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Hitelite wrote on 2014-05-07 17:59
My total lvl is 370 right now, and my current lvl is 84.
(I messed up a lot when starting out so I'm 16 years old right now.. 4 more weeks for rebirth)
Also, my exploration level stinks.. My total exploration lvl is like 8.. I didn't know what exploration lvl was until my last rebirth D:
I used to dual battle swords, but I got my hand on a Glory Sword (Just need to special upgrade now) and I love it!! I know that dual battle swords out dmg two handed swords by far, and so does lances, but for now, I'mma keep my Glory Sword.
Right now, I've wasted my ap A LOT. I'm close combat btw
A lot of my skills (main ones I wanted to lvl) are rank 9 (sword mastery, combat mastery, etc) that will benefit my dmg
-Other close combat skills are untouched except for Smash (rank 5, I wanted aoe smash) and Windmill (rank 3)
I'm going to level Windmill to rank 1 first, before looking at other talents, but.. I'm thinking ahead for now!
What I was going to do was..
-Rank windmill 1!
-Rank some archery skills to rank A-9!
-Rank lightning bolt a bit high! (and mana shield too!)
-Then maybe harvest song, commerce, and carpentry! (want money, luck, and str)
-Then transition to Lancer! (A lot of people told me it's really good)
Is this a good route to take? I want to learn fighter for pvp reasons, but.. that will be last for me. I am planning on being a paladin forever, so because of the stam+dex reasons, I wanted to learn archery (having 1 range is good to have, I think)
Or is there something I'm doing wrong or can do better..?
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Iyasenu wrote on 2014-05-07 19:18
Survivability might be a thing.
Since you plan on using Dual Wield/Two-handed/Lance, you won't be using a shield like that.
Maybe shoot for a suit of Heavy Armor, and Heavy Armor Mastery, for the times when you won't be using Archery.
The bonus defense, protection, and Auto-Defense chance would be helpful for a Melee character.
And Heavy Armor Mastery isn't a very expensive skill, either. (25 total, by r1)
It comes with a Dex Penalty (-50% rE -> -35% r1), after rE, though, so it wouldn't be for times when you'd want your whole amount of Dexterity. But for Melee, especially Sword-Melee (Sword Mastery gives a large amount of Balance), you won't need a huge amount of Dexterity.
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ironwoman wrote on 2014-05-07 19:43
As of current meta, if you really wanna great damage, there is no other weapon to use other than lances.
That being said, don't think of Knight as a separate class, it's all melee.
For maximum amount of str gained, you do want at least ranged attack and arrow revolver to rank 1 for the str, if not just for utility and a bit of dex.
As for magic skills, there is really no need to rank them unless you want to go into gunner soon. It can provide utility but it's not that great and is good enough at rank 9.
As for bard, what you really want ranked is battlefield overture, not harvest song. Harvest song is great when you want to do gathering based life skills, but not in combat.
To be fair, lancer should be the second class you transition into. Just get it out of the way early.
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AoiPhantom wrote on 2014-05-12 23:58
Sorry in advance for the overwhelming amount of text, but here I go...
I'll start by commenting on your future skill build. I would agree that WM should be ranked up to R1 quickly, as it becomes more difficult to train once you CP increases from ranking other skills further and the gain in stats you get along with them. Ranking range next would seem a bit out of place, even if only for the benefit of the 50 DEX towards increasing your balance. At the cost of 155 AP for getting R1 range, you have a good many skills at your disposal that can be ranked instead.
Combat Mastery would cost you 165AP to get from R9 to R1. You would gain 80 HP, 8 balance, 22 STR(or 8.8 max atk), and 10 dex. I would rank this skill second on your list in place of range as it provides a good amount of survivability and does the job of providing you with both a decent mix of damage and balance.
Next up, there is Smash. Maxing Smash with only 102AP, you gain 4 STR(1.6 max atk) and your DMG goes from 400% to 500%(single handed/duel wield) and from 480% to 600%(2handed; whether its moving on to lances or sticking with your Glory Sword). Don't forget the increase in splash DMG from 10% to 20%, boosting that AOE smash you ranked it up. Whether you decide to stick with duel wield and glory sword or decide to transition into lance, smash is your main damaging skill in the melee class. This I would either put second or third in the list.
Assuming your critical skill is R9, it would cost 105AP to max. This provides a gain of 24WILL( or 2.4crit) and an increase of critical DMG from 190% to 250%. Critical is ABSOLUTELY critical, as it benefits any class in the damage they deal. This skill may take time to train up so I would just rank whenever possible.
Now what comes next would depend on your decision on whether to continue with dual wielding and 2h swords(glory sword) or to transition early into knight talent. Given that your defense and counter at not exactly high ranked, lances wont really impede you much in combat as your lance counter would be quite similar ranked to counter anyways. In lower ranked shadow mission, you wont notice the benefits of piercing much, but as you move on to ADV and HM shadow missions, lance would appeal to you more.
Although I say "transition", you will only be needing to rank up lance mastery for now. At the cost of 207AP from RN to R1, you gain the benefit of +19STR(7.6 max atk), +25 max atk for lances, and +15% crit for lances. Now if only lance mastery gave you extra balance. No worries here as combat mastery and a good enchant or two should patch up any issues with balance.
Combat mastery R1 provides 15 balance. A fully upgraded lion claw lance would have 12 balance. A cheap common enchant such as Strider provides 10 balance, along with a nice 16 STR bonus(or 6.4 max atk). And maybe if you get the chance to fight the Black Warrior field boss and find the Sight enchant for heavy armor, that would provide you with an additional 10 balance and even 10 max atk to boot! Assuming 0 dex, this would bring you a grand total of 47% balance, not great but still better than the 12% balance on a upgraded lion claw lance :fail3:
Now if you decided to continue on with swords, there is sword mastery. At the cost of 137AP from R9 to R1, you gain 8 balance for swords, 18 DEX, and 13 sword damage (this counts twice if you duel wield, giving 26 total sword damage instead).
Lightning bolt, mana shield, harvest song, and carpentry should not be ranked at such an early stage in the game.
As you are not thinking of transitioning into mage or gunner anytime soon, the extra gain in DMG and INT from ranking lightning bolt is negligible, your basic atks probably do more damage. So lightning bolt will only provide you with the utility of stopping approaching enemies in between combos.
With the recent updates, mana shield does a terrible job of keeping you alive; as they now do not take into account your def or prot in the calculations. So unless you have mana reduction set effects coupled with high end INT, its not viable.
As ironwomen has mentioned, battle overturn would be a much better alternative to harvest song as it provides a huge bonus in max damage and crit at R1. However, for this to be effective you would need to rank up playing instrument and/or song to increase this effect. The damage bonus from the buff is also in % so you will find it a bit underwhelming with little base damage, but increasingly more useful later on late game.
Carpentry has an extremely high STR:AP ratio, making it a good choice to rank for STR-dependent classes. However, it provides you with only 42str(or 16.8 max atk) and 0 combat capability or utility. In general, ranking skills solely for its stat gains is done after ranking all/most of a skill set's skills. Theses skills, along with the talent associated with it, should already be providing you with a good amount of stats as well as % damage from its primary skills.
From my personal experience, I find that quickly finishing and specializing on a single skill set as your primary skill set should hold top priority. Whatever that skill set maybe, it will serve to be you bread and butter when it comes to levelling and doing G's. After that, you can start hybriding or ranking just about whatever skill you like.
Everything stated above is my personal opinion; whatever you decide to go with ultimately depends on you.
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Hitelite wrote on 2014-05-13 18:52
Quote from AoiPhantom;1219896:
Sorry in advance for the overwhelming amount of text, but here I go...
I'll start by commenting on your future skill build. I would agree that WM should be ranked up to R1 quickly, as it becomes more difficult to train once you CP increases from ranking other skills further and the gain in stats you get along with them. Ranking range next would seem a bit out of place, even if only for the benefit of the 50 DEX towards increasing your balance. At the cost of 155 AP for getting R1 range, you have a good many skills at your disposal that can be ranked instead.
Combat Mastery would cost you 165AP to get from R9 to R1. You would gain 80 HP, 8 balance, 22 STR(or 8.8 max atk), and 10 dex. I would rank this skill second on your list in place of range as it provides a good amount of survivability and does the job of providing you with both a decent mix of damage and balance.
Next up, there is Smash. Maxing Smash with only 102AP, you gain 4 STR(1.6 max atk) and your DMG goes from 400% to 500%(single handed/duel wield) and from 480% to 600%(2handed; whether its moving on to lances or sticking with your Glory Sword). Don't forget the increase in splash DMG from 10% to 20%, boosting that AOE smash you ranked it up. Whether you decide to stick with duel wield and glory sword or decide to transition into lance, smash is your main damaging skill in the melee class. This I would either put second or third in the list.
Assuming your critical skill is R9, it would cost 105AP to max. This provides a gain of 24WILL( or 2.4crit) and an increase of critical DMG from 190% to 250%. Critical is ABSOLUTELY critical, as it benefits any class in the damage they deal. This skill may take time to train up so I would just rank whenever possible.
Now what comes next would depend on your decision on whether to continue with dual wielding and 2h swords(glory sword) or to transition early into knight talent. Given that your defense and counter at not exactly high ranked, lances wont really impede you much in combat as your lance counter would be quite similar ranked to counter anyways. In lower ranked shadow mission, you wont notice the benefits of piercing much, but as you move on to ADV and HM shadow missions, lance would appeal to you more.
Although I say "transition", you will only be needing to rank up lance mastery for now. At the cost of 207AP from RN to R1, you gain the benefit of +19STR(7.6 max atk), +25 max atk for lances, and +15% crit for lances. Now if only lance mastery gave you extra balance. No worries here as combat mastery and a good enchant or two should patch up any issues with balance.
Combat mastery R1 provides 15 balance. A fully upgraded lion claw lance would have 12 balance. A cheap common enchant such as Strider provides 10 balance, along with a nice 16 STR bonus(or 6.4 max atk). And maybe if you get the chance to fight the Black Warrior field boss and find the Sight enchant for heavy armor, that would provide you with an additional 10 balance and even 10 max atk to boot! Assuming 0 dex, this would bring you a grand total of 47% balance, not great but still better than the 12% balance on a upgraded lion claw lance :fail3:
Now if you decided to continue on with swords, there is sword mastery. At the cost of 137AP from R9 to R1, you gain 8 balance for swords, 18 DEX, and 13 sword damage (this counts twice if you duel wield, giving 26 total sword damage instead).
Lightning bolt, mana shield, harvest song, and carpentry should not be ranked at such an early stage in the game.
As you are not thinking of transitioning into mage or gunner anytime soon, the extra gain in DMG and INT from ranking lightning bolt is negligible, your basic atks probably do more damage. So lightning bolt will only provide you with the utility of stopping approaching enemies in between combos.
With the recent updates, mana shield does a terrible job of keeping you alive; as they now do not take into account your def or prot in the calculations. So unless you have mana reduction set effects coupled with high end INT, its not viable.
As ironwomen has mentioned, battle overturn would be a much better alternative to harvest song as it provides a huge bonus in max damage and crit at R1. However, for this to be effective you would need to rank up playing instrument and/or song to increase this effect. The damage bonus from the buff is also in % so you will find it a bit underwhelming with little base damage, but increasingly more useful later on late game.
Carpentry has an extremely high STR:AP ratio, making it a good choice to rank for STR-dependent classes. However, it provides you with only 42str(or 16.8 max atk) and 0 combat capability or utility. In general, ranking skills solely for its stat gains is done after ranking all/most of a skill set's skills. Theses skills, along with the talent associated with it, should already be providing you with a good amount of stats as well as % damage from its primary skills.
From my personal experience, I find that quickly finishing and specializing on a single skill set as your primary skill set should hold top priority. Whatever that skill set maybe, it will serve to be you bread and butter when it comes to levelling and doing G's. After that, you can start hybriding or ranking just about whatever skill you like.
Everything stated above is my personal opinion; whatever you decide to go with ultimately depends on you.
Aiya thanks so much for providing me with so much info +_+
Yea I agree completely with what you've told me. I'm still in the process of learning much and much so what you've said sounds all good to me xD
Thanks again for the advices~
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Cookieknight wrote on 2014-05-14 02:33
I recommend getting a lance. Rank some combat skills and life skills that give you strength you strength I guess. I would start with windmill, then do combat mastery, then smash, critical, after that sword mastery (Just rank the basic skills). Then get like a knight lance or something and start ranking up lance skills. Then do some life skills that give you strength, start with carpentry. Then you can rank up the useful bard skills like lulaby and battlefeild overture. While you doing this you can get some good equipment, enchant your stuff, abd get reforges. After your done with that you can do rank other skills like fighter, mage, range, or alchemy. Then gunner or puppets.