I have been trying out a kamael class since I came back to the game and I hit lvl 40 1 day ago, I was wondering would tatts do any good to the Soul Breaker class? As I see it we already have so low hp it might be better to skip tatts.
Ok... Kamael classes are really hard to tatoo without loosing major things. It's a matter of playstyle and support (if you have any)... but here's what I did...
From 40 to 65 i went +4STR +4DEX -8CON... this is not the best setup, but It helps to level up faster at those levels...
After that, I totally changed my setup. I am: +2DEX -2STR, +3CON -3STR, +2WIT -3INT. I am very happy with this set, because my playstyle allows me to. It's a very useful set for pvp too. Some ppl might thing I'm crazy for gimping my STR... but I rather rely on my crits than on normal dps, and It works just fine. I also wear an Apella set, so my dyes don't get modifyed by the armor bonuses.
My suggestion, define your playstile and try to play with the numbers.
Yea Kamaels are a bit complicated, for my nuker and dagger the tatts were really easy. I am lvling the kamael at the same time as my wc sub together with a bd and sometimes a tyrant friend. I'll try the -8 con setup and see if it's any good.
Hmm i didnt use dyes until lvl 61 , because kamaels can lvl pretty fast without them and lot of ppl dont use dyes at high lvls too they know what to do and they owns in pvp too hehe :)
I am a kamikaze SH Kamael... +4Str +4Con, +4Dex -4Con, +1Dex -1Con .. plus draconic +1Str +1Dex -2Con ..... XD but it works to pve fine ^^ killing alone with SE buffs in varka..
S grade dyes on a Soul Hound are usually +con (+ dex is optional). The damage loss is low enough that -8 str doesn't actually make a whole lot of difference. The only conceivable area that it might be important is Shining Edge, but I don't see any evidence supporting this.
As a female Soul Hound, I use +5 con, and no dex (36 is high enough for now. I might change my mind when Gracia Final comes out with the changes to evasion). Gimping your INT is actually pretty stupid. Even with an effective 200+ dark attribute, curses can still fail and nukes can still fail to yield really high results. Do so at your own risk...
If you find your desperate for cast speed/re-use (which changes completely in a few months) get an acumen weapon and learn how to weapon swap like a pro.
Not that stupid... the -int i have is barely noticeable... but the casting time I gain with +with actually is decisive to interrupt my opp skills or tu steal their buffs. And how can you have a +200 dark attribute if maximum for a weapon right now is 150?? that makes no sense. I dueled against a tyrant of my lvl, and i managed to have him chasing me. I only lost because i didn't use Sword & Shield (don't use it in duels in case I need it later) but I left him only about 100 or 150 HP left. My curses landed pretty well with no dark att weapon, and It has worked for me... again, everyone has their own setup dyes. ^^
The difference is, when you fight high level people, stuff just stops landing well. Any minus int is going to affect you noticably. The class already has low comparative M atk as it is. Well whatever you want. I'm speaking from my own experience. I've tried your build and I think it sucks.
You get 150 on your weapon. 180 with toggle+Dark Weapon buff. 200 with all dark nukes (as these have a natural attribute of 20 built in). The '+' you get is by overenchanting Dark Weapon. Never mind pushing this up further with Surrender and this can be overenchanted as well.
Basically this makes a lot of difference in landing dark attributed skills. Yet even with numbers this high, people still resist. +2 wit (about 10% increase in cast/re-use) won't let you spam Death Mark. Basically if you fail the landing of it in a pvp match, your not in that much better a position to use it again. you might as well have as much chance as possible to land it when you cast it the first time.
Your better off getting an acumen weapon if your having trouble with spell casting while in combat.
Additionally, with all the farmers in HB dark/holy stones are almost as cheap as fire/water stones. Its not so difficult for people to have a few pieces of extra armour to get 120 dark p def. There is no big secret what attribute a Soul Hound will have...
Saying it that way really clears a lot of things for me. But I will go back again that all depends on playstyle. It has been working for me pretty well both in pve and pvp, I don't rely my strategy in deathmark (curiously)... so when I get my hands on a dark att wepn i will try to test a new set. But at this lvls con is mor important than str, that's for sure.
I really like +wit on soul breaker, just to get soul of pain off faster in pve for now (in 1x areas still have to wait for refresh to hit each mob with it), later for stealing buffs faster in pvp... but no str/dex/con tats needed really in general. -8 con if you have vr support if you want I guess, for pve... -8 str for pvp is valid if you want to rely on nukes and shining edge/checkmate at high level.
Well... let me tell you that I followed riot's advice and removed the wit tatoo... (it was store anyway) and casting speed is almost the same, and I recovered my m. atk ^^ Guess you were right on that, I believe I got the wrong idea, coz when I put the dye we still didn't have the fast casting passive... but now SB is pretty much balanced. I only went with +5str and +2dex +3con and that works fine ^^
You will find that pushing up one stat as far as possible is usually the best way to go about things as yields of this nature are generally small my default in L2. Con is very useful for quite a few key things so it's not a bad choice (or you could just go all out and use minus -9 str. My heart doesn't have the conviction for it though :P).
I'll let you into a secret a little birdy told me:
Stun resist now has racial considerations when considering how effective it is. Kamael for example have low naturally con (like mages and DE's), so the effect of the con modifier on stun resistance is higher than other classes with naturally higher con (Dorfs, Orc, and humans). Similar to how the Con relationship affects hp/cp, and weight gain.
That relationship is basically DE's and Kamael's get more benefit out of +5 con than a high con class.
Could be complete bs, as this little birdy couldn't prove it ^_^. Still, I has some logic to it. It's just a shame Logic and NC Soft don't work well in the same sentence....
+4 CON +4 DEX -8 STR +4 WIT -4INT for Olympiad
+4 or +5 DEX +4 WIT for PVP, you can even keep the Oly setup if adena is tight.
PRE-lvl 78 +4DEX +4 STR and grind grind grind.
Someone above mentioned going -Int is stupid. That in itself is a stupid statement.
My playstyle is simple. Steal Divinity is what my strategy revolves around. It is our most powerful skill. If you do not take advantage of this skill, you are not playing this class correctly.
I laugh at some of the nonesense I read on these forums.
Does STEAL DIVINITY need Matck to work? NO.
We have crappy matck to begin with. If you pvp alot, you know that most times, if the player is higher level then you and properly buffed, shadow bind, voice bind, deathmark, surrender to dark, soul vortex etc. etc. etc. will not land. Shoot, my clanmate is a lvl 81 Stormscreamer with +15 silence. His MATK is through the roof , upwards of 12k full buffed with S/D's. Guess what, it still has a crappy land rate.
We have low matck. Why do we have STEAL DIVINITY? It is to give us a chance to knock our target down to a manageable size. If you STEAL a persons buffs once and you get the right buffs, all your debuffs land rate sky rockets. If you steal buffs 2 times, chances go up even more. If you steal 3 times, everything should land without a hitch. If it does not, you are outleveled by a wide margin.
I use the speed that my Kamael has. I kite, I steal , I debuff and then unload damage.
++WIT also boost Magic Crit Rate. Our WIT is pretty **** low. Adding the +4 WIT gives a 36% boost to our WIT.
This game is all about CAST speed. It is about who gets the first strike. It is about who lands what first.
I love all the acumen weapon preachers. Have any of you held a Forgotten Blade versus and Arcana Mace with Acumen. Can any of you actually see the difference in cast speed?
Do not qoute the numbers you see in your Character Status screen. Get a converted FB and a AM and cast the same nuke over and over alternating weapons. Then tell me there is a difference in the cast.
I tell you something funny. Our cast speed is really really low compared to all the other nukers. A Storm Screamer has a much higher cast speed compared to my Cast speed. Yet , when we nuke side by side, it is clear that I have the superior cast speed.
I am a 3 time Soulhound hero. I have defeated all the other Soulhounds on my server in closed comp. Why? It is simple, because I was the only one with the +4 WIT dyes.
I blasted my opponents out of the Olympiad before they could get off any significant damage. While they were getting done casting Steal Divinity, I was already casting Voice bind after executing my initial attack.
I will be level 80 in a few days. If you want to pvp, right now, you need to go +WIT. Beside Magical Crit rate boost it also decreases re use timer on all magic skills.
For those that say, "if Skill X does not land due to your Low Matk, you will lose the pvp", I have just to say this: It is obvious you are not only a noob, but you do not use QHP or CP pots. If you do not use Quick heal pots and a Greater CP/Lesser CP pots macro, you do not know how to pvp. You are what I call an easy target.
Now, I would preach ++++WIT until I am blue in the face, but next update, it will all be different. We must wait and see what changes actually make it to the NA servers.
Hope this helps. If you feel insulted, I apologize. I love this class, I have played it since its inception and I have combed the INTERTWEB for all info Soulbreaker/SOulhound. I have experimented with millions worth of dyes.
Last thing, VOICE BIND, SHADOW BIND, SOUL VORTEX, DEATHMARK, Surrender to Unholy, Dark Flame, Curse of Life flow and sometimes even DISARM all LAND with my ----INT
++++WIT. This is not theory people, this is what I do daily.
The quick and short: Go +STR +DEX until you hit S grade. You need to be grinding as efficiently as possible to level up fast.
Tell me about nuke damage with -4 int... if you have a dark attributed weapon... how much damage does a simple nuke does with -4int (average ofc)... I'm intrigued by your post, coz i think like that... but I had +2 wit and I didn't notice any difference... now, +4 wit is something I still don't have the gust to do ^^ I appreciate your help.
Whatever. Kronk obviously thinks he knows everything so good luck to him. The fact is, I''ve fought with people who have completely spec'ed my damage and you will laugh at the damage coming off the spells when they have 240 dark attribute on some sets.
Natural low cast speed means wit modifications are actually 'less' effective than on a typical mage. Steal divinity you say? How much damage does it do? Yeah... I've seen Soul Hounds kill people in Oly without using anything other than SD and melee skills against 'physical damage dealers' (which is pretty crazy but whatever works for you). The effect of removing buffs is huge.
Anyway regardless of all this, try this stuff out yourself. Like you've noticed yourself Romanec the difference is almost barely noticable. That is your oppinion. Test, test, and test some more. Don't take what other people say as gospel, especially since some of us only write 'nonsense'.
To think someone would actually talk about +4wit being amazing (less than a 20% cast/re-use speed increase) then question the use of an arcana mace (with 15% hard increase on acumen), and since when has Disarm had anything to do with Matk. Silence, root, and other curses all have typically bad landrates. The only things that improve your chance is matk. Gimp that (and your damage) if you want. I have tried it and in my oppinion it sucks. Or maybe I'm simply wasting my time on people who are outside oly where I spend 99% of pvp time...
I'll say it again: -int is stupid on a Soul hound (and even more so in CT3), but by all means, try it out yourself, don't listen to what random hot-heads, I means 'noobs' like myself have to say. Have fun...
On another target of equal level I would say an average of 1000-2000 with Soul of Pain. I can crit for 4k damage to 7k damage.
That is pretty much the average for all nukes except CoD (lame nuke).
Cast speed pwns. I mean why did all the nukers go with Dark Crystal robes when Majestic was top A grade? Because of Cast Speed.
What I need to do is sit down with the other Soulhound noble in clan and test out DYE for DYE and compare. I will try to do this. I really will promise!
What is funny, is my Silence lands more than my buddies lvl 81 Stormscreamers +15.
Why? Steal Divinity and this game is weird with their mathematics. Compare you cast speed to the other nukers. Compare the actual number and then go out and see who casts the fastest. If you go buy the numbers, we shoul have the worst cast speed. But, if you observe the cast in action, it is probably the fastest. The only thing that holds us back is our long re-use. Now, supposedly come next update, re-use on most nukes will be 1.2 seconds. Imagine Soul of Pain with a 1.2 sec re-use. All of our nukes currently have long re-use timers. We do not have a Hydroblast, Prominence or Hurricane equivalent nuke when it comes to re-casting. I can spam all of my nukes and then wait a good 5 seconds before I can recast Soul of pain.
If the update hits the NA servers and we get what I hear we are getting, Soulhounds will become OLY enforcers and possibly the next FOTM class. They are currently very stong on the Korean servers. Steal of Dinity re-use has been cut down. To what exactly? I have heard the following:
Re-use timers will be shortened to 1/4 of the current duration.
Re-use timer will be shortened by 1/4 of the current duration.
If they shorten it to a 1/4, that would mean I could cast it every 15 seconds or so.
If they cut it by 1/4, I could cast it every 30 seconds.
All with regular buffs. No sws buffs.
I am truly excited about the update. I hope NCsoft does not let me down. (they prolly will)
Thanks LordRiot for your comments... I think Both of you are right coz it all depens on playstyle and purpose to change your stats (not same fight in oly or in mass pvp or in pve) but I want to tell you that I have sharing posts with Kronk for a long time... and he has good experience to share, different from yours, and he doesn't "know everything". I don't like discussions ^^ at the end I will use the combo that fits my playstyle better.
I don't have adena to get myself an AM+acu... and even If i had it, i would try to spend it on armor, or resist or any other thing. I think rapier works just fine.
About casting speed... Numbers are wrong... we cast as fast (or even faster) than nukers even though we only have like 300(+ or -) c. speed because our nukes should have an incredible SLOW casting time. I can compare it with a Hurricane I got once on an augment, and it took 7 seconds to cast. I had to remove it. Imagine if a nuker with 1k c. speed would get Soul of pain?? ^^ That's a theory though...
Kronk, I hope you can really do that test, coz if with -4 int you make and average of 1500 dmg (1000 to 2000) then it still his the same a friend of mine with no tatoos does. I wanna know if this is true and how far a Soulhound can go with tatoos, but I don't have the possibility to try it myself, not only because of adena, but because of level too... I'm still about to hit S grade.
Anyway, I appreciate both of your comments in this matter... and again, what works for 1 doesn't necesarily work for all. Tatoos set depends on playstyle. My playstyle is pretty much like kronks... but I'm not sure if gimping int that bad would help nukes... I don't have the gust to lower my int that bad ^^ but I had it to lower STR to -5 ^^
Currently set I use is +3CON -3STR... +2DEX, -2STR... and no wit int tatoo (I removed a +2WIT-3INT i bought from store ^^)
I certainly respect his opinion it's just the tone I don't appreciate. If someone is trying to be offensive then fair enough, but if you're not then care must taken with the approach you take. Saying 'no offense' after being offensive doesn't really work. In any case it is irrelevant.
On cast speed: Your right indeed. We cast fairly fast and that is down to the spells themselves having naturally fast speeds. I'm sure if a normal mage had our spells they'd be like a machinegun. This is also why the effect of wit changes are even smaller. 10% of 100 is very different to 10% of a 1000 for example.
The only other thing Wit is good for is crit rate. If our crits follow the rules of other spells, then 11 or even 15 is simply abysmal. Yet they upped the rate 'by more than 10 times' in an update so the rates are pretty good for us now from my experience:) . It's safe to say that +4 wit does not out-perform Wild Magic 2.
Well.. I can say that I magic crit more with my sb without wm2 thatn with my SE who actually has the WM2 in inquisitor... maybe luck... I dunno, but when i'm in pve very often I get to press the Attack button after a nuke and then I realize the target is dead ^^
Sorry, have not been on the forums for a bit. I have been in hardcore pve mode racing to get as high as possible before the update. I wish I knew when it is going to happen.
Anyway, back to the Wit vs no- Wit debate. I still have my +4 Wit. Even though the boosts to cast speed might not look like alot in our Character Stats, the difference is big enough for me to keep it.
Here is how I break it down:
Pros:
A boost to crit rate - We have to crit to win in pvp. To be more specific, If I am pvping an equal level enemy that carries CP pots , QHP pots , GHP and Elixirs, I need to get some serious spike damage in there to knock them out.
Re-Use timer Decreased- the faster a skill cycles through, the quicker I can cast it again.
I as well as many other Soulhounds live off of Steal Divinity. The faster the skill cycles the better.
Cast speed boost- cast speed rules.
CONS:
Land rate of skills to a degree.
Less damage per nuke.
You may think that the +4 WIT boost benefits do not outweigh the negatives of going - INT. Just do yourself a favor and try it.
I am fully aware of some people sporting full Dark resist armor because they exp hellbound.
I can tell you this, even if you do not go -INT we will still do gimp damage against full resist armors. There is no arguing that. It sucks but it is true.
As far as my skills/debuffs landing. I hardly ever cast a debuff before I cast Steal Divinity. Like I mentioned in my past posts, If you steal the buffs a few times, the chance of your skills landing goes way up. I am not just guessing here, I know from personal daily experience. Our Vortex is strong and lands more often then not. My binds land with my negative INT.
Wrap your minds around this fact: My friend has his lvl 80 Stormscreamer. He has 10 times the matck I have. His Silence has been enchanted to +15. When him and I duel, my Silence lands more often and consistently then his +15. My point is this. You can not strictly go by the numbers listed in out Character Status Sheet.
Our cast speed looks a heck of alot faster then the 350 or 450 (depending on buffs) listed on our character stat sheet.
As far as my other dyes go, for pvp I usually go +5 DEX - STR. I live and die by my speed. Some people say +5 DEX only adds a few points of run speed. Every point of runspeed makes a big difference. I always have a speed talisman and I always push for Tanor Fortress just to get the WindWalk passives. Having a 215 runspeed with Hard March on is a huge advantage when it comes to pvp. My playstyle involves alot of kiting. So this setup suits me.
For PvE I go +5 STR - 5 DEX. I run trains in MoS and I clearly clear out the mobs alot faster with the +STR compared to +DEX.
For Olympiad right now I use +4 DEX +4 CON - 8 STR +4 WIT -4 INT.
The +WIT kills other Soulhounds that do not have it. Even if it only gave +1 to cast speed, that means I will be first to Cancel and Silence my opponent.
Lastly, I do not pretend to know it all. I only speak from my experiences. I am still learning little things about my class every week. There is so little information about our class. We are the only source of information when it comes to this class.
I do not mean to come across as a jerk and I mean no Ill will toward anyone on the forums. I was a bit shocked to see the "Stupid" comment when it came to boosting WIT and got a bit defensive. I did not mean to take any shots at anyone. The +WIT has served me really well. Switching back to the default dyes right now would feel like running and casting through mud.
I hope this info helps people. It is geared to suit my playstyle which involved alot of kiting. We got the speed, might as well use it.
I put +wit on my soul breaker and I like it quite a bit. I also wear bw light atm so cast speed is very good; I don't worry about the reduced damage too much; in pvp getting skills spammed fast is important, and soul of pain's chance to detarget is really good (like 1 out of 2 shots can detarget). In addition to steal divinity's reuse.
On the other hand, my significant other is a 77 Soul Hound and refuses to reduce int because of the loss of matk. We choose to play differently, it's up to the player tho.