Bonedancers - How will you spec yours?

[blain]

Had another play with Character generator

15Dark/30Sup/42BA

This would give
15th Dark mage
27th Supp Bouncer
30th Supp Builder
42nd BA Tank

 

[Nonnier]

47 supp
26 BA

nice spec by the look of it

 

[si1verwolf]

What race will you go for Roo?

 

[Krakatau]

Well, sort of my idea too Roo ( no rhyming intended )

Thinking of respeccing at 20 and then respec back at lvl 40..

But I still have to autotrain my new Valkyn warrior for a while before levelling my BD

And I'm gonna make a troll BD

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I've made mine a kobby. Put my points into pie and con only. Sup is a complete hoot, I have to admit. Pulling a mob with a dd or dot so it keeps the agro off the pets is quite a turnaround from the usual caster way of doing things and is a lot of fun.

Generally pulling orange mobs for good xp/low downtime, red mobs for something a bit dangerous and longer downtime (which doesn't bother me because I'm usually chatting to peeps).

Blue con mobs die in about 10 seconds flat with no downtime until you've done 8-10 in a row. This is around lvl15 when you get 1st minion pet. Finding BD + savage a fun combo. BD holds the agro on himself while the rest of the instant-army hacks away. If you can get a pox from somewhere you eat mobs like crazy. Armour is yellow con, and so is staff.

Some info for anyone interested: the first sup minion is a buffer pet which gives a damage absorb (at least I think thats what it is)and a haste buff on you and your commander. It is conc based so you lose the buffs if the pet dies.

EDIT: Can't make up my mind if its a damage shield (like shammy one) or a buffer of some sort. It does say damage shield on it, but the value is -3. Anyone know what it actually is?

Been impressed with the AI sometimes. Pets will automatically peel adds, even if you haven't told them to and they don't blindly hack away at the mob you set them on. I can see problems with this potentially, but its saved a couple of groups already.

 

[Cami]

Originally posted by SilverHood
darkness looks quite nice

Hammer of a Cold debuff (insta) and then nuke your debuffed target to bits.

catacombs is, as a guildie said "the way they wanted daoc to be" ^^

anyway, it is a body debuff, i am considering 48supp for the best LD and pet, 22dark for the first body debuff and then 11 into BA, you get a 5.x dam add to your pets there.

 

[svartalf]

THinking of this;

5) "DarkDancer" 50 Darkness / 20 suppression / 4 Bone Army (or 48/22 or 46/28 dark/supp)

These BDS go for pure nuking power in darkness line. They will also have a 50% body debuff to boost their relatively weak lifetap. They'll have the best nuker and debuffer pets, the best (or second best) snare+dd with no variance, best str/con pet buffs and basic healer pets. Great nuking damage with overlap of snare+DD and 50% debuffed lvl 17 or 22 lifetap. With the addition of nuker pets doing 50% body debuffed damage, these BDs should have the fastest damage output of all BDs but at the cost of AE, absorb buff and high level healer pets. This template may be a bit harder to level early on but will certainly pack a punch in RvR.

or this

3) "DarkTapper" 39 Darkness / 37 Suppression / 4 Bone Army (or 38/38 dark/supp)

This BD will have very strong DD using baseline DD (capped variance with +11 darkness items only), the second best lifetap (no variance with +11 suppression items and realm rank 3) and a 30% Body resist debuff. This spec is very oriented on fast damage from overlapped dark DD and body debuffed lifetaps but still has access to good healer pets (capped at lvl 31), access to the 3% or 6% absorb buff and 150 radius focus snare. It has very good str/con buffs for pet as well. This is a slightly more aggressive template than a "TapDancer" but without too much sacrifice on defense/survivability and group abilities.


With my experience of a 5spec SB and spreading my points too thin, I'm inclined toward the 1st one.. but I do like the idea of better heals.

 

[dozigden]

Well one week into release and my BD is now upto level 39 - should make 40 tomorow and i thought id share some thoughts.

I've gone for the "one trick pony" sup spec (47sup 26drk), at the moment I have 37supp and 9dark. I've duoed all the way so far grouped with a dark/supp balanced spec BD.

The trade off between dark and supp / DD and lifetap seems to keep your damage output at range about the same - my LTs do better - his DDs have better variance, the supp spec definately eats the power noticably quicker though. As long as you dont completely ignore the other line.

The pets spreading themselves across adds can be nice - but can also be a real pain - as so far they seem to completely ignore root, and whether they notice mez seems random - Ive seen a sub-pet whos already engaged an add break off and change target when it gets mezzed - but ive also seen them head straight for mezzed adds.

The absorb buff i havent played with much - im expecting to get proper opinions when we hit malmo - i did drop it on an XPing SB in spin who stopped to duel his buffbot and he thought it was great - and that was only the first tier one - but could have just been lucky numbers. (note level 38 to 41 your realm targetable abs buff is better than your own self buff if youre supp specced)

On the subject of spin, dungeons = complete nightmare. The commander behaves basically like a normal pet - but the sub pets seem to completely ignore walls when they have aggro - if your healers or mystics (i presume archers too) get aggro and decide to run it turns to complete chaos. The only viable way to fight in dungeons that ive seen is to have pets permanantly on pasive with the healers just as a healing battery (they still heal when on passive). I did have some thoughts that just having tank pets might work - and just resummoning them in combat if they die - but never got to try this.

On styles: the commander styles (position based - apparently dependant on weapon which position) and the BA pets style - but not the buffer/debuffer pets - thats the advantage of the BA tanks.

My observations compared to a spiritmaster (have a lvl47sm currently): biggest difference is that the BD pets seem to peal you much better. with both chars id pull with a debuff - with the SM the spirit would peal about half the time before the mob reached me, and sometimes take a couple of swings to peal. With the BD commander i dont think he ever failed to intercept a mob before at least lvl35, and even now peals with the first swing.

This character has been some of the most fun ive had pve like this for a long time - and has made us develope completely different pve tactics.

 

[dozigden]

EDIT: Can't make up my mind if its a damage shield (like shammy one) or a buffer of some sort. It does say damage shield on it, but the value is -3. Anyone know what it actually is?

As an aside ive not seen this buff for a while now - im not sure that my guardians dont cast it anymore, although i mostly use just healers now anyway. What ever it is/was it happilly co-exists with the shaman damage shield too.