Heavy/Robe Foxie Guide 2.0

Myerna - Raging Tide

Post 28:

Since you wrote a few things about each skill, it's probably a good idea to include the lvl79 skills despite not being actual Sage/Demon skills. I can't say the lvl79 skills have any significant differences among play styles of the two but you might as well mention them. It might be worth mentioning details such as Sages having more chi available can use the Myriads more often than Demons, Demons can use Summer Sprint's anti-stun for Feral Concentration without the need of a genie (avoiding the skill's stun) which is useful if one would want to save genie in a pull for..whatever reason. (Not that fortify costs a lot but still, genie stamina has limits! Thanks for the pointers! I'll add those mentions as soon as I can.

*There's Natural Synergy but requires a pet and the pet may not always be there, plus it costs a spark..plus a spark for Feral Concentration..yeah. It's not as bad on Sages though because of their chi but still... 2 sparks gone in a couple of seconds can still hurt the wrong moment.
..and while you're at it, I think you could write a small paragraph about the Morai skills. Simply mentioning that they don't particularly affect the play styles of Sage vs. Demon or HA vs. AA as they have the same functionality for every kind of Venomancer. I'd suspect a newcomer might wonder about those skills when you've already written about 80% of the Venomancer skill tree already
Hmm true, the spark cost on Synergy can be tough sometimes. Though if your pet is out, often that antistun can save you, making it worth it.
Good point! I'll add notes on the morai skills too, hehe.

Mauntille - Heavens Tear

Myerna - Raging Tide wrote: »

Posts 23, 25, and 27:

Wow Mauntille!

First of all, those are some awesome and extremely helpful builds/calculations!

Second, would you mind if I added them('them' being your calculations on gear for level, as well as the damage calculations on post #27) into the main guide, so they would be more accessible to people? I think those would be really helpful! All credit would go to you, of course. I just think they are awesome and deserve mention up front. ^_^

I'm glad it helps, and you're perfectly welcome to use them. If you decide to include them, you might want to note that a couple of the items aren't as easy to come across (trophy capes, bloodmoon wrists, etc), but there should be enough other gear available to make up for that.

Myerna - Raging Tide wrote: »

True enough! =P I did realize that we would be pretty low on the DPH stack in comparison, but I didn't want people to discount us entirely. I've faced plenty of people who don't do any research, but just assume that we would be doing so much less damage than everyone else that any bonuses would be null--like how people mock an HA wiz/psy/cleric or an AA barb. So I tried to make a point that we still did decent damage. Though you are quite right, and I did not want to presume that we would out-DD a DD-focused class that was played right. Thanks for balancing out my statements and doing good research, hehe.

Eh, I figure that people who play for the big numbers shouldn't being playing the Veno class to begin with. Our strengths lie more with our debuffs than our base damage. Plus pets weren't figured into my damage calcs, since there's too many variables there, so even the "raw" damage we deal is understated. The research I'd done mainly focused on damage dealt by a single target (since that's what would make the Veno pull aggro as opposed to the pet). Even if our max hit doesn't necessarily cap other classes, that doesn't mean we aren't a force to be reckoned with.

Raujada - Archosaur

Hey buddies! Can I ask for a small add-no to the guide? The theory about stats and everything is perfect, but it would be wonderful to see videos of heavy venos doing stuff. I think it's the better way to learn such a complicated gameplay. So what about a small section dedicated to videos? Come on tank foxies, share videos of your destruction! b:angry

Evryn - Morai

Not sure if anyone tried this before... But given the massive phys bonus venos get, has anyone ever tried to add a set of axes into the mix? Do skills, switch to axes, and hit -extremely- hard? Something along the lines of a Unicorns Tragedy doesn't require all that many extra statpoints, but would double the damage of your physical attack.

opkossy

No physical skills in human form and can't use skills if you glitch axes into fox form (which is illegal and the only way to get axes used in fox form).

That combined with the fact that melee mastery + magic sword (or pataka) is better for physical damage than standing up to DD with axes in human form and axes wind up being only something you'd use for lulz... or at lower levels when you haven't quite come into your damage potential yet.

Raujada - Archosaur

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

Not sure if anyone tried this before... But given the massive phys bonus venos get, has anyone ever tried to add a set of axes into the mix? Do skills, switch to axes, and hit -extremely- hard? Something along the lines of a Unicorns Tragedy doesn't require all that many extra statpoints, but would double the damage of your physical attack.

It sounds a loss of time to me. You could need to switch to human form very quickly, and you can't use your human skills with a non-magic weapon. Even using hotkeys it could be hard, and you can't even heal your pet.
And I didn't know nything about this glitch. O_O

Myerna - Raging Tide

Mauntille - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I'm glad it helps, and you're perfectly welcome to use them. If you decide to include them, you might want to note that a couple of the items aren't as easy to come across (trophy capes, bloodmoon wrists, etc), but there should be enough other gear available to make up for that.

Will do! Thanks for the note.

Myerna - Raging Tide

OPKossy wrote: »

No physical skills in human form and can't use skills if you glitch axes into fox form (which is illegal and the only way to get axes used in fox form).

That combined with the fact that melee mastery + magic sword (or pataka) is better for physical damage than standing up to DD with axes in human form and axes wind up being only something you'd use for lulz... or at lower levels when you haven't quite come into your damage potential yet.

^

This.
Granted, I (and probably several others) at one point wanted to see venos throwing around warsoul axes with melee mastery, but sadly it isn't all it is cracked up to be without venturing into the illegal. =/

But that hardly nullifies the attack power of magic weapons in foxform, so even if it looks slightly less cool, it certainly measures up well enough!

morenawolf

Is there any endgame heavy veno on Archosaur or Morai? I'm courious to see one in action

hogwarts123

I don't know if you played against the other classes but can you add what gears you used for them? and also can I use the arcane t3 g16 with this build in mind as well as t3 heavy?

kittyempressa

hogwarts123 wrote: »

I don't know if you played against the other classes but can you add what gears you used for them? and also can I use the arcane t3 g16 with this build in mind as well as t3 heavy?

Guess Kitty could throw in her take on HA-venos.

Against other classes Kitty's mainly trying to be a support veno and to get best total defence she usually uses T3-AA plate and rest T3-HA with AA-ornaments for best balance. If she needs to kill, Kitty swaps to HA-plate for attack levels, debuffs and Stunning Blow-APS's them to death. APS on magic sword ish dangerous.

A properly built HA-veno can use pretty much any gears available at 2nd RB100. Including purge pole(for teh lolz) if wearing stat-ornaments.

Kitty's usually carrying 3 gearsets on her HA-venos: HA-T3, AA-T3 and APS-gears. With APS-gears on and spamming Wind Shield Kitty's HA-venos have 2.5APS(with magic sword) and her T3+10-magic sword's DPS somewhat equals to that of r9rr+7-2.5APS sin's, thanks to melee mastery(which equals to 300 str. on melee weapon). Thus Kitty's HA-venos's phys. attack multiplier ish about same as 636 str/dex. melee class's.

Kitty's APS-set consists of: T2-legs, T2 or T3-helm, T3-plate, TT99-HA boots+wrists, TT99-LA belt+neck, Lunar -int cape and Pan Gu. Kitty chose HA-armors and LA-ornaments to avoid statting any extra to dex. for LA-wrists+boots as that would limit useable ornaments. Kitty rather keeps her HA-venos independent of any certain gear piece.

Kitty prefers magic sword over pataka because especially in PVE HA-veno's real strenght ish in APS and though pataka has slightly higher skill damage, it doesn't even compare to magic sword's DPS. If squad has another veno to do the debuffing, Kitty tends to have the aggro on bosses as when she doesn't need to debuff she can concentrate on keeping spark up.

APSing on HA-veno doesn't mean swinging the sword in human form. Nor it means clawing enemies down. APSing on HA-veno means biting and clawing your enemies in Fox form at extreme speed.
Kitty's seen a HA-veno who uses claws. Therefore she can't use any magic weapons except rebirth-pataka. When Kitty once saw her at Stronghold Assault mobs, she was clawing them down one by one. Or using Noxious gas with that RB-pataka dealing pathetic damage.
Then Kitty came and 1-shot them all with ParaNova. Kitty doesn't need to hide behind pets or lure those mobs out. As a HA-veno she can take on them all at once without issues. Actually, Kitty doesn't usually bother calling her pets out 'cause they'd die quickly 'cause they can't go through stuff a HA-veno can.

There's one extremely dangerous thingie about HA-venos. Or to be exact: demon HA-venos. Demon HA-veno with demon Ironwood Scarab can see when it procs. And if a demon HA-veno goes doing 1,67APS auto-attacking at that point...well, poor victim.

Another dangerous thingie about HA-venos ish their flexibility. Always suitable armors for situation, both kind of attacks to utilize enemies' weaknesses and to take advantage of either myriad's proccing. No other class can take advantage of both magic and physical as effectively as HA-veno can.

Some video examples of utilizing those:

-HA-veno's tankability and melee skill damage: Water pav on HA-veno
-HA-veno's APS-DPS: Earth pav on HA-veno
-HA-veno's suitable def.+attack for situation: Wood pav on HA-veno​​

spudfuzz

Thanks, so, so much for continuing this guide! I'm Reikara, from way back when. I came back to PWI because I missed playing my HA veno and I needed your updated version bad!

I find myself agreeing with Mauntille a lot- I was playing around with PWI calc and there's no reason a level 90 (or possibly 80) venomancer couldn't be wearing both level appropriate armour and weapon. You just need a high single stat tome (30 - 40+) and one of the Energetic lunar robes. I'd say it's much more optimal to get as much stats concentrated in a fewer pieces of gear to really free up other beneficial stats like +%HP, % Accuracy, or whatever your heart desires. I'm interested in hitting endgame name now to see if AA or HA takes the cake at the end of the day.