Light Armor build

LA = 1 str 1 dex 3 mag

LA vs AA depends on your playstyle, level, and server. Most would say LA is better for lowish levels (especially if on a PvP server) and that you should restat to Arcane later on.

As for skills, go max out everything but frost when you have the spirit to afford it.

I jsut hitted lv 60 and im a Light Armor Veno who mainly fights in Fox Form.
I mainly shard for p.def and refine my armor a few levels for extra HP.

Yes I dont have much HP (2000) but in PvE so far that wasnt a problem at all due to Leech and Befuddeling Mist (hp recovery and acc down).
My p.def was pretty shabby in the low levels but recently I can easy survive 3 non magic mobs shooting at me even if one has att+.

Due too low HP you have to pay attention as LA fox form veno but i dont feel weak when my pet tanks 2 mobs while i kill and tank 3 others and all I used was a one potion (if melee mobs).
In LA and fox form magic and ranged mobs who team up and run can get quite annoying even with maxed out Stunning Blow (keeps them from running..a while). But those are always annoying on a melee class I believe.

I tried a human form veno too and there I found Arcane works better in PvE then LA on a human form veno.
LA shines in fox form with the right shards in my opinnion.
PvP wise i have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA sorry. ^^ I dont PvP and I dont like it at all. ;-)

I hope i was able to help. Please excuse my english.b:surrender

edit: Oh i forgot what skills you level heavily depends on if you are a human form veno or a fox form veno you simply wont have enough spirit points a long whie to play both efficiently. ;_;
For Fox i use: Lending Hand and Bramble (must have for supporting), Befuddeling Mist, Stunning Blow, Leech, Amp Damage, Melee Mastery, Purge and Fox Form.

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

-Light Armour will be better if you choose to fight in fox form a lot because it gives a better bonus in terms of physical defence, accuracy and nice critical hits. You will have more survivability but lower magic attack = lower pet heal. Keep in mind that at endgame it will become inferior to other builds. Arcane armour catches up with the physical defence due to shards/refined ornaments. Heavy Armour will give you insane physical defence in fox form.
Points should be: 1 Str, 1 Dex, 3 Mag every level. You can only afford putting up to 7 Vit or no Vit at all.

Actually, at end-game you will have enough points to make LA quite fun and far from 'inferior'. I kept my char AA/vit (60 base vit, max mag) all the way up to 100, then changed to a LA/AA build. I have enough mag to use tt99 weap/armors, enough str/dex for TT90 LA armor, and then 30 base vit.
The trick to a build like this is to maintain 2 sets of gears (it can be a bit expensive). I keep TT99/90 AA armor, TT90 LA armor, and basically 2 separate sets of ornaments for different situations.
Surprisingly the magic attack is only about 1K less between the 2 builds (according to PWcalculator). Believe me, it is still more than enough to get the job done and/or steal aggro from your herc.
The pet heal is a tiny bit lower, but it has not stopped me from doing anything I was able to do before. To test this I tried a boss that I remembered being a spam-heal-on-herc situation (Crag Warper) when I was full AA, and was still able to solo him as LA. I still solo TT instances without a single problem, so this minor drop in pet heal isn't stopping me from doing anything most AA venos can do.
As far as defense goes... no... you probably will not 'catch-up' to the pdef of LA while being AA unless you have all 4 sock TT99 and fill them all with Garnet Gems.

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

...But after calculations seems like Arcane give you more magic defence and heavy armour more physical defence. I mostly followed what most people say (always considering that their source is right/valid).
I generally support any build when it's done correctly/with effort.

So very true. One of the nicest things about a LA/AA build, which can use both sets of armors, is that you have the option of quick-changing into AA gears (which will increase that elem/mdef but lower pdef) or the LA gears which will lower that mdef, but raise the pdef. Saved me more than once b:chuckle

As for Heal pet I know the difference is mostly visible with LA/HA and pure mag AA. I just thought of mentioning it.

It's good that you did mention it. A lot of veno's either don't know, or forget, that their pet heal works mostly off of m-attk.

In fact I wrote as little as possible in those builds. I could have explained things in more detail. Thank you for taking to point out the heal pet thing instead b:victory I guess the way I wrote things over there wasn't very clear and might have confused the person asking for help too. Heh I'm not that great at explaining either.

Also, my other Venomancer is LA..and I love it b:laugh I wish to try HA too one day though.

I also considered HA when I changed builds at 100, but decided against it. Seems like there is a lot of compromise associated with that build (weaps, gear) for high def and high p-attk. I figured it would be nice but I could kiss running solo TT's goodbye due to a very low pet heal. b:chuckle Was just my opinion though.

tweakz wrote: »

LA is fail for veno. Gimped matk, sub par patk, sub par hardiness. Not as bad as LA wiz, but still bad.

I don't use my pet as my LA veno, I nuke with magic, then when they get close, I melee them in fox form. Your build is even more fail tyvm. Aggro stealer from herc on top of that, you can't get HP back really easy without a cleric or pot, oh, even vit venoes can kill things before things reach them and no need for OP pet like herc b:bye. Enough Mag to heal pet fine, doesn't even matter. Stop criticizing LA builds cause you either fail or not experienced any yourself.


I think LA venoes are the most OP build ingame. I think you suck at managing builds, I feel sorry for you

Yulk - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I don't use my pet as my LA veno, I nuke with magic, then when they get close, I melee them in fox form. Your build is even more fail tyvm. Aggro stealer from herc on top of that, you can't get HP back really easy without a cleric or pot, oh, even vit venoes can kill things before things reach them and no need for OP pet like herc b:bye. Enough Mag to heal pet fine, doesn't even matter. Stop criticizing LA builds cause you either fail or not experienced any yourself.


I think LA venoes are the most OP build ingame. I think you suck at managing builds, I feel sorry for you

I saw you actually posted something that made sense today. The above post didn't contain it, but kudos! b:victory

Ms_HopToIt - Sanctuary wrote: »

I have to disagree here some what. Yes in earlier lvls you will have to compromise something to make the HA build work, but in later lvl you can easily have more flexibilty with the build. I have no problem soloing most of the TTs with 291 magic, 229 str, 57 dex, and 32 vit. and a 4.6k-5.5k magic attack unbuffed. The only TTs out of my reach are 3-2 and 3-3, which no one really solos anyways. I was soloing every TT but 2-3 before i restatted from LA to HA at 90, and i had a noticeable less magic attack. Imo, its made it easier to solo TT for me, since i can survive a few more hits. I no longer have to worry about keeping hood up all the time just to pass through a bunch of mobs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the HA build, its just that when I decided to change builds I played and played on the PWcalculator, and tried a few HA builds. What turned me off the idea was the compromise of either semi-high mag for a higher lvl weap/mattk/pet heal or higher str for higher lvl armors/pattk.
Sounds like you have a good build that really splits the difference between a full-on HA-pattk-fox veno and AA veno.

Megabyte_ - Heavens Tear wrote: »

All that you listed would be based on a bad, or poorly played, build, imo.

#1 - I don't have a "gimped" m-attk. According to the online calculator I'm about 1K-800 short of my old AA/vit build, and in-game it's barely noticeable.
Besides that, having a crit rate of 10% as LA vs 4% as AA works out to be very close to the AA damage mathematically, but in reality probably works out to be more dmg due to the randomness of crits.

#2 - You might use some fox attacks as LA, but if you are holding just enough str for LA gears, you probably don't have enough to be tanking mobs. I personally use them for the effects (leech to gain a little hp back, befuddling mist to reduce accuracy, etc). LA build isn't about having amazing fox attacks, it's about gaining some pdef.

#3 - I don't rely on my pdef for hardiness, but over 7-8k in fox form as LA build VS 3-4K as AA does help (without super cash-shopper gears or burning up sockets with high-lvl garnet gems).

lol and lol
i dont CS and many venos i know dont do it either but dude, you can get 5k pdef in human form unbuffed, 15k-18k in fox form buffed. do that with your LA armor... and lol again

tweakz wrote: »

I can't believe people still argue for LA.

Can we make this quick?

-Show us your build so we can all point, laugh and make fun of how over priced it is!

you do realize you can make a STR, VIT or MAG LA veno right? Are you just stupid to realize there is stat modifier or what?

Infact MAG LA veno can dish much better damage than your fail veno. While having more P.DEF / HP than you.

umm venomancer is caster humanform AND foxform pure melee so dont talk **** about veno being purely a caster class TWEAK.

u playing pure mag only gives u one halv of the venomancer tree while me play purely in foxform melee and i dont see myself as a CASTER class cos i am A fox AND I love IT SO **** U WANA PLAY PURE PLEASE GO PLAY A WIZ and leave venomancer class in peace b:victory peace

Silvia_Xenth - Lost City wrote: »

umm venomancer is caster humanform AND foxform pure melee so dont talk **** about veno being purely a caster class TWEAK.

u playing pure mag only gives u one halv of the venomancer tree while me play purely in foxform melee and i dont see myself as a CASTER class cos i am A fox AND I love IT SO **** U WANA PLAY PURE PLEASE GO PLAY A WIZ and leave venomancer class in peace b:victory peace

Making veno pure fox form is like making HA wizard...

blizzypol wrote: »

Making veno pure fox form is like making HA wizard...

That's a very poor analogy. A Veno has melee skills while a wizzie doesn't. People should really stop trying to compare a Veno to a Wizzie... aside from both having magical ranged skills, the similarity stops there.

@Tweakz. You would argue which direction the sun rises, so I doubt anyone is going to post their builds for you to get your jollies off on the argument that follows.