UNBOUND Energy Vortex : What am I doing wrong ?
Since pets are pretty much useless vs. Unbound Energy Vortexes, I have been trying to find a Template that can kill them fast.
I thought that a Dexer would have done the trick but, with a Dexer using a 100% Poison Elemental Double Axe with Air Elemental Slayer, 46 HLD, 50 HSL, 45 HCI, Swing Speed 1.25, 100 DI (on suit), 50 DPS (damage per second), and reaching Perfection from Honoring it, I can only do 70 to 80 damage per hit, and even spamming Double Strike, I still need close to 4.30-5 minutes to kill an Unbound Elemental which is ridicolus, IMHO....
By the way, my character is 120.0 Swordsmanship, 115.0 Tactics and has 100.0 Anatomy....
What am I doing wrong ? I do not see it as reasonable that it takes all of this time to kill an "average" Monster.... am I not using the right skills/weapon or special moves or Chivalry spells ?
I would like to cut down the time to kill them to like 1 to 2 minutes, possibly, but closer to 1 minute would be better.....
This, without the need to have to bring along another character like a Tamer with a discord pet or a Bard to discord the Vortex.
Thank you for the help.
Comments
Why do you call these average? They are in the higher end of UO mobs. Can you kill a Dimetraur or Allosaurus in 1 min?
Go play with one of those Mud guys down there if you think all those mobs are easy.
I will try if, with a Bladed Staff, I can manage to kill them faster, I thought of using Double Strike because I can actually hit twice in a row rather then once and so, my 70-80 per hit, with Double Strike, becomes roughly 150 per Double Strike.... would hitting with a Bladed Staff hit for more damage then a Double Strike can do ?
Any other suggestion about how to cut down the kill time to the lowest possible yet, without using a secondary character ?
Thanks.
Many players are confused about when to use Armor Ignore or when to use Double Strike. Here is a very simple breakdown. (I keep this for myself as a general reminder. Things may not always work exactly this way.)
Let's say you're fighting some creature, you do 100 damage per hit, and the creature has 60 Resistance to whatever damage type you are dealing.
With Armor Ignore you will completely ignore the targets resistance and all of your damage will be delivered to the target.
With Double Strike you will strike twice, but the targets resistance to whatever damage type you are dealing will be factored into both strikes.
At 50 resistance Armor Ignore and Double Strike will deal the same amount of damage.
The result:
50 Resistance and above use Armor Ignore.
50 Resistance and below use Double Strike.
Hopefully that makes sense.
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For your UEV's in particular, if you don't lower their resistance a bit, use Armor Ignore.
or
Use a pet to discord the UEV (if they can), or use Runic Corruption, or Onslaught, or a combo, to lower the resistance.
Example, if a UEV resistance to Poison is 60%, and you don't lower it, Armor Ignore will deal more damage than Double Strike. However, if you do lower the resistance: say Discord lowers it to 50%, and Onslaught lowers it to 30%, Double Strike will deal more damage than Armor Ignore.
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Good Luck!
I do not find it difficult at all.... just sit there and bash it.... for 5 minutes....
It is only ridicolously time consuming but I fail to see any particular difficulty in killing them....
I hardly loose more then 10% health and a single bandage gets it back with ease.... thus, when I eventually kill one, I hardly feel like I have earned the loot.... I more feel at a gross loss because, at the end of the process, I stood there for 5 fat minutes in order to be able to kill it...
Hell, I can sometimes deal with 2 Unbounds on me at once without dieing although, that is pointless to do since I can only hit one at a time for decent damage, using FWW does less damage... and also Momentum strike which supposedly should help hitting 2 creatures at once, in the end does not seem to speed up the process....
Bottom line is, those 5 minutes to kill an Unbound seem to me such an extraordinary enormous amount of time that I was convinced that I had to be doing something wrong, and that there was a better way to kill them faster....
I am astonished to learn that there isn't....really astonished....
Well, thanks, that is quite some good food for thought !!
Apparently, from your numbers, with a Rune Corruption pet that halves the UEV's resistances, then, using Double Strike would achieve 40% more damage as compared to using an Armor Ignore weapon....
That is quite a bit more damage that should cut my 5 minutes kill time of quite a bit...
I hate, though, to have to bring along a secondary character.... I would have much preferred to have been able to kill UEVs faster with only the one dexer....
Oh well.... I guess that I have to convert to multi-clienting... although that does not please me at all....
Any suggestion on what pet would then work the best as a Rune Corruption pet ?
I guess, one that I can park it on the UEV, that is, with native healing... and with lots and lots of Mana so as to be able to use Rune Corruption indefinitely while my Dexer does the real damage using Double Strikes a go go ?
What would be one such pet, then ?
Thanks for the kind help !!
Best bet for a single character to my understanding:
Swords sampire using honor, the 100% poison weapon with air elemental slayer, onslaught every 4-5 swings, double strike, and with a 120 discord vollem as a secondary attacker. That should lower its resistance enough to be getting 100+ damage per strike.
With the amount of hit points they have it’s still gonna take a couple minutes.
There may also be an option for a tamer/warrior/bard template that I haven’t tried.
120 taming, lore, music, discord
add in wrestling, anatomy and healing… plus a refined energy suit. Basically your character tanks and heals to stay alive, discords the UEV and uses 5 wolf spiders to attack. In theory the wolf spiders might be able to out damage the double strike on a discorded UEV.
If you really want to speed it up, use 2 accounts.
Your 1st set up suggestion is pretty much what I am currently using although, without the 120 discord vollem....
Did you try that set up and got the UEV down in about 2 minutes on average ?
The reason that I am asking, is that, without the 120 discord vollem, it takes me a fat 5 minutes... I would be much surprised to learn that the presence of a 120 discord Vollem would cut the kill time of a good 3 minutes...
Also, that would mean a 2nd character as a Tamer to master the 120 discord Vollem, right ?
So, it would still be multi-clienting....
Also, in this thread, @Riner here https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/87442/#Comment_87442 mentioned not to bother with a Discord pet or a Bard with Discord because, to his experience, UEVs cannot be discorded....
Why would a 120 Vollem be instead able to discord them, if I may ask ?
I know each 5 minute increment of time is very valuable to you, but do you not think that the same is true for everyone? Why dont you go down there with a Bard and see if they can be discorded? Instead of wanting someone else to do it?
A bard with an air elemental slayer or ele slayer would be the best test. A pet does not carry slayers on them...
So glad I saved you 5 mins of testing...
4x120 Bard, Discord Mastery, Air Ele Slayer instrument, first try...
So, for me the argument Discording was a non-argument.
He tried, it did not work. Why should it has worked for me if another player tried it and did not work for them ?
You bring up using a Slayer instrument.... mkay.... 120 Discordance + Slayers makes sense that it "could" work.... but that does still not explain why then a 120 Discord Vollem should be able to discord the UEV since pets do not use Slayer instruments, to my knowledge and as you also point out.... and, again, Riner mentioned using a Discord pet and this not working...
So, everything looks quite confusing.... some players say it works, others say it doesn't...
Shouldn't it just either "yes" work or "no" work ?
How come that different UO players get different results ?
How can this be possible when the code is one and the same for everyone ?
If this can save me 3 minutes per UEV kill, that is half hour in 10 kills or an entire hour in 20 kills.... quite a significant time of my life gained.....
Oh well....
Reducing the resists to to 10 more damage is not going to save you enough time to quantify that much effort to drag along a bard since it is not made.
A little known factoid about Discordance:
For creatures with a barding difficulty of 160, the debuff is halved, which means there is a debuff of only 14% instead of 28%, with a discord level of 120
So Discording it will bring the 70s resist to to around 60. So using an AI weapon would still do more damage since you get 95% damage from the weapon on 0 resist.
In this case you can not speed up the kill unless you bring another melee toon.
Otherwise bring another melee toon or archer/thrower.
Have quicker reflexes maybe. That's what makes me do less damage than others.
Not to mention, that I could also entertain the idea of a 5 bucks Mythic token which could save me some good time... and, if I can gather jewels with Bardic skill points on, that would also save me some good time... in the end, with 25 bucks and buying a bracelet and ring with bardic skills, it might not be "that" much time consuming to make a 4 x 120 Bard...
And if I really feel spending a little 20 bucks extra to save up even more time, the De Luxe starter Pack has the Token of Skill Alacrity that gives me a week to enjoy faster skill gains...
How much is one's own time worth ?
How long would I need to spend to train 4 x 120 Bardic skills ? Would 25 or 45 bucks be worth the time saved ?
https://www.uo-cah.com/pet-abilities/Rune_Corruption
I only need to find a pet with self healing (so that I can park the 2nd client tamer and focus on using the dexer to do the most of the damage) that can have enough Mana to sustain the 30 Mana cost for the entire duration of the fight....
There is 12 x 5s in 1 minute.... so that takes 360 Mana for 1 minute fight to have Rune Corruption always up and running which it means that my dexer can then spawn Double Strike for 140 damage at all times.
The Unbound has 20,000 hit points which it means at 140 per hit, some 143 Double strike hits.
Swinging at 1.25, taking into account misses, it would roughly mean about 2 minutes to kill an unbound.... maybe less, assuming that the pet will also do some damage...
I just need to find the right pet and figure out what would be the best training to give to it.
Suggestions ?
Bard skills will need to be in real skill, I believe, not equipped skill.
As Yoshi mentioned, you might try a disco pet, vollum or otherwise, with your warrior before making a bard. I'm not sure what setup Riner was using, but it's possible there is some trick to getting the pet to Disco the UEV. Pet people may (or may not) be willing to share that trick.
You might be able to farm the UEV's with your fighter/vollum and a tamer with a Rune Corruption pet (2 accounts). That would give you Rune Corruption (or whatever it's called), Discordance, and Onslaught, all lowering the UEV's resistance and allowing Double Strike to hit for a lot more damage.
The Double Axe is a nice weapon since it has Double Strike and Whirlwind, but you're not champ spawning, you don't need whirlwind to farm UEV's. If you can get the UEV resistance down to where Double Strike outperforms Armor Ignore, consider a Two-Handed Axe (100% Poison, Air Ele Slayer). The Two-Handed Axe still has Double Strike, but will do one more point of damage, both low and high end, then the Double Axe. One additional point of damage doesn't seem like much, but it adds up over 1000's of hits.
If you are not having problems staying alive, you could also up your Anatomy/Tactics to 120 and/or your Strength to 150, and/or add Lumberjacking to your template. That, of course, will be dependent on your template and how well you are doing against the UEV's.
You have many options to increase your damage output, depending on what you want to do, and how you enjoy playing the game.
-Good luck!
P.S. I believe that if you play in Felucca, every UEV drops 5 Shame Crystals? Or is it just the bosses that are guaranteed to drop whetstone ingredients in Felucca?
P.P.S. You might be able to find someone on your shard who also wants Shame Crystals. They might be willing to back you and split crystals...just saying. Sometimes we all tend to focus on maximizing solo play and forget UO is still an MMO.
If you discord the vortex the resist will only drop to 60. An AI weapon will do the same damage as it does now!!!!
Discording the vortex will not let you do any more damage than you can now.
If you spend ten minutes or a month making a bard you will not get a benefit from it.
Make another melee or archer!
I believe a 120 disco pet can discord a 160 bard difficulty, but it can take a while sometimes.
Come back and tell us the new time at that point.