared to sv_fps 20. It does however cost a bit more in bandwidth and as such, you should avoid stupidly low sv_maxrate settings. (12000 is comfy-ish)

Set r_displayRefresh to the highest Hz rating your monitor can handle in the resolution you play in, then use r_swapinterval 1 for vertical sync - cpm physics are independent of fps, why put up with tearing and flicker when you can play q3 smooth as silk :) r_displayRefresh will need to go into your autoexec unless you don't mind setting it manually each time you load q3. Make sure you use the right rating for your monitor!

Don't miss out on quad and suit glow if you need to play in vertex! set r_vertexlight 2 to keep these extremely handy effects.

cg_altlightning 2 will get you thin shaft without messing around with zoomfov binds.