My warlock is lvl 40 and is currently wearing a theca set with a War Axe w/health and FP shield (borrowed from my dwarf). After having leveled up my BH to lvl 45, I have a fair amount of money to spend leveling my warlock such as using beast ss and css.
My question is if anyone went the melee route since beast ss was introduced or ran some tests to see how efficient it was compared to going robes + Homu w/acum. I know Kai will become more powerful once I hit 44 and get servitor haste. Also the weight of light armor + css can be a little much, I think I can only carry around 5k of CSS and 5k of beast ss. At the same time transfer pain / corpse life drain / and body to mind all seem to be useful for melee summoners; and if Interlude ever gets here I'll look **** as hell in theca.
If L2pets was up I could ask there but unfortunately it's still down. I am going to try and join a clan as soon as possible, I would say my focus is having fun with the class and not powerleveling, but I'm asking for advice because I don't want to be gimping myself more than I might realize.
And just to clarify I do want to use Kai, I don't want to finally make it to lvl 40 on my warlock only to nuke my way through C grade.
I went melee as soon as I hit 40. Had a borrowed Theca and SLS w/focus. This was back in C1 or C2 (cant remember when I class changed), when there was no beast ss at all.
but the reason that most nuke at lvl 40 to 50 is you don't have a decent damage as you do with your main spell and you could spend a hefty fortune just going melee. plus you couldn't kill a mob 7 lvl's higher than yours while your nuking and using the summon at same time as your doing it in melee.
with the intro of herbs you can solo as well use the summon since herbs now pass the effect to your servitor. so your mp consumption is noticeable.
places that you can xp with your summon if you want doing some melee try Dion heretic/pilgrims very far in you can get the same xp that you will get when your killing higher mobs. try a small room until you feel comfortable. (if your still in your low 40's).
Thanks for the replies. I went a few buff rounds around the Ivory Tower killing the enchanted golems and such; I averaged about 12% in 20 min. Once I can enter the catas I'll try holding some small rooms and seeing if the exp is less or more than that. The herbs/pots allow me to kill non stop, I think in one buff round (self buff) I only had to heal Kai a few times, and that was only because I'd get lazy and send him ahead of me. I could keep transfer pain up the whole time and my mp never drops below 80%.
About killing mobs 7 lvls higher than me, it always seems like the amount of exp I get once I venture into orange/red mobs isn't worth the effort. The exp just doesn't seem that great on higher level mobs.
Thanks for the replies. I went a few buff rounds around the Ivory Tower killing the enchanted golems and such; I averaged about 12% in 20 min. Once I can enter the catas I'll try holding some small rooms and seeing if the exp is less or more than that. The herbs/pots allow me to kill non stop, I think in one buff round (self buff) I only had to heal Kai a few times, and that was only because I'd get lazy and send him ahead of me. I could keep transfer pain up the whole time and my mp never drops below 80%.
About killing mobs 7 lvls higher than me, it always seems like the amount of exp I get once I venture into orange/red mobs isn't worth the effort. The exp just doesn't seem that great on higher level mobs.
i can officially say as a newbie PhantomSummoner that the rules havent changed from being a dark wiz.
faster kills are ALWAYS > slower kills.
if you want to really get a run for your money, try soloing in places like Cruma Tower lvl 1, or Forest of Mirrors. herbs drop there from everything, and its pretty fast exp.
the reason most summoners go looking for red mobs to kill is because the summon's timer is so short while in combat. red mobs (like catacomb mobs) are still easy kills as you are a duo, but the exp is much much greater for these mobs while the kill speed is very similar to fast kills on 1x mobs.
Summoners timer is just over 1h now, vastly improved to the roughly 25 mins it was before...
I usually hunt whith/yellow mobs since the summon takes them down pretty fast (am a PS, so the summon does the dirty work), and as Spudnik said killspeed is whats counts.
Did alot of lvls on Alligator Island, got 3 or 4 elven mithril gloves from the quest there.
on my warlock...from 40-45 i soloed in the catas with outside prof buffs...and i went melee route. I didn't use Css at all, just bsps for the heals, and used Beast shots,...i would like the summon tank...and then just have the binding cubic up, we did 1 full room and 1/2 room...this is with 0 down time and no chance of dying, and this was all white and green mobs.
I used Plated leather set and SLS focus. I had OOP buffs so I never had any use for trasfer pain or anything like that. I rarely used servitor heals either. its a lot faster to deal damage along with your servitor then if you dont. at least at low lvls.
I'm currently 48, but I use karmian and +hp duals lol Weird combo but it works well. I have a homu and shield but tend to only use it as a nuker in groups. I also got a lot of levels at Alligator Island... and SoS.