Questions for the masters

Since I'm playing with multiple characters and widely different builds now, I've started to have a bit of puzzlement creep across me regarding charged vs. auto attack combined with locked glyphs and DPS.

Recently I watched a livestream with @Kor (I believe) beating on a demon. His deck was locked except for one glyph, which popped up extremely quickly. Because of this I locked a few more glyphs, but do love stacking random glyphs so I still left 4 open I think.

This led to some DPS struggles. Because you can't charge a locked glyph and charge your attack at the same time, I am wondering:

Is

• charged attack + locked attack glyphs

considerably lower DPS than

• autoattack + locked and
• charged attack + unlocked?

If you want to charge locked glyphs regularly, do you need to use autoattack?

 

edit I see it in there you want to charge up an no skilled attack and power up a glyph at the same time - AHHHH

While you are "charing up" up an Auto Attack then yeah you a prevented from charging up a skilled glyph but you might be able to combine using other keys, so ther problem I see is if oyu are charging ANYTHING you should not also be able to stack or charge a skill this would be counter intuitive.

You are asking to be able to power up a Rend, while also powering up a plain old sword attack sorry should ne happen if it is being allowed needs to be fixed.

But you can NOT "charge up" a non skilled attack while an auto attack goes off.


Again this leads to the need to clarify the wording on Charging, stacking, powering up . . . . .

all completely different.

 

Yes, now we are both confused.

So I'm not asking FOR anything, just asking about it, that should be the first clarification.

Basically it seems to me that charged attack makes charging locked glyphs sub-par, because now you are not swinging or charging your weapon.

Whereas, if you are stacking glyphs while charging your weapon, you're essentially doing two things at once.

And if you are on autoattack while charging locked glyphs, you're again doing two things at once.

But if you use charged attack and locked glyphs, you can only do one thing at a time, maximum.

So, do any of the pros do the last one or am I right, and it is sub par?

 

there are four things here

1 Powering Up a Locked Glyph
2 Stacking unlocked Glyphs
3 Charging up a non skilled Attack
4 Auto Attack

(4) auto attack is consistent attack that can fire off / hit while one is Powering up a Locked Glyph (1) or Stacking unlocked ones (2)

if you are doing 3 I do not know if you can power up or stack, but if you can and also charge up a non skilled attack then this should not be allowed, if was was happening then it needs to be fixed

Basically you can do either one of the top three at a time.

Now yes if you are Charging up a Non Skilled attack (i.e. stronger auto attack) then you should not be able to just auto attack.

As I said earlier in my example what I see you looking at is both charging up a Double Swing swing(1) while ALSO Charging up a Auto Attack (3)

I do charge up Attack (1) while letting auto attack (4) fire off it works just fine. I have yet to try to charge up a non skilled attack (3) while also dong either 1 or 2 which is what I am saying if it is allowed, should not be.

Ok just tried to charge up auto attack and I have to shut it off to charge them up will try again in a second

After turning off auto attack and charging up a shot I just tried to power up a Blinding shot and it wqould not it overroad the Charged plain attack so no it does not appear you can do both .

As for losing DPS sure if you are not shooting Auto Attack and taking a long time between shots you would be losing the hits from auto attack. So sure I see you concern.

I do not see a fix

soo in the end if you are not using auto attack while powering up or stacking yews you are losing some DPS - I think that is what you where looking for.

 

Yeah, auto attack and haste both became more relevant when glyph charging went in, and weapon charging became less viable. I guess weapon charging is still good for saving arrows and damage to weapons, but other than that, I can't think of any reason to use it right now.

 

Ok, that's what I was feeling. Thanks!

 

Somehow I didn't see this reply. Yes, that's what I was thinking, charged attack is really costing you DPS unless it's being used to conserve ammo, because it prevents you from also charging a locked glyph at the same time. You can, however, stack at the same time if you use the hotkeys. So you can do 2 and 3 at the same time, charge and fire 3, then fire the stacked 2.

 

Yes, now all we need is an extra hand.

 

I use charged auto attacks almost exclusively. I was using standard auto attacks when the crit to the back nerf went in because the bust damage went away. That seems to have changed a bit and I am back to charged autos. I rather charge an auto then a skill since a lot of times 5 skill attacks will out damage a five stack. Skills like Rapid Fire in past demanded a full staking but I use staking now just to save focus. 35 focus a rapid fire is a lot.

The only time I use regular autos is when tanking a boss or something big that way I can stack heals and defensives.

Here is a video showing how bursty charged shots can be with manual stacking. I do a full charge and then release an ability. I hit a mage today for 1067 plus the second hit damage.

 

I have 5 unlocked slots for glyphs for attacks. I stack/combo them and weave in auto attacks in between. So the pattern goes:
1-3 glyphs stacked, auto attack, 1-3 glyphs stacked, auto attack... The attacks come in very high pace with no downtime for charging either auto attack or glyphs. I use keyboard only to stack fast enough and not miss any attacks.

I haven't tried another setup for a long time, so I can't know for sure but it feels alright.

 

That's how I play my archer. Seems like it won't work as well for melee.

That's almost how I play melee, although I do have two attacks I charge, the others get immediately fired or stacked if more than one shows up at a time. Since autoattack keeps going while I charge, it still keeps everything flowing. Pour a little corpion poison on the blade and every hit gets an extra 25 damage

 

That's how I play my melee too. Auto-attack is going off while I'm charging a skill. I don't really make use of combos; They just haven't seemed all that great or reliable to me yet as melee.
I think part of my problem is half my deck is taken up with locked defensive and in-combat buff glyphs. I think I should make an alternate deck for the buff glyphs. Not sure what to do with the defensive glyphs (parry and block).

Diab is putting out some crazy damage in that video. That's just insane...seems like I shouldn't even bother going melee...

 

I definitely do a lot more damage with my much lower level archer (unless I've poisoned my spear). But I think I just haven't figured it out yet with melee.

 

I feel like I'm in the same boat. I'm getting by, but probably not doing it "right" yet. I've seen people using a spear with a shield, but a spear is a polearm isn't it? Does that work better than using a longsword + shield? I think I'm still making too many assumptions based on my experiences in UO

 

It depends on what you're trying to do. Spears (polearms) hit 4 targets at once, so that's super nice in a big fight. I also really like poisons, and polearms give 25% bonus to those.

 

I don't want to imply I'm a "master", but this is how I look at it... (Disclaimer - I haven't used ranged/bow much at all, so I can't comment on how that works).

If you're charging your weapon, it's one other thing to pay attention to and micro manage. If you don't manage it, you miss the free hits and DPS due to your delays.

Also, charging your weapon requires use of your left mouse button and the ability to click on a glyph. Not an issue for stacking now with the heat system... but is an issue with combos of two different gylphs if they are too far for your fingers to combine them. And, the time spent on charging/releasing the attack takes away from the time you can use your glyphs on the hotbar. Whereas autoattack will just swing in between using a skill/spell or when charging one with the heat system.

So I find that while charged attacks do more damage per hit, I still get more DPS out of autoattack since it just happens on it's own and virtually it swings on every moment possible. There are no delays due to me not paying attention and there are no holdups on my glyphs because I'm worrying about charging the weapon attack.

 

Yes, so if I autoattack, I can also be charging Meteor Shower. If I charge attack, I can only use single use locked or stacked randoms.

I suppose if I was REALLY fast I could switch to charged attack part of the time, and then turn it off when charging my locked glyphs. But it seems that that extra level of micromanagement would probably lead to me missing autoattack time rather than getting extra damage from intelligently used charged.

 

Exactly my point. You can be more efficient by switching back and forth, but the micromanagement required can cause delays in doing something else (like using a more powerful glyph) and in the end, it's just easier and more consistent IMO with autoattack.

 

Wait, I'm confused - what is a charged attack? Sounds like that is different than a charged glyph, so I'm not sure I'm aware of this charged attack mechanic. I do the thing where I charge Thrust, and auto-attack while it's charging.

 

I've noticed that while you charging, you may or may not produce more damage, comparing to amount of dmg you can deal with 2-3 skilled attacks without charging, in some cases DPS is higher than one charged skilled attack. In other words, charged skilled attack doesn't always proc more dmg. But if it does and it crits, you can end up doing hundreds of dmg per one charged skilled attack. In the long run, it seems to me that DPS higher if you just spam attacks. You lose more power though, but have higher chance to crit multiple times.