Alternate endgame pvm weaponry

[Litestrider]

I've always been underwhelmed by rifles in general, and I'm far from impressed by our perk specials as well. Aimed shot also has its own slew of issues in PvM I'm sure I don't need to repeat here. I'm sure some of you other agents have felt this way, and given the vast number of nanos and tricks we have access to (as well as all that crit+, which makes a lot of unconventional stuff work), there have to be some good non-rifle options out there for TL7 pvm, don't there?

I've heard about the MA agent, it sounds like a pain from the buffing perspective, but it sounds pretty fun. Has anyone tried it? Care to give your opinions? I've also seen the thread where, sadly, we were unable to equip the dshark. I also swear I've heard an agent mentioned who uses a Xan sloth and does well with it.

Anyway, what sort of unusual weapons and/or setups have you guys considered or managed to get away with?

[Xootch]

Three years without noticing there's a search function - mazeltov!

[Djiax]

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=166613

Bow agent setup with maxed crit i think, did this long time ago and didn't double check if everything was there.

From my experience and because i rolled agent for pvp, if you use pande rifle with that maxed crit setup you ll do just marginally lower DPS then with a bow ; try to sneak in as many AS as you can. With effort in setup Agent DPS could use a slight buff, but nothing serious (cutting all the whine about agent supposedly super bad PvM DD). The rifle/crit setup can be hotswapped out to a PvP setup easely (bare these 3 AI tech 3 perk, sadly).


http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=156770

Might not be optimal again, didn't double check, but sounds fun. Had calced you could end up with like 2.7K MA skills counting everything possible in game, maybe 2.8k. You want as much as you can because the MA weapons scales up to 3K MA skills, giving a better dmg/crit base template. This setup would definitly worth the experiment if you had a toon to sacrifice for it, i think. Been hard to simulate the DPS you can get out of it with the auno DPS calc, so someone really has to try it out. Can't remember why i didn't include Shen Sticks, might worth to look at.

[Litestrider]

Three years without noticing there's a search function - mazeltov!

And mazeltov on winning the "most unneccesarily jerkish post" award!

Yes, this topic comes up every once in a great while. Not nearly often enough to whine about, and it always seems to taper off with an unsatisfactory conclusion.

I'll bet if I were to post in one of those threads asking for more information, you'd have yelled at me for "necro", wouldn't you?

Anyway, I knew about the bow, but the MA setup is indeed interesting. I'm not knowledgeable enough about MA to know why you would or wouldn't equip shen sticks, but I've seen the top martial arts "weapon", and that crit damage is oh-so-sweet. I may have to give that a shot one of these days.

[Pyroatheist]

A word of warning on the MA template... the top MA *weapon* is for MA only. All other profs have a lower, worse, template, and shades have a separate template worse than everyone else as well. However, with enough MA skill, and a hefty amount of crit, it would be possible to churn out some nice damage with that.

And yeah, Xootch, you're a huge dick.

[LyrLazarus]

If you are doing pvm that allows a lot of aimed shots, as opposed to attacking Beast for example, this setup has the most pvm damage. Not going to bother to prove it.

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=170802

[Xootch]

And mazeltov on winning the "most unneccesarily jerkish post" award!

thanks!

since the last threads there's be no changes, no new conclusions and it's pointless to reroll that discussion before the rebalance(tm).

and i don't judge necroing. infact i'm a vintage lovin kinda guy.

[Psikie]

I saw this thread, and I decided to resurrect a project toon I made a LOOONG time ago. I made a 1he/sneak agent. Weird but sneak is actually lower IP cost than AS. Although 1he is more expensive than rifle. But anyway the premise was a sneak up and cut your throat kinda agent or stab you in the back silent ninja. Throw objects for my ninja stars was cute. RP wise this worked out great, but obviously I was cutting off root and shoot tactics. My low agent body meant lotsa time at reclaim also. Primarily fp adv-morphs, mp-heal pet, and fixer-run speed/HoTs. Perks shadowsneak/made for evades and some crit/champ nano/champ lt inf. I only went to lvl 150 so I have no idea how the all the other perklines will work with 1he instead of rifle at high lvls. Some may not work at all but I don't have the lvls to test them. I used a combo of kyr/ofab weapons and with s7 I think that 1he isn't bad at all for that 150 range.
In team though I usually just needed to get behind a mob hit hide and fire off sneak attack quickly before I got detected. Needless to say I drew agg a lot...and reclaim. My point is this was really a fun and frustrating toon to play. I'm just not sure if I could take this to tl6 or beyond. Any ideas on moving this forward or should I just keep it as a funny/odd 150?

[Sromp]

Sneakypie got some very nice results with Chaos, including 8-9k crits iirc.
Ivorbigun got dual shen sticks to work pretty well also, but that requires a non-standard IP.

If they still play, they could probably help you with an equip.

[Cuteypie]

Sneakypie got some very nice results with Chaos, including 8-9k crits iirc.
Ivorbigun got dual shen sticks to work pretty well also, but that requires a non-standard IP.

If they still play, they could probably help you with an equip.

Main problem with Chaos specc is that AR is horribly low when you cant be in trader and drain yourself up. I recall having problems hitting AI gen's and some of the higher evade DB mobs(db1,2,3).

Though the ip investment is quite low, basically you can keep everything else except maybe a PE/Full auto swap, dont even need to reperk.

I respecced out of it as i a cpl of years ago did a pre-rebalance optimization based on the thoughts that rebalance would be in soon :P

[Gridpain]

I respecced out of it as i a cpl of years ago did a pre-rebalance optimization based on the thoughts that rebalance would be in soon :P

Lolololol, your so naive, Q !

[Aimzor]

Am rethinking my setup at this point and prolly going into a RE/pistol combination dualwielded. Still need to try some stuff but after the rebalance all kinds of perks will open up since they (then) only req "ranged weapon" (instead of "Rifle" atm). It's a huge IP sick however :S

[Nomad]

Dual abandonment of the xan. Ok dmg and low reqs, plus you can pretend to be a real enfo and get teams.

[Tinypain]

Hmm...some ideas!

Heavy Weapons:

Amplified Sleek Cannon

Massive Bolt Charger


Grenade:

Sloth of the Xan


The MBC is kind of easy-mode alternative DD weapon for just about any profession in AO, but it's different and super easy to transition to as an agent.

The ASC is different and should do wonders against low AC mobs such as AI or RK.

The XoS I believe has been done before...but don't quote me on it. It's pretty standard and you'd want to go heavy duty crit setup. It wouldn't be very exciting, but I'm sure you'd get some decent DD out of it.


Personally of those three choice I'd go with MBC or ASC, which shouldn't require FP trader and instead FP crat and charm something for a little extra damage.