Master's Touch at low levels

[squishwizzy]

I'm looking to TR my main wizzy, and this time go PM as I've acquired most of the stuff I wanted to have when he levels. I'm thinking about doing the Master's Touch / Greataxe thing at low levels. So my questions are:

1) What kind of armor am I going to need?
2) Approximately when do you think I should stop using this method and seriously focus on casting?
3) What other spells - obviously Mage Armor and Shield fall into this category - do you think would by synergistic to this method?
4) What other items should I use at low levels to keep me afloat with doing melee?

I'm farming for Carniflex as the main weapon, and my crafting level is 50+, so I can pretty much make anything I need.

I've also got access to a Diabloist Robe, the Might of the Abashai set.

My thought are that around lvl 6 I should be dropping melee and focusing on casting for quests, but I'd like to hear some additional input.

[Tobril]

Weapon: Scream of Bleed
Armour: Outfit/Robe of Invulnerability, add life shield at 5
Somewhere: Moderate Fortification (level 3 if I remember)

Most of the rest is your standard TR checklist sort of thing.


By 7 you are probably done with melee for the most part,
your mileage may vary.

[Enoach]

I'll give a second on the Outfit/Robe of Invulnerability

I also agree with Fortification, keep in mind as a wizard you generally have less HP then your melee counterparts, so you want to protect them even more. That means avoid frontal attacks on Trolls/Ogres at early levels that like to triple swing too.

When to give up Melee as your primary form of offensive damage will depend on your focus. If your a control freak than you can push using melee as a primary out further, saving your SP to HOLD/DISABLE what your fighting putting the odds in your favor.

Look for the extra damage modifiers available for you level, you won't be investing in crit enhancements or power attack so you want to squeeze in as much damage as you can. Also consider using high crit range weapons like the Falchion. While it has a lower crit multiplier it has a higher chance to crit and since most of your damage comes from the extra stuff this is more beneficial for Burst type effects.

At higher levels use of Divine Power Clickies can help increase your BAB as it makes it equal to a fighter of your level for a few minutes, giving you more swings and a greater To-Hit chance.

[vraelliott]

On my TR wiz life I stopped melee'ing seriously around 6 or 7 (Wall of Fire @ 7 makes life a lot easier). I got lucky and found a no min-level +2 Greataxe of Monstrous Humanoid Bane (sahuagin & minotaurs) that I pass around between all my TR's these days (I haven't looked to see what the min level of that would be crafted, but I think it'd be 5 w/ Master Craftmanship?)

Mage Armor, Shield, Bull's Strength, Rage, Heroism, Haste. Web is always good for some CC. It's easier to hit them when they aren't hitting back.

Carnifex is a good axe, but I wouldn't worry about it too much--crafted weapons will do just fine.

[nivarch]

As a caster most of your melee DPS will come from effects damage rather than base damage. It's possible that with a low strength, malstrom will out DPS carnifex (too lazy to calculate at the moment).
A Screaming of Bleed 2 handers is your best bet, and later a Holy of Bleed works well (keep the screaming of bleed for neutral monsters). A Holy of Undead bane can be useful too.

Finally I tend to massively reduce meleeing around 5, fireball is better than firewall in many situation (a maxed fireball with some spellpower is enough to one shot in a lot of places, and is much faster than firewall cooking).
When you reach 7, acid rain is a very nice spell to have, in my opinions miles ahead of firewall. After 7 you really shouldn't need to melee.

Of course it all depends on your gear, if you are twinked with a Vibrant purple Ioun stone you'll have much less issues blasting your way with fireballs.

[squishwizzy]

Thanks, that's what I needed to know. I was going to farm for Carniflex right before I posted this, but I'll just craft something instead.

[firemedium_jt]

Not sure the self healing PM Wiz is worth the melee esp if u dump str. Is it Warforged? If yes with high Con and Toughness and more hp than your averg pug melee it is fun. I used keen falchions on my self healing Sorc WF with repair.

Mod fort is a must. WF is another 25%. Sorc is lots of self healing.

Now my wiz/rog did some rapier melee.

You can melee into the mid lvls. At lvl 5 Divine power is only 1 click per item. Lvl7+ is 3 clicks per item gets u to next shrine with 3 items, and a easy buff to conserve sp. At high lvls Necrotic ray is so cheap for the damage and guaranteed neg lvl that it blows the melee away. U can then shelve most of your divine power click items but I would keep one handy if u are out of sp.

I would always have some melee even on a high lvl caster. It is not a lot of gear to be effective instead of piking out of sp.

Even Gandaf had a sword and did not **** away sp on all the mobs. Saved it for those orange named Nazgul.

[Jaid314]

1) those crafted robes people mentioned will do just fine.
2) if you want, you can start as early as level 1. burning hands while kiting will save you a lot of SP, mix in an eternal wand for finishing stuff off. at level 3, you get scorch, which means no more cooldowns. in fact, i've even had success with electric at low levels using sonic blast and electric loop almost exclusively if you prefer that.
3) if you have your heart set on melee, look for buffs i guess. protection from evil offers +2 AC against a lot of enemies, and of course the +4 stat buffs available at level 3.
4) guards are nice. and lots of healing potions.

that said, with the way spells cost now, and the change to add echoes of power a few updates back... the melee wizard phase is never really required imo. i've gone pure caster with newly created untwinked level 1 wizards. just practice your standard kiting techniques, and make good use of those early level 1 dirt-cheap attack spells.

i guess *maybe* if you have some weird obsession with doing everything on elite, and you don't bother twinking your caster gear, you might run into problems. other than that, you should be fine.

[yawumpus]

I'm really wondering what is wrong with mostly using your spells? Shouldn't you have some impressive wizzy twink gear that will crank your CR through the roof? Do you get the apprentice robe again (assuming you destroyed the bound old one)?

Yes, screaming of bleed should work just fine. I'm wondering why your wizzy can't do some wizarding. This isn't the pre-spell-pass era when carnifex was prefered (even though just about anything else was better on low-strength arcanes).

[PpalP]

My advice:

Look for a keen Greataxe with low ML (RR for ML1 better), Risia is about to come, then Icy Burst it, better weapon that Carnifex and less farming, more damage because you don't have enough STR/BAB to make good crits confirmation.

I'm my TR's as wizard (WF) I allways take rogue levels to do traps and soloing, but you'll need some heart to remove the 2 rogue levels at 18 or so.

Anyway, Master Touch, Expeditious Retreat and Shield are good spells; Blur adn Web too. I begin with casting with Web, Conjuration Focus Feat with Diabolist Docent make web very usefull, then kill all with the axe; I go to acid untyl Firewall, preffer Acid Blast than Fireball because is more usefull, and don't burn the webs; Acid Spray plus Acid Blast an your axe vs monster trapped in webs make leveling fast and easy : )

I hope that helps you

[Deathdefy]

Un-meta'd Burning Hands + Acid Spray spam with full enhancements in fire and acid, as well as the best acid and fire caster sticks you can wield is amazing for levels 1-5.

I'd second that the game really does make this a superior tactic to THFing on the low levels now, even if you are running an Elite Bravery Bonus. Often you'll finish with > half a mana bar.

[Such755]

I used master's touch up to level 6, using it less and less as I advance.
Weapon - flaming greataxe and at level 4 carnifex.
Armor - invulnerability for DR5 up to level 7 or so then switch to superior stability at level 9.

At 6 you get zombie form so no need for fortification item as said above, you get 100%. Though be prepared for your melee attacks to be 20% slower. That's why I stopped using it at this point, also at level 7 you get wall of fire so meleeing is really pointless, unless you're standing in wall of fire with your death aura on and just adding some damage with your axe.

[MRMechMan]

The moment burning hands/acid spray went from 10sp to 4sp, the need to ever swing a weapon on an arcane dissolved completely.

If you still chose to swing a weapon for some reason, crafted is MUCH better than carnifex on a low-str character:

Say...14str

Carnifex:
1d12+5
17-20/x3
=
15.5 per swing

Holy of Bleeding
1d12+3
20/x3
2d6
1d8
=
20.9 per swing

[evilgardengnome]

Don't underestimate the power of Summon Monster. The summon will spot mobs well before you and will draw some agro away. Farm a Roderic's Wand if you don't want to carry the spell. The wand is useful until about the time you stop meleeing. Charm person is also useful. You can solo pretty easily, if that's your thing, with a summon, a charmed person, and a hireling. Especially if you take the Augment Summonning feat.

[Inouk]

Don't underestimate the power of Summon Monster. The summon will spot mobs well before you and will draw some agro away. Farm a Roderic's Wand if you don't want to carry the spell. The wand is useful until about the time you stop meleeing. Charm person is also useful. You can solo pretty easily, if that's your thing, with a summon, a charmed person, and a hireling. Especially if you take the Augment Summonning feat.

Couldn't agree more with the Roderick's wand. The recharge rate on it is super fast so it'll never run out, and so much so that you can keep recasting til you get what you want most of the time (typically the spider). I did a little melee at low levels because I had a no ML +5 str ring, but as stated, it's really not necessary. I see zero reason to farm carnifex, or to put any additional effort or stat points into making melee viable. At higher levels you'll get much more mileage from death aura + necrotic blast than any amount of crappy melee you might attempt. At lower levels echoes will keep you going anyway.

[squishwizzy]

Ok, for posterity...

I did quite a few of the recommendations here. I went with the robe of Invulnurability, and basically crafted every piece of gear at lvl 1 for my toon before I even tried Kothos. The last life I had enough Cannith favor to get marks for Masterful Craftsmanship shards. So I was able to craft the following (doing this from memory):

Robe of Invulnurability and Unbalancing,
Belt with light fortification and +1 CON,
Ring with +30 nullification and +20 spell power,
Helm with +1 INT and +3 Concentration,
Goggles with +1 attack bonus,
Boots with 5% Striding and +3 balance,
Bracers with +2 armor bonus,
Cape with +1 CHR and lesser acid resistance (very nice because everything an its brother uses Melfs Acid Arrow at these levels)
Another ring with (I think) fire resistance and maybe spot.
A greataxe with screaming and bleed.

I can't remember what my necklace was, and now I have at Archivist set for the free SP clicky.

Unbalancing on the robe was a bit of a throwaway, as I don't think I could have crafted in a false life on there (not 100% sure). I needed one, but got by without it.

The big, obvious payoffs to the gear was the greataxe and the cape. The numbers on the greataxe with Master's Touch were nice at lower levels. The only downside is that if I run into skelleys, I'm in for an ugly fight. That being said, I've got space for some necro spells now, so that's a bonus.

I happened to get lucky and managed to find an elite group for most of Kothos, so I breezed through most of that. I had to run Stopping the Shauguin solo and the pre-quests for Kothos Island solo. These were essentially cakewalks with or without a healer. Although I ran into a tough fight with a skelly mage - not helped by several lovely "teleports" that occured in the heat of battle - and it was my only death from lvls 1 to 3.

Also, I noticed a bit of a bug in that specific quest (don't remember the name ATM). If you die fighting the optional skeleton mage, and attempt to have a hireling grab your soul stone and take it to the shrine, you're in for a big surprise. You'll be able to get the cleric to grab your stone, and you'll even be able to get the cleric to open the door to the shrine below...

...HOWEVER...

...The hireling will teleport up to the ledge where the skelly mage was located, pulling you along with them. I tried like six times to get the cleric to open the door to the shrine, but eventually succeeded. Then it was a matter of racing to the rez shrine before I got pulled back again.

So, forewarned is forearmed.

[HanzelC]

L1 --> who cares
L2 +1 Lacerating 2-12 extra damage
L4 +1 Lacerating & and elemental d6 3-18 extra damage
Best fort you can at get of course
Spells
Expedious retreat, sheild, masters touch --> armour
Web, blur --> resists if no ship take pick other wise. I like electric loop for the CC

Start casting at L5ish

There is a nice staff in the pirate chain that uses intel for to hit with an extra 1-4 tidal damage has goos cold and electric spell boosts as well ML6

Sorry I replied late...maybe help someone else though.

Old guy

[Matuse]

I have an RR +1 Icy Burst Acid Greataxe of Pure Good, ML:2.

You're not out-crafting that.

At low levels, the ability to icy burst a lootgen item will always put them ahead of crafting.

[firemedium_jt]

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...47#post4808547

Keen is awesome.

Especially with Divine Power.

[squishwizzy]

I have an RR +1 Icy Burst Acid Greataxe of Pure Good, ML:2.

You're not out-crafting that.

At low levels, the ability to icy burst a lootgen item will always put them ahead of crafting.

The problem is that my axe is essentially disposable. I'm near lvl 4 already, and will probably drop it around lvl 6, which is maybe a couple of active nights or questing. I add a +1 enhancement to upgrade it once. Adding Icy Burst at this point would be like pearls before swine.