TA
11-04-2010, 08:07 PM
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7391/guideintro.jpg
This is going to be your in depth guide to the Battle Scythe wielding Evie. The skills, how to play it, and generally how to be better at it. You never know, you may learn something.
The Scythe Evie is an extremely versatile class. It has massive damage comparable to Lann, a strong magic shield to protect itself, the ability to teleport around the battlefield, a self heal and is generally just all around awesomeness and very fun to play.
This guide is currently incomplete and will continue to be improved and added to as time goes on.
Note: Please keep all your Evie questions, and guide comments/questions, here in the the thread instead of PMing me with them. I have a limited inbox size and you'll receive a faster response from other users here.
Skills
Skill Order
The skills are grouped in what their priority is. The higher up on the list the skill is, the higher priority it is (that means you rank that first). If something isn't available to you yet because it's too high level then rank what's available that is the next highest on the list for you.
Legend
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/4568/reqrem2.png
* = Either due to skill requirements or the bare minimum one should ever get
Controls
L = Left Mouse Button (Normal Attack)
R = Right Mouse Button (Smash)
+ = The following can be performed separately.
E = E-Key (Grab/Pull)
Controls are listed based on a Mouse+Keyboard configuration. If you're using any other layout, use the actions in parenthesis as designated by your current control setup.
These are skills that are a priority and should be ranked up first.
Lv. 22
022Smash Mastery
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8660/smashmast.png
Description: It's fairly high AP, but I'm not giving you a choice on this one. All of your attacks benefit from it. You want Rank A, and Rank 6 eventually. At bare minimum get it to E for the 10% boost. You need at least Combat Mastery D before you can rank Smash Mastery, so do that early!
Lv. 14
014Intelligence Mastery
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3851/intmast.png
Description: It takes a decent amount of AP, but this benefits all of your finishing moves and will allow you to pick up heavier objects. You won't have much else to put points into at this level anyways, so get this to Rank A.
Lv. 12
012Magic Mastery
http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/7239/magicmast.png
Description: 500 extra M.Att? Yes please. Get it to A, you'll use it for all your finishing moves and the boost is no laughing matter. Massive AP cost, but it's worth it. You probably won't have much else to put points into until 22 anyways, so you may as well dump some points into this. It'll benefit your staff until you get your scythe as well, so not a terrible idea.
Lv. 24
024Battle Scythe: Blink
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5618/blinkv.png
Controls: (W, A, S, D) SPACE SPACE
Description: This is by far your most used and most useful skill. Get it to Rank A as soon as possible. It costs a lot of stamina and ranking it will help you out a great deal. Note: The tooltip on this skill's ranking is wrong. It is not %. At Rank A it reduces the cost by 7, meaning down to 33 from 40.
Lv. 36
036SP: Insane Reaper
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/410/insanereaper.png
Controls: Z to use. X to toggle between available SP skills.
Description: This skill is amazing. AMAZING! You definitely want it, and you'll want to use it a lot. The bonus from it is extremely nice and it only costs 2 SP bars, so rank it up. Rank it to whatever you feel you can afford, but you'll want Rank A eventually. Whether you go higher for the attack speed increase is up to you. 9=4%, 8=6%, 7=8%, 6=10%... but Rank A is the highest stamina regen at 10, A-6 all have 10 regen. Now, let me explain something... You get this at level 36, and it's amazing. But it takes very high AP to rank up. You don't need to rank this higher than F, it'll get the job done even at that level. If you max the other priority skills though, this will be a good one to invest into. Note: Insane Reaper restores n stamina to you (4-10 depending on rank) and always 4 to party until Rank A and beyond, where it will restore 5 to party members.
Lv. 14
014Magic Critical Hits
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6581/magiccrit.png
Description: Rank it to E at the very least for the 10% increased chance and 10% damage boost on magic crits. Rank A is nice with 18% chance increase and 14% damage increase, but for 790 AP it will be the least important of your priority skills to invest into. You will however want Rank A eventually, and before the non-priority skills. This skill affects your smashes as well as your finishers. For Evie all smashes are considered "magic attacks." So, definitely worth investing into.
Lv. 6
006Standing Endurance
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7472/standingend.png
Description: Kinda useful and might save your life. At Rank 9 and above it will allow you to roll instantly when knocked down instead of having to wait the duration. Above r9 will reduce stamina cost by 1 per rank.
Lv. 40
040Bloody Thread
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/502/bloodythread.png
Controls: LLLLRE+R
Description: Unlike Death Label, this skill isn't restricted to same-type mobs and it has a very large range, even at low level. It does amazing damage too, you'll definitely want to rank it up. You need Rank C Scythe Mastery to get this, so make sure you have that by the time you hit 40. At absolute minimum, get it to D for 3 targets, but I definitely recommend A.
Lv. 8
008Alchemy: Erg Transformation
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5795/ergtrans.png
Description: A lot of people overlook this, but I think it's kinda nice. 11 ergs that heal 90 hp, 990 hp just from a silly little pot is pretty nice. It only takes 570 AP total to max too. This is an extremely nice skill and I recommend everyone maxes this fairly quickly. Not only can you heal yourself completely for very minimal stamina, but you can heal teammates as well, and with a Scythe! One little pot, plate, club or whatever is available to transform can heal 990 health on its own. If you do several before a battle or at random times, this skill can entirely replace healing potions for not only you but for your party as well. This skill's usefulness should not be overlooked!
Lv. 1
040Mana Shield
http://i.min.us/ikWtOw.png
Description: This is your shield. Obviously it's generally a good idea to rank it. Shield good. No shield bad. Rank it when it becomes available. Each rank reduces the time it takes for the little buggers to come back by 6 seconds. So, it's a good idea to rank it as high as possible.
Lv. 40
040Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation
http://i.min.us/ikVH6i.png
Description: Whether you decide Dark Knight or Paladin, it's important you get it as soon as possible and start using it hourly (it resets on the hour every hour) and level it up. The quest chains that will give you your transformation all start with "Pact:" - do those as soon as you get them before the rest of your quests. If you don't, you may end up being forced to do much more of the main quest because Nyle will go into hiding until a you've done The Yeti, an Ancient Race and completed that part of the main quest. As of the Transformation Update, 1st transformation takes 0 AP and 0 SP to use, so use it every hour that you can, without fail. 2nd transformation still takes 10 AP every time you use it. Assuming you deal enough damage, you should get 100XP per use. Each "level" of it requires 2000XP. That's 50,000XP for level 25. Assuming you get 100XP per transformation that's 500 transformations and 5000 AP. It's also 500 hours. So again, every hour. Get on it!
Dark Knight Transformation
1st Transformation
Revelation: HP, Revelation: ATT - these are a given that you want them. However, they aren't the first thing you want to max. I find Revelation: Fatigue is more important now that our forms no longer have infinite stamina. With this, hopefully you'll be able to keep your Insane Reapers up and get a few Reverse Gravities in.
Revelation: Resistance... this depends pretty heavily on your playstyle and how important it's going to be is up to you. Personally, I play pretty recklessly so I can dish out as much damage as possible in my transformation, so maxing it is pretty high priority for me. Not getting knocked down is nice. I really miss that about the original transformation.
Steal - this actually doesn't add very much benefit, not nearly as much as you might imagine. Personally, I leave this at 1, get 1 in firestorm, and possibly get slowdown as well. No need to max this stuff. Not very useful and there are more important things to worry about.
Revelation: Aura - as an Evie with Insane Reaper, I find this woefully unimportant; however, Revelation: Potential after it, is incredibly important. You're going to want to max that for sure.
2nd Transformation
In your second transformation, the first priorities for you are going to be Vigor and Fury. The extra attack and added balance is very nice. And well, we go back to the sp thing. More Reverse Gravity is good. Lots of damage. You will of course want Longevity as well, but it's a bit lower priority than those other two.
You should be able to get 22 points in your 1st transformation before putting points into your second. Now why do we do this? The reason is simple, really. You're going to be using your 1st transformation much more often than your second, so it's much more beneficial to get the first skills ranked up before the second. If you aren't going to use your second transformation often (and you shouldn't, because it takes AP), then the first is obviously higher priority. You may want to consider the second transformation more of an "oh ****!" button, to use when you know you're going to die, since it will fill your health.
Anywho, at which point, you will put 3 points into Fury, then Vigor becomes available and you can max that.
You're going to want Destiny as soon as possible. As for Stamina, well, that's up to you. It depends how much you feel that you need it. With Insane Reaper, I'd say it's a fair bit below the other things on the importance scale.
Fissure, not as useful as it was when it could be used indefinitely, but it's still fairly helpful.
I guess that about wraps up the Dark Knight Transformation. Remember, always use your own judgment on these things, and base your choices on your own playstyle. Use this guide as just that, a guide, but make the final decision yourself. This is just information so that you can make better decisions.
Lv. 52
052SP: Reverse Gravity
http://i.min.us/in0mQg.png
Description: Who doesn't love this skill? It's awesome. Amazing animation and it does massive damage. You'll be using it quite a bit while your Transformation is on cooldown. So, rank it up. Get the skill no matter what. I recommend Rank A eventually, it's not a huge priority, but it does get a pretty significant damage boost. So, it is a good idea to rank it.
Decide Early
These skills are generally unimportant unless you intend to go with various routes associated with them. You should decide early on what you want to do and rank these skills accordingly, or not.
Note: As you start out, the benefits of the heavily increased armor rating will outweigh the small difference in damage. However, once you start reaching around level 40 and start getting higher level armor sets like Rose Drop, the disparity between armor and damage will be very noticeable, and not in a good way. By not using the Cloth sets you will be losing a huge amount of INT. It's very noticeable when each piece is giving around 80 INT per piece instead of 20-30 per. It is with that said, that I personally believe that investing a lot of AP into these skills is a waste. However, later on some Cloth sets will use pieces of Light armor, at which time you will need the base Weight Endurance and may want to rank Light Armor Proficiency, when it gets to that point. Until then, more important things have priority. It is your personal choice however.
Lv. 34
034Weight Endurance
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/9656/weightendurance.png
Description: While not exclusively an Evie skill, you need to decide early on if you're going to use this. Many Scythe users will prefer Light or Heavy Armor over Cloth Armor and those players will need to invest in this early. If you intend to go with Light or Heavy Armor, you have to get this skill to Rank A, at minimum. If you do not plan on using Light or Heavy Armor you do not need to rank this nor either of those skills. Here's why: by default you have a Maximum Weight of 91 Stones. Your Scythe with Rank D Scythe Mastery weighs 47 stones. That means you can only have 44 stones on you. Let's take the White Tyrant Light Armor set for example. Each piece is 42 stones each and there are 5 pieces. That is 210 stones, not even remotely within your realm of conceivability. With Rank A Weight Endurance you'll get an additional 120 stones. 120+44=164 stones. That means, the White Tyrant Set at 210 stones will still be too heavy. You will have to rank Light Armor Proficiency to Rank A as well for the -12 stones per piece, thus taking it down to 30*5=150, which you can manage. If you don't intend to go with Light Armor, then only rank it as needed. Eventually you are likely going to need to wear Light Armor though due to the higher sets having Light Armor pieces, or being nearly all Light Armor. So, rank accordingly.
Lv. 10
010Light Armor Proficiency
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4866/lightarmorf.png
Description: There are some advantages and some disadvantages of going this route, but you need to decide early on if you're going to do this. If you didn't, you can decide later but you'll end up having to wear cloth until then. The advantage is a higher DEF, STR, AGI and armor durability. The disadvantage is less INT and an obviously a sizable AP investment. Cloth armor will also generally be cuter. You can decide for yourselves. Once you're higher level (~50+) Cloth Armor sets will start to include pieces of Light Armor. So, you will need to rank it at that point. So, keep that in mind and just plan ahead and make sure you get it high enough for whatever set you want before that time. Until this point however, it's fairly unimportant. Later on, you will have nearly entire sets that are Light and also have a ton of INT, the set just having fairly more defense. An example would be Vehemence or Midnight Wedding, at 61. Eventually you are also going to want to rank it higher for more defense. When you do get these predominately Light sets, you'll find that the AP investment wasn't that big of a deal since you would have needed to do it anyways, and that INT isn't a problem either, though you will have a bit less than the full cloth sets like Wonderland. So, it's not bad at all to put points into this early on, or at any point for that matter. You're going to need it eventually most likely. Though you could probably get by completely naked for the majority of the time anyways, so it's not hugely important early on anyways. Might want to focus more on some of your more important skills in the early game, but that's just my opinion. Do as you like.
Lv. 10
010Heavy Armor Proficiency
http://i.min.us/ilrJso.png
Description: Some Evies will prefer Heavy Armor over Cloth or Light. You will have much higher DEF, STR & AGI stats. Your armor will also break much less. You will also have significantly less INT. However, it's important to note that it's unlikely you will be able to wear a full Heavy Armor set for a very long time. Even with Rank A and Weight Endurance Rank A and pieces enchanted, you won't be able to wear the full set. Until we get a patch that enables beyond Rank A Heavy Armor, it will be impossible to wear the full set. However, you will be able to wear 4/5 pieces of a set. You will be able to wear 5/6 pieces of Blood Prince with at least +3 enhanced armor, Rank A Heavy Armor Proficiency & Rank A Weight Endurance. If you prefer the stat boosts this provides, then go with it and invest early on. If you do not intend to use Heavy Armor, then don't waste your points in this. It's a personal call, you either want it or you don't. I'll leave that decision up to you.
Not a priority
These skills may or may not be good, but they aren't a high priority to invest into.
Lv. 18
018Combat Mastery
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/437/combatmast.png
Description: You get a significant boost to your normal hit damage, which is big since Scythe already has the highest normal damage in the game. Ranking it up would be good, but not a high priority. LLLL will do roughly about the same as an LLR with this skill at Rank A. You need at least Combat Mastery D before you can rank Smash Mastery, so do that early!
Lv. 42
042Alchemy: Create Golem
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/2720/creategolem.png
Description: Alright, my thoughts on this are this... Pros: Very good at drawing agro, very good chance of knockdown. It could be used by itself to keep a boss pinned down somewhere while the rest of your team does something else, on Nightmare at the Ruins for instance, pinning down Laghodessa while the rest of your team kills the other Giant Spider. It also does pretty decent damage. Also, a note to make is that the golem cannot kill a boss. So, you can use it to get certain bonus/oath kills if need be - just let it go at the boss for awhile then finish it however is necessary.. Cons: Body blocks teammates and yourself (which can make it especially annoying for melee characters either getting trapped or moved away from a boss, making them miss their smashes and et cetera), bosses tend to stand inside it so it makes stunlocking them with spears very difficult, it can sometimes hit your teammates, and it costs 1k per use. Overall, I say it's very useful if you're soloing. It makes things like Red Tyrant much easier. However, I don't particularly suggest it for other times unless you think your team can work well with it. That however, will be up to you. So too will be what you put into it. It doesn't really die all that often, so ranking it up isn't really even necessary if you're worried about that. The glowy magic stuff does change colors as you rank it up and it does get bigger and do more damage, get more health and whatnot.
Lv. 56
056Alchemy: Mana Pistol
http://i.minus.com/ibcd5IpNVIpTEs.png
Description: Personally, at 960 gold a pop, I find Golem to be much more efficient in both damage and holding aggro. This skill, to me, should be used once your golem dies and you just really need something to take agro for a bit so you can either get some attacks in or res your fallen teammates. Other than that, at the cost of 960 gold per use, I can't very well justify using it very often. You can however use a massive amount of them in a dungeon. So if you really have to, you can. Just keep in mind... if you use 9 of them... are you really getting enough gold and/or drops from the mission that the 8,640 gold hit is going to be that useful to you? Or maybe you should try other less money intense strategies instead? It's just something to think about. It's your gold, and you can do whatever you want. But I tend to try to save, myself, so I tend to not like this skill very much. If you do intend to use it though, you'll probably want to rank it up pretty high so it actually deals some damage and doesn't die too fast. Keep in mind, this is a pretty big AP investment. Considerably less useful and more expensive both gold-wise and AP-wise than Golem. So, definitely get that first.
Lv. 32
032Battle Scythe: Mark of Death
http://i.min.us/ilhiYS.png
Controls: LLLRE+R
Description Your first real snap-finish move. You have three choices. Get it to E for the 10% damage increase, D for being able to mark 3 targets, or go all the way up to A. You'll want to get this to Rank A eventually. Get it to E at the very least. The skill description "Increases damage to marked enemy with smash by n%" may be a bit misleading as it does not increase all smash damage done to marked mobs while the mark is in effect. What it actually means is "Increases damage to marked enemy with (smash-key activated snap finish) by n%". I hope that's more clear.
Lv. 28
028Battle Scythe: Blade Shift
http://i.minus.com/iXtqu0lSUbOXO.png
Controls: (W, A, S, D) SPACE SPACE R
Description: I have this maxed at Rank A, and I have to say, I use it a lot more than I probably should. It's a bit of a gimmick skill in that it just does things a little faster. Blinking into enemies in general, is someone in quite a rush, and having an attack added onto it, that's just an added bonus I guess. The damage isn't actually all that great. It's "okay." Probably not worth the huge stamina usage however. So, if you find it fun, rank it. If not, well... it's not incredibly important to be honest. You can take out low level mobs pretty fast with it since it's a little less powerful than an LLR. So if you find yourself in a rush a lot of times or don't have much else to invest in, go ahead. It's just another skill to have fun with. You're still going to be dishing out your damage primarily with your Invisible Loom+Bloody Thread.
Lv. 28
028Battle Scythe: Demon Splitter
http://i.minus.com/ibiXvf4aT1wx3V.png
Controls: LRR
Description: I've gotten this to Rank 9 and used it quite a bit before I decided I could really comment on it. I've used it in a variety of places and my observations are this: It's about as powerful as your LLR, you can do it slightly faster and it has more aoe since it swings all the way around, but it does take a bit more stamina. Useful vs low level mobs, but maybe not all that useful for more practical purposes since you'd have to land all the hits to get the LLR damage. So, probably not the best thing to use when trying to solo a boss and attacking up to the hit. Again, a bit of a gimmick skill. Kinda fun. Rank it if you want, don't if you don't want to. I'd wager it's not going to greatly affect you either way.
Lv. 25
024Eagle Talon
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/6373/eagletalon.png
Description: It says we aren't supposed to be able to use this, but we can, and they can even with boat 7 in Korea. So, maybe it's just wrong. When you start running it takes 5 stamina every second until eagle talon kicks in, so ranking it will reduce the stamina drain when you run by a decent amount. It takes 3 seconds at Rank F for the smash to kick in at 90-91 from 110 stamina. At Rank A it takes 1.2 seconds for the smash to kick in at 100 stamina from 110 stamina. There's also the whole... fire bomb blowing up stuff for fun thing (r9). Not really a priority, but rank it if you really want.
Lv. 24
000Battle Scythe: Spirit Bind
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/7186/spiritbind.png
Controls: LLRE+R
Description: This little guy is like Chuck Norris Jizz. You make him, he lasts 120 seconds and then proceeds to interrupt/knockdown and/or wtfpwn mobs and bosses. Here's a video of the lil guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkds_9KleA). Yeah, he solo'd that vampire lancer. What you put into this skill is up to you, he seems pretty beast at Rank F. You may or may not want to rank him up to A. It doesn't take a huge amount of AP, but it's not really a priority in my opinion. The AP could be better spent elsewhere at the beginning. Eventually, yeah you may as well after your other stuff.
Lv. 10
010Cloth Armor Proficiency
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/2343/clothmast.png
Description: Pretty unimportant at first, just rank it as needed. You'll need at least Rank C for Lighter Red Tyrant at level 36. Rank B for Rose Drop, I believe. Later on, you're going to need it considerably higher ranked for higher sets, and the added defense and durability are nice. Everyone knows cloth tends to like to break at the drop of a hat, so having a 80% or more increase is very nice.
Lv. 14
014Strength Mastery
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/542/strmast.png
Description: Alright, I'm not gonna lie... it's a really high AP requirement. But, you'll probably want this. All of your smashes will benefit from it. You do pretty good damage without it and unlike Fiona/Lann you pick up stuff with your INT attribute, so it's up to you really. If you want the extra damage, go for it. If not, then it's not a huge priority. Most of your attacks do a combination of INT/STR based attacks, but it's moreso INT than STR. Eventually you'll want Rank A though.
Lv. 12
012Campfire
http://i.min.us/ill5Dq.png
Description: It's nice and all, but as an Evie... you don't have counter attack or anything incredibly important to do with your gear not breaking. So, not really a priority at all. Just mooch off other people with high fires, like a Fiona for instance. Eventually, yeah, the buff is useful. But, not anytime soon.
Lv. 22
022Agility Mastery
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3606/agimast.png
Description: At Rank A it adds 81 DEF, and you'll get faster stamina regen. The stamina regen is nice. But honestly, not all that important, especially with SP: Insane Reaper. Eventually it's not a bad idea, but not a priority.
Lv. 22
022Willpower Mastery
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/4782/willmast.png
Description: At Rank A it only adds a 2.5% crit chance. Not too important, but you need at least Rank D for Life Flare. You don't really want normal crits anyways (see Critical Hit for an explanation).
Lv. 22
022Life Flare
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8193/lifeflare.png
Description: Honestly, not very important. Get it to Rank E, then don't bother with it for a long, long long time. Eventually get it to rank 9 or 6, but it's soulcrushingly unimportant compared to your other skills.
Lv. 24
024Battle Scythe: Life Drain
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4703/lifedrain.png
Controls: LR
Description: Not a very useful skill to rank. The skill itself can be useful at times at the start, since it can heal for a somewhat decent amount if it crits, or whatever it does. It seems that sometimes it only heals for like 5 hp though, which I assume is if you get a physical crit and the magic (pull) doesn't hit. When it does, it heals for about 50 or so unranked I believe. You could spam this when you run out of potions or use it to avoid potions all together, but not in any kind of serious scenario. It heals very little and the effort you would need to heal a large amount would likely result in you taking even more damage since you have to be in such close proximity. Alchemy: Erg Transformation is a much better skill to rank. I do not suggest ranking this one unless you have nothing else left.
Lv. 19
019Critical Hit
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/346/crithit.png
Description: DO NOT RANK THIS! This affects the small part of your smashes (or all of LR). However, physical crit for scythes can be more of a hindrance than a help. The physical component of your smash crits, the crit causes the mob to fly away and the major part of damage (magical) misses. It's good on mobs that either don't flinch or can't get knocked away. But the benefit is very minimal from boats 2-3 onward as the normal mobs start to pose quite a danger themselves and missing an entire combo is really bad. It's even worse EP6 onwards because the easy bosses to farm are difficult to solo, not because the boss, but because of soloing trash mobs along the way. If you ranked Critical Hit by accident, all is not lost. You do not need to delete your character.
Extended Description: I would first like to say that this is an extremely controversial skill and you may wish to seek out other sources of information and debate specifically regarding this skill. Ranking Critical Hit can be seen as a bit of a debate of Crowd Control vs Damage. First thing's first, if you do rank this skill then you will be investing a massive chunk of AP, make no mistake. What it comes down to is getting a chance to knock something down in exchange for either losing half of your damage (your smash) or all of your damage (your smash and your pull). You of course also lose the stamina that you expended for the attack that did no damage. In addition to this, you can not decide when this happens. It will occur at random. It may happen when you want it to, or it may happen in an extremely bad situation for it to happen. As such, it is a very unreliable skill to have as you will lose your ability to know what your skill is going to do when you use it. Instead you will be playing a lottery. A lottery with your life. If you don't rank it you won't have any significant chance for this knockdown crit on upswing to occur, resulting in you 1) knocking things down, 2) missing your smash and possibly 3) missing your pull/snap. As such, you will be able to play more reliably, knowing your character is going to execute the command you gave it. You will know the tools at your disposal and you will decide when to use them. If you like Crowd Control and don't mind sacrificing DPS and not having any control over when this occurs, you may actually find Critical Hit useful to rank. That will be for each individual player to decide. My firm opinion, as writer of this guide, is that it is not advisable to rank Critical Hit due to the large amount of possibly negative side effects with relatively little gain, and all for a massive AP investment on your part. If you do decide you want Critical Hit then I suggest you wait until Boat 6 (Rocheste) to rank it. Until this point, it will be entirely useless to you as normal mobs pose little threat and all flinch when attacked, leaving this skill a complete waste of AP and possibly making you lose a bunch of stamina and have a lower overall damage output because of it. So, if you do decide to rank it... Wait until you get that far. Hopefully you will have already ranked your important skills by then. It is a very large AP investment, and it won't be useful to you until that point anyways. So if you must, then try to wait if you can, and rank your more important skills first. That, is my advice. You are, of course, free to decide for yourself.
Damage Formulas & Percentiles
(Credit goes to Bakuryu (http://mabination.com/vindictus/vindictus-guides/12480-damage-formulas-percentiles.html))
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/8671/percentiletableeviescyt.png
Skills with two percentile values means that the attack has two "#Hits" but each of those Hits have a different percentile (and damage type)
Physical Damage Formula:
(ATK - DEF + 900 + extra damage * 6.25)* percentile * (1 + Mastery%)
Magical Damage Formula:
(MATK - DEF + 900 + extra damage * 6.25)* percentile * (1 + Base Mastery% + Mastery%)
Physical Critical Damage Formula:
Damage * [1+ (Critical Skill %) + Will * 0.03/200]
Magical Critical Damage Formula:
Damage * [1+ (Magic Critical Skill %) + (Intelligence +1000) * 0.03/200]
Gravity Inversion Damage Formula:
(MATK + 10500) * 1/3 * (1 + Mastery%)
Skill Tips
Quickly Blink Open Doors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvNUf9YtxU0
Description: Quickly blink open doors. Blink once to crack it open and once the door is cracked open the next blink will open it very wide. If someone else has already cracked it open, your initial blink will open to the same as if you had already blinked into it once.
Easily Blink Down Blocks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISp7zrrZZJw
Description: Like doors, you can easily blink down blocks. Just stand next to the block and blink. It's easy!
How to solo Gnoll Chieftain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKDseh56zfI
Description: At level 24 this shouldn't even be needed. But, if you're having trouble with it... here it is. How to solo him on Hard Mode + Season of Macha. I messed up quite a bit, but it was still pathetically easy. Combo + Blink. Rinse, repeat. You can get the basic idea. That's about all there is to really point out I suppose. At 24 he should already be non-issue.
How to solo Hidden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4iy6l8l6z8
Description: Try to hit as many mobs as possible with invisible loom in the opening room for a bunch of SP. You should be able to get 4 bars, or really close to it.
http://i.min.us/inmYuu.png
It should take about 2 minutes to clear 1st room. Once you've cleared it, go ahead and Summon your Golem. once it's summoned hit F4 to make it Disappear! The reason we're doing this is because once we get inside we aren't going to have enough time to get it up unless we already have it cast.
Go onside and while it's still doing the little cinematic where it shows the Spider, hit F4 to make your Golem Get Up!
When you get control of your character, immediately run up and left and break the 2 pillars you see in front of you and lead your golem through the junk so it can collect them and form.
Once it's formed, set it to Attack! (F1) then while the spider is attacking your golem, don't screw around - you wail on its ass!
If you're higher level, you can use your Mana Pistol at this point. If not, don't worry about it - you don't need it.
Make sure you stay either on the side or behind the spider at all times. It's a good idea to stand either the opposite of your Golem since the spider's agro will be drawn to it. Just wail on it hard. Combo all you can. Invisible loom (LLLLR) every time you can. If you don't have time and have to dodge his attack then get whatever attack you can in and blink. If you have time to pull a Bloody Thread but not enough time to keep hitting, then do it! Maximize your damage output.
Remember those 4 SP bars we got you earlier in the first room? This is where you use them. Use your SP: Insane Reaper and attack constantly. Blink when you have to, but just keep attacking non-stop. The faster you damage him, the less time you're going to have to fight him on your own without your golem.
Note: It's a good idea to have your SP Insane Reaper ranked up to at least give you 10 stamina per second. If it isn't, then you could try stamina potions. But that's really the best way to do this.
Now, at this point, your golem is going to die. "Oh god, oh god!!" Yeah, okay. Don't panic. That's fine... probably...
If you pumped enough damage, the spider should be either 1) dead or 2) near death. If not, you're gonna have to take care of whatever's left. If you were a bit slow you may have 2 or 3 bars left. Hopefully not. But that's okay.
If he jumps at you, just blink diagonally to a side and start comboing. At least get LLR in. You might be able to squeeze in an LLLR or LLLLR if you're comfortable enough. If not, just do what you can. LLR is fine, just keep the damage up. The faster you kill him, the less chance there is of him killing you.
If you already had him on 1 or 2 bars, then chances are even if you mess up and he hits you a couple times, you should still be alright.
If not, what you're going to have problems with is his double swipe. You have a few options here. You can either blink twice, which will always get you away (assuming you have enough stamina), or you can try some other methods. You might try dodging the first attack and then blinking on the second. Or, you might try to just blink through him diagonally towards whatever arm he swipes at you with. Whatever the case, you're gonna have to experiment a bit and find what works for you best. This is really about the only hard part of the whole thing. If you did enough damage while your golem was up it's gonna be easy though, or not even needed cause you already killed him.
So, just try your best, and you should get it done. If you're having trouble getting enough damage in, you can try watching the video and see if you can learn to speed up your attacks and increase your damage output a bit.
All in all, the second part is probably gonna take a little under 3 to 4 minutes. Unless you have Mana Pistol, then it's probably gonna be a lot faster than that.
http://i.min.us/inncAC.png
Changelog
11/06/2010
Added an intro picture.
Added a Legend.
11/07/2010
Added Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Modified description of Weight Endurance for clarity.
Ninja-fixed Heavy Armor Proficiency chart.
11/08/2010
Reorganized skill list and prioritized skills.
Reformatted and restructured post.
Added additional descriptions and changed some.
Added Damage Formulas & Percentiles information.
Added Campfire and SP: Insane Reaper.
Magic Critical Hits added.
Updated Mark of Death description to more clearly explain skill usage.
Added Agility Mastery, Willpower Mastery and Life Flare.
Fixed typo in Changelog. (lol)
Skill Tips section added.
"Quickly Blink Open Doors" video added.
"How to solo Gnoll Chieftain" video added.
11/09/2010
Cloth Armor Proficiency added.
11/10/2010
Added a note to SP: Insane Reaper.
Added a note to Battle Scythe: Blink.
Updated Battle Scythe: Mark of Death description.
Updated Battle Scythe: Mark of Death description again and moved it to Not a Priority.
11/15/2010
Added "Easily Blink Down Blocks" video.
11/16/2010
Fixed SP: Insane Reaper skill table (wiki was wrong) and changed the description.
11/20/2010
Smash Mastery values corrected. Thanks aznhick!
11/22/2010
Updated Magic Critical Hits description.
Added minor details to Cloth Armor Proficiency.
Updated Damage Percentile chart.
Added Alchemy: Erg Transformation.
Added Combat Mastery.
Added Eagle Talon.
Added Standing Endurance.
Added Critical Hit. *
Info added to Standing Endurance.
11/29/2010
Fixed Standing Endurance chart to reflect appropriate skill levels.
Changed Standing Endurance description to be a bit more explainable.
Moved Standing Endurance to Priority Skills.
Added a small note to Willpower Mastery description.
12/02/2010
Added Bloody Thread.
Added a Note to Decide Early section.
12/03/2010
Added a Note to Legend.
12/18/2010
Moved Life Drain lower down in priority and changed description.
Moved Alchemy: Erg Transformation to Priority and changed the description to reflect this change.
Added Alchemy: Create Golem.
Updated Combat Mastery ap chart and description, noting Rank D is needed to rank Smash Mastery.
Added Combat Mastery note to Smash Mastery.
12/26/2010
Information added to Eagle Talon.
1/02/2011
Information added to Skills.
5/02/2011
Fixed missing images: Mark of Death, Campfire.
Added information to Light Armor Mastery.
5/06/2011
Added guide for soloing Hidden.
Added Mana Shield.
Added Dark Knight/Paladin Transformation.
Added information to Critical Hit.
Added an Extended Description to Critical Hit.
5/07/2011
Removed Stamina Recovery. No longer in-game.
5/08/2011
Added SP: Reverse Gravity.
Fixed missing image: Heavy Armor Proficiency.
5/12/2011
Added an Update to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.
Removed the Update to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.
11/08/2011
Added detailed information to Dark Knight Transformation.
Added Battle Scythe: Demon Splitter.
Added Battle Scythe: Blade Shift.
Added Alchemy: Mana Pistol.
Added information to Light Armor Proficiency.
Added information to Cloth Armor Proficiency.
Added information to Weight Endurance.
Added information to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.
This is going to be your in depth guide to the Battle Scythe wielding Evie. The skills, how to play it, and generally how to be better at it. You never know, you may learn something.
The Scythe Evie is an extremely versatile class. It has massive damage comparable to Lann, a strong magic shield to protect itself, the ability to teleport around the battlefield, a self heal and is generally just all around awesomeness and very fun to play.
This guide is currently incomplete and will continue to be improved and added to as time goes on.
Note: Please keep all your Evie questions, and guide comments/questions, here in the the thread instead of PMing me with them. I have a limited inbox size and you'll receive a faster response from other users here.
Skills
Skill Order
The skills are grouped in what their priority is. The higher up on the list the skill is, the higher priority it is (that means you rank that first). If something isn't available to you yet because it's too high level then rank what's available that is the next highest on the list for you.
Legend
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/4568/reqrem2.png
* = Either due to skill requirements or the bare minimum one should ever get
Controls
L = Left Mouse Button (Normal Attack)
R = Right Mouse Button (Smash)
+ = The following can be performed separately.
E = E-Key (Grab/Pull)
Controls are listed based on a Mouse+Keyboard configuration. If you're using any other layout, use the actions in parenthesis as designated by your current control setup.
These are skills that are a priority and should be ranked up first.
Lv. 22
022Smash Mastery
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8660/smashmast.png
Description: It's fairly high AP, but I'm not giving you a choice on this one. All of your attacks benefit from it. You want Rank A, and Rank 6 eventually. At bare minimum get it to E for the 10% boost. You need at least Combat Mastery D before you can rank Smash Mastery, so do that early!
Lv. 14
014Intelligence Mastery
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3851/intmast.png
Description: It takes a decent amount of AP, but this benefits all of your finishing moves and will allow you to pick up heavier objects. You won't have much else to put points into at this level anyways, so get this to Rank A.
Lv. 12
012Magic Mastery
http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/7239/magicmast.png
Description: 500 extra M.Att? Yes please. Get it to A, you'll use it for all your finishing moves and the boost is no laughing matter. Massive AP cost, but it's worth it. You probably won't have much else to put points into until 22 anyways, so you may as well dump some points into this. It'll benefit your staff until you get your scythe as well, so not a terrible idea.
Lv. 24
024Battle Scythe: Blink
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5618/blinkv.png
Controls: (W, A, S, D) SPACE SPACE
Description: This is by far your most used and most useful skill. Get it to Rank A as soon as possible. It costs a lot of stamina and ranking it will help you out a great deal. Note: The tooltip on this skill's ranking is wrong. It is not %. At Rank A it reduces the cost by 7, meaning down to 33 from 40.
Lv. 36
036SP: Insane Reaper
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/410/insanereaper.png
Controls: Z to use. X to toggle between available SP skills.
Description: This skill is amazing. AMAZING! You definitely want it, and you'll want to use it a lot. The bonus from it is extremely nice and it only costs 2 SP bars, so rank it up. Rank it to whatever you feel you can afford, but you'll want Rank A eventually. Whether you go higher for the attack speed increase is up to you. 9=4%, 8=6%, 7=8%, 6=10%... but Rank A is the highest stamina regen at 10, A-6 all have 10 regen. Now, let me explain something... You get this at level 36, and it's amazing. But it takes very high AP to rank up. You don't need to rank this higher than F, it'll get the job done even at that level. If you max the other priority skills though, this will be a good one to invest into. Note: Insane Reaper restores n stamina to you (4-10 depending on rank) and always 4 to party until Rank A and beyond, where it will restore 5 to party members.
Lv. 14
014Magic Critical Hits
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6581/magiccrit.png
Description: Rank it to E at the very least for the 10% increased chance and 10% damage boost on magic crits. Rank A is nice with 18% chance increase and 14% damage increase, but for 790 AP it will be the least important of your priority skills to invest into. You will however want Rank A eventually, and before the non-priority skills. This skill affects your smashes as well as your finishers. For Evie all smashes are considered "magic attacks." So, definitely worth investing into.
Lv. 6
006Standing Endurance
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7472/standingend.png
Description: Kinda useful and might save your life. At Rank 9 and above it will allow you to roll instantly when knocked down instead of having to wait the duration. Above r9 will reduce stamina cost by 1 per rank.
Lv. 40
040Bloody Thread
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/502/bloodythread.png
Controls: LLLLRE+R
Description: Unlike Death Label, this skill isn't restricted to same-type mobs and it has a very large range, even at low level. It does amazing damage too, you'll definitely want to rank it up. You need Rank C Scythe Mastery to get this, so make sure you have that by the time you hit 40. At absolute minimum, get it to D for 3 targets, but I definitely recommend A.
Lv. 8
008Alchemy: Erg Transformation
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5795/ergtrans.png
Description: A lot of people overlook this, but I think it's kinda nice. 11 ergs that heal 90 hp, 990 hp just from a silly little pot is pretty nice. It only takes 570 AP total to max too. This is an extremely nice skill and I recommend everyone maxes this fairly quickly. Not only can you heal yourself completely for very minimal stamina, but you can heal teammates as well, and with a Scythe! One little pot, plate, club or whatever is available to transform can heal 990 health on its own. If you do several before a battle or at random times, this skill can entirely replace healing potions for not only you but for your party as well. This skill's usefulness should not be overlooked!
Lv. 1
040Mana Shield
http://i.min.us/ikWtOw.png
Description: This is your shield. Obviously it's generally a good idea to rank it. Shield good. No shield bad. Rank it when it becomes available. Each rank reduces the time it takes for the little buggers to come back by 6 seconds. So, it's a good idea to rank it as high as possible.
Lv. 40
040Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation
http://i.min.us/ikVH6i.png
Description: Whether you decide Dark Knight or Paladin, it's important you get it as soon as possible and start using it hourly (it resets on the hour every hour) and level it up. The quest chains that will give you your transformation all start with "Pact:" - do those as soon as you get them before the rest of your quests. If you don't, you may end up being forced to do much more of the main quest because Nyle will go into hiding until a you've done The Yeti, an Ancient Race and completed that part of the main quest. As of the Transformation Update, 1st transformation takes 0 AP and 0 SP to use, so use it every hour that you can, without fail. 2nd transformation still takes 10 AP every time you use it. Assuming you deal enough damage, you should get 100XP per use. Each "level" of it requires 2000XP. That's 50,000XP for level 25. Assuming you get 100XP per transformation that's 500 transformations and 5000 AP. It's also 500 hours. So again, every hour. Get on it!
Dark Knight Transformation
1st Transformation
Revelation: HP, Revelation: ATT - these are a given that you want them. However, they aren't the first thing you want to max. I find Revelation: Fatigue is more important now that our forms no longer have infinite stamina. With this, hopefully you'll be able to keep your Insane Reapers up and get a few Reverse Gravities in.
Revelation: Resistance... this depends pretty heavily on your playstyle and how important it's going to be is up to you. Personally, I play pretty recklessly so I can dish out as much damage as possible in my transformation, so maxing it is pretty high priority for me. Not getting knocked down is nice. I really miss that about the original transformation.
Steal - this actually doesn't add very much benefit, not nearly as much as you might imagine. Personally, I leave this at 1, get 1 in firestorm, and possibly get slowdown as well. No need to max this stuff. Not very useful and there are more important things to worry about.
Revelation: Aura - as an Evie with Insane Reaper, I find this woefully unimportant; however, Revelation: Potential after it, is incredibly important. You're going to want to max that for sure.
2nd Transformation
In your second transformation, the first priorities for you are going to be Vigor and Fury. The extra attack and added balance is very nice. And well, we go back to the sp thing. More Reverse Gravity is good. Lots of damage. You will of course want Longevity as well, but it's a bit lower priority than those other two.
You should be able to get 22 points in your 1st transformation before putting points into your second. Now why do we do this? The reason is simple, really. You're going to be using your 1st transformation much more often than your second, so it's much more beneficial to get the first skills ranked up before the second. If you aren't going to use your second transformation often (and you shouldn't, because it takes AP), then the first is obviously higher priority. You may want to consider the second transformation more of an "oh ****!" button, to use when you know you're going to die, since it will fill your health.
Anywho, at which point, you will put 3 points into Fury, then Vigor becomes available and you can max that.
You're going to want Destiny as soon as possible. As for Stamina, well, that's up to you. It depends how much you feel that you need it. With Insane Reaper, I'd say it's a fair bit below the other things on the importance scale.
Fissure, not as useful as it was when it could be used indefinitely, but it's still fairly helpful.
I guess that about wraps up the Dark Knight Transformation. Remember, always use your own judgment on these things, and base your choices on your own playstyle. Use this guide as just that, a guide, but make the final decision yourself. This is just information so that you can make better decisions.
Lv. 52
052SP: Reverse Gravity
http://i.min.us/in0mQg.png
Description: Who doesn't love this skill? It's awesome. Amazing animation and it does massive damage. You'll be using it quite a bit while your Transformation is on cooldown. So, rank it up. Get the skill no matter what. I recommend Rank A eventually, it's not a huge priority, but it does get a pretty significant damage boost. So, it is a good idea to rank it.
Decide Early
These skills are generally unimportant unless you intend to go with various routes associated with them. You should decide early on what you want to do and rank these skills accordingly, or not.
Note: As you start out, the benefits of the heavily increased armor rating will outweigh the small difference in damage. However, once you start reaching around level 40 and start getting higher level armor sets like Rose Drop, the disparity between armor and damage will be very noticeable, and not in a good way. By not using the Cloth sets you will be losing a huge amount of INT. It's very noticeable when each piece is giving around 80 INT per piece instead of 20-30 per. It is with that said, that I personally believe that investing a lot of AP into these skills is a waste. However, later on some Cloth sets will use pieces of Light armor, at which time you will need the base Weight Endurance and may want to rank Light Armor Proficiency, when it gets to that point. Until then, more important things have priority. It is your personal choice however.
Lv. 34
034Weight Endurance
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/9656/weightendurance.png
Description: While not exclusively an Evie skill, you need to decide early on if you're going to use this. Many Scythe users will prefer Light or Heavy Armor over Cloth Armor and those players will need to invest in this early. If you intend to go with Light or Heavy Armor, you have to get this skill to Rank A, at minimum. If you do not plan on using Light or Heavy Armor you do not need to rank this nor either of those skills. Here's why: by default you have a Maximum Weight of 91 Stones. Your Scythe with Rank D Scythe Mastery weighs 47 stones. That means you can only have 44 stones on you. Let's take the White Tyrant Light Armor set for example. Each piece is 42 stones each and there are 5 pieces. That is 210 stones, not even remotely within your realm of conceivability. With Rank A Weight Endurance you'll get an additional 120 stones. 120+44=164 stones. That means, the White Tyrant Set at 210 stones will still be too heavy. You will have to rank Light Armor Proficiency to Rank A as well for the -12 stones per piece, thus taking it down to 30*5=150, which you can manage. If you don't intend to go with Light Armor, then only rank it as needed. Eventually you are likely going to need to wear Light Armor though due to the higher sets having Light Armor pieces, or being nearly all Light Armor. So, rank accordingly.
Lv. 10
010Light Armor Proficiency
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4866/lightarmorf.png
Description: There are some advantages and some disadvantages of going this route, but you need to decide early on if you're going to do this. If you didn't, you can decide later but you'll end up having to wear cloth until then. The advantage is a higher DEF, STR, AGI and armor durability. The disadvantage is less INT and an obviously a sizable AP investment. Cloth armor will also generally be cuter. You can decide for yourselves. Once you're higher level (~50+) Cloth Armor sets will start to include pieces of Light Armor. So, you will need to rank it at that point. So, keep that in mind and just plan ahead and make sure you get it high enough for whatever set you want before that time. Until this point however, it's fairly unimportant. Later on, you will have nearly entire sets that are Light and also have a ton of INT, the set just having fairly more defense. An example would be Vehemence or Midnight Wedding, at 61. Eventually you are also going to want to rank it higher for more defense. When you do get these predominately Light sets, you'll find that the AP investment wasn't that big of a deal since you would have needed to do it anyways, and that INT isn't a problem either, though you will have a bit less than the full cloth sets like Wonderland. So, it's not bad at all to put points into this early on, or at any point for that matter. You're going to need it eventually most likely. Though you could probably get by completely naked for the majority of the time anyways, so it's not hugely important early on anyways. Might want to focus more on some of your more important skills in the early game, but that's just my opinion. Do as you like.
Lv. 10
010Heavy Armor Proficiency
http://i.min.us/ilrJso.png
Description: Some Evies will prefer Heavy Armor over Cloth or Light. You will have much higher DEF, STR & AGI stats. Your armor will also break much less. You will also have significantly less INT. However, it's important to note that it's unlikely you will be able to wear a full Heavy Armor set for a very long time. Even with Rank A and Weight Endurance Rank A and pieces enchanted, you won't be able to wear the full set. Until we get a patch that enables beyond Rank A Heavy Armor, it will be impossible to wear the full set. However, you will be able to wear 4/5 pieces of a set. You will be able to wear 5/6 pieces of Blood Prince with at least +3 enhanced armor, Rank A Heavy Armor Proficiency & Rank A Weight Endurance. If you prefer the stat boosts this provides, then go with it and invest early on. If you do not intend to use Heavy Armor, then don't waste your points in this. It's a personal call, you either want it or you don't. I'll leave that decision up to you.
Not a priority
These skills may or may not be good, but they aren't a high priority to invest into.
Lv. 18
018Combat Mastery
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/437/combatmast.png
Description: You get a significant boost to your normal hit damage, which is big since Scythe already has the highest normal damage in the game. Ranking it up would be good, but not a high priority. LLLL will do roughly about the same as an LLR with this skill at Rank A. You need at least Combat Mastery D before you can rank Smash Mastery, so do that early!
Lv. 42
042Alchemy: Create Golem
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/2720/creategolem.png
Description: Alright, my thoughts on this are this... Pros: Very good at drawing agro, very good chance of knockdown. It could be used by itself to keep a boss pinned down somewhere while the rest of your team does something else, on Nightmare at the Ruins for instance, pinning down Laghodessa while the rest of your team kills the other Giant Spider. It also does pretty decent damage. Also, a note to make is that the golem cannot kill a boss. So, you can use it to get certain bonus/oath kills if need be - just let it go at the boss for awhile then finish it however is necessary.. Cons: Body blocks teammates and yourself (which can make it especially annoying for melee characters either getting trapped or moved away from a boss, making them miss their smashes and et cetera), bosses tend to stand inside it so it makes stunlocking them with spears very difficult, it can sometimes hit your teammates, and it costs 1k per use. Overall, I say it's very useful if you're soloing. It makes things like Red Tyrant much easier. However, I don't particularly suggest it for other times unless you think your team can work well with it. That however, will be up to you. So too will be what you put into it. It doesn't really die all that often, so ranking it up isn't really even necessary if you're worried about that. The glowy magic stuff does change colors as you rank it up and it does get bigger and do more damage, get more health and whatnot.
Lv. 56
056Alchemy: Mana Pistol
http://i.minus.com/ibcd5IpNVIpTEs.png
Description: Personally, at 960 gold a pop, I find Golem to be much more efficient in both damage and holding aggro. This skill, to me, should be used once your golem dies and you just really need something to take agro for a bit so you can either get some attacks in or res your fallen teammates. Other than that, at the cost of 960 gold per use, I can't very well justify using it very often. You can however use a massive amount of them in a dungeon. So if you really have to, you can. Just keep in mind... if you use 9 of them... are you really getting enough gold and/or drops from the mission that the 8,640 gold hit is going to be that useful to you? Or maybe you should try other less money intense strategies instead? It's just something to think about. It's your gold, and you can do whatever you want. But I tend to try to save, myself, so I tend to not like this skill very much. If you do intend to use it though, you'll probably want to rank it up pretty high so it actually deals some damage and doesn't die too fast. Keep in mind, this is a pretty big AP investment. Considerably less useful and more expensive both gold-wise and AP-wise than Golem. So, definitely get that first.
Lv. 32
032Battle Scythe: Mark of Death
http://i.min.us/ilhiYS.png
Controls: LLLRE+R
Description Your first real snap-finish move. You have three choices. Get it to E for the 10% damage increase, D for being able to mark 3 targets, or go all the way up to A. You'll want to get this to Rank A eventually. Get it to E at the very least. The skill description "Increases damage to marked enemy with smash by n%" may be a bit misleading as it does not increase all smash damage done to marked mobs while the mark is in effect. What it actually means is "Increases damage to marked enemy with (smash-key activated snap finish) by n%". I hope that's more clear.
Lv. 28
028Battle Scythe: Blade Shift
http://i.minus.com/iXtqu0lSUbOXO.png
Controls: (W, A, S, D) SPACE SPACE R
Description: I have this maxed at Rank A, and I have to say, I use it a lot more than I probably should. It's a bit of a gimmick skill in that it just does things a little faster. Blinking into enemies in general, is someone in quite a rush, and having an attack added onto it, that's just an added bonus I guess. The damage isn't actually all that great. It's "okay." Probably not worth the huge stamina usage however. So, if you find it fun, rank it. If not, well... it's not incredibly important to be honest. You can take out low level mobs pretty fast with it since it's a little less powerful than an LLR. So if you find yourself in a rush a lot of times or don't have much else to invest in, go ahead. It's just another skill to have fun with. You're still going to be dishing out your damage primarily with your Invisible Loom+Bloody Thread.
Lv. 28
028Battle Scythe: Demon Splitter
http://i.minus.com/ibiXvf4aT1wx3V.png
Controls: LRR
Description: I've gotten this to Rank 9 and used it quite a bit before I decided I could really comment on it. I've used it in a variety of places and my observations are this: It's about as powerful as your LLR, you can do it slightly faster and it has more aoe since it swings all the way around, but it does take a bit more stamina. Useful vs low level mobs, but maybe not all that useful for more practical purposes since you'd have to land all the hits to get the LLR damage. So, probably not the best thing to use when trying to solo a boss and attacking up to the hit. Again, a bit of a gimmick skill. Kinda fun. Rank it if you want, don't if you don't want to. I'd wager it's not going to greatly affect you either way.
Lv. 25
024Eagle Talon
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/6373/eagletalon.png
Description: It says we aren't supposed to be able to use this, but we can, and they can even with boat 7 in Korea. So, maybe it's just wrong. When you start running it takes 5 stamina every second until eagle talon kicks in, so ranking it will reduce the stamina drain when you run by a decent amount. It takes 3 seconds at Rank F for the smash to kick in at 90-91 from 110 stamina. At Rank A it takes 1.2 seconds for the smash to kick in at 100 stamina from 110 stamina. There's also the whole... fire bomb blowing up stuff for fun thing (r9). Not really a priority, but rank it if you really want.
Lv. 24
000Battle Scythe: Spirit Bind
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/7186/spiritbind.png
Controls: LLRE+R
Description: This little guy is like Chuck Norris Jizz. You make him, he lasts 120 seconds and then proceeds to interrupt/knockdown and/or wtfpwn mobs and bosses. Here's a video of the lil guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkds_9KleA). Yeah, he solo'd that vampire lancer. What you put into this skill is up to you, he seems pretty beast at Rank F. You may or may not want to rank him up to A. It doesn't take a huge amount of AP, but it's not really a priority in my opinion. The AP could be better spent elsewhere at the beginning. Eventually, yeah you may as well after your other stuff.
Lv. 10
010Cloth Armor Proficiency
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/2343/clothmast.png
Description: Pretty unimportant at first, just rank it as needed. You'll need at least Rank C for Lighter Red Tyrant at level 36. Rank B for Rose Drop, I believe. Later on, you're going to need it considerably higher ranked for higher sets, and the added defense and durability are nice. Everyone knows cloth tends to like to break at the drop of a hat, so having a 80% or more increase is very nice.
Lv. 14
014Strength Mastery
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/542/strmast.png
Description: Alright, I'm not gonna lie... it's a really high AP requirement. But, you'll probably want this. All of your smashes will benefit from it. You do pretty good damage without it and unlike Fiona/Lann you pick up stuff with your INT attribute, so it's up to you really. If you want the extra damage, go for it. If not, then it's not a huge priority. Most of your attacks do a combination of INT/STR based attacks, but it's moreso INT than STR. Eventually you'll want Rank A though.
Lv. 12
012Campfire
http://i.min.us/ill5Dq.png
Description: It's nice and all, but as an Evie... you don't have counter attack or anything incredibly important to do with your gear not breaking. So, not really a priority at all. Just mooch off other people with high fires, like a Fiona for instance. Eventually, yeah, the buff is useful. But, not anytime soon.
Lv. 22
022Agility Mastery
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3606/agimast.png
Description: At Rank A it adds 81 DEF, and you'll get faster stamina regen. The stamina regen is nice. But honestly, not all that important, especially with SP: Insane Reaper. Eventually it's not a bad idea, but not a priority.
Lv. 22
022Willpower Mastery
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/4782/willmast.png
Description: At Rank A it only adds a 2.5% crit chance. Not too important, but you need at least Rank D for Life Flare. You don't really want normal crits anyways (see Critical Hit for an explanation).
Lv. 22
022Life Flare
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/8193/lifeflare.png
Description: Honestly, not very important. Get it to Rank E, then don't bother with it for a long, long long time. Eventually get it to rank 9 or 6, but it's soulcrushingly unimportant compared to your other skills.
Lv. 24
024Battle Scythe: Life Drain
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4703/lifedrain.png
Controls: LR
Description: Not a very useful skill to rank. The skill itself can be useful at times at the start, since it can heal for a somewhat decent amount if it crits, or whatever it does. It seems that sometimes it only heals for like 5 hp though, which I assume is if you get a physical crit and the magic (pull) doesn't hit. When it does, it heals for about 50 or so unranked I believe. You could spam this when you run out of potions or use it to avoid potions all together, but not in any kind of serious scenario. It heals very little and the effort you would need to heal a large amount would likely result in you taking even more damage since you have to be in such close proximity. Alchemy: Erg Transformation is a much better skill to rank. I do not suggest ranking this one unless you have nothing else left.
Lv. 19
019Critical Hit
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/346/crithit.png
Description: DO NOT RANK THIS! This affects the small part of your smashes (or all of LR). However, physical crit for scythes can be more of a hindrance than a help. The physical component of your smash crits, the crit causes the mob to fly away and the major part of damage (magical) misses. It's good on mobs that either don't flinch or can't get knocked away. But the benefit is very minimal from boats 2-3 onward as the normal mobs start to pose quite a danger themselves and missing an entire combo is really bad. It's even worse EP6 onwards because the easy bosses to farm are difficult to solo, not because the boss, but because of soloing trash mobs along the way. If you ranked Critical Hit by accident, all is not lost. You do not need to delete your character.
Extended Description: I would first like to say that this is an extremely controversial skill and you may wish to seek out other sources of information and debate specifically regarding this skill. Ranking Critical Hit can be seen as a bit of a debate of Crowd Control vs Damage. First thing's first, if you do rank this skill then you will be investing a massive chunk of AP, make no mistake. What it comes down to is getting a chance to knock something down in exchange for either losing half of your damage (your smash) or all of your damage (your smash and your pull). You of course also lose the stamina that you expended for the attack that did no damage. In addition to this, you can not decide when this happens. It will occur at random. It may happen when you want it to, or it may happen in an extremely bad situation for it to happen. As such, it is a very unreliable skill to have as you will lose your ability to know what your skill is going to do when you use it. Instead you will be playing a lottery. A lottery with your life. If you don't rank it you won't have any significant chance for this knockdown crit on upswing to occur, resulting in you 1) knocking things down, 2) missing your smash and possibly 3) missing your pull/snap. As such, you will be able to play more reliably, knowing your character is going to execute the command you gave it. You will know the tools at your disposal and you will decide when to use them. If you like Crowd Control and don't mind sacrificing DPS and not having any control over when this occurs, you may actually find Critical Hit useful to rank. That will be for each individual player to decide. My firm opinion, as writer of this guide, is that it is not advisable to rank Critical Hit due to the large amount of possibly negative side effects with relatively little gain, and all for a massive AP investment on your part. If you do decide you want Critical Hit then I suggest you wait until Boat 6 (Rocheste) to rank it. Until this point, it will be entirely useless to you as normal mobs pose little threat and all flinch when attacked, leaving this skill a complete waste of AP and possibly making you lose a bunch of stamina and have a lower overall damage output because of it. So, if you do decide to rank it... Wait until you get that far. Hopefully you will have already ranked your important skills by then. It is a very large AP investment, and it won't be useful to you until that point anyways. So if you must, then try to wait if you can, and rank your more important skills first. That, is my advice. You are, of course, free to decide for yourself.
Damage Formulas & Percentiles
(Credit goes to Bakuryu (http://mabination.com/vindictus/vindictus-guides/12480-damage-formulas-percentiles.html))
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/8671/percentiletableeviescyt.png
Skills with two percentile values means that the attack has two "#Hits" but each of those Hits have a different percentile (and damage type)
Physical Damage Formula:
(ATK - DEF + 900 + extra damage * 6.25)* percentile * (1 + Mastery%)
Magical Damage Formula:
(MATK - DEF + 900 + extra damage * 6.25)* percentile * (1 + Base Mastery% + Mastery%)
Physical Critical Damage Formula:
Damage * [1+ (Critical Skill %) + Will * 0.03/200]
Magical Critical Damage Formula:
Damage * [1+ (Magic Critical Skill %) + (Intelligence +1000) * 0.03/200]
Gravity Inversion Damage Formula:
(MATK + 10500) * 1/3 * (1 + Mastery%)
Skill Tips
Quickly Blink Open Doors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvNUf9YtxU0
Description: Quickly blink open doors. Blink once to crack it open and once the door is cracked open the next blink will open it very wide. If someone else has already cracked it open, your initial blink will open to the same as if you had already blinked into it once.
Easily Blink Down Blocks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISp7zrrZZJw
Description: Like doors, you can easily blink down blocks. Just stand next to the block and blink. It's easy!
How to solo Gnoll Chieftain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKDseh56zfI
Description: At level 24 this shouldn't even be needed. But, if you're having trouble with it... here it is. How to solo him on Hard Mode + Season of Macha. I messed up quite a bit, but it was still pathetically easy. Combo + Blink. Rinse, repeat. You can get the basic idea. That's about all there is to really point out I suppose. At 24 he should already be non-issue.
How to solo Hidden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4iy6l8l6z8
Description: Try to hit as many mobs as possible with invisible loom in the opening room for a bunch of SP. You should be able to get 4 bars, or really close to it.
http://i.min.us/inmYuu.png
It should take about 2 minutes to clear 1st room. Once you've cleared it, go ahead and Summon your Golem. once it's summoned hit F4 to make it Disappear! The reason we're doing this is because once we get inside we aren't going to have enough time to get it up unless we already have it cast.
Go onside and while it's still doing the little cinematic where it shows the Spider, hit F4 to make your Golem Get Up!
When you get control of your character, immediately run up and left and break the 2 pillars you see in front of you and lead your golem through the junk so it can collect them and form.
Once it's formed, set it to Attack! (F1) then while the spider is attacking your golem, don't screw around - you wail on its ass!
If you're higher level, you can use your Mana Pistol at this point. If not, don't worry about it - you don't need it.
Make sure you stay either on the side or behind the spider at all times. It's a good idea to stand either the opposite of your Golem since the spider's agro will be drawn to it. Just wail on it hard. Combo all you can. Invisible loom (LLLLR) every time you can. If you don't have time and have to dodge his attack then get whatever attack you can in and blink. If you have time to pull a Bloody Thread but not enough time to keep hitting, then do it! Maximize your damage output.
Remember those 4 SP bars we got you earlier in the first room? This is where you use them. Use your SP: Insane Reaper and attack constantly. Blink when you have to, but just keep attacking non-stop. The faster you damage him, the less time you're going to have to fight him on your own without your golem.
Note: It's a good idea to have your SP Insane Reaper ranked up to at least give you 10 stamina per second. If it isn't, then you could try stamina potions. But that's really the best way to do this.
Now, at this point, your golem is going to die. "Oh god, oh god!!" Yeah, okay. Don't panic. That's fine... probably...
If you pumped enough damage, the spider should be either 1) dead or 2) near death. If not, you're gonna have to take care of whatever's left. If you were a bit slow you may have 2 or 3 bars left. Hopefully not. But that's okay.
If he jumps at you, just blink diagonally to a side and start comboing. At least get LLR in. You might be able to squeeze in an LLLR or LLLLR if you're comfortable enough. If not, just do what you can. LLR is fine, just keep the damage up. The faster you kill him, the less chance there is of him killing you.
If you already had him on 1 or 2 bars, then chances are even if you mess up and he hits you a couple times, you should still be alright.
If not, what you're going to have problems with is his double swipe. You have a few options here. You can either blink twice, which will always get you away (assuming you have enough stamina), or you can try some other methods. You might try dodging the first attack and then blinking on the second. Or, you might try to just blink through him diagonally towards whatever arm he swipes at you with. Whatever the case, you're gonna have to experiment a bit and find what works for you best. This is really about the only hard part of the whole thing. If you did enough damage while your golem was up it's gonna be easy though, or not even needed cause you already killed him.
So, just try your best, and you should get it done. If you're having trouble getting enough damage in, you can try watching the video and see if you can learn to speed up your attacks and increase your damage output a bit.
All in all, the second part is probably gonna take a little under 3 to 4 minutes. Unless you have Mana Pistol, then it's probably gonna be a lot faster than that.
http://i.min.us/inncAC.png
Changelog
11/06/2010
Added an intro picture.
Added a Legend.
11/07/2010
Added Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Modified description of Weight Endurance for clarity.
Ninja-fixed Heavy Armor Proficiency chart.
11/08/2010
Reorganized skill list and prioritized skills.
Reformatted and restructured post.
Added additional descriptions and changed some.
Added Damage Formulas & Percentiles information.
Added Campfire and SP: Insane Reaper.
Magic Critical Hits added.
Updated Mark of Death description to more clearly explain skill usage.
Added Agility Mastery, Willpower Mastery and Life Flare.
Fixed typo in Changelog. (lol)
Skill Tips section added.
"Quickly Blink Open Doors" video added.
"How to solo Gnoll Chieftain" video added.
11/09/2010
Cloth Armor Proficiency added.
11/10/2010
Added a note to SP: Insane Reaper.
Added a note to Battle Scythe: Blink.
Updated Battle Scythe: Mark of Death description.
Updated Battle Scythe: Mark of Death description again and moved it to Not a Priority.
11/15/2010
Added "Easily Blink Down Blocks" video.
11/16/2010
Fixed SP: Insane Reaper skill table (wiki was wrong) and changed the description.
11/20/2010
Smash Mastery values corrected. Thanks aznhick!
11/22/2010
Updated Magic Critical Hits description.
Added minor details to Cloth Armor Proficiency.
Updated Damage Percentile chart.
Added Alchemy: Erg Transformation.
Added Combat Mastery.
Added Eagle Talon.
Added Standing Endurance.
Added Critical Hit. *
Info added to Standing Endurance.
11/29/2010
Fixed Standing Endurance chart to reflect appropriate skill levels.
Changed Standing Endurance description to be a bit more explainable.
Moved Standing Endurance to Priority Skills.
Added a small note to Willpower Mastery description.
12/02/2010
Added Bloody Thread.
Added a Note to Decide Early section.
12/03/2010
Added a Note to Legend.
12/18/2010
Moved Life Drain lower down in priority and changed description.
Moved Alchemy: Erg Transformation to Priority and changed the description to reflect this change.
Added Alchemy: Create Golem.
Updated Combat Mastery ap chart and description, noting Rank D is needed to rank Smash Mastery.
Added Combat Mastery note to Smash Mastery.
12/26/2010
Information added to Eagle Talon.
1/02/2011
Information added to Skills.
5/02/2011
Fixed missing images: Mark of Death, Campfire.
Added information to Light Armor Mastery.
5/06/2011
Added guide for soloing Hidden.
Added Mana Shield.
Added Dark Knight/Paladin Transformation.
Added information to Critical Hit.
Added an Extended Description to Critical Hit.
5/07/2011
Removed Stamina Recovery. No longer in-game.
5/08/2011
Added SP: Reverse Gravity.
Fixed missing image: Heavy Armor Proficiency.
5/12/2011
Added an Update to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.
Removed the Update to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.
11/08/2011
Added detailed information to Dark Knight Transformation.
Added Battle Scythe: Demon Splitter.
Added Battle Scythe: Blade Shift.
Added Alchemy: Mana Pistol.
Added information to Light Armor Proficiency.
Added information to Cloth Armor Proficiency.
Added information to Weight Endurance.
Added information to Dark Knight / Paladin Transformation.