Returning Player - A few questions

[godmathias]

Hey all,

Returning to the shard after a LONG period of not playing, and very excited. Just have a few questions I want to ask before I start playing/macroing, make sure im on the right path:

1. Are dexxers viable for money making? The huge problem I have with a lot of shards are you cannot make money unless you are a tamer or provoker. The last shard i played, every single person was a provoker, and it really bugged me. Can dexxers make money farming like the good ole days? Is parry and full plate good against monsters?

2. Are dexxers good in PvP? Can you tell I like dexxers? Obviously, the end goal is a heal or tank mage for me... but would something like a med or eval dexxer be good in pvp here? I think I recall Hally/Katana combo being decent, but dont remember.

3. I know this is the era of the tank mage, but any other templates that are good for pvp?

Thanks and look forward to seeing you all out there.

[Hernando_Kortez]

I think the answer to all 3 questions is basically yes. I have a no magery parry dexxer who uses full plate and parry and he can make gold and pvp just fine. All sorts of other dexxer templates are also viable. Best gold on a dexxer is probably liches or lich lords with a silver weapon but there's lots of other good spawns to hunt too.

[godmathias]

Does parry add enough value for fighting PVM to warrant 100 points?

[Horngold]

Parry is not that useful, in my opinion. When fighting both monsters and humans, most of the incoming damage is from magic. If you come across another dexer who you want to fight with parrying, I guess it might be good for that. Or maybe if you wanted to do melee against dragons. Also, parry makes it a little harder to use potions.

[MatronDeWinter]

1.)Dexers can make decent money. A silver weapon and a lich spawn will go a long way (Also consider things like Gazers). There are also many other things you can fight. The only real issue they can have is due to their inability to quickly heal (which is fixed by including magery), and then perhaps their lack of wrestle (which causes problems while trying to "use" the magery). So, you might find yourself jumped by some PK's and you can't get a recall or heal off. But in this age of recall+invisItem that shouldn't be an issue at all.

2.)Dexers are just fine for Pvp. If you don't go the mage/med (or similar) route, you might have troubles and need to run off screen to heal quite often. It's also very difficult to get a kill since everyone will off-screen you. Teleport items go a long way on a dexer. Actually, the combination of invis/tele/MR are very important when actually trying to PvP. The only reason people talk bad about the class is because it's cheaper to grab 20 of each reg and a hally to go out PvP'ing. A fully equipped dexer is easily THE best pvp template available. Though costly. Look at the winners of most of the old magics-allowed tourneys, yeah, dexers.

3.)The pvp here really comes down to: "Can you kill someone before they escape or kill you". When you add groups of people to the equation it becomes a little harder. You will have trouble killing even the most uncoordinated newb as a dexer without using teleport items or having magery or something. Purple potions are a huge aid in this as well. Of all the possible templates that people use on UOSA, I would say that these are the most viable (obviously skill level comes into play as well);

Dexer (med/mage) (eval/mage) (wrestle/mage)
--Swords is the way to go, always. Everyone has invinity red-pots, maces suck. Fencing is slower, more expensive, and less diverse.

Pure Dexer (poison + something else)
--It works pretty well actually. Poison + mage is a good suggestion. Don't bother with parry or archery.

Tank Mage
--No explanation needed here

Anat-Tank (no resist)
--Good but you need MR items if you ever hope to fight more than 1 person.

Thief (mage/stealth)
--You might not kill people, but you can always beat them into running off.

There is something to be said for templates like thief-dexer or the no-wrestle-anat-tank, but I just don't find them as viable as the others. Pure mage is totally useless. You will never accomplish anything unless you have a friend to help you sync people to death. Tamer is rather worthless now, pets are too slow now, you can only set up traps with this template, but everyone should see it coming from a mile away when show-incomming-names reads " (a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)(a dragon)"

I always tell people to start w/ 50 magery and make a dexer. Use the basic dex skills to make some money and train magery until you are an med-dexer. Once those are GM, dump med for eval and see how you like that. If you find yourself using spells very often, and not really relying on damage over time, then pick back up meditation and ditch the anatomy. If you still like the template, then just transform into a tank mage. You should already be using swords anyway.

Parry just plain sucks. Don't ever bother with it unless you are one of those people who wants to play the dice-roll jousting game with things like balrons while drinking 5k in potions wearing invuln armor. There is just no money in it. Parry is good for PvP, in the extreme case where a.) Your opponent is a dexer, and b.) They can't run too far from you. Otherwise, it's a total waste. (It's fun on some other templates though, but only gimmicky ones and non-pvp ones)

Oh yeah, there is only 1 use for archery. If you aren't in a large group looking to insta kill people, don't ever use this skill ever.