Venomancer Guide 2013

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

A guide to Venomancing
or
Bouncy Bouncy Foxy Foxy

by

Vitenka the Venomancer


What is a venomancer?

Animal tailed girls; wild ladies who like to poison you. Our menfolk are big fuzzy barbarians who turn into big fuzzy tigers. (Or even bigger panda's.)

We. Turn. Into. Foxes!

If you want to know more; read the quest text. It's a long sad story of slavery, warfare, love and revenge. Then wraiths attack, and it's all the fishmen's fault. Then you go back in time, and it's all your fault, but you fix it before it happens. Kinda.

(Admit it though, you became a venomancer for the foxies. Boing boing boing. Fluffy fluffy. Poing.)

What is a Venomancer?

Ignoring the lore for a moment, a venomancer is a pet class. A hybrid healer+tank+Direct damage (DD). The full holy trinity; with a smatterring of control skills too.

The downside? We're not actually very GOOD at most of it.
We're a third rate tank (well, our pet is, we ourselves are way down at 6th or 7th), a third rate DD (though there's some places we shine - a quirk in the damage calculations means our pets can deal serious damage to level-[?] monsters), and we can only heal pets, and ourselves. We have exactly TWO long-term buffs (bramble and summer sprint), and one of those is self-only. (Technically at high level we have several variations on bramble. And fox form is technically a buff, but I'm not including it as that.)
We have the best debuffs. We have a stun. (And a couple of snares.)

In the past, we were the 'go to' class for soloing. But we're not even the best at that any more.

So, why would you be a venomancer? Because there's nothing we can't do. Any squad, doing anything, is improved by adding a venomancer. Our debuffs count. And there are a few situations we really shine in.

Oh, and we may not be the best soloers? But we're a damn solid second. You can count the content we can't (eventually) solo on the fingers of one hand. While in fox form.
We're very versatile. Lots of magic, lots of melee, and a lot of power packed into a variety of pets.

What playstyles?

As a venomancer, there's a bunch of stuff you can do.

Probably the default option is to stand at the back, with the cleric and the wizard and the archer and fling spells at the enemy; while sending your pet forward to slug it out with the tigers and the blademasters and the assassins. Our spike damage is relatively poor; but our sustained output is surprisingly good. Most of our spells cast quickly, and have relatively short cool-downs, so we can just keep pouring on the damage.

A second, usually more useful, role; is to constantly run around - catching additional monsters that head for the cleric, luring monsters to the tanks, purging where needed, and throwing your debuffs and attacks where they'll do the most good. Other classes can do all these jobs; but we can do them best; because we can be in two places at once - our pet doing one thing, while we do another.

Alternately; you can dive into the front line yourself. We're not as good at surviving as a tiger; but we're way less squishy than some classes are. So we can survive an AOE attack or two, and get up close to throw some really nasty debuffs (especially amplify damage). Or to take over from the tiger who's had to have a little lie down.

Playing solo, we can do pretty much every quest easily, and many of them levels before we have to. (Memorably, I was helping my guild-mates with some level 85 content while I was level 70. And by helping, I mean 'killing it all while they had a little talk with the cleric'.)

Usually, we work on one monster, kill it, and then move to the next. Sometimes we deal with one monster while a pet deals with a second. Sometimes the pet holds a few monsters attention while we keep the pet alive. Sometimes we throw an AOE attack of our own. (And sometimes, we have to run away with our tails between our legs. We can do everything, but only if we're CAREFUL.)

And of course, we can mix and match; and do all of these things when they're the best thing to do. This is the best thing to do - one of our key class abilities is our flexibility. Make the most of it.

Final note here - we are the energiser bunny of the classes. Other classes need to use charms, or potions, or sit and rest. We have five skills related to refilling our HP and MP; and even while we're recovering (or digging up herbs) our pet can keep fighting. We keep on going. Only wrist strain can stop us. (As a side note - if you've got a terrible ping, then as a pet class we can cope a lot better than most others, who generally need to be able to react more quickly. When lag strikes, hold down pet heal and hope.)

What Variations?

The primary, default, venomancer form is Arcane, or human-form venomancer. In this style you are largely a wizard, using your foxform only occasionally for the debuffs it has and a daring escape when everything goes wrong.
This playstyle can be also called 'wood-mage' (as we're acting as a DD class, and our skills are almost all wood element)
It's a solid, effective style. It has a disadvantage of being somewhat easy to die this way; but outright deals the most damage - and usually the rest of the squad, or your pet, should be taking the hits - not you.

The second playstyle is, obviously enough, foxform. This can still use arcane armour; or can go to light or even heavy armour. It concentrates on melee, and either surviving while using the pet for most damage; or doing the majority of the damage yourself and relying on your armour and skills to survive.
This playstyle is fun for those who want to charge right up to the enemy and bite their kneecaps.
The upside is good survivability. The downside is that we're not very good at dealing spike damage this way. And compared to other tanks, we have few aggro management skills. (We have a pet 'roar' skill, but this is single target only.)

Finally, there's the hybrid venomacer. This starts as an arcane venomancer; and sacrifices a little attack power for a little survivability - either with vitality or using light or heavy armour. With modern gear, this tradeoff is of dubious value (as it is easier to get hitpoints and defence boosts from gear than it is to boost attack power) but if you're not rich, it's a useful option. (Note that the very top-end venomancer armour is arcane, so for heavy and light armour, our end-game gear choices are slightly limited.)
You can play be hybrid and then mainly go either arcane or fox form; but you can't go hybrid and also use melee armour - you just won't have the stat points for it.

Note that for best play any venomancer will utilise both forms sometimes. Although a primarily caster-form veno probably won't want to use their basic physical attack often, you still want to use some of the fox-form debuffs (and the HP and MP stealing can be nice too).
Similarly, a primarily-foxform melee venomancer will need to drop into human-form sometimes, for ironwood, for the AOEs for HP and MP recovery and to pass sparks.

Note that you can, somewhat, use shards to shore up your weak spots. You'll almost always want to add magical attack to your weapon; but your armour can be partially citrines for hitpoints, and partially garnets for physical defence if you're using arcane armour or maybe sapphires for magical defence for the heavy armour users. Rich people get more options, with attack and defence levels to consider instead. If you can afford those, they're almost always better.

So the very best venomancers alternate play styles. The very richest even use multiple sets of gear, but most accept a trade-off and are a little less effective in one form than another.

Legendary!

It is almost fair to say that there are venomancers with the legendary pets; and there are venomancers without them - and neither understands how the other half lives.

With a legendary pet you are much more powerful. All that 'do anything' stuff? That assumes a legendary (specifically, the hercules). Without that, many bosses will be beyond your solo capacity.
But if you're usually in a squad - that matters a lot less; you probably won't be the main tank anyway.
The legendary pets downside? They cost a heck of a lot. They're end-game gear, but available right from day one, if you want.
The legendary pets are cash-shop pets; but it is possible to grind out the coin needed to get them. You're looking at 50-100m, depending on demand and periodic price reductions.

If you don't play with a legendary; you have to pay a lot more attention into keeping your pet alive. You have to lure more often, as you can't just charge into the middle of a group and expect the pet to survive. You get to choose which pets to use, some are better in some situations, some in others. And you get to play with a range of different pet skills. Pay attention to the debuffs, and the bash and elemental bash skills especially.

The quick rundown:
The hercules is a tank. It doesn't die; it hits pretty hard.
The phoenix is a DD. It hits stupidly hard, and quickly. It's not as tough. Originally designed for PVP.
The harpy is an AOE pet and ranged. It's designed primarily for crowd control.
The monkey is really specialised as a PVP pet. It still hits hard in PVE though.

One other advantage - at level 100 you can evolve them into pets which can go on land, and fly, and swim. (Some popular non-legendary pets also evolve; but they don't gain this ability.)

Non-Legendary

There are a huge number of pets available; but only a few will really last you into the end game. The glacial walker is the best tank pet. Scorpions and sawfly's (and skatefish) and Dark Wanderers are DD pets. There's no AOE pet available to you.
Plenty of debuff pets exist. (Pay attention to the skills of the wolves especially, there's a few unusual skill combinations tucked away here and there.)
One thing to note is that a low level pet that levels up with you is usually a lot stronger than getting a new pet that starts at a higher level.
You have the eldergolth sharp shooter monkey, and a couple of cacti as ranged pets. One thing to note in contravention of the previous note is that their range does not increase as they level up; new ones have higher ranges. (To actually get them to use their range you have to turn off their default skill, otherwise they'll run right up close for the skill before using their normal ranged attack.)

There aren't many water quests; it's usually sufficient to tame a water pet when you need one. In case it matters, the turtles are solid water tanks, and everything else is more DD aligned.

There are also rare pets. These are normal in every way - except that they come with some rare skills (mostly pounce) and only spawn very rarely. They're cute; the bears are good tanks, the others are good DD and debuff pets. It's worth mentioning the level 101 dinosaur rare pet; which is an excellent damage pet; but, well, level 101. You can (if you're very lucky) find it at "Derjan's rest" in Morai.

Some rare pet eggs (and some less rare) can be combined to make all-class pets; these are fashion-only.
There are many rare-pet guides available on the wiki. If you're interested, go there.

There's quite a few unusual pets available at high levels. Mostly they are not very useful; but they can still be fun for fashion. I give special mention to the giants (which truly are huge) the acephalid horseriders and the firefox.

Luring.

Luring is using a quirk of the aggro mechanics to cause a single monster (or a chosen few) to attack, rather than grabbing the whole group. You do it by hitting the moster with your pet, then unsummoning the pet. Our tame-pet spell can do this too.
Venomancers are masters of this skill. Mystics can do it the pet-way too, and one genie skill can do it.
See the wiki for more details.

Stats.

To use any of our skills, we have to use a magic weapon. (Or our bare paws. There is no reason to willingly do that, however - it's only there in case your weapon breaks.) That means putting 3 points into magic every level.
And you need to put some points into strength to be able to wear your armour.
The remainder of the points... well; they can go anywhere.

For an arcane user, most or all of them should go into magic. This armour gives you great magic defence, and, well, nothing else. Physical attacks will hurt, a lot. You'll probably want to invest into shoring that up somewhat with your ornaments and shards.
Arcane armour requires the fewest stat points - it means putting one point into strength every other level. Arcane armour also has a magic requirement (3 points every other level); but that's covered by the requirement of your weapon already, unless you're using a very odd build.

If you want to use light armour... then, quite honestly, you should probably stop wanting that. It's not good enough for the stat cost. But if you do want to do that, then it's 1 dex, and 1 str every level. Which has the advantage of being easy to remember.
Light armour (compared to arcane) gives you a bit more physical defence; higher physical attack, better criticals - but lower spell damage and a bit less magic defence.

To use heavy armour is a guide all of its own, as it takes 3 magic and 2 strength every level, and a dex point every other level. And so you need to get extra stat points from somewhere. Lots of planning is needed!
It gives greatly improved physical attack, and the best physical defences you can aspire to. The downside is greatly weakened magical attack and defence (compared to arcane armour), and the need to invest in stat point bonuses on your equipment. (Or use lower level equipment somewhere.) It's also pretty costly, because ideally you want to have two sets of armour - so that you can switch from physical to magical defence when needed.

So, where should your points go?

You can put extra points into Strength - you need to to wear light or heavy armour; Other than that, it boosts our melee damage, but only a very tiny amount so it's not a good idea to put them into strength for that reason alone.
Similarly Dexterity - apart from armour use - it boosts our accuracy; but almost all of our skills automatically hit. And foxform gets a respectable accuracy buff already. It does boost the chance of a critical hit - so one possibility is to get it up to 20 (including bonuses from your equipment) to get that advantage. Personally, I'm not in favour of critical hits; but some play styles love them. So it might be worth raising dex to 20 to get that bonus critical.
Vitality. This is contentious - because we get the best HP per point of all the mage classes; but it's still not a very large amount. It also boosts defence slightly. In your early levels it can be nice to have a few points here. But be aware that a couple of citrine shards is just as good; and not really that expensive. Still, it's an option - and if your budget is limited, or you really really want hitpoints at the expense of everything else, it may be a good one.
Finally - magic. For an arcane user, most or all of them should go into magic. This boosts the damage of your attacks and the strength of your pet heals, as well as giving you a larger mana pool to swim in.

The Low Levels (1-40)

If you know what you're doing it's perfectly possible to get through this stage of the game in one day.

I urge you not to. You'll miss a lot of flavour, and a lot of oppportunities to be slowly introduced to your skills and the various ways different monster types react.

I'm not going to cover the stuff that's common to all new players in any details; like the season quests and the daily charms and getting sent to Archosaur at level 20.

Do complete your gold quests - especially as otherwise you'll miss getting your first pet, and acquiring fox form!

Skill-wise; you should get the first level in each skill as it opens up to you, so that you can explore what it's like.
As a caster, your main skills in these levels will be Venomous Scarab and Ironwood. Frankly, that's true for the entire rest of the game. Don't miss befuddling mist though; while the accuracy debuff isn't a very reliable way to stay alive - it's an AOE skill and not everyone realises that. And don't forget your pet heal!
Foxform venomancers - melee mastery! And probably befuddling mist - foxywallop is ok early on, but lags behind later.
Soul transfusion stands out as a bit of an odd skill. It swaps your hitpoints and mana; so allowing you to refill whichever was low. It works on a percentage basis; so if you only have 10HP, that can still turn into thousands of MP. It also consumes up to one spark - if you have less than one spark - the skill still works. Very handy. Also, very dangerous, and great for scaring the **** out of clerics. Once you have this, you should be able to avoid running out of mana ever again. (Very slight exaggeration; but only very slight.)

If you're not going the legendary route, then choose a pet to stay with you for a long time. The scorpions, glacial walkers, dark wanderer and sawfly are the most popular pets for a reason. But some of the others (the wolves for example) come with very overlevelled skills and can be very good choice.
It you're going the legendary route then you can pick whichever pet appeals to you most on pure aesthetic grounds as you won't be using it long and they're all good enough for the early levels.

It you're going the heavy-armour path, then round about level 20 you'll start to run out of stat points. At this point you need to decide whether to lag behind in your weapon, in your armour, or get very aggressive on seeking out reduced requirement and +stat equipment. One other option is to consider using light armour for the lower levels - it's probably good enough (better for resisting magic), the requirements are easier to meet, and you benefit from the added crit. The dex is needed for higher level HA too, so it's not a waste of stat points. (But check where you should stop.) You really need to see the separate guide on this.

Learn to lure! "And all his friends came too" is not a lure!

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: Got your fox form, and a pet, got 1 level in every skill available to you, got your permanent flying fish (even if you're using one of the timed ones right now) got your level 39 cultivation, and found some friends. Oh, and got at least 4 lines of bank open. And died from a soul transfusion at least once.
To stay at a low level a little longer, you can feed experience points to your genie.

The medium Levels (40-70)

Tip one very much has to be... find a good guild. The game truly TRULY sucks for medium level players right now. It's almost completely abandoned. Be thankful that you're a venomancer who can do your own quests!

In these levels you should be acquiring your full skill set. Put at least one level into everything.
Caster-form venomancers should work on maxing out Venomous, Lucky, Ironwood and Noxious (your main AOE). Also prioritise out Amplify Damage, and at least one other fox-form skill (as you can't change back to human for six seconds) I personally use Befuddling mist; but Leeching is a good alternative.
If you're a heavy foxform player, you want instead to max out befuddling mist, and probably leech life too. Stunning blow is useful to stop the runners, and consume spirit is a nice way to keep your mana topped up. (It's pretty nice for primarily arcane form venomancers too, but while skill points are tight, it can't be a priority.) Foxy wallop isn't so great; and malefic crush (because it uses two sparks) is for special uses only - but does have the nice quirk that it's an AOE that will cast even if your target dies (where noxious and nova will fizzle.) Prioritise amplify damage - but don't neglect Ironwood and lucky scarab.
Everyone should grab at least a few levels of Natural Synergy and Metabolic Boost; and realise why being a venomancer is so much better than those potion sucking other classes.
Whichever path you follow; ignore frost scarab and keep your pet heal up to date. You WILL have to pick and choose your skills for these levels; you won't have enough spirit to increase all your skills.
If you squad up regularly, and are the only venomancer then also concentrate on increasing bramble. Your tanks will appreciate it. (Or if youre tanking on yourself...)

One unusual skill you gain in these levels is "Lending Hand". This lets you send a spark to another character; who can probably make better use of it than you can. Use it to top the cleric back up after they put up their blue bubble; or the tank after they use their big yellow monk, or the BM throws the fire dragons, or the wizard or archer launch their huge AOE skills. They'll love you for it. (Assassins typically don't need sparks, seekers are also usually self sufficient.)

Your bounty hunt quests are a good way to practice, to level up, and to acquire level-appropriate equipment. (The items crafted from divine orders are nice too.)

Mostly.. you'll be pressured into doing "FC". This is, by far, the fastest way to level; and you'll not be contributing much at this level, just soaking up the XP. This is not fun, and I urge you not to give in. At the very least, watch for monsters breaking away from the group and practice catching them.

At level 60 and again at level 70, you'll be able to use Twilight Temple (TT) items. The TT60 Magic-sword isn't bad; though other items are just as good. (The 70 weapons ditto) The TT70 arcane armour... royally sucks. Stick with purple gear with good add-ons. (The TT light and heavy gear is pretty good, if you're going that path.) Note that you need to decompose some TT70 gear to make higher level TT stuff later.

Enjoy these levels; around about level 50 you are actually the hardest hitting class for a while. you get overtaken again shortly, but it's fun while it lasts.

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: 3 pet slots, a guild (to chat with, if nothing else), your level 59 cultivation (you ideally ought to have your 69; but it's acceptable to not finish that until level 72 or so), at least 3.5k HP and 3.5k pdef. And your main pets should be at least within a few levels of you.

Unless you're always running with higher levels, your lures are really useful here. Learn about genie luring, tame-pet luring and maybe play with some of the really odd edge cases. There's an excellent luring guide on the wiki.

The High Levels (70-99)

Here you start to specialise; and get your best (but least reliable) debuffs.
Don't miss these debuffs. At level 79; "Myriad Rainbow" has two versions, one human and one fox form - and both throw a host of random debuffs. Or sometimes do nothing at all. Get them from apocalypse pages (Higher TT runs, or 89, or make from tokens) and medium ink (buy from a merchant).
The foxform one is an AOE; but has a shorter range. Eventually you want both.

At this point in your career you start hitting bosses you can't solo even with a legendary pet (Jewelscalen, Polearm, some of the TT bosses)
You also start to meet monsters with AOE more regularly. Start filling out your skills - and start worrying about needing to max out 'Purge' - one of the few skills we have that works better than any other class. Not many bosses need it; but the ones that do, really really do.

Start collecting gear with an eye towards it either upgrading, or being resold as you head for your endgame gear. TT80 and 90 suck a lot less than TT70 does (but note you have to decompose earlier TT gear to make them). Start getting left behind by other classes, as their gear begins to overpower your pet. Start to get really annoyed with keeping pets levelled up.

At level 89, you get to make the choice between Sage or Demon. We have one of the closest balances between the two paths. Demons get speed, and critical hits - but more randomness. Sage gets more solid reliability, but less spike damage. Pick whichever appeals to your play style most; both sets get some unique stuff to lord it over the other with.

You'll be doing a lot more Bounty Hunts (BH69 is pain, BH79 and Eden are joyous venomancer playgrounds. Brimstone is.. interesting. Painfully so.); but again - the largest activity here is FC. But now you get to DO stuff. Practice keeping your pet under control, practice stunning things - and practice keeping your damage under control and not dying too often when you throw an AOE.

If you can, get into a gamma run before you hit 85. They're few and far between - but it'll do you good to learn how.

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: 5k HP and pdef. Chosen your cultivation, and got at least a few skills to level 11. Opened up the past-time maps. (Shameful really, that nowadays I have to put this here; you can get in at level 70! Try it!) And make sure you've got your chosen ranged pet.

Luring is important less often; still, there are a few really nice ones you can pull off now.

The End Game. Level 100+

The best gear is constantly evolving, and is, of course, the most expensive. Right now it's the rank gear.

If you haven't got your legendary pet(s) yet; get them now! Finish off getting your sage/demon skills as you can. Get the ones you use most first, obviously. Some of the most desired skills are amplify damage (both versions), soul degeneration (sage) - and for fox-form users, melee mastery (demon). The morai skills we have are almost solely PVP - though bewitch (and variants) is still a seal on monsters.

Go to the lyceum, and evolve your pets. Then go back and destroy some of those bosses you couldn't touch earlier in your career. It's very very satisfying.

If you went hybrid; consider buying the reset scroll and restatting as pure, now that your gear (hopefully) is making up the difference. Or maybe consider going Heavy Armour (far easier to do it now, than struggle up through the ranks that way.)

Frankly; unless you solo a lot; you'll probably never lure properly again. People are impatient, and use genies. Or just tear into the middle of all the monsters and kill them all at once. Which has a certain satisfying quality too.

Pet Skills.

Pets being a somewhat central part of being a Venomancer, it's worth giving a quick rundown of pet skills here.

The majority of pet skills can be obtained from the Zoologist NPCs in Achosaur. That's also how you put the skills onto a pet, and level up skills. Skills cost around 100k, and levelling up costs 200k. Some rare skills are only available through events (Lyceum and dragon temple primarily - but they're tradable) or come pre-equipped on rare pets. If you have a high level faction base, some pet-skill scrolls may be on sale there, too. Those are very expensive (36m), but are the best available.

So what skills should you put on your pets? There are really three types of skill - damage, debuffs and utility.
Damage skills are the simplest. Bash is the most well known as the best for generating aggro - but there are equivalent skills in each element. There's also flesh ream (which inflicts a bleed) Pounce is an attack, an attack speed increase and a stun. Sadly, it's also rare (and has a long cooldown).
The useful debuffs are mainly howl and pierce. And you can mostly duplicate pierce with ironwood; so get howl. There are other debuffs too, such as threten and shriek.
For utility - the healing skills aren't really powerful enough; but tough is a pretty nice way to stay alive; (as is threaten). The rare utility skills (strong, claw, protect, blessings of the pack and reflect) are all awesome if you can get them.

At level 100 many pets can evolve - and then it gains some additional skills as well as a bunch of stats. This is a good thing, don't miss it! Check with the zoologist for details.

Genies.

Venomancers can use all the usual genie skills.

We have a few that we get especial use out of:
Fortify makes you immune to movement debuffs. Which is nice on its own as an anti-stun; but it has a special combo with our Feral Concentration skill - turning it into a long-lasting invcibility with no real downside other than the cost.
And Blinding Sand stacks with Befuddling Mist to give an accuracy debuff that's large enough to be really useful. (Unless you're doing lots of damage with bramble, then it's potentially really annoying.)
For self preservation, absolute domain is always a popular choice, as is holy path (though demon path venomancers especially get really quite fast).
For healing - second wind is a nice chunk of healing; it's instant - and unless you're a hybrid-vitality venomancer, will probably be a nearly complete heal for most of your levels. If you do have a lot of hitpoints, then Tree of Protection can be a better choice (healing more, but more slowly. It also tends to tick your charm, if you use one.)
We lack aggro skills - so if you intend to be a tank (even just an "Oh ****, everything went wrong, I'd better save the cleric even though it's suicide for me" tank) then you can't go wrong with Alpha Male. It used to overwrite brambles, but no longer. Which is nice.
And lastly earthflame. Our bane. It's a perfect lure (the same way your tame pet is.) So get it if you feel like being really lazy. Or at least learn to watch out for your squadmates using it.

All the general all-class advice for good genie skills applies to us too - gaining chi is always nice, for example. (Though sage path veno's need this less than most classes.)
Earthquake is (at level 10) a perfectly reliable AOE interrupt, and a knockback - which is very nice combo to have sometimes.
Lightning chaser is a less reliable interrupt.
The channel time reducers are nice, though our channel times are mostly short to start with.
Wind Shield reduces damage a bit, quite cheap, pretty nice.
Expel applies silence, but also immune to physical damage for a while. Use it to stop a caster, or use it on yourself as an alternative to Absolute domain.
Badge of Courage is an unstun. One of the few things you can do while stunned, which is nice.

The venomancer-specific "Soul Transfuse someone else" genie skill is... not well regarded. It can't be used except in PVP (no replenishing squad-mates MP, unless you're in a duel with them), and while theoretically useful in PVP it's too specialised to be useful very often.
And Hollow Fist is basically a pdef debuff, the same as Tangling Mire; Tangling Mire being better at it - though without the small damage and bleed that hollow fist adds.

TODO: Suggested minimum attack strength at each level boundary.
TODO: Links. (Wiki, Rei's HA guide., the list of links sticky.)
TODO: Endgame stuff. Though the guide is already huuuuge.

Kniraven - Lost City

reserved derp derp

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

Couple skills that need a mention: soul transfusion and lending hand.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Good call; added those.

Desdi - Sanctuary

I'd say the Harpy is a ranged magic DD/AOE pet. I'll add more stuff when I take a better look at it later XD

tweakz

You mentioned tearing it apart in another thread, but I'm not even sure it's a good place to start from.

A hybrid cleric+tank+DD. The full holy trinity; with a smatterring of control skills too.

We can't heal anyone but ourselves and pets. We suck as tanks. You say we suck as dd: "a third rate DD"; yet our 1-1 mag sustained dd is not. According to you we're **** for healer, dd, and tank. DD is the only thing Mystics are commonly good for.

We have exactly TWO buffs

We have many more buffs than that. We're not a solid second for soloing. We can't solo as much as you say. A lot of the guide resorts to ambiguity and stating what's already in the tool tips or in-game guide.

Guides should be in the wiki.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

Mystics? Where did mystics come into the picture? This is a venomancer guide, not a mystic guide.

Many more buffs than two? Well, I think she miscounted too, but I only come up with 5 if you count foxform as a buff (summer sprint, bramble guard, bramble hood, blazing barrier and foxform)

You seem to think every venomancer guide is bad, yet you never give an example of a good guide, nor write one yourself. Put your money where your mouth is for once.

Kiszmet - Heavens Tear

I feel this guide is a good effort... but also a bit misleading. It's obviously written from the point of view of an AA venomancer with legendary pets, which is fine, but I feel some things need to be mentioned and others clarified in order to better represent all aspects and options of the class.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

A guide to Venomancing
or
Bouncy Bouncy Foxy Foxy

by

Vitenka the Venomancer

Contents:
What is a Venomancer?
What Playstyles?
What Variations?
The low levels.
The middle levels.
The high levels.
The end game.


What is a Venomancer?

Ignoring the lore for a moment, a venomancer is a pet class. A hybrid cleric+tank+DD. The full holy trinity; with a smatterring of control skills too.

The downside? We're not actually very GOOD at most of it. We're a third rate tank, a third rate DD, and we can only heal pets. We have exactly TWO buffs, and one of those is self-only. We have the best debuffs, but in this game that isn't saying much.

In the past, we were the 'go to' class for soloing. But we're not even the best at that any more.

So, why would you be a venomancer? Because there's nothing we can't do. Any squad, doing anything, is improved by adding a venomancer. Our debuffs count. And there are a few situations we really shine in.

Oh, and we may not be the best soloers? But we're a damn solid second. You can count the content we can't solo on the fingers of one hand. While in fox form.
We're very versatile. Lots of magic, lots of melee, and a lot of power packed into a variety of pets.


What playstyles?

As a venomancer, ther's a bunch of stuff you can do.

Probably the default option is to stand at the back, with the cleric and the wizard and the archer and fling spells at the enemy; while sending your pet forward to slug it out with the tigers and the blademasters and the assasins.

A second, more useful, role; is to constantly run around - catching additional monsters that head for the cleric, luring monsters to the tanks, throwing your debuffs and attacks where they'll do the most good. Other classes can do all these jobs; but we can do them best.

I really don't know where this comes from. Barbs are the best at luring massive crowds of monsters, hands (or paws) down. HA venos CAN do it but they aren't as good. Barbs also have agro grab skills, we don't. We CAN grab with spells and skills, but so can any other class and I wouldn't say we can do it better as you said yourself our damage is at best second or third rate.

Alternately; you can dive into the front line yourself. We're not as good at surviving as a tiger; but we're way less squishy than some. So we can survive an AOE attack or two, and get up close to throw some really nasty debuffs. Or to take over from the tiger who's had to have a little lie down.

True we have more base HP than other casters, but it is negligible in the grand scheme of things. Survivability is based on gear, refines, shards, and skill. I've seen plenty of AA venomancers go down to the same attacks that kill cleric, psychics, and wizards. It should also be mentioned that if you want to go front line veno and take over for the tiger while its napping you need to go LA or HA for the physical attack power as you will be spending a lot of time in fox and it is only in fox form that you get most of the defense benefits.

Playing solo, we can do pretty much every quest easily, and many of them levels before we have to. (Memorably, I was helping my guildmates with some level 85 content while I was level 70. And by helping, I mean 'killing it all while they had a little talk with the cleric'.)

Currently I'm not sure how true this is given the state of the game, but I remember this was generally only possible with the Hercules legendary pet.

Usually, we work on one monster, kill it move to the next. Sometimes we deal with one monster while a pet deals with a second. Sometimes the pet holds a few monsters attention while we keep the pet alive. Sometimes we throw an AOE attack of our own. (And sometimes, we have to run away with our tails between our legs. We can do everything, but only if we're CAREFUL.)

This part is 100% true

What Variations.

The primary, default, venomancer form is Arcane, or human-form venomancer. In this style you are largely a wizard, using your foxform only occasionally for the debuffs it has and a daring escape when everything goes wrong.
This playstyle can be also called 'wood-mage' (as we're acting *** a DD class, and our skills are almost all wood element)
It's a solid, effective style. It has a disadvantage of being somewhat easy to die this way; but outright deals the most damage - and usually the rest of the squad, or your pet, should be taking the hits - not you.

The second playstyle is, obviously enoughm, foxform. This can still use arcane armour; or can go to light or even heavy armour. It concentrates on melee, and surviving while using the pet for most damage.

This is an absoluetely horrid line. As an HA veno I easily do twice if not three times as much damage as my best DD pet, and only do slightly less overall damage than an arcane veno w/o channeling upgrades.

This playstyle is fun for those who want to charge right up to the enemy and bite their kneecaps.
The upside is good survivability. The downside is that we're really REALLY not very good at dealing damage this way. And we have no aggro management skills.

Again horribly misinformative, bordering on an outright lie. With a good DD pet, good magic weapon, and decent STR stat the damage is decent at worst but if built well can match the normal damage of any other melee class that isn't APSing. It should also be mentioned that foxes have skills that can shut down other melee classes and have added debuffs which gimp their damage while increasing ours. Not to mention the damage dealt by bramble. When asked, I find many melee classes fear the melee fox over the arcane venomancer.

Finally, there's the hybrid venomacer. This starts as an arcnae venomancer; and sacrifices a little attack power for a little survivability. With modern gear, this tradeoff is of dubious value (as it is easier to get hitpoints from gear than attack power) but if you're not rich, it's a useful option.

Eh, not much to say here. I hear VIT venomancers really love their VIT and the bonus is added to all the benefits of the armor, shards, and refines, it doesn't try to replace it.

Legendary!

It is almost fair to say that there are venomancers with the legendary pets; and there are venomancers without them - and they don't understand how the other half lives.

That's kind of elitist don't you think?

With a legendary pet you are much more powerful. All that 'do anything' stuff? That assumes a legendary (specifically, the hercules). Without that, many bosses will be beyond your solo capacity.
But if you're usually in a squad - that matters a lot less; you priobably won't be the main tank anyway.

The legendary pets downside? They cost a heck of a lot. They're end-game gear, but available right from day one, if you want.

The quick rundown:
The hercules is a tank. It doesn't die; it hits pretty hard.
The phoenix is a DD. It hits stupidly hard, and quickly. It's not very tough. Originally designed for PVP.
The harpy is an AOE pet. It's designed for crowd control.
The monkey is really specialised as a PVP pet. It still hits hard in PVE though.

No mention of the free pets? Many of which can at least come close to the hercs and nixes power with the same buffs that come with those pets? Ok Ill do it for you.

Ther Derjan's Hatching is arguably the best free end game pet. With Claw and HP Buff (both of which can be attained in game) it is essentially a poor man's phoenix. It can actually do more damage than a phoenix against other pets and monsters with it's Bone Sickle skill and was designed to be an enemy pet killer.

The Shademark Scorpion (upgraded version of the scorpion you choose at the beginning) is a close second on the ground with its aoe debuff, though it lacks the resistances and attack speed of the hatchling.

The Thorn Bee is arguably the best free Damage pet in the air and its supporting skill slows down enemy flyers. Excellent for chasing down those players which like to hang out in the sky and fly away from stiff resistance.

The Supreme Walker (upgraded version of the ever popular Glacial Walker) is the poor man's Hercules. Though it lacks the AOE skill of the upgraded Hercules, it does more damage per hit (with good attribute additions, though it does have a slightly slower attack speed) and has very close to similar resistances. With the same buffs as a Hercules, (again, all three available in game for coins) and a good roll on mood it can do quite well for soloers.

The Flaming Crystal should also get a mention (though not as tough as the Walker) for it has a very good self heal which doubles as a tank skill adding 200 def levels for a short time.

There are also even more free pets based on play style ranging from ranged damage dealers such as the Illusory Thorn (none of the Cash pets do standard range damage) to the excellent stun support from the armored bear King Cuddlesworth. The type you get depends on your play style. Just do research and compare end game skills to decide which pet is right for you.

As a final note the Cash Shop pets can go anywhere in the game while the free pets are limited to their "zone" (land, air, water) but, the free pets don't cost roughly $200 per pet.


Stats.

To use any of our skills, we have to use a magic weapon. (Or our bare paws. There is no reason to willing do that, however.) That means putting 3 points into magic every level.
Arcane armour requires the fewest sta point - it means putting one point into strength every other level.

The remainder of the points... well; they can go anywhere. Most or all of them should go into magic. If you want to use light armour... then, quite honestly, you should probably stop wanting that. It's not good enough for the stat cost. But if you do want to do that, then it's 1 dex, and 1 str every level. Which has the advantage of being easy to remember.
To use heavy armour is a guide all of its own, as you need to get extra stat points from somewhere.

You can put extra points into strength - but it gives us very little advantage, so is a bad idea. It boosts our melee damage, but only a very tiny amount.
Similarly dex - it boosts our accuracy; but almost all of our skills automatically hit. It does boost the chance of a critical hit - so one possibility is to get it up to 20 (including bonuses from your equipment) to get that advantage. Personally, I'm not in favour of critical hits; but some play styles love them.
Finally - vitality. This is contentious - because we get the best HP per point of all the mage classes; but it's still not a very large amount. In your early levels it can be nice to have a few points here. But be aware that a couple of citrine shards is just as good; and not really that expensive. Still, it's an option - and if your budget is limited it may be a good one.

As this is an Arcane Armor guide I won't pick on this too much, Heavy Armor has a very different build but you do mention that. Light Armor, to be effective, also requires a different build and play style which many players haven't experimented with yet. That doesn't mean it should be discouraged so long as the player understands there isn't a lot of information on good Light armor use and may get frustrated when they have to discover the ins and outs of the build themselves. However Light Armor venos do exist and many of them love being Light armor.

I won't go into your leveling guide, I think its fine for arcanes, but Light Armor and Heavy Amor venomancers will have different focuses.

Desdi - Sanctuary

The Harpy can do standard range damage. It's generally a ranged pet that also comes with ranged skills whith a very short cooldown that makes them spam-able. I just wanted to clarify that. Think of it like a mix of Illusory Thorn + Mystic's Storm Mistress with an addition of an AOE stun for monsters.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Otherwise, let's not turn this into an argument of pets and builds.
We all know how this will end, it's the same over and over. For a starter guide I think you should just mention simple things such as the general attribute point distribution and just outline the main points of each build (eg. HA focuses on maximizing physical defence and increasing HP as well as utilizing fox form skills moreso than AA Venomancers, that at the cost of lower magic damage and in some cases lower magic defence) and then also mention endgame related things such as how 3rd cast Nirvana and r9 affects builds.

I don't know I think it's best for someone that has experienced all builds to write that part. I can say I've gone through all builds as a personal experiment (did quests and all as LA and HA on a 2nd toon) as well as in attempt to find out what build I want to follow and settle down with so I could give it a try.

Kiszmet - Heavens Tear

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

The Harpy can do standard range damage. It's generally a ranged pet that also comes with ranged skills whith a very short cooldown that makes them spam-able. I just wanted to clarify that. Think of it like a mix of Illusory Thorn + Mystic's Storm Mistress with an addition of an AOE stun for monsters.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Otherwise, let's not turn this into an argument of pets and builds.
We all know how this will end, it's the same over and over. For a starter guide I think you should just mention simple things such as the general attribute point distribution and just outline the main points of each build (eg. HA focuses on maximizing physical defence and increasing HP as well as utilizing fox form skills moreso than AA Venomancers, that at the cost of lower magic damage and in some cases lower magic defence) and then also mention endgame related things such as how 3rd cast Nirvana and r9 affects builds.

I don't know I think it's best for someone that has experienced all builds to write that part. I can say I've gone through all builds as a personal experiment (did quests and all as LA and HA on a 2nd toon) as well as in attempt to find out what build I want to follow and settle down with so I could give it a try.

I agree. I wasn't trying to turn this into an argument, but a good guide needs to focus on all aspects available to the class, not just magic and cash shop. I can forgive poor representation of melee foxes but I don't think its appropriate to leave out non cash pets. Of course one can question the usefulness of a guide anymore as there are so few "new" players these days, and players making alts are already going to have an idea of what they want for a class.

Desdi - Sanctuary

Kiszmet - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I agree. I wasn't trying to turn this into an argument, but a good guide needs to focus on all aspects available to the class, not just magic and cash shop. I can forgive poor representation of melee foxes but I don't think its appropriate to leave out non cash pets. Of course one can question the usefulness of a guide anymore as there are so few "new" players these days, and players making alts are already going to have an idea of what they want for a class.

That was my concern too last night, not sure if we should even bother with a guide for starters at this point b:surrender I don't know really, maybe I'll get down and write something later today and post and see what others think.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Added a bunch of stuff.

Not going to go into TOO much detail on HA; but yes, wasn't being very fair to it.


Added a section on the non-legendaries; which I do mention in the low level part of the guide; but you're right, bringing them to the fore is a good idea. (I was non-legendary for most of my levels)

And I apologise for the tone, it was meant to be "they don't understand each other" but that sure didn't come out in the words I actually used. Changed.

As for luring... charging into the whole lot of them and dragging them all back isn't luring. It's what tigers DO, and yes, they do it best - but it's not luring.

CaitlinDan - Heavens Tear

Vitenka, I think this is a great guide!

1. Perhaps you could bold and enlarge headings? So they stand out more? Maybe with a different colour because it could help to break up the content into more visible and presentable chunks rather than the same fonts for the entire guide.

2. I really like your "don't level out of this range until you have xxxx HP and xxxx p def. I think that helps new players know how much they are lacking or what they should be aiming for on refines.

@Kizsmet, I think Vitenka was trying to suggest that players should aim to get some form of legendary pets because they're the best. She said "don't have a legendary? Aim to get one" or something along those lines. She also mentions in the beginning that venos now have a lot of farming options and with that, they can farm for a Hercules. Just my understanding.

I think new venos do need to know that it is possible to farm for the pets because I farmed for my herd (i meant hercules, damn auto correct) back in 2010 from level 40-50 ish, and Hercules was pricey then, it's a lot cheaper now.

+1 to what mayfly said about tweakz, I think this guide is really a job well done, and updated to reflect the new changes to venomancers.

Vitenka, I think you should make the changes to your first post, not repost it here because it would get very confusing to keep finding the most updated post. I'm not sure whether you copied the updated one and posted it above me, or the two are different versions of the guide. I hope I'm making sense.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Updated based on your comments (including removing the repost)

Would a heavy and a light fox like to make comments? (I've not got a heavy or light fox out of the 1-40 range, personally) I hope I addressed yours Kizmet, but do you have any more?

Desdi - Sanctuary

I have some experience with playing HA/LA Venomancer even at low levels but I don't have much time right now so I'll post a bit later.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

My current main is 101, and has been HA/AA since level 1 (and among my many venos, is the only one that is heavy; I have one light, but still low level.)

Level 1-19 is easy, because of low stat requirements; level 20, you start to run into the dreaded stat crunch, where the heavy armor/magic weapon stat requirements start to add up to more than you've earned, and you have to choose to:

a) skimp on armor and keep weapon up to date,
b) skimp on weapon and keep armor up to date, or
c) scrounge -req armor/weapon and +stat equipment to try to keep both up to date as much as possible.

As a melee fox, while your pet can keep aggro from you (which lasted for me pretty much until I had a high refined End of Eternity: Eon), your main grinding skills are Befuddling Mist (decreases opponent accuracy), Consume Spirit (restores mana at the cost of HP) and Leech (restore HP at the cost of mana.) I know many disagree with me on Consume Spirit because of its low damage, but it decreases down time for form switching for Nature's Grace, and many times I was able to restore mana to near full from near empty once I added Consume Spirit into the mix. Now I have to make do with triple-sparking to restore some mana, and using Nature's Grace when even that isn't enough.

For archers and other runners, Stunning Blow is your go-to skill to hold opponents in place, though its cost of one spark makes it difficult to use repeatedly. (Magic runners I typically switch to human and use arcane armor, with the exception of Rangers in Brim, whose magic attack does physical damage. For them, I use heavy armor, foxform and stunning blow as a rule.)

Malefic Crush is a situational skill, typically only useful when you have a lot of opponents surrounding you. It has the advantage over Parasitic Nova of going off even if your target dies before channeling is done.

Desdi - Sanctuary

Nevermind xD Mayfly got it covered and is pretty accurate.

Kittennice - Heavens Tear

I'll give you an E for effort
Guild needs a lot of work
I suggest playing all styles then trying to build a guide

Raziyal - Archosaur

For some reason i got to distracted in the writing, there was to much of it, or its just the lack of colour that many guides have... not Sure.

Other than thats its fairly good

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Mayfly - updated based on your input (and going back to ecatomb to remember when some of those skills are first learned.) Thanks.

Raziyal - thanks for the encouragement. I agree, the sections have started to get too long again; any suggestions on breaking it out?

Desdi - thanks for the encouragement; anything at all you can add would be great.

KittenNice- that would be why I started this as a co-operative effort to tear down the existing guides and put them together again with input from people. So if you have any input and suggestions, please say what you know so it can be added into the guide. If you're just being hostile - go home.


Still haven't had any input from any LA veno's. I'm sure they exist somewhere? Or is "caster/melee" a reasonable split, and the only difference how effective at the two paths you are?


In the root thread in general; tweaks made a suggestion for adding matk advisories to the level ranges. That sounds like a damn good idea, and maybe patk for melee foxes instead/too?
Problem is.. I don't know what's a reasonable minimal expectation for those ranges. (I can fill out 99 though). So any suggestions?
I'm thinking "Quest pataka +avg shard" for exiting 1-40, maybe "TT70 +flawless +3" for exiting 70, and roughly TT99+5 for exiting 70-99. Adding on 4.5-magic per level should give a minimal (I'm not aiming at "you must be godlike to proceed", but a reasonable minimum - remember you get +magic bonuses, and stat points at higher levels, so it should be reasonable to attain even as a hybrid.)

For melee foxes... I honestly have no idea what a reasonable patck for you guys is. "Enough magic attack to 75% heal your pet" seems like a reasonable aim for magic - or would you want more, or can you live with less?

Worth mentioning channel / crit as being worth roughly a 1% boost to your attack, when figuring out a reasonable attack level?

Desdi - Sanctuary

My second Venomancer started out as LA mainly because it was easier to allocate the attribute points (and could have at level both armor and weapon) at lower levels as opposed to HA but I played it pretty much in the same way as HA (like in Mayfly's post).
However, I remember back in the days a lot of LA Venomancers still focused on their mage tree and just wanted LA for the defences.

Separating it into mage/fox sections might be a good idea (LA would have to be included in both as playstyles) but don't forget to put a reminder; regardless of what playstyle a person may choose and what form they want to focus on, they have to utilize both forms for the best performance.

Neferhotep - Lost City

Mmmmh, they are a lot of things i dont aggree with...

Ignoring the lore for a moment, a venomancer is a pet class. A hybrid cleric+tank+DD. The full holy trinity; with a smatterring of control skills too.

and we can only heal pets, and ourselves

Id not use the word "cleric" here, cause it could lead to misunderstanding. That would fit for mystics, but being able to heal the pet only is not really a cleric ability. The self heal ability is something most classes have

We're a third rate tank (well, our pet is, we ourselves are way down at 6th or 7th)

A HA Veno is a great tank cause of its immense base Phys Defense in Fox Form what is even much higher than same-geared BM/Seeker defense. There are some skills helping as well (Thinking of Leech, ST and FW). The only problem is to keep aggro.

We have the best debuffs, but in this game that isn't saying much.

In this game debuffs are everything. You dont meet a bm without at least HF lvl 10, Sins with SS and plenty of genie-debuffing skills. Amplify + Myriad, just as IS are extremely important.

Probably the default option is to stand at the back, with the cleric and the wizard and the archer and fling spells at the enemy; while sending your pet forward to slug it out with the tigers and the blademasters and the assasins. Our spike damage is relatively poor; but our sustained output is surprsingly good. Most of our spells cast quickly, and have relatively short cooldowns, so we can just keep pouring on the damage.

Was already mentioned before, its a mainly AA-style. You should at least put here the duty to keep the enemy amplified and to purge if neccesary, cause thats something even AAs should do, thats a part of the default veno too. Just as lending hand. Its not pretty useful to only mention it in the lvl guide only.

Alternately; you can dive into the front line yourself. We're not as good at surviving as a tiger; but we're way less squishy than some. So we can survive an AOE attack or two, and get up close to throw some really nasty debuffs. Or to take over from the tiger who's had to have a little lie down.

If an AA Veno can survive one or two hits only, why should the Veno take aggro? Also, how should she do this without AM? The last sentence would make sense when talking about HA or LA Venos (but you really have to put out Alpha male here, cause i highly doubt a Veno can steal aggro from a barb that used Flesh)

A second, more useful, role; is to constantly run around - catching additional monsters that head for the cleric, luring monsters to the tanks, throwing your debuffs and attacks where they'll do the most good. Other classes can do all these jobs; but we can do them best.

Only when zhenning or maybe in PV as well. Taking mobs from the cleric can be done by the veno, just as by everyone else.I would even prefer a bm/Psychic doing that.

Playing solo, we can do pretty much every quest easily, and many of them levels before we have to.

Depending on your pet and Build. With a Herc, you can nearly do everything. With a walker/Magmite you might have a hard time, but its still possible, With DD pets its not. Sure, you can do every Mob-killing Quest. But doing bosses is a whole different story. I might go too much into detail here, sorry.

The second playstyle is, obviously enough, foxform. This can still use arcane armour; or can go to light or even heavy armour. It concentrates on melee, and either surviving while using the pet for most damage; or doing the majority of the damage yourself and relying on your armour and skills to survive.
This playstyle is fun for those who want to charge right up to the enemy and bite their kneecaps.
The upside is good survivability. The downside is that we're not very good at dealing spike damage this way. And we have no aggro management skills.

HA does nearly the same damage as AA. I can kill the same bosses with my AA Veno with Herc as fast as my HA Veno with tabby, or at least most. The damage reduction only counts for Human-Form skills, and if you keep your magic weapon up-to-date its not much lower.

It is almost fair to say that there are venomancers with the legendary pets; and there are venomancers without them - and neither understands how the other half lives.

Most Venos had normal pets before they got Legendary pets

Without that, many bosses will be beyond your solo capacity.

Maybe you should have post this together with the "Veno can do all their Quests alone" part Bosses are highly part of quests, especially below 75.

To use any of our skills, we have to use a magic weapon. (Or our bare paws. There is no reason to willingly do that, however.) That means putting 3 points into magic every level.
Arcane armour requires the fewest stat points - it means putting one point into strength every other level.

If you want to use light armour... then, quite honestly, you should probably stop wanting that.

Light armor is pretty useful at lower lvls (1-80) if you like playing in fox form, since HA is a bit complicated for beginners. its a mix of human form and fox form, what means while youre damage is not better than HA damage, you have the +crit from stats and armor and you can take both phisical and magical hits.

To use heavy armour is a guide all of its own, as you need to get extra stat points from somewhere. It gives greatly improved physical attack, and the best physical defences you can aspire to.

Its not so hard, if you look at the armor you wanna have in some lvls you can easlily stat your point. However, i highly suggest to keep your weapon up to date meaning 6 points into mag , then followed by 3 str and 1 dex every two lvls. This works at lower lvls fine, at higher ones you need to take a lot at the gear requirement and better safe some points till youre sure how many you need.


The guide is a nice idea, but still needs a lot of work. Something that really bothered me is the fact that whenever melee/HA-Venos are mentioned in your guide, you suggest reading the HA guide. That makes this guide a FULL AA guide, because a complete Veno-guide is about both ways. If you dont have experience in that, you can read the HA guide yourself or look into various HA-threads, maybe ask specific questions about that build. But dont write "Look into the HA thread for information" if youre doing a full venomancer guide.

Desdi - Sanctuary

I posted a reply to you in another thread just gonna throw it here.

I went through the whole guide, finally, and I have to say that you did an excellent job at keeping a friendly and humorous tone. I'm sure people who are new to Venomancers and looking for a complete newbie guide will greatly appreciate it.

I love what you did with the "don't level out of this range until" parts. This is probably the most useful part. I'd suggest putting it in bold (just the first sentence) so they won't miss it. Speaking of which, you might have to put in bold some other parts too just to give an emphasis to them.

Adding gear and/or weapon advice (as said in the sticky related thread) is a nice idea as well.

There are some things I'd have left out or added but this leans towards mostly my own preferences and opinions so I'm leaving them out. I'd say the guide is more or less good to go. Other additions I'd put are: maybe increase the size of the header (3-4 should be good), bold a few things as mentioned to give emphasis to important things, correct spelling mistakes (I've noticed quite a few xD) and add some links.

For links I'd suggest general things such as the wiki page to Venomancers, pwdatabase, ecatomb for skills etc. and the link to Mauntille's useful venomancer links (I know it's a sticky but a lot of people seem to skip it for some reason).

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Thanks for both of these, will add something to the guide later.

There are two main problems with adding a full HA guide here too:
1. I'm not HA, I don't have the expertise. That's where you people come in.
2. The guide is already getting huge (and you're asking for duplicating stuff from one part into another already, which makes it huger)

Desdi - Sanctuary

Neferhotep - Lost City wrote: »

Mmmmh, they are a lot of things i dont aggree with...

Id not use the word "cleric" here, cause it could lead to misunderstanding. That would fit for mystics, but being able to heal the pet only is not really a cleric ability. The self heal ability is something most classes have

Well, Vitenka does clarify that the only thing Venomancer can heal are our pets and ourselves so I don't think it's too bad. Perhaps, it should be changed to just healer though to avoid confusion with the Cleric class.

Was already mentioned before, its a mainly AA-style. You should at least put here the duty to keep the enemy amplified and to purge if neccesary, cause thats something even AAs should do, thats a part of the default veno too. Just as lending hand. Its not pretty useful to only mention it in the lvl guide only.

Vitenka does mention it in various parts but (not sure if it's this thread or another) we've already discussed of splitting the section into human playstyle and fox form playstyle while putting a reminder that both should be utilised for the maximum potential and performance.

Only when zhenning or maybe in PV as well. Taking mobs from the cleric can be done by the veno, just as by everyone else.I would even prefer a bm/Psychic doing that.

Vitenka didn't talk about pulling monsters only; also mentions debuffing and whatnot which is included into the running around since it's technically not DDing like other classes (or healing the tank etc.). It can be worded better though, I admit.

Depending on your pet and Build. With a Herc, you can nearly do everything. With a walker/Magmite you might have a hard time, but its still possible, With DD pets its not. Sure, you can do every Mob-killing Quest. But doing bosses is a whole different story. I might go too much into detail here, sorry.

It's mentioned and addressed later in the guide, specifically at the pet-related sections, which I believe is more than enough and people who start reading the guide shouldn't be sticking to the introductory part anyway.

HA does nearly the same damage as AA. I can kill the same bosses with my AA Veno with Herc as fast as my HA Veno with tabby, or at least most. The damage reduction only counts for Human-Form skills, and if you keep your magic weapon up-to-date its not much lower.

Not true; HA cannot keep up with attribute points so they either have to give up on the weapon for the sake of armor or the other way around. Another option is to hunt for -requirement items but people might not be very lucky with that. At lvl 70, in order to wear lvl70 HA armor I had to wear a TT60 weapon simply because I didn't have enough points and I'd rather sacrifice the weapon than the armor and be squishy (let's not forget high refines are not an option at those levels).

When it comes to melee skills and DPS, HA may or may not out DD or be in par with AA builds. That depends on the weapon of both sides but it is generally accepted that HA can compete in DD with AA at least at low levels. Endgame is different; AAs can deal decent physical damage too (but HA gets better weapons for magic as well) but I won't go into detail.

You also have to keep in mind that this is a general guide.
A HA Venomancer might have a really good weapon, maybe a very good tome too and perhaps ornaments with good bonuses that allows them be good DDs even in human form with magics attacks. In some cases, even better than AA but that's specialised builds and just because it works for you, it doesn't mean it will work for the rest.

Heck, you might have a dominance tome and a +10 weapon and out DD that pure magic +7 weapon Venomancer but a newcomer or someone's alt who doesn't have a lot of money will not have that and will be greatly disappointed to see their damage be lower than what they expected.

My whole point is; this is a general guide to introduce people to Venomancers. Exceptions and specialised builds are a different story and when it comes to endgame people won't be following this guide anymore either way. They'll go out asking other Venomancers about the build they follow and how to improve it, specialise it, make the best out of it etc. etc.

Sorry if my tone may rude by the way. I'm not trying to.

The guide is a nice idea, but still needs a lot of work. Something that really bothered me is the fact that whenever melee/HA-Venos are mentioned in your guide, you suggest reading the HA guide. That makes this guide a FULL AA guide, because a complete Veno-guide is about both ways. If you dont have experience in that, you can read the HA guide yourself or look into various HA-threads, maybe ask specific questions about that build. But dont write "Look into the HA thread for information" if youre doing a full venomancer guide.

Going into an in-depth explanation of the HA build will kinda derail the guide though. This isn't meant just for builds and there are tons of build related guides (both here and on the wiki) as well as threads that can be searched on.

Vitenka also mentioned of not having particular experience with HA and LA so they are filling the guide in with information whenever HA/LA Venomancers give some input.


@ Vitenka - I just realised there's no mention of genies. You should probably quickly write a few things about genies (we get them at the very start anyway) and their general uses.

Also a good idea to mention useful genie skills for every range (such as a Second Wind at lower levels, Tree of Protection at higher levels).

Neferhotep - Lost City

Well, Vitenka does clarify that the only thing Venomancer can heal are our pets and ourselves so I don't think it's too bad. Perhaps, it should be changed to just healer though to avoid confusion with the Cleric class.

I know she did but as i said self-heals is something nearly every class has. IMO healer does mean more than just healing pets, but i actually had my problem with the word "cleric", so yeah i aggree its enough to change it to "healer"

Vitenka does mention it in various parts but (not sure if it's this thread or another) we've already discussed of splitting the section into human playstyle and fox form playstyle while putting a reminder that both should be utilised for the maximum potential and performance.

Wasnt about using fox skills as well, but to remember exactly this 3 skills as being important. What i mean is if you split the section many pure-mag venos will still look at the human part and just take a few looks into the fox part. Even if you remind them to use both skill trees. I didnt mean to put a whole fox-skill tree here, but to name those 3 skills as one of the venos priority.

Vitenka didn't talk about pulling monsters only; also mentions debuffing and whatnot which is included into the running around since it's technically not DDing like other classes (or healing the tank etc.). It can be worded better though, I admit.

I was just talking about that "pulling mobs from the cleric "part as being done by other classes better Shes right that venos are an active class, hardly staying at one point for the whole fight.

It's mentioned and addressed later in the guide, specifically at the pet-related sections, which I believe is more than enough and people who start reading the guide shouldn't be sticking to the introductory part anyway.

Ive read that later as well, thats why i suggested to put it with together with the quest part. Not to write it down again but to put those parts together.

About that HA part, i did say that you need to stat your point fitting to the gear you wanna wear. Never said you would have enough points for both gear at your lvl >> If you prefer defense over attack, you need to stat your points like it of course. Something must be lower, either armor or weapon, that Vitenka said in this guide as well.

A HA Venomancer might have a really good weapon, maybe a very good tome too and perhaps ornaments with good bonuses that allows them be good DDs even in human form with magics attacks. In some cases, even better than AA but that's specialised builds and just because it works for you, it doesn't mean it will work for the rest.

Thats exactly it. Its one part of being a Veno. She doesnt have to write a full HA guide here, of course. However, thats a guide that should fit the modern PWI. And in the modern PWI a HA Veno is just as common than being AA and should be introduced as so.
I do respect the fact that she does not have experience and so cannot write about best Heavy armors, stats etc. But with the help of other HAs there can be information about them as well. For example, "While Pure-mag venos prefer to fight in human form and use Fox form for debuffs or escaping only, Heavy armors prefer melee fights while switching to human form sometimes to keep the boss debuffed with Ironwood Scarab."

Also a good idea to mention useful genie skills for every range (such as a Second Wind at lower levels, Tree of Protection at higher levels).

Aggree, while Holy path and AD are pretty useful as well.

Desdi - Sanctuary

We had a discussion at the other thread that lead to a Venomancer guide re-make and a lot of people were saying we're focused too much on endgame that there aren't many decent (and up to date) guides that includes low level related things which is, I assume, one of there reasons you don't see a lot of endgame-related things mentioned here.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Ok; updated taking some of those comments into account, putting some aside as TODO for later.

The main reason endgame isn't addressed so heavily:
I'm not really a heavy endgame player, I'm a level 99 who levelled up a couple of times too many

And also, while writing it, I wrote so much on the early stuff I ran out of steam. But an endgame guide is a lot less needed - by the time you get there, you have some idea what you're doing. (Or, you know, you're a complete fool and won't read a guide anyway.)


Aaanywy. Genie section added; dunno how I forgot that. (Oh yes I did. Evil hateful gebnies, depriving us of our proper role as lurer supreme.) Has anyone ever used the veno-specific genie skills? Is doing soul-transfusion to other people ever actually useful?


My point about being a great class for recovering from messed up situations is our ability to do two things at once - pet one way, us the other.
I admit, I didn't actually say that anywhere in the guide though. Maybe I should?

Desdi - Sanctuary

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Has anyone ever used the veno-specific genie skills? Is doing soul-transfusion to other people ever actually useful?


My point about being a great class for recovering from messed up situations is our ability to do two things at once - pet one way, us the other.
I admit, I didn't actually say that anywhere in the guide though. Maybe I should?

Sounds good to be added.

And, the Veno-specific genie skills is way too situational to be considered good for anything. It's nice in theory but doesn't really work in practice.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

If I remember right (no longer have it on a genie), Hollow Fist gives the same debuff as Tangling Mire, but Tangling Mire does a better job, and the bleed from Hollow Fist isn't that significant.

Chaotic Spirit will only switch HP and MP on an enemy, so in order to use it to allow a friendly healing class to restore MP, you must be in a duel with them. In PVP it might be useful in conjunction with Malefic Crush's mana drain on uncharmed, low mana pool classes, but from what I've read it isn't really that useful.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Thanks; added those opinions on the genie skills - and added earthquake which I have and use and completely forgot while writing the guide
(I double-check on pwpedia for the oh-so-accurate in-game descriptions of the skills too.)

Any more comments from anyone at all? Please?

I'd also especially like to get suggested attack ratings for the level guidance. Or I'll just go with my gut until about half of you shout they're too low and half shout that they're too high.

Edit: Edited some typo's in the guide. Changed phrasing in a couple of places to bring the foxform to the front a bit more.