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Thread: New BS trying to know how to play

  1. #1

    Question New BS trying to know how to play

    Hi all

    First of all, I read the sticky about BS and need to think about it as I do not understand everything and have some difficulties to get all those informations together.

    I leveled on myself and did not group at all as most of the guys in my guild were already 80 and the ones I met in the wild just sent me an invite about making a team without even a word. So, I never grouped with them.
    Even if I planned to visit AoC world, I rush and used my offline points for the last 17 lvls.

    Yesterday, while they knew I was too green for that, my guild kindly took me into T3 dungeon but I saw i was completely useless to them and really need to improve.

    1) a POM was healing a group of tanks dealing with one boss. I went there to support him, got killed by a swip of his halberd 5 minutes later, and the POM kept on healing them without even noticing I was dead. Am I a really poor healing class/player or was he too greatly stuffed for me to compete?

    2) my stuff is blue craft and I get some 2500/3500 hits when dealing with the "crawling bugs" popped by Thot Amon. In 2 pulses I am dead and wonder if things will get better with a better gear.

    3) someone said that BS healing depended of the damages he dealt. I read the various description of the skills and combos but did not see any explanation about what he said.

    4) on Ten Ton Hammer, I saw some Totems but did not find them in my pannels in game. Have they been cancelled? Same question for the manifestation Enfeeble.

    5) "the sticky" talks about turning around the mob to land the last hit (the one who is the more efficient) on his back? How can you do it when it is crowded like hell with tanks and as many necro pets as can be generated?

    6) I thought that I was a good player using "crushing armor" to help the the tanks/DPS hitting harder, while casting "Manifestation of Spirit" / "Manifestation of Forest" to either enhance their damages or lower the ones they took in order to heal them less.
    Of course I fumbled with the commands, casted 1 combo then another one before the 1st landed because the first one took 3/10seconds to land or did not start at all (canceling it whe the first combo finally appeared), but obviously this is not as smart as I thought ...

    7) "Manifestation of Regrowth" was also used but I am not sure that it is really usefull.

    8) How to configure your video options? If I allow everything, I cannot play because of lag and because my screen is full of effects. So I decided to use "effects on me" ad it was much better. I could however see the green and blue healing while cast on the surrounding players/pet, but the blue/green heal disappeared quickly. Any reason for that? (see 9)

    9) When you have 2 BS, is there one of them who prevails while casting "Regrowth" or "Blood Flow"? Do the spells stack or does the BS who casts them last, cancels the previously casted spells?

    10) when you talk about having the combos on shortcuts, do you mean all the steps (start, hits, finisher) or just the starting blow?

    11) I am running FDS, but some parts of the UI are too big.
    Where can I modify them to have a smaller raid window, smaller casting bars, bigger buffs/debuffs for my target, smaller icons for the hitting sequence, ...

    Thx for any answer and your patience while reading that.

  2. #2

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    1) Been a while since I've been in t3 but I'm assuming the halbred guy is Arbanus (could be wrong) but he has a frontal cone aoe attack that hits pretty hard. You need to stand to the back of the boss.

    2) THe aoe dmg in thoth amon fight is unholy so you will survive that better with more protection and you can also use your rune of resilience or rune of grounding to help mitigate it. Be sure to right click and remove rune of grounding to get rid of the snare then after you are healed back up.

    3) There are two mechanics where doing DPS increases a bear shamans healing. One is Nature's Wrath (top tier of Wrath tree) and basically as you do combos you will see this stack on your buff list. When you cast a blue heal you will get a bit of bonus HP healed dependent on how high that stack got to. In my opinion you completely ignore this mechanic. As a bear shaman the most important part about timing your blue heals is to keep Blood Champion up (Spirit tree 4th tier). It has been a while since I played bear but pretty sure the buff lasts 15 seconds so in a perfect scenario you are casting your blue every 15 seconds. Of course if there is some tank you missed with your blue that is taking dmg and needs a heal, you heal him, but perfect scenario you keep the casts 15 seconds apart.

    The other healing mechanic from doing dps is Nature's Revenge (Wrath tree 9th tier). This is another buff that stacks to 10. The healing part of this buff is completely passive and it just fires off when you get a 10 stack. The important part about Nature's Revenge is trying to time your hard hitting Shrewd Blows while you have a 5+ stack as the higher the stack of Nature's Revenge you have the more crit chance on shrewd blow you have. Combo rotations vary greatly for a Bear Shaman who is actually trying to keep debuffs/buffs running and not just IB/SB spamming for highest DPS so it will take a lot of practice to keep your eye on this buff and hit your SB6 at the appropriate time.

    4)Totems are gone

    5) It can definitely be tough in a crowd and a lot of times people lock you in and there is nothing you can do about it. Just remember you have 2h range so don't get right in the mobs feet so you don't get locked in. A lot of times taking 1 second to reposition (if you are turning with the keyboard this will take A LOT LONGER) will give you added dps compared to hitting a 3 stack shield or even a 2 stack.

    6) A good BS will keep the armor debuff from Crush Armor (think it is a Physical Torment) stacked to 5. Once it is at 5 though you should avoid using Crush Armors as they are lower DPS than Shrewd Blow. THere are many other classes that stack Physical Torments too (Conqs, barbs, sins, rangers off the top of my head) so be sure to check the mobs debuffs so you aren't uselessly throwing CA. If a 5 stack of Physical Torment is about to run out, you are better served canceling whatever combo you are doing and throwing your fastest CA before it runs out. Here is a post with some really good info about the debuff system in Age of Conan. http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=2022000 As a bear shaman you have access to Physical Torments with Crush Armor and Physical Wrack with your Manifestation of Forest. A lot of shammies will use Mani of Forest for 1 second at the start of fights and in their rotations just to get that debuff before they switch to another Mani to hit their IB with.

    7) Mani of regrowth is okay I guess. Honestly in this game DPS is king in my opinion (things die faster, you need less healing, etc) but if there are fights where your tanks just really can't stay alive you can run Mani of Regrowth. It pulses healing dmg to anyone in its AOE and its Vision (Vision is what happens when you land an Internal Bleed with a Mani Running) gives you bonus protection which may or may not be useful in certain fights. The 'STANDARD' manifestation rotation is Forest for the instant debuff, right to Sun where you use two IB while it is running (use IB as first combo and use it again as soon as it is off cooldown), then you switch to Spirit and use 1 or 2 IB depending on how feated out your manifestion cooldowns are in your AA tree ... and then back to Forest for a half second right into Sun ... RINSE AND REPEAT.

    8) I only show spell particle effects on myself too. The worst part about it is that your blue/green heals will show on other people but disappear as soon as someone else overwrites them (people can only have 1 blue and 2 green heals on them) so it gets a little confusing. You will eventually get your heal rotation down that you dont need to see effects on other people.

    9) I think regrowth stacks but not sure but Blood Flow is just whoever casts it last which is why healing parses are absolute ********. People that brag about healing parses don't understand game mechanics.

    10) You should have basically everything keybound. Directional attacks to activate combos, combos themselves, buffs, manis, everything. It is tough on a bear shaman. I recommend a Razer Naga mouse if you are serious about this game (12 side buttons you hit with your thumb) and also perhaps switching movement to esdf or hell even rdfg instead of wasd so your hand is more centralized on the keyboard and you can comfortably reach to the left and the right. I personally don't like using alt or cntl to swap my keybind so I just bind everything. You can remove stupid stuff like Hide and a bunch of other stuff from your keybinds and move them further away from your movement keys so you can then rebind them to useful abilities.

    11) This I dunno


    GOODLUCK MANG!
    Baneric / Munok / Johnkruk / Tomjones / Elgranorgo

    US first kills - Arch Lector Zaal, Bat of Nerd Rage, Emperor, Cloud, and Entity.

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    Hi all

    First of all, I read the sticky about BS and need to think about it as I do not understand everything and have some difficulties to get all those informations together.

    I leveled on myself and did not group at all as most of the guys in my guild were already 80 and the ones I met in the wild just sent me an invite about making a team without even a word. So, I never grouped with them.
    imo, not a good idea... ok, i know it's a bit rude to ninja invite people without a word, but at least you could have started to see a bit of teamplay...
    i remember once, while leveling my bs, i teamed up with a guard, he pulled a lot of mobs, gathered all of them togheter, then i used the stun, healed the guard, and we burned them down... it was a lot of fun!!

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    Even if I planned to visit AoC world, I rush and used my offline points for the last 17 lvls.
    acutally, not a good idea too, for the same reason i wrote before...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    Yesterday, while they knew I was too green for that, my guild kindly took me into T3 dungeon but I saw i was completely useless to them and really need to improve.
    not surprising at all, 'cos t3 is not the right place to start raiding...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    1) a POM was healing a group of tanks dealing with one boss. I went there to support him, got killed by a swip of his halberd 5 minutes later, and the POM kept on healing them without even noticing I was dead. Am I a really poor healing class/player or was he too greatly stuffed for me to compete?
    basic heals does not depend on gear (AA ones do, but i don't think you have them yet). probably the rl put you in a group with another healer 'cos he knew you could have died...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    2) my stuff is blue craft and I get some 2500/3500 hits when dealing with the "crawling bugs" popped by Thot Amon. In 2 pulses I am dead and wonder if things will get better with a better gear.
    the mobs should not hit you... but of course on toth there are the corpse explosions, and they should hurt for more than that...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    3) someone said that BS healing depended of the damages he dealt. I read the various description of the skills and combos but did not see any explanation about what he said.
    check "nature's wrath" description (in your feat tree)...
    and of course, you can't apply your green heal, if you don't hit anything...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    4) on Ten Ton Hammer, I saw some Totems but did not find them in my pannels in game. Have they been cancelled? Same question for the manifestation Enfeeble.
    must be something before the 1st revamp of bs...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    5) "the sticky" talks about turning around the mob to land the last hit (the one who is the more efficient) on his back? How can you do it when it is crowded like hell with tanks and as many necro pets as can be generated?
    positioning is one of the things that you learn better in groups than in raids...
    btw, better to hit in the front that not to hit at all...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    6) I thought that I was a good player using "crushing armor" to help the the tanks/DPS hitting harder, while casting "Manifestation of Spirit" / "Manifestation of Forest" to either enhance their damages or lower the ones they took in order to heal them less.
    Of course I fumbled with the commands, casted 1 combo then another one before the 1st landed because the first one took 3/10seconds to land or did not start at all (canceling it whe the first combo finally appeared), but obviously this is not as smart as I thought ...
    there is a "buffer" of 1 key, if you press something else before the animation has finished, it gets replaced. let's say you start a 2 keys combo (starter and finisher). you press the starter, and the animation starts, then you press the finisher, and it gets buffered. if you press another combo starter before the animation of the previous opener is done, the finisher of that combo gets replaced, and you start another combo instead.
    this way you also lose all the special effects of the previous combo (debuff, cc, etc)... so you have to learn how to time your keys...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    7) "Manifestation of Regrowth" was also used but I am not sure that it is really usefull.
    it gives some healing, and the vision associated gives a temporary boost to protection. may be useful against bosses that does magic damage...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    8) How to configure your video options? If I allow everything, I cannot play because of lag and because my screen is full of effects. So I decided to use "effects on me" ad it was much better. I could however see the green and blue healing while cast on the surrounding players/pet, but the blue/green heal disappeared quickly. Any reason for that? (see 9)

    9) When you have 2 BS, is there one of them who prevails while casting "Regrowth" or "Blood Flow"? Do the spells stack or does the BS who casts them last, cancels the previously casted spells?
    people can onlt have 2 green and 1 blue helas. if you cast a blue hel, and 1 second after another healer casts another one, yours will get replaced, so you won't see the blue circles anymore..

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    10) when you talk about having the combos on shortcuts, do you mean all the steps (start, hits, finisher) or just the starting blow?
    both starters and white hits, of course...

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    11) I am running FDS, but some parts of the UI are too big.
    Where can I modify them to have a smaller raid window, smaller casting bars, bigger buffs/debuffs for my target, smaller icons for the hitting sequence, ...
    i don't know that ui....

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    Thx for any answer and your patience while reading that.
    you're welcome...
    "in the depths of a mind insane fantasy and reality are the same"

    Yawgmoth (Ranger) - Nyxathid (Necro) - Yixlid (HoX) - Kaltas (DT) - Heung (BS) - Teysa (HoX) - Gatzu (Guard) - Krovax (Ranger) - Hurkyl (Barb) - Vedalken (PoM)

  4. #4

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    1. Bosses will usually have some nasty frontal attack, so stand on their backs if possible - you'll deal more damage and you should still reach tanks with your heals (unless the boss is really big). In T3 there are three bosses that have frontal cone attacks: Arbanus, Gyas and Keeper.

    Dead healer is a bad healer, so focus on keeping heals and staying alive first. T3 is a poor place to train playing - you should try getting into T1/T2 raids and some easier 6-mans (best if with friends and second healer).

    2. You will get very high hits during many fights - most of the time you're supposed to avoid them because they're deadly even in high-end gear. The "bugs" that were hitting you came from the corpses on the floor - obviously you shouldn't stay near them.

    3. Like Erock said - you don't get much healing from damage, so just forget about it. For starters focus on keeping blue heal on tanks and click Renewal whenever it's off cooldown. If you're the only Bear Shaman near the tanks - use Fierce Recovery.

    4. BS had gone through some changes since the release - you can totally disregard most of the stuff from before 2010.

    5. Forget about maximizing dps until you feel the flow of heals and combos (and it seems you have trouble with that). This is the LAST thing to learn as a priest.

    6. What Erock said. If you raid with experienced people, boss will have full armor debuff before you finish your first CA. The simplest rotation is IB4-SB4/5-SB5/6 - if you can't run it fluently with heals and manifestations, forget about fancy stuff.

    Dps is the king, which means standing and thinking how to perform best is worse than just hitting the boss with arrows and spamming blue heal.

    Of course, if you're the only armor debuffer then replace SB with CA.

    7. I use Manifestation of Regrowth only on the hardest fights, where survival is more important. Using it in normal fights instead of Spirit will probably give the same survivability bonus with insignificant decrease of dps.

    Renewal, Blood Flow and timed Fierce Recovery is the only thing required. The rest is there to cover mistakes and crappy gear.

    8. If you can't setup your graphics to see the healing circles, there are other ways to ensure the tanks have their HoTs.

    Renewal: click it (don't forget to hit the mob afterwards!) every time it's off cooldown, don't run away too far from your party and they will have green heal all the time

    Blood Flow: cast it before every Internal Bleed, cast it when you just arrived to the group (you had to go somewhere else and broke the rotation) and cast it if you think it's not running. It's lame, but nothing is more lame than not keeping blue heal on tanks

    9. Don't think too much about overwriting other blue heals - if someone will comment on that, tell them to **** off. The only thing you should worry is if you're 100% sure tanks have the blue heal and the 15s damage buff you get after casting.

    Dunno if Manifestation of Regrowth stacks, but you'll be most likely the only BS with that

    10. I click every single skill from my skillbars. It's enough to do PvE, so if you normally don't play on keyboard - you don't have to.

    11. Stonerune is more compact - maybe you should try that?

    Good luck!

  5. #5

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    Something similar to this is what "keybind everything" means.

  6. #6

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    Thx all for those nice and time costly answers.
    That will make a really good brainstorming session trying to use all those advice but it will be rewarding.

    Enjoy the game and perhaps , see you in Hyboria.

  7. #7

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    Hi again fellow Shaman

    I have been reading again my feat trees and trying to figure how to use your advice in game.
    If I do not consider the fact that I need to remind the differences between the spells/combos/buff/debuffs on screen, my Main concern seems to keep an eye on the icons of my buffs/debuffs/spells on the top of the screen as they quickly grow smaller and are always moving depending of the spells casted. As you previously said, it requires some training.

    1) I'll try to focus on the healing and Mani cycles, mixing it with blows when I have time to land other things than IB/SB6/Ursine brawl (for debuff).

    2) I did not understand Erock when he said: " As a bear shaman the most important part about timing your blue heals is to keep Blood Champion up (Spirit tree 4th tier)". I have Blood Champion maxed but this is a passive skill (alterating the blue heal). So how can I keep it up ?

    3) I have Blood healing at 5, and checked it in the combat window. My BF increases from 192 + (x*96) to 204 + (x*102). So, if I am not wrong, by the end of the 20 sec of the heal, everyone got 132 more HP healed! Is this skill really worth the 5 points I dropped in it?

    4) Same question for Fierce Healing, with its low healing increase. 10% of 1800 is not much.
    Of course, you'll tell me than small numbers add and end in a big one, but would not the 2 points invested better used somewhere else?

    5) I have a new combo "Lycan bite" something like that, which is a 10% Life Tap with a long timer (60 sec I think). This can be usefull specially when you land big combos and get some life tap bonus on your stuff. Am I right or again far from reality ? :P

    6) I have Claw of Life at 5. In my testing fights in the villas, when it pops, it does only 24 HP (49 if crit) in a few pulses. It is so low that I again wonder if those 5 points would not be better used somewhere else.

    7) I tried to use a parser (Guildstat) but the activation of the recording of the combat log through the command : /logcombatlog doesn't work. Any clue about that?

    8) I did not see any lower left nor lower right hit among the BS combos. I set them on my N52 and so, I could use those 2 butons for some other shortcuts.

    Thanks again
    Last edited by SHAKALL; 21st April 2013 at 09:02.

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    Hi again fellow Shaman

    I have been reading again my feat trees and trying to figure how to use your advice in game.
    If I do not consider the fact that I need to remind the differences between the spells/combos/buff/debuffs on screen, my Main concern seems to keep an eye on the icons of my buffs/debuffs/spells on the top of the screen as they quickly grow smaller and are always moving depending of the spells casted. As you previously said, it requires some training.

    1) I'll try to focus on the healing and Mani cycles, mixing it with blows when I have time to land other things than IB/SB6/Ursine brawl (for debuff).

    2) I did not understan Erock when he said: " As a bear shaman the most important part about timing your blue heals is to keep Blood Champion up (Spirit tree 4th tier)". I have Blood Champion maxed but this is a passive skill. So how can I keep it up ?

    3) I have Blood healing at 5, and checked it in the combat window. My BF increases from 192 + (x*96) to 204 + (x*102). So, if I am not wrong, by the end of the 20 sec of the heal, everyone got 132 more HP healed! Is this skill really worth the 5 points I dropped in it?

    4) Same question for Fierce Healing, with its low healing increase. 10% of 1800 is not much.
    Of course, you'll tell me than small numbers add and end in a big one, but would not the 2 points invested better used somewhere else?

    5) I have a new combo "Lycan bite" something like that, which is a 10% Life Tap with a long timer (60 sec I think). This can be usefull specially when you land big combos and get some life tap bonus on your stuff. Am I right or again far from reality ? :P

    6) I have Claw of Life at 5. In my testing fights in the villas, when it pops, it does only 24 HP (49 if crit) in a few pulses. It is so low that I again wonder if those 5 points would not be better used somewhere else.

    7) I tried to use a parser (Guildstat) but the activation of the recording of the combat log through the command : /logcombatlog doesn't work. Any clue about that?

    Thanks again
    2) It's not passive - you get +weapon damage when you cast your blue heal. You should by trying to cast a blue around every 15 seconds which is the duration of the weapon damage buff.

    3) Not worth it IMO.

    4) Also not worth it IMO.

    5) It's not a combo but rather a spell/ability. It's handy for soloing and that sort of thing but in a group environment you shouldn't be getting hit anyway.

    6) Again not worth it IMO.

    7) the command in game is /logcombat on. You can turn it off with /logcombat off. You can then select the file from within conanstats/advanced combat tracker (ACT / advanced combat tracker is better).

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    If I do not consider the fact that I need to remind the differences between the spells/combos/buff/debuffs on screen, my Main concern seems to keep an eye on the icons of my buffs/debuffs/spells on the top of the screen as they quickly grow smaller and are always moving depending of the spells casted. As you previously said, it requires some training.
    For PvE, most of those icons are irrelevant - in the beginning you can totally ignore them and focus on playing. Later on it can be useful to watch Rampage and Nature's Revnge stacks. Manifestations or Blood Champion can be controlled easier (in my opinion).

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    1) I'll try to focus on the healing and Mani cycles, mixing it with blows when I have time to land other things than IB/SB6/Ursine brawl (for debuff).
    Try to make a "rotation" that will allow you to use Internal Bleeding every time it's off cooldown. This means you'll need 10s worth of combos between each Internal Bleed. Then cast Blood Flow before each Internal Bleed.

    Controlling Manifestations is done easiest by looking at the manifestation icon on your bar (because it's always in the same place) - the cooldown timer will tell you how long the Manifestation will be running (if you do some simple maths).

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    2) I did not understand Erock when he said: " As a bear shaman the most important part about timing your blue heals is to keep Blood Champion up (Spirit tree 4th tier)". I have Blood Champion maxed but this is a passive skill (alterating the blue heal). So how can I keep it up ?
    If you'll cast Blood Flow right before every Interal Bleeding (granted to execute Internal Bleeding whenever it's off cooldown) you will have Blood Champion all the time and you won't have to watch the icon. It's not 100% optimal, but basics first.

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    3) I have Blood healing at 5, and checked it in the combat window. My BF increases from 192 + (x*96) to 204 + (x*102). So, if I am not wrong, by the end of the 20 sec of the heal, everyone got 132 more HP healed! Is this skill really worth the 5 points I dropped in it?
    Who said it's worth it?

    I use it veeeery rarely with a few other healing feats - the sum of them has some impact. For 99% of PvE content you should be using Mutilation build. For PvP you'll probably have it anyway because of Iron Hide

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    4) Same question for Fierce Healing, with its low healing increase. 10% of 1800 is not much.
    Of course, you'll tell me than small numbers add and end in a big one, but would not the 2 points invested better used somewhere else?
    Who advised you to use Fierce Healing? It's crappy, even if you manage to crit (+300hp / 60s).

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    5) I have a new combo "Lycan bite" something like that, which is a 10% Life Tap with a long timer (60 sec I think). This can be usefull specially when you land big combos and get some life tap bonus on your stuff. Am I right or again far from reality ? :P
    If you manage to land a good combo then yes. Later on you can feat it to tap 15% and refresh at the same time as Rune of Aggression *hint*

    Quote Originally Posted by SHAKALL View Post
    6) I have Claw of Life at 5. In my testing fights in the villas, when it pops, it does only 24 HP (49 if crit) in a few pulses. It is so low that I again wonder if those 5 points would not be better used somewhere else.
    Again - why are you using it?
    Last edited by Misiuggah; 21st April 2013 at 09:20.

  10. #10

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    Thx for the updates

    Considering the useless skills, I made my build alone according to what I thought could make you a good healer, with all the percentages being important.
    I was a bit conforted in that by looking at some "good working healer builds". After looking at the figures and datas, I thought it was not as efficient as expected and was asking for confirmation of that feeling.
    I shall look for some "better" heal and DPS builds (got one on the "Smash guide") in the forum.

    Thanks for the tp about Blood Warrior and the obvious one about Mani. Considering the maths, I have difficulties to count on my fingers and deal with the mouse and N52 at the same time :P

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