Fox Veno Build?

Azzy_ - Sanctuary · November 2009

Okie. I have 2 separate groups of people....People who swear on Fox Builds some who say Fox Build's are completely ****. So, if it is possible I would like an okay Fox build, LA. And "Must have" skills so I can try one out myself. Oh, and pet recommendations if possible.

Thank you very much.

WaffleChan - Sanctuary · November 2009

theres never really such thing as a build that makes most of the fox tree, because it well sucks. melee moves limited to a magic weapon's low p.atk is sad.

it is possible to have a heavy armor venomancer that switches to arcane when needed, that can make some use of fox, due to its high str req, id recommend reading reikara's stickied guide to make the most of what youre looking for.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver · November 2009

Azzy_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Okie. I have 2 separate groups of people....People who swear on Fox Builds some who say Fox Build's are completely ****. So, if it is possible I would like an okay Fox build, LA. And "Must have" skills so I can try one out myself. Oh, and pet recommendations if possible. Thank you very much.

Fox light armour? Huh.
Well, my understanding of the fox skills is that 'befuddling mist' is actually really high damage until you get a very high strength. Stunning blow is, of course, awesome but costs a chunk of chi. Leech becomes your healing skill, the mana regen one isn't terrible.
It's still worth getting ironwood and the healing skills on the arcane side, you might want lucky blow too.
Amd for bosses and you should be good to go.

Pets wise, because you will have aggro quite often (and be able to survive having aggro) you can use pets with more damage and/or debuff rather than concentrating on pets which have to survive having aggro. Which means that you can go with the scorpions. Having said that, you may well want roar or pounce to get aggro back OFF you in an emergency - the eldergolth works is a good pet which happens to have roar, pounce doesn't come free from any non-rare though.

ewingoil · November 2009

You use both in good for debuffing in pvp and great in dungeons for it as well along with using a pet.

Flugal_Rere - Sanctuary · November 2009

OK ok. she wants to be fox and deal melee damage but have a pet. So just use the melee weapon of your choice (probly axes since they hit hardest) and do 3 str 2 dex every level. or if you want a lil vit do 5 str 4 dex 1 vit every 2 levels. kind of like a BM but with a pet. hope it helped

Solandri - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Azzy_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Okie. I have 2 separate groups of people....People who swear on Fox Builds some who say Fox Build's are completely ****. So, if it is possible I would like an okay Fox build, LA. And "Must have" skills so I can try one out myself. Oh, and pet recommendations if possible. Thank you very much.

I posted my calculated DPS for all the skills/spells. I'm a heavy veno so it won't translate exactly into a LA build. But I think the fact that my melee and spell DPS are nearly the same is a pretty good indicator that a LA build will have inferior melee damage compared to spell damage.

http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=5191732

For me, being able to melee is about flexibility, not necessarily about dealing awesome damage. When I help take people through FB59, I'll play as caster in the metal valley (stuff runs up walls so I have to keep my distance), switch to fox for the wood valley (don't have to cut through their high wood resist), back to caster for water (pet disappears if I have to fight in water), caster for the first half of the fire valley (exploding mobs = bad for melee), either for the second half, and mostly fox for the earth valley for the higher pdef (lots of archer-types there).

In FB79 and FB89, I'm mostly in fox form as protection against archers. I can take two hits from an archer type while pulling, and gain nearly all of it back with a single Leech. And most of the time I can stand toe-to-toe in melee range with those dreaded acephelid rangers. But if we're fighting a patch of casting or melee mobs, I'll switch back to casting gear when I think it will help.

WaffleChan - Sanctuary wrote: »

theres never really such thing as a build that makes most of the fox tree, because it well sucks. melee moves limited to a magic weapon's low p.atk is sad.

I've tried wielding both a TT70 magic sword in fox form and TT70 axes in caster form. DPS is higher with the magic sword due to the 120% melee mastery bonus. If you sacrifice your magic stat and put those points into str, then the TT70 axes end up doing better. But if you're going to do that you might as well just roll a BM in my opinion. Magic weapons look like they have low p.atk, but they hit really fast (1.25x per sec, vs 0.87x per sec for axes). The closest analogue is probably a fist BM (magic sword attack speed is in between regular swords and fish weapons). Add in the melee mastery bonus and veno melee damage is pretty respectable (probably on-par with BMs if you include pet damage).

The real problem with veno melee damage is that the skills suck. BM and barb skills are designed to augment damage from a str-heavy build. Veno skills are designed to augment damage from a str-light build, so they don't do much additional damage. Consequently, if you put a lot of points into str like a heavy build does, your regular attacks end up doing more DPS than your skills. So it can get a bit boring doing nothing but hitting Amp every 30 sec and heal every 10 sec or so.

Overall, I'd say that a pure arcane build is better in terms of raw DPS. But the difference is not that great - I'd estimate I do about 80%-85% the DPS of a pure arcane, probably around 90% if you include pet damage. And there are several areas of the game where a pure arcane veno can die in 1-2 hits if they aren't careful, or has a hard time due to resists. Also, many of the situations soloing bosses where I thought I'd be limited due to my weaker pet heal, I've actually found I'm more limited by my herc's hp or the speed of my heals (i.e. I can do better than if a pure arcane veno with less channeling heals my pet).

If you think you'll get bored playing a straight caster all the time, and want some flexibility to better handle different situations, I'd say fox form is certainly viable.

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear · November 2009

melee mastery is the key for DPS. no matter how low your base damage or skill damage is, the mastery works like a natural multiplier for every hit.

ok it's possible to deal decent damage while fox/melee. the problem is that you'll have to spend some points with strength to make it worth. for doing so you'll be spending less points with other stats so there are drawbacks. other than that get might rings with good phys attack adds and you'll be fine.

Shifong - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Fox form in light armor build can work. In PvP you can use debuffs, like purge and still do reasonable enough damage to arcane chars to take them down in fox form. Used to be light armor, and when i fought a cleric who was atleast 5 levels higher then me i couldnt take here down in human form. But once i changed into fox, purged her, and went melee on her, she did go down. A heavy veno can do this even better of course.

In PvE it's only good for debuffing mobs/bosses, and you'll stay human form anyway for doing good damage.

As for skills. Even though their damage sucks, i still use befuddling mist a lot when grinding. Decreases the need for healing by quite a lot.
Also leech is really nice to fill up my HP again.

Azura - Lost City · November 2009

Flugal_Rere - Sanctuary wrote: »

OK ok. she wants to be fox and deal melee damage but have a pet. So just use the melee weapon of your choice (probly axes since they hit hardest) and do 3 str 2 dex every level. or if you want a lil vit do 5 str 4 dex 1 vit every 2 levels. kind of like a BM but with a pet. hope it helped

Don't listen to him. If you do what he says this will happen:

All your skills need a magic weapon (or unarmed, but damage sucks unarmed), so if you wear something like an axe you would be on human form all time only being able to use auto-attack. You wouldn't be even able to go in fox form ever. If you try to go in fox form with a proper weapon and then change to an axe, you would't be able to do that because your equipment is locked.

In my opinion go with the magic tree because ranged skills are better than melee. It sucks to run to a mob to hit it, is a waste of time. In pvp you don't know how many times I have failed trying to stun a kiting opponent in fox form. I can only stun them if they don't see me coming. However with lucky scarab I can stop other players, sometimes even if they try to run.

Of course not all the fox form skill are bad. The ones I only use are the curse skills: Debuff, Amplify Damage, Soul Degeneration. Every magic user should have those. Sometimes I use Leech or Stunning Blow, all the other skill melees I barely use them.

If you however don't want to take my advice is fine, just please don't do what the poster I quoted said. He is a noob.

Azzy_ - Sanctuary · November 2009

Well, as I said before I have people on both sides of the field....But, thank you for the help all...However I need a stat build if possible....No one but the Blademaster build gave me one...Which well, as Azura said....Not smart because I wouldn't have use of fox form.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver · November 2009

Azzy_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Well, as I said before I have people on both sides of the field....But, thank you for the help all...However I need a stat build if possible....No one but the Blademaster build gave me one...Which well, as Azura said....Not smart because I wouldn't have use of fox form.

If you want light armour and to use the magic weapon, you're locked into a 3Magic, 1Str, 1Dex build. (Hand waving for using +stat gear etc.)

No flexibility at all. And 90ish points of base-magic per level less than a pure arcane, which adds up to a fair whack. Which is why the light armour surprised me, Rei's Heavy+Arcane is in many ways better - though you lose the small crit bonus your dex will give you.

Rebutia - Harshlands · November 2009

If you are not an arcane veno, you should probably eventually be looking for +stat gear.

If you are a fox-form veno, you should probably be heavy or light. Light is a lot cheaper -- heavy requires lots of your stat points to come from your gear (or lots of gear with -requirements). Also, light has better accuracy than heavy, and 1 dex, 1 str, 3 magic per level is easy.

Fox form venos get a lot of their damage from their ornaments and from their garnets and (when they can afford them) from their refines. Our melee mastery is rather nice.

I am too low level to make intelligent comments on skills. But I have been doing reasonably well with maxing my pet and fox form skills, except for leaving tame pet level 1. My heals are pitiful when compared with an arcane veno, but in PvE my debuffs mean I do not need so many heals.

And... soon... I will become a target and I will be failing miserably in PvP. But I am describing every 3x on a PvP server...

Reikara - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Light armoured fox is certainly possible, but in my opinion it works better for casters who simply want extra pdef while retaining magic defense.

Light armour was originally meant for archers, who use dexterity to their best advantage. Never missing and unlike us melees, foxes, barbs and BMs, they use dexterity instead of strength to hit hard. (You'll also encounter at higher levels that
light armour bonuses from twilight temple and moulds and such won't really favour
your particular build.)

A light fox will have:
*High criticals
*Medium physical defense
*Medium magic defense
*High evasion
*High accuracy
*Medium physical attack
*High HP

Now, you actually have two other options from this and I beleive the
second one is most likley what you're looking for. There's my build, the hybrid
which takes advantage of the two armours with the highest defenses and both
skills trees of human and fox form, and then there's the unknown heavy fox.

The heavy fox is simply that; a heavy armoured fox form user who weilds magic
weapons for physical attack. The down side is that this build is quite expensive,
(but not as expensive as the heavy/arcane hybrid.) however I think you'll find
it more suitable to a melee type.

A heavy fox will have:
Extremly high physical defense
High HP
High physical attack
High accuracy
Medium evasion
Medium criticals
Low magic defense
You can always use magic/elemental ornaments to give your magic defense a boost.

You'd be using a magic weapon which will trail about 10-20 levels lower than you. I don't recommend keeping it below 10 levels of yourself until about level 70 if you plan to level up with this. The thing is though, you need to refine your weapon high enough to keep your damage up to par (which is why it's best to leave a build like this till higher levels when you can begin to use better legendary gears that will last you quite a while.)

I'm a little shaky on giving any sort of guide to build this but i'm sure it's nothing too difficult. As far as I know, I do beleive you'd need to find yourself ornaments that add t your stat bases such as +str, +dex +mag ect to help you out a bit. You can leave your vit at 5 until much later on when you can find the spare stats to add on to it, but that wouldn't happen till around 80-90 I think.

I'll update this when I can find some sort of formula lol.

Reikara - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Here; I found what I wrote a while ago to someone else who had a similar question about a fox build:

Reikara - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Well, fox is completly melee, if you don't have dex you won't hit at all. Dexterity should be just important to you as your strength, and you'll also need it to wear heavy armour (which I highly suggest with this build as you can gain a massive amount of physical defense making you very difficult to kill. You could also go for light armour for some magical resistance but this would nerf your physical attack.)

I'm glad someone finally opted for a fox only build. May I suggest putting in just enough dexterity points to be able to wear heavy armour, this way you'd still have mild accuracy and evasion. Criticals aren't important to you but you will need accuracy to actually hit things. Although you use a magical weapon, your damage is strictly melee in fox form.

You'll end up needing to use all your stats, you'll find ornaments that give bonuses;
like helmets, capes, necklaces, rings ect that add +str +mag +dex +vit useful. It may be a little impossible at times to wear gear for your current level without those.

I suggest leaving magic only at minimum to equip your magic sword since you won't be hitting magical damage. Leave your dexterity at minimum for your armour requirement. Pump the rest into strength and share leftovers into vitality for HP.
Sakyamuni's light (level 70 legendary and level 89 requiem blade are excellent magic weapons for fox form to invest in)

You can even keep your magic weapon a couple levels behind you and have it refined so the stat requirements won't be so harsh. I don't recommend doing that till level 70+ though.

A fantastic fox build I once saw on the MY server forums was a level 90+ venomancer using the sakyamuni's light level 70 legendary sword +10 with 6-7k physical attack (no spark.) and 20k physical defense.

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Reikara - Heavens Tear wrote: »

A fantastic fox build I once saw on the MY server forums was a level 90+ venomancer using the sakyamuni's light level 70 legendary sword +10 with 6-7k physical attack (no spark.) and 20k physical defense.

sage strength of titans + max attack auras I guess.

Azura - Lost City · November 2009

How come Reika didn't say anything about Robe vitality venos. Robe vitality venos are the best build end game (level 99 or more) in my opinion. Although this build is for players that will use mostly magic attacks. Most venos use magic anyways, including me.

-They have the most hp of all the werefox builds.
-Their physical attack, and accuracy will suck, but who cares, you will be using magic attacks.
-They of course have the best magic defense of all the 3 builds. Believe me, you will need a lot of magic defense end game. End game mages hit the hardest.
-The cons part is that they will usually have such bad physical defense that its big hp won't matter much. However, if you find use certain gear with adds like +physical def, and you put only garnet shards in your gear, your veno's defense will be much better.

Here I made a build in a calculator about a vitality veno. The veno is using "easily" obtainable gear, "low" refinements, "cheap" garnet stones and everything is 3 socket:
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=0eb476de20641d5a

I only didn't put the rings cause there so many kind or rings. Some ppl want rings with +magic attack, others want critical, others -channeling etc.
The boots are from the past with with "lucky" adds. But seriosly I have seen a lot of people with arcane past boots with +94physical def x 3.

Once again, the physical def is low, but we have fox form. We could be all the time in fox form until we are close enough to attack or get in fox form to kite. By the way, in my opinion arcane robes work better with sage venos

One last thing, If you can ever get the CV rings (Sign of Antiquety Chaos), you will see that robe vitality venos are even better than heavy or light (add the rings on the link above).

WaffleChan - Sanctuary · November 2009

http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=ea402e3d9a47fdec
thought id tweak your build a tiny bit, not so much a fan of souless, figure if youre going for 99 golds, may as well use the 99 glaive. chose a few other gear also, but it i just emphasizes the point... vit arcane > all.

Shifong - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

How come Reika didn't say anything about Robe vitality venos. Robe vitality venos are the best build end game (level 99 or more) in my opinion.

Because that's not what the topic starter asked about. And your opinion can be different then other people's preferences and opinions in gameplay.

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear · November 2009

Azura, the topic is about FOX. No-one is complaining about your build. It just doesn't match the purpose.

kenlee · November 2009

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

How come Reika didn't say anything about Robe vitality venos. Robe vitality venos are the best build end game (level 99 or more) in my opinion. Although this build is for players that will use mostly magic attacks. Most venos use magic anyways, including me.
[...]

well arcane vit veno is well rounded and better than light in end game
but heavy/arcane mix is also a good choise imo. heavy fox form can deal the same damage as arcane human, now depends on playstyle and also sage/demon. i wear two heavy parts and 2 arcane but if i want to fight a mage in world pvp i can swap 2 heavy with 2 robe just clicking on hotkey bar. also my robe set will have hp shards not garnets like pure arcane witch is also good imo.

tweakz · November 2009

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

How come Reika didn't say anything about Robe vitality venos. Robe vitality venos are the best build end game (level 99 or more) in my opinion. Although this build is for players that will use mostly magic attacks. Most venos use magic anyways, including me.

-They have the most hp of all the werefox builds.
-Their physical attack, and accuracy will suck, but who cares, you will be using magic attacks.
-They of course have the best magic defense of all the 3 builds. Believe me, you will need a lot of magic defense end game. End game mages hit the hardest.
-The cons part is that they will usually have such bad physical defense that its big hp won't matter much. However, if you find use certain gear with adds like +physical def, and you put only garnet shards in your gear, your veno's defense will be much better.

Here I made a build in a calculator about a vitality veno. The veno is using "easily" obtainable gear, "low" refinements, "cheap" garnet stones and everything is 3 socket:
http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=0eb476de20641d5a

I only didn't put the rings cause there so many kind or rings. Some ppl want rings with +magic attack, others want critical, others -channeling etc.
The boots are from the past with with "lucky" adds. But seriosly I have seen a lot of people with arcane past boots with +94physical def x 3.

Once again, the physical def is low, but we have fox form. We could be all the time in fox form until we are close enough to attack or get in fox form to kite. By the way, in my opinion arcane robes work better with sage venos

One last thing, If you can ever get the CV rings (Sign of Antiquety Chaos), you will see that robe vitality venos are even better than heavy or light (add the rings on the link above).

"Most HP" equates to higher cost of MP, Lower MP, Lower MP recov, Lower mAtk, poorer pet heals, lower yield on Leech, pots, Soul Transfuse, etc. All this for a poor HP yield on vit compared to other classes.
Physical Atk, and Accuracy do matter as Fox Form is very useful for Phys AoE, PvP, mag resist mobs, etc.
Pure Mag has higher mDef!

I'm only Lv.94 and have similar defenses, much faster speed with cheaper lower level equips, higher mAtk (yours is 4167-5466, mine is 5533-6481 *and mine is w/o saphire and only +2 refine on weap and I'm 6 levels away!). I can also bring my HP up to over 4k with defense equips which seems like overkill for FF, Seat of Torment, solo BH, etc which is why my equips are refined from 2-5 rather than all 5. I do use Perfect Garnets mostly but they can be bought with what I save elsewhere in equips.

Fox Veno Build?

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