PvM : What works best, Resist CAPs raised to 75 (DCI 25), or DCI raised to 70 (Resists 65) ?

popps

In PvM, in terms of more protection, what works best considering using Refinements on Armor ?

Raising one's own CAPs to 75 (Energy 80 for Elves) but at the cost of lowering one's own Defense Chance Increase down to 25, or, rather, raising one's own Defense Chance Increase CAP to 70, but at the cost of lowering one's own Resists' CAPs down to 65 (Energy 70 for Elves) ?

And, also, is there a difference in whether it matters more the Increase of the Resists CAP at the expense of the DCI CAP, or the increase of the DCI CAP at the expense of the Resists CAP, when considering doing either one for a Melee or a Ranged character ?

Thanks.

Jepeth

In my experience having higher resists decreased damage taken (spells and melee) while higher DCI decreased getting hit.

I think what you might be asking is: what is better for a warrior template in the current event. In short, having my resists at or as close to 75 knocks the single hit 50 or 60 damage para’s do down a few points, increasing my survivablity. I don’t believe DCI prevents that single-hit damage, but someone may correct me there. It is this way on both my dragoon and archer, all though my archer uses more non-refineable pieces in his suit. If I were doing this event on a mage I might consider more DCI for the other spawn as I tend to play dangerously without protection always running.

dvvid

In what I’ve read it seems higher resists is favored more than higher dci. 

McDougle

if you aren't using parry does DCI matter?

Jepeth

McDougle said:

if you aren't using parry does DCI matter?

Yes, they are separate checks. https://community.stratics.com/threads/defense-chance-increase-vs-parrying.233250/

Seth

@popps

Boss fight: 
25 DCI
45 HCI
Armor resist go for 75, energy 80 (preferred)
35 SSI
DI 100
However, I do have 120 parrying. 

Low level monsters
- Currently, I swap and wear luck jewels Lune and Souleil Rouge, so only 5 DCI with just 25 SSI. This is enough to kill imps and gargoyles because they are super weak and plentiful. I am getting more drops from killing low level more than the demons and paragons. 

Frankly speaking, you can just run around killing the mid and low levels, and leave the paragons to the other veterans. This is what I do most of the time. Paragons only when there are many players around and we can kill quickly. Otherwise its a waste of time not for solo fight. 

---
I quit pvp but I heard from some players in the past say high resist is also good. esp. fire resist against pvp mages. 

Riner

Right now I have raised my physical and fire resists to 75 and lowered my DCI to 35, I am curious how much benefit others are seeing from having all of their resists raised or perhaps just energy along with the other two. 

Seth

McDougle said:

if you aren't using parry does DCI matter?

Need to have both.
I have tried 60 parrying and 45 dci (ok but not good against rend)
120 parrying and 0 dci (weak against rend, easy die), I would say 50-50. 
120 parrying and 20 dci sweet spot, thanks to advise from various experts in stratics.

Sacrifice 25 dci for a 80-75-75-75-75 resist.

Basic test for newbie warrior is to kill greater dragon and balron solo.
Intermediate test do Purtrefier and Rend solo with no help.
Advanced test do the champspawn boss solo. 
Expert test do all the new bosses with help from Bard
God mode: solo all bosses with no help.

I am only at advanced stage. 

Seth

@popps
One more thing, high resist is also good for archer because it uses ranged attack so does not need DCI so much. High resist will protect against attack spells. 

Jepeth

JackFlashUk said:

Oh wait,  soon be time to argue, debate the life out of all the answers people are wasting their time giving you

I like talking about this game and helping others. Much as others have helped me. It's not wasting my time as it provides a great light alternative to the sometimes heavy stuff I deal with in my day job. There is no reason for you to attempt to speak for me.

Kaz

DCI - checks (calculates) first. Determining if you get hit at all. 

Parry - checks 2nd

in terms of a melee dexer running bushido and high parry: it kinda makes sense that you want the dci check to fail a bit more so that you have a chance to parry.   Cuz when you parry, you counterstrike (good to get in the habit of keeping counter strike up at all times), and thus you are getting extra hits in. 

If you go this route, it makes sense to jack up your resists to mitigate the dmg that does get thru as much as possible. 

If you dont have max dci, i cant think of one reason NOT to refine your armor for better resists.  

Now if you are looking for the math behind it all: look it all up on uo guide and make some analysis that way.  

Mariah

@JackFlashUk , cool it. 

Not everyone understands the workings of refinements, it will benefit others to have it explained.

Drago

with my samp. i swap 120 anat for 120 resisting spells and keep resists at 70 (except energy at 75 bc elf). 

45 HCI

40 DCI

25 SSI

187 Stamina.  With double axe. im at best tick rate (1.25) and with 120 resist,  mob debuffs dont drop my stamina below 180.

I found this to be effective against all paras.  you definitely want HCI maxed at 45 , since HCI drops against para mobs.

Riner

Drago said:

with my samp. i swap 120 anat for 120 resisting spells and keep resists at 70 (except energy at 75 bc elf). 

45 HCI

40 DCI

25 SSI

187 Stamina.  With double axe. im at best tick rate (1.25) and with 120 resist,  mob debuffs dont drop my stamina below 180.

I found this to be effective against all paras.  you definitely want HCI maxed at 45 , since HCI drops against para mobs.

Does this mean you can solo para Balrons?  If so what's the rest of your skills at?

popps

Kaz said:

DCI - checks (calculates) first. Determining if you get hit at all. 

Parry - checks 2nd

in terms of a melee dexer running bushido and high parry: it kinda makes sense that you want the dci check to fail a bit more so that you have a chance to parry.   Cuz when you parry, you counterstrike (good to get in the habit of keeping counter strike up at all times), and thus you are getting extra hits in. 

If you go this route, it makes sense to jack up your resists to mitigate the dmg that does get thru as much as possible. 

If you dont have max dci, i cant think of one reason NOT to refine your armor for better resists.  

Now if you are looking for the math behind it all: look it all up on uo guide and make some analysis that way.  

That's a good point, if one has high Parry, to prefer refining for higher resists and thus lower DCI so as to trigger counter strike.

Thanks for pointing it out !!

popps

Drago said:

with my samp. i swap 120 anat for 120 resisting spells and keep resists at 70 (except energy at 75 bc elf). 

45 HCI

40 DCI

25 SSI

187 Stamina.  With double axe. im at best tick rate (1.25) and with 120 resist,  mob debuffs dont drop my stamina below 180.

I found this to be effective against all paras.  you definitely want HCI maxed at 45 , since HCI drops against para mobs.

Does that mean that you do not use refinements at all ?

Neither to increase resists' CAPs nor to increase DCI CAP ?

Drago

popps said:

Drago said:

with my samp. i swap 120 anat for 120 resisting spells and keep resists at 70 (except energy at 75 bc elf). 

45 HCI

40 DCI

25 SSI

187 Stamina.  With double axe. im at best tick rate (1.25) and with 120 resist,  mob debuffs dont drop my stamina below 180.

I found this to be effective against all paras.  you definitely want HCI maxed at 45 , since HCI drops against para mobs.

Does that mean that you do not use refinements at all ?

Neither to increase resists' CAPs nor to increase DCI CAP ?

nope.  I tried them and difference was negligible at best.  You  don't want to drop DCI cap against mobs that hit fast, even with parry.  The resist gains aren't worth it if you have 120 resist spells.

Drago

Here quick guide to refinements.  I have this page in OneNote because all the combos and variations are confusing lol

It is also the worst item to try and find on VS because you need to search using 3 terms.

https://www.uoguide.com/Armor_refinement

Mariah

Or you could just search for 'refinement' on the front page of the wiki?

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/gameplay/crafting/armor-refinement/

popps

Drago said:

popps said:

Drago said:

with my samp. i swap 120 anat for 120 resisting spells and keep resists at 70 (except energy at 75 bc elf). 

45 HCI

40 DCI

25 SSI

187 Stamina.  With double axe. im at best tick rate (1.25) and with 120 resist,  mob debuffs dont drop my stamina below 180.

I found this to be effective against all paras.  you definitely want HCI maxed at 45 , since HCI drops against para mobs.

Does that mean that you do not use refinements at all ?

Neither to increase resists' CAPs nor to increase DCI CAP ?

nope.  I tried them and difference was negligible at best.  You  don't want to drop DCI cap against mobs that hit fast, even with parry.  The resist gains aren't worth it if you have 120 resist spells.

Ah, that's good to know....

I do see, though, looking around, players who who them on their Armor.....

I wonder, for what particular Templates and what hunts, they can be beneficial, whether one raises the Resists' CAP lowering DCI, or raises the DCI CAP lowering the resists, from the use of refinements.....

I take then, that from your personal experience, you disagree with @Kaz who wrote here https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/65999/#Comment_65999 , that lowering DCI from raising the Resists' CAPs with refinements, could be usefull for those Templates using 120 Parry and Bushido, since the lower Defence Chance Increase combined with 120 Parry can increase the chance of Parrying, and if one uses the Bushido spell "Counter Strike", that Parrying can trigger extra hits due to Counter Strike ?

Seth

The fun part about the warrior is that we use different gears for the different boss fights. 
Osiredon, Zipactriotl, Paroxysmus, Travesty, Shadowguard, Doom, etc. So it depends on your experience. 

I think I agree with Drago it's best for you to start at standard 70 armor resist for beginners. 70 resist works fine for most people. 

If you have tried to say solo the underwater BMV, you may prefer extra armor resists as the spells are really devastating and DCI does not help much... but ofcourse, some expert-level like Bear corpse does not need that extra resist. 

Riner

@Seth could you explain what suit set ups you use for which bosses? Also, what you use to determine which type to use?

Seth

Riner said:

@ Seth could you explain what suit set ups you use for which bosses? Also, what you use to determine which type to use?

Out of the 5 which I happened to list above, only Paroxysmus can be killed with a standard sampire template. Same with Dreadhorn. 

For the rest, some requires skill swap and some special weapon.

For Zipa, the warrior must be able to teleport up a pedestal and setup a macro to cast telekinesis and activate 2 switches at the same time. Other than that, it’s not too hard.

Travesty needs to use sword and shield without life leech. The part when the ninjas appear it’s easier to honor self to finish off Travesty. If solo fight the ninjas, it is hard to kill Travesty.

Osiredon, I swap necro with healing and used boats to block Osiredon from running at the docks. For this guy I used my 4x bard to heal… sorry I cheated lol… 

For BMV, I also used a bard but it is trickier because the bard gets attack sometimes. 

Same with Shadowguard, I solo with my own bard support. 

Not every fight is perfect and I do make mistakes and paid the price.

—-
By the way, I can only advise newbies 
There are experts around us who are not active on this forum.

So a Side note for those who think sampires are easy and can do everything… it’s not true. We cracked our brains to figure out ways to defeat the bosses. It’s not just hack and hack.

Riner

I am thinking of refining my armor to have max resists using Invulnerability refinements since there is a chance of not getting one resist which one would you choose? I am thinking cold but not sure if that is the best choice. I know I have the option to try again if I don't get five just not the resources right now. Or I am better off chancing poison since most poisons don't last long with vampire form running? I use my sampire for most challenges other then the roof right now. Any thoughts?

Seth

Riner said:

I am thinking of refining my armor to have max resists using Invulnerability refinements since there is a chance of not getting one resist which one would you choose? I am thinking cold but not sure if that is the best choice. I know I have the option to try again if I don't get five just not the resources right now. 

Physical - only against melee attack. 

Fire, cold, energy - both spells and melee, but spells are more deadly because you can't run fast enough to avoid them.

Poison - mostly melee but few monsters have poison melee damage. 

imho, there are two options:
1) Choose the least-used resist which I think is poison. 
2) If you are using an elf, maybe choose energy since it already has 75 resist. 
For me I chose energy as I prefer balanced approach. 

Suggest to try and get +5 for the "permanent" gear, e.g. feudal gloves, Blackthorn helmet, britches or tinker legs, balron armor. 

Helmet +5
Balron chest +5
Feudal gloves +5
Legs +4
Above 4 is 19 points but I hope to get Legs +5 in future. 

Then remaining 2 imbued gear (could also be legendary/major arty):
Neck +3
Arm +3

So based on the above, it gets cheaper to remake the worn-out neck and arm armour since it only needs hardening.

One thing to be careful is that if it goes above +25 it means DCI will drop below 20.

PlayerSkillFTW

Seth said:

Travesty needs to use sword and shield without life leech. The part when the ninjas appear it’s easier to honor self to finish off Travesty. If solo fight the ninjas, it is hard to kill Travesty.

Travesty can be soloed easier by a Sampire with GM SS using Wraith Form+Curse Weapon. When Travesty transforms into you, she becomes vulnerable to Undead Slayer (due to Wraith Form). You can stack Undead Slayer on Weapon and Talisman to hit 300% damage cap against her then (also works against any other Changeling). The Wraith Form keeps sucking Mana from her, and the Curse Weapon keeps your Health up.

I usually just refine for +5 Physical/Fire/Energy Resist Caps. The other two Resists aren't needed that much. Physical/Fire/Energy are the three most commonly encountered attack types. DCI only functions against Kinetic attacks, it does absolutely nothing against Magic or abilities like Dragon Breath (which can hit very hard from high HP mobs).

Seth

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Seth said:

Travesty needs to use sword and shield without life leech. The part when the ninjas appear it’s easier to honor self to finish off Travesty. If solo fight the ninjas, it is hard to kill Travesty.

Travesty can be soloed easier by a Sampire with GM SS using Wraith Form+Curse Weapon. When Travesty transforms into you, she becomes vulnerable to Undead Slayer (due to Wraith Form). You can stack Undead Slayer on Weapon and Talisman to hit 300% damage cap against her then (also works against any other Changeling). The Wraith Form keeps sucking Mana from her, and the Curse Weapon keeps your Health up.

I usually just refine for +5 Physical/Fire/Energy Resist Caps. The other two Resists aren't needed that much. Physical/Fire/Energy are the three most commonly encountered attack types. DCI only functions against Kinetic attacks, it does absolutely nothing against Magic or abilities like Dragon Breath (which can hit very hard from high HP mobs).

Yeah, thanks for the input, we need more sharing of sampire and warrior tactics. I have seen those videos using Whammy but later a friend on my shard told me his sampire just used a sword and shield, and to drop the life leech from the sword. It works but I have to be careful about BO and the last part when Travesty summons the ninjas. 

I used EOO and honor for the double damage as I did not use the undead slayer method. 

Merlin

I have tried both the high DCI and high resist cap methods with Sampire template and found the higher resist caps work better.   The boost in DCI is useful in PVP, but still didn't outweigh losing the higher resists. 

PlayerSkillFTW

Sometimes the higher Resist cap can be enough to avoid bandy interruption when getting hit too (26+ damage will interrupt a bandy, lowering the healed amount), for Healing Warriors. I've seen high Eval Flamestrikes be just below 26 damage with a 75 Fire Resist cap, which meant they would've interrupted the bandy attempt if i had only 70 Fire Resist (DCI would've done nothing against that FS anyways).

Balin_Wingnut

I just recently brought my DCI to 65 on my sampire. Honestly 5 points in resist is literally only 5 damage for a 100 point hit. I consider a HUGE hit to be around 60. So that would only save me about 3 points in damage. And since I've had to lower my DCI cap, I'm much easier to hit.

Raising DCI: now I have a chance to straight up not be hit at all by those mega melee hits. This means for a 60 damage hit, I might not take any damage.

 I've heard the argument for having it low for counter strike, and honestly, I don't need to kill things a bit faster. My main painpoint on my Sampire is how do I survive against the toughest mobs? Anything that I can survive through I can kill fast enough. Counter-strike does enable you to hit the enemy, which enables you to leech life, but I think I'd rather avoid some of those mega hits than take the chance that one procs counter strike.

McDougle

Not to brag but my Bard was getting 1 an hour this morning and I think if hail storm wasn't broken i could get two what a magical time to be alive