Lvl 79

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

I'm "soon" reaching lvl 79, and was wondering if you guys have any recomendations on which of the 79 skills I should get. They are quite expensive, so don't wanna waste alot of money/spirit on them. I will explain my "needs" further down.

I'm also starting so save up, and think of, the Demon/sage choice. I know it's a long way to go still, but want to be prepared. I will list my playstyle beneath this, and hoping for some good advices :0) (Sorry for another D/S thread, but I can't find a thread that fits me...)

I'm a LA veno. I have rather low HP, and puts most of my spare points into mag. I use Herc as "standard" pet. I mostly do BH, FB, and TT runs. The occasional grinding may happen :0)

The skills I use the most are:

Venomous Scarab
Ironwood Scarab
Noxious Gas
Lucky Scarab
Parasitic Nova
Bramble Guard/Hood
Summersprint

I never use FoxForm... I know I should, so sorry...

I don't want this to be a "war" between Demons and Sages, just want to gather som info and listen to what people have experianced.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Get all 3 skills.

If you have to prioratize:
1. Fox form Myriad (since it is a AOE and uses the same mp as the human form one)
2. Human form Myriad (single target)
3. The other skill that I cannot remember the name.

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Get all 3 skills.

If you have to prioratize:
1. Fox form Myriad (since it is a AOE and uses the same mp as the human form one)
2. Human form Myriad (single target)
3. The other skill that I cannot remember the name.

The last one is Feral Concentration: A Venomancer uses this spell for full protection. Immunize the caster of all coming damage at the cost of being unable to move for 10 seconds.
I think I will get that :0)

The Fox form Myriad is 1 mill spirit. Should I get even when I never use Fox form??

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

You can still heal pet whilst in fox form and changing to and fro is almost instant.

So there's really no disadvantage (apart from increased mana cost - a HUGE one if you're above 80% mana...) in flipping to fox, casting amp damage, casting the fox spell you want, healing your pet and flipping back.

I'm interested in what skills to take too (I pretty much just run instances). Not that I'll be 79 any time soon.

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

You can still heal pet whilst in fox form and changing to and fro is almost instant.

So there's really no disadvantage (apart from increased mana cost - a HUGE one if you're above 80% mana...) in flipping to fox, casting amp damage, casting the fox spell you want, healing your pet and flipping back.

I'm interested in what skills to take too (I pretty much just run instances). Not that I'll be 79 any time soon.

That's true. Might work on some Fox form stuff eventually, just that it have never been my priority...

Thx for reply :0)

Reikara - Heavens Tear

IMO, human myriad is a waste of coins, even if you're a human only veno. Fox is aoe debuff. Works wonders in pvp and pve. Feral concentration should be high priority also. It's saved my butt many times. A self stun to resist all damage for 30 seconds. Help when you're getting ganked and your charm is on cooldown.

Tisa - Dreamweaver

Reikara - Heavens Tear wrote: »

IMO, human myriad is a waste of coins, even if you're a human only veno. Fox is aoe debuff. Works wonders in pvp and pve. Feral concentration should be high priority also. It's saved my butt many times. A self stun to resist all damage for 30 seconds. Help when you're getting ganked and your charm is on cooldown.

Actually as an arcane veno i find the genie skill Expel infinitely more useful. It only prevents physical damage, but it lets you move around and is of course instantly cast (2 serious advantages over Feral imo).
The duration is lower than Feral, but i dont think that's too important because the instant cast Expel lets you avoid spike shots.
I understand that as a heavy veno you can afford the 3 second channeling, but i think arcanes are better off with istant protection (especially when you see an archer demon sparking your way for example).
For these reason i almost regret getting Feral at all. Might change my opinion if i decide to restat to heavy later on though.

P.S.: Feral lasts 10 sec, not 30

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

Tisa - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Actually as an arcane veno i find the genie skill Expel infinitely more useful. It only prevents physical damage, but it lets you move around and is of course instantly cast (2 serious advantages over Feral imo).
The duration is lower than Feral, but i dont think that's too important because the instant cast Expel lets you avoid spike shots.
I understand that as a heavy veno you can afford the 3 second channeling, but i think arcanes are better off with istant protection (especially when you see an archer demon sparking your way for example).
For these reason i almost regret getting Feral at all. Might change my opinion if i decide to restat to heavy later on though.

P.S.: Feral lasts 10 sec, not 30

I have already filled my genie with the skills I want. I don't want to change those skills, and personally, I'm not a big fan of using multiple genies :0) I only want a clean view on this, and leaving the genie out.

Thank you for the info and reply :0) Alot of people might take a look here, so some allround info is nice :0)

Brael - Dreamweaver

Get them all, anniversary packs make apocalypse pages cheap. Even if you don't train all 3 skills right this moment, get the books.

I find I use Myriad in human more so than in fox, thats because I only go fox twice a minute to amplify, the cooldown on myriad though means it can be used up to 3 times a minute normally (as long as you're generating lots of chi). Myriad fox is rather useful too like others said (same situations as human form really, just toss it onto a skill macro when you amp). Feral is the least useful of the bunch, but I've found a few uses for it such as pulling shoveals in lunar and surviving room 27 of cube. The trick to the skill is to also have the fortify skill on your genie, used right you can also move around.

I have already filled my genie with the skills I want. I don't want to change those skills, and personally, I'm not a big fan of using multiple genies :0) I only want a clean view on this, and leaving the genie out.

Genies get more skill slots as they get more lucky points, if you have the skills you want, that means you're going to have more skill slots eventually. Without the genie feral is of very little use, with it it's a bit more useful. Feral is a skill that you really want to cast in advance because of it's slow channeling time. If you're caught off guard I find bramble to be the better life saver.

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

Thank you for all the replies! I think I will learn all of the 3 skills.

Now, do anyone have a view to the demon/sage choice?

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Jellytops - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Thank you for all the replies! I think I will learn all of the 3 skills.

Now, do anyone have a view to the demon/sage choice?

Nah, we have all settled on that sage is better <runs to hide>

It depends on your playing style.

Alphae - Lost City

Honestly for venos, sage and demon are really very balanced. www.ecatomb.net is your best friend.

If you really can't decide, look at the spell options for demon/sage and keep tallies of which you'd rather have. At the end, the higher tally wins.

I'm going demon (and staying arcane-vit) for debuffs on magic skills and better bramble, plus longer amp duration.

Sevas - Heavens Tear

Note: When you get Feral Concentration, carry Soulcleanse orb to remove stun so you can move, resummon pet, or whatever.

Demon swings very well for PvE and PvP. I was tempted by Sage for a while, but then decided, based off of the skills I used most, I was better off going Demon. Demon Ironwood is awesome when it hits and don't let that 20% fool you. It hits fairly often.

I have a question or two though. You say you don't use Fox Form skills much. Do you have Purge and Amplify Damage maxed? Those, at least, are good to have maxed. Demon FF is super sweet and you can regen the mana it takes to shift during cooldown. It's free speed. No need to waste pots/herbs or Genie stamina.

Jellytops - Heavens Tear

Sevas - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I have a question or two though. You say you don't use Fox Form skills much. Do you have Purge and Amplify Damage maxed? Those, at least, are good to have maxed. Demon FF is super sweet and you can regen the mana it takes to shift during cooldown. It's free speed. No need to waste pots/herbs or Genie stamina.

I only have Purge and Wallop. Since I wasn't using fox form, I haven't bothered to lvl the skills either. I tried using some fox form yesterday, and I kinda regret that I haven't used it more. I will lvl some more on fox, and definatly get max purge and amp! Any other skills that I should max out in fox form?

To the demon/sage thingy, so far I'm looking most into demon. I like the extras on my most used skills. Nice if someone could give some examples on usage, beased on my playstyle as I mentioned in the first post. I like the extra % from Venomous, and the 0% from Ironwood. I know the effect will only come at about 20% of the casts, but that doesn't bother me that much. Doing alot of bosses and elite mobs, so could be nice to have :0)

Shifong - Heavens Tear

I'm also a LA veno, and i didn't use fox form a lot before level 75. Once you get some useful skills you'll notice how good fox form can be. Especially in PvP.

As LA veno you should definitely max; purge, amp, befuddling mist, stunning blow and leech. Take in mind though, compared to normally hitting your target and using one of these skills does not quite make a difference in amount of damage. The damage from fox form skills is really weak, but the effects they give are really nice though.
As far as 79 skills go. Get them all.

Decided to go Sage since i like the "constant" factor. Although I'm still not sure b:chuckle
But I'm pretty sure it's going to be sage since I like that best for my playing style with my LA veno.

Brael - Dreamweaver

I think you should have amp, purge and two more fox skills maxed at the minimum (with no channeling I could see an excuse for one but two is more effective). It doesn't matter which two in all honesty as long as you have two, the reason is because fox has a 6 sec cooldown which is just enough time with a skill macro to use 3 skills (amp+2).

I like using Consume Spirit, Leech, and Amp in that order, consume will eat some hp and give me a little mana after 3 seconds, leech will fire, then I get the hp back (plus mana from consume) right afterwards. Finally I amp. That combo gives me about the same damage as an additional 80% of a nuke, along with 40 chi. The only other way an arcane veno is generating 40 chi in 6 seconds is with blazing, lucky, and venomous. Plus I make up almost all of the mana spent on fox/consume/leech/amp/fox by using consume in there. The downsides I've found to the combo are that because leech isn't 100% sometimes a cleric that's overeager to heal will start casting a heal before leech goes off (or leech misses the heal that time), and they waste the mana to heal about 400 hp on me. Also, consume is a very expensive skill, and isn't all that great until you have a few levels on it, so like the name implies, it's going to eat up a ton of spirit that could be spent elsewhere.

Another combo that works out well is befuddle/leech/amp, befuddle is the second highest damage fox skill for an arcane (second only to fox), and generates more chi than consume (26 it looks like, consume is 15). The advantage to this is that you're going to get an additional 1396.6 (at level 10) damage out of your fox cycle, you can train befuddle earlier, you get an accuracy debuff on the mob, and befuddle is cheaper to train. The disadvantage however is that you're going to use a lot more mana per cycle. Exactly how much more is going to vary by character, because the additional 16 chi can be pumped into double and triple sparks some of the mana loss will be reduced, at 7600 mana (my current stats) if I were to use befuddle rather than consume I could decrease my mana loss by 81.13 per cycle (16/300*.2*7606), a total mana use after sparks of 397.37 mana. Using the consume option in comparison would be a gain of 167.83 mana, for a difference of 565.2 mana. Of course, befuddle would also mean more damage from more sparks.

So it's up to you really, more mana (which you can turn into more overall damage if not chain casting) or more damage with some tanking debuffs (won't benefit any pet buffed with strong, which is a herc buff). There's not really a wrong answer here other than to not get two skills to use when you amp.

As for the whole sage/demon thing... they're balanced extremely well for venos. I went sage because I'm a fan of sage soul degeneration, mainly due to the fact I rarely have an archer around. Search on here, there's a few good posts on sage vs demon, there's a few good posts around here on it. I think that overall sage is very slightly better for human venos, and demon is very slightly better for fox venos but the difference is so slight as to not really matter. If looking for posts you don't find anything useful, goto ecatomb and check the skill lists... just look through and see which skills you like more.

Sevas - Heavens Tear

If you're into PvP, Soul Degeneration works very well in 1v1 situations with clerics and people using ToP. I maxed out my curses before I maxed out fighting skills. The only time I fight in Fox Form is in TT2-2/3, that's if I'm not tanking for some strange reason. (I can almost take 2-3 Ape with my herc.) Though, I do like to get in a few smacks on Inc. Mag. resistance mobs in BH89s.

Imamandamnit - Heavens Tear

Jellytops - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I only have Purge and Wallop. Since I wasn't using fox form, I haven't bothered to lvl the skills either. I tried using some fox form yesterday, and I kinda regret that I haven't used it more. I will lvl some more on fox, and definatly get max purge and amp! Any other skills that I should max out in fox form?

To the demon/sage thingy, so far I'm looking most into demon. I like the extras on my most used skills. Nice if someone could give some examples on usage, beased on my playstyle as I mentioned in the first post. I like the extra % from Venomous, and the 0% from Ironwood. I know the effect will only come at about 20% of the casts, but that doesn't bother me that much. Doing alot of bosses and elite mobs, so could be nice to have :0)

Something that a lot of people overlook about sage ironwood is not only is the duration doubled,but you get 40% def reduction also,i know it doesnt say that on the skill book itself.

Brael - Dreamweaver

But barbs/clerics have their debuffs jump to 50% with sage (they're 40% normally) so it doesn't really change the playing field at all. It's still the same situation where sage IW is weaker than other squad debuffs.