this is both a suggestion and a question post rolled together:
first the question; i want to know if the good builds for healers to solo in are really as cookie-cutter as they seem. its not a question of looks, nor pure Matk for undead nuking, but of 1/2hp - 1x and sometimes 2x (i know some people) mobs that are huntable using normal weapons and good armor sets by healers.
i have experimented with a few builds in l2calc and it seems a blue wolf light set makes for some fun hunting. that and beginning at B grade and heading into A grade solo as a healer (who would do so is beyond me) a nice hunting spot is in the outer skirts of giants cave as well as the surrounding area of the cemetary.
of course SS spam is necessary but i do think that some weapons would really shine for healers attempting to solo in these areas; namely Arthro nails with rsk. evasion. they both look cool and function well.
dont get me wrong, hp potions, gmhp, greater swift attack, are all rather necessary as you won't survive long without self buffs AT LEAST! let us not forget however that soloing healers is a risky and dangerous thing: it has been said before but its worth repeating (on undead mobs ... ) "Nuke first, kite, nuke again and start swinging" as it draws the mob away from groups or social mobs, and deals a fair amount of damage before you actually cut into the mob itself.
of what i have tested on a bishop, i can say Focus duals ... meh. haste duals, worse. Health duals, work ok with self BOA but still sux, fists with evasion, great. fists with crit bleed, awesome. fists with crit drain ... well they work but not considerably Uber enough for me. also on a bishop for fists, cant beat Blue wolf light. doom actually will hurt your damage output TOO much. Zubei light and evasion fists are not underpowered. on an EE self buffed, evasion gear is UBER! especially with +6 zubei light set (at the time of testing set was borrowed from clannie). thats some crazy evasion man. but somewhat of an erratic build for anything but ee. bishop did ok in it, but it was gimp sans the highly plussed fists.
fists with health i havent yet tried, but i suppose they wouldnt be altogether underpowered for 1x mobs.
but the song remains the same; SE will not have so bad of a time pveing as they do have some great buffs for melee in the area of damage output and VR. EE by contrast do not, but have a rather nice selection of shield buffs which i have tried on my EE; i have tried the doom light with doom shield, health sword ... bah. so slow. again with haste ... meh not too bad but very unstable. focus, same. best for me in the EE was dagger. overall nice crit rate, attack speed, and sometimes (with crit bleed dagger) a bleed would land.
all in all not a bad time was had, but it did take some getting used to. soling wasnt like soling as any other class; this was a touch-and-go type thing where you hit, and watch your hp bar get down to half then heal or fire a potion if it was a weak mob.
and now the suggestion: make heals damage the undead. major heal = major nuke. its been suggested before but iw ouldnt hurt to suggest it again. it doesnt help in pvp, but then again, no healer does help in pvp. you may battle heal for 1300 hp, but when ur tank get crit for 6k, its worthless to try.
A healer in light does not receive passive evasion boosts - add to that the fact that they really, really don't have that much DEX to begin with, and their HP pool needs to be low to solo at a decent pace, and you don't have much reason to bother trying to throw on risk evasion.
A healer is more 'safe' than many other classes - not least of all because they have CC and powerful self-heals. Of course, they are frail, so it's a matter of getting into a good pace.
Daggers are the healer DPS weapon of choice, doubly so for EE/PP with shield buffs.
Regardless, though, soloing melee without VR and/or crit buffs is an exercise in great patience.
well, i was really aiming at bishops soloability as prophets and SE's really dont have *that* much problem being some of the better attack-based buffs in game.
the whole problem to begin this topic was that a lot of prophets etc felt unneeded in parties and needed a way to exp (see topic by TheBun).
soloing a healer means "nobody else is present" right? OOP boxing another healer is cheating!
Spud,
You hit the nail (one of them) on the head when you said "it took some getting used to". Quite a few people get in to this game thinking that it is going to be a mindless FPS type of game that takes very little thought and an expertise in tapping buttons. For the most part the one aspect of this game that brings me and my personal friends to it is the fact that it DOES take thought to play it effectively. I love that in order for me to maximize my xp'ing effort I need to explore and research.
As for the Bishop not getting his dues, well it is a class that takes a unique personality to play. I like your idea of heals doing damage. However, as it is a Bishop can be effective soloing, its just not as microwave fast as some other classes. Most people only play classes that give them the immediate sastisfaction of leveling quickly. Also, if you play with friends and can always group you may get left behind. And no person likes that feeling.
WIth the herbs and pots dropping, I think with a littel research and planning someone could lvl a bishop without getting bored. I agree, 1/2hp mobs that are white or green is the key though. They give great xp.
That would be horrifically painful. When I was doing my second class change quests around 39 before I became a bishop, I used duals and spammed SS. It took forever and a day to kill white mobs. I had no tats taking away all my STR like I do now either.
For the 76 class change I had to kill white mobs myself, and even buffed out with greater swift attack pots and ss it was so slow... oh man. There's no way.
And considering even a bad group would get you better and faster exp.. well. Man. I bet I could deck out a bishop in battle gear and give it a go just to test it.
That would be horrifically painful. When I was doing my second class change quests around 39 before I became a bishop, I used duals and spammed SS. It took forever and a day to kill white mobs. I had no tats taking away all my STR like I do now either.
That is why I suggested 1/2hp mobs. They are the best for low damage people like me and my DA.
For the 76 class change I had to kill white mobs myself, and even buffed out with greater swift attack pots and ss it was so slow... oh man. There's no way.
And considering even a bad group would get you better and faster exp.. well. Man. I bet I could deck out a bishop in battle gear and give it a go just to test it.
and now the suggestion: make heals damage the undead. major heal = major nuke.
Might of Heaven on undeads in C5 already has nearly the same effective power as Hydroblast on regular mobs (and cheaper in MP than Major Heal). You cannot make +Int tattoos and you have no additional damage on "weak" (or surrendered) mobs, though.
I just don't see why people try to make non soloing classes, solo viable. It's like asking a nuker to try to fill a healer spot.
Soloing with might of heaven, even with empower, without recharges, is several times worse than a sps trying the same thing due to the severe limitation in mobs you can hurt in the first place, weakness of the spell, range, etc etc. Esp at high levels (75+)
I just don't see why people try to make non soloing classes, solo viable. It's like asking a nuker to try to fill a healer spot.
Soloing with might of heaven, even with empower, without recharges, is several times worse than a sps trying the same thing due to the severe limitation in mobs you can hurt in the first place, weakness of the spell, range, etc etc. Esp at high levels (75+)
because it makes you think twice about just how squishy you really are, or how tough it really is to make it in the game as a non-DD.
I just don't see why people try to make non soloing classes, solo viable.
If you are logging for just a hour of play, not in your clan's prime time, will you try to find a group during that hour?
Exactly
Getting a good group going can take forever. By the time you get there your out of mana and its time for you to leave. I really like the fact that if I want, I can get a few % here and there by soloing with my Bishop on undead.
God no I play an alt or my sub. The only time it would be worth it to solo a bishop for 1 hour is if I was already in my hunting spot, with a buffer and ran into no war tags.
This was a great post to read, as a non-prophet that quite often goes out and solo's on my SE, it can be done. I run around in a NM light set, and +4 dual keshes; The nm light is amazing due to the 3% built in VR, and the keshes give me a bit more attack speed; I also have a +4 strength tattoo, so while my con sucks, I can dish out a fair amount of damage; If I'm lucky enough to get prophet buffs before heading out, I can pretty easily take the first room of devotion, I just have to be careful about pulling. Without prophet buffs things are a bit more precarious, but the beast farm isn't all that difficult, and I've found I can feed the babies up to 1x and kill them with ease for great xp; With this method I can average about 4-5% an hour so when I can't get parties this is what I do.
Yeah I have, and it was okay, but I guess at the end of the day I'm just a duals kind of girl. Plus if I EVER do get subbed I can use my duals on my sub also; less weapons for a poor girl to try and come up with :)
well, how does pve work currently solo as a bishop?
one sure way is might of heaven nuking.
now lets set up a bishop similar to a nuker setup - demon robes / nm robes , +4wit or more, +8 homu/acu or +3 SOM/acu , boxed emp3 only - l2calc states matk = 1460 / cspeed 598 even self buffed.
seems a bit low.
switching for dark crystal - 1256 / 838 which is much faster but that also means faster oom.
lets nail some FULLY buffed at lvl 61 bishop in NM first then DC;
so we see a HUGE difference in cast speed but as i said boxing a recharger that isnt a problem to go OOM fast. then again, to acheive those numbers you need 3 different high level buffers :/
fair to say that Might of heaven needs the same cast sped and power as regular nukes.
One thing not mentioned... Magic Power SA is nice for low Matk characters.
Magic Power is not as nice for nukers as it doesn't add as much damage as it does mana cost, but for bishops, its mana cost penalty is better balanced by the MAtk gained.
Note that Might of heaven is a fastcast/short range spell.
I don't know of anyone who would mind it becoming an exact duplicate of hydroblast with an undead/demon-only tag.
Throw in Despair... a reverse version for SE that only works on Angels.
One other thing to consider for soloing is Turn Undead. The Lethal strike lands pretty well against white/yellow mobs, and can actually be used for soloing.
Unfortunatly you really need multi hp mobs, with only undead aggro, and it's not so easy to find them. At 72+ the first room and corridor of Imperial Tomb is pretty nice. I can solo there at 73 for around 1.5-2% an hour, but it's highly dependant on luck.
It's better exp than any melee soloing I've done at that level (by far), however it's very expensive. It can also be tedious and frustrating when Turn Undead decides to have a row of ten failures. Although that's usually made up for by the next three mobs getting lethal striked on the first cast each time.
But I don't think it's really a viable thing at most levels, due to lack of decent hunting area.
Note that giving it the same power value as hydroblast will guarantee that it hits HARDER than hydroblast as the bane damage mod is quite potent.
A bishop using MoH with a mage weapon already hits almost as hard as a spellsinger with hydroblast. Yes, the bane damage is quite powerful.
(note Spellsingers with +4 INT tats have ONE more INT than a stock Bishop)
I am not shooting it down... only mentioning that it would be quite powerful.
I am in favor of almost anything which allows priests some small group/solo lovin'.