Little BD advice plz

[Reneger]

Im almost lvl20 now, so i can respec my BD.
I am now full Darkness, and with de debuff or nuke pets i had lots of fun on bg0.
Everyone keeps telling me i need to respec to Sup, but im not sure about it.
Can some highlvl BD's plz give me some advice on the best way to spec a BD (in their opinion)?

thx....

 

[Cadire]

I never specced anyhting but full Suppression, so I can't comment on the viability of Dark and Bone Army lines, but full Supp has served me well up to lvl 41. The lifetap is the big gun of Suppression... backed up by healer pets you can happily take on oranges or reds if you have to.

My suggestion would be to go full supp intil lvl 40, and if it's not what you want, respec again.

If you can team up with a Spiritmaster, you'll both be laughing all the way to XP heaven, as their body debuff slots in nicely with the Suppression line.

 

[old.Belorfyn]

Nearly all high level BD's are suppression specced and it is most powerful bonedancer line.
There might be other configurations also, like high bone army and low suppression to get some healer pets or high darkness and low suppression. I don't have BD myself but knowing something about them, something like that might be an option.

One spec being the "best" spec doesn't mean you'd have to stick with it, if you don't want to and feel like trying something different.
If you like darkness, you can always try it out until 40 when you get one more respec change.

My spiritmaster isn't suppression specced and I'm very happy with it, even if 99% of spiritmasters are suppression specced.

 

[old.Belorfyn]

Originally posted by Cadire
If you can team up with a Spiritmaster, you'll both be laughing all the way to XP heaven, as their body debuff slots in nicely with the Suppression line.

Yeah, this is nice. Belorfyn and Morgyn didn't exp together but afterwards on our hunts and rvr, we've found my -50% body debuff quite useful

One thing worth mentioning, spiritmasters needs to be darkness specced for those best body debuffs.

Bonedancers can get 15% (if I remember correctly) body debuff from darkness if they spec suppression as primary and darkness as secondary spec.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I levelled Jink to 40 mainly Bone Army with sup to 18 for healer pets. Unfortunately, the crazy AI makes it very difficult to level at times and I couldn't wait to get rid of the non-sup pets.

Its a bit of a lame reason for respeccing, but I got fed up with the pet AI bugs in PvE. At least with sup spec it returns the focus of the action to the caster, not his pets, and that helps mitigate somewhat the appalling programming of these pets.

I've got a darkness Bonedancer, only lvl6 atm which I may take to BG to try out, as Darkness is the only boney spec line I haven't tried out yet. I was tempted to take a risk with the 40 respec to full dark, but I bottled out since I didn't expect the pet AI to be any better.

Jink will be 47 Sup, 25 or 26 dark when he hits 50 probably. There's a pet buff low on the BA line which I may take rather than the last point in darkness, I haven't decided yet.

 

[dozigden]

Im afraid I've not seen a single post saying darkness is a viable primary spec, Meeraise the the bonedancer I duoed all the way along with started out intending to go high darkness and by about the later 20s had abandoned the idea.

As Roo says the pet AI seems to be a nightmare.

Im also of the opinion darkspec is just lacking... something. The output from your caster pets will be pretty bad unless your fighting yellow to you or lower mobs, remember the pets are "2 cons lower" than you, for PvE that severly affect their performance.

I my opinion theres 2 sensible ways to level up BDs - suppression or bone army. Wehn going suppresion then somewhere around levels 25 to 30 I'd put some points into darkness to help the varience on your nuke. I dont like suppression/ba specs - i think BA is a poor secondary spec for high suppresionists.

Second way is Bonearmy - if your going bonearmy i think its best to get suppression 18 for the little healer pet asap - it'll make leveling a lot easier. From what ive heard BA is just as viable to level up with as suppression - but again the pet AI will cause you problems.

On the whole as Roo has said suppresion all the way for the easiest life with fewest pet AI problems.

 

[Reneger]

Well, i now respecced to supp, but on the BG it sucks i think

When im grouped its ok to have an healer pet ready for ya, but on BG i luv the Darkness pet more.
So at 40 ill change back to Darkness for the comming RVR fun.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

If you're going Dark and intend to sit in Malmo from 40-50, you won't find the pet AI a problem. Typically players just sit their pets well back from the groups on passive so pet AI is negated.

Dullsville though

When you hit the higher levels I'd be keen for you to post how you get on with dark spec... or if you decide to stay sup.

Slightly separate subject:

I think the reason BA is a poor second line is because the DoTs on it are very weak anyway, and only much use when you get 2 stacked together. At least on Dark spec as second line you have a baseline nuke at a reasonable level (43) which you can even up the damage on.

However, I also think this is the reason darkness isn't too favoured as a primary line, since that is a fairly low level to have your main damage dealing spell on when you hit 50.

Perhpaps if the baseline nuke was at 50.... nah, Mythic wouldn't be dumb enough to do that

 

[AzuratMinimus]

Well i have a lvl 24 BA specced bd, and it´s really fun since you don´t really need the pets to solo, just stack the dots and run sort of for yellow/orange con. And just keep chaining goes rather fast.

Would think the same for darkness, since you get dd snare, which is pretty neat for soloing. Just that you don´t want the pets since they´ll only break the snare for you.

 

[dozigden]

I think theres more to it that that to be honest Roo. As far as damage dealing goes the dark-BD is in the same boat as the supp-RM...

BD dark spec line:-
DD snare
Nuking pets
Debuffing pets
Pet str/con buff (those casting pets need higher str, right?)

RM Supp spec line:-
DD snare
AE DD snare
Nearsight
Confusion
Bubbles

The pet AI problems are so big theyre more a hinderance than a benefit in most situation - although i suspect performance is "ok" in rvr once you get there. The rest of the line is just completely unappealing.

Personally i view giving dark spec a DD snare to have been a bit of a cop-out on mythics part - the lazy option - they ran out of ideas.

I think Dark BDs desperately need some sort of a decent AE option - but i think pinching the ae dd snare from rms would be an even bigger cop-out.

 

[bone_idle]

Make the insta lifetap a 3 second cast instead of insta. Thats what i say

 

[Groborthir]

Originally posted by bone_idle
Make the insta lifetap a 3 second cast instead of insta. Thats what i say

How the hell would that make the darkness line more viable, lamer?

 

[nezzen]

maby a ae root... atm its only shammys who has it and it could be what is needed... u aeroot and get ur pets on one of the mobs at a time. would also give darkness BD some power in RvR... prehaps finishing up with a insta aeroot @ specc 46-47 or so..


i might be wrong =D

edit: make the nookerpets do snare dd aswell... tehn it wont be broken