Fully unlocked Deck tutorial

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Snazz, Sep 5, 2016.

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  1. Snazz

    Snazz Avatar

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    Hi Avatars! Said I was going to do this a while ago, so here it is:

    The theory behind the fully unlocked deck is all related to stacking. Both defensive buffs for added effect and duration, and for offensive spells to cost less focus and hit harder. There is a secondary way to play the deck, and that is a global-limited machine gun glyph user. You will be using 4/5 glyphs per skill always, unless you have a lesser used utility glyph thrown in the mix. (Like Body Slam in the first example)

    Any blue skill name is replaceable with you build's version. Mix and match, as this really isn't a Death Build FAQ although some will get that value too :)



    This is my solo deck that has 2 main defensive buffs, 2 AoE, 2 fast and hard hitting Blade skills and one CC/gap-closer

    [​IMG]

    It has a ton of versatility where you can stack glyphs that are not quite suited for early combat (Coup de Grace and Corpse Explosion) but at the same time hitting machinegun Thrusts, Death Touch and AoE damage/heal from Death Field. If you haven't had prep time, as shown in my gathering examples below, then you will also start stacking your right side defensive glyphs in early combat. My technique is usually to use a mouse on those and execute my damage with keyboard numbers. Quite user-intensive, but has a high payout !

    The 3rd benefit to stacking "later used glyphs" is that they are then removed from the "shuffle pool" and therefore probability increases greatly of drawing your "early combat glyphs"

    The 4th thing is that upon stacking a glyph, you are dealt another card instantly. It resets the" draw counter"


    Here's King Solomon getting stacked up ready to destroy that archer:
    [​IMG]


    And a Skellie Mage about to get trounced after I get my cotton :D

    [​IMG]

    I used to stack stat buffs on the right as well (like all 4 in slot 10 as a refresh during long battle) but recently I have moved those to my non-combat bar and just buff once per large pull.


    This one below is for party use and does not have the utility of my DK decks. One can deck-swap if needed to bounce from balanced/solo deck to a focused deck like this. Do note, I locked the end two due to their cooldown, duration and frequency of use. You don't always have to go fully unlocked. Limit is your imagination.


    [​IMG]


    There is a little stacking potential (like early in the party battle when no corpses are present) where you drag/drop a glyph to add potency plus reset the decay counter of 20 seconds. One could double up two slots, wait then double those up again and maintain an active glyph for a full minute without concern of decay.

    There other way to play it is single casts. Because the shuffle deck is so limited, it will always be drawing one of 3 main skills with high probability. This will burn a ton of focus, but you can literally cast once per global cooldown even though the CD of Corpse Explosion is 12 seconds.

    I use this strategy with Blade/Fist skills too, feathering a skill between auto-attacks, and getting under one attack per second.

    The chaos glyph on the far right will actually make that faster by reducing draw delay. The next glyph, Passive Stance, works only with low-tier spells and cloth/staff. The focus regen will heal you in synergy with Chaotic Feedback. This mainly a caster trick and likely not relevant to melee focused builds, as there are many penalties for each.

    Thanks for reading, and I likely will add to it, as I remember more topics I was going to share :p

    Should be building a few more decks this week and have a few more examples.

    For those who haven't looked at the stacking stats, here's an example of the progression:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]



    Your brother-in-arms, King Solomon

    [​IMG]

     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2016
  2. Nadomir

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    Hmm... interesting... thank you for putting that together... I think I can learn a thing or two from that for my own decks... for example that you can stack cards in slots ...
     
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  3. Rofo

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    I'm not a caster, but from the melee side.

    You stacked glyph stats really shows off just how terrible stacking is, and really highlights why it's a before combat activity and not a during combat activity.
    waiting for 4 stacks to be available, and then casting all 4 for ~50% damage increase doesn't seem worth it.

    In the melee world, it's much better to just lock the skill at 40 ( much less focus 45-65%, and only 10% less damage compared to a leveled active glyph), and spam all 4 individual glpyhs.
    More total damage in equal amounts of time, and more chances to crit.
     
  4. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Thank you for the tips! I have been wanting to do something like that for my low spells.

    But

    Can someone please post a video how to get the glyphs to stack? I have never been able to get them to stack. I have been able to drag and drop one glyph into the square slot but not able to drag and drop glyphs behind it.
     
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  5. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    Do you mean how to get multiple glyphs to deal to a slot in the deck window? Just make sure the slot is not locked (click the gold lock to clear it, if it is), and then drag and drop each glyph to the slot where you want it dealt. They should appear above the slot like in the OP's first screenshot. If you need to clear the slot, right click to remove the glyphs.
     
  6. Sixclicks

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    On the caster side, particularly as an Air mage with very high focus costs, stacking before and during combat are essentially necessary. I have 606 focus, but my Chain Lightning at level 76 costs 25 focus to cast. The damage increase is small, but the focus cost reduction is what really matters. If I just spam single lightning and chain lightning glyphs, I'll be out of focus very rapidly. It does help that most mage spells have a casting time though. During this casting time, you can continue to stack other glyphs that come up. I rarely 4 stack during combat, 2 or 3 stacks suffices, but I usually always start combat with at least one 4 stack prepared.

    Since melee attacks don't have much of a casting time and their focus cost isn't as high as Air spells, I could see why stacking during combat isn't too necessary for a melee character. It doesn't really hurt though. It takes less than a second to stack a glyph.
     
  7. Tahru

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    I use a combination of this with a few fixed slots as well. However, I noticed that

    (1) if you do not allocate a good spread, you end up with more blank card slots than a deck that did not choose where to put the random cards. At least that is my perception.

    (2) If you screw up and leave spells in the deck that don't have a slot to go it, you get slugs.

    My mitigating solution for #1 is to have two bleed over slots. For example

    Slots 1-3 DPS only
    Slots 4-5 DPS, Heals and Defensive buffs
    Slot 6 Heals and Defensive buffs
    Slot 7, 8 and 9 fixed

    Slots 4-5 provide bleed over spaces which helps reduce the number of blank cards perceived. Originally 4 was DPS only and 5 was heals and buffs.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2016
  8. Snazz

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    @Rofo Very true. There are times where I don't need health from Death Touch and stack the extra copies up in order to give higher probability that thrust is drawn (for spamming)

    You also then end up with a big heal when you do drop down in HP. I also get scaling from being hurt which makes that 50% even more. And the cast is practically free.

    I do the same with Coup de Grace.

    Stacking can be done while inside the GCD, so no reason why you can't do both
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2016
  9. Snazz

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    Definitely sounds like you have the lock icon closed on the slot. It should be grey, not gold colour. But also try dragging directly on top of another glyph, instead of behind it.

    You can then drag and drop upwards a few pixels to change the order, although I am unsure how it interacts with:

    In combat, the dealt cards will fill from left to right in slots that are empty and have that card assigned.
     
  10. Lord Baldrith

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    I'm a pure mage who does not ever stack spells. Is there a benefit to stacking for mages who do not run out of focus? I mostly use ice arrow and ice fist as that is my specialty. I do over 100 damage on my ice arrows that are unstacked. I have a focus pool of about 650.

    I find that stacking takes a huge amount of time and doesn't seem to increase the damage much. I haven't tried it for a few weeks...but it seems to take me forever to drag and drop glyphs on each other for a very small gain in power...
     
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  11. Baalice

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    Pure mage as well (and ice focused too, hey! ;P). For myself, I've been trying to get used to stacking but it's definitely a learning process. Since I play with my left hand on the directional keys and right hand on the mouse, I use the keyboard for stacking as dragging with the mouse is slower and sometimes can be unresponsive. I don't use the 'R' + first glyph + second glyph thing, too clumsy in my opinion. I go with the 'hold first key down, press second key and release both' method. The way I have my bar set up, I keep specific spells in say, slots 1-4 and then all of them stacked in 5. That way, I know what's going to come up in those first 4 slots and when a match comes up in 5, I hold down 5 and hit the matching glyph in 1-4. Depending on the draw, I can get ice arrow to 3 or 4 fairly quick (or any spell, really) and it does seem to make a difference. Plus, knowing 5 is going to be my first key helps build that muscle memory of 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4, etc. It certainly helps a bit with focus. Now, is the trouble stacking worth the effort? Not really sure, still experimenting, but that's my 2 cents.
     
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  12. PrimeRib

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    I've found that with the right USB hub, I can plug in 3 keyboards and 2 mice. Then invite a group of friend over to epicly raid a wolf.
     
  13. Snazz

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    Low level spells are situational for stacking, as the examples I gave.

    I never stack thrust unless I'm not engaged with an opponent.

    You may find a great increase to damage mitigation by stacking your light ar buffs. You can stack stuff like Enlightenment too for 20+ int and crazy duration.. But then you are kinda left with discard draws after cast.

    I used to delegate one slot to stack on to, just like Baalice, especially for buffs.

    Most low level skills you will use fast draws to spam cast vs stack.
     
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  14. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Thank you for the help. What I was trying to do it to have one slot with 5 fire arrows. I needed to alternate fire arrow with Searing Ray, Obsidian Arrow, Ice Arrow - then the stacking worked. Not 5 of one.
     
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