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So you want to be a Loaded Artifact Player?  XML
Forum Index -> UT2004 DisastrousConsequences.com Go to Page: Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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Grizzled_Imposter

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 02/20/2006 15:59:35
Messages: 713
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I see, mine is more like this:

Wave 1 run around getting all the weapons that are available. Max a good bonus weapon (anything with a good damage bonus, or infinite ammo).

Wave 2-5 kill monsters until I hear double kill, turn on the Rod. With the kill spree running I can usually get to around monster kill and keep half of my almost 200 adr.

Wave 6 run tripple, but mostly just try to stay alive.

Wave 7-16 usually spent dead most of the time. run Rod while alive, try to wrack up some kill sprees.

I occasionally have finished a map successfully with this character as low as level 21, even with the new monsters. thats better than my level 72 healer or my level 76 weapon master. The monster change has truly made a difference in how well my older characters do on maps.

Core 2 DUO @ 4.1Ghz Grizzled_AM AM 43
Nvidia 9800 1g Grizzled_EMT. MM 85
4gb mem Grizzled_LW WM 87
Grizzled_EN EN 64
A drop of knowledge is more powerful than a sea of force~ unknown
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Spacey

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 01/07/2005 21:28:14
Messages: 589
Location: Da'Burgh (Pittsburgh) PA
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I just got a PM from someone asking what I would recommend for their lowish (still getting the freebies) level LA player, since they said "you are one of the best AM players". Gee... I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I will admit the following:

1) Spacey (_e) started out as one of the LA switchovers (I was something like the second or third LA after Dru opened the class up), and that happened around level 60 or so. Either way, that was a long time ago in a game far far away.

2) mc^2 (incase you have not figured it out, E equals M C squared, and so is a second LA player) is still rather low. How low? See this.

3) My style may not match other players styles.

But with all of this, here are my opinions and reasoning.

First, this LA player has leech 2, LA2 , drip 1, and denial 3, with the requisite MaxAmmo of 50. In addition, they have their max adren up to 150 (which means they can max), and a couple of bytes of weapon speed (e.g. 16 pts). for their level, I would say pretty good. I have leech 3, LA3, resupply 1 and drip 1, and find myself wanting to get to 150 adren (I am at 141) and have denial 3. But they have a few more levels than I do at 26, so...

With this in mind, what would I be planning? First, I would personally take the next skill to be LA3. There is much to be said about having an unbreakable MWM (it may be only a 33%, but statistically this says that you use it 3 times, it will break... on average). Next would be to consider drip 2 in the near future, along with surge 2 when you get to damage bonus of 50, since you have the 150 adren. But at this point, I would probably say to leave the adren itself directly alone. Note, I am not saying immediately, but getting the most of the damage and kills you do is rather silly. About like not taking the essentially free money your employer might give you by matching your 401(k) contribution up to your 6% point. After this, the next major adren point is 200 adren, which gets you the next level of artifacts... but for them, you need to be getting adren even faster... and staying alive.

What can you do to get adren faster. Well, for every N% of additional damage caused either by weapon speed or damage bonus, you have an increase of N% in your adren. How? Well if D is your additional damage bonus, and S is your speed bonus, then things would be quite straight forward, but for one thing. You have to spend 2 pts for every 1% of damage bonus, but only 1 pt for 1% of weapon speed. And do, if D and S are the points spent, we have the following:

0.5% * D + 1% * S = % adren gain

So, on initial inspection, I would say to spend points on weapon speed. But then, the second wrinkle comes into play... you run out of ammo faster, and will need to spend points on resupply, especially for those low-ammo maps. Depending on the weapon (and its fire rate and max ammo), you may find that that even with the 2:1 ratio, you could end up better off spending it on damage bonus instead. Complicated, isn't it? And that is even before you consider that a damage bonus of 50 is required for surge (at least, last I checked).

Now, you also need to be able to stay alive to use your adren. This is where health and damage bonus come into play. If a monster is doing 100 pts of damage, it takes 2 RPG points to drop that damage to 99. But that same 2 points spent would actually get my health up to 104 from the base 100. Looking at a potential damage of 300, if I max DR to 50, the 300 drops to 225. But that same 50 points spent on health would put me at 200 health instead of 100. So I am surviving the smaller monsters better. Add a medic with medic 3 healing you, and suddenly you are at 350 health, which means you would survive with 50 health to spare, while if you spent it on DR instead of health, the same situation would leave you with only 25. And so, I favor health.

And so, which to choose between damage (WS/DB) and health? Play around with things a bit, and if you find yourself constantly running out of adren, put some points into WS/DB. Constantly dying with lots of adren or out of ammo, favor health.

My goals... well, as soon as I get 150 adren, I am going for denial 3 (getting at least denial 1/2 at the same time). That achieved, I am going for 200 health and 50 DB... That opens up surge, and with another 50 spent in DR, I can then go for ghost.


BTW... we have been talking about how we do waves... it is changing a bit, particularly as we have the monsters in the waves change, but it is basically
this.

Early waves - Try to make a good flak and/or RL (nice damage bonus, or like an energy). Nali's... go for the headshot... you are silly to pass up the free 10xp and 10 adren, esp as a LA. I might occassionaly switch from the MWM to the rod to kill those vamp razor flies, but these waves are almost always MWM or possibly max. Oh, and I also try to get rid of bad weapons I might use, such as the sniper or LG, even for a plain one.

Wave 5 - Store up adren for the titan wave.

Wave 6 - TITANS! Lightning bolt.

Waves 7-11 vary. I might still be trying to make a good flak, RL (these two, piercing or energy preferred), and shock (piercing or vorp). If I am in pure score mode as opposed to attempting for a bingo, then piercing or energy flak or a vorp shock means I go for the kills.

From here, it depends greatly on how I have done so far. Good weapons, I start using the bolt (no triple) and tend to get a bit agressive, esp with spacey. With poor weapons, or with mc^2, I tend to get a bit more cautious... try to stay alive. Alive means scoring, even if I am scoring less in a given time.

I think with how many maps we are now winning (or how few), I would actually advocate upping the win bonus, and perhaps 2x the points if you are still alive at the end. The new bugs have made it all the more frequent that we win with only one or perhaps two players in my experience.

And as usual, for a post like this, realize, YMMV.

*BEL*_e (spacey), BEL Clan General -- You Frag em, I'll Slag em!
LA -- *BEL*_e (level 283 - Extreme AM), LW -- *BEL*_o (level 26) MM - ?? ( *BEL*_Rolaids ?? *BEL*DrWho??, Engineer... *BEL*BS_E_E [BSEE '89, Ohio U] (level 22)

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ECHO

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 09/03/2006 23:12:48
Messages: 1335
Location: orange county
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I still maintain that an unbreakable MWM isn't that useful at lower levels. My LA character is about level 52 and I still don't have loaded adrenaline 3. Maybe I'm just not picky enough to have it constantly running (though I can be very selective while playing as a WM). My game plan is pretty simple compared to others. I mainly try to score two decent weapons within the first three waves (flak and link). After that I mostly use the beam and bolt, occasionally using the triple on a large target. Waves 12 and up are mostly spent hiding, running, or some combination of the two. The very last wave I use up my adren as quickly as possible because I'm not likely to survive very long.

I've been taking a break from my character, but I'm still building weapon speed. After that I will probably bump quickfoot up to level 2 because I go out of my mind dealing the transition between quickfoot 5 on one character and next to nothing on my others.

You can never have too much precision in your soup.

"I don't think it's fair for me to be on the jury because I'm a hologram..." - Liz Lemon

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blade_TX

Killing Spree

Joined: 08/19/2005 23:07:35
Messages: 49
Location: san antonio
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To my surprise I am actually enjoying my adren character. It is by far the easiest class to level up with as a low level player, I broke 1000 on the score board before I even reach level 25. I took a different approach with this character than I normally do, usually I start with health and DB, but this time I decided to get all class specific abilities first, and adrenaline. I use the shield gun as my primary gun no matter what class I am playing (with a shield gun you don’t really need DB or ammo). So I use the shield gun to kill monsters close to me so I can keep my adren up and the bolt to kill things out of my reach. That alone with no real effort in enough to get an 800 or 900 score on any given map. So all in all I am very surprised. Right now I am only level 39 with no extra health, DR, WS or ammo, so like Echo I spend most of my time after wave 12 running.
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RoadKill v3.4

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 06/03/2007 18:43:42
Messages: 1085
Location: Resurrection Hub orbiting Canada searching for More Beer
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haven't played my Am too much but they are fun I noticed that with the right
map (knowing were the DD is ) a low level AM can score very high , I hit 1000 with my AM earlier than with my Medic

I've taken a similar approach as Blade getting most all specific abilities to at least lvl 2 then going to increase health and ammo a bit

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Akuma



Joined: 06/18/2006 16:09:31
Messages: 6
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if you are already experienced with using TD, Globe, Lightning, etc...basically if you know how to play with adrenaline heres the order i'd suggest a new build:

1 adren mastery
Loaded artifacts level 2
50 db
50 max adrenaline
surge 1
surge 2
energy leech 1
adrenaline drip 1

I think you will be exactly level 20 at this point and you will be killing effectively with a TD and surge 2 giving you adrenaline. Also you'll be maxing your weapon's magic stats. Next work on max weaponspeed, resupply 1, max db. Rest is arbitrary.

I think the biggest mistake is getting 50 ammo bonus and resupply 1 before u get surge 2. Surge 2 is the most magical thing about your class you got.
 
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