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DDOCast 360 – Weapon Damage Calculations

Patrick briefly covers the week’s news before launching into a beginners lesson on how to calculate weapon damage!

WARNING: this episode is very crunchy and also includes visual charts.  If you have more interest in calculating weapon damage, you can check out some old blog posts that go into much greater detail: Shamgar’s Weapon Calculation Blogs – http://shamgar.ddocast.com/category/building-blocks/calculating-weapon-damage/page/16/

Check out www.ddocast.com for mp3 audio, our show calendar, swag, archives, and more!

Want to support the show?  You can feed the kobolds (give money) on our website www.ddocast.com or you can send in game items to the character “ddocastone” on any server!  We use such things to support the show and give out prizes.

News – 2:01
Calculating Weapon Damage – 12:47
Lightning Post – 57:37
Closing – 58:07

Support Team Turbine Movember
DDO Chronicle 119
DDOGamer Crunches Cards
Bewtopia Shroudpalooza
12 Days of Christmas

Post

Crunchy Bits: Midwinter Games Loot

Cormyrian Midwinter Festival

Midwinter Games

Midwinter Ice Races is a new kind of seasonal event held in the iced-over Starwater River of Eveningstar, coincidentally conducted around the same time of year as the Risia Ice Games. Adventurers can run through the course of ice & illusions to compete for prizes.

  • Score by getting Snow Flakes – There are four types of snowflakes, each worth different amounts of points.
    • Bronze – 1 point
    • Silver – 13 points
    • Gold – 27 points
    • Purple – 42 points
    • Finishing the Course in the 3 minutes time limit – 100 points (The double points works on this also, so +200 if you complete while you have it)
  • Buffs – These will be randomly located about the course like the snowflakes, touch them to activate.
    • Super Speed Boost (Green orb) – Effect: +30% Melee speed, +50% enhancement bonus to Run speed, Duration: 6 seconds.
    • Super Jump (Blue orb) – Effect: +30 jump skill, moon jump and Featherfall, Duration: 4 seconds, similar to the buff as found in Challenges, though shorter duration. Jumping super high is neccesary to collect a couple of the static purple snowflakes now, so get these and time your jumps well.
    • Double Points (Appears as a large bright white spark randomly) – Duration: 15 seconds
    • Midwinter Vole (CR 23, Animal type, Rat race) – Hit any of these once to get both Double Points and Super Speed instantly. They can be killed, but you are not intended to do so, as they have several thousand hitpoints and give no reward for being killed. A single melee hit, even a grazing hit will be enough to trigger the buff.
  • Game Score and Reward Tier
    • When Brace’s buff wears off or you’ve completed the race, you’ll receive rewards like midwinter motes & recipes based on how well you scored.
    • Motes received are always 1/3 Score point rounded down. Lower scores are supposed to grant lower-tier Recipes, however it seems quite random.

Midwinter Race Game Rewards

You can exchange motes for wonderful wintery prizes! Here are the items you can get and their mote cost:

  • Polar Bear Cub – 10,000 Motes
  • 50 Midwinter Snowballs – 500 motes
  • Lolth Spider Queen Cookie – 280 Motes
  • Fire Shield Pot – 120 motes
  • Potion of Resist Fire/Cold – 60 Motes
  • Greater Protection Fire/Cold – 90 Motes
  • Add Resistance to Fire/Cold Upgrades to Armor, Shield or Robe only
    • This is an Inherent Elemental Resistance (Insight bonus) added to your randomly-generated items. Cost for Upgrades are as follows
      • 1 point resist – Recipe, 45 Motes
      • 3 points of resist – Recipe, 90 Motes (135 cumulatively)
      • 5 points of resist – Recipe, 180 Motes (315 cumulatively)
      • 7 points of resist – Recipe, 360 Motes (675 cumulatively)
      • 10 points of resist – Recipe, 720 Motes (1,395 cumulatively)
  • Add Festival Glaciation Upgrade to Armor, Sheild, or Robes only
    • This adds an equipment bonus to cold Spell Power added to your randomly-generated items. IMPORTANT: Festival Glaciation will increase the minimum level of your item to the value listed in parentheses. Upgrade cost is as follows, just click on the image to zoom in for details:

sp gain and mote cost per min level

Aside

Crunchy Bits: DDO Doublestrike Mechanics

Doublestrike / Doublestike

Doublestrike gives you a percentage change to take an additional attack with your main hand melee weapon. If you have a 6% double strike then you will get a bonus attack roughly 6 out of 100 attacks. It does not impact ranged attacks, spells, off hand attacks, or attacks using special animations (like cleave, trip etc…) It will affect special attacks using standard animations such as smites or ki strikes.

The number of sources of doublestrike is small compared to many other bonuses you can get, but there are still quite a number of them in the game. Stacking rules for doublestrike have never been entirely verified by devs. It seems that differently typed double strike bonuses will stack and same type bonuses will not. Untyped bonuses only stack if they are from a different source, aka a weapon will stack with a feat will stack with an enhancement, but two feat bonuses without types will not stack. If they do not stack then you should get the largest bonus.

You can see your current double strike bonus by hovering over the BAB icon (its red) in the character sheet Stats page.

Types of Doublestrike in DDO

So lets go over the different sources of double strike and group them by what should not stack and order them from largest to smallest

Mystery Shield Bonus – An untyped 4% for using a shield

Competence Bonuses – Fighter Weapon Alacrity capstone (fighter 20) 10%

Sacred Bonuses – Paladin Zeal spell (level 14 pally) 10% (no scrolls, self only, temporary)

Insight Bonus – Monk Windstance  2.5%/5%/7.5%/10% levels 1/6/12/18 respectively

Morale Bonus

  • Shield Mastery / Improved Shield mastery  3%/8% when using a shield
  • Timeblade (longsword) 3%  /  Epic Timeblade 6%
  • Hellstroke Great Axe 3% / Epic 6%
  • Cutthroat’s Smallblade (shortsword) 3% / 6% with tier 3 upgrades
  • Swashbuckler (shield)  3% / 6% with tier 3
  • Alchemical Weapon (any) Teir 2 Martial Air 6%
  • Antipode, Fist of the Horizon (handwraps) 6%
  • Bard Warchanter 2 Inspire Recklessness song 5% (level 12)
  • Way of the Sun soul set bonus effect +6% (temporary)
  • Epic Spare hand (belt) 3%

Untyped type Class Feats/Enhancements

  • Natural Fighting 6%  (druid level 9) can be taken up to 3 times for 18% total
  • Ranger Tempest 3  (level 18)  5% when wielding two weapons
  • Rogue Opportunist feat  3%  (level 10)

Alchemical Bonus

  • Fabricator’s Bracers with Combat Infusion 5% (temporary)

Untyped epic Destinies  (seem to stack with non epic sources)

  • Sentinel : Legendary Shield Mastery 6% when using a shield
  • Legendary Dreadnaught: Lightning Mace 15% bonus after Vorpal strike for 6 seconds
  • Grandmaster of Flowers: Hail of Blows 3%
  • Grandmaster of Flowers: running with the Wind 3% (in wind stance)

Profane Bonus

  • Shadowdancer: ShadowTraining 4 3% (certain light weapons only, temporary)

So who can have the most double strike?

Druids are king of full time double strike, but shield base builds, monks and two-weapon fighters are in the top ranking for doublestrke efficiency.
Shield based

  • +18 if you take three levels of natural fighting: 18%
  • If you use a shield you can get +8 from shield mastery (another two feats) and the +4 base shield bonus giving you 30%
  • Legendary shield mastery stacks for another 6% taking you to 36%
  • +3 Twist Hail of Blows for
  • 39%

Monk Multiclass

  • +18 for natural fighting
  • +5 for second tier wind stance
  • +3 from Hail of blows, and +3 from Running with the Wind
  • +6 from an item for
  • 35%

Each could squeeze in temporary bonuses from Shadowndancer and Combat infusion for a short term max of 47% though it would be quite unreliable to get it and only last seconds.

After the druids you would have shield using fighters and paladins, then non druid wind monks.

Anything you can do that bumps attack speed will also enhance double strike. Monk unarmed and Druid wolf forms both have faster than usual attack animations, Rogues and Fighters can get combat speed boost enhancements (also available in the dreadnaught line).

Ultimate double strike build?  Probably a half orc Druid with a splash of rogue and or fighter wielding a shield in wolf form.

Thanks to the DDOWiki and SteeleTrueHeart for their hard work in collecting and testing information about Doublestrike!

Aside

Festivult Cookies & Cakes for Dec 2012

winter beholder

Cookies and Cakes are back for 2012 Festivult! Here are the list of cookies and cakes for this year’s Festivult in December 2012. I’ve included the whole list, including the three new cookies and the four updated ones. My favorite is still the Taken Cookie, followed by the Kobold Cookie.  What are your favorites? Enjoy!

Icon Name Spell
New Cookies
cookie Spinner of Shadows Cookie Enveloping Swarm
cookie Lolth, The Spider Queen Cookie Lolth’s Blessing: +2 Profane attack and damage, +3 Profane PRR, +5 Profane Unviersal Spell Power. You can buy this cookie with winter motes at the alter.
cookie Spiderweb Cookie Spiderskin
Updated Cookies & Cakes
cookie Lamannia, the Twilight Forest Jelly Cake Vigor
cookie Shavarath, The Battleground Jelly Cake Enchant Armor
cookie Queen Lailat, the Marilith Cookie Blade Barrier
cookie Suulomades Cookie Shocking Weapons
Festivult Cookies
cookie Arraetrikos Cookie Meteor Swarm
cookie Beholder Cookie Disintegrate
cookie Black Abbot Cookie Stoneskin
cookie Black Abishai Cookie Remove Fear
cookie Blue Abishai Cookie Blur
cookie Green Abishai Cookie Neutralize Poison
cookie Hezrou Cookie Infernal Power
cookie Red Abishai Cookie Protection from Energy: Fire
cookie Succubus Cookie Mass Charm Monster
cookie Velah, the Red Dragon Cookie Cometfall
cookie Warforged Titan Cookie Titan’s Grip
cookie White Abishai Cookie Fire Shield (cold version)
cookie Xyzzy Cookie Bee Breath
cookie Stormreaver Cookie Call Lightning Storm
Kobold Cookie Kobold Cookie Wondrous Power: kobold jumping powers & a purple crystal. Used in Collection Challenges.
Lord of Blades Cookie Lord of Blade Cookie Wondrous Power: Adventure Area Slayer Boost 10% for 30 min
Madusa Cookie Medusa Cookie Flesh to Stone
Taken Cookie Taken Cookie Wondrous Power: it will make you look “Absolutely Fabulous”
Toven d'Cannith Cookie Toven d’Cannith Cookie Radiant Forcefield
Festivult Cakes
cookie Daanvi, the Perfect Order Jelly Cake Defender of Law
cookie Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams Jelly Cake Wondrous Power: Diseased, but gain some spell points afterwards
cookie Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead Jelly Cake Death Ward
cookie Fernia, the Sea of Fire Jelly Cake Fire Shield (fire version)
cookie Irian, the Eternal Day Jelly Cake Sunburst
cookie Kythri, the Churning Chaos Jelly Cake Hound of Chaos
cookie Mabar, The Endless night Jelly Cake Wail of the Banshee
cookie Risia, the Plane of Ice Jelly Cake Ice Storm
cookie Syrania, the Azure Sky Jelly Cake Jump with Feather Fall
cookie Thelanis, the Faerie Court Jelly Cake Prismatic Spray
cookie Xoriat, the Realm of Madness Jelly Cake Otto’s Sphere of Dancing
Aside

Crunchy Bits: Armor Class and You

In Update 14 there were dramatic changes to the way armor class works in DDO. I’m going to try and explain how it works and more importantly how you can use the new system to your advantage.

Lets define some terms 🙂

  • Physical Defense: Anything that protects you from attacks by weapons.
  • There are now five types of physical defenses in DDO
    • Damage Reduction: This defense reduces damage you take by a fixed number. It does not generally stack and there is often a means to bypass it by the use of special damage types.
    • Physical Resistance: Is like damage reduction but instead of a fixed number it reduced damage by a percentage.
    • Miss Chance: This is a percentage chance that a monster will miss you with an attack. Three common types of miss chance are Dodge, Concealment, and Incorporeal states.
    • Fortification: This is a percentage chance to avoid taking critical hits.
    • Armor Class: Armor class represents how difficult it is for you to be hit. When you attack you must overcome your opponents armor class on your attack roll to land a hit.

When you are attacked, this is what happens:

  1. First you check miss chances: Each type is checked separately. If the attacker rolls below the miss chance they may continue the attack, otherwise the attack ends.
  2. The attacker makes an attack roll which is compared to armor class
  3. If the attack roll is higher than your armor class you are hit
  4. If the attack roll is not higher but is within a certain range, you take a grazing hit
  5. If there is a hit or grazing hit the attacker rolls damage (grazing hits do far less damage)
  6. If the attack is a critical hit, fortification is checked. If the attacker rolls over the fortification value, damage is multiplied by the attackers crit multiplier.
  7. Next up the damage is reduced by the Physical Resistance lowering it by a percentage.
  8. Finally any damage reduction that is not bypassed by the damage type is applied reducing the incoming damage by a fixed amount.

Attack vs Armor Class in Detail

Armor class is the most complicated of the defense types. In classic D&D if your attack roll is a larger number than your target’s armor class you hit. Because you roll a Twenty Sided dice in D&D there is a window in which a change in armor class or attack will matter. If you have a +40 to hit there is an AC window from 42 to 58 where adding or losing AC will make a difference. Anything outside of that is either a near automatic hit or automatic miss. A roll of 1 is always a miss and a 20 is always a hit so it’s never impossible or completely automatic.

In DDO this caused problems because there were so many ways to raise AC and attack values that the windows were much smaller than the possible character values. This led to AC becoming either something you hyper specialized in, or something you completely ignored. It made things very hard for the developers to balance well.

The new system is quite a bit more complicated. A 1 is still always a miss, and a 20 is still always a hit, that part remains unchanged. But how you roll to hit is rather different. There is now a formula that gives you a percentage chance to hit:

(To-Hit+10.5) / (2*AC) +.25
(players only and only if proficient with weapon)

If you and a monster are roughly equal, you will have a 75% chance to hit them, and they will have a 50% chance to hit you.

When you roll your d20 the system rounds the % value into a 1-20 with 1 being 5% and 20 being 100%. 19 is 95%. This way you can still roll a d20 to see if you hit but under the hood it’s no longer a linear relationship.

As to-hit rises above AC the chance to hit increases fairly rapidly, but as AC exceeds attack the chance to hit decreases in a bell shaped curve, steeply at first but then ever more gradual. Each point of AC gives a bit less of a benefit from the last one. Also as you the numbers overall get larger, the effect of each point of attack and AC diminishes so the “window” from hit on a 2 to miss on a 19 gets larger and larger.

The result of all this is that its harder for you to get your AC up to where you almost never get hit, but it is much easier to get it to where you will get hit only 30% of the time. The higher level you are, the more remote the extremes are.

Lesson to take away

  1. Increasing your armor class will generally benefit you with getting hit less often until your AC gets well above the attack of the monsters you are fighting. If you can get more AC on your character it is probably worth doing so, but if your AC is already high and you would have to make a sacrifice in some other area to get more AC, it likely isn’t worth while.
  2.  Hitting monsters is incredibly easy now and sacrificing accuracy for AC or accuracy for damage is almost always a good trade off. With a half-way decent attack score you will only rarely miss except on a 1.

So how do you get more AC?

An exhaustive list could take hours. AC can be had from numerous sources and the rules about what AC bonuses stack and what ones don’t can be complicated.

Every character starts at a 10AC baseline and this value is then modified up and down by various effects.

Armor 101

The most classic source of AC is Armor, indeed this is the origin of the term. What armor you wore in the original D&D determined what your Armor Class was. In DDO it is but one of many sources, but it is often the largest for most armor wearing characters.

There are three important stats on armor that determine its AC benefit. First is its Armor Bonus which is its base AC value, second is its enhancement bonus which is added to the Armor Bonus. Finally there is Max Dex Bonus. This tells you how much of your dexterity bonus you can add to your AC while wearing the armor. It also sets the maximum amount of dodge you can benefit from. Any value bigger than your actual dex bonus or dodge value is not going to help you.

Armor comes in three categories: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Light armors give the least AC and heavy armors give the most, while max dex is the reverse with light armors offering the most and heavy armors the least.

Each weight of armor has two types, for instance leather and chain are the two types of light armor, scale and breast plate are medium, while half plate and full plate are the heavy armors. In each category one of the armors will have a higher AC rating while the other will have a higher max dex value.

Furthermore each armor weight also comes in 5 different ranks based on a stat called absolute minimum level. The base rank starts at level 1 and goes up to 3, the second rank is from 4 to 9, the third from 10-15, the fourth from 16-21 and the fifth from 22 to 25. (shields have slightly different level breaks)
The higher the rank the more armor it provides.

Of course not every character can wear any armor they like. Arcane casters can suffer from arcane spell failure in most armors and characters cannot benefit from evasion wearing medium or heavy armor. That and armor proficiencies may limit your choices. Wearing armor you are not proficient in will incur a hefty attack penalty equal to the armors armor check penalty so that may also be a limiting factor.

Docents

Warforged body types and docents are now a bit different too. Docents don’t have types or categories, but they do have the 5 ranks just like armors do based on absolute minimum level.

The body types determine max dex rather than the docents themselves and they also determine the effective weight of the armor. Adamantine body is treated as heavy armor for all intents and purposes. Mithral is considered light armor except that the protection it provides is closer to traditional medium armor. Composite provides protection about like light armor, but it is actually treated as not being armor at all for class abilities and so forth.

Legacy armor

Random loot armor that was in the game prior to update 14 is legacy armor and is always the lowest rank of armor no matter its minimum level. At low level it is still comparable but at high level it is almost always worse than the new armors. Most named armor was upgraded and doesn’t have this problem.

Legacy armor can also come with the mithral and adamantine metal properties. Mithral used to be very valuable because it increased max dex values, but now it is only found on legacy armors which are always the lowest rank. Thus they are only meaningful for low level characters any more. Named armors still may have these properties and they work fine there, but otherwise they are no longer relevant.

Armor Take Away

  • Don’t wear armor that interferes with your class abilities
  • Wear armor with a minimum level close to your character’s level
  • Wear armor with a high enhancement bonus
  • Wear armor with a max dex bonus that is as close as possible to your dexterity/dodge bonus

Shields

Shields are very much like armor. There are different types of shields (buckler, light, medium, and tower) as well as 5 ranks based on absolute minimum level. And they also have enhancement bonuses. The heavier the type and the higher the rank and the bigger the enhancement bonus the more AC they will provide.

Tower shields are the only type that has a maximum dex value and thus the only type that can restrict your AC bonus from dexterity.

Also like armor, shields can create arcane spell failure for some classes and not everyone is proficient with all types of shields and using one without proficiency can give you attack penalties.

Unlike armor, using a shield can negatively impact your damage output by disabling two weapon fighting and two handed fighting. Still, if you want to maximize AC, a shield is often a must have item and the two best prestige enhancement lines for defensive characters gain extra benefit from using shields. Remember that defenses only matter if you are getting attacked a lot. That means either solo/small group play or if you are a party tank. Otherwise maximizing your DPS is likely going to benefit your group more than our turtling up.

Tank type characters have to balance defenses and offense because agro is based largely on the damage you deal and the agro amplification you have. Shield mastery helps a little with damage output and shields with +10 seeker on them are also a nice bonus, but your best bet is to crank up on the threat amplification through items, class abilities and the intimidate skill.

Crafting armor and shields

When crafting armor and shields you want to break down an item of the rank you want to end up with. Too high and you can’t use it, too low and you won’t get the maximum armor value. Armor blanks made before update 14 is always the lowest rank and therefore likely not of much value to you any more.

AC bonus types from other items and spells

AC bonuses from other items come in a range of types. Deflection is a common type that comes from the shield of faith spell, protection items, and various other sources. Natural armor is another common AC bonus that comes from barkskin and various items. There are also sacred, profane, alchemical and other AC bonus types. Generally they don’t stack if they are of the same type but there are exceptions which are usually toned in the item or spell description.

Anyone serious about AC will be looking to get at least a 5 natural armor and 5 deflection bonus to AC and as much of the others as you can muster.

AC bonuses from character abilities

A number of DDO character classes, enhancements, feats, racial abilities and so on can contribute to your armor class. Most class based ac bonuses will stack with whatever gear and spells you may have unless they are spell like powers. Of the lot, the Fighter’s Stalwart Defender and Paladin’s Defender of Siberys offer the biggest defensive bonuses. Stalwart is very focused on armor use, while Sybaris is less so. Monks also have some AC bonuses to offer but they all are dependent on not using any armor or shield. While other classes do have something to offer in the AC arena, none can match these three.

Miss chance and dodge

Let’s quickly talk about miss chances. Dodge is the new kid on the block here. It used to be that dodge was an AC bonus that was unique in that it always stacked. In the new system each point of dodge is a 1% miss chance. Its also capped by the max dex of your armor and has an absolute maximum of 25%. Rogues and Barbarians receive dodge from their uncanny dodge ability now, and monks can get some dodge bonuses from water stance. The Dodge, Mobility and Spring attack feats also grant a few points as do all the old equipment items that used to have AC dodge bonuses. Its not easy to cap it out at 25% but it is possible. That said most armor wearing characters will have a lower limit. There are also some short term boosts that can take it above the normal maximums.

There are also concealment and incorporeal miss chances. Each type is checked separately so some of each is great, but bonuses of the same type don’t stack. The displacement spell is the best concealment bonus at 50% but can be bypassed with true seeing. Displacement is self cast only, but you could UMD scrolls, or even take the elven dragonmarks to get it on a non-caster. Incorporeal is very rare, only found in Ninja Assassin, Shadowdancer, and Pale master and is bypassed with ghost touch which is rarely found on monsters.

Miss Chance Take away

Take any opportunity to get some miss chances for your character of each type you can. Dodge can be the most work to get and the least rewarding but don’t turn your nose up at it. At higher levels each point of AC will have less impact but each point of dodge is always worth +1% defense.

Physical resistance rating

Physical resistance is another entirely new mechanic. It reduces the amount of damage you take from physical attacks by a percentage. The PRR value is not the percentage of reduction. Like armor class it has a kind of diminishing returns system. The formula is

1 – (.99^PRR) x .65

The upshot of this is each point of PRR you have is worth a bit less than the last. At around 50 PRR you are getting about half the rating in reduction 26%. From there it gets a bit worse and you will need to reach 150 PRR before you can reduce damage by half.

Because its a percentage system, at low level you often will only be reducing damage by a point or two, but at high level you get harder and the reduction will be a larger absolute number.

PRR comes from a few sources. Armor grants some PRR based on the weight of the armor and your character’s base attack bonus. Heavier armors give more than lighter ones. There are also a number of prestige enhancements and epic destinies that grant some PRR with the defender lines being the stand-outs. Shields don’t grant PRR directly but in combination with the shield mastery feats and some of the prestige enhancements they can contribute a good chunk.

Damage reduction

This hasn’t changed much from days of old. It effectively stacks with PRR though the mechanic is very different. DR simply reduces the physical damage you take by a set amount. While there is no way to get around PRR, most DR can be bypassed with certain damage types such as silver, adamantane, magic, blunt and so on. DR will always list what types of damage bypass its effect. DR pretty much never stacks but if they bypass one source it won’t always bypass all of them so there can be a reason to have more than one source of it.

Grand summation

  1. Every character can benefit from defenses now so its squeeze it in wherever you can without sacrificing the primary mission for your character.
  2. If you are dedicated to good defenses you want to get as many different sources as you can. AC and PRR offer diminishing returns so if you have to choose, shore up your weakest defenses first.
  3. Against physical attacks heavy armors are generally better since they offer both AC and PRR and don’t need much investment in character dexterity.
  4. If you are currently using non-named armors and shields from before update 14, junk them and look for new ones. Avoid legacy armors on the auction house.
  5. If you want to be a real tank, go paladin, fighter, or possibly monk. Combinations of those with other things work as well.

 

Related Episode:  DDOCast 258

Aside

Festivult Jester Build!

Now with Simulated Drunken Stupor!

The jester is drunk and he trades cookies for coin, hard to say what class that is so its pretty much up to you.  I went with a Wizard with two levels or Arty up front

My thinking is since the jester wears robes, I want a robe wearing class. I like the idea that as an artificer he makes goodies, and it gives me haggle as a class skill which seems appropriate. Wizard will give him access to the majority of the cookie spells. I went for pale master and be a zombie Festivult Jester which looks just a bit like a drunken stupor that you find the Jester in, but also because I just like pale masters a lot.

Mechanically, artificer-wizard is probably a little weaker than rogue-wizard. You miss out on evasion and a few skill points. What you gain is a nice starter weapon with the repeaters, access to rune arms as spell enhancing weapons, a tiny umd bump, and more spell points. In either case you get UMD and trap skills which are a nice side line for a caster. While evasion is unquestionably superior in end game, the cross bow and rune are are simply a lot of fun and make playing a low level caster a breeze.

More…

Aside

Festivult Cookies & Cakes for Dec 2011

winter beholder

Hey DDO Fans and DDOcast Listeners,

Here are the list of cookies and cakes for this year’s Festivult in December 2011. I’ve included the whole list, including the five new ones and the updated ones (only two really). Enjoy!

Icon Name Spell
New Cookies
Kobold Cookie Kobold Cookie Wondrous Power: kobold jumping powers & a purple crystal. Used in Collection Challenges.
Lord of Blades Cookie Lord of Blade Cookie Wondrous Power: Adventure Area Slayer Boost 10% for 30 min
Madusa Cookie Medusa Cookie Flesh to Stone
Taken Cookie Taken Cookie Wondrous Power: it will make you look “Absolutely Fabulous”
Toven d'Cannith Cookie Toven d’Cannith Cookie Radiant Forcefield
Updated Cookies & Cakes
cookie Mabar, The Endless night Jelly Cake Wail of the Banshee
cookie Shavarath, The Battleground Jelly Cake Blade Barrier
Festivult Cookies
cookie Arraetrikos Cookie Meteor Swarm
cookie Beholder Cookie Disintegrate
cookie Black Abbot Cookie Stoneskin
cookie Black Abishai Cookie Remove Fear
cookie Blue Abishai Cookie Blur
cookie Green Abishai Cookie Neutralize Poison
cookie Hezrou Cookie Infernal Power
cookie Queen Lailat, the Marilith Cookie Burning Blood
cookie Red Abishai Cookie Protection from Energy: Fire
cookie Stormreaver Cookie Call Lightning Storm
cookie Succubus Cookie Mass Charm Monster
cookie Suulomades Cookie Freedom of Movement
cookie Velah, the Red Dragon Cookie Cometfall
cookie Warforged Titan Cookie Titan’s Grip
cookie White Abishai Cookie Fire Shield (cold version)
cookie Xyzzy Cookie Bee Breath
Festivult Cakes
cookie Daanvi, the Perfect Order Jelly Cake Defender of Law
cookie Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams Jelly Cake Wondrous Power: Diseased, but gain some spell points afterwards
cookie Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead Jelly Cake Death Ward
cookie Fernia, the Sea of Fire Jelly Cake Fire Shield (fire version)
cookie Irian, the Eternal Day Jelly Cake Sunburst
cookie Kythri, the Churning Chaos Jelly Cake Hound of Chaos
cookie Lamannia, the Twilight Forest Jelly Cake Spike Growth
cookie Risia, the Plane of Ice Jelly Cake Ice Storm
cookie Syrania, the Azure Sky Jelly Cake Jump
cookie Thelanis, the Faerie Court Jelly Cake Prismatic Spray
cookie Xoriat, the Realm of Madness Jelly Cake Otto’s Sphere of Dancing
Aside

Day 3: PAX Prime 2011 Media Mix

A picture is worth a thousand words. Enjoy!

[pe2-gallery]
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Audio

DDOcast 145, Part 2 – Crunchy Bits Collection

(The MP3 file can be downloaded HERE Right-click and ‘save as’ to download as an mp3)

Hello again!

This is Volume 1, Part 2 of Crunchy Bits and was complied and released in two parts by Jerry back in November 2009. You can find Part 1 here.

I thought it would be a good idea to release put these out this week since Sig and I will be out for this weekend and there will be no live show for Ep. 227.

We understand that its been a while and some things may have changed, but most of the advice and knowledge still applies. If you listen to it and have any questions feel free to send us an email or post in our forums. We hope you enjoy this republishing of Crunchy Bits!

Thanks,

Anne
July 28, 2011

P.S.: I’ve kept Jerry’s original message but will make another post for part 2 of the collection. If I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I may republish the Crunchy Bits Notes here on ddocast.com.

P.P.S.: Oh and 2009 is back when I was finishing up school and our play time in DDO was at its low point, and well before we inherited DDOcast from Jerry.


Part 2: Left click to play, right-click and ‘save as’ to download as an mp3.

:00 Introduction
:25 14-Rogues
10:28 15-Combat Basics
22:49 16-4th edition Sneak Peek
30:49 17-Team Tactics
40:27 18-Barbarians
50:32 19-Paladins
59:44 20-Weapon Traits pt 1
1:10:19 21-Weapon Traits pt 2
1:19:35 22-Weapon Traits pt 3
1:29:01 23-Art of Character Building
1:40:01 24-Multi-Classing
1:51:30 25-Special Forces Multi-Classing
2:03:52 26-Skills
2:15:21 Jerry, Sigfried and Anne Outro

END

TOTAL TIME: 2:18:04

###

All right. I’ll be mostly away from the ‘net through the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend. Have a good holiday, be safe and I’ll see you soon.

Jerry
November 25, 2009

DDOcast - A DDO Podcast

Audio

DDOcast 145, Part 1 – Crunchy Bits Collection

(The MP3 file can be downloaded HERE Right-click and ‘save as’ to download as an mp3)

Hi everyone!

This is Volume 1 of Crunchy Bits and was complied and released in two parts by Jerry back in November 2009. I thought it would be a good idea to release put these out this week since Sig and I will be out for this weekend and there will be no live show for Ep. 227.

We understand that its been a while and some things may have changed, but most of the advice and knowledge still applies. If you listen to it and have any questions feel free to send us an email or post in our forums. We hope you enjoy this republishing of Crunchy Bits!

Thanks,

Anne
July 28, 2011

P.S.: I’ve kept Jerry’s original message but will make another post for part 2 of the collection. If I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I may republish the Crunchy Bits Notes here on ddocast.com.

P.P.S.: Oh and 2009 is back when I was finishing up school and our play time in DDO was at its low point, and well before we inherited DDOcast from Jerry.


Hello Everyone,

Doing something different this week for the long Thanksgiving holiday. The following is a two-parter featuring all of the “Crunchy Bits” in one place! Sigfried and Anne did an amazing job with these, and I’ve had numerous requests to put all 26 of the segments together and release it.

I figure long road trips for Thanksgiving and the introduction in recent months of new players to DDO makes this is a great time to finally get this done. New players and veterans alike will get a lot out of this – here’s the crunchy stuff! Presented by Anne and Sigfried on DDOcast, here’s a treasure trove of useful advice and information and a great way to delve deeper into DDO!

This is a lengthy show. I’ve split it into two parts, each a little more than two hours long. Consider this both a “show” and an archive, a reference spot for the future.

Listen in parts or as part of a long road trip, enjoy! All of the Crunchy Bits show notes can be found HERE.

Visit DDOcast.com for any and all of the episodes in which these originally ran. Approximately September of 2007 through August of 2008. With just a few exceptions, all of the information contained within is accurate as of the time of production. Keep in mind that lots of rules have changed in DDO over time. Still, a ton of good information is here.

Thanks Sigfried and Anne for your hard work and research.

Jerry
November 25, 2009

###

DDOcast’s Crunchy Bits Master Class with Sigfried and Anne Trent, hosted by Jerry Snook
Part 1: Left click to play, right-click and ‘save as’ to download as an mp3.

:15 Introduction and chat with Sigfried and Anne
12:41 1-Two Weapon Fighting
22:20 2-Two Handed Fighting
32:05 3-Armor Class
43:05 4-Mod 5 Strategy
53:46 5-Races of DDO Overview
1:03:41 6-Ranged Combat
1:15:24 7 (accidentally called 6 in the segment)-Spell Casting Basics
1:26:57 8-Cleric Strategy
1:36:44 9-Bonus Stacking
1:47:46 10-Dynamic Duo
1:56:12 11-Intimitanks
2:05:54 12-Battle Wizards
2:17:52 13-Saving Throws
2:27:11 Outro by Jerry

END

TOTAL TIME: 2:27:44

DDOcast - A DDO Podcast