What to wear?

Last night before bed, I was able to eek out a little bit of play time with my Shadow Warrior and hit RR76. For those who have been there, they may know that this is the magical rank where you can wear four pieces of Sovereign gear, and get two bonuses from the set (Ballistic Skill and wounds). What these means, is that, if you want, you can do a mix of Warlord and Sovereign gear to have the BS/Wounds bonuses from each, and say goodbye to your Invader for all eternity.

You don’t have a lot of choice in what you’ll be wearing, being gated by renown rank, so you’re stuck with the Sovereign boots, gloves, amulet, and shoulder pieces (much thanks to Rancid and his WARdrobe for picking up Curse’s slack here, and doing it better as far as I’m concerned). The rest of your gear will be the warlord stuff (including the amulet). The highlights of the loss from previous invader/warlord setup is -1% ranged crit, +2% to be crit, and loss of the 60 hp/4, however, in return you should gain about 15 wounds, 10 BS, 80 toughness, a bit over 80 weapon skill, and about 100 extra armor.  Yeah, 80 toughness and weapon skill, that’s pretty big. I was sitting at about 530 weapon skill in skirmish stance. I’m going to be (very) slightly more squishy, but my killing power should increase significantly against heavier armored targets.

It’s a great tradeoff as far as I’m concerned, particularly in light of all the high rank players that are around now, and the gear creep that comes along with it. My survivability stays relatively unchanged, and target diversity increases, and Gorfang has a lot of Destruction tanks, DoKs, and players who have an IV drip of their favorite armor pot. The more armor they stack, the more valuable my weaponskill becomes.

Tales of Hate, Entry 4

Today is May 4th, I will be posting this on July 8, 2010.

I almost spilled the beans today. A post by one of our server’s more famous forum trolls made me giggle on the inside, given my play on this Blackguard of late.

I’ve been looking into the different specs for the class, and trying to theorycraft what would be the best type of build for the career. I’ve lurked on the various forums, trying to glean as much information as possible from the more veteran players of the class, and have come to a bit of mixed information. Everyone seems to agree the class is very gear dependant, and that’s fine, a lot of classes are. My Shadow Warrior in particular was heavily reliant upon the best gear. Still, there seems to be a couple “core” tactics that are chosen by all, and then the last two seem to get mixed up based on personal preference.