LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Talking About The Secret World Ability Combinations
It has taken me a while to really start to dive in and understand the depth and complexity of the ability system in The Secret World but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. When I first started playing I mainly just grabbed things that looked cool and didn’t really think or look too much into how things work together. However, the Blue Mountains zone was quite a step up in difficulty and I started re-thinking how I was set up. I’ve been spending the next couple of zones looking for a good combination of skills and weapons. As I’m working through the City of the Sun God, I’m finally settling in on a combination that I’m really enjoying. I’m still probably going to tweak my equipment a bit to better maximize this build but I’m pretty happy with how my character feels so far.
I’ve been pretty much a solo player in TSW as I just haven’t had the time available to really contribute reliably to a group. So my build is set up to be very survivable as I do tend to jump first and look second, which can at times cause a few problems. All along I’ve been down the Blade line and looking for a good way to compliment it. It took a number of attempts as I started with Pistols for a ranged attack, then Elementalism for more damage output, but have settled on Blood Magic for self healing. I now need to do a little better balancing with my equipment as I was just stacking health, but now look to add some more attack rating as well as heal rating since I don’t need as big of a health pool.
I’ll include the specifics on what abilities I have slotted as I go through this post but will describe my general attack plan and how fights normally go. My main attack skills are all blade focused and I have an AoE builder (Blade Torrent) and an AoE consumer (Clearing the Path) with my two other attacks being impair skills both as an AoE (Stunning Swirl) and single target (Trial by Swords). My other 3 active slots are dedicated to heals with an insta-cast HoT+Shield (Blood Shield), a channeled HoT+shield (The Scarlet Arts), and an oh-crap channeled heal (Point of Harmony). For the most part I’ll alternate between my builders and consumers and use my impair abilities to disrupt any inductions the mobs are preparing. If I start to get into trouble, I’ll start with the HoTs and shields but I’ll also use them during directional AoEs that I can easily avoid.
Where all builds (including what I’ve put into this one) really start to take form is in the picking of the passive abilities to maximize the utility and strength of your active skills. I’ve mainly set mine up to take advantage of Penetrations and Impairments as I wanted something other then just impairments since those are quite often immunities that mobs will have. My builder is traited (Perfect Storm) to also afflict mobs with a DoT when it hits. I then chose my consumer that exploits this afflicted state by always penetrating any afflicted target. Once I penetrate, I’m traited for the following:
- HoT from Immortal Spirit
- Builds a counter that provides another AoE impair (Five times a charm)
- triggers a defensive shield (Donor)
I also mentioned that I also look to exploit the impair state as well, which you see from above that I not only include abilities to impair but passives to build towards it as I get the following from hitting impair targets:
- HoT from Tipped Scale
- Just setting a target to the impaired state (I don’t have to hit it) gives my next shield a buff from Omen
My last passive ability is Clotting which each time I apply a shield it progressively makes the shield stronger and provides a defensive buff. So as the battle goes on, I’m constantly triggering heals and building up defensive shields. Those shields also get progressively stronger the longer they stay active so I find myself stringing them together to provide a chance for my HoTs to actually heal myself as opposed to just cancelling out the incoming damage. Pretty much whenever I see a shield go up, I kick off my insta shield as not only is it quick but is gives another chance for clotting to go off again and further increase my shield as well as that defensive buff. I usually save the bigger shield/HoT for either when a mob does a directional induction or when I impair things and also try to either precede or follow it with the insta-cast version to further that clotting tick.
We’ll see how this build works out as I move into Transylvania (almost there) but so far I’m quite happy with it. I’ve seen other builds that focus on HoTs and I feel like combining the HoTs with shields provides a more survivable build. I also think this will be an interesting group build as a front line support member or an off-tank kind of role since the shields go to my defensive target. I’m guessing I could probably swap out reasonably easily enough into a more heal focused support build, but I just haven’t had a need to go that route yet.
That’s my thought process and implementation, any suggestions or ideas on how I can make it better? I’m probably going to replace one of the two impair abilities with something, most likely a ranged attack but I haven’t decided yet.
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#2 written by DocHoliday 4 months ago
I’ve run through a number of those same choices
And I’m also looking at rifle as a secondary too, I just haven’t decided yet.I haven’t run into an area that’s made me pay too much for bleeds, but I’m not real reliant on them to do actual damage (yet). Although I am JUST starting on Transylvania, so it might still be ahead.
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#3 written by sean 4 months ago
I’ve made it to Ql10 with Blade/Blood; Blade doesn’t need the heals from Rifle to be effective. I’m trying to remember my build (was a few months ago now).
Slot, if you can, Circulation and Donor from Blood: Donor gives you a shield every time you penetrate, which is every time you use CTS; Circulation heals you every time you Afflict, which is every time you use Blade Torrent. Art of War is an essential Elite; both for the Impair and the Glance bonus; coupled with Fuild Defence (Elite) you take less damage *and* do more damage.
Mobs in Egypt can hit harder if they’re Afflicted, but I never saw any problems there; the real problems from a Blade point of view come in Transylvania in the later maps: mobs that are immune to Impair AND have to be Weakened a number of times before they can be damaged. At that point you’ll probably want (still using Blade) the Shotgun Elite Close Quarters (Hinders anything within 3 metres) and the Elemental passive Dial Down (purges one buff on Hinder); I was often slotting the Pistol passive Exploitation (cleanse 1 effect on Hinder) or the Shotgun passive Perjury (same effect) at this time, as the Transylvanian mobs put loads of very nasty debuffs on you.
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#4 written by DocHoliday 4 months ago
I am slotting Donor, but haven’t acquired Circulation – but it was something I was looking at. Art of War and Fluid Defense does sound like a handy combo, will have to keep that in mind.
Thanks for the tips on Translyvania, I was looking at adding some ability to weaken as my next path to walk down and you pretty much cemented that
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#5 written by Sylow 4 months ago
Just a few random comments:
As some people state that there are some mobs which make you pay for afflicting them: indeed, there are. For example there are some spider and stuff in Romania, which put a powerful DoT on you (stacks up to 10 times) whenever you afflict them. But keep in mind, other mobs punish you for penetrating, for healing, for not healing, for weakening, for hindering or impairing. No matter which setup you go for, there will be _some_ nightmare mobs which get much more powerful when using the mechanic you went for.
But don’t worry, you have so many things on the wheel wich people at the start think they “wasted” points on. When you run into nightmare mobs which counter your current setup, just improvise another one, quite often i found that even just picking stuff from the inner wheel on another setup and mechanic allowed me to get past stuff which countered the finely tuned mechanic of my primary setup. Just have weapons of any kind along and you should be able to adjust and be able to overcome any nightmare mobs mechanic, as long as you just take a look at the buffs they carry and consider change your setup if they trigger on the mechanics you currently use.
On the setup discussed here, you might want to take a look at 12 gouge of shotgun. Whenever you penetrate, you put a -3% damage output debuff on it, which stacks up to 10 times. Enemies dealing 30% less damage to you keeps you going for a long time.
Also, you might want to look at beatdown of chaos. Whenever you hit a target with a blade, hammer or chaos ability, you make the target receive 3% more damage from all sources. This includes you, and as it also stacks up to 10 times, you boost your damage output by 30% with this. This is quite hard to beat.
Last not least, though, on how you envision your role in a dungeon group:
1. Try to do some dungeon running. The first one is Polaris in Kingsmouth, and a mix of QL1 and QL2 green gear is good enough for it. Then progress up the dungeon chain. Normal mode, they are very easy, but already teach you the mechanics you need to know in Elite. (Nightmare, some additional mechanics come into play, but that shouldn’t be your primary concern. )
2. Before you learn it the hard way in a group, i think i should better point it out to you here: Your setup is very much a solo-setup, but absolutely not suitable for any dungeon, especially not in the role you envision. In detail:
- You use Blade Torrent, an AoE with increased hate generation. Indeed, this guarantees that the tank will hate you, as you make his job much harder than necessary. Please avoid, unless you are the tank.
- You have several impairs in your setup. This again will create a lot of hate from the tank. Keep in mind, tanks impair bosses to interrupt special abilities, which would kill them if not interrupted. If a DD drops in “random impairs”, the boss will be immune when the tank tries to land his impairs. A guaranteed way to wipe the team, so please avoid. (Also avoid impairing passives. Power line from elementalism is one of the classical “hidden team wipers”, where the user often doesn’t even realize it was his fault that the tank was unable to stop the 15k damage attack and thus died. )
- You have some self-shielding in your setup. If you work well and the tank does the job, you won’t ever need a shield. All damage you take will be when you stand in crap, and your shield won’t help you there. (If you do stand in stuff, you would need healing, not shields. And even that healing is not your job, leave it to the healer with much higher heal rating. Rather try to avoid taking unnecessary damage and work on killing the target. )
- Your setup of active healing abilities will piss off any healer. You will have a dedicated healer in your group, and he will have all healing talismans slotted. By bringing along your own healing, you display distrust in his abilities and at the same time, by using healing talismans, do a worse job than you could do by using all talismans set up for your actual task.
- Your setup actually interferes and hinders a blood based healer. Either you have plenty of healing talismans in use, which means you do only a part of your job (damage), or you apply very weak shields. Either way, as long as you don’t go for a full healing setup, your shields will be weaker than what a full healer could supply. Now consider: shields do not stack. If you put shields on yourself, you actually eliminate the shields provided by the official healer and actively destroy his work. This guarantees to frustrate the healer, and the smart healer will just let you live or die on your own shields and not care for you any more, as the group would probably be better off with you dead in the dirt than interfering with them in a hard fight. So, please avoid.
That being said, you are well on way for an awesome solo setup, where a sound mix of survivability, damage and some self-healing is the most powerful combination. (While i posted a few small refinements above, it’s only that: finetuning. ) Just keep in mind that this setup is not suitable for dungeons at all. Please consider which role you want to fill, you have the potential to go either, way, tank, DD or healer. (Additionally keep in mind, DDs are cheaper in the dozen, while tanks and healers are more scarce and thus get spots in dungeon groups easily. )
If you have a group of friends you regularily go to dungeons with, the tank/DD/heal roles are more flexible, a coordinated team with people who know each other can run more unusual builds, where the tank brings in more damage as usual, healing is done by two damage-healers and another DD provides additional survivability for the team, or something like that. But you don’t run with a group of friends, but will go with people you don’t know yet. In such pickup groups, specialists with predefined roles do much better, as they require less of coordination on who will do what.
The tank comes with high enough health and mitigation glyphs on his talismans. (Block, defense, etc. ) He still needs to have enough hit and attack rating to actually hurt the damage, as a tank not doing any damage also creates almost no threat and thus doesn’t tank, but the primary concern is survivability. Also, tanks can most easily provide the exposed debuff (30% more damage on target, see above), boosting the damage of all of the team. Thus they are expected to do this.
Healers heal. Sounds easy, can be a hell lot of work.
And while there’s plenty of DDs in TSW, the sad truth is that most of them are not too good, either. Many think that damage alone is their job, and way too many even don’t do that too well, due to having too much “unnecessary” stuff on their passive bar, which is good for solo play, but doesn’t help a dungeon group. The “average” DD at least puts out plenty of damage, the good ones also help the team in many other ways.
First of all, i expect at least one DD in the team to debilitate. (30% less damage output of a boss, for most tank setups it’s hard to include this and the healer usually can’t provide it, as it requires to attack the boss. ) Most DD setups can provide it, so at least one DD should have it in his setup.
Next, DDs can boost each other (and thus the whole team) by bringing along some nice buffs like Breaching Party, Short Fuse and Deadly Aim. Use them to boost your killing speed. Using them at the same time, so DDs coordinating when they use those, gives a massive damage improvement, which helps a lot in bringing a boss down quicker.
And finally, while not being of high importance in normal and elite dungeons, the ability to purge buffs from enemies or cleanse debuffs from the group becomes essential in nightmare mode. The most promiment ability to do this is Cleanup from shotgun, but others exist in Pistol and Elementarism. Note their absense on any healing or tanking weapon, this gives a clue on who usually is expected to bring them along.
I am sorry if this text on dungeons sounded harsh, but i had all that already. People disrupting my tanking (and i am just a mediocre tank myself) by using blade torrent and interrupts and thus getting agro or getting me killed all the time. People disrupting my healing by throwing in weak sauce shields. People like that are more of a problem than helping the group, and sometimes i even saw teams throw out such people after several wipes, just to then succeed with only 4 people, where they failed with 5.
So i hope this helps you plan your setup before heading for dungeons, allowing you to be a valuable asset and avoiding frustration for both you and the people you group with. Anyway, as mentioned above, i’d advise to just go for the normal mode dungeons of Solomon Island and Egypt first. (Romania dungeons don’t exist in normal mode any more, they are Elite by default. ) Normal mode is quite forgiving and allows you to learn the bosses first.
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#6 written by DocHoliday 4 months ago
Wow, that’s some awesome info. Your suggestions for the build were things I was thinking of – and I’ve already run into a few cases where I’ve had to swap out to move forward. Right now I’m clearing out the inner wheel (still early on here for me) but then will start cherry picking on those 2nd tier ones that I want.
Also, amazing info there on group mechanics as I haven’t run any sort of group anything – mainly due to a lack of dedicated time. Some of what you mention is typical group mechanic stuff, but there’s certainly a lot that is specific and unique to TSW. I have yet to really decide what kind of role I’d want to fill in a group, but your suggestions will provide me some good ideas for whichever of the 3 routes I pick.
Thanks!!
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I started with Blade/Pistol, which is probably the best build when you have like 10-20 AP total, because having your unused pistol resources turn into free healing when you kill mobs, supplemented with a small HOT from your drones.
Next I tried Blade/Rifle, but this was still early Kingsmouth and you really don’t get good healing with Rifle until you unlock Anima Shot, so it was kind of pointless.
Then it was Blade/Fist. Interesting, but no range whatsoever.
Then I went with Blade/Blood, which I stuck with for the last third of Kingsmouth and early Savage Coast until I just got shredded by Akabs. It worked fine for me given room to kite while the cast-time heal consumer does its thing, but you get too many adds if you try to kite Akabs.
By this point, I had saved up some AP and used it to switch back to Blade/Rifle. The jump in performance was huge – slightly less overall healing but much better damage and no need to kite. I repeated the quest with the Akabs the very next night and chewed through em.
One thing I’ve heard are that there are eventually mobs who make you pay for putting dots on them, which means that CTS stops working. I guess when I come to that I will either try to build an alternate Blade build or use one of my various secondary weapons to deal with the problem.