Your problems with the samurai come with bloodlust. Berserking greatly reduces you to-hit chance, and uses up more stamina.

I usually go dual with samurai (using enchanted wakazashi). But with bloodlust, i use no secondary for a while, to build up sword skill fast. You can get 2 attacks / 2 swings quite fast with a samurai (not counting the bonus swing from bloodlust). With secondary, its usually 1 attack / 1 swing at this point. Later, with higher skills, check again. At one point, i'll have 2/2 with and without secondary weapon. From this point on, i'll use secondary sword.

Do tell? I for one would be greatly interested in this secret.

Yes, me too! If Flame doesn't know it, it's really a BIG secret! :-D

Actually I am trying to confirm something I thought I had discovered about Lightning Strike. I was running a 4 person Hybrid team with an unusual build for their professions. My Samurai was getting Lightning Strikes at level 2 and got one on the King Crab, then the Gregor. It just kept happening with greater frequency after that. Several times in a large battle and about every other small battle. Little witch even got one against a Berserker in Arnika at level 12. 5x and on the 3rd swing she got a criical kill on it. In exert mode too!

Anyway, I always felt it was the attribute build I used that caused her to be this way since it was something I had never tried before. I brought it up else where but the idea was poo-pooed and I was told there was no way to create a char or items that could be equipped to make LS happen more often. So I just left it alone. Now I'd like to see if there is any similarity. Just to see if maybe I had beed right. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

I got a ton of LS's from my imported solo Lizard Samurai (Lisa). I built her to get Reflextion and Powercast. Leftover points went in Speed first, then Strength (of course, as a Liz import her Str was already over 60). Her Sen has remained at 35 the whole time. Katana weapons seem to help. I imported an Ench Broadsword, but the Ench Katana i reloaded 3 times for in the Coffins (actually quite quick if you combat-run past KC and Gregor and don't fight the Noxies--even if you don't import, you can do it @L1) made noticably more LS's, and Bushido, then Muramasa did quite well. I didn't try for a Light with this one, but i seem to recall doing quite well with one with another Sam. But with that one i noticed the LS's started tapering off when my Sen went over 45, so the comparison is invalid, if it's true that low Sen is one of the tricks.

How high was their intelligence?

See this was a Felpurr who of course was naturally fast and I added all creation points to Int, Dex, and Speed. I never touched Str or Sen. Every level up I always put 3 to Int, split the remaining 3 between Spd and Dex, first 1 to one of them and 2 to the other, then the next level reversed that.

She started increasing Critical Strike, Close Combat, and Dual Weild, way faster than sword skill. By the level of 12 when she got that crit on the Berserker 5 levels her senior (she did it twice in row by the way, both an LS with a crit midway) her CS, CC, and DW were well into the 70's but her sword was barely 50.

I had the feeling her Int causing those skills to raise so fast had a bearing on the LS frequency. Even when the crits started so early, many occurred during an LS.

I was just overly impressed with her performance. I've never had a Sam do so well before or after that one. Never again did I build them with the main emphasis on Int. It just made me wonder.

Well, obviously, if i was making Powercast, the Liz had high Int...i didn't touch the Int on the one with *Light*, and i'm pretty sure the Liz had a lot more LS's than she.

DUH! I feel stupid. I did pay not attention to the build where you mentioned PC. My bad. So what do you think? Can we say Int might very well be a factor then?

Yah. I guess we could test that with an editor, how would it work best? If we want to check the value of 3 different Attributes; Int, Dex, and Spd? maybe:
1) 55 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
2) 100 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
3) 100 Int 55 Dex 100 Spd
4) 100 Int 55 Dex 55 Spd
5) 100 Int 100 Dex 55 Spd
6) 55 Int 55 Dex 100 Spd

Or would it work better to have Duo's and have only one difference and run 3 parties? And we have to see what Sen does...

There was some testing done which involved Spd, Sen, Dex, and Str.

From what I gathered of it the higher the speed and senses the less often an LS was seen mainly because the number of crits were very high. The theory was they were instant killing them too often to generate an LS.

Strength was found to have little or no real bearing on LS frequency.

Dex factored into it when the Sam started getting more swings per attack, it also seemed to dictate the number of swings in an LS. Other than that not much else was said about it so it bears further investigation I think.

Not only attribs are coming into play here, skills I think are a big factor too. So for example your #1 would need to be something like:

1a) 55 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
CC 100 CS 100 DW 100 Sword 100

Then 1b-1? altering the skills for that one attrib set. Or not. I am not sure how valid the results would be if the skills are all just set to 100 or varied where some are high and others are low.

I think it would be a huge undertaking and I believe both of us are involved in other projects at the moment that is demanding a lot of our time. We can just park it on the back burner for future reference.

Its enough to know that at least some one else saw a major difference when Int was high. :D