I just made a Dark Wizard who is speedily approching C grade, and I'm wondering how to outfit him, as there are so few PS's to set an example. I definately want to go with light armor, because I think male dark elves look completely stupid in robes for the most part. As for the weapon, I'm not quite sure what to go with. Duals would be my first guess, but then the idea of a bow occurred to me. Suggestions?
summoner's dont need to consure about weapons nor armor
best guess will be a cheap C weapon with acu get a light or robe set, and you done for the next 40 levels just remeber your pets (summons) are your weapon if they fall you fall
summoner's dont need to consure about weapons nor armor
best guess will be a cheap C weapon with acu get a light or robe set, and you done for the next 40 levels just remeber your pets (summons) are your weapon if they fall you fall
Judging by the light armor masteries PS's get, robes seem a bad idea to me. While light armor raises your cast speed, mana regen, atk speed, and pdef, robes only raise your pdef. I also don't get anymore nukes past lvl 40, so why would I want acu SA'd nuker weapon?
you dont do damage so DPS is useless yeah at 40 it looks like you do damage but it will change ones you reatch 52 you will understand what it means to be a sommoner sinds it's all you have but dont sweet they are GOOD
BW Light, is probobly the best armor you ever can have, highest P.def and your damage output dosnt mater as much, just use a blunt /w Health or something, or dagger /w focus if you got a buffer.
and PS even BW light got more P.def then top A so :P Just +3 your BW light and your sett to S grade, and here thers no good armor anyway.
Yeah I was refering to my friends PS setup :P second highest leveled active PS on lionna :P Only higher lv PS is kiroth (spelling?) and the difference is 2-3 levels ^^.
summoner's dont need to consure about weapons nor armor
best guess will be a cheap C weapon with acu get a light or robe set, and you done for the next 40 levels just remeber your pets (summons) are your weapon if they fall you fall
Judging by the light armor masteries PS's get, robes seem a bad idea to me. While light armor raises your cast speed, mana regen, atk speed, and pdef, robes only raise your pdef. I also don't get anymore nukes past lvl 40, so why would I want acu SA'd nuker weapon?
Thats not true.. I f u check ur lvl1 passive skills u ll see that with robes u gain more casting speed, att. speed and p.def. After that the robe masteries dont mention these boosts. So a robe has more or equal boosts with the light armor except for p.def which u wont need basicly since u wont get hit.So for c grade divine robe set rocks and for b grade bw light is great.(acu bonus)
Tell you the truth though, IMO your better off with a weapon with acumen on it. I have a Warlock and my son is a PS. We don't even turn SS on for ourselves. We don't really do much damage, the servitor is the weapon and it does the damage. The only reason for you to hit anything is to get your cubics to activate and you don't need SS for that. However, I can promise you that you will run into situations where you will need to spam heals on Soulless, as I have had to on Kai. You will appreciate having the extra casting speed then.
Also, since we don't use SS for ourselves we only carry a little bit, I never carry more than 500 SS, and 4-500 bsps to boost heal amount and speed. That means more weight space to carry Beast Shots, and I can a lot of them. I stay in the field a long time with this setup, other party members have to go back to town and re-supply, I end up sitting holding the room until they get back cause I sure didn't have to go to town for supplies. I normally am able to carry 10,000 Beast shots, and 14,000 spare on my buffers. But I very seldom have to get any off the buffers so what they have is just emergency spares.
First off your damage is not insignificant, ignore people who tell you that because its' nto true. Until 48 or so you can nuke your way up alright, actually till 44 this might be faster since you can't cast haste till 44. Anyway i recommend light right off unless you're still nuking. My preference is drake since you will be tanking for your pet for the most part but plated leather will actually put you on good ground as far as damage. For B grade you can go doom or BW and do well. I recommend doom ont he gact that a male PS in BW looks like a transvestite ****** but really they are almost identical in performance. I'm not far from 75 and i still have doom and am doing fine.
As to weapons, well there's a lot of freedom. I do recommend a fighter weapon, you don't need accumen and if you do you need to re-evaluate your hunting style. Currently i'm using a sword soon to hav health, and if you pvp i recommend it, also helps if you are in doom. I wouldn't get a dagger until at LEAST 52, before that you have a fairly low accuracy and it doesn't hit enough to justify it even with focus.
Once you hit 52 or so and especially if you have doom your accuracy is decent and focus can make you do some real damage. I do recommend a 1 handed weapon at all times though, mainly if you pvp. It helps out a lot with archers and daggers and you can really see a difference. If you dont' pvp then i might recommend a 2-handed sword or blunt, preferably with focus or health. I recommend keeping your weapon upgraded because you do decent damage and your matk is needed for the few debuffs you have.
while it is true your summon will outdamage you eventually, that is not true unitl lvl 48 or 52. as of now, at lvl 50, I have approx. 400 pattk vs Kai's 600 or so. he does in fact do more damage than me, but I am still doing significant damage myself. I carry shots for myself, which is expensive but also nearly doubles my xp %, and cuts down the amount of healing I have to do. I am in pl with health duals so I can tank for my summon, and CLD to get my health back. works well, going for Doom Light myself and some mid or top B weapon (whatever I can craft/afford when the time comes) and I imagine I'll still be doing 1/3 to 1/4 of the total damage well into my 60's (tested on the PTS in C4, worked reasonably well).
recommend HIGHLY you nuke until at least 44, if not all the way into B grade. your summon SUCKS at first. pattk is low, health is not much better, and your heals are just not powerful enough. a bsps nuke will take off 1/2 of a mobs hp at least well into your late 40's, and your summon should be capable of tanking the rest. robes for cast speed, and a mid range acumen weapon (homu will do nicely, no need for an OE). when you hit 52 you can switch to melee, doom or BW light and a fighter weapon (sugest two handed sword or duals, mostly for the coolness factor).
nice thing about PS and Warlocks, we do get CLD so we can tank for our summons a little easier than ES, HP management is a bit easier. believe a PS gets a summon with inherent VR as well, so that makes it easier all around. if I really didn't like how male DE looks (and didn't like cats so much), I probably would have went PS myself.
i used theca light and a berzerker blade with focus for a while, it was fast and good for pvp, fairly safe set up. then i switched the berzerker for great patas with risk haste and used BTM my hp low, cubic fire rate was nuts but not pvp effective best pve strat i had pre B grade.
at b grade i use bw light and greatsword with health, excellent pvp strat and worked well for hunting in risky areas. i also used bw robes with nightshade when i act as a healer, i have excellent mp regen and can heal like a bishop.
for a grade i plan on pvping heavily and due to certain skill i wanted to rely less on my summons and more on my cubics so i will use dual keshs +4 with DC light.
Basically go for Light and Duals. (Worked great for me so far)
Theca Leather, plus Dual Kats at C-grade.
Blue Wolf Light and SLS Duals at B-grade.
Two important aspects of being a Summoner.
1. Stay alive ;), at higher levels Mobs get smarter and will attack the Summoner as well, so PDef is important! If you play it smart, you can arange it so that your Summons will drag all aggro, but the moment mobs turn your way, you need adequate protection. (Dont forget your low but very effective Battle Heal, spam it on yourself if needed)
2. Make good use of your Cubics, the faster you can strike the more your Cubics will fire. So go for Duals! Dagger is an option too, but you dont have any Dagger skills to max out the use of a dagger.
BW Light gives adequate MP and MP Regeneration and Casting speed. MP and Casting speed are only an issue when you use Soulless, this summons does need a lot of Healing. Alternating between Shadow and Soulles gives you the chance to regen enough MP to re-summon Soulless after a go with Shadow.
Wel I did say it was my opinion. We all have different playing styles. My son and I spend a lot of time in the cata's and necros. There's a lot of damage potential there and of course you have the folks who like to run trains in on you. That's usually the time that we heal Kai and Soulless up all the way then run like hell while they cover our backs. We can normally get out of aggro range before the servitors die, but not always. Sometimes we end up running into more aggro from another room. We also have OOP buffers since we have 4 accounts. Level 52 SE/PP buffs on level 40-50 players works pretty well.
As to the weapon, we both carry +8 Homu's with acumen, they were handy as we took them off our Sorc's. So we didn't have to acquire new weapons, and at +8 the P atk isn't too aweful. But I will look around and see what I have and try a fighter weapon, see how it works out. You guys have been at this longer than we have and I'm always open to new ideas. I haven't had to tank for Kai yet and I find that his power is more than enough for what we are up against (the buffs help that I suppose). Of course, our party is a Duo/Trio as we have all 3 of the summoners in our clan and about the same levels. So we do manage to kill pretty fast.
About the shots. We do use them when things go bad sometimes, and it does increase the damage. Again this is a playing style thing. We like to stay in the field for long periods of time without going to town for supplies. The setup we've been using lets us do that. It takes a while for Kai to use up 10,000 shots, then there is the spare 14,000 that the buffers are carrying.
These are good tips though and I will tell my son about this post, and I'll give some of this a shot......hmmm, I did have a +3sls with focus on it somewhere....maybe I'll try that.
The main difference is that you have 4 character whereas most people, partucularly summoners are solo. It's a very different playstyle when you don't have an OOP box following you around everywhere.
yeah. buffs are a big help, might and VR being the big ones. I can eke out about 15% to 18% per hour solo, if I REALLY push it, 12% -15% is more common and less taxing. however, if I can convince my clan leader's SE to follow me around and buff my summon (VR, focus, might, DW) I can easily hit 20% and maybe a little more.
Yes, buffs make a big difference. Though I don't normally refer to my buffers as being boxed. My son and I run 4 computers at the same time, this way the SE/PP can be active in the party. Many's the time when we have been able to save ourselves when things go bad because we can active heal and root with them while continuing to fight with the summoners. Not quite as good as having someone live on the SE/PP 100% but much better than what you get trying to run 2 clients on the same computer. I realize that most people don't have this advantage (I'm an IT professional, hense the extra computer equipment), and this also effects our playing style drastically.
Now we have 4 summoners in our party, another PS joined us last night, and it appears that another may soon come too. That will give us a party with 5 summoners in it. We should be able to kick some major mob butt!
Once you hit 6, make sure you all have cubic mastery 3 and see what you can get with everyone running 3 cubics. ( i recommend storm or phantom via mass cubic unless the mobs take a while to die).
Dude, we intend too! For one thing none of us has ever seen a party with that many summoners in it. We are very excited over the idea and can't wait to see what we can. Oh! Does it count if number 6 is a Necro?....nvm, he doesn't get cubics, ****! Only problem is that the only way we can all get 3 bugs is if 2 people cast mass summon, otherwise one summoner will always have 2. I think I might try to talk that guy into going Warlock instead of Necro. What are your thoughts on that?
I have sent you a PM through the board. I wanted to ask you a question that you might not want to asnwer on the thread. Looking at your sig, I thought it possible that you might not want to make the answer public. Or course, you may not want to answer anyway. But at least this way it's private.
In normal parties i usually trade off with the mass cubic since most the people don't have any cubic mastery. In unless there's several people with multiple cubic slots you just end up wasting them when you mass summon.
Mass Storm usually hits dead mobs in my experience.
5 or 6 summoners (in my experience, once again) kill too fast just about anywhere to make mass cubics worthwhile, better just to have whoever pulls put on Aqua/Storm/Phantom to do some up-front damage/debuffing goodness. Have them pull with a debuff (c:weak is good, as it is cheap).
Depends on what you're fighting, an L room group that competely clears the room still has plenty of tiem for an aqua cubic. A TOI or something on the other hand i'd rather not because the lower landrate on aqua sucks harcore on angels and other transform/ressurect type mobs.
Not just the landrate... it's just dead before aqua gets to run its course - and honestly, with people critting left and right for 1k, is it really worth it to add 1k on every mob for that cost? I sometimes think I'd do more damage just meleeing.
I have a 7x Phantom Summoner, still in BW light (fully +3/+4) and a +3 AOBA w/Health.
I have been considering trying some other weapon setups.
The choices I've tried/have considered trying:
Health weapon -- more survivability in PvP; especially with Transfer Pain halving damage already. This is my current setup.
Acumen weapon -- Reduces cast times, so heals and cures are faster, although they are very fast to begin with. It also possibly reduces the delay between cubic firings; a cubic has basically two delays -- one variable-length delay because the chance to fire is not 100%, but it also has a cooldown period after firing during which it cannot fire again. Cast speed may shorten that cooldown period. (NEED TO TEST THIS).
Dagger with Focus -- Good crit rate, and a fast attack speed so you trigger the cubic quicker; it reduces the time between when the cubic is cooled down and when it fires. Cubics will trigger on misses, too, so the low accuracy doesn't hurt the cubics.
If they ever add a mage dagger with Acumen, it would be the single best weapon, talking in pure cubic terms. You'd shorten both of the cubic delays. Sadly none of the mage daggers ingame yet have Acumen as an option.
In PvE I don't use cubics much except mass cubics in large groups; poltergeist has only a 1/3 chance to hex and that's IF it triggers and IF it lands, and nothing else increases my kill speed, so it isn't something I use a lot. I kill white and yellow monsters so fast, anyway, that it really doesn't seem like it would make much difference. So these choices are really more PvP related.
I'm still debating A grade armor. My main thoughts:
DC Light -- more damage for me; slightly worse HP. Lower pdef than BW Light +3/+4 so I'd need to fully enchant it just to get back what I had before.
NM Light -- The +0 is the same pdef as the BW +3/+4 so I wouldn't lose any of that. The +4% mdef might be nice as every bit of mdef helps. Still the slight HP loss.
Majestic Light -- Maybe I can carry a real supply of soulshots if I had that ;) Plus I despise stun, it's often been my PvP bane.
Of course, there would always be possibilities with robes, though I am not sure the pdef loss would be worth it.
I would agrree with all that but looking at the bonuses i don't think DC is really any better than B grade since it's enchanted and the bonuses aren't that great. I borrowed NM while my roommates did their subs and it was nice. The VR is surprisingly effective and the + dex is good, honesly i'd say that for a PS Doom is actually just as good as DC assuimg fully enchanted doom.
Statwise I like the BW light better than doom light (and on a female, "boob wolf" looks decent; I like Zubei light best for pure looks but BW isn't bad).
I do worry about my loss of INT though, from the BW light and also from a -INT +WIT tattoo. Didn't matter in C4 when we had no active skills, now I wonder how it will affect the land rate of Betray. Not like I'm gonna come across a whole lotta summoners, though, to really need the skill. And in PvE my int is useless as I really don't use windshackle much, and haven't yet done any SH AoE groups to utilize mass surrender to wind.
I'm actually kind of regretting my tats right now. I think i might switch to -2 int -2 men instead because while summoners aren't that common, necros are and betray is nasty. Mass surrender i had land on CAbrio the otehr day, that was cool. First time it's worked though and i try and use it every raid. Wind shackle i use all the time and it works pretty well but when i solo i'm usually going through whites or greens. Still works a lot in groups though so i guess it just doesn't take much to work.
I'm glad your on this subject. My son and I have a Warlock and PS. I just hit B grade on the Warlock and he is about to on the PS. We still have not been able to decide what Tats to use. If I am reading the above correctly, we can use int tats? I thought that we were not able to touch int. So, anyway, I need some input on tats. I worry about -men on the PS since the MP regen gets effected and right now, soulless sucks! lol
MP that is. We notice that with Soulless up the MP regen rate is terrible if you have to cast some heals on it. Does this get better for the PS B-grade and above? and really, what tats should I use on my Warlock?
In response to some ealier posts in this thread. I found that once I hit 52 on the Warlock, I could indeed use a melee weapon. Lucky for me, I had a SwS with a +7 Damascus w/focus that I could use. Cast speed is ok thanks to the BW light. I still worry about cast speed on the PS though, as the DE has a slow cast speed. So I still might want to go with a acumen weapon on the PS for B grade. Any input wouild be appreciated on this. For A grade I should be set. My BD has a set of +4 Kesh*Kesh that I can use and it may look funny, but my SpS has a BOMT w/acu that I can put on the PS. No problem since I retired the SpS anyway.
I currently have -5 int + 5 wit and as soon as mammon comes again i'llget -4 str+4 con. Used to recommend -8 int +4 with +4 men but since i actually cast spells on people now i've focused on cast speed with huring int as little as possible. I'm thinking abut going -2 int -3 men since men isn't that big of an effect. Soulless never gets better aobut the mp drain, it's always about the same as transfer pain but if you are hunting with VR available he works just as well as shadow. Actually a lto better, since he has a faster speed and better damage as well as less SS per hit soulless is a much mroe effective DD than shadow as long as you can keep him alive.
With the tats cast speed isnt' a problem, it is 421 without buffs which is slow but plenty for a PS. I usually carry greater accumen pots for emergencies (ie i lose the pet). I have borrowed accumen weapons and really saw no improvement over normal hunting particularly when i can have health on a weapon instead. +4 con and a health weapon essentially double a my HP making me much more durable for those "ohh crap" moments. -4 str will hurt a bit but honesty it doens't affect the patk that much, certainly not enough to counter the extra HP and carrying capacity.
Ok, thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I will discuss this with my son and we will see what we do. I still may have to go with acu weapon on his PS, we seem to have a few more of those "oh crap" moments than we should, but it is exciting! I do have a B grade Health weapon available, but I hate to have to take it off my dorf. AOBA +5.
Now I just have to come up with enough AA to get all the dyes!