Bonedancers

[Turamber]

Good golly they are fun! Been having a whale of a time with the fotm troll/sup spec in Thidranki. Amazing how stupid so many infil players are that they think they can 'pwn' you or whatever the expression is.

Consequently I have a number of realm skill points unallocated. Any recommendations on realm skills to spec?

MCL would normally be my priority, but as my Healer (with pom 5) is on another account mana regen in PvE is not much of a problem.

Input would be appreciated, thanks

 

[old.Jeriraa]

My guess would be everything that augments damage, no?

Augmented Acuity, Wild Power, Mastery of Magery (In PvE at least... in PvP its ofcourse Purge, Raging Power and stuff like that.)

Btw I dont tjink that pure supp is the fastest way to level a Dancer...

I've been competeting with supp Dancers in Spindelhalla and I generally kill faster and with less/no downtime. My current spec at level 39 is 34+8 army and 18+8 supp. I usaly run with a soldier and a healer. The archers aint worth it. They are slower and do less damage than a soldier even if they are higher level.
Exping is very easy: Send pets and let them hit twice. Then cast the 2 dots and wait. Most times the mob will go for you after a few seconds but at that point its at 50% or even less health. Just melee it while the healer pet takes care of you. If you have pom (I use level 30 mana regen potions.) and want to speed things up a little use your lifetap.
When doing yellow con mobs you can do 2 per pull... set the pets on the 1st and once they engaged send them to another. The soldier will stay on the first target while the commander goes for the second. (This is also usefull when you get baf's or cfh's - 3 yellow or 2 orange adds aint a problem at all. If you are fast with root and pets you can even handle a cfh with 5 mobs.) If the mobs are close together and no other mobs are near use ae dot and then single baseline dot. Thats 3 casts to kill 2 mobs... very power effective.
Actually the pets can kill yellow and even orange con mobs on their own but the dots speed up things alot. Currently I do about 800-900 damage (baseline ~80*5 ticks + spec ~70*6 ticks) to a yellow con with with my 2 dots. That plus 2 pets with a 7.3dps damage add kills a yellow con in a couple of seconds.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Tur, for first RA if you aren't worried about power usage its hard to say what to get. Probably Aug Acuity 2. 4 points and not really worth it for most people because MCL is usually such a high priority to help with levelling. Having it will up your damage output and get you ready for the nice RAs that have it as a pre-requisite later on. If going full sup, aug con or toughness maybe since you take an alarming amount of damage at times. I've never really considered what to get with the luxury of not having to worry about power usage and most of the list Jeri gave you have prerequisites that you need aug acuity 2 for but won't be able to afford on BG1 salary

Jeri, thats the spec I ran with on my bonedancer til 40. The pet AI eventually made me insane though and I gave up and went sup.
Maybe in subsequent patches its been fixed somewhat though.
I'd be tempted to play my bonedancer again if the other 2 spec lines got some love or even if you could just attack things without always having to send the commander which somewhat defeats the purpose of ranged pets.

Have to say though, my mixed spec didn't kick into gear until lvl30 for me when I had enough BA mixed with the healer pet to reduce downtime. I was absolutely creaming Spindels with BA/Sup mix.

 

[old.Jeriraa]

Yeah, I was full army till level 30. Then spec'd for the supp pet. I cant complain about the pet AI... the only anoying thing are the healers who sometimes run into walls or stuff like that and dont heal since they need line of sight. But thats a problem that affects supp Dancers even more than me.

And about the ranged pets... like I said they aint worth it. I compared damage of pets in duels vs my wee shammie. (Pets con'd yellow to her.) The archers had a miss rate of about 2/3. But as if that wasnt enough a lvl 30 soldier did more damage per hit, attacked faster and missed less often than a lvl 33 archer. In addition the soldier can taunt.

I see my place in RvR in keep defenses where the ae dot combined with the ae dot of a cave shammie is a terrible weapon. Was alos thinking in matters of disabling enemy healers in group vs group battle since I can set pets on multiple targets... 1 army dancer = 3 disabled casters/healers. Ofcourse that doesnt matter for savage assist groups but I dont like them anyway.

 

[Nonnier]

for the rvr battles i would recommend:

1) MCL
2) purge
3) mastery of magery

no need for RP imo as you can get power pots

 

[greatred]

Originally posted by Nonnier
for the rvr battles i would recommend:

1) MCL
2) purge
3) mastery of magery

no need for RP imo as you can get power pots

It's hard to get power pots usable in combat, the ingredients are awfully rare. If you've seen the video of the BD sedrik pwning that group of albs I'd say that RP is important to keep the lifetap running. Not that I've played a BD mind you

 

[brite]

I have respecced my realm abilitys serveral times and now i have everything i want here what i think you should get in order

MCL
MCL II
Raging Power - Can get purge before if you feel the need.
Purge
Augumented Acurity II
Mastery of Magery II
Wild Power II
Long Wind I
Toughness I

i am now going to save points and up MoM and WP

edit: go MoM I WP I, then move to the second level if that isnt obvious

 

[brite]

Originally posted by Nonnier
for the rvr battles i would recommend:

1) MCL
2) purge
3) mastery of magery

no need for RP imo as you can get power pots

i take it you have never had raging power then ? beacuse without it in a big battle your gonna be sat doing nothing but hitting with your staff until you can use another power pot, i will burn serveral pots and RP and MCL II in some battles

 

[mavericky]

Even leveling with a healer pox5 i would say MCL is a must, not got a bonedancer myself, but have a SM, and MCL was always invaluable especailly at higher levels to reduce downtime (i always had pox4)

 

[Groborthir]

At RR6L6 I had:

MCL2
Aug acuity 2
Aug con 2
Toughness 1 (with aug con 2 I had 1586hp with MoA3 shammy buffs)
Wild power 3 (25% chance to critical hit)
Mastery of Magery 3 (lifedrain cap 402)
Purge (you can't heal yourself when you're stunned)
Longwind 1 (for perma-sprint)

And 7-8 RA points that I was saving to get Raging Power. No matter what they say, power potions can not substitute RP when you're out of power after killing the first two-three enemies. The damage/power ratio as a BD is huge, so you need RP.

If you're a troll, you might want to consider getting Mastery of the Art and aug dex 2 or even 3.

The key RA's are still MCL and MoM+WP; remember, the more damage you do with lifedrain, the more healing power will you be able to increase your survivability with. That's why, in my opinion, MoM and WP are the most important RA's.

And please, the bonedancer is obscenely overpowered in BG1; don't think it will be the same at level 50. If you're not quick on your fingers, have the right set of RA's and now how to move around to avoid certain styles, a buffed infil using the right poisons and getting his PA+CD in will kill you.

 

[Nonnier]

Originally posted by brite
i take it you have never had raging power then ? beacuse without it in a big battle your gonna be sat doing nothing but hitting with your staff until you can use another power pot, i will burn serveral pots and RP and MCL II in some battles

as a lowbie BD i would get purge over RP.

30 min timer is too much for my tastes as you will burn mana in about 3 mins, PP can keep me going till MCL charges up

i did have RP, i got rid of it over purge as a mezzed BD is more dead then a oop BD.

RP is only something i'll get RR5+, no need for it before hand.

 

[brite]

never use purge on mezz beacuse if your pets are mezzed you aint gonna survive anyway only use on stuns, thats what kills you only use purge on mezz when i know im not going to be targetted as soon as i do