Create Distance or Crowd Pleaser?

[Adoede]

Anybody have experience with these two skills and can tell me which is better for defense?

Create Distance seems good, but it only triggers once every other round...and it only stops 1-2 attacks (not much use vs. a speed build throwing 8-10 attacks in a round). At least the defensive bonus for Crowd Pleaser is constantly on for every attack. Anyone know how best to set up strategy to take advantage of it? I'm experimenting with hybrid War builds.

Also, anyone know if there is a big difference between the 157 armor rating of top-shelf medium armor vs. 196 armor rating of top-shelf heavy armor? That doesn't seem like much of a difference. Is there also a class bonus for heavy armor for more blocks and deflections and such or something? If not, I might just take the medium armor and put the skill points elsewhere instead of in LAAF.

[Narol]

You'll get far more deflections from heavy armour, that's a sure thing.

Crowd Pleaser is a low level skill and I'm under the impression that the defense bonus it gives is quite small so I would favor create distance that is very useful against big hitters, but with all the speed builds around maybe Crowd Pleaser is a better choice anyway in the current metagame.

[Kreegan]

I believe Create Distance is supposed to add to the armour deflections and occasional parries of the Wars, creating an effect similar to the super-defensive Theatrics. But they can't really be compared. Create Distance would trigger far more often against heavy weapons than the attempts to parry but will not help you much against gladiators who attack many times per round. And vice versa. There are other differences too. Besides, these skills are class-specific, why would you compare them in the first place?

[Cynaidh]

Since we are talking about a defensive warrior here I am guessing, the biggest concern to me is if your going for crowd pleaser, then its not really just comparing crowd pleaser (which isn't class-specific btw) and create distance but your also missing out on Armored Fortress in the warrior tree as you wont be able to get it either. I'd think create distance + armored fortress would be a lot more defense then crowd pleaser + feint/called shot. Anyways just my opinion. :)

[Kreegan]

Oops, I was thinking about Strength of the Crowd. :o

[Adoede]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm actually trying to build an offensive blade war - need to decide whether to go heavy armor or medium and am experimenting with a hybrid build (if it doesn't work, I can always go back to full war tree). I've got a choice between Brute force, Create distance, Crowd Pleaser, or Light as a Feather for my last skill and I wasn't sure which would be best. Crowd pleaser seems to work amazingly well with defensive theatrics in parry-attack mode. LAAF I'd only get if I go full heavy. I currently have create distance trained to 7 and haven't been very impressed with it. But good point about create distance triggering more often against heavy weapons vs. trying to parry them.

[Cynaidh]

Oh that sounds interesting the hybrid build with medium armor on a blades warrior. I wonder how something like:

10 Devastating power
10 Blades, 10 Battle hardened, 10 DFA, 10 Armor Movement, 10 Never Say Die
10 Feint, 10 Called Shot, 10 Crowd Pleaser, 10 Hamstring

Would work out, got the increased crit chance and crit damage with called shot and brute force, nice damaging hits with DFA and Feint, extra life from Never Say Die, and then defense being increased by crowd pleaser and hamstring. Since looking at medium armor just stack the crap out of agility since we know that's nice and OP right now.

Damn I need another glad slot to try that myself :)

[Adoede]

That's definitely one of the options:) (Devastating power instead of Brute force - which I assume is what you meant)

I'm testing out how effective War Cry is right now paired with Spite (crit bonus), a speed weapon, and called shot (crit bonus). The dude stuns a decent amount of people (maybe 25%).

I was originally going to go heavy armor and trade blows til I got a stun in. But perhaps I'll switch to medium armor.

[Cynaidh]

Yup fixed that :)

That's a really interesting build idea, i like the spite race with it too! You've almost got me wanting to try and find a slave to do it on my 2nd team (have 5 HOL Slave tokens sitting waiting there).

What the hell saw this sitting there after a couple of refreshes:

74-81-90-83-83-67-90

Figured i'll just give it a shot for the fun of it with that build :)

[Prinny]

Oh that sounds interesting the hybrid build with medium armor on a blades warrior. I wonder how something like:

10 Devastating power
10 Blades, 10 Battle hardened, 10 DFA, 10 Armor Movement, 10 Never Say Die
10 Feint, 10 Called Shot, 10 Crowd Pleaser, 10 Hamstring

Would work out, got the increased crit chance and crit damage with called shot and brute force, nice damaging hits with DFA and Feint, extra life from Never Say Die, and then defense being increased by crowd pleaser and hamstring. Since looking at medium armor just stack the crap out of agility since we know that's nice and OP right now.

Damn I need another glad slot to try that myself :)

Doesn't work in blood gods, I've tried and failed

[Adoede]

Cynaidh, glad you're having fun with less orthodox build ideas:) (I've got a rage-theatrics somewhere too - that one I'm real curious to see how he ends up building out)

Prinny - Can you tell us a bit more about what you tried and what the problems with the build were?

[Cynaidh]

Cynaidh, glad you're having fun with less orthodox build ideas:) (I've got a rage-theatrics somewhere too - that one I'm real curious to see how he ends up building out)

Oh ya fringe builds are what i enjoy most about this game, i am constantly re-rolling glads, i think i have around 20 in the HoL right now.

I was doing the rage-theatrics thing too accually!

When i retired him he was:
732-429-24
Bracket: Blood God
Ranking: 11th

original stats: 80-90-91-88-65-72-84 (smallest HoL slave i had seen at that point that cost over 1100 had to do something with him)

Skills:
10 blade, 10 dev power, 10 brute force, 10 armor move, 10 rampage, 10 adrenaline rush
10 feint, 10 called shot, 10 GV, 10 Hamstring

Was stacking agility on him, was quite effective at the time i retired him.

[Adoede]

I'm doing something very similar, but sunder armor instead of armor movement. I always wanted to see what sunder armor and called shot could do together. He's still a wee lad, but fun to watch him grow.

How did the dual adrenaline rush/hamstring work on slowing down opponents attacks and was there any build he was weak against? My glad isn't ideal, but worth experimenting with I guess: 83 75 93 81 85 75 73 with a moderately high luck score.

[Cynaidh]

I retired him before we had a ton of people in Legendaries but when it was just purple epic gear it was highly effective, i'd think it would still be now.

When Hamstring and adrenaline rush both hit in round 1, then the opposing glad is only doing a bit under 20% (50% of there normal attacks per round, and they do 61% less damage per hit) of there normal damage for the rest of the round and the next round, it really shut glads down.