Managing Maddening Mystical Mayhem - A Mystic Guide

Like wizards and clerics, mystics can be considered a "full magic class" in that a point of vitality only gives 10 HP. This is the lowest tier, making vitality a stat of limited usefulness, but one which some may wish to invest points in. Strength is entirely useless beyond the amount required to wear the class of armor desired; the physical defense boost from strength is negligible. Dexterity is an entirely useless stat to any mystic not choosing to wear light Armor, unless he or she is using gear such as the TT99 boots which give dex. In these cases, a mystic might include enough to reach the nearest multiple of 20 for the 1% crit, but the crit is not worth the wasted points without such items being present.
This leads to the selection of armor types.


Arcane Robes are the most suitable armor for a mystic. The strength requirement for this armor is the same as that for magic weapons, which, excluding stat bonuses, amounts to the initial 5 str + 1 point per odd numbered level, maxing out at 54 for TT99 or NV gears, or 55 for R9. Arcane users have high mdef and rather low pdef, and so should always wear Protection ornaments. If Elemental ornaments are desired for -% channeling stats, the player should have both ornaments available and hotkeyed. Arcane gear should be sharded with a mix of physical defense (garnet) and hp (citrine) shards, the mix determined by the player's preference. Personally, I favor almost full hp sharding, as arcane armor refines very poorly for hp and because of Verdant Shell, which grants a mystic nearly double his or her base pdef.

For a mystic wearing robes, after the base strength for armor, the option of vitality can be viable. Personally, I prefer a full magic build, however, which entails putting all points after the str required for gear into mag. This gives high damage output and higher mp regeneration, easing slightly the mp consumption rate. There is also a negligible mdef boost from this; the main point, however, is higher damage. A mystic using pure magic build will need better shards and refines to maintain good hp, however. But with the current state of the game, both of these are much more readily available than in the past.

If one does choose vitality, the options are to put 1 vit every even level for a total of 500 extra HP by Lv 100, 1 vit every level for an extra 1000 HP by Lv 100, or ever 3 vit 1 str 6 mag every two levels for 1500 extra hp. However, it should be noticed that the damage output of the latter will be as bad as that of a light armor user, but without the boosted crit percentages. I strongly dislike both of the latter builds, and they will make solo pve situations much slower, but it may fit some playstyles. If uncertain about the utility of vitality points, one can always experiment and restat points as desired at higher levels.


Light Armor is the second armor option for mystics. Light armor has higher physical defense but lower magic defense than arcane armor, and requires 1 str 1 dex per level to wear. This means that the amount of magic is increased drastically and damage is lowered, in exchange for what is theoretically more defense and crit from the dexterity required for the armor. Light armor also refine more hp than arcane. However, due to the nature of mystic--being a rather damage-oriented class--and the availability of shards and ornaments to offset arcane pdef lackings, I find LA to be a highly undesirable choice.

If one should wish to pursue it, however, shards should be full hp, with one protection ornament and one elemental ornament to continue keeping the two defenses somewhat balanced. Ornaments such as the Cube Puzzle Badge and the Paradise Sachet/Guard of the Thundershock are particularly desirable because they increase both defenses. The stat build for LA mystic is 1 str 1 dex 3 mag per level, not counting whatever points max be added by gear. If attempting LA build, I suggest finding gear that provides as many stat points as possible without sacrificing quality to offset the lack of magic from the build. One other advantage, however, is the ability to wear helmets rather than hats, which can provide significant hp bonuses.


Heavy Armor mystics would potentially be possible, but the idea is rather pointless in my view, and even if one were to attempt it, it would be an advanced project beyond the scope of this document. For my purposes, HA will not be considered as a potential mystic armor type.


Since all mystic damage is based on magic attack, including physical spells such as Absorb Soul, the only rings worn should be magic rings, with the exception of might rings such as the rank badges which increase both physical and magical attack. The slight pdef refined from a might ring will never be worth the lost magic attack. If one desires pdef on a ring, then the lunar rings (Sign of Antiquity - Chaos) are a wise investment. On the whole, since mystics have low channeling times on all skills except absorb soul, I find crit mods to be more useful than channeling mods. However, when possible, both are preferable.


Aside from gear and stats, it is important to consider, in building your mystic, if you prefer support or a more active role in the squad. The two influence gear, stats, and which skills to level, as well as the playstyle. And, of course it is quite possible to take a middle-ground, but presenting it as a digital dichotomy gives one the idea of which extreme interests them more.


For a support mystic, your emphasis will be on, obviously, supporting the rest of the squad. This usually means being an auxiliary healer, or in a few limited circumstances the main healer, and so naturally healing skills should be maxed. The debuff plants and healing plants are both important to this type of mystic, since debuffing can be more useful than healing if the cleric is handling the latter without any trouble. However, make certain that your debuff pet of choice does not over-debuff a superior debuffer in squad. Sage venos provide a 40% pdef debuff, and a Lv 5 veno pet mdef debuff provides 36% mdef debuff, while befuddling creeper only provides 20% reduction and casts so frequently that it will overdebuff. Assassins also have a 50% attack speed debuff, but if there is no other defense debuffer, this should not stop you from using the creeper. But if a better defense debuffer is present, spidervine provides a useful alternative, since few things give a long-term attack debuff the way it does.

Comforting Mist is a passable aoe heal, but if the cleric is too busy to handle aoe heals, you would likely do better to use Healing Herb, as it heals constantly over time and allows you to cast other things, whilst only eating a single lump sum of mana to provide heals for over a minute. Vital herb's low duration means it isn't particularly useful in long boss fights, but it is still worth leveling for aoe pulls. As far as summons go, salvation will be the most important for support, allowing you to cast a shield on any particularly vulnerable party member for a situation such as Ancient Evil: Lethal vengeance where the boss has powerful random agro. Support might entail a bit of vit as well, since staying alive is more important as a healer, but heavier vit builds will damage your already sketchy healing abilities further. Support mystics might have an easier time finding squads, but don't try to heal things you can't, such as BH69, in which polearm's debuff will likely destroy your squad due to lack of purify. In this roll you will also likely lure quite a bit, assuming no veno is present.


If you are, like myself, however, you may find that the support role is a rather uninteresting one and that the class lends itself much better to other things. Taking a more active role as a DD may make it more difficult to find squads due to those short-sighted individuals who will only see you as a potential cleric replacement. Getting beyond this, however, I find that it is far more interesting. Gale Force and bramble tornado are important to max for this build, especially if you choose a pure magic build, as you may well find yourself pulling agro on mobs, and these skills allow you to protect yourself, especially from physical mobs. Falling petals is useful in this as well, either as a self-cast or on others, If you expect to take heavy damage, salvation allows you to eat quite a bit of it without your hp moving at all, or if you're not overly worried about that, Storm Mistress increases your damage output considerably, particularly on bosses, and as a caster she is less vulnerable to aoe damage.

If you wish to avoid agro, however, Thicket and Absorb Soul are your friends; the former only gives token agro because it is technically enacted by four plants, and the latter apparently behaves the same way, likely as a result of the implementation of its inability to cause a critical hit. Take care if aoeing with Thicket and then Storm Mistress, however, as she will take all the agro in this scenario, perhaps unexpectedly. If you are LA, I would suggest not bothering much with these two skills, since neither can crit, which voids your only advantage in doing damage. If you are LA though, I would suggest this path over the other given that heals also cannot crit.

Naturally, being a more active mystic doesn't mean you should ignore support entirely. If someone is dying and healing them won't give you agro, you should do so. Falling Petals is also a great preventative measure for any situation where damage is caused directly (ie not by dots), so throw it on the person luring the boss or the barb/BM before they agro a pull in frost or elsewhere. And good use of plants is still advised, perhaps less the healing and more the debuffing but still as described above.


On the whole, I would advise most mystics to take the latter approach, since as I have said, those trying for full support don't even really make clerics happy and are inferior to them in most situations. I understand that it fits the playstyle of some people better, which is why I presented it, but on the whole I find that they are not particularly useful and that filling only a support role wastes the potential of the class greatly. Even if you prefer support, be ready to react to situations that require another approach. Mystics are a versatile class, something of a jack of all trades without any specific focus, and should be respected as such, not treated as a way to ditch having a cleric along. Remember that even Lv 11 sage resurrect buff will not be as good as a proper res, and Lv 10 is only as good as a Lv 9 res. But even a Lv 9 res is better than losing all exp for a cleric, so that even if you do not care to waste the mp in keeping the whole squad res buffed (because you really don't need to be doing that at 2.6k mp a pop), ensure that the cleric's is always refreshed, or that your own is if you are trying to solo heal.

Due to their nature and the fact that there is much more to say about these than about individual skills, this section will provide a more in-depth discussion of each summon and plant, as well as my thoughts on their utility and importance. Note that the sage versions of all summons except cragglord reduce the summoning mp cost by 10%, while the demon versions give ten extra chi for summoning.

I also cannot provide any useful data on the exact stats of summons, as their stats are based on their summoner's stats at the time of summoning. So, refining your gear will increase your summon's stats as well, making them potentially stronger than venomancer pets for very high-tier mystics. However, as a general note, our summons are on the whole much less durable than veno pets, and make for poor tanks in comparison. Note also that all mystics share the same four summons, and they cannot be given custom names as venomancer pets can, nor learn new skills via skill scrolls.


Devil Chihyu
This is the initial summon. The devil is a fully physical attacker, with one physical skill and one stun. Stun range is slightly higher than the melee skill range, it still not particularly high. Many players erroneously treat this as a standard veno tank pet, which it is not. Hp and defense are significantly lower than those of even weaker veno pets, never mind Hercs, and the skills do not provide as much agro as Bash or flesh ream. On the whole, I personally haven't touched this pet since I got Storm Mistress. However, his somewhat higher physical damage makes him a decent choice for lower levels, when fielding the kind of mana reserves needed to keep Storm Mistress's mp up can be difficult.

As far as pvp goes, I don't find him hugely useful there, either. Although he provides access to the only mystic stun, it is roughly melee range and so poor for preventing an opponent from running (which I find to be the main problem with out lack of stuns). Anyone who has tried to stop a fleeing opponent with a nix using pounce will know this difficulty--the pet will attempt to stun from its max range, but by the time it's casting the target will have moved out of range. It also cannot keep up with anything higher than a 2.5 flying mount.

Using energy leech on the devil may be the most effective use of it in pvp; a 30% crit rate boost for Lv 11 is significant, and very useful against melees, as is the physical defense buff. However, use of energy leech for dd purposes would be somewhat wasteful, and I find the only time the devil should be used for such is if you cannot field enough mana to supply storm mistress and salvation wouldn't be of much use. Lv 11 devil gains an extra 20% attack buff, potentially making it more useful as a dd. Lv 11 books are available via Mysterious and Old Book Pages.


Storm Mistress
The second available summon, and my personal favorite. If kept fed with mp and her initial skill (Luna Blade) is kept on auto use (auto use of one pet skill on cooldown max be toggled by right clicking the skill; the skill currently marked for auto use, if any, will be indicated by a yellow border), she is an entirely ranged dd, who will never close to melee range. This is very useful both in pve (avoiding aoes, or to take the usually lower damage from ranged attacks if she pulls agro, which is far from unlikely on Lv [?] bosses with only a barb or other low-dd tank) and pvp, and a change from venomancer pets whose damage is primarily physical, barring the elemental bashes.

She is also unique of the permanent (ie, Devil, Mistress, and Salvation) in that she has a fairly powerful AoE skill, which, like her main skill, does metal damage. This makes up somewhat for the low number of aoes available as normal skills, and should be used in all aoe situations in which salvation is not necessary and you do not wish to spend two sparks on cragglord. In pve, her metal damage is also a great boon against wood monsters, who take less damage from mystic skills in general.

Energy leeching her can be a viable strategy versus arcane classes in pvp, granting a bonus to magic defense as well as 200% magic attack at level ten, which not only has the initial antistun (to avoid cleric sleep and the like, but lasts for longer than even demon spark. Given this, it can be a viable dd strategy, but only if you are willing to give up the Storm Mistress's own dd, or resummon her and waste part of the time you have the buff from this skill. Note that, as it has a unique icon, it stacks with both Rapid Growth and sparking for the magic attack bonus, and cleric buff for mdef bonus. Lv 11 Storm Mistress gains a 3 second seal skill, which can be greatly useful in pvp, especially since antistun skills such as Will of the Bodhisattva do not block seal effects. Lv 11 books are available via Mysterious and Old Book Pages.


Salvation
The third available summon. Unlike the other two, Salvation is effectively useless as a dd. Her strength lies in defensive buffs, Aegis Sphere and Martyrdom. These may be self cast (note that in order to do this, you must target your own character by clicking your portrait in the upper left hand corner) or cast on any buffable target, including other squad members or npcs. Aegis Sphere gives a shield that absorbs a set amount of damage per level, and can be cast relatively constantly. Note, however, that recasting it does not overbuff an existing instance of the shield.

Martyrdom acts something like a cleric's plume shell; once cast, it absorbs a % of the damage taken by the target out of the summon's mp. However, unlike plume shell, the buff does buff vanish if the summon runs out of mp, so this skill should be used with caution. Attempting to refill Salvation's mp to cast Aegis Sphere will result in it immediately being depleted by Matyrdom if the buffed target is taking heavy damage. Note that resummoning Salvation, however, will clear the martyrdom buff from the target and prevent this situation. This skill is primarily useful as a self-cast in pvp.

Energy leeching Salvation offers a strong Aegis Sphere buff and falling petals state, which can be useful in pvp. In pve, though, simply self-casting the Aegis Sphere buff would usually be more economical. Lv 11 Salvation gains Warp Shield, which gives a 600 damage shield to all party members nearby. Not the most useful thing in the world, but vaguely useful in gv or other aoe situations where multiple party members are expected to take damage. Lv 11 books are available via Advanced Mystical and Old Book Pages.

Cragglord
The final summon, and the other 2 spark ulti. Cragglord is unique in that he has a limited appearance time, and that his skills do not require mp to cast. Both his skills are fire elemental aoes, with the first being lower-range but also adding a fire dot. This makes Cragglord a fine choice in aoe situations. His normal physical attacks are also quite strong, making him a fine choice to use sparks on for dding a boss so long as you are willing to lose your current summon to do so. His aoes also do not seal, making him a useful answer to melee complaints about that.

PvPwise, Cragglord hits quite powerfully and can potentially out-damage Thicket, but he lacks the seal and immobilize, and can be pushed back or killed before his twenty seconds are up. A player could also potentially kite him. Due to these factors, use of Cragglord in pvp should be thought through carefully, as he could turn the tide of a battle or just as easily waste your chi and leave you bereft of Salvation's protection. Overall, use with caution, but potentially a very powerful weapon.

Energy leech cannot be used with Cragglord. Sage version allows him to stay up an extra 3 seconds, which is never a bad thing. Demon version has a 25% chance to cast using only one spark, which is risky to count on but can be a powerful boon when it procs. Lv 11 books are available via Pages of Fate.



That wraps up the summons, leaving plants. Plants are entirely separate from summons, and having one in use does not prevent the other from being used. Plants do not require mp, and cannot be controlled once placed. They are "always on," as it were, spamming their ability on any target within their range. Note that this includes npcs, and using a plant in a duel in safezone can make you go temporarily pink if there is an npc in range. Barring vital herb, only one plant may be summoned at a time. Summoning a plant replaces a previously summoned plant.

Except for healing herb and vital herb, which appear near the caster, plants are summoned near the targeted hostile target. Plants except vital herb last for one minute, and have some undisclosed % chance to avoid taking damage from attacks. Plants may also be exploded (sans the healing ones) using the lysing skill to cause a 10 meter aoe of their effect centered on the plant itself, which kills the plant regardless of the % to avoid damage. Plants and associated versions do not have Lv 11 versions available. With that said, on to the individual plants.


Punishing Sting
This plant does a small amount of physical damage to targets. Like pets, it does not take damage reduction on Lv [?] bosses and can potentially be used to increase your damage on bosses. However, its damage is relatively weak and I find it of little use except in the Celestial Tigers event, where debuffing the boss is not something I wish to do. Level it if you find it useful, but I would not suggest prioritizing it. Pvp use is nigh-nonexistent.

Befuddling Creeper
Perhaps the most useful plant in group pve, Befuddling Creeper does an aoe pdef, mdef, attack speed, and channeling debuff. If no venomancer is present and the barb is not spamming Devour, then this is the plant of choice for increasing the squad's overall damage output. Be aware that most bosses are immune to channeling debuffs however. The attack speed and channeling speed debuffs make it potentially useful if lysed in pvp. Level this one fairly quickly. For comparison, other class pdef debuff %s are:

Barb: 50% (Lv 10-11 devour), 30% (Lv10 Penetrate Armor); 35% (Lv 11 Penetrate Armor)

Venomancer: 30% (Lv 10 ironwood scarab); 40% (Sage Ironwood Scarab); 0% (Demon Ironwood Scarab, though 20% chance of 100%), 36% (Lv 5 Penetrate Armor pet skill)

Cleric: 36% (Lv 10 Dimensional Seal), 40% (Lv 11 Dimensional Seal)

Blademaster: 50% (Lv 10-11 Glacial Spike)


Spidervine
A decently useful plan, this one debuffs physical attack, magical attack, and movement speed. Use on bosses who pose a significant threat to the party, or in dangerous aoe situations. Very few other class skills debuff these attributes, so doing so can be tremendously useful if the wizard or other aoe dd is dying in gv. In normal pvp this is effectively useless, however, as attack debuffs do not have their full effect in world pvp. In TW, this plant is excellent however, as the debuffs do take full effect in the TW environment, and planting in in the middle of a lane can significantly slow the advance of a push. Lysing in this situation can also be highly advantageous.


Listless Blossom
This plant has a chance to perform AoE sleep. The sleep debuff acts like a stun in that the target can do nothing except use defensive genie skills while under it, except that taking damage removes the effect from the character. This has few pve applications since, in AoE situations, continuous aoes will immediately wake any mobs that are slept. However, the sleep effect when lysed at Lv 10 is 12 seconds, which is a significant amount of time in pvp, or in tw. Use carefully, however, and ensure when using that your summon does not attack and wake the target prematurely.


Healing Herb
This plant does an aoe heal on party members nearby. The healing is not significant, but can help to avoid charm tick and reduce the stress placed on the cleric, or be used in combination with falling petals for self-healing in solo pve situations. In high risk aoe situations like GV or frost, it may also be worthwhile to use this plant to supplement BB. The healing herb heals a small amount of hp every 2 seconds. Due the movement in pvp and the weakness of its heals, healing herb is of little use in pvp. Healing Herb cannot be lysed.

Vital Herb
This plant aoes heals for an undisclosed amount every second and increases party member hp regeneration. In exchange for its short duration (20 seconds), lack of chance to evade hits, and 1 spark cost to cast, it can coexist with any other plant. This allows it to be used for double healing in aoe situations, or used in combination with spidervine or any other plant desired. Due to its lack of damage evasion, however, make certain it does not take heal agro and die prematurely, wasting your spark. Vital herb also cannot by lysed.

Given that much of this document has focused on pve aspects and I am an avid pvper, I could not help but include this section. I find mystic a very fun class in pvp, though this will naturally be updated somewhat as I continue to gain experience in the area. And, of course what I have already mentioned about pvp is still applicable.

On the whole, I find Salvation to be the most useful summon in PvP. Her shield allows me to take a significant amount of extra damage, and can be used in combination with charms and pvp pots, as well as recast as soon as 15 seconds later. This allows me to survive many mistakes that would otherwise be fatal. It also allows me to fight sins better, since it can be self-cast while waiting for them to appear. In my experience, like defensive genie skills, it can also be cast while asleep or stunned. Falling Petals is a valuable preventative measure in almost any situation.

Bramble Tornado is useful against almost any class. For melees, the utility is obvious in pushing them back, allowing you to escape or damage them. If on the ground this combines well with the movement speed debuff from Nature's Vengeance, and allows time to use further control skills such as Gale Force or Thicket. Against arcanes, the use is more subtle, but if they are any significant distance away, then using it will often knock them beyond casting range, canceling any skill they are channeling at the time. It is also useful to get a breather to recover or allow charm cooldown to finish.

Note however, that as a mystic you are in the lowest range bracket for arcanes and so careless use could push a target to a range at which they can cast and you cannot. Mystics and venomancers max out at 27 meters for Lv 11 skills; clerics and psychics are 28.5 meters, while wizards are 30, demon archers are 32, and sage archers are 34. Bramble pushes back 12 meters (13 if demon), and has the same max range as your other skills, so push back ranged classes prudently.

In my personal experience, Thicket is a godly skill in pvp. Around 90% of the time, from what I've seen, the target it is cast on will be both immobilized and sealed, and I have never seen a target not using an antistun be unaffected by either one. This allows a significant amount of time to finish them off, and at 8x I was able to defeat 9x and 10x players this way. It is especially effective if used after bramble, which gives you time to move away or take other action if they survive, as well as putting you out of the range of genie skills such as Occult Ice and True Emptiness, which can be cast through a seal effect.

Speaking of genie skills, I find Fortify a very useful skill in dealing with melee targets, if kept at Lv 1, and that holy path is incredibly useful for ground pvp. Absolute Domain is also excellent for surviving surprise attacks, or Faith/Belief for enemies with a lot of control skills. At a later time I will create an entire section detailing my thoughts on genie skills.

Be wary of nixes, though, as arcane classes are vulnerable to their glitched bleed skill, and if you try to tank their normal hits in the air while healing yourself from bleed, you may find yourself taking significant damage. However, tanking a nix's normal hits on the ground is safer, as they take air to ground reduction in pvp. Note that this will not stop bleed from doing full damage, however, and whenever possible bleed should be resisted or purified off as soon as possible. if fighting a weaker venomancer, killing them may be easier than killing the nix, which has as much mdef as any arcane class or more at 10x and significant HP. If you do wish to kill the nix first, sleeping the veno via Listless Blossom's lyse effect is a good way to do so.

The latter strategy is also a good way to allow yourself the time to channel absorb soul on an arcane, if you are not demon and/or do not have the chi to demon spark for the channeling bonus. Rapid Growth is a less chi-intensive way to speed the channeling of absorb soul, and both the mag attack and channeling bonuses from both skills can be stacked. Note that absorb soul will bypass a cleric's plume shell, despite doing physical damage rather than magic. I have yet to test if it also bypassed Aegis Sphere, but I believe that it does.
This section will naturally be expanded at a later time, though I can't give away all my secrets.


I hope this document has proved helpful to you, whether you are a nonmystic, prospective mystic, or even an experienced one looking for other perspectives. I encourage feedback, critical or otherwise, but I will again pay flames no attention beyond reporting them to the forum moderation team. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope I have managed, in some small way, to improve your play experience.

I've added some colored headers and bolded them. Are there any paragraphs in specific that you feel should be broken up more? And thank you. ^^

Aveidha - Thank you very much. I'm flattered that you find it to be so, and I hope future additions can continue to live up to that.

Caydon - Thank you as well. I'm glad to be of help with that... As to the formatting, I can look into it. I know my text is rather dense, but being an avid reader myself, I'm not the best at breaking that up. Are there any specific places you would suggest adding such?

Voltaire: I wasn't sure how to respond to your comment before, since I was somewhat skeptical that it would ignore the immunity pot buffs. However, today I tested it with them and bramble hood and have come to the same conclusion as you. I also verified that it does not ignore pdef debuffs. I will update the guide with this taken into account--that you for pointing me to it.

Thank you, though I would maintain I am correct on most of those:
1. If you look at the numbers I listed for other classes, 20% pdef is about the weakest available as a Lv 10 skill

2. I have not extensively played psy, so I cannot comment from personal experience, but given their greater array of damage skills, and aoes especially, I find it unlikely we can dd quite as well as they.

3. True, but the importance of bb is not from the strength of its heals, but the half damage reduction. In many cases, such as doing Snakefist in warsong, this is required to prevent a boss's aoe from oneshotting the squad, and in situations like gv, to keep those party members who have multiple mobs on them from dying before the heal procs. BB is essential in these situations, and the plants cannot replace it.

4. Barring a high-refined mystic whose summons have a lot of HP, they have relatively low HP and defenses compared to common veno tank pets. Storm can do things at range in some cases, but even then they do not keep agro well due to a lack of agro skills.

Still, thank you for your feedback, and if you feel still that I am wrong, I'm open to further debate.

On a more general note, I recently acquired Demon Rapid Growth and found that the description of it on Ecatomb was incorrect. The effect is actually -10% more channeling according to the skill book. This has been updated, and I hope to add a list of what kind of pages are used to get each book soon, as well as a genie section and others.