Not too familier with 1.65, which classes on ALB will do mass amounts of damage in RvR? I loved Fire Wizzys but heard no one want's them in groups.

Razzle wrote:Not too familier with 1.65, which classes on ALB will do mass amounts of damage in RvR? I loved Fire Wizzys but heard no one want's them in groups.

No one wants them in 8v8, but in zerg and keep stuff they rock for aoe damage.

Are you specifically looking for a caster?

If not, a Mercenary is very popular in groups and great melee damage.

This can help you, it's configured to 1.65: http://play.nixian.eu/index.php?page=charbuilder

Hmm, never played a Merc in my life. Did they do lot's of melee damage in 1.65? or is an armsman the way to go if I am going to be melee?

Razzle wrote:Hmm, never played a Merc in my life. Did they do lot's of melee damage in 1.65? or is an armsman the way to go if I am going to be melee?

If you want damage and to be more desired by RvR groups, Merc is the way to go.
Armsman is more tanky, less DPS, and better a peeler role.

Nezix wrote:

Razzle wrote:Hmm, never played a Merc in my life. Did they do lot's of melee damage in 1.65? or is an armsman the way to go if I am going to be melee?

If you want damage and to be more desired by RvR groups, Merc is the way to go.
Armsman is more tanky, less DPS, and better a peeler role.

Merc is more or less as good as an armsman in the peeler role. Yes, Arsman has MoBlock, but only if you go thrust for the 44 2nd in chain snare can they peel effectively. The synergy of thrust with an armsman's pole dmg (str only) is not as good as with a merc, where your DW dmg (thrust) will also be str/dex. I know arms has an anytime snare on the pole, but it's low duration.

Add to this once you get Prevent flight, and your merc will be proccing it like crazy with fast DW wpns, whereas if the arms has pole out to snare it will be far less frequent.

The only real bad point about merc is having to manually swap in the shield to slam/guard, but you have the really big advantage of being able to also be an effective DPS, even if getting 44 thrust. You can get 44 thrust, 42 shield and around 45 DW with the bonus points from AT with a bit left for parry.

I will be rolling a saracen thrust merc, and advertising as peeler OR dps, able to do both very effectively.

Armsman will be alot more efficent as a peeler especially pre RR5, only class in the game who got an anytime Snare Style. If you are fighting tank groups MoB will come in handy on your peel tank aswell.

I thaught Dual Wield was 100% strength based aswell.

http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Dual_Wield

Raifs wrote:Armsman will be alot more efficent as a peeler especially pre RR5, only class in the game who got an anytime Snare Style. If you are fighting tank groups MoB will come in handy on your peel tank aswell.

I thaught Dual Wield was 100% strength based aswell.

http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Dual_Wield

Firstly, i have never come across the fact that DW dmg is str based, i thought the dmg depended on wpntype, can anyone conform that? If so, i'm glad i found this out

Secondly, i would take a 27 second snare (even if 2nd in chain) from thrust, applied with fast weapons, over a 12 second snare applied by a polearm for two reasons:

1) Snare is usually applied after slam, after you change to pole and apply, it will probably only snare them for around 4 seconds after the slam duration expires before needing to be reapplied. With the thrust snare it would last 19 seconds after the slam before needing to be reapplied, time to find another target, slam snare, rinse repeat.

2) With pole out you are defenceless , no shield, and if you have high pole + shield, you wont have much parry either. The merc still has shield out whilst applying snare, plus 360 evade, so can avoid incoming slams much more easily.

Once, prevent flight enters the equation, the merc then comes out at least even with the increased procs. As i said earlier , only an armsman specced thrust really can compete as a peeler.

You could not slam the target you want to snare until its really needed. I think Armsman will have the edge as an defensive Peeler, because of his superior RA's SB and MoB. But both are viable choices.

If you using your Detaunt + Follow up to peel your losing out on alot of damage. Other than that I totally agree with your summary.

If you want to have a designated defensive tank take an Armsman.
If you want to be flexible take a Mercenary.
If you want to play offensive take a Mercenary.

To be fair it doesn't matter if Dual Wield is 100% Strength or 50% Strenght and 50% Dexterity based. If you are running Thrust Weapons or a shield you want to cap Dex anyway.

As you can probably tell, i have spent a long time myself trying to decide whether to play an armsman or merc! I know the mechanics are very different but i spent a very frustating 2 months on Genesis trying to play peeler with a Hero. You simply could not slam the savages there at all and BM's had a better time as peelers than Hero's did overall. I got to RR7, but ended up simply being an inferior DPS. If there are large numbers of savages on Uthgard you will probably still really struggle to slam them and wandering around with your pole out (thats what she said!) trying to snare and getting slammed yourself is not going to be much fun.

This time i'm going merc, and that way you still have the option to be good dps, using the same spec as you do to play peel. I also think a lot of groups in the first few months are going to run with paladins as peeler due to lack of money / orgnisation to have end pots. and i would rather sit this time out as offensive dps, than in the portal keep as armsman LFG.

Evade mechanics were wrong on Genesis. I remember reading that savages had no evade cap resulting in way more evades than how it should be and making savages overpowered.
You can expect the opposite on Uthgard 2.0. In fact I got slammed first try pretty often on Uth 1.0, even with evade buff up.

See this video for reference:

It depends on the PF implementation if Arms or Merc will be the superior def tank.

pweet wrote:It depends on the PF implementation if Arms or Merc will be the superior def tank.

Well, what is the 1.65 implementation? Is it fixed chance to proc everytime wpn swings or does speed of wpn affect the chance?

Or

Are you referring to whether or not it will stack with/overwrite style based snares?

I think it will mainly depend on if snare breaks with dmg or not.

Well PF is never supposed to break from damage, so if it does then the server has a pretty serious fail for a 14 point RA.

I believe it does respect root immunity, but shouldn't give any immunity or break on hit.

Prevent Flight doesn't break on damage, and IIRC it doesn't matter if the target has root immunity or not for it to land (at least it is not supposed to). Also note that Armsmen do get PF in addition to mercs.

The weapons that you use determines if it is 100% str or 50/50 str/dex. If you are a thrust merc you need dex. If you are crush or slash on a merc then your damage is str-based, although dex is still useful in calculating your evade and if you ever want to guard.

For an arms, using the anytime thrust chain isn't that great. I would rather use Crippling blow and switch really quick back to shield if you need to guard. The detaunt doesn't have any to-hit bonus, so you will have a harder time landing it on a zerk, bm, or savage. If the hib group has a warden, forget about reliably getting any 2 part chain off. Crippling blow has a medium to-hit. Just use a fast polearm to snare, and you can switch between shield/pole quickly.

For a reliable peeler, arms is hard to beat. Mercs do have a side snare (flank doesn't have a to-hit bonus either, though), and relying on PF to proc isn't very realistic, although I do remember it proccing pretty often.