TLDR: I will stop ATing at lvl 36!!!

Let me start by saying this is all my opinion and may be completely wrong but I want to lay my thoughts out to provoke a discussion and hear the community's opinions. We all know ATing will be less than pleasurable on a Mins and although I plan on subjecting myself to this masochism, I've tried to figure out what is the break point in which I feel the pain is not worth the reward.

AGAIN, MY OPINION!

First I try to figure out my goals, and I see it as three scenarios achievable with FULL AT to lvl 48. Full AT to 48 will give you an extra 77 points to play with. AT to 36 will give you 44 points to play with.

50 Instruments is a must with all my specs for that final ablative.

With Full AT to 48:
A.) 8v8 spec = 50 Instruments / 44 Thrust (for side snare) / 8 Stealth.
B.) Solo Slash Melee Oriented Spec = 50 Instruments / 37 Slash / 25 Stealth (minimum for wall climb)
C.) Solo/Small Stealth Grp Spec = 50 Instruments / 29 Slash (minimum for Amy anytime skill) / 33 Stealth

I am going Highlander for the higher con with Slash spec in mind, but want to have the option to go 8v8 Thrust spec down the road should I desire the alternative.

A.) 8v8 spec = 50 Inst / 44 Thrust / 8 Stealth
Why would I need those 8 stealth points, ever, they do nothing in my opinion, this is not a stealth spec! So my goal is 50 Inst / 44 Thrust. You can achieve 50 Instruments / 44 Thrust / 0 Stealth by ATing to 36. Anything beyond 36, all you are doing is adding points to stealth, which will never get above 8. Conclusion: 8v8 Spec of 50 Inst / 44 Thrust / 0 Stealth is achievable with ATing to only lvl 36.

B.) Solo Slash Melee Spec = 50 Inst / 37 Slash / 25 Stealth
With this spec, I want to avoid the zerg, not engage in stealth wars. I will move slower in stealth, but I plan on being visible and running at speed 5/6 with a pet as much as possible. I will jump the mile gate walls and avoid the bottle neck gate as much as possible. Let's face it, mins are not melee oriented characters. We are on a different dmg. table than melee toons and don't benefit as much from each additional level we raise our melee spec. Personally I think going up 8 points from 29 to 37 will start to make a noticeable difference, not huge, but enough to investigate. If you stop ATing at lvl 36, you can achieve 36 Slash. The difference between 36 and 37 Slash, in my opinion will be negligible. Conclusion: 50 Inst / 36 Slash / 25 Stealth is achievable with ATing to only lvl 36.

C.) Solo/Small Stealth Grp Spec = 50 Inst / 29 Slash / 33 Stealth
I feel you should go 29 Slash to get the anytime style 'Amy.' I have heard arguments this spec is appealing because you can get to composite 50 stealth by rr 7, as opposed to rr 9. The journey to rr 7 is much more obtainable than rr 9, so 50 composite stealth is a more obtainable goal with this spec. If 50 composite stealth sooner than later is your goal, then full AT may be your answer, but if you stop ATing at 36 you can achieve, 50 Inst / 29 Slash / 32 Stealth.

My whole point to all of this is I think ATing to level 36 is much more doable/less painful and it gives you very close to max skills obtainable by ATing to 48. The additional time and effort to AT from 36 to 48 will be substantially more than getting from 1-36 and in my opinion has reached diminishing returns. This is not a min/max perspective. This is coming from the perspective of, I am 15 years older now, married with kids and full time job and want to have a more casual experience yet still try and get as much of an edge as my time allows.

This, of course, ignores the scenario of having a group/guild carry you, PL you or manipulate respec stones. I will most likely be soloing due to unreliable and sporadic play times and a 5 month old baby always on the verge of a meltdown.

In conclusion, I will be going with option B. 50 Inst / 36 Slash / 25 Stealth with AT to lvl 36 on my highlander (10con/15charisma)

I'd love to hear yall's thoughts (Nezz I'm looking at you!) on my Paper DAoC. The countdown has begun and pulled me back in.

/Cheers

- Shep

I think you've done a pretty good breakdown, so I'll just a few more points and opinions.

1) 44 Thrust:
This seems very good on paper but I don't think it will be nearly that good in reality. It requires a two part chain to pull off this snare that you are trying to land with a Minstrel's defense penetration - not good. The first skill is a detaunt without any hit bonus so assuming you attack someone with no defense skills and equal armor to weapon bonus you're still going to miss like 17.5% of the time with Tranquillize. Honestly I think this got popular on Genesis because the hit/miss formulas were way off so it was easier to do.

TLDR: I wouldn't base any autotraining decisions on getting this - especially if you're not sure if you want to 8v8 or solo (which would require switching specs and maybe gear from slash to thrust).

2) The case for no autotraining:
This is probably where I am going to land. First, as you said, it's been a long time since the 'ol days and now I work 40-50 hours a week, live with my GF and just can't see myself actually playing without instruments even to 36. Only some PL / Guild support could change that. Also I will be out of town launch weekend so I'll miss the first couple days - without the option to take any time off work either

I want to mostly solo, and with my thoughts on Thrust above this lands me either with:
29 Slash, 31 Stealth vs your 29 Slash, 33 Stealth
34 Slash, 25 Stealth vs your 36 Slash, 25 Stealth

I can tell you that I'm pretty sure my Minstrel will hit like a wet noodle regardless of whether I have 29 or 37 Slash. I played for a period with 50 + 13 Slash in beta and thought the damage was pretty sub par. I just don't think +2 in either Slash or Stealth is worth that pain (to me).

Another thing to consider is that composite 50 Stealth won't be all that great with See Hidden - by the time you get enough RR to have 50 there will be plenty of SB and NS with See Hidden and it won't matter. I'm going to take a similar approach to you and avoid the stealth wars where I can.

Of course the perfectionist in my wants all those AT points but I've been slowly dialing back the hardcore gamer in me over the years to the point I can probably get by without them.

Literally just PMed you before I saw you post this. Disregard PM. Thanks for the input!

/Cheers

- Shep

So it sounds like you're going 50/29slash/31stealth?

ShepDex wrote:So it sounds like you're going 50/29slash/31stealth?

Probably 50 Instruments, 34 Slash, 25 Stealth. If I find that there is a huge difference between 31 and 25 stealth against non-stealthers maybe I will flip but I plan to do most of my play around my pet.

Nezix wrote:1) 44 Thrust:
This seems very good on paper but I don't think it will be nearly that good in reality. It requires a two part chain to pull off this snare that you are trying to land with a Minstrel's defense penetration - not good. The first skill is a detaunt without any hit bonus so assuming you attack someone with no defense skills and equal armor to weapon bonus you're still going to miss like 17.5% of the time with Tranquillize. Honestly I think this got popular on Genesis because the hit/miss formulas were way off so it was easier to do.

Snare chain has nothing to do with defense penetration unless you try to snare a tank from their front and why would you ever do that? As a minstrel you have 2 uses of snare;
1- You play as interrupter on the frontline and you may wanna snare some casters/healers to keep them in the interrupt range if they are trying to kite as a group. Guess what... they have no defense to penetrate.
2- Your group is kiting or retreating after a bad engagement and you wanna peel from your casters/healers. If they are chasing someone else, you are either behind the target you wanna snare or you have a safe positioning to flute-mezz a couple of them. Only zerkers and bms can evade attacks from behind and they should never be your priority anyways.

@ShepDex
A tiny bit of con from highlander will not change anything while soloing, but quick demezz from saracen in group will do. If you hate AT then don't do it but it's not hard at all if you avoid solo leveling. I would fully AT any toon that I'm planning to play for years. 36 to 48 doesn't take that long.

So scary issue I posted to Issue Tracker just now at:

https://uthgard.org/tracker/issue/2755/

Even with Full AT, Mins does not currently have enough points to get to 50 instruments/44thrust. Nixian builder gives you 2223 points and uthgard currently only give you 2173. BEWARE, AT MAY BE BUSTED and not worth it at all!!!!

If this is not fixed, I will not longer be ATing at all!

Vote on issue tracker above please to get this in front of the Uthgard team.

Just created a fresh minstrel and I got 2223 points plus level 12 instruments. It's fully AT and nothing wrong with it.

https://uthgard.org/tracker/issue/2452/ ... er_Respecs

Maybe its that. No idea

Yes it should be about insta30. When you respec 77 points go into your AT line (which is instruments here). Since he has 50 points missing, 27 points were autotrained (77-27=50) but he didn't get the AT points after level 28.

you guys are so smart. Maybe this is the case, ill roll a fresh toon and try that, i used my old mins thats been around since start fo beta.

So i fall under C. with my stealth minstrel. I've come to the conclusion that it's only worth it to AT to 40. Reminder, 1-40xp takes the same xp time as 41-50. So you're essentially cutting your AT time in half because the last half is simply not worth the extra 1 point into slash.

Play with the numbers yourself here (be sure to click "Autotrains : Instruments" at the top: http://genuapp.appspot.com/char/class/minstrel.html

Having 29slash really is a must here. You could go lower but the melee style dmg is abysmal if you don't have amethyst slash. Every spec needs at least 29slash. Composite 49/50 stealth is a must as well. Anything below and you might as well not run stealth.

From rr1-5: 44inst, 35stealth, 35slash. AT doesn't matter much here, but again i will be AT'ing to 40. This is key, you can't get both 50inst, composite 49/50 stealth, AND 29slash below RR5. Gimping stealth or slash really screws you so you kind of have to lower instruments. All you lose here is going from red to yellow ablative buff.

RR6+: 50inst, 33stealth, 29slash. Yes stealth will be 49, but it won't be that noticeable. This spec will be perfect at RR7.

Biggest assumption is RR7 is fairly obtainable at 1.7mil rps. This is the goal to run an optimal stealth minstrel spec.

If you AT to 40: At RR7 Spec will be 50inst, 33stealth, 29slash. Every RR after only bumps up your slash up by 1 point which is negligible. So at RR10 spec will be 50inst, 30stealth, 32slash.

If you AT to 50: At RR7 Spec will be 50inst, 33stealth, 30slash (the math works out so that you can't put another point into stealth to run this spec at rr6, so it has to go into slash). So At RR10 spec will be 50inst, 30stealth, 33slash.

TLDR: If stealth minstrel, you only need to AT to 40 unless you want 1 extra point in slash. If you only AT to 36 then you need RR8 to have the optimal spec. The RP diff between RR7 and RR8 is another 1mil and is too large. Or just byass all this crap and get a PL to 50 and AT the whole way.

As a long time stealth minstrel, I can tell you that every point you can get into stealth does matter. With that said, I'll be ATing to level 40. There's literally no point in going to 48 for one more point into Slash. I bet it's less than 10 weaponskill, and you'd have to be like RR11 to even get 51 composite spec. Haha.

50inst / 33 stealth / 29 weapon

Best AT bang for buck would be in my opinion:

AT to 12: 35 wep/25 stealth/50 inst (compared to 34 wep for only 12 AT levels) for people not wanting to AT this is good alt.

AT to 20: 29 wep/32 stealth/50 inst (compared to 31 stealth and this gets 50 comp stealth RR8) with tasks I am going this route, not much harder than above.

AT to 36: 44wep/50 inst - good in 8v8 but no stealth leaves a lot of play options out and with above builds can still use slash snare and the climb walls can be used time to time in 8man.

I prefer the top 2 listed builds as having climb walls is nice and stealth utility for more play options.

On uthgard 1.0 I did solo a full AT minstrel and after I hit 50 server got wiped, I think it took almost half year with switching between classes. At same time I was also full AT scout, I have to admit the scout was easier to level if you can afford the arrows/gear. Bringing that heal pet across zones and needing to go back if it died was worst. Once I hit around 40 on scout even with full AT pgy goblins was easy mode leveling. On minstrel even with heal pet if wearing crap gear that pet isn't going to keep you up.

The trade-off with AT is always effort (how much more time will I spend with full AT) vs. benefits (free points).
Since you will spend much more time actually being lvl 50 than reaching it (if you intend on sticking to the game/char that is), ATing becomes even more attractive.

I would simply not make a minstrel on release. Time is better spent lvling a cabby, for example (or a good group char), and then powerleveling your minstrel via your guild (or if you're not in a guild, via a mutual agreement with someone else). Thus, you have a farm/raid char and a full AT minstrel. In other words, you can have your cake and eat it, too.