artificer (my thoughts)

[bobbert22193]

So I didn't see an artificer feedback thread anywhere, if there is one in the future I will post this there also, so here it is.


What I like so far:

They are fun to play, got mine up to level 4 and will roll one on the live servers when U11 hits them for sure.

Melee with a rune arm equipped is nice although a bit challenging to charge/fire and swing all at the same time.

Pets are nice but at the moment are a cross between a hireling and a summon, imo, a bit hard to control. Use will be situational instead of always, as I guessed it would be.

Pets can be named, very nice

EDIT: Pets can use intimidate naturally, this could prove useful in the right situation. Would be nice if we could activate it for them though.


What I don't like so far:

Rune arm equipping makes you move like you have permanent slow on. unequipped it didn't seem to change. You should move slower when charging I can understand this.

Pets are very buggy in that they don't follow you so much when leaving a quest. dismissing and re-summoning fixes this. Maybe have them dismissed when leaving a dungeon?

Rune arm default key is the caps lock, I changed mine to tab key, this makes for a lot of caps in chat. Maybe default it to ctrl?

Enchanted weapon/armor timer, could we get this up top with the rest of the buffs please and thank you.

Other:

When the rune arm from korthos is equipped, weapon attacks seem to gain an additional damage number. It was like each weapon attack was firing a MM, is this supposed to happen, if so I like it.

Conclusion:

Overall I would say they are good, could be better (can't everything though?) Will probably level mine further on lama as time permits but no guarantees.

[elixer1]

how about crossbow usage? or have you only been meleeing?

Thanks for your insights.

[bobbert22193]

how about crossbow usage? or have you only been meleeing?

Thanks for your insights.

Used a crossbow for a bit, they can be used with the rune arms. once I found a decent melee weapon I pretty much gave up on the crossbows. Didn't really use them before the update so I can't say if they are better or not but, imo they are pretty crappy.

EDIT: didn't see if the same damage applied with the crossbow as the melee weapon with the rune arm equipped.

[BSCrossland]

Guess we can use this as the arty thread untill they change it.

I really liked the new class. Liked the damage boost with rune arm and the dog is nice to have since i seem to be a little squishy. Problems i noticed or just didnt like IMO was to acess the pets char sheet you had to right click it( found by accedent) would look nicer if it was on our char sheet maybe. As stated before the pet has to be dismissed resummoned each time you change from public to quest but thats been said already. The crossbow speed is very nice makes it a very usable weapon. Little disapointed i did not see blade barrier in the release notes could be wrong. I noticed the run speed is all so slow with rune arm equipped, is this on purpose? All in all seems to be a really cool and fun class cant wait to play it on live

[Unsure1]

lvl 6 Helf Artie with barb dillatante, i would like to see the pets intimidate able to be turned off for group situations.
Pets seem to tank better than the fighters of similar lvls if u take the right pet abilities.

I like the buff spells that artificer has access to, but how about instead of a feat that permanently turns u into a partial construct make that a buff that just makes you 100% construct self only and say 5min length

the damage output of a artie with repeater and bow feats is insane! only named mobs get into striking distance.

lastly, is there any reason for a rogue anymore? are u devs going to put in raids where sneak is useful? the only downside i see to a properly built and played artificer is that there will be no rogues anymore.

Oh and a suggestion for the pets, Make a new set on the bar that will make them attack mobs as soon as they come onto my target circle, i hate having to click the atk button everytime.

We need artificer live now!!!!!! I cant Wait anymore.

[elixer1]

Just to clarify the repeater with proper feats is good dps? or at least fun to play?

[Calebro]

Copied from my post on our guild site:

I rolled up an Arty this morning and played for a few hours. With the 1000% XP bonus on Lama I got to level 9 super fast.

Thoughts:
Low levels: X-bow almost feels OP. Almost. I was running around with various elemental x-bows and doing ridiculous damage.
Example: Level 4. +2 light repeating shock x-bow. Flame Arrow wand. Elemental Weapon infusion (acid). Runearm Imbue (light or force). X-bow damage enhancement.
That's (1d6 +2) +1d6 +1d6 +1d6 +1d2 in three shot bursts with Rapid Reload and Rapid Shot.
It was disgusting. I only ever used my Runearm for the actual shot/blast/effect for bosses because everything else died too quickly.
The mecha-puppy is a beast at low levels. He can literally solo the quest for you if you want him to as you lead him along.

Mid levels:
I only got to 9 so far, but it's starting to slow down. Don't get me wrong, play wasn't fast before. The ranged combat mechanic slows it down a bit, obviously. I was running 15 minute Tear instead of 8 like I would on a melee (I'm sure I could cut that down quite a bit once I get used to the targeting mechanic. It's quite different from anything else I've played in this game). But it was so easy that it felt faster than that. The buffs are starting to get good at this point. Take that damage from before and add +8 into the pre-crit number, from my Int score. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the damage isn't scaling with the x-bows enough to keep the same pace. So they're AWESOME at low levels, but start to taper off. The middle levels are going to be painful for a x-bowman. Just have to wait for 15 and Blade Barrier. I've seen much more use of the Runearm from 7-9. Where it was hardly ever used before, I'm tossing it into the rotation regularly now.
Remapped from Caps Lock to Z for ease of use.

UMD:
Easy peasy. You get bonuses from class for different things (wands/scrolls/etc) at different levels. You also get.... drumroll.... Enhancements to boost your UMD skill! I started with a 6 Cha and I'm not having trouble with things very often yet. Admittedly, I'm only using low level stuff at the moment, but I'm using them 5-7 levels before I would have even considered it on my rogues. And the best part? You get an increase to your caster level when using some items. That Exp Retreat scroll from the Market lasts 4 minutes instead of 1. That Blur scroll lasts 6 minutes instead of 3. It's pretty awesome.

So trap skills, great buffs, a mini tank for you so you don't get beat down (my has a 39 AC at level 9, which is great with Stoneskin, Blur, etc - and he has more HP than I do as well), the ability to heal yourself and others, no matter if they're Fleshy or Forged.... It's pretty awesome.
Like I said, the middle levls are going to be a little painful, but the early levels were cake. And I expect the later levels to be fairly easy via BB.

All Mass Cures, via a potion as the component, and the spell can be Meta'd, starting at level 1.
There's a buff that adds 10% to your targets max HP, at the cost of 10% of your own while it's in effect.
Between that and their "haste-like" effect, Artys are going to become amazing support in ToD. The Arty gives up about 40-50 HP to give the tank another 60-80. Done and Done.

I love this class so far.

And for the record, I didn't think the Arty was going to translate well into DDO. I'm glad I was wrong. And BOY was I wrong!

[bobbert22193]

Thanks for the other positive/constructive feedback thus far, hopefully the devs take note of this thread and the things pointed out.

From the x-bow damage listed earlier I may need to change my mind about them, seems to be a pretty powerfull combo with a rune arm and extra elemental damage.

Won't be able to test much again untill friday as reality continues to interupt my life..

[Xionanx]

I leveled an Artificer from 1 - 9 (28 Pt Build) and then a friendly dev bumped me to 20. I also participated in the market mayhem and enjoyed doing some decent damage even though I was still only wearing a +1 Docent and Korthos Island Gear. A Dev also gave me a +5 GS Heavy Repeater (Just a plain one) and the "Glorious Obscentiy" Rune Arm, which I tested a good amount. So here's my thoughts:

• Artificers are OP with a Repeating Heavy Crossbow and the Artificer Battle Engineer prestige class which lets you shoot for 6 seconds without reloading. 6 Seconds may not seem like a lot, but when you hold down the fire key on a heavy repeater and you see a wall of damage numbers you'll think differently.
• Artificer buffing spells are game changing, and in some cases may be a little over powered. The ability to ADD DR breaking to weapons and or enhance the damage die of weapons is simply amazing. Even though I was shooting a "basic" greensteel bow at the Judge, it didn't matter, I simply cast the right DR = Full damage, then pop the no reload and low and behold I'VE GOT AGGRO even though there were like 50 other people beating on him.
• Artificer Capstone makes anyone else who uses scrolls/wands/clickies look like fools. The ability to go to the market and buy the absolute CHEAPEST wands in the game, and then treat them like a level 20 spell caster and use MY INT for the DC + all the wand/scroll damage enhancements... it's simply amazing.
• Pets - I'll be the first to admit I thought pets were gonna suck horribly and by all means go through my post history, I've said it often enough. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that at 20 my "Grease Dog" had over 600 HP a 40 Str, a 50 AC and it wasn't even using a docent and or weapon mod. Granted they are still buggy as hell, and the fact that it doesn't auto use its abilities like "Trip" is frustrating, but for a work in progress, I'm impressed.
• Rune Arms - See my post here

All in all I think Artificer is a great addition to the game and turned out well enough. I can easily see building one a couple of different ways:

A UMD Specialist who relies solely on scrolls/wands for damage is VERY doable. Use your SP to buff the party and yourself and then proceed to spam cast wands of the appropriate damage type for whatever it is your fighting. Never running out of SP means you can DPS with the best of them by just spamming your wand.

A DEX based HVY Repeater XBOW DPS Specialist who buffs thier bow to be the right DR breaker for the Quest and enhances its and everyone else's damage.

A "Jack of All trades" type who combines a little of both to be whats needed when needed, need a trap disabled (DONE) need a spell cast (DONE) need some DPS (DONE) need a ham sammich (DONE).

I cant wait to see what kind of multiclass goodness comes out of this.

[SirAppleheart]

Hey,

First off, thanks for sharing your experiences with everything! I did have a brief test of it myself and had a blast with it, but unfortunately only had the time to get to level 5 and a bit, and didn't get to test many of the things I was interested in finding out...

So, for those of you who did get higher levels... Did anyone notice the difference in reload time between Heavy and Light repeaters? It'd seem in theory at least that light would end up better, as all the damage bonuses remains the same between the two, but with higher ROF on the light.

Second off, the fantastic-sounding Battle Engineer ability to need no reloading for 6 seconds, what is the cooldown on it?

Cheers!

[Calebro]

Second off, the fantastic-sounding Battle Engineer ability to need no reloading for 6 seconds, what is the cooldown on it?

Cheers!

6 seconds without needing to reload, 30 second cooldown, 5 per rest with a long activation time, so activate it on your way towards mobs rather than after the fight starts.
But with only 6 seconds, it becomes a timing issue. You need to time the activation early enough that you're not missing part of the fight, but late enough that you get to use all 6 seconds of it.

When timed properly it's EXTREMELY powerful. When timed poorly it isn't going to add much, if any, DPS.
It's a bit of an art.

[Mjesko]

The Artificer with repeating crossbows is very good at the starter island even without stats, but as soon you leave the island you need high Dex or Int to hit the targets.

To boost your damage you need spells like Elemental Weapons, Insightful Damage or Flame Turret, but the Artificer is no pure caster in my opinion. He uses spells to increase his damage and to repair himself and his pet.

The damage progression is not attack speed in my opinion. It is damage per shot and the Artificer has many options to increase the damage per shot, but the options are too front loaded. I think the crossbow enhancements should be avaible at level 3 / 9 (damage) and 6 / 12 (attack). The Enchant Weapons and Enchant Armor spells should scale with the level as the PnP Greater Magic Weapon spell (+1 at level 1-4, +2 at level 5-8, +3 at level 9-12, +4 at level 13-16 and +5 at level 17-20, 10 spell points).

The Jedi ... i mean the Artificer is strong in too many areas. I think the bonus feats should be changed to level 5, 10, 15 and 20.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Was on for a couple hours last night, got to level 5 & loving it so far - how much of that is "ooohh shiny new toy!" & how much is long term enjoyment i cant say yet

At low levels with some judicious twinkage they are almost ridiculously overpowered - eg. +1 shock of PG (ML4) heavy repeater, stick a festival icy burst on it, then some kind of elemental ammo & an elemental imbue plus whatever rune arm then PBS for larger base damage at close range too... wow.

As much as being pure is going to be effective, i'm also trying to think of some fun multiclass builds.. a few potential thingies i've thought of so far:

Artificer2/fighter18: heavy repeater kensai, nice degree of base damage, rune arm more about the imbue than actual cannon use.
Artificer14/rogue6: (maybe 13/7) take mechanic to add int damage, then can use the infusion to make int the to-hit too, meaning only one stat for both, though that'd mean no IPS if you'd dumped dex.
Artificer7/rogue13: classic rogue mechanic, but the volley thingy from engineer would act as a nice dps boost in the same way that manyshot does now & having int bonus plus all that sneak attack damage could be very nice
Artificer7/rogue7/ranger6: DWS, engineer & mechanic.. extended SA range plus IPS could be fun, 2wf capability...could manyshot with bow (maybe even with arcane archer imbue) then switch to xbow & use volley for another burst of rapid fire.

[Saaluta]

Artificer is pretty nice, I must say. Using the crossbow and runearm from korthos, I leveled to 7.3 on a 1st TR before I hit waterworks(helps that xp is 1000%). The iron defenders are nice to have as well, and with the Augment Summons feat, they are great. Will be doing more testing, the only bad thing I have to say is the dog seemed to want to break barrels more than he wanted to kill monsters and was always running away and aggroing whole groups of things then pulling them all back to me...bad dog, no cookie...otherwise, it was fun leveling tonight.

Saal