What "Build" means in this game...

"Build" in this game, has nothing to do at all with the actuall class you character has.

You can use any class and use any weapon or combination of magic(you could have a tactician staff user or a whip using warlock).

Of course, class specialisation does come into having some effect. Though you could play an bow-using guardian, it does remove their beneficial bonus they receive. (At the moment) there is no reason to play this combination.

I'm going to attempt to put together a "build" guide here by using stats.

Currently you can have a maximum of 100 in a stat level, and a maximum of 280 stat levels at level 70. This puts a grand total of 840 bonus stat points with a maximum of 300 points in one stat.

Lost everybody? Good. Onto each stat.

MELEE
Str: Strength is required when using crushing or slashing weapons only, or if you are using a shield (in part). If you are not going to use Str, don't put points into Str.
Dex: Dexterity is required for all weapons to hit, and for some, for damage. At the moment, all classes need to get Dex to over a 100 bonus points (minimum lv34 melee at Lv70). Consider this in your "builds".
Pst: one point in Pst = around 3.3 points in energy.

MAGIC
Int: Only required for archers in part, and DD Mages. If you are not going to use DD at all, there is no reason to put any points into INT.
Cnc: Required for all DD Mages, DoT Mages and archers. If you are not going to use DD, DoT or archery, there is no reason to put points in here either.
Mst: one point in Mst = around 3.3 points in mana.

DEFENSE
Agi: Used for avoiding attacks/kiting/parry/blocking. All classes probably should at least get Agi up to 100 bonus points. (debatable)
Cnt: Used for avoiding DD/DoT attacks. All classes probably should at least get Cnt to 100 bonus points (debatable). This plus the above would mean that you would need a minimum Lv68 at Lv70.
Dur: this increases the number of hit points you can have. Currently I have not done any checking on how this works as yet as it works on level as well.

RECOVERY
Whatever you have left from the above can go into here.
Pre: Physical recovery - how fast you can recover energy (in & out of combat)
Mre: Mental recovery - how fast you can recover mana (in & out of combat)
Rec: Recovery - how fast you can recover hit points (in & out of combat)
I haven't done the math on the above either, for the same reason as Dur.

Part 2 coming soon - what does this all mean..?

This is where you decide on what you are going to do with your "life". These are mainly the big options (there are many others, but these are the big ones):

Pure Magic Options:
DoT Mage: Spells do Damage over time. Staff damage is used as support damage. INT would not be used in this build
DD Mage: Spells do Direct Damage. Staff damage is used as support damgae. Both INT & CNC is required in this build.
Healer: Spells are used to either avoid damage, or heal damage or both. Staff damage is used as the ONLY damage. Both INT and CNC is not required in this build.

(these are the extreme builds - you can vary in-between all three)
These three can be done with a weapon below instead of a staff. Remember though that gem speed is slowed for an increased melee/missile dps.

Pure Melee Options:
1h Weapon & Shield style: As it says on the tin.
2h Weapon style: Also, as it says on the tin.
Dual wield 1h weapons style: Again, as it says on the tin.

Also, as above, you have the choice of slashing/crushing/piercing weapons. Piercing weapons have higher minimum damage, slashing does the most amount of damage per second, and crushing weapons have a bit of both, and also have some nice effects later on.

Whip Options:
Whips are used as 'support' damage/healing for a pet. Whips are better used with an offensive style pet as you can get a 20% bonus to critical hits, as well as the bleed effect which doubles the damage again over 10 seconds (1.5 x 2 = 3 times damage on a critical). As there are no two-handed whips, you can either use the 1h weapon & shield style or Dual wield style with whips. (Some players do use dual whips with healing pets and use the whip damage as the only sort of damage to the opponent). Restrictions to the maximum stat points you can get would make combining a DD mage/whip master difficult. A DoT/whip master is possible, but would hurt recovery times.

Missile Options:
Bows use Dex to hit (debatable by some) and INT & CNC for damage. Note that 2 points in CNC = 1 point INT + 1 point CNC, there is no reason to put points into INT unless you are going to use DD spells as well. Shields/whips from above can be used but will slow the dps of the bow for extra armor class/pet damage.

After you have worked out what weapons you are going to use and what style of magic, then go to Part 3 - splitting your stat points.

Now, here comes the painful part. Distrubuting Stat points.

Get a piece of pencil and a paper (or open your spreadsheet program if you have one - which you should). Now work out from the numbers in part 1 with what magic and weapon choice you have from part two, and work out what stats you want when you reach level 70 (your ultimate goal).

Work out the melee side first on what stats you want to get (to at least 100 preferably - you do want to rescue that woman at the start at some stage I suspect). If you are going to need INT/CNC for magic, work that out next. Next work out what defense you need. And lastly, whatever is left you can add to your mana & energy points and recovery. Simple! NOT!

Example: I want a character that uses a whip for melee and a shield for defense (I'll need STR & DEX for attack and AGI for defense). I also want to use DoT gems for an extra kick. I open excel and do the following:

Step 1&2
Str: 100
Dex:100
Mst: ?
(lv 68)

Int: 0
Cnc: 102
Pst: ?
(Lv 34)

Agi: 102
Cnt: 102
Dur: ?
(Lv 68)

That gives me 280-68-68-33 = 110 levels to play with. Actually, this is starting to look good. Now if I specialise in either Mst or Pst, then I only need a few points in recovery & spells. I decide to go with Mst to keep things easy for me. I can add some points to dur as well to keep myself alive.

Step 3 - allotting the rest.
Str: 100
Dex:100
Mst: 100
(lv 100)

Int: 0
Cnc: 102
Pst: 0
(Lv 34)

Agi: 102
Cnt: 102
Dur: 99
(Lv 100)

Mst: 69
Pst: 0
Rec: 69
(Lv 46)

Now to choose a class! - step 4.

Now, all you have to do is choose a class that fits what playing style you have chosen.

For my example, most classes will fit it. It all depeds on what you want to do. I would suggest something that would increase either the defense of the build, or increase the pet capabilities. There is the choice of:

Defense:
Guardian - bonus to blocking
Tactician - bonus to parry

Pet "buffs":
Beastmaster - bonus to pet skills & damage
Vampire - healing from pet damage

DoT enhancement:
Angel - Bonus to forsaken damage (uses Energy) + healing spells.
Necromancer - Bonus to disease damage (uses Energy) + Dark Patience at Lv20
Or trade Energy for mana, and you could use Druid/necromancer/rogue for DoT enhancement. Rogues would also increase min damage of the whip.

There you go - you have a "build".

[USAViper2127]

Didn't read that, too lazy. but if you want to talk builds I can help you with an archer build. I am a true archer using a bow arrow and quiver. Archers don't have much health so you they mainly need to use healing gems. I have green and white magic both at my lvl. I am currently lvl 51. All my archery stats are lvl 51 as well. I have my magic lvl at 92 with a full INT CNC as high as I can get them right now. INT is sitting at 285 with stones and CNC is 268 with stones. Strength is all the way down to 89 so far. When my Magic lvl hits 100 I will start really building on my Defence. My Agi is hurting at 113 as of now. It is low because kiting wasn't in affect when I started.

The guide doesn't talk about stat enhancement, there are enough guides about that. But thanks for bringing that up as an important area.

I wrote this as most people see the class as the most important choice, where in fact, tailoring your stats to your weapon/magic is the most important. (Which you also stated).

Certainly lots of good info here... Too much to read considering my current overwhelming sense of procrastination. Good guide.

Also, I believe CNC can be helpful for taunting. I know there is a skill at level 20 that makes taunts stick better (aggravation under the psych magic tree), but even at 100 skill, which will take an awfully long time to achieve, it only provides 75% chance to taunt. That may sound huge, but when you are protecting some glass cannon characters against purple/black con monsters, you want to be landing nearly all of your taunts (especially as your gem bag gets larger and you have potentially much longer waits between each taunt gem). Certainly character level can play a part in this (though, as previously stated, you're usually fighting stuff higher level than yourself). Blue Magic has also been reported to help increase the chance of taunts sticking, but it's not always practical to dump all your resources (and passive advancement) into blue magic. Every little bit seems to help.

Sorry for the little rant there, it's not meant to be negative, just something for melee characters to consider.

Overall good stuff - I'll try to read it in better detail soon!

~ Solikos

One more thing... Can someone confirm that PST/MST provide fixed energy/mana gains? Or does your mana pool (and potentially the 'modifiers') increase with each character level as well? I have yet to test this, but it should be fairly straightforward.

Thanks,

~ Solikos

[zenga]

Originally Posted by Solikos

One more thing... Can someone confirm that PST/MST provide fixed energy/mana gains? Or does your mana pool (and potentially the 'modifiers') increase with each character level as well?

I haven't seen any change when i level up or delevel.

Taunt is considered an offensive spell, so therefore would benefit from CNC.

I could get into should you level Pst or Mst or both before deciding on what to build, but that is covered in other guides as well.

In short

White Magic DoT, DD - energy
White Magic heal - both

Green Magic DoT - both
Green Magic heal - neither or mana
Green Magic DD - mana

Blue Magic DD, Specials - both

Grey Magic Damage Prot - mana
Grey Magic DD - mana

Red Magic DD, DoT - mana

Black Magic DD - energy
Black Magic Dot - either.


You can always specialise in one or the other and use the balance gem anyway.

Ok, so I'm a noob with a noob question, just saying up front...

I've been trying (trying) to use this guide to help me make a character. I've pretty well decided that I want to go 2h piercing. In the guide, you say that strength is for slashing or crushing weapons, and I've also read in the game itself that dexterity affects piercing damage (partially...?)

So my question is this: How should I distribute my strength and dexterity to accomodate 2h piercing? I'm also open to suggestions as to a different weapon if you have one to suggest.

I'm going to be travelling for about a week with no internet access, so if I don't reply back to this for a while then that's why.

I've been dreading leveling up my character for fear of doing this wrong, so if someone would be so kind as to help a friendless noob out I would be very appreciative.

Piercing uses Dex and not Str.

Awesome guide (that i plan to use obsessively, of course), but a few mistakes

- pst and mst are under the wrong categories in part 3. you list pst as magic and mst as melee. also, you list mre and pre as mst and pst, and reg as rec.
- you imply that necro has only bonus to disease DoT - after rereading i could tell that you hadn't forgotten mana-based dot's but you might want to specify that necro's bonus (in p4) is for all black, not just disease
- most importantly: str isn't necessary for piercers, but it does add significantly more damage than the dex partial bonus. after restatting my str points to dex on a pierce-rogue, my average damage dropped by about 10 per swipe (from 30-30 to 25-25 avg), but after adding stones that got my str up to what it was before restat, i was hitting about 10 damage more than before (35-35 avg). it was about a thirty-point shift from str to dex, so 30 dex does approximately 5 less average damage on an 11-33 weapon than 30 strength. these aren't backed by statistics, just my observations, but do with it what you will.

Ok, some final checks before I really do much....

This is what I'm thinking about doing:

Str:100
Dex:100
Pst: ?
(lvl 68)

Int:0
Cnc:0
Mst: ?
(lvl 0)

Agi:100
Cnt:100
Dur:100
(lvl 100)

Pre:
Mre:
Reg:
(lvl 78?/80?)


So what I'm looking at is a character using 2h piercing and healing gems; vampire. So, I decided I'd go ahead and do 100 str 100 dex because of what Tapobu said. Unless I'm mistaken, Int and Cnc do not affect healing... right? So what I'm looking at is either 100 in Pst and using Pre and Reg, 102 in Mst and using Mre and Reg or is a combination of both better?(???) Something else?

Thanks for the amazazing guide and the help btw. In case you hadn't figured out, I like to plan these things ahead, lol.

Also, (sorry if I'm spamming the board) I'd like to know if this build looks good:

Jeweler, Staff user; DoT caster...not quite sure how to stat but here goes:

Str: 100 (Idk how much to get, but str helps staff dmg.. how important?)
Dex:100
Pst:55
lvl 85

Int: 0 (don't need for DoT, right?)
Cnc: 100
Mst: 56
lvl 52

Agi: 100 (agi/cnt/dur amounts?)
Cnt: 100
Dur: 55
lvl 85

Pre: 58
Mre:58
Reg: 58
lvl 58

I basically did str, dex, agi, cnt... cnc... then distributed the rest kindof even. I don't really plan on specializing in mana or energy, but I feel like butter over too much bread... on the other hand, I originally had it set up with 0 dur and 0reg. I looked at it and thought about survivability I mean, awesome amounts of mana, energy, and mana/energy regens are pretty useless if you're dead, lol.

So just tell me what you think, I'm still trying to find my character build.

Thanks!

Hi Necrox, I read your guide, but I don't really get the whole idea even after reading it twice.

Ok, as a vampire, I need to hit hard enough to heal. So do I get more STR? But if I don't make enough hits, it also means I cannot heal, so should I get more DEX? WHich is more important?

And with regards to weapons, if piercing does minimum damage and slashing does maximum damage, then why would anyone use priercing in the first place?

Originally Posted by Madeline

Hi Necrox, I read your guide, but I don't really get the whole idea even after reading it twice.

Ok, as a vampire, I need to hit hard enough to heal. So do I get more STR? But if I don't make enough hits, it also means I cannot heal, so should I get more DEX? WHich is more important?

It depends on which weapons you are using. Using crushers, you can put all your points into Str, because they fully rely on it to deal out damage and even partly to hit.
Slashers and whips need Str and Dex. Whether you level both stats equally or focus on one or the other is up to you and also depends on what other skills you are using (parry, f.e., requires dex, while blocking requires str).
With piercing weapons, you can put all your points into dex, since piercers rely on dex to hit and half on dex, half on str to deal full damage.

As you play a vampire, I'd recommend you wield slashers or crushers, since those deal more damage than piercers.

Originally Posted by Madeline

And with regards to weapons, if piercing does minimum damage and slashing does maximum damage, then why would anyone use priercing in the first place?

With piercers you hit more often and the skills puncture and hemorrhage add quite some damage to it. But I think that your lifeleech ability doesn't work on bloodlet and puncture damage, so as a vampire you're better off using slashers or crushers.

Hi Nosebatter,
Thx for the reply. So basically I need to stick to slashers and crushers and then increase STR? What about DEX? How much should I increase for these? How about PSt?

Originally Posted by Madeline

Hi Nosebatter,
Thx for the reply. So basically I need to stick to slashers and crushers and then increase STR? What about DEX? How much should I increase for these? How about PSt?

Stick with either crush or slashing in the beginning. For crushing put all points into Str. For slashers, I found a 2 Str : 1 Dex ratio to be working out well, but that's just me.

You will need some PSt if you use either white or black magic. A good indicator on when you need more PSt is when your energy bar runs lower than your hitpoint bar during most fights. In other words, increase PSt every time you feel your energy supply is insufficient, else don't. You can completely disregard it, too, really depends on what kind of magic you are using and to which extent.

Ok thx a lot. If I have any more problems, can I send you a message to ask you?