New Brigand trying to understand class - Need Help

[Kitteh]

<p>Hi.</p><p>So, after setting my main up as a Fury, I have decided that I want to play melee dps in my offtime and have chose the Brigand after researching that they have very good soloability.</p><p>I understand the basics (i.e. STR is the most important stat followed by AGI, STAM, etc) but I am still confused when it comes to weapons. I don't really know how to pose this question other than I have no idea what the heck is going on when it comes to them. I know dual weilding is a given.</p><p>  1.) Since we use piercing and slashing, should I have one of each? Should one go in offhand and the other in mainhand or does it make a difference?</p><p>  2.) What is the deal with slower weapons vs faster weapons? Does it matter which hand I have them in?</p><p>  3.) Beside where is says Damage: (for example) 32-92, what does "Rating" mean?</p><p>  4.) Should I choose weapons with better stats over damage, or damage over stats?</p><p>As for AA's, I plan on soloing most of the time. Is there a reccomended spec for soloing?</p><p>Which deity is best for a brigand?</p><p>Thanks guys!</p>

[Backpayne]

<p>1.) Since we use piercing and slashing, should I have one of each? <span style="color: #ff0000;">Should one go in offhand and the other in mainhand or does it make a difference? - Your epic is slashing. Some of the best off-hand weapons in the game (from raids anyway) are piercing.  Try to keep both skills maxed out.</span></p><p>2.) What is the deal with slower weapons vs faster weapons? Does it matter which hand I have them in? - <span style="color: #ff0000;">When you dual weild, you get a delay penalty.  Faster weapons reduce the amount of time you have between auto-attacks to get Combat Arts in.  Aim for a 3-4sec delay with a decent haste item (Such as the Fearless/Dauntless shard armor set from TSO @ L80).  Keep both weapons at the same delay so that you don't have to worry about timing both to get your auto-attacks in.</span></p><p>3.) Beside where is says Damage: (for example) 32-92, what does "Rating" mean? - <span style="color: #ff0000;">Rating is average damage of the weapon.</span></p><p>4.) Should I choose weapons with better stats over damage, or damage over stats? - <span style="color: #ff0000;">Look for a weapon with a high max damage and a 3-4sec delay.</span></p><p>As for AA's, I plan on soloing most of the time. Is there a reccomended spec for soloing?  - <span style="color: #ff0000;">Check the "How to a Brigand" post on eq2flames.  It has a really good write-up on the AA spec's.</span></p><p>Which deity is best for a brigand? - <span style="color: #ff0000;">Rallos Zek</span></p>

[Kitteh]

<p>Hey, thanks for the reply. I am still confused about the peircing vrs slashing question, though. Maybe I can be a little more specific here.</p><p>Since I am a beginning Brigand, and levelling is very fast, should I have a piercing weapon AND slashing weapon so that I can raise both skills at once? If not, how is it possible to raise both skills without it taking forever? Would disabling combat experience be a good thing to do to make sure I get the most skillups on piercing and slashing before I level?</p><p>I hope this was a little more clear.</p>

[Dareena]

<p>Unless you're a brigand who's using the Wisdom line, which many don't, then you're going to be usually dual wielding.  I would honestly suggest that you dual wield a slashing in one hand and a piercing in the other. </p><p>I was given this advice in my lower levels and I ignored it back then.  Then once I was in my 60's, I realized that I couldn't wield a lot of the good brigand weapons in T8.  So I took the old 1.2 delay falchions and auto attacked on SS spiders for around x4 hours to get my skill up to maximum.  Though in hind sight, I really should have been auto attacking on a training dummy for the skill increases.</p><p>The point is that there are a lot of good top in weapons in both categories.  And some raid mobs below T8 are completely immune to either slashing or piercing.  Thus making it a virtual requirement for a brigand to be skilled in both.</p><p><em>EDIT</em></p><p>And for deities, you're going to want to switch over to Anashti Sul once she becomes unlocked on your server.  From the Test reports, she is clearly the new god for all evil classes that are looking to DPS.  But until then, Zek is a standard deity choice for many brigands.  Though I myself use Cazic Thule.</p>

[jaguarjp]

<p><cite>Kitteh wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hey, thanks for the reply. I am still confused about the peircing vrs slashing question, though. Maybe I can be a little more specific here.</p><p>Since I am a beginning Brigand, and levelling is very fast, should I have a piercing weapon AND slashing weapon so that I can raise both skills at once? If not, how is it possible to raise both skills without it taking forever? Would disabling combat experience be a good thing to do to make sure I get the most skillups on piercing and slashing before I level?</p><p>I hope this was a little more clear.</p></blockquote><p>Here's what you need to ask yourself: do you want to be level 80 as fast as you can, and if so, are there other people willing to help you stay alive to get there? If so, don't bother locking combat XP.</p><p>However, if you want to be a powerful Brigand from about level 20 on up, then you ought to lock combat XP ASAP, quest as much as possible, and try to get a good ratio of achievement points : character level. This way, if you need to solo, you won't feel gimpy.</p><p>My own strategy was that upon leveling, the first thing I did was get my Slashing, Piercing, Defense, Parry, and Focus capped for that level. Then I resumed questing, making sure to pull with a ranged item until Ranged was maxed. Whenever I had some time, I would cap Safe Fall.</p><p>Make no mistake, I am nitpicky when it comes to skills, so I was just playing the game the way I enjoyed it. If you don't enjoy staying on top of your skills, don't worry about it. Just play the game the way YOU enjoy it, because if it feels too much like a chore, then, well, it's not nearly as fun.</p>

[lazlo1]

<p>Ima 80/185 raiding brigand, so options may vary:</p><p>Dont worry about timing CAs and AutoAttack its over rated, just spam CAs and get the weapons with the best damage rating possible.  Slower it better.  Most the good later pokers are 4s.  One of each type if you buy them, otherwise whatever you get that is best.  Get stats from other gear.</p><p>Its easy to max skills along the way.</p><p>Dont forget to use poisons, esp the red one. At 80 they do a good percent of my zonewide parse. ( I do 8k ish zonewide on palace raid trash )</p><p>I would not lock combat since they changed quests to give AA even if grey. I would focus on killing named guys when you are the right level and just level. Grey quest are very easy and give exactly the same AA. Its easy to back fill AAs with grey quest imho.</p><p>AAs - get walk the plank first, its nice. I run 2 builds max dps for raids and guild groups and a build with FD from the int line for soloing and pugs. I dont do a tanking build some do. I dont think I have ever used defensive stance lol.</p><p>Have fun! Brigands are a great to solo, group and raid.</p><p>Brigands strength is single target, stun locked, massive debuf, kill them quick.... if not dead yet snare run till CAs refresh. repeat.</p><p>Brigands weakness is groups , we have 1 crappy blue aoe.</p>

[Kitteh]

<p>Ok, does it matter which hand I have the piercing weapon and slashing weapon in? Like, should I have slashing in mainhand and piercing in offhand?</p>

[DwarvesR]

<p>I don't think it "actually" matters, but anecdotally, whenever I DW the mainhand weapon seems to skill up faster, so I'll when that weapon caps, I swap the hands until the 2nd caps out also.</p><p>Beyond that it doesn't matter -- CA's aren't weapon based so you won't do any more or less damage with them based on what's in which hand.</p>

[Wolfknight]

<p>Kitt: I would recommend to get a slash and a pierce whenever possible, but try to balance  it with some of the better weapons you can find. My Brig is 40, and I've been mostly finding pierce weaps, though I'm going to try to get some slashers soon.</p><p>As to Deities:</p><p><a href="http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Gods" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Gods</a></p><p>Personally I chose Bristlebane, but I made my choice for RP reasons, rather than for stats. (Rykoo is more of a trickster, rather than straight up evil)</p>

[Turb]

<p><cite>Jonna@Befallen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Beyond that it doesn't matter -- CA's aren't weapon based so you won't do any more or less damage with them based on what's in which hand.</p></blockquote><p>Yeah, but just like melee to-hit, if you don't have the weapon skill, the CAs won't land much. </p><p>I prefer to use two weapons of the same type, which given the myth is slashing, means slashing.   I can then focus on getting +slashing gear, for the (little) extra help that gives.</p>

[jesman]

<p>I saw this thread and I did read the info on eq2flames but I had one quick question.  On the Rogue AA is it better to start with agi or the strength line.  I have been told AGI should be the priority.</p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>Elvok@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I saw this thread and I did read the info on eq2flames but I had one quick question. On the Rogue AA is it better to start with agi or the strength line. I have been told AGI should be the priority.</p></blockquote><p>Personally i started with STR. I think at those low levels the crits give me most.  Otherwise it doesnt matter to much, its so easy to get AA between 10 and 30.</p>

[Dareena]

<p>No matter which line you want to take, your first priority should be spending at least x5 AA into the Agility line.  This will let you get the Walk the Plank ability.  It's a definite must for a brigand since it will help you get off your rear attacks more often.</p><p>If you wanted to go x5 Agility and then finish Strength, then that's fine.  But just make sure that you grab WTP ASAP.  I didn't initially and have kicked myself for making life unneccessarily hard (in those days).</p>

[TheSpin]

<p><cite>lazlo1 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ima 80/185 raiding brigand, so options may vary:</p><p>Dont worry about timing CAs and AutoAttack its over rated, just spam CAs and get the weapons with the best damage rating possible.  Slower it better.  Most the good later pokers are 4s.  One of each type if you buy them, otherwise whatever you get that is best.  Get stats from other gear.</p><p>Its easy to max skills along the way.</p><p>Dont forget to use poisons, esp the red one. At 80 they do a good percent of my zonewide parse. ( I do 8k ish zonewide on palace raid trash )</p><p>I would not lock combat since they changed quests to give AA even if grey. I would focus on killing named guys when you are the right level and just level. Grey quest are very easy and give exactly the same AA. Its easy to back fill AAs with grey quest imho.</p><p>AAs - get walk the plank first, its nice. I run 2 builds max dps for raids and guild groups and a build with FD from the int line for soloing and pugs. I dont do a tanking build some do. I dont think I have ever used defensive stance lol.</p><p>Have fun! Brigands are a great to solo, group and raid.</p><p>Brigands strength is single target, stun locked, massive debuf, kill them quick.... if not dead yet snare run till CAs refresh. repeat.</p><p>Brigands weakness is groups , we have 1 crappy blue aoe.</p></blockquote><p>I also have an 80 brigand and was raiding up to 4x a week with him.  This is almost exactly the advice I would give to a new player.</p><p>If you are having problems maxing skills, try to find a training dummy (guild hall amenity), turn on auto attack with some fast low level weapons equipped and go afk for a while.</p><p>We do have a weakness when fighting multiple mobs.  Sometimes I address that weakness by helping the tank burn down his target, but other times (like if the tank isn't holding aggro very well)  I'll use my stuns to offtank a mob without really getting hit.  If I run out of stuns I use the lay low ability to drop my hate position and swap targets to the tanks target but usually it's dead before the stuns run out.</p>