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So you want to be a Loaded Artifact Player?  XML
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FodderFigure

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Joined: 03/31/2005 17:04:57
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In this thread we can discuss:

1. What skills to add first to get us on the right track
2. Why you'd think these skills are important.
3. Discuss a skill and what it does for your type of play.
4. How skills interact with other skills.
5. What exactly various skills do.
6. Etc...






You mean I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?



My skin
http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/1093.page

My Loaded Weapon character is known as [DC]FodderFigure
My medic character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_MD
My Artifact character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_LA
FodderFigure

Wicked Sick!
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No replies?






You mean I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?



My skin
http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/1093.page

My Loaded Weapon character is known as [DC]FodderFigure
My medic character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_MD
My Artifact character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_LA
320

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Joined: 10/11/2005 21:28:38
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Since I just started an Artifact char, I'll throw in my initial impressions.

First, LA is a difficult class until, I think, around level 70. You should expect that from about level 20 - 70 is going to be a long exp grind. I base this opinion off what I've seen with other good LA players. Around lvl 70 - 90 is when they start to shine. With LW, there's a much smoother progression curve. A good lvl 50 LW player can top the scoreboard consistently and by level 35 with a few levels of vamp, a LW player should be able to survive all the waves except 16. The potential is there earlier on for LW.

This is basically what I did with the first 20 levels. A decent player should be able to get around level 20 in about five hours.

It used to be the standard advice to tell new players to put all their points into health. Now, the medics do a great job keeping everyone alive and at +150 over base so this is less the case. This is also why the LA class is *much* more appealing now as the necessity to run out your adren with booster is often not a factor.

If you are a LW player and know how to use the triple, I recommend you don't put anything in health. The medics will take care of you. If you don't know the triple, put 50 - 100. Experienced player: 50, total newbie: 100.

Next, you need Loaded Artifacts 2 and energy leach 2.

Then add 25 adren and get adrenal drip 1. Between leach and drip, you should have a surplus of adren most of the time.

Next, get your ammo bonus to 50 (this is a mistake I made, waited too long). You can then buy resupply.

With the balance of points, max out your weapon speed. Don't worry abut dmg bonus, for two reasons. First, I think wep speed is a better bang for the buck purchase at low levels. Let's say you're shooting a bad guy. Assuming you hit it every time, with max wep speed you do 150% dmg in the same amount of time. This costs you 50 stat points. With dmg bonus, it costs 80 points and each shot will do 40% more dmg. Even though you run your ammo out faster, you have resupply to help.

The second reason is play strategy which I'll explain shortly.

So here's the point breakdown:

You start with 28 stat points. By level 20 you have a total of 133. Here's what I would buy:

1. Artifact class: 1
2. leach 1 and 2: 10
3. LA 1 and 2: 11
5. Ammo max 50: 50
6. Resupply 1: 15
7. Adren max 25: 25
8. Drip 1: 2

Total: 114

9. Put the rest in wep speed.

After this, I might split between dmg bonus and health for awhile. Not sure.

Play Strategy

1. The first thing is to use the triple dmg ALL the time. Even against weak level stuff. I use a strategy of running right up to monsters and shooting at them point blank with a flak. For stuff far away, I use lighting + triple. If you can't kill something with one close range flak hit, you should activate the triple so that you can. Basically, anything stronger than a nali. The sooner it goes down, the sooner it's not shooting/hurting you, the sooner you collect your adren bonus and exp, the sooner you're on to the next monster, rinse/repeat.

This is why dmg bonus is less important early on. By virtue of the triple, your dmg bonus will be 300% when it counts.

If you're LW, this might seem strange since LW players are used to conserving adren for tougher waves. With LA, you have adren all the time so you might as well use it.

Don't wait to get 100 adren or whatever before you turn on the triple. You need 14 adren to turn it on, which gets you two seconds. If you run right up on a skaarj, brute, assasin, etc. and activate the triple, a point blank flak shot will kill in one or two hits.

2. Head for the medics when you are at 50% of your boosted max. So if a medic heals you from 100 up to 250, head for the medic around 125.

3. On titan waves, or going into them, make sure you have your medic boost and as much shield as you can get. The pebbles can kill you. Then play aggresive with the triple.

4. On wave 12, you have to hang back some. Shock rifle + triple. Like the directions on a firework: light quickly and run away. Don't go for kills, just go for dmg (and therefore exp and adren). You should find a safe spot to snipe/camp.










[KitFox]

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320's Strategy is awesome. I did not do as good as this when i levelled. I have put everything in Weapon Speed first then Damage Bonus. It took me a LOoooooong time to level.

Try getting Class specific abilities as soon as possible! But i definatelly suggest max Damage reduction ASAP.


4. On wave 12, you have to hang back some. Shock rifle + triple. Like the directions on a firework: light quickly and run away. Don't go for kills, just go for dmg (and therefore exp and adren). You should find a safe spot to snipe/camp.
 


I caint agree on this one tough. Wave 12 mobs have low Damage reduction. Full Flak hit + Tripple at Point Blank. 2 - 3 Shots and mobs die. This wave is a Xp fest. If i could sustain a booster or something it would be awesome. Problem in this wave... i die very often lol, so take this as an advice


I will try to write what is my strategy when i get time, but to resume, im a VERY agressive player. I NEVER sniper or hide. I dont know why, im unable to do that...
320

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[KitFox wrote:
]320's Strategy is awesome. I did not do as good as this when i levelled. I have put everything in Weapon Speed first then Damage Bonus. It took me a LOoooooong time to level.

Try getting Class specific abilities as soon as possible! But i definatelly suggest max Damage reduction ASAP.  


Here is my argument against dmg reduction for any class, until a much higher level. I admit this might be flawed or I'm overlooking something. Maybe vortex can expand the issue.

Max dmg reduction costs 50 points (each point gets you 0.5% DR). Let's say you have 100 health with max DR (25%) and the monster has zero dmg bonus. That means if the monster hits you with a 100 dmg shot, you take 75 dmg. So, it's like you have 25 extra hp.

Starting out, you can buy 26 hp for 13 stat points. You would need to spend 50 in DR for the same effect.

Now let's say your health is maxed at 300. Same math gets you 75 extra hp. That's 37.5 stat points in health for the same effect vs, again, 50 in DR.

Let's say you have 300 health and a medic heals you to 400. Now with DR, you get 100 extra hitpoints.

100 extra in max health stat costs you 50 stat points. So at 400 health, max health stat and dmg reduction cost the same. At 450, DR has a small advantage, cost-wise.

Now, again, I could be overlooking something. But if I'm not, then DR should be purchased only after health is maxed, I think.

I caint agree on this one tough. Wave 12 mobs have low Damage reduction. Full Flak hit + Tripple at Point Blank. 2 - 3 Shots and mobs die. This wave is a Xp fest. If i could sustain a booster or something it would be awesome. Problem in this wave... i die very often lol, so take this as an advice  


Another 20 levels or so and I'll be in there with ya.

I will try to write what is my strategy when i get time, but to resume, im a VERY agressive player. I NEVER sniper or hide. I dont know why, im unable to do that...
 


I have the same problem.

[KitFox]

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But if I'm not, then DR should be purchased only after health is maxed, I think.
 


You are right. Wow i didn't tough i had bought my abilities in such a bad way hehe

Another thing to note. Energy Leech: Try getting level 2 very fast, it makes such a difference its not even funny. And it only cost 8.
Szlat

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320 wrote:
Max dmg reduction costs 50 points (each point gets you 0.5% DR). Let's say you have 100 health with max DR (25%) and the monster has zero dmg bonus. That means if the monster hits you with a 100 dmg shot, you take 75 dmg. So, it's like you have 25 extra hp.

Starting out, you can buy 26 hp for 13 stat points. You would need to spend 50 in DR for the same effect.  

One other difference is that once you have got rid of this monster, with DR you only need to get 75 health to get back up to full strength, whereas going the "health first" route, you need to get 100 health. With medics around that is a lot easier - there is always health lying around on the map. Before medics, health was always in very short supply, so DR made more sense. Not for the first monster, but the second, and third...

For example, assume that between monsters you can only find 75 health. With DR you would live forever (in this example), as you would be back to full health before tackling the next monster. On the health route the second monster would kill you.
320

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Excellent point. As you can tell, I think of DR from the LW standpoint, where vamp makes health limitless and cheap. With artifacts, it's adren and the triple which are limitless and cheap.

This might also be why no one wants a vamp 7 flak anymore when I offer it. Or maybe they just don't like me.

The medic class makes the low-level game ten times more viable, not to mention FUN. I didn't really see the point at first with this class, and I sometimes question how much fun the medics, themselves, might be having doing all this healing for the rest of us and making nali cows in their spare time. Still, in terms of improving the low level game, Druid hit a home run.

Mach10

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320 wrote:
Excellent point. As you can tell, I think of DR from the LW standpoint, where vamp makes health limitless and cheap. With artifacts, it's adren and the triple which are limitless and cheap.

This might also be why no one wants a vamp 7 flak anymore when I offer it. Or maybe they just don't like me.

The medic class makes the low-level game ten times more viable, not to mention FUN. I didn't really see the point at first with this class, and I sometimes question how much fun the medics, themselves, might be having doing all this healing for the rest of us and making nali cows in their spare time. Still, in terms of improving the low level game, Druid hit a home run.

 


I'm having LOADS of fun being a medic, I'd have no problem sitting in a corner and only healing. Although, I prefer to roam around the map to get some extra XP by killing some monsters. Usually I only set up camp on the tough waves (6, 12, 14-16). Being a lower level medic is more fun for me than being a low level LA or LW. The core skills can be bought right away, and although I'd like to be able to summon something above a manta or three nali cows it's not a big deal right now, I'll eventually get better monsters. I'm finding myself surviving quite a lot of the tough waves even when I'm not just hiding. Self-healing is like Vamp times 10, and although the medic weapon isn't exactly a flak 5, because it is infinite I can take down some monsters with it. With the combo of healing and killing some monsters I have gotten 1200XP on certain maps as a level 20ish medic.
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I agree, low lvl medics are VERY survivable, and can be fun too. Besides with a little help I made a lvl 20 medic in a couple of days that was out experiancing my Lvl 24 LA character and surviving most maps all of the way through..

In that way they may be a little unbalanced, but I wouldent say to change them because they arent gong to rule the world with all of that healing.

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ck

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advice for new LA players: you probably think Damage Reduction or Damage Bonus (or Wep Speed even) are obviously better choices than Max Ammo - well, that is wrong, do what 320 wrote, get Resupply first. I changed my stat points recently to get resupply, and not that i do very good, but resupply feels like playing a completely new game and it was even worth giving up 50 points in Damage Bonus and Adrenal Surge.

Obviously because of healers, spending 50+ points on health may not be the best option when you're starting.

(so yeah, i agree with 320s beginning stats completely, no need to repeat.)

As for LA3, this is a tricky one. LA 2 (breakable Magic wep maker) will not get you a vorpal or a vampiric (of course it can, just pointng out that you need to be very lucky). LA 3 might do the trick but still doesn't guarantee you a vorpal or a vamp by lvl 12/14 and i mean if you spend most of your adrenalin on it. You could effectively spend the adrenalin on other things (yes, i mean triple damage) and probably have better scores. so i would say get LA 3 late(r) unless you feel one with your vorpal shock or sleep with a vampiric flak at home. again, that doesn't even guarantee anything.
Chameleon

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Another good thing to look into is denial. If you spend half the map trying to make good weapons and then you die, you will have to start over with nothing. If you have, at least, denial level 2, you can keep one of your weapons that you made. Plus, you won't have to go running around the map trying to get weapons again. That will help you out when you come back in on those later waves.

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320

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After I get resupply 1, I plan to get denial 3. I might get leach 3, first. Don't know yet. I won't start building dmg bonus, health or max adren again until then.

It all goes back to the triple. One decent wep + triple is enough at low levels. When I die, I go get another flak and I'm back in business.

I think instead of the resupply route, you could also go the Denial route. I think either of these would be pretty effective. Probably denial is better for noobs that don't know the maps as well or if you tend to die a lot.

I'm at lvl 32 and UGH what an exp grind it is. And I'm typically getting 700 - 1000 exp per level. I do remember with my LW char, though, that I would have to play around 10 maps per level.
320

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Now my artifact char is level 58 and starting to win matches more consistently. I'm outscoring my LW char at the same level.

The big factors since level 30 are (in order):

1. Resupply
2. Adrenaline Surge 2
3. Speed switcher
4. Denial 3

Speed switcher 1 has allowed me to work some basic combos into my game, most often LG to Flak - a great combo when you're running stuff down. But if you don't combo, don't bother with SW at this level.

I thought Denial 3 would make a huge difference but it didn't, really. The medics can keep you alive so much that you only die once or twice in 16 waves. Obviously, this would be more valuable if I died more often.

The big boost in points came following the purchase of surge 2. This has allowed me to run the triple even more. Pretty much all the time. Any time I am competing with a LW player for a kill I use the triple to get it, even a nali or a skaarj. Even though I lose a little adren, drip and surge make it up almost immediately. LW can't really play that way without running out of adren pretty quick.

BotFodder

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Given this post ...

I'm almost ready to agree with Mystic on the Triple issue (not Flak 5 though) - but not like he originally specified. It is of no surprise to me that you're outscoring WMs - as you say, you can run the triple a lot more than pretty much any WM ever could.

The triple can throw off the balance quite a bit - but not in favor of a WM, but in favor of the AM. Add the usual 3+ Medics that are on and you're good to go (for at least the first 12-14 waves) - any benefit a WM might get from vamp is nullified.

Really, it's been my experience so far that the only time a WM can really run a triple constantly is against Warlords, Queens, and Titans ... and with Warlords, you probably loose out a bit on adren. Queens can throw things off if they throw up a shield.

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