Another kind of high

John actually realises that there is more than one way to get high. One doesn't need to jump that high in order to kick a car's windscreen, an act, if done successfully, would result in damage successfully reflected. At the same time, getting high doesn't require you to watch Legal High Season 3. Oh wait, there's no Season 3. Apologies to all who want to see Aragaki "not part of Gaki no Tsukai" Yui at her legally best.

Meanwhile, here's something to tide you all over.

Gaming the time away

Neverwinter is currently down for server maintenance, therefore John has some time up in his hands. This post will entail Tomb of the Nine Gods and... well, random stuff.

404 Rex Not Found

There are few names under the Rex category. John is referring to T-Rex, King Rex, Razor Rex, and Zombie Rex.

Erm... no. Not including this Rex.T here.

John is talking about Razor Rex for a reason. When Cryptic first released the latest mod that reads a bit like Omurice, the Razor Rex actually spawned quite frequently. John doesn't mean the normal version, but rather the hunt mark version. As a result, the Razor Rex trophy was quite cheap. Cheaper than the T-Rex trophy. That was last time around.

Now, the Razor Rex (i.e. the correct version) has gotten a spawn nerf. In fact, one can be forgiven for believing the respawn rate to be second lowest. As for the lowest, it's that damn bear. On the flip side, the Magehunter has the highest spawn rate. Not that it matters much anyway since everyone needs a Razor Rex trophy to buy a tier 1 lure.

The most frustrating part of this total recall on the respawn lies in the drop rate for the hunt specific gear. The rng seems to stay the same. Objectively speaking, this evens out the playing field when it comes to the level 480 gear one can get from Tomb of the Nine Gods (note that you can get at least one depending on whether you get to open the second chest). In fact, the average hunt mark gear does have better property than any level 480 hunter gear (note that those requiring a low current HP level to proc are to be an exception. More on that later).

While there's no way for John to discern the cost of a Razor Rex trophy on the Chult trade channel, it's likely that thing may cost like 1 superior mark of potency. John may want to try his luck by offering his 2 Magehunter's Helms for a Razor Rex Spine. Note that this is based on John's assumption that 1 Magehunter's Helm costs 2 greater marks of potency (i.e. 1 greater mark of potency costs 25K astral diamonds on the Wondrous Bazaar with 1 superior mark of potency costing 4 times the amount, so just go do your maths and get your answer).

Also, John traded 2 Driftwood Shields for 2 Plagued Bear's Paw (or whatever that thing is called). So all John needs right now are 2 Razor Rex Spine. Because John wants to test his luck at getting the fur coat. Just don't eat the bear paw even though it's seen as some kind of Asian delicacy. It's contaminated.

Tomb of the Nine Gods: Cyrea Durothil version

It's fun running this one with a sun elf devoted cleric, never mind the fact the DC is a female toon instead of a male one. The moveset was tweaked due to the inclusion of BTS. Not the Bangtan Boys but Break the Spirit. So the whole thing should look like this:

At-will: Lance of Faith, Astral Seal

Encounters: Astral Shield, Divine Glow, Break the Spirit

Dailies: Flame Strike, Hallowed Ground

Class features: Terrifying Insight, Prophetic Action

Weapon and armour enhancements: Holy Avenger, Negation

Key boons: Critical and AP gain.

It must be noted that Cyrea has yet to get all the Chult campaign boons. In fact, she has yet to start the last three campaigns (i.e. Storm King's Thunder, The Cloaked Ascendancy, and Jungles of Chult). Effectively, John was guilty of running Tomb of the Nine Gods with a half-baked sun elf girl who may/may not resemble someone you know. Gear wise, however, John did get two pieces of pilgrim armour from the trade bars store with Weathered Hydra Boots and Guise of the Wolf Clan completing the setup. Artifact set bonus wise, it's Tiamat. For the rings, it's Ring of the Gravestriker +4 and Ring of the Hunter +3. But because John finds the need to increase the movement speed, Cyrea is currently going with two Rings of the Hunter +3. Shouldn't be a problem if Cyrea goes to the tomb again since the only major difference lies in trading power (and a bit of crit) for movement. Given that Cyrea is a three-way hybrid (i.e. buff, debuff, and heal), this shouldn't be an issue.

Only two raids have been done at this point. Process-wise, there's not much separating the two. One thing to note is this: Ideal party setup for this raid should be 1 tank, 1 dps, 2 DCs, and 1 dps-buff hybrid. For the DCs, it must be 1 Divine Oracle and 1 Anointed Champion. This is to avoid the risk of illegal stacking firstly and foremost. When John talks about illegal stacking, he's not talking about an illegal boob job amounting to a potential hazard. Rather, he's referring to the fact that certain things cannot be stacked. Take for example Terrifying Insight. You can't stack that because having 2 DOs with this class feature would result in the party being buffed with Terrifying Insight instead of Terrifying Insight x2. See the difference? Of course, it is possible to run this with 2 ACs. This is because the AC isn't what one would call an aura class. Terrifying Insight is counted as an aura (even though in name it's not). The 3 As (i.e. Anointed Action, Anointed Armor, and Anointed Holy Symbol) are not. Also, please note that Weapons of Light feat for the Righteous tree can no longer stack. Then again, any sane minded DC user should already know it by now. The devs did the fix like... well, John can't recall how long ago.

Because Cyrea is a sun elf, what it means is that AP gain is her racial bonus trait. By itself, this trait may not amount to much. Combined with Elven Haste and Demonic Swiftness plus Amulet of Tiamat's Demise and that's going to be a lot. That'd be like... 12% AP gain bonus. With Artificer's Persuasion, that'd even more. This allows Cyrea to put Orb of Tiamat's Orb of Majesty into the active slot. Previously, this ball of stunlock was broken because it dealt damage as well. Right now, it gives stun and increased damage taken to the enemies. You have to be close enough to pull that off so two Rings of the Hunter +3 may be useful after all. This helps a lot in crowd clearing. Which would be like at least 90% of any raid. Also, please remember fighting Ras Nsi would always result in adds spawning every now and then.

Due to the constant supply of AP together with Terrifying Insight, Hallowed Ground spam is 100% doable (and vital). With Astral Shield and Divine Glow forming an effective "circle" for the tank and any melee dps, all that is left would be Break the Spirit. The fun part lies in the empowered version instead of the divinity version. The latter results in the target being stunned. On the first glance, this should be useful against boss fights. Actually, it is. Especially against Nostura in epic Spellplague. However, a combination of Divine Glow executed 3 times in a row under divinity mode and an empowered Break the Spirit can easily create the dps version of the Bangtan Boys.

In case anyone has forgotten, empowered version of Break the Spirit confers 10% damage bonus per stack of divinity. In fact, things got so ridiculous in the first raid that the only trickster rogue in the party ended up asking why he/she racked up so much damage. And that's taking into account Terrifying Insight and Hallowed Ground (again, endless AP self-supply). Initially, the BTS was intended as a stunlock tactic. John thought the empowered version would cause stun. Never did John realise accidents do happen every now and then.

Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of lag during both attempts. This didn't create many problems until the party went up to fight Ras Nsi aka that snake guy upstairs. Running on lag has to be the worst way to fight Ras Nsi. The reason why being that any moment of lag could result in any of his WMD hitting you. In fact, John suspected the only reason why Cyrea was able to survive this long was due to Prophetic Action preventing 100% of the damage once at every fixed interval. Unfortunately, the lag got Cyrea. In both raids, the party had to continue without her. But at least Ras Nsi's HP bar was already way less than half.

Conclusion

In Malakut's own words, it was a fun run. There was plenty of mass buffing going around. Not just in terms of the AoE, but also in terms of the dps muscle. John was half-fearing the run would result in the German word for failure.

As it turned out, it's not even half as bad. After the first run, John became much more confident of himself. More specifically Cyrea. As the result, Cyrea got herself a Huntsman Raid Coif and a Huntsman Raid Braces (if John remembers correctly). However, John prefers Cyrea getting Hunstman Restoration Braces instead. Ah well, that's life.

Plot twist to the German word for failure

P.S: Getting late now. John will try doing the second part where Arylos will be the focal character. That plus some theories on how to make that crap 25% HP treshold Omu hunt mark gear work.