Not a Guide: Melee Dex
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This is not a guide or how to. It's just some notes from leveling an alt and a melee build that I think new players might find helpful when they're planning a build and they want to read a wall of text.
I wanted to make a melee character and ended up choosing a Chadra with Dex/Int/Per maxed. I started as a Street Rat basically because everyone said it was the worst starter.
Using a Dagger with a cloth set and the basic street rat skills, the first three things I did were: get Verdant Regrowth from Sproutlings to protect my Dex/heal; get Battle Jump from Bullfrogs as a movement (Battle Jump because I planned on trying Battlemage set); get Chilling Touch from blue frogs (mostly because I found them first versus the fire frogs).
At this point I switched to unarmed with cloth. I tooled around the jungle with this build but really struggled killing anything without enough talent points to get Martial Mastery. Bought a Scimitar off the market because it was cheap and close by then picked up Bleeding Strike and Bloodlust from lizards and then Barbed Skin from Sproutlings. At this point I switched to Dex/Int/Con because I wanted bandages to work better than they were.
Scimitar, cloth set, Verdant Regrowth, Battle Jump, Strike Wounds, Rend Armor, Bleeding Strike, Barbed Skin, Bloodlust: Full cleared the southern Grokoton area picking up Spike Trap and dropping Battle Jump. Had almost no issued clearing this area. Talent points went down Dex, picking evasion, and then to Single Weapon Mastery. Also mana regen.
On the way to Bandits, I picked up Crippling Strike off Crabs and dropped Bleeding Strike - using Spike Trap for Bleed synergy with Bloodlust. I also made a bow to pull bandits. Full cleared the main bandit island without much trouble. Bandit Leaders were difficult, but I was able to kill em.
At this point in time I had made about 33k off farming and drops and there was a Battlemage set for 30k. Swapped to Battlemage and Rapier. (I did a bunch of testing with unarmed, scimitar and rapier. Rapier felt better and won out. Unarmed never felt good.)
The Battlemage stacks do not get increased or refreshed from mana over time costs (i.e. from Barbed Skin). After looking at 5 second CD skills I decided to get Cure Wounds because I already knew it and it could be used with medium armor. I built up and maintained Battlemage stacks with Verdant Regrowth and Cure Wounds Spam.
Rapier with Battlemage and: Cure Wounds, Verdant Regrowth, Spike Trap, Crippling Stirke, Strike Wounds, and Battle Jump. (Barbed Skin dropped sue to mana issues.) Getting the hang of Cure Wound spam took a little, but with 300 stacks of the Battlemage buff, I absolutely decimated all of the rest of the bandit camps. Four bandits at once could get rough, but never died and blew through all the rest of the POI. Leaders were still difficult because they stun and bad timing would end up reseting my Battlemage stacks.
Feeling confident, I skipped all other content and went strait to ogres. Ogre Brute hit me too hard with their sword attacks, but I was able to kill all the rest just fine. Dodging the ranged attacks from Witches an Druids made those super easy. I learned Empower from Druids and maintained Battlemage stacks with Empower, Verdant Regrowth, and Cure Wound (I picked up mana regen enchants to facilitate the spam). Dropped Battle Jump for Empower.
From here I decided to get Weaken from Obsidian Crabs in the volcano so that I could try Ogre again as well as the big dragons. I learned Protection from Fire for the volcano monsters. Both Dragonlings went down fairly easily though mountain was not super easy. Earth Elementals were fairly easy. Greater Earth Elemental was my first k/o since picking up Battlemage - too many stuns that would break my Battlemage stacks. Everything else in the volcano was easy to trivial except for the big dragons.
TLDR on big dragons: Weaken only has a 50% uptime for me and Ember Dragon hits like a truck. If I went back and practiced more I think I could maybe kill it by kiting between weakens, but oof, hits hard. Did not try a Mountain Dragon knowing that they do not hit quite as hard, but guessing it would still be too much (plus they also stun).
At this point, alt is probably benched. I will probably dust them off once Stone Skin can be learned and then I'll give the hard content another shot (and probably update here). Edit: I wont do this since Stone Skin is light armor only >.<
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very nice not a guide
