Gear question

Sirsquishy, I see you are on Tegan and actually found a guild. What guild do you belong to? I would like to join a good guild but can't seem to find one.

Thanks

 

I'm with EasternDragonS. Finding a good guild makes all the difference in the world. My suggestion would be to let forum members know that you are looking. Try posting here and be sure to post when you are active, that makes a big difference, and whether you focus on pve or pvp, some care a lot about that.

I've not been a member of other guilds so I can't say how good others are or not. It really depends on what you are looking for in a guild and how active you and they are.

 

thanks

 

Well as you can see by my stats, I'm seriously lacking in dmg, but finding a good 2h weapon (or any 2h purple or leg) is much tougher than I thought it would be.

Should hit lvl 45 tomorrow even without the forthcoming (delayed) 151 update.

My plan is to go with the Dragan set once that event comes along and it may take more than one before I get the gear, but that will make going 2 handed even better.

Add some good gloves, boots and belt and I should be okay to go solo on even the toughest maps.

As of today, here are my stats:



I'll need far more hp, a tad more armor and crit and a nice boost in resist, but at a month old, it seems to be going rather well at this point. A really nice 2h sword would make a huge difference even now.

 

In the last 12 days I've been farming HOD almost exclusively and have improved a bit, but dmg is still hardest to improve on.



I'm upgrading gear as I farm and finally found a leg ring that added some dmg and reduced my resist a bit (which is okay).

I'm planning on finally buying a few gems and that's where my question comes in.

What I need most is dmg (rubies) and speed (sapphires) for my current state.

Both pieces currently have 2 full stones and 1 polished, so upgrading either is exactly the same amount of ander.

Since my exo sword doesn't offer a lot in long term possibilities I was considering investing in speed at this time as my adornment is 4 lines of crit and is a longer term piece of gear.

My logic is that speed would increase my health regenerating and therefor allow me to live a bit longer. It won't be a huge jump, but would go from 10% currently to 15% speed.

On the other side I would go from 20 dmg to 30 dmg if I went with rubies.

Thoughts? Suggestions? or should I just scrap the idea and invest in more hp gems for now until the DSO gods smile on me with a nice weapon?

 

That is actually significant improvement on almost all stats except crit, but your crit is still rather respectable. Looks like you know what you need, the only trick is doing it. On the topic of Speed vs Damage, it is a toss up. Speed will help you generate rage faster, and Damage will make you heal more when you hit. When it comes to what you should invest in, if you are looking at the decoration as a long term item, then slots would be your next good investment (after you get 3 polished in the slots you already have) as you could temporarily fill the slot with your largest crit gem until you have another +5% speed gem to make it worth it.

 

I have 2 gear items (amulet and adornment) with huge crit lines that will help get my percentage back up as I upgrade them. I hated giving up some crit, but I'm still at 45% currently and a couple of boosts during upgrades will get me back to 50% which is my goal. (I'll hit 51% once they are both at lvl 47). A week of good farming should get me there.

I'm still hoping to find some shoulders with dmg and not give up too much armor. That's the weakest link on my right hand items and easiest to replace without giving up too much armor/hp/resist.

I'm still looking for a good belt to go with, and there's a possibility of getting some additional crit there along with some potential dmg.

Looking through the 2h section of the forum, the possibility of good dmg stats on weapons exist more frequently, where speed seems to be limited somewhat (in comparison) so that is one other reason I was thinking of sapphires now and rubies later as I continue to upgrade what I have.

So far with gear a lot of it seems like taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. I'm still moving forward so I can't complain too much. I was able to solo the moon event and kill the spider using just blue ess, so I know that I'm heading in the right direction.

Now I just have to farm and continue to upgrade until the Dragan event comes around and a nice weapon drops.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

 

2H weapons no longer have speed on them, so any and all speed enhancement will come from your gems and other gear. On the other hand, when you find % damage lines on a weapon, it can make huge differences with gems. I'll give you an example. I recently upgraded one of my flawless rubies to a sacred D). The damage increas is only +5 difference between those two gems, but I gained about 20-21 damage. The reason for this is that my sword has 103% weapon damage on it. That just about doubles it right there. Then, I use 2H master, and that gives me an additional 40%. In addition to that 40%, I have LVL 30 Ancient Knowledge which is another 30%. Finally, I also have the Warlord set (which I know you are still waiting for the next time the event comes up to get your hands on) for yet another +30%. Those three percentages add up to yet another 100% doubling the ~10 damage that the sword gained from the +5 increase from the gem change. Further more, if you had 2 OK RoDs (at least 2.5% damage each), that would be another 5% damage bring the second total up to 105% or more. As you can see, good % damage lines can make a huge difference to the gains you get from your rubies.

 

The Warlord set will make a huge difference once that event comes along and luck is on my side. From reading the feedback it seems that the cape takes a few events to get.

Today is my 48th day playing, so I've been darn lucky so far in most gear drops (other than a leg 2h) so I can't complain.

I still have to use blue ess for the bosses in HOD (or health pots if using green) but I can clear the map just using green and still move somewhat quickly.

Finally managed to raise all my gear up to lvl 45 today, so I got a little more boost in hp and armor.

Next gear question.. Is this belt worth opening up at least one additional gem slot (1600 ander). I've been upgrading it as I go which helps, but not sure if it is long term enough to spend the ander on opening up slots. From the few I've managed to see, getting some okay dmg and crit together seems few and far in between. The 442 armor doesn't hurt my feelings either

 

I'm going to say something that you will likely want to smack me for, but one of the few belts worth investing in is Keen's Belt. That being said, I know that it takes a little more than 48 days to get pieces from that coveted set. Short of Keen's, I'd look for a full crit belt or one with at least 2 decent lines. In general (for a damage build), you want a majority of your offensive stats to come from your LHS items and a majority of your defensive stats to come from your RHS items (with the exception of if you are able to get some exceptional speed gloves).

And with respect to getting the warlord cape... "a few" is an understatement. It takes about 60-80 runs on average to get enough capes to craft the top tier cloak. If you have a good team and farm like a mad man, you may finish in one iteration of the event... if not, you'll be looking at having to do the event twice.

P.S. To help speed up Map2, try to have at least one SW. If you can do it as a team of 2, it becomes much easier because the double armor break on the knights mean that they usually die in 10-20 seconds as opposed to 30-50 seconds for solo (I'm guesstimating that is about how long it would take you with greens).

 

I'm planning on it taking 3 or 4 Dragan events to complete the Warlord Set. This game gives a lot of meaning to "random".

Okay, I'll leave the belt with just 2 slots and keep looking for a better one while farming. From what I've read and heard the Keens set is even harder to get than a great OP weapon, but I'll add that to my wish list...

 

I would be happy to help as well, Just look up Tegs or Tegaine

 

Sirsquishy, you're my hero...

Thanks for posting your progress. It gives me hope that I can get there someday....

 

It really boils down to patience and lots of random luck. I've made a little over 80 runs through HOD in the past couple of weeks, mostly solo which takes just this side of forever, but at least I can use green ess on everything but the bosses, which I have to use blue.

As I mentioned earlier it feels like taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back with each new piece of gear. Gain dmg, lose crit. Gain hp, lose resist. Gain armor, lose all the above.

Here's an example of my gear versus the highly recommended Keens set.

Keen ----------------------------- My gear

Belt - 290 armor, 350hp ---------- 442 armor, 179 crit, 20 dmg
Boots- 390 armor, 250hp -------- 621 armor, 226hp, 134 resist
Gloves- 340 armor, 300 hp ------ 444 armor, 266hp, 179 resist

Keen boost:

500hp
25 dmg
10% more crit hit.

If I get all them, I would gain 900hp and 5dmg, but I would lose almost 500 armor and 313 resist. The crit boost is about even with what I would lose.

So the question becomes is gaining hp and a little bit of damage worth losing so much armor and resist?

Now, the Keens set begins at level 40, where my current gear is at 45, so I would have to level them all up to my current lvl to give a fair comparison and maybe the armor will even out or at least get closer.

I've found the boots so far and it would take 450,000 gops to get to lvl 45, so all being equal I would be looking at roughly 1.5 million to get them up to what I already have.

Using that same 1.5 million on my current gear it gets bumped to 48, so once again my current gear would outweigh the keens until they could be leveled to match.

Now I've read here on the forum that some can get as much as 1 million gop in a day farming HOD, but I don't get nowhere near that, even on the long days where I can play up to 8 hours, so I'm not sure how they do it. On a great day I get a few hundred thousand gops which allows me to upgrade 1 level on 1 or maybe 2 items if luck runs wild for me.

I'm almost finished with my knowledge tree, so I'll get 1 more little boost in the next few days from getting that to 30, so I may hit 1000 in max dmg. Will be darn close as I am at 983 now.

What I've noticed most is that while lvl 45 gear sells and melts for more, I am finding them to be far worse in stats than those found at 42 and 43.

Again that leads to the catch 22. Farming hod really adds up fast so you can upgrade your gear, but I find better gear on the lower maps, but the drop rate is painfully slower. Now that may be completely different for other players, most people I've talked with swear by hod for everything.

In some ways I've been very lucky in getting gear with very decent armor, crit and resist, with okay hp, but I am still lacking a ton of dmg compared to where I should be.

I've decided to try crafting if I can ever find a 4th exo 2h weapon. I'll probably end up wasting the 100 gold, but I just have to see what a legendary 2h looks like.

 

One caveat about your 4 exo craft, make sure you are not using the one that you have already leveled up because then the glyphs will be lost.

On the topic of Keens, here is the combined set values at 46 (which costs a total of about 2.4M to get them up to).

1311 armor
1657 HP
25 Damage
10% Crit
10% Run speed
Guaranteed 4 slots each and only 7200 ander to open one additional slot on each.

I made sure to mention the slots. I'm sure that you are still building your nice gems, but at my point I have +400 Resist worth of gems and +750 HP in gems stored in those three items. I would be ticked off if I had to switch to 3 legendaries that had 2-3 slots a piece and have to pay between 15000 and 40000 ander to open them all to 5 slots or take a cut of as much as 200 Resist/400 HP until such time as I could farm the ander to get the slots open. I'd much rather put that ander towards offensive gems.

 

Farming HOD is the best place to get glyphs. Gear is random. I've found some nice individual pieces in HOD, but am just stashing them for now. I found my 2-1 level 43 shield in thundercrest, i think, and my 2x weapon enhanced damage % and 2x attack speed% sword was crafted from level 43 and 45 1h weapons from thundercrest and stalgard.

As Baragain pointed out, slots are a big reason why people prefer unique over legendary gear. Its tough to open every 2-3 slot legendary up to 5 slots, and most want to save their anders for gems. I personally only did the 2 to 5 slot thing twice, for my sword and claw, and it hurt both times.

The slot cost thing, btw, colored one of the decisions I made with my alt dwarf. I had been using the deep sea bullets (20 damage, 200 hp) since about level 41 or 42, mainly because it had 4 slots. I didn't want to glyph it up or open the 5th slot, but i did need a better adornment. when I made the switch, i had a couple of choices - a leg with 2x damage and 2x crit (iirc, +38 dam and ~+340 crit), but only 2 slots - a 3x crit extraodinary (+451 crit) with 3 slots - and last, a 3x damage (+50 damage) extraordinary with 4 slots. I went with the +50 damage and 4 slot extraordinary even though the item stats may be weaker as it would only cost 400 anders to go to 5 slots, allowing me to buy another +5% speed gem. Paying for 3 slots to get all 5 slots in the 2 slot legendary was just too much.

(The other factors were that damage can sometimes be more valuable for dwarves than crit as turrets don't crit, and i already had 1700+ or 3000+ crit in pve due to my other items, using a witch chaser and sparks build - had i really needed crit, i would have opened 1, maybe 2 on the +451 crit and 3 slot extraordinary)

 

The slots are a huge factor. I've read that some legs can cost over 14K to open up a 4th or 5th slot and that is just crazy. It would have to be one heck of piece of gear for me to consider spending what would be a nice radiant gem on.

I love the boost of hp that the keen set offers, so I've put my boots in the locker until I can find the other pieces.

And no, I won't be crafting any upgrading items, those will get melted if and when I find something better. Gops are too hard to come by just to give them away.

 

The prices for opening slots is set. Because legendaries always come with at least two slots, the most slots you'd ever open is three. The first one costs 1600 and each subsequent slot costs three times the last one. That means that the second slot costs 4800 and the final slot (if the legendary came with only 2) is 14400. That means that the total to open 3 slots on a 2 slot legendary is 20800. It is a very rare item that is worth opening that many slots given that for the same price, you could buy 4 polished offensive gems with a little left over or make a flawless defensive gem with enough left over for a polished defensive (if bought on sale). The only item that I have opened 3 slots on is my current weapon decoration (a 3/1 crit/damage with 625 crit and 22 damage at 48). I was fortunate enough that my 2H sword came with three so I only had to spend 6400 to open two slots.

Congrats on getting the boots. I simply hope that you find the other two items in such a time that you can actually use them before LVL 50 comes out and these items become obsolete. I'm under no delusions that once 50 is here that those items will be worth keeping compared to LVL 50 legendaries. The costs to upgrade Keen's items to LVL 50 (let alone LVL 55) will be to high to make use of them anymore.

 

Ok, I crafted my first leg 2h to see what would happen. 3 swords, 1 hammer and of course I got the hammer with its slow speed.


I would gain a little more max dmg (before switching my rubies) but would gain almost 10% crit dmg.

So in the end, with rubies, I would gain 100 max dmg and 10% crit, but lose a ton of the speed I just paid for with sapphires. Certainly not the very good I was hoping for.



Should I swap it for a new "temporary" weapon or just melt it and keep searching for a real weapon?

Side by side stats: