Quick Artificer question

[RavenStormclaw]

Lost my main to my own stupidity.

Decided second life would be an Artificer. My question is just soliciting thoughts and opinions. 2 level of rogue for evasion or two level of barbarian for blood tribute or just go pure. Goal is level 20 and 1750 favor.


Thanks!

[Thunderborr]

Evasion precludes you from using medium armor and for evasion to work, your saves must be high enough. So 2 levels of Rogue is debatable. I personnally don't recommend this.

I advise 2 levels of Barbarian for Blood Tribute for sure. Heightens your chances of survival by a lot early on and also grants you the flexibility of leading the charge for your party as well.

[Hawklynn]

RavenStormclaw, a word of wisdom from my current life doing an Artificer. I returned just recently to play an Arti to 20 and noticed there are bugs with the Dog Collars. Seems some recent changes have affected them and I'm not seeing Element Damage and other affects being applied from the Collar and most Augments are not activating in the Docents or Collars.

I've crafted collars with the Acid/Fire/Cold/etc. and they don't seem to work. I've purchased handwraps and converted them and they are not working also. I've placed some Stat Augments in the slots and I'm not seeing an increase. Some augments do work like a recent Ruby of the Snowpeaks, which can proc a Freezing Ice. The only two collars I've seen properly work are the named "Thrall of the Fire Temple" and "Hound of the Night". Luckily they can be found on the AH. I've not done as much testing on the Docents with augments.

So don't jump on buying a Dual Augment collar as it might not work. As for docents, aside from finding a Con/Fort/Repair Amp one, I've actually had some luck with Soul-Stealing ones since the dog seems to like to be a smack toy. It's helped me collect some soul gems.

[unbongwah]

If you own Harper & Inquisitive, my gut instinct is Artificer 18 / barbarian 2:

41 APs Inquisitive
8 - 14 APs Frenzied Berserker: Blood Tribute and (optional) Sprint Boost & Extra Action Boost
6-8 APs Harper for Strategic Combat and Know the Angles
remaining APs into either Battle Engineer for DPS or Renegade MM for survivability (Admixture SLAs, heal amp, etc.)


Since you don't have the APs for a level 18 Artificer enhancement, I guess you could still splash rogue if you want Evasion as well.

Unless you were thinking caster spec like Strimtom's build (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/522439-An-easy-first-lifer-caster-artificer-build-for-elite-or-R1s).

[RavenStormclaw]

Thanks all for the responses.

Not sure what I will do yet but see you out there. Her name is Arathena. Hit ne up if you see me on.

[kanordog]

Evasion precludes you from using medium armor and for evasion to work, your saves must be high enough. So 2 levels of Rogue is debatable. I personnally don't recommend this.

I advise 2 levels of Barbarian for Blood Tribute for sure. Heightens your chances of survival by a lot early on and also grants you the flexibility of leading the charge for your party as well.


Artificer = INT -> strategic combat line+know the angles from harper tree and... insightful reflexes.

[C-Dog]

Not sure what I will do yet...
Then, respectfully, you aren't hearing what people are saying.

Any ranged build wants Barb 1 for that +10% run speed - that's just too good to pass up. So you've already got Barb in the build, and you're half-way there. (And the skill points prevent any trapping problems, but I'd jigger stuff around and make best use of Jump here.)

Frenzied Berzerker gets Die Hard, which is a "free" safety net of about 50 hit points at the bottom of consciousness - not the preferred place for it, but it's there. And you need 5 AP to get to Blood Tribute, so this is just along the way. (Athletics 1 rounds it out, for +1 Balance & Jump (& Swim).)

Blood Tribute is a spammable 150 HP at the top - just so powerful.

And +1 AP more gets you +35% Sprint Boost - no real need for more, this is ample to get you out of any trouble. (+2 more AP for half-again as fast? Nah.)

So much love for only 9 AP.

[Seph1roth5]

I guess the question is how well you know the quests and if you plan to solo or group your way to 20.

If you know the quests, there are very few traps where you need to go through them to disable. If you're planning on mainly grouping, you'll be in the back and rarely be getting hit by spells, so either case doesn't need evasion as badly as if you don't know the quests and solo.

Barbarian is probably much better since the HP buffer will protect vs stupid stuff like champs and cyclonic blast that you can't do **** about.

There are a lot of quests I never run on live, and only see them on HC. Don't remember them at allllll lol, and my favor guy (wf paly) has no spot so it's a bit rough. And I don't want to wiki every last quest I run, so...yeah we'll see how this goes heh.

[RavenStormclaw]

Then, respectfully, you aren't hearing what people are saying.

Any ranged build wants Barb 1 for that +10% run speed - that's just too good to pass up. So you've already got Barb in the build, and you're half-way there. (And the skill points prevent any trapping problems, but I'd jigger stuff around and make best use of Jump here.)

Frenzied Berzerker gets Die Hard, which is a "free" safety net of about 50 hit points at the bottom of consciousness - not the preferred place for it, but it's there. And you need 5 AP to get to Blood Tribute, so this is just along the way. (Athletics 1 rounds it out, for +1 Balance & Jump (& Swim).)

Blood Tribute is a spammable 150 HP at the top - just so powerful.

And +1 AP more gets you +35% Sprint Boost - no real need for more, this is ample to get you out of any trouble. (+2 more AP for half-again as fast? Nah.)

So much love for only 9 AP.

Oh I hear. I am just saying I haven't decided, Interesting fact. Humans are not lemmings. Shocker right! That means I can go my own path. Having the knowledge shared here is nice and helpful and I greatly appreciate it. However I don't have to follow it if I don't want to. Now I probably will but I haven't decided.

[C-Dog]

Interesting fact. Humans are not lemmings. Shocker right! That means I can go my own path.
By all means, go against all advice, fun > success, 100%.

I just thought when you said ...
Goal is level 20 and 1750 favor... that you meant with this build. And that's not likely to happen with something that you're going to pull out of your own stubbornly non-lemming imagination.

GL with that.