Go for cliche, or dare be different?

There's an "End Game Highlevel" setup for caster classes that gives them high defense in both categories and unlike relying on light armor, the effect doesn't include low magic power and/or low HP. Besides, for much of the higher levels you are much more fragile in a grinding context from a lack of mdef, not pdef. Also, whatever benefit having light armor has against physical opponents in the mid levels, you are guaranteed to be owned by a magic class.

I guess it depends what you want to do with your venomancer.
Im a believer in pushing your int as high as you can while leaving a bit for vitality to have enough HP to take a few hits without it triggering your heiro.
I think the high int is useful more for the bigger heals than the extra damage you do.
A lot of your dps is done by the pet anyway, and a lot of time is spent running around, that the extra dps from high int isnt going to make a lot of difference, but keeping your pet alive is going to make a huge difference for those times you want to solo an instance or run one without a tank, or your tank dies during a bossfight and your golem needs to tank till the tank gets res.
Or kill some boss for a guildy.
etc etc etc.

For the same reason I tend to favour tanking pets over damage pets, though for grinding in the sky I prefer dps pets for obvious reasons.

Also lower int nerfs the magic weapons you can wield which further nerfs you.

As you say, cloth armor venomancers are easy pickings in pvp, at least for classes that do physical damage. I guess thats the price you pay for being able to solo HH and not having to pay money to level up. You just have to pick your targets carefully. Go for squishy's.

I dont think light armor will work particularly well against physical attack characters. IMO you will probably have to go for heavy armor build.

My own personal preference is to go caster. I'm going to play on a pve server, so my opinion may be slightly biased, but Im more interested in PVE, particularly instances.
If I get into TW, then Ill just have to try and keep my distance and use my pet to be annoying. (Some have some very irritating spells )

Another thing which hasnt been mentioned so far, is that as a heavy armor build WF you will get zhen groups as lurer, wqheras there no use for cloth WF in zhen. Personally Id sooner be soloing +5 level mobs in the sky and making a bit of money than paying to level up though, but thats just me.

bron wrote: »

I'd like to be able to do both sides of the skill tree decently well, wabbit. Also I'd like to make fights against WR, WB, and EA last longer than two seconds of "Omg one shot Magic Armor WF" where physical classes wouldn't eat me alive.

So senovit, level 2 add 2 Con, 1 Int, 1 Str, 1 Agi, and that's it for Con? Then from there on 3 Int, 1 Str, 1 Agi per level? Would that really keep up with the weapons and armors though? How far behind wouuld I be on Light Armor every ten levels? Would there be a level at which I'd need to add 1 Int, 2 Agi, and 2 Str to keep the Str and Agi on track, or would I not have to do that and still keep armors on track? It's pretty hard to get the stats just right early on to be able to get them to add up right on time, so I was just making sure.

Yes, that's the build. You will never be behind on light armor, nor will you be behind on your weapon, as long as you keep the 3 int, 1 str 1 agi per level going. These are the minimum stats however, so do be sure to keep int at 3x your level and str/agi at your level + 4.

Battles will still only take about 5 seconds. It's kind of a tossup really. It's not as if light armor defenses will make a giant difference, you might take 5 hits instead of 3, for instance. It will however give you a strategy other than "run away and hope ripping bite is enough to win."

In duels, I prefer to fox form most classes other than axe blademaster and decently leveled barbarians, as axe users have a pretty annoying stun lock they can spam and barbarians just have too much hp / pdef for me to break through in fox form. Mages / Clerics I fox form and are generally pretty easy to kill. Start with a debuff while your pet runs in for a ripping bite, and you've pretty much won. If the mage seals just run in close so you can prepare to start physical attacking and seeing as how they're robes with no buffs, they'll die in a few hits, especially if your pet has already set a bite on them. Cleric's the same thing. Even if they sleep you, your pet can still ripping bite.

Archer's are probably the toughest to handle. I prefer fox forming, as in mage form most archers like to out range me, follow with a paralyze, and then normal attack me or lightning skill me to death. Even with light armor, that combo is usually enough to kill me. So in fox form, you get to choose between debuffing their dodge - depending on if they have dodge accessories or not, you may or may not have to do this, although debuffing their fire / movement speed buffs are nice too - or getting into their bow weaken distance. I usually get in range and start spamming life depriver / hexmist, and hope their lightning doesn't kill me. Of course, start the duel with bramble on in case they're stupid and wing attack you.

As for pk'ing... I honestly like to mage form it, even against robe classes, at least in the start. Starting with a -% physical defense and throwing in a ripping bite from a pet is enough to kill a lot of robes, especially since you know they'll take awhile to blasting point you. Follow with a megalith or fox form for debuffing whatever they might be doing, such as an archer's or cleric's barriers.

Hiero fights suck though. My damage is pretty low, and against a light armor fist warrior of an equal level I was unable to break through his hiero without a fury burst.

tl;dr - Less magic damage, slightly more physical survivability, not much change against magic classes, very useful fox form attacking, less HP until level 70-80+

Should be like this:
Level 2: 2 Con, 1 Str, 1 Agi, 1 Int. (Total 7 con, 6 str, 6 agi, 6 int)
Level 3 onwards: 1 str, 1 agi, 3 int (Total 7 con, 7 str, 7 agi, 9 int)
...
Level 100: Total 7 con, 104 str, 104 agi, 300 int.

Your int should always be 3x your level, and str/agi 4 points higher than your level. Con is your dumpstat if you can acquire any +stat items, at least until you get armor with good bonuses to hp.

Also, all pets can be taught ripping bite as long as you go buy the skill book from granny. I wouldn't bother unless you're afraid of getting ganked from the ground. Golem runs too slow to be a good pvp pet, although if you can land ripping bite it's high attack power will ****. As your tank, it also needs some other tanking skills like crustaceous, frighten, etc. and using up a slot for ripping bite might gimp you.

Drop the "magic def lower" skill. It won't help you tank and will only help you pull aggro away from your golem. That skill is only slightly more useful in PvP, but even on one of my pets that it came with I never use it.

I'm not sure what frighten is called in this version, but it's the skill that drops an enemy's physical attack by a certain percentage for 15 seconds, with a cooldown of 30 seconds.

Leveling up your pet skills probably won't make a difference. But teaching them new ones can and will. If your pet is having trouble and about to die, a quick crust or frighten will let you heal right back up, or allow you to get in an extra attack.

On my golem, I have Bashing level 5, bluster level 1, Crustaceous level 5 and Frighten level 5. Bluster, a skill that resets aggro to your pet, I have just because in a lot of dungeons, my party members tend not to hold their aggro and it's easier for me if the pet is the tank, at least for the mobs. Other tanking skills which might be useful are 2 rare scrolls that only come from events - raised physical defense or raised magic defense for an hour, or possibly the skill that lets you heal 10% with a cooldown of 10 seconds - although this will slow down your attacking since the pet is healing itself, your pet is a tank and should go for maximum survivability.

Bluster basically resets aggro onto you. So it's useful for stopping someone from being chased, but for werebeasts it's less useful, as if you've built up a lot of aggro through ripping bite, if you bluster you lose it all, and even though bluster will pull the boss's aggro towards you, it sets it to a lower level than what you had built up through ripping bite and your damage dealers will pull aggro soon after.

Healing skill isn't worth it for most situations, as even maxed it only heals 12%, which might come out to like 200-300 hp at max. Not terribly useful unless there's a boss who just barely kills your pet, but I just wanted to throw it out there as a possible tanking skill. Life drain and mana drain are event scrolls as well, but I can't say for sure if they'd be useful or not since I don't know how much they drain or what the cooldowns are.

Bluster is pretty situational yeah. The situation you posted would be a good time to pull bluster, to stop all the damage dealers from pulling aggro or, more likely, to give yourself time to escape while the boss is distracted for a few seconds by your pet. I usually use it to pull mobs onto my pet off of other classes though, as I consider me healing my pet to be more reliable than one priest healing 4-5 people. It's also useful if your party isn't the smartest one and chases mobs that kite into another group of mobs. A quick bluster and a click of the follow command will pull the mob back towards you.

I happen to like frighten a lot, and it's definitely useful for keeping my golem alive. Strictly speaking though, it's not entirely necessary as the Golem already has very high physical defense, but since it lasts 15 seconds and has a cooldown of 30, you can effectively spend half the battle taking less damage, letting you heal more. Crust is nice if you get multiple aggros onto your pet, as it reduces both types of damage. However, since it only lasts 15 seconds and has a cooldown of 60, it's not going to save you against bosses.

If I had to pick any of my skills to drop for ripping bite, it'd probably be bluster. Bashing level 5 can hold aggro well enough when it's just you and your pet, and if your party likes to pull aggro, it'll be their own fault if they die x:

bron wrote: »

Do you know anything about the skill that is supposed to make the pet a vampire?

I went looking for that skill in PW-MW, but I couldnt work out which one it was, so I tamed one of those wolves near mines that have it (to find out its name), and sadly its a skill that the granny doesnt sell.

Its almost worth going with one of those wolves, almost but not quite IMO.

senovit wrote: »

I happen to like frighten a lot

Does frighten make them run all over the place (and thus agro other mobs) or do they just stand there doing nothing?

I like frighten when a warrior is about to lions roar me.

Bash is much better for holding aggro. Aggro works on some kind of skill level * damage^x formula, so high instantaneous damage like bash will hold aggro better than ripping bite's high damage over time. Also, just so you know, with cooldowns taken into account, bashing level 5 will do more damage than ripping bite level 5 over a drawn out battle. You could just leave bash on auto and start the battle with ripping though, most mobs will be dead before the first ripping even ends.