Epic mount choice and worth of insignia bonuses.

nezdin

Hi all,

considering getting an epic mount top finally be able to move faster through the areas, which has been taking ages in some cases!!! I main a DC (righteous) with a CW and SW as seconds right now. (all of them smaller than 2400 item level)

How should I choose?

I've been mainly looking at survivability-boosting insignia bonuses as well as stat-increasing bonuses. So up to now the following have caught my eye:
Barbarian's revelry (but read there is an internal cooldown), Oppresor's Reprieve, Gladiator's Guile (is the +2000 movement with the Stormraider Clydesdale worth it?), and maybe Vampiric Craving (although not stacking Lifesteal on my DC), Survivor's Blessing and Wanderer's Fortune. Oh and last, Magistrate's Patience: but I don't understand if it heals allies only or if it also heals myself?

What has everyone's experience been with these?

scathias

Champions Return is probably the best bonus for survivability, the extra stamina it gives you when it procs allows 1 or 2 extra dodges or more sprint to help you survive as well as adding a heal over time. Other bonuses like oppressors, survivors don't really give that much healing, they help, but not as much as Champions instant help. barbarians is meh, the heal is small again and there is that ICD you mentioned. Magistrates heals you as well i think, but it only procs the heal when you use a healing ability as i understand it, so probably not that useful except on a DC where it isn't needed. that damage done magistrates is very small as well.

Personally I love Guile, but i just like running around faster, apart from that it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Fortune is where the best investment is honestly, you can gain a significant amount of RP just by doing your dailies each day, the only bad thing is that it takes up an extra 12 bag spaces since it drops white+green versions of stability/union/power/resonance and then pearls through to black opals. the Drops are BoA though so once you get a stack you can stash it away on an alt until 2x RP. The armored bear might not look pretty but since you can ride any of your collected green/white/blue mounts instead that doesn't matter much. an extra 8k HP as the mount power is also not a bad thing for survivability, it benefits all classes equally, unlike something like crit or lifesteal or armor pen

cesoso55

I would get the Guard Drake epic mount first because give Power bonus and protector's camaraderie, useful for all classes on damage dealed. Take into account that the faster you kill the less damage you take and also get more powerful heal and buff from your divine cleric. The other insignia bonuses you can take them later from white/green/blue mounts that are cheaper. My second option would be the gilded spider for wanderer's fortune to save rp that is currently expensive, but that is a rare mount so can wait a bit longer.

jumpingmorks

magenubbie said:

Apart from Wanderer's fortune, there's no buff in the list I found to be a gamechanger for any of my characters. The bonuses help, but not dramatically. The values simply aren't high enough unless you spend a fortune on purple insignia and even then I think there are cheaper ways to improve your character. If you have a need for character improvement, do it on the character. These 5 small buffs will not save your behind if you have a bad build/rotation to begin with.

Unfortunately, if you really want the WF buff that limits your choices severely as usually lockbox mounts have that insignia buff. You'd have to pick between the gilded spider and the armored bear. Refining your options further by your own statement you want an epic mount would just leave you the bear. Personally, I don't find it an attractive mount, but to each his/her own. If you can live without WF, just pick one you like best based on its looks. If you don't care about that either then armpen, power and crit go with every class and mounts giving those are your safest bet.

Just my 2 cents.

Agreed, if you are not a BiS player Wanderer's will help a lot, it drops a ton of RP.

Guile is also very nice, it's only a utility power but you'll be surprised how much you'll like it.

The Guard Drake I'd only consider if your main character has a crit that is 80% + to use the 2k power bonus and Protector's Camaderie is only useful if you actually use a pet, not an augment.

nezdin

Thanks for all your answers - indeed Wandere's and Guile sound like the most promising from what I read above. Due to the constrained offer of mounts in the store it was either Armoured Bear for Wanderer's or Stormraider Clydesdale for Guile.

The reason initially to consider an epic mount was that I felt it would make gameplay so much faster! I went with Stormraider and Guile. I feel as if I'm flying all over the place now!!! The only downside is that I cannot imagine playing without it

An additional question: does anyone know how movement speed works (is it additive)? This mount gives a bonus of 2000 to movement speed. I can think of 2 possibilities:

(1) Base*(1.10 + 0.15 + 0.05) ? I.e.: Base*(epic mount speed + Gladiator's Guile + 2000 movement speed)

(2) (Base+0.05)*(1.10 + 0.15) ? I.e.: (Base + 2000 movement speed)*(epic mount speed + Gladiator's Guile)

jumpingmorks

I don't know the math, but 1 bonus gives 15% 2xGuile gives 18% and 3 gives 20% I believe. And as far as I know base movement seems to have little or no additional increase in your mount speed. There is an SH boon that does increase mount speed directly though.

greywynd

Bonuses generally tend to be to the character and not the mounted speed.

dupeks

greywynd said:

Bonuses generally tend to be to the character and not the mounted speed.

This. The only way to change mount speed is with a different "base" speed or with the SH boon. All other movement modifiers are ignored when you're mounted.

To add to the discussion, I always slot these 2 for all my toons:

• Gladiator's Guile
  
• Champion's Return

The other 3 are usually a mix of these:

• Wanderer's Fortune for PvE (must-have if you're going to be running anything regularly).
  
• Vampire's Craving/ Survivor's Blessing for PVP (the self-heals from these are not effected by healing suppression)
  
• Protector's Camaraderie for power-stacking builds (DC with Weps of Light / OP with aura gifts / GWF for deeeeeps)
  
• Shepherd's Devotion: this one currently triggers the bonus for Artificer's Persuasion instead (+recovery, movement, AP gain, and stamina gain). Since the trigger is casting a daily and it gives you AP gain and recovery, this one is currently very powerful for dailyspam builds.

dupeks

jumpingmorks said:

I don't know the math, but 1 bonus gives 15% 2xGuile gives 18% and 3 gives 20% I believe. And as far as I know base movement seems to have little or no additional increase in your mount speed. There is an SH boon that does increase mount speed directly though.

I believe the first copy of an insignia bonus gives 100% benefit, and all subsequent copies give 25% benefit each. So if you slot all 5 of a particular bonus, you get 200% (or 2x) the base benefit.

santralafax

dupeks said:

jumpingmorks said:

I don't know the math, but 1 bonus gives 15% 2xGuile gives 18% and 3 gives 20% I believe. And as far as I know base movement seems to have little or no additional increase in your mount speed. There is an SH boon that does increase mount speed directly though.

I believe the first copy of an insignia bonus gives 100% benefit, and all subsequent copies give 25% benefit each. So if you slot all 5 of a particular bonus, you get 200% (or 2x) the base benefit.

I've seen at least 3 different takes on how insignia bonuses work, and do not take them too seriously because of that. The game developers should make the system clear, if they are not good for face value.

The wiki gives no indication of deprecation of value based on numbers and you can have as many as 5 of these suckers at any one time.

Are the insignias themselves deprecated when in multiples?

@strumslinger

silverkelt

If you have bondings , slot a Protector's Camaraderie and friendship.
Every toon should have wanderers, you can transfer your maxed toons to alt ones.
Every toon should have gladiator guile, alot of players are slotting it and in dungeons if you dont have at least the 15% speed bonus, you will feel the difference. TRS are adding it thier own speed bonus already.. making them the fastest played toon in the game.

on my non bonding toons.. I will have shepards up usually, + a healing one.

A few have magistrate's , just because .. well 1% dps is better then nothing I guess.

If you can only afford 1 , I would go with wanderers,
If you can only afford 2, I would go with wanderers + guile
If you can do 3, Protector's Camaraderie
Protectors Frienship is found off several of the green giveaways, these mounts are REALLY good, because they stack with the epic versions vs adding to them. Dont by pass these.

The remainder of the bonuses, fill in as you desire, I have all the powers opened, but I dont have multiples of each per se, so I do not stack many powers, I know some poeple who use all thier slots for Protector's Camaraderie and Friendship.

That is my opionion, the utility of wanderers and guile is hard to overlook though, as one allows you to progress in game and the other speeds up everything in game by a good margin.

someonedies

If you are looking for insignia heal-bonuses, check it out http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1218030/feedback-healing-tools

nezdin

Thank you to everyone who has replied here.

Ok so there s still some uncertainty it seems about stacking different insignia bonuses and how they work.

silverkelt said:

Protectors Frienship is found off several of the green giveaways, these mounts are REALLY good, because they stack with the epic versions vs adding to them. Dont by pass these.

Ok that is interesting. Although I am assuming this holds mainly for strong companions? I only have a war dog stuck at level 30 for instance so I can't imagine the boost would be too significant.

someonedies said:

If you are looking for insignia heal-bonuses, check it out http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1218030/feedback-healing-tools

Thanks for the link. What is Shield? I guess it is not the CW's Shield but some other class?

qexotic

The description for Protector's Friendship is:

Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 1% of your Power and Defense for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.

So you can get up to 4% of your Power and Defense added to your stats for upto 10 seconds. If you also have Protector's Camaradarie, things can get interesting. The description reads:

Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 3% of your Power and Defense for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.

So this can give up to 12% of your Power and Defense being added to your stats for up to 10 seconds. If you have one you have two mounts with one giving Friendship and the other Camaraderie, then, as ironkelt said, the bonuses are additive. So you can gain up to 16% of your Power and Defense for up to 10 seconds.

However, if you had two mounts that gave the same insignia bonus, e.g. 2 x Protector's Camaraderie, then it isn't a simple addition. It will be a sliding scale. You would not get upto 24% of your stats added it would be more like 15%. If you manage to stack five mounts all with the same insignia bonus the combined result seems to be double the base amount. So up to 12% for one mount would become upto 24% with five mounts slotted.

It is confusing but does sort of make sense when you think about it. They do seem to have over looked the way that the two and three insignia variants of the bonuses do additively stack once.

nezdin

qexotic said:

The description for Protector's Friendship is:

Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 1% of your Power and Defense for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.

So you can get up to 4% of your Power and Defense added to your stats for upto 10 seconds. If you also have Protector's Camaradarie, things can get interesting. The description reads:

Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 3% of your Power and Defense for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.

So this can give up to 12% of your Power and Defense being added to your stats for up to 10 seconds. If you have one you have two mounts with one giving Friendship and the other Camaraderie, then, as ironkelt said, the bonuses are additive. So you can gain up to 16% of your Power and Defense for up to 10 seconds.

However, if you had two mounts that gave the same insignia bonus, e.g. 2 x Protector's Camaraderie, then it isn't a simple addition. It will be a sliding scale. You would not get upto 24% of your stats added it would be more like 15%. If you manage to stack five mounts all with the same insignia bonus the combined result seems to be double the base amount. So up to 12% for one mount would become upto 24% with five mounts slotted.

It is confusing but does sort of make sense when you think about it. They do seem to have over looked the way that the two and three insignia variants of the bonuses do additively stack once.

So if I understand correctly, I get the stat boost off my main (equipped) mount only and get the full insignia bonus on any additional mount in my stable that has his bonus unlocked, as long is the bonus is different from the one of my main mount. If the additional insignia bonus is the same as the one that my main mount has, then the reduction in bonus applies. However, I only get the stat boost from my main equipped mount.

Thanks for this very clear description of how the effects interact! It really does seem that combining some of these bonuses is worth it.

silverkelt

the companion ones are more for bonding set ups.. if you are not using bonding stones, dont worry about it for now.

Wanderers and Guile, some of the GOLD purchased mounts have the green mount bonuses (just as 1 though, not multiple choices) you can get a green mount from the summer festival now,

You can actually get 1 epic, 1 blue, 1 green and 2 for gold right now to save some AD. Look at the insignia list and determine what you may want.

But those two utility functions are great.

nezdin

silverkelt said:

You can actually get 1 epic, 1 blue, 1 green and 2 for gold right now to save some AD. Look at the insignia list and determine what you may want.

The gold purchased one are the ones in PE, green mounts, right (but cannot get epic or blue for gold I guess)? Thanks though, it makes perfect sense with what you and Qexotic explained above!