Let's talk Holy Champions.

[zombiedachshund]

Mr. Penumbra has just ascended to the Holy Champions league. Hooray! He is a H2H specialist (which I've come to realize doesn't synergize as well with the cloaks as does archery; but I get bored searching for ammunition, so there you go.) I'm looking for advice on T3 skills! Here are my thoughts:

* Cloak of the Foundation, obviously, once I save up the CP.

* one of the other cloaks would be nifty! But they are so expensive and don't do that much for me. Either I get Cloak of the Relentless Sea (120 CP for a travel skill. A hella rad travel skill, but still) or Cloak of the Tornado (90 CP for a travel skill. Another rad travel skill, that eats MP that I need for other things.)

* Is the HC pet worth it? Probably not, right? I mean, I've always enjoyed a pet for my nexus champions, and if it was awesome like an origami tiger, I'd do it anyway, but it's, what... some kind of lamp? Kind of lame.

* Probably the most practical thing to do would be to get wings, Aether Manipulation, an aura spell, Mystic Shield and Seeking Hand, and then specialize in tanking. With just a little bit of grinding (like 100 books and the exploration badges) I could do this AND get the full water cloak.

What am I missing?

[klapaucius]

In terms of day to day movement, the air cloak is way more appealing to me than the water cloak, and 90cp cheaper. There's just not that much water in the Nexus that is convenient to travel through - almost all the big factions and most resource buildings are inland. I can imagine patrolling the waters of Laurentia might be good for hunting, but I can't really comment with authority.

The mp cost of tornado will cut into your attacking budget until you get the 90cp earth cloak. However, once you get your 90cp earth cloak, your mp costs will be reduced dramatically to spells, travel, divine resolve and cloak activation. That should be doable with the 59mp you'll end up on (and you can always keep spellgems charged for raids when you need to tank + damage + travel a long way).

I will say, the pet and tornado are not a good combo. Pet takes a bit of mp, so if you go that route I would consider just picking up wings. I'm skipping the pet, HCs have so much cool, expensive stuff it just seems unnecessary.

Water comes with that nifty search bonus, though. And some very nice immunities. I'm going archery with wind/water and hopefully the ability to dodge tank - I clearly couldn't decide which I wanted in the end

Other skills: holy bulwark seems nice. You don't always come across actives, and they can't always sap your mana, but if you're trying to tank against a faction with an active defiler exit you're gonna have a bad time without it. Stamina and holy fortitude also make you that little bit less likely to explode without time to heal.

edit: If you're in Heart of Oak, maybe the water cloak is a bit more mandatory

[Ravenik]

Klap pretty much nails it on the head.

Myself, I go full air cloak, plus cloak of lightning. I like the "infinite" ammo that it gives, for grinding targets/doors/backup ammo.

[Srekto]

If you're going tank / H2H, consider picking up cloak of quicksand? You get some nice tanking potential with your 40% resistance to everything and a good sandblaster attack.

[Yukari]

Air + Tap ley line seems like something that hasn't been considered in this thread yet.
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Tanks for everything.

[zombiedachshund]

Great stuff, especially from Klaupacius! I guess it's worthwhile to really think about specializing; for example, I hadn't considered holy bulwark, but I can see that for a dedicated tank, it would be pretty key. Ditto the extra HP-granting skills.

I wish I could justify the water tree, but it's just not so good for hand to hand. Maybe next breath!

[MerlintheTuna]

At a more basic level, how do twinned cloaks actually work? I'm looking at making a HC either later this breath or sometime next one, and it's not clear to me whether they benefit from the 60/90CP upgrades to their parent skills or if they're their own isolated deal. If you want to go into Cloak of Quicksand, is that a single skill activation or do you activate a Cloak of Earth and stack a Cloak of Water on top of it? Are you paying MP for 2 (or even 3) cloaks simultaneously?

Sorry for the threadjack. The class looks super interesting, I just haven't been able to decipher the specifics based off of the wiki.

[Ravenik]

You put on one cloak at once. Air is good for hunting and travelling. Lightning would be good for door smashing, target shooting, or AoE. Water for searching and travelling. Earth for tanking. Etc. I'm just giving general examples.

The exception is Cloak of Divine Resolve. This is just an AoE buff that gets extra benefits based on whatever other cloak that you have on.

And Yukari... shhh... that would never work. Just delete your post.

Because I wanted to try it before anybody else.

[klapaucius]

Tapping ley lines is a filthy habit that I could never recommend to anyone in good conscience :p

But yeah, it pretty much eliminates any mp restrictions, especially in combination with a movement-for-mp skill. It also enables other roles in raids, notably AOE spam. Ridiculous, disgusting, don't bother knocking down the forts or bringing a petmaster AOE spam. But you're an angel, with... morals and... ideas about fair play right?! Please don't do this.

If you can accrue 100 candy corn (you might need to trade for it? Or have nice friends), the vampire fangs would be crazy strong on a h2h HC! (+3 damage -5% accuracy over boxing with knuckles, right?)

Side note on archery HCs: Having a 'free' attack cloak is appealing... Usually though, when I want a free attack I'm not having mp troubles: target shooting, door murder and so on, so just the 30cp cloak of water can do the trick at 1mp per arrow.

And from there, it's only 60cp to get on demand slashing immunity and 5% search! And from there, only 90cp to get free travel through water, another 5% search and free arrows! It's a slippery slope, moistened by the glorious power of dual tree air/water. Mmmm.