your minstrel spec?

[Deerstalker]

Mines 50 inst 26 stealth and rest thrust ( 29?)

thinking of changing this though , climb walls is fun but just pointless in NF , if you can get in and avoid the guards any decent stealther in the courtyard with mos 3 + will be able to see you on the wall.

Possibly going 50 slash rest instruments if I can find a respec.

Deer

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Agree. At least at rr5-6 when you get some extra +skill under your belt.
My mincer is now 5L1 and 50Instruments/33Steatlth/30Slash and probably going to respec to 50ins, 39slash etc soon.

Best spec there is imo - 29/31/35 stealth (any of those) is a waste as most assassins/archers will see you a mile off regardless of spec.

50 Instruments for the bets DD's and alblatives
39 Slash - Back Slash during the stun or run-through - nice damage / growth.
18 Stealth - at RR10 this gives you at least 38 stealth (avoids visible zerg).

RA wise i have to reccomend my old solo spec - never found anything quite like it for utility and dps.

FA 1, Purge 3, IP 2, SoS 1, MoM 3, WP3, AugStr 3, MoPain 3 and MoF 1.

If you want something with slightly less actives in it that is still very nice i'd say go with:

Purge 3, SoS 1, AugStr 4, MoPain 4, FA 1, rest in either MoM or WP. Dont bother with things like second wind or Aug Con/Toughness - the difference they make is negligable i've found unless you spec to 4+ in them and even then minstrels are fine at taking damage if they have toys up - you need to augment your DPS not your survivability.

Aug Aquity (spelling?) is nice but truthfully i've found the returns on it are tiny comparatively.

Finally ALWAYS get a point in wild power - without it your DD's have 0% chance to crit. Granted most crits will only be in the 20-100 range but it all helps - and for a single point you can't knock it.

One last thing i was playing with right before i retired her was SoS2/AM3/Purge3 for fg-fg stuff - the AM3 is just plain disgusting and means your clerics can go into pure MoC shear-mode for a good 5-10 seconds if youre holding your own on the interrupts phase (i swap a pair of +heal items in just before firing this which gives me capped +heal so it heals for around 450 a tic). Purge 3 means it's always up (youre very CC vunerable as a minstrel), SoS2 means you can kite a fg/zerg to a location of your choosing - water/bridge/tower/your own zerg - whatever.

Shame they didn't fix the class before i got bored of being gimped and retired her though - yeah sure warguard + som + wh + alblative is just plain disgusting (a PA hits me for <80 usually with all those toys up, sometimes as little as 50), but what most people dont realise is that you can be that tough once per 15 mins for about 30 seconds. Its a simple affair to Vanish/Use Petsnare/Ranger RR5 whatever to get away and return 30/300 secs later to find a (largely) helpless minstrel who probably just blew their purge first time around. After all, its not like they cant find us again. Thats why i find it so amusing when most of the clueless little stealthers whine about the OP minstrel abilities - any ability/RA/artifact is very powerful if you don't bother to circumvent it by making someone waste it...

Incidentally for all of you taking slash to 40+ don't bother - you use a paladin's damage table (roughly) so you can't dish out decent DPS even at 50+20 sec in all honesty (tried it - varience was very small in damage but increase was also tiny - maybe 10-15 a hit).

Lecture mode off. Food time.