Semi-drifting until end of May (5/5/19)

Well, tonight feels a bit weird. I was intending to read The Children Of Hurin until the end of first chapter. But there’s this sense of foreboding telling me not to rush it. It’s like watching the final season of Game Of Thrones despite knowing your favourite character most likely going to die. It’s a tug of war between wanting to progress and not 100% prepared for the ride. Either way, it’s only a matter of time before I truly start my reading engine going since finishing The Hunter’s Blades trilogy. Ask me and I’d say this was R.A. Salvatore’s best job done since The Dark Elf Trilogy. It’s not everyday that one got to see a massive heroic BSOD story instead of just another heroic BSOD moment from Drizzt Do’Urden. With that being said, though, I stopped at there because my family was (and still is) too poor afford books. That plus the impact of digital age on those more used to the screen rather paper, ink, and the ancient ways.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicBSOD

I’m not sure whether I want post some of my personal thoughts about what I’m about to read here. The reason why being that I prefer having something substantial to say on a consistent basis instead of trying to force it and risk massive disrespect to a titan of a man. Thankfully, I have something else to say. I’m going to try seeing how much I can write on my personal take on the current class changes to Neverwinter. Note that for now, I’ll just do these classes below:
Warden, Devout, Sentinel, Arcanist, Whisperknife

Warden will be a given since the deliberate visual similarity to Archer has always been my main. In fact, this is about my personal experience with this ranger paragon class. As for Devout, the accidental visual similarity to He Ying Ying’s current look will be done in a future post as well. As for the Arcanist, the accidental naming and/or visual similarity to Shalynn Tsai may (please understand the meaning of the word used) take up the same space as Whisperknife and a Sentinel who happened to be a poor man’s tribute to an awesome man of guts named... well, Guts.
These are the classes I managed to mess and tinker around with so far, so any further progress involving two more tanks and one more healer will require a day or few after end of May. More specifically from 27th May onwards unless that Heliopolis of a Suntec is unable to fetch me a PC. In this case, I’ll need to move on to Marina Bay Shinar for the PC Show.

Now onto the only intentional tribute to a fictional character apart from Wolfhawk.

The changes to the ranger class were much welcomed. The reason why being that there’s actual balance struck between ranged dps and melee damage. Of course, there’s always a trade deal involved. And it’s called downscaling the range dps. I need to check after 27th May or so to see whether base damage for off-hand melee gear has been upped. Suffice to say, this is a far better trade deal than the one NUS and other educational institutes are trying to set right currently.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/recommendations-for-nus-disciplinary-and-support-frameworks-ready-by-mid-may
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/smu-ntu-review-sexual-harassment-procedures-monica-baey-nus-11474380
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=my99WOLiKyo

The third link is not to speculate whether Emiya Kiritsugu was a pathetic rat graduated from ITE, let alone whether Kayneth was some big shot university graduate (he’s an elitist, though. A fact ensuring Waver Velvet being the most suitable Master for Alexander the Great due to a matter of ego). Rather, it is to point out you can now adopt the Kiritsugu approach if you want to. An analysis involving the Hunter paragon class would require some massive theoretical work inside my cranium (not that I never did this before since my brain is never meant to be Singaporean), therefore I’m not going to touch on that.

Now what are the attributes I chose to up? The intuitive answer would be Strength and Dexterity. It doesn’t matter whether you think like a Singaporean or not. And therein lies the catch: I mentioned the word “you”, not “we”. Because Arylos was meant to be a personality tribute to Kiritsugu (an idea which requires much more work if I’m serious in creating a serious protagonist out of him), I decided to make him as true to character as possible. This involved upping Intelligence and Wisdom right to the max via leveling up.

Intelligence now affects two things: Power of your control effects and magic damage. This ties in perfectly well with the fact that the Warden paragon class has great options in terms of the dps. Moves like Electric Shot, Split The Sky, and Call Of The Storm involve magic damage. I’m not 100% sure about ES, but the tooltip strongly hinted at this. Anyway, this sets the Warden apart from other dps paragon classes in that it’s a strategically flexible class to use. Unless you’re going Vorpal, please bear this note in mind. In other words, the payoff offered by overall damage due to weapon enhancement can result in unexpected/unintentional consequences on the positive basis. Again, please note that Vorpal is an exception unless proven otherwise.

To highlight how potentially insane this can get, let me point out that in most of my RLQ raids so far, total item level didn’t mean a single thing when it comes to the dps race. Using Bronzewood meant I shouldn’t expect high end damage dealing in Master of the Hunt skirmish. After all, the enemies there have higher/high end resistance to arcane damage. That plus Bronzewood isn’t the best dps option out of every weapon enhancement. The result? Total item level didn’t matter because Arylos took the top spot more oft than not.

The chief reason behind the seemingly illogical and outright IMPOSSIBRU! was due to the aggro not breaking, tank or no tank. To make this work, you”ll need a dps game revolving around four things: Electric Shot, Split The Sky, plus the feats Focused and Storm Conduit. This would result in a mass nuking game only a Hellbringer warlock can hope to outdo. This can be terribly devastating in raiding if you’re to consider the presence of an augment companion.

Which now comes to possible changes recently. Apparently, this legit strategy is now considered illegal. I tried the same strategy in one of my previous Dread Legion skirmishes. Turned out it didn’t work according to plan because the aggro broke towards me. As a result, I had to press Shift+2, albeit I didn’t have to do that if the warlock behind never sabotaged me by ignoring the need to revive a fellow party member. Let’s be honest here: Not even the likes of Geralt of Rivia and Goblin Slayer could have survived that. The latter needed Priestess to work in tandem with him behind the shadows in order defeat the goblin lord while the bad ending of Witcher 3 involved logical combat advantage. That didn’t prevent Arylos from taking the top spot in the dps race ladder, so one could conclude the act of sabotage, intentionally or not, failed to achieve its purpose.

This comes to mind the fact that copper, silver, and gold are now actually useful. A fact not lost to us after countless mods’ worth of this fact being lost to the devs. You really need injury kits, trust me. You need them for RLQ tier raids so long we’re talking about anything from the Sharandar challenge level onwards. If even a tank can realistically respawn in Master of the Hunt (I got no idea how that could be possible until I start running RLQ with a tank), it means either there’s something dodgy about the scaling, the player him/herself, or both. You’ll really need to consult gamers far savvier than me on this one. I’m serious here.

Either way, this means a change in approach. I can choose to stick with the cat (the literal one, not that other Fluffy from Chult). That’d require me to rely less on Call Of The Storm and more on Forest Ghost. Which by itself isn’t a bad idea since it’s 25% AP cost to jailbreak. But the dodgy part would be trying to hike the AP gauge since the game is now going harder on overall AP gain. In other words, either you need a standard artifact giving you active AP gain or Artificer’s Persuasion mount insignia bonus to make this decently workable. Thankfully, Arylos got the Siegebreaker’s Banner. So long the right person becomes the focal point instead of the tank, this shouldn’t be an issue. After all, Arylos got the AP gain boon (read: This strategy is only doable due to the said boon).

Another approach would be switching down the cat and bringing in either the Blink Dog (for direct dps due to combat advantage) or Siegemaster Klarke for a more tactical approach (note: The name Klarke was done half in jest and half due to lack of creativity, hence nothing to do with Emilia Clarke).

So which option is the better option?

On the first glance, it should be Reus or Klarke instead of a cat named Crytt. However, having an augment companion in raids means having better critical rating. For Wardens opting the Skirmisher’s Gambit feat, this is important as it can contribute a lot to the dps since the ranger gameplay no longer discriminates against either stance. But would having a direct damage companion help in downgrading the aggro bar colour?

This comes to mind another question: Which feat is better at this point? I’m referring to the final tier feat choice between Nature’s Envoy and Enhanced Conductivity.

To be honest, I won’t be surprised if I need one respec token to set things right. Thankfully, there’s Simril every year. And that included 2018. But maybe I’ll try and see whether strategic adjustment can be enough. After all, there’s a reason why I now bind Constricting Arrow to E with Split The Sky going to Q since my index finger has always been the trigger finger.