So I've been playing Asheron's Call on and off for years. I've always been a melee oriented player -- I love to hack and slash my way through dungeons and find that next great weapon.
Recently, I've been playing pretty hard for a few months and hit 275 on my two-handed character. I've gotten most of my XP augmentations (still need the innate attributes) and just a couple of luminance auras. I put together a pretty good legendary suit (non-set though) and a nice collection of weapons. However, despite this, I still feel that tier 8 content is pretty brutally hard without the help of a mage friend. Is a fully developed melee character with all augs/lums/legendary defender/whatever suit even viable at the true end game stuff? I know we have our niches, and I can tear through a non-caster dungeon like nobody's business, but the level 8 vulns and DOTs and wars tend to overwhelm me a lot. With my "mage" innates at 10/10 (focus/self) it seems so hard to live through the ineviable chain casting of a large group of mobs. Would it help to go heavy weap/shield so I can wear something magic absorbing?
To me the survivability feels somewhat backwards at this point (and always has, I suppose) where the mages are the real powerhouses with the ability to dish out massive damage AND recieve it.. the new Summon/Void combo that is popular has just reinforced this paradigm.
Any maxed out melees out there go through this problem? Should I just focus on my mage as my "main" for PvM and keep my melee around for PK/PKLite? Is this a balance problem or am I just looking at it from a wrong perspective and/or doing something wrong?
Any tips/advice appreciated!
Recently, I've been playing pretty hard for a few months and hit 275 on my two-handed character. I've gotten most of my XP augmentations (still need the innate attributes) and just a couple of luminance auras. I put together a pretty good legendary suit (non-set though) and a nice collection of weapons. However, despite this, I still feel that tier 8 content is pretty brutally hard without the help of a mage friend. Is a fully developed melee character with all augs/lums/legendary defender/whatever suit even viable at the true end game stuff? I know we have our niches, and I can tear through a non-caster dungeon like nobody's business, but the level 8 vulns and DOTs and wars tend to overwhelm me a lot. With my "mage" innates at 10/10 (focus/self) it seems so hard to live through the ineviable chain casting of a large group of mobs. Would it help to go heavy weap/shield so I can wear something magic absorbing?
To me the survivability feels somewhat backwards at this point (and always has, I suppose) where the mages are the real powerhouses with the ability to dish out massive damage AND recieve it.. the new Summon/Void combo that is popular has just reinforced this paradigm.
Any maxed out melees out there go through this problem? Should I just focus on my mage as my "main" for PvM and keep my melee around for PK/PKLite? Is this a balance problem or am I just looking at it from a wrong perspective and/or doing something wrong?
Any tips/advice appreciated!