Best PvM build

[herpderp]

What are the most useful skills for PvM anymore? I haven't played in quite a few years, since AoS - and I'm curious which are the most powerful for soloing mobs.

Thanks

[Mita]

Short Answer: ALL SKILLZ

Single MOST effective skills/spells for stronger mobiles:
Discordance
Wraith Form / Vampiric Embrace
Warriors: Armor Ignor / Double Strike / Consecrate Weapon (when low mana)
Mages: Corpse Skin + Fireball spam / lightning spam
Taming (greater dragon with high HP, strength, wrestling, as best tank) (or a doni pet...)

Sampire builds are overall best in PvM.

Here are some PvM spells/skills and their uses though.

Hiding
 - When running from mobs, if you turn around a corner/leave line of sight, you can insta hide to drop aggro. Good for luring mobs slowly or just to get away.
 - Also good for sneaking past certain areas via Stealth and ninjutsu's Shadow Jump.
 - Useful in combo with guarding pets when going through teleporters so that mobs attack pet.
 - Or if you just want to log out somewhere out in the wild...
Stealth
 - Duh, the above. You want to get to at least 100.0 though or it wont be reliably safe.
Shadow Jump [ninjutsu]
 - Faster then stealth at the cost of mana, but also allows you to teleport as though using the teleport spell. You can actually cross rivers this way.
Invisibility [magery]
 - Spell to hide, incase you can't hide with the skill where you are. You may hide immediatly after being hidden by this spell.

Detecting Hidden
 - Some mobiles hide. Using the skill costs no mana, but you could cast spells too.
 - Good for treasure hunters (lockpickers)
Tracking
 - Even better then detecting hidden. This points to where the mobile is hiding.

Tailoring
 - To repaire stuff on-the-go.
Tinkering
 - To make tools on-the-go. (bring about 50 ingots)

Music
 - cuase the next 2 skills fail without it.
Peacemaking
 - Mostly useful for taming to prevent being *hurt*. Easy to raise.
Discordance
 - Lowers Mobile (PvM only) skills by 10% or something like that. Short terms: Easier to hit mobile, harder for mobile to hit you.

Alchemy
 - Increases the effectiveness of potions. I don't much use potions in PvM though.
Anatomy
 - Slight damage increase for weapons.
 - Major bonus for healing with bandaids. (very important here)
Tactics
 - Major damage bonus for weapons.
Lumberjacking
 - slight damage bonus for axe tpye weapons

Swordsman / MaceFighting / Fencing
 - Hit Chance
 - Evade Chance
Wrestling
 - Evade Chance (in case you use a book or are disarmed)
Archery / Throwing
 - Some creatures are just easier to use archery.

Healing
 - Bandaids rock for healing.
Parrying
 - chance to negate damage taken to 0, up to 36% with a shield (and 0 bushido)
Resisting Spells
 - chance to 'evade' certain spells like poison or curse, or otherwise lower effects of many, many spells


Evaluating Int
 - Magery Spell Damage
Inscription
 - slight magery spell damage bonus
Spirit Speaking
 - Necromancy damage and form-leech effectiveness
Focus
 - Slight mana and stamina regeneration.
Meditation
 - manage regeneration.

Poisoning
 - Magery poison spells and weapon poison abilities increase poison level with skill.

Animal Taming
 - Pets = good tank and good 2nd source of damage.
Veterinary
 - Healing (bandaids) for the pet.
Animal Lore
 - Increases Vetting heal amounts and control chance slightly.

:: Bushido ::
Bushido has an active Parrying effect. Those with bushido should use a 2H weapon to have a 33% block chance, whereas those without bushido would have a 36% while holding a shield.
It also has a luck effect and damage increase (up to 1000 luck and 100% DI) using the honor system.
Lightning Strike
 - Chance to do more dmg and huge hit chance increase. This is the signiture move of 'Sampire' builds in PvM as most builds don't include much hit chance increase.
Evasion
 - If you really want to bother, evasion can be awsome in evading 'big' spells or dragon breath attacks.

:: Ninjutsu ::
ShadowJump
 - I said it above in the hiding section.
Mirror Image
 - Increases the amount of damage you can take by redirecting some of it.
Animal Form
 - Snake poisons, wolf/llama run at mount speeds...

:: Chivalry ::
Healing or curing with chivarly, or removing curses requires high karma, but these spells are good no matter what.
Devine Fury
 - Restores 100% stamina and temporarily increases swing speed at a minor defence chance penalty.
Consecrate Weapon
 - Weapon will do 100% damage type of the receiving target's lowest resist. Easily doubles damage in most cases.
Enemy of One
 - Dangerouse in large varying mobs, but good versus single mobile types. Raises damage to next hit type, raises damage taken by al other types.

:: Necromancy ::
Animate Dead
 - Can animate 3 corpses at once. Does not count toward pet control slots.
Wraith Form
 - Leeches 100% damage you deal to mana.
Vampiric Embrace
 - Leeches 100% damage you do to health, and grants minor poison immunity. Garlic spells hurt you more and fire resist lowers though.
Painspike
 - for those pesky all high resist mobs when its time to get the kill hit.
Wither
 - for groups of mobs in combination with wraith form
Corpse Skin
 - lowers target fire resist if already the weakest resist to do more dmg
 - great in combo fire Fireball [magery]
Curse Weapon
 - temporary 100% life leech for weapons. lenght increases with bad karma.

:: SpellWeaving ::
Summon Fey/Imp
 - 1 slot each, damaging and easy summon/hard dispell when using high crystals
Healing... whatever the spell is...
 - precast this one on you when you know you'll need the constant heals, or on you pet
immolating weapon
 - increases damage for weapons

Magery basically uses
Greater Heal
Cure / Greater Cure
Curse
Fireball / Lightning
Explosion
Teleport
Invisibility
Recall / Gate Travel / Mark (rune)
energy vortex

I've found very little uses for mysticism really, but I heard the summon collossus is a good tank.






Wanna talk about play-builds? You can combine these on pandora, but typically its like this:

Paladin / Ninja Palladin
Focus is on tankability. Chivalry for heal/cure, Healing (bandaids). Parrying a must. Mirror Image if you have ninjutsu. Damage is augmented through Consecrate Weapon.
It is the most basic play style in UO, but still effective. I once saw a ninja build on a 740.0 cap shard solo a greater dragon paragon. Horribly long fight though. Sampires do it much faster.

Try the 'Sampire' basics
Vampiric Embrace
Lumberjacking + Double Axe (with mana leech, damage, swing speed) OR
Bladed Staff (to spam armore ignore for high resist mobs)
Sampires focus on high damage output at reliable accuracy and fast swing speeds while in vampiric form in order to heal. Bandaids will help tremendously though.

Try the 'Tamer Mage' basics
Greater Dragon (pet) tanks damage and does a lot of damage himself
Vet the pet every 2 seconds, or about every 1-3 spells you cast.
If pet needs it, you can greater heal between vets twice.
Poison Field on mobiles that use magery to posion your pet. They will keep curing instead of using those nasty spells.
Get into Wraith Form for mana leech, cast corpse skin where usefull, animate dead, and fireball or lightning spam.
Equipment is best with high Spell Damage Increase and/or Slayer Spellbooks, but can be done with spellchanneling weappons.
This is the build I like to use for PvM becuase I rarely need new equipment, or even to repair as I never really take hits. No weapons means no repairs for that either. Even if I run out of bandaids, I can heal my pet with magery. It allows me to be out and about for long periods of time without going to town.

[Rippster]

Nice, thanks for posting that.  

[King Kong]

Great post Mita.

Thank you

[herpderp]

Awesome and informative post. Saved.

Thanks!!

[Mita]

np
ty for the great response. ^_6

Here are some more...

:: Mystism ::
Enchant
 - Temporailly adds hit spell effect + spell channeling to weapon.
 - I would imagine it a great addition to bosses or otherwise strong-resists mobiles.

Cleansing Winds
 - Cures, Removes Curses, and Heals with one cast. Use it to cure/remove curse yourself.

Healing Stone
 - Like having a healing potion you can use without needing an empty hand.

Spell Plague
 - Not really that useful in PvM. Great for PvP though.

Spell Trigger
 - Usually used to store Spell Plague for PvP.

Rising Colossus
 - Usefull summon for trouble mobiles, as it is such a great tank.


:: Spell Weaving ::
Arcane Circle
 - Makes all spell weaving spells more potent. Do not underestimate.
 - - Summons harder to dispell, summon more (1+crystal lvl) at a time
 - - Healing will last longer and heal more damage per 'hit'
 - - Buffs / Debuffs last longer
 - - damaging spells do more damage

Arcane Empowerment
 - enhances healing and damaging spells and summons toughness temporarily

Gift of Renewal
 - Heals multiple times for a duration based on skill and crystal lvl. Amount scaled too.
 - Great for pre-casting when about to fight a hard hitting mobile or whn running through large mobs.

Immolating Weapon
 - Adds fire damage to weapon temporarily.
 - Great in combo with corpse skin + consecrate weapon or while using armor ignor / doubble strike

Attunement
 - temporarily absorbs a portion of melee damage
 - useful against hard hitting mobs, large mobs, PvP

Thunderstorm
 - PvP usefulness is questionable. *may* cuase a faster cast recovery penalty to target.

Nature's Fury
 - The overall best Summons.

Summon Fey
 - Better than imps
 - Good if crystal level 2+ as will require at most 2 summons to summon the max number.
 - Good as temporary guard while afk, or to use against a single mob.

Essence of Wind
 - Good for the penalties it applies to enemies hit. Swing Speed & Faster Cast

Dryad Allure
 - Tames humanoid creatures. Can be useful in luring mobs to help fight harder mobs.

Ethereal Voyage
 - Mobiles cannot attack while active.
 - Great for entering a famously dangerous entrance 'destard' or running past mobs.

Word of Death
 - Best used against mobs with high resists and high hp (like... 50k hp) while holding a high lvl crystal. Creature needs to be under a percentage of its max hp for the spell to be effective. Every lvl of crystal adds 5% to the minimum hp threshhold. (1:5%, 2:10%, 3:15%, etc)