UO Second Age

Since nearly every PK on the server is a hally/mage with some minor variation, I am taking it upon myself to try and find a competitive solution. Most PK’s have more experience than I do and better equipment, so making a Hally/mage would likely be a losing proposition for me.

I’m going the Dexxer route with sword primarily so I can get some hally cycling in with a nice katana for interrupt, both deadly poisoned. I decided to GM poisoning on this character so I can reapply deadly poison in the field because it’s really time (they use up all the orange pots) that will make this effective. Being able to reapply in the field was something I felt was essential. I also felt deadly poison would be essential due to the faster ticks and the better damage, primarily the interrupts on the faster ticks.

Taking on a mage as a dexxer, I’ve found the most important thing is to get the mage flipping to defense as quickly as possible. If I can get them into a defensive mode and keep them in a defensive mode, the fight will go my way. The damage of the hally, the deadly of the poison, should cause them to switch pretty quickly. Once I get them defensive the speed of the katana and the deadly of the poison should hopefully keep them there. I also plan on not wearing my helmet at the outset of battle, so they are using the wrong tactics at the beginning, and equipping it as time permits once the chase ensues.

I’ve got most of my build mostly figured out, but I’ve got 50 points left over. I’m not sure what to do with it. There’s no sense bringing magery to 100, because I won’t have the mana to cast above 6th circle. The 70 in magery gets me a casted recall every time without a scroll, greater heals when necessary, and invisibility among other versatile spells.

Swords
Tactics
Anatomy 80
Healing
Magery 70
Resist
Poisoning
So here are my options as I see them:
Parrying 50
Hide 50
Track 50
Archery 50
I love hide but at 50 it’s unreliable. I’ve got enough invis rings, that it shouldn’t be a problem to drop it. The 50 parrying should help me stay in a fight against a dexxer and helps from a PVM perspective. Would archery even hit a hally mage at 50? Tracking would be helpful for when the mage tries to get away.

Now I do have one more option. I could lower magery to 37 (100% to recall with a scroll). That would allow me to put 83 points in one of those skills. Hiding is a very viable option now and could give me the time I need for a bandage to hit. Parrying and Archey at 83 should both be viable skills, with archery requiring a high tactics magic weapon which I have.

I love parrying. I really do, but it takes too long to equip both hands. I want to be able to switch weapons and chug potions like a mad man. I really don’t know when I would equip a shield when taking on a Hally/mage, but it would certainly allow me to hang with a dexxer.

So what do you think? Out of those options, which do you prefer? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Don't do this to yourself, you will get destroyed.

Stick with something standard.
100-swords, tacs, anat,magery,healing,resist, and you can play with hiding or go something like meditation and wear leather.

Swords
Tactics
Meditation
Resist
Magery
Wrestling
Eval

Ultimate PK hunter build.

But isn’t that the standard PK build most PK’s use some variation of? Trying to beat someone at their own game they’ve been mastering for several years seems to be a far quicker and certain death to me. Unless I pull out the vanq Hally, it will probably won’t win any of them. If I lose the vanq Hally in the first fight, well I guess it’s time to drain the bank account

I get it. I do. I probably will see the world in gray and often, which is totally fine. Even if I only win 1 in 10 battles, I’m still putting them into stat loss for a week or more which makes the lost battles worthwhile. I promise you all 10 battles will be fun for me, even the losses.

I’m getting a GM alchemist out of it, which provides a profit opportunity. I’ve got a GM smith so selling deadly poisoned hally’s is another profit opportunity. I’ve got a treasure hunter so selling deadly poisoned magic weapons is a profit opportunity. The additional DPS provided by greater poison makes it possible to farm blood elementals, so it works pretty well in PVM. I haven’t fought a lot of PVM stuff with him yet, but he handles it as well as my standard mace build dexxer in his unfinished state. He’s probably a little faster actually. I’ll have a lot of fun with this guy even if he doesn’t end up as a very good PK hunter. I’m getting pretty close to finishing him, so I’m trying to flesh out the rest of his build.

Everyone runs the same 4-5 template because they'e stood the test of time. Unfortunately, if you want to be competitive your best bet is to stick with one of the big ones. The real difference between winning and losing battles is the how well you can play your character and the quality of your items. Not the diversity in your build.

My recommendation:

100 (swords, macing, or fencing)
100 tactics
100 anatomy
100 healing
100 resist (or as close as you can reasonably get)
100 magery
100 - utility skill*

This build leaves room for a utility skill such as hiding, detect hidden, meditation, archery etc. A well equipped swords med dexxer in leather can be extremely deadly here. Typically, a swords dexxer is the strongest due to higher burst damage and increased variety of viable weapons, but is the most expensive. Fencing and macing are less attractive but cheaper to equip.

This may seem cookie-cutter, but in my humble opinion is the best way to go.

archaic subrosa?

i dont like the build, but if youre looking for something to sink 50 into, try detect hidden. 50 detect will reveal a magic(item, spell) hidden character 100% of the time if he has 0 actual hiding skill.

If you want a non-standard build that chews through the tank template, make an eval/mace hybrid dexer. It's challenging to play outnumbered depending on the exact build, but extremely efficient 1v1. I've always been lazy about character building, but here's mine:

http://my.uosecondage.com/Status/Player/23068

There are different variations that include gm med instead of healing, but I prefer the survivability of armor + bandages rather than mana. When relying on an already depleted mana pool, I like to reserve it all for offense. Basically, grab a nice power qstaff, and a bunch of potions then have at it. I like to cast and hold an ebolt then just mace them down to 20 or so and drop it on them to finish. Can also mix purple pots and play more like a dexer. It's pretty flexible. The low mana gets tricky 2v1, bit invis, tele, and reflect jewelry help.

That's actually really close to my mace build. I've got 5 more dex, and 5 less int. I'd simply have to switch parry out for eval which is free to raise. Training eval would give me the additional int I need.

Here's a question I've never fully understood. Magic leather never sells on my magic item vendor. I would think this would be in high demand for the PK community. How does med work with leather, is invuln leather actually "worse" than regular leather because of its high AR? I can't figure out why that stuff doesn't sell and the only reason I could think of is the additional AR takes away some of your ability to med.

If anyone could tell me how this works I would really appreciate it.

In T2A all armors hinder meditation, so any char with med should go without armor entirely. Any char without med will chose chain or ring over leather...so leather is essentially worthless on this era.

An important mechanic to note whenever playing an eval dexer is that hitting a bandage self key will cancel a held spell. So, you'll want to start a bandage before casting and holding an ebolt, then try to use heal pots unless you think another bandage is necessary. It takes some practice to get good and sometimes you'll make the wrong call. In general tho, you won't have much issue 1v1 against a squishy mage. A nice magic qstaff can hit close to 40 and it's fast enough at 50 dex to disrupt a greater heal. Dex pots and str pots are a must too. Especially the str because you can pop one and start a bandaid before the fight even begins.

Lead with a clumsy because the stamina damage is what really makes this a beast against a 25 or 35 dex tank.

The best and only real way to kill any decent pk is to have a better conn and never miss. Other than that most all pks that run dungeons will just recall if they feel they are evenly or out matched as most are in stat. A poison fencer that is excellent at throwing purples is your best bet. 50 hiding to get yourself hidden and 50 detect as Mal said.

That is your best build.

Sounds like someone is butt hurt.