MRD Builds

[VydarrTyr]

My current build is balanced. There's not much demand for Marauders, and my other two rank 50 classes are Conj/Thm. If I want to participate in a dungeon, I've got to be able to quickly switch to Conj/Thm.

That means I can't stack points into physical attributes. So I keep everything relatively balanced, use traits to swing my attributes, and use food to supplement. That means I can't min-max anything. Which is a bummer. But that's what I get for leveling Conj/Thm and not Arc.

It is correct. DEX actually is more of a defensive attrubute right now, increasing your parry and evade rate alongside with critical hits. About increasing accuracy, its relative...because it increases accuracy "only", which will make you have less "misses", but it does not affect the amount of "evades" the monster do since its related to them...i once had 120 DEX for tests...once your DEX reaches crazy values you will notice you barely miss...but at same time the monster will start evading much more often since evade can only be triggered when you actually hit it...so there will be no real increase accuracy wise...would be much better leave accuracy to food and actions and thinking that DEX is purely defensive.

But as defensive attribute DEX rocks...when i played MRD as DD i always liked much more using light armor (cloth/leather) instead of heavy armor...with high eva and decent DEX nothing can touch you. Very often, if monsters were good enough to make fight last until steadfast trigger, it was over.

This.

Dex seems to help a little with hit rate, but not nearly as much as getting an HQ Engraved Bhuj. But as you increase Dex, there seems to be a noticeable difference in evasion/parrying.

When I had my Dex at 110, I was a parry-->Fracture machine. I even started putting Haymaker/Jarring Strike on my bar.

The problem for Marauder, of course, is getting Steadfast to pop. You've basically got to make a choice. You can hold still to get Steadfast to pop, or you can re-position yourself to take advantage of Marauder's conal AoE, like Broad Swing, which creates an awesome amount of TP. But you can't do both.

But with Dex that high, I didn't need Steadfast to parry. If it did pop, it was usually an instant parry. But if it didn't, I still parried like crazy (even while wearing a hauby). And I also got to move around and build TP.

People seem to think of Marauder as a fat dude with lots of HP who hits hard. But a high Dex Marauder is a completely different animal. You're not going to get as much damage mitigation as a Glad using a shield, but you're going to do more DPS, and your innate counters will stop the mob from using its WS. If Marauder had a Heavy Shot type attack that depleted the mob's TP, we'd be an anti-WS tank.

[VydarrTyr]

elements help food work better.

True.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm willing to bet 1 moko grass that the elemental link for food goes away soon. They're simplifying things, and food attributes right now are so confusing that you can only figure out how they work if you have a chart open in another window. In my opinion, elemental affinity seems like a pretty good bet to get dropped.

[Rentahamster]

True.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm willing to bet 1 moko grass that the elemental link for food goes away soon. They're simplifying things, and food attributes right now are so confusing that you can only figure out how they work if you have a chart open in another window. In my opinion, elemental affinity seems like a pretty good bet to get dropped.

I hope so. Having food be dependent on stats that take forever to switch around is unnecessarily complicated and inconvenient.

[VydarrTyr]

Totally agree.

And as I said above, I'm having trouble just switching my stats around to be useful as a DoM, and also level my DoW. That doesn't even take into consideration food effects.

[Lienn]

Indeed. I like the idea behind this food system...but i'd rather it not only showing the optimal requeriments but, instead of optimal rank it having optimal attribute...like instead of a r10, r20, r30, r40 and r50 food for STR + HP, we having one optimal for 10 STR, 20 STR, 30 STR, 40 STR...this way the player could see the optimal attributes of the food and pick the one that match his allotment to be able to always have a food with optimal effect for him.

[Holyomen]

Again, elemental stats don't mean anything when it comes to tanking.
If you're a tank you want HP and DEF, so the food you would eat is Knight's Bread.
However it would be counter productive to lower your VIT under 90 so that you could get the "special effect".

In all my tanking, soloing, and testing, I have not see any significant difference in DEX increasing my ability to land hits, evade attacks, or parry. So for now I say it is broken and a waste of points beyond your base.

When it comes to Accuracy and Evasion the greatest factor is your level vs the mob's level.
Beyond that it will be your weapon, armor and your abilities that enhance your ability to deal damage and take it.

[VydarrTyr]

Again, elemental stats don't mean anything when it comes to tanking.
If you're a tank you want HP and DEF, so the food you would eat is Knight's Bread.
However it would be counter productive to lower your VIT under 90 so that you could get the "special effect".

Well, yeah. But would it be counter-productive to set your elemental affinity so that you get a "special effect"? I mean, you haven't allocated any points into any elements. Why not put some of those unused points into Wind so that you more benefit from Knight's Bread?

[Scape]

I totally understand the not caring because the stats, for the most part, don't do very much.. or anything at all. But, it seems a bit silly to not even allot any at all just because of that. We can speculate all want on how useless they are, but we do not know 100% for sure they they really do absolutely nothing. I would rather just throw them wherever and at least hope it does something lol. It does no harm at least, and if anything actually will help you in one way or another.

has anyone done testing to see if it helps with magic resistance? I thought I read somewhere that they will raise the resistance of the opposing element. Like having a high Earth elemental property would lower your damage to Water attacks or something. Lots of enemies also have elemental properties to their regular attacks too.

[Akashi]

Interesting, so far both of the (full) builds displayed are tanking MRDs. Any DD ones out there?

[Valor]

I've seen a couple STR MRDs, their hits are pretty amazing. Usually Lots of STR, DEX, and then whatever in VIT.

I keep my MRD build for everything else when I rank up, because I find that if I adjust my play-style a little bit, then I don't really have a problem with MP for my caster classes.

I personal just think of myself as an Off-tank/Crowd Control player. Because nothing makes me happier than saving the mages by popping warmonger than doing a quick chainspell and res on the tank.

Now that I think about it, I probably don't play my MRD 'right'. But I'll be damned if it isn't fun! Kamikaze Build!