The Guide to Illusionary Crystal Usage-Culti and Skill Leveling

theg00dlord · January 2015

Seeker PWI Culti Leveling and Armor/Weaps Eclipse Version
This Guide will Include:
Level + Stat Distribution
Current Armor
Faction
Armor
Weapons (including the tt99 I want)
Cultivation (Soloing vs Squad) from none to Transcendent in 4 days due to low play time
Level-100 at 68% non-rb

Stat Distribution- 5str even levels, 3 dex 2 vit odd levels- did not cap vit

Without Armor and Buffs:
Vit=100
Str=248
Dex=162
Mag=5

With Armor(stats slightly off, did it by memory lol):

http://pwcalc.com/ba68c98d46720798

Current Armor- mostly master’s gear from the Book of Time Mailbox quests, however I have made some tt gear for him on my main, VenahManzier
Weapon: (currently Masters Longsword) but would like the tt99 Darkslayer, Obliteration dual blades because:
A. they do not need a soulsphere from a lower level tt weapon and
B. they have a med-high damage ratio
c. it has a +255 vit bonus(I think, not sure exactly) and I feel like that would be nice to have if I solo instances and pvp a lot, which I plan on doing.

Cultivation- I went from the lvl 9 culti to the lvl 69 culti in a day, and I leveled a lot of the single shot and speed skills to max asap- for culti you usually have to take out bosses and minibosses, so these ranged, single shot skills really help. Also, I get up to 19k crits even with the Master’s Longsword, which is quite nice, and when you get the spark burst +…..well. your single shot skills do around 10-12k dmg per hit which takes down a miniboss’s or a boss’s hp rather quickly.

Skills to level for cultivation quests:
Skill Leveling Guide- up to Transcendent Skills

Note: All skills listed require a Blade or Sword equipped. These skills cannot be used while unarmed.

Rock Splitting Cleave
A sword slash capable of splitting the hardest of rocks. Deals large amounts of damage.
-Max quickly; good skill spam

Staggering Strike
A ranged sword strike that deals physical damage. Use on a target with "Eye of Northern Sky" status to deal additional damage, immobilize target, and reduce the target's defense
-Max quickly; good skill spam

Unfetter
Increases movement speed.
-Max when you can, good alternative to Blade Affinity

Northern Sky Waltz
While active, each successful strike has a chance to inflice "Eye of Northern Sky" status on the target. If Staggering Strike is used on a target with the Eye of Northern Sky status, the target receives extra damage, becomes immobilized, and suffers reduced defense.
-Leave at Lvl 1

Bladed Fervor
Focuses the spiritual energies of this world to enhance your fighting ability.
-Do not get this skill until better skills are maxed; long channel doesn’t make any noticeable difference.

Battousai
A ranged blade strike that is so fast, it sends a wave of cutting winds towards the target. Deals metal damage to the target.
-Max quickly; skill spam

Blade Affinity
Binds your soul to the spirit of your blade. Temporarily reduces channeling time.
-Good to Max as the –channeling allows you to use your higher damage skills

Heart Shatter
Lowers metal and physical resistance of the target to skills.
-Leave lvl 1

Parchedblade Dance
While active, each successful strike has a chance to inflict "Bloodlet" status on the target. If Stalagstrike is used on a target with Bloodlet status, the target receives extra damage and becomes stunned.
-Leave Lvl 1

Ion Spike
A sword strike that calls upon the powers of lightning. Deals large amounts of metal damage to enemies around the target. Has a chance to reduce the target's metal resistance.
-Leave Lvl 1, spark burst is better for skill spamming vs bosses

Stalagstrike
A sword strike that calls upon the powers of lightning. Deals large amounts of metal damage to enemies around the target. Has a chance to reduce the target's metal resistance. Can be used in tandem with Parchedblade Dance to deal additional damage and stun enemies.
-AoE, level as you want

Adrenal Numbness
An adrenaline-induced trance that increases your defense.
-HUGE def boost, max ASAP

Blade and Sword Mastery
Increases all blade and sword weapon damage.
-Extra Damage? Max Asap

Saber Rattle
Increases the attack and defense of yourself and any squad members within 15 meters
-debuff, lvl 1 ok for now

Mind Shatter
Lowers wood and water resistances and increases the critical strike rate on wood and water skills on the target.
-debuff, lvl 1 ok for now

Heart Seeker
Deals largest amounts of metal damage and has a chance to immobilize the target.
-Leave lvl 1 for now

Darkcloud Bolt
Uses your sword like a lightning rod and calls down a powerful electric bolt. Deals large amounts of area of effect damage.
-AoE, level as you see fit

Voidstep
Envelopes you in the spiritual energies that allow you to traverse the void for short distances. Instantly warps you to your target, stunning them.
-Good for pvp as well as mobs, but not very helpful in boss fights as apparently it does not stun bosses

Soulsever Minuet
While active, each successful strike has a chance to inflict "Spirit Bore" status on the target. If Gemini Slash is used on the target with Spirit Bore status, the target suffers extra metal damage and reduced attack and defense.
-For now leave at lvl 1

Gemini Slash
A ranged sword strike that is so fast, it makes it seem as if there are multiple attackers. Can be used in tandem with Soulsever Minuet to deal extra damage and reduce attack and defense.
-There is a stance that adds extra damage to this skill so there is no reason to level further than lvl1

Soul Shatter
Lowers fire and earth resistance and increases the critical strike rate and damage for fire and earth skills.
-not needed for culti, nice debuff to have though

Edged Blur
A continuous strike made possible by a burst of speed. Deals large amounts of metal damage to targets around you.
-very useful, you do not need a target to use this. Definitely get and level as a medium priority

Yataghan Vortex
Deals a large amount of physical damage every 3 seconds to targets around you. Spell channels until it is cancelled or you run out of mana.
-very very useful skill, not necessary to max but helps a lot, everywhere from boss fights to pvp

Quid Pro Quo
Allows your soul to pass through the void to transfer debuffs onto your target.
-very very useful skill, not necessary to max but helps a lot, everywhere from boss fights to pvp, I think this can transfer stuns as well but not sure

Nudimmud - Lost City · January 2015

Your recommendations for a lot of the skills made me cringe.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver · January 2015

You can't cast any skills while stunned, slept, paralyzed or sealed, so you can't use Quid Pro Quo to transfer any of those statuses.

Keisari - Raging Tide · January 2015

Kitty thought she could write her own lil seeker guide...

About cultivation:

As skill-dependant class sage seeker ish better choice in most cases. Sage spark makes it easier to tank, lvl 59 skills have better range and sage Heartshatter has 15% higher phys./metal skill dmg boost. Sage weapon mastery also give 25% weapon damage more(equals to wizzie's Frostblade-buff). Sage Soulshatter gives 30% better damage boost for wizzies and psys. Sage ish usually vit. or str. seeker's choice of culti.

For exotic builds(dex. seeker, APS-seeker) demon ish a viable choice. Attack speed buff from demon spark gives APS-seeker some extra attack speed and demon Heartshatter+demon B/S Mastery gives better crit. rate. Many demon skills' effects last longer and demon's stances have stronger debuffs. Casters love 15% extra damage from demon Mindshatter.

About stat build:

In general, seekers have 2 common stat builds: vit.-build(5str/3dex/2vit) and str.-build(7dex/3dex).

Vit. build has more HP and some extra m. res.(not much though) and it's a good choice if you feel like not tanky enough with HP from gears. It has about 66% weapon damage lower base damage. In other words: the damage difference between vit. seeker and str. seeker ish same as between str. seeker with lvl 10 Blade/Sword Mastery and str. seeker without Blade/Sword Mastery.
At full T3 gears give so much HP that benefit of vit. build ish negligible, according to Kitty's experience.

Str. build has about 20% higher base damage, but requires decently refined/sharded gears to be sturdy enough as higher damage usually makes seeker have aggro easier in AoE-situations. But if you can handle the aggro, str. build ish well worth it.

There's also one more build, which ish best-suited for demon crit% seekers. It's dex. build(5str/5dex). It has higher accuracy, evasion and 5% higher crit. rate than other builds. As demon with demon Heartshatter and suitable ornaments a dex. seeker can have 40%+ crit rate easily.

About gears:

If you have recently Illusion Stone'd to 100, you should be able to get Master's Longswords. Use them to work your way up the cultivation chain and get gears from mailbox with Token of Time as you proceed in culti.

When you reach Aware of Vacuity-cultivation, you can do Morai-chain to get Morai-gears that are good for PVE. You can make Morai-chain easier by doing "Time and Illusion" as soon as it becomes available. It gives you Morai-sword. You'll need that quest anyway to do BH EUs.

With Morai-gears you'll be at least semi-useful in BH-squads if you have debuffs leveled(Shatters, Northern Sky Waltz, Soulsever Minuet). Big numbers do indeed look nice, but your damage won't be that nice at this point yet due to inferior gears(average players are usually full T3 or better these days).

Note: As heavy armor gives good phys. defence but lacks in elem. res., it's better to use elemental belt and necklace.

If you're planning to go r9 some day, Nirvana T3-gears are a good sidestep to help farming it. There's 2 ways for nirvana-gears: TT90/99-gold and Lunar-Gold. TT-based nirvana-gears bind on equip(in most cases, there's one lucky exception) while Lunar-based nirvana-gears are tradeable.

The lucky exception ish TT99-gold(Dragonslayer, Annihilation) swords crafted from Shinrotwins(TT80 d. swords)->Dragon Seekers(TT90-d. swords)->Dragonslayer, Annihilation(tradeable TT99 gold dual swords). This ish the cheapest way to craft non-bound nirvana blade/sword weapons. When you get your r9 you can sell your T3-weapon this way.

There's 4 choices of nirvana-weapons for seekers: blade, sword, dual blades or dual sword.

Blade has lowest spike of these all but also higher high spike than a sword. Average damage ish lower than dual-weapons, though, so for APS-seeker Kitty would recommend this as single blade has higher APS than duals. It also looks nice.

Sword has more stable damage than blade, but since it has the lowest high-spike Kitty can't recommend sword for anyone as seeker relies on high spikes in PVP.

Dual blades has quite spikey damage, with lower low-end than dual swords, but also highest high-end of the weapon grade. If you really like high numbers, this ish your(and Kitty's) choice of weapon. Kitty also likes its looks. While rerolling blades, Kitty suggests aiming for max. phys. att. adds to maximize it's spike.

Dual swords have more stable damage than blades, so it you like predictability, this ish your choice of weapon.

Short guide to seeker-debuffs:

Shatters:
1. Use Heartshatter on anything that takes more than 3 hits to kill, for yourself and any phys./metal DDs in squad.
2. Use Mindshatter if you have a veno, mystic, wizzie or psychic in your squad(it only affects their spells).
3. Use Soulshatter when wizzie's or psychic's damage ish at highest. In other words: Use Soulshatter when wizzie or psychic sparks.(It only affects fire- and earth spells.)

Note: Some wizzies prefer using ultis or Sutra-combo instead of sparking so it's a good idea to ask when they want their Soulshatter.

How to stance:
1. Use Northern Sky Waltz, Parchedblade Dance or Soulsever Minuet to enter stance.
2. Attack your enemy until you see the stance marker on it.
3. Trigger the stance by attacking your enemy with proper skill.

Stances, their triggering skills and effect:
Northern Sky Waltz - Staggering Strike(Deals some damage, freezes the enemy for 3 secs and lowers it's def. lvl by 20 for 8 secs. Overwrites Soulsever's def. lvl. debuff.)
Parchedblade Dance - Stalagstrike(Deals some damage and stuns the enemy for 3 secs, useful in Water pavilion in FWS)
Soulsever Minuet - Gemini Slash(Deals some metal damage and lowers enemy's def. and att. lvl by 10 for 3 mins. Att. lvl debuff doesn't stack with Barbarian's Devour's.)
Duelist's Glee - Arme Nier(Deals some damage and disarms the enemy for 6 secs)

Note: As Parchedblade Dance and Soulsever Minuet are triggered by AoE-skills, you can apply those debuffs to many enemies at once. It's a good idea to use Soulsever at the start of the fight, trigger it and swap to Northern Sky Waltz+skillspam for max. benefit.

P.s. in PVE QPQ ish useful for debuffing bosses. While you're QPQing SacriSlash, you can pop some self-debuffing genie skill or apoth(Crimson Blood/Soul Powder) to have a magical HF appear. Without BM in your squad. SORCERYYYY!

P.p.s. If you're good at timing, you can try QPQing stuns and bubbles back at bosses. Works on some of them(for ex. teh Octopus). No need for anti-stun if you succeed.b:avoid

DionDagger - Dreamweaver · January 2015

Kitty, your text gives me cancer

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The Guide to Illusionary Crystal Usage-Culti and Skill Leveling

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