by Yadori 

Ahura edited and added content everywhere

Rinako edited and added content

Taws edited and added content

Wyze added discussion

Tsumori edited and added content 

1. Introduction

The lancer is a pretty straight forward class when it comes to purpose and mindset in pvp. You are the mad dog, king of position and the lockdowner which can turn the tides of a battle within a second. As a lancer, you want to stick onto a target and never let your target move.

So, why would you choose this class for pvp? Here are some pros and cons.

Pros:

• Very viable in all pvp-oriented content
• Have a wide set of crowd control abilities
• Fairly easy to learn
• Does a decent amount of damage considering it’s a “tank” class

Cons:

• Hard to “master” 
• Requires aiming skills
• Playable with bad ping, but requires a good ping to play at top levels
• May need a specific race to reach “its full potential” 

What I mean with “tank” class is that in TERA, there isn’t any way to force someone to attack you. There is no real taunt in pvp. A real tank-class, in my opinion, is a class which can force others to attack it. A “tank” class, in this case, means it can take a beating.

What I want to say with “its full potential”, is different races have different animations for certain spells. Leaving you to choose what advantage you want to have by choosing race.

This guide will include the following:

Introduction – Purpose, mindset, pros and cons, content, my words and opinions

Knowing your class – Crowd control knowledge, spells, glyphs, gear, etchings, crystals, race

Control your lancer – Animation cancel, lancer mechanisms, combos

Lancer in duel – Lancer, warrior, slayer, zerk, archer, sorc, gunner, reaper, priest, mystic

Lancer in Champions’ Skyring Arena 3v3 – Compositions, positioning

Final words – Summary, my words and opinions (again), links and description to things worth mentioning

*NOTE: PLEASE READ EVERYTHING DOWN BELOW*

Steam users/beginners should probably not start by reading this guide because there are many other guides that explains the basics and other useful things which are not included here. I will try to link stuff that are useful and can help your lancer gameplay down below. If you happen to have found this guide first then you should look for another. Also this guide is a clusterfuck because I am updating it slowly. Not experienced players might not notice if something is outdated or up to date.

I haven’t really set a “level” on the guide yet, which I will have to go through. Whether it’s a beginners guide, advanced guide or a mediocre guide. I am a big fan of bolding text by the way (hopes this gets buried). This will drastically change the need of content written here. At the moment, I would say you need to be at least level 65 ingame and understand some of your spells as well as a brief knowledge about other classes.

*NOTE: There are people holding a grudge against lancers executing their available mechanisms well. Some people say that all lancers macro, which I believe is wrong. If these mechanisms shouldn’t be in the game or you believe they are totally broken, DON’T complain here. Report it to your publisher so they can further report it to BHS. I personally don’t macro and there is no macro, whatsoever, in the footage shown in this guide.

(Purpose, mindset, pros and cons, content, my words and opinions)

1. Knowing your class

Crowd control knowledge

In TERA there are different types of crowd control effects. Some effects break other effects and applies the new effect. You could say that some crowd control effects are superior to others. I use the term “CC” for crowd control in the description below. Inflicting damage on targets affected by sleep, fear or Time Gyre will break the CC. The three listed on top are not CCs, but you need to understand what these terms are. 

I’d have to do so much research to complete this CC table 100%. Do keep in mind I won’t do that which means specific CC explanation might not be accurate. For example, “What happens if you get KDed and Pushed then knockup happens while also being leashed ” or something similar.

iFrame (Invulnerable Frame): There are a lot of Invulnerability Frames in TERA. Each class has at least one. The invulnerable duration depends on what kind of iframe it is and your current attack speed.

Cleanse: This is a healer’s skill which removes harmful effects/debuffs/CCs. Some debuffs aren’t cleansable; “Plague of Exhaustion (Priest spell)”, “Menacing Wave”, “Giga Leash or Chained Leash”, “Burning Breath (Sorcerer spell)”, “Curse of Exhaustion (Mystic spell)”,“Restraining Arrow”, “Mangle (Warrior spell), “Inescapable Doom (Berserker spell)”, Mystic “new spell” and Fear effects.

Dispell: This is a healer’s skill which removes buffs from targets hit. Everything can be dispelled with an exceptions of Retaliate buff and some item buffs.

*NOTE: I choose to use the word “Dispell” because I personally am used to it, others may refer to this word as “Regress”, “Plague” or “Purge”. Sometimes this word is also used for the term above. In this guide, I chose to use these terms.*

Stagger: This is the first of the two most common CCs in TERA. It’s an uncleansable ministun. Being staggered has a cooldown of roughly 1 second.  You cannot stack staggers. You cannot stagger on stunned, knockdowned or knocked up opponents. When the stagger cooldown is gone a new stagger can be applied. Stagger works on slowed targets. If stagger is used on a slept or feared target the damage from the stagger will break the sleep or fear and stagger said target. Applying a damaging stagger on a Time Gyre’d target (sorcerer root) will break the root as well as stagger the target.

Slow: This is the second of the two most common CCs in TERA. It is what it says, it slows your movement speed or attack speed depending on what kind of slow it is. Most slows can be cleansed however there are a few slows which can’t. Some slows stack with other slows. Slow can be applied on any CC without breaking the first CC, however if the slow deals damage, it will break sleep, fear and Time Gyre.

Knockdown: This is the most powerful CCs in TERA because it is uncleansable and it overwrites any other CC (except the “knock up” CC) applied to the target. This CC is very common but stronger than slows and staggers due to its duration.The two most common cures for this CC are, Arise: Priest Skill and Retaliate. It has a decent long duration and it turns the front of the knocked down target to the caster’s front while also moving it 3m. Being pulled or knocked back by some spells will also cure the knockdown state.

Stun: This is a strong CC which makes the target unavailable to move and use spells. The duration is somewhat RNG. Applying a stun works on all kind of CCs except the knockdown CC. Applying a damaging stun breaks sleep, fear and Time Gyre. However, if you stun a slept target, the target will get stunned but will not wake up, unless the stun deals damage. Stunning a feared target will make the target stunned regardless of damage applied to target. All pvp stuns can be cleansed with an exception of Giga Leash.

Sleep: Has the same effects as the stun effect. If a slept target takes any damage the sleep is interrupted. Sleep is not affected by Stun Duration effects of the target’s earrings (which will be explained further down). Warriors’ Cascade of Stuns works on sleeping targets. Sleep can be applied on slept, stunned, staggered, rooted and feared targets.

Knockup: This CC makes you go up in the air while applying the same effects as the stun/sleep CC. A knockup can be used on all kind of CCs except the knocked down CC. You could say this CC is a stun which nullifies the character collision, so when you go up in the air people can still walk below you. You can resist this CC by using “stun immunity buffs”. Uncleanseable.

Knockback/Pull: Your position changes very quickly towards either way. You can’t move or use spells while “changing destination”. Uncleanseable.

Root: A root makes the affected target unable to move by using “wasd”. There are different types of roots. 

The slayer’s backstab is considered a root.This root allows you to iframe, it allows you to use charging/teleport spells such as Teleport Jaunt (Mystic and Sorc spell), Charge Lunge, Headlong Rush, etc. This CC ends if the target is knockdowned.

Mire (Mystic spell) allows you to use iframes and the skills mentioned above. Moves you a very minimal range when using other abilities. Also ends if knockdowned.

Time gyre does not allow you to use iframes or Teleport Jaunts (Charges can still be used). However, using skills allows you to move around. The CC ends if the target receives damage.

All roots can be applied to all kinds of CCs.

*NOTE: Some may argue that Mire isn’t a root. Because Mire is affected by your slow duration stat on boots. But the fact that you can use charges and jaunts and your spells don’t move you was the reason why I stated this as a root. Let’s say you are slowed by 90%, same amount that Mire slows for, by hailstorm and glacial retreat. If you use spells under this condition you will still move more than if you were mired.* 

Fear: A fear moves you randomly until the duration of the spell has ended or you take damage. Fear can’t be applied on stunned, slept, knockdowned or knockupped targets, however fear works on targets with retaliate buff. Fear also works on staggered targets. Fearing a rooted target will apply the fear effects without breaking the root, the target will not move randomly though because it’s rooted.

Increased cooldown duration: It increases the cooldown of used abilities. This effects is applied with  “Plague of Exhaustion (Priest spell)”, “Exhaustion Blow (Slayer spell) and “Curse of Exhaustion (Mystic spell)”.

*NOTE: “Plague of Exhaustion (Priest spell)” adds more cooldown duration only to, what’s considered melee spells.*

Spells

Damage

Combo Attack: Poke your lance in front of you. This spell has three consecutive attacks and is your main attack, AKA auto attack. It gives you mana when it hits a target and does not need mana to be casted. 

First attack hits 3 times. Each hit slows for 50% for 3 seconds and has a fairly fast attack animation. 

Second attack hits 2 times. Each hit slows for 50% for 3 seconds and staggers, but has a slower attack animation.

Third attack hits 3 times and allows you to activate Spring Attack faster but has the longest attack animation.

Shield Barrage: Swing your shield in a 180 degree angle. This spell has two attacks.

Both attacks apply a 50% movement speed slow for a very short duration (approximately 1.2 seconds). First attack staggers. Second attack staggers and has a small chance to stun.

Spring Attack: Pierce your lance in front of you. Your main source of damage. This spell hits 4 times and each hit slows movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds. Activates faster if used after the third consecutive hit of Combo Attack, second hit of Shield Barrage or Shield Bash.

Wallop: Flips your lancer to perform a backflip MLG bazooka to the ground and blast everything to oblivion. This is your highest single number hitting ability. This spell hits once and knockdowns. Activates faster if used after Spring Attack, second hit of Shield Barrage, Debilitate, Shield counter or Charge Lunge.

Lockdown Blow: Turn 360 and slap your shield in front of you. This spell hits once and slows by 30% for 7 seconds. Has a pretty long range and a fast position change.

Utilities

Leash: Magically summon a chain to pull and stun a target for a short duration up to 18m in your crosshair. Gives a buff for 4 seconds which makes the Master Leash available.

Master Leash: Magically summon a secondary chain to pull and stun a target for a short duration up to 18m in your crosshair. Can only be activated once the buff from Leash is active.

Giga Leash or Chained Leash: Magically summons a chain to magically pull a maximum of 6 targets within 15m of the target’s range and applies an uncleansable stun to them. Distance to aimed target is 15m max. Will also pull jumping, stunned and knocked down targets. Will not pull targets affected by the Retaliate buff.

**NEEDS TO BE TESTED OUT MORE**

Backstep: Jump 6m backwards in fear of dying…? This is your only iframe. Costs resolve. Will jump a shorter distance if you have a slow debuff(s).

Debilitate: Punch your shield in front of you to reduce endurance by 4.5% and reduce the target’s received heals by 50%. The endurance debuff stacks up to 3 times.

Charge Lunge: Rush 20m forward. Isn’t affected by your slow debuff(s).

Onslaught: Puts your lance and shield up and sprint forward 18m. This attack damage is weak. It hits many times and the last 3 attacks deals more damage. You are less likely to be knocked down and you only take half the damage while in animation. Can also be used to become Jesus and walk on water.

Shield Bash: Punch your shield in front of you to stun. Debilitate and Shield Bash has almost the same animation. Shield bash has a slightly shorter animation lock.

Menacing Wave: Open yourself up and release a wave around you in a 7m radius. Applies a non-cleansable debuff to your target(s) that slows their movement speed and attack speed by 15% for 5 seconds.

Second Wind: Put your hands in the air and replenish xxxxx Health and 750 Resolve.

Health received is affected by your healing received level. This spell can crit heal and the crit chance is affected by your crit rate/chance.

Challenging Shout: Scream manly with passionate hate and put everyone in combat within a 11m radius. Regains resolve for each target hit.

Infuriate: Scream manly without passionate hate and put everyone in a 11m radius of you in combat. 

Stand Fast (Block): Blocks any kind of attacks except for Blacksmith Hammerstrike (VM stun) and various glyphs. May also block an attack for someone by reducing the damage significantly. Knockdowns can also be blocked for an ally. Takes away 50 resolve every 0.5 seconds the skill is held or active.

Costs resolve to block attacks depending on how strong your weapon and the blocked attack is.

Shield Counter: Punch with your shield and poke with your lance in an attack in front of you. This spell hits 2 times. First attack deals damage. Second attack staggers. Can only be used after a successful block. Restores a good amount of resolve.

Buffs

Iron Will: Put your hands in the air to activate a shield that absorbs xxxxx damage.

Pledge of Protection: Put your hands in the air to activate a buff for 12 seconds. Allies within a 20m range gets a buff after 2 seconds of being in range or spell being casted, which grants 35% reduced damage. You take the 35% reduced damage for your allies, however the damage you take is reduced by your defense.

Guardian Shout: Rapidly shouts with an intention of saving everyone’s lives… An instant buff that adds 91% endurance to your team members within 20m for 40 seconds. This buff vanishes if you are knocked down. Your team members will receive the graceful buff after 2 seconds of being in range or spell being casted. Shares cooldown with Rallying Cry.

Rallying Cry: Same animation as Guardian Shout. Gives a buff to allies hit within 11m which grants knockdown and stagger immunity for 7 seconds. Shares cooldown with Guardian Shout. 

Adrenaline Rush: Put your hands in the air to become fast and gain 20% attack speed and 50% cooldown reduction on Shield Barrage, Wallop, Shield Counter, Spring Attack and Onslaught for 20 seconds.

Retaliate: Spins on the ground like a windmill to return back from the knocked down state and give you a 2 seconds buff of immunity towards stuns, sleeps, knockdowns, and staggers. The animation will begin slightly before you get the immunity buff, leaving you vulnerable to stuns and sleeps for a split second.

The reason I put the exact slow duration and not the exact stun duration considering both of these numbers are affected by factors in the game, boots and earrings, is because stuns in TERA are RNG and slows are not. Even though I could have included a stun duration number decently accurate, I chose not to. 

Cooldown timer on the spells isn’t included  because it’s easy available ingame or any other website. The cooldown timer is also different depending on gear roll and/or etchings you may have.

Glyphs

I will list the efficient glyphs for Lancers and I will explain why they are an important part of pvp. The glyphs left out are the ones I don’t think are viable at all in pvp.

*NOTE: This is a master glyphs’ list*

* = Master glyph

Green – Very viable
Orange – Situational

Red – Not viable but can be in some cases. Test it out for more information. 

*Combo Attack: Glyph of Spirit (3) – Increases MP regeneration by 20%.

This glyph isn’t viable because you will have other ways to regain mana which will be covered later in the crystal section. Why I included this is because you can remove the mana crystals and then have this glyph as your mana source. However I do not recommend using this glyph. Lancer is actually a very mana consuming class though.

Stand Fast: Glyph of the Pump (4) – 30% chance to increase power by 15% for 10 seconds on a successful block

This glyph adds 7.5 power, 15% of 50. This glyph is situational because more damage is never bad but it isn’t green because it needs a successful block, the chance to proc is pretty low and the damage given by 7.5 power is also low.

Stand Fast: Reinforced Stand Fast (4) – Increases max resolve by 500

Why would you use this? Ever? Well since the damage overall is so much higher now then guess what happens to your resolve in the process. Blocking Eviscerate from a slayer or something similar can eat more than half your resolve. You might find yourself having a lot of resolve problem when you are blocking for your teammates (Explanation further down) which is a really good defensive mechanism. A lancer without resolve can do close to nothing, no iframe, no animation cancel. 

Backstep: Glyph of Energy (3) – Decreases cooldown by 25%

1.5 less cooldown on your only iframe is never bad. You will use this spell a lot to get out of certain CC chains or bad positions.

Spring Attack: Glyph of Power (5) – Increases skill damage by 25%

Add 25% more damage to your main source of damage can’t possibly be a bad thing.

*Spring Attack: Glyph of Numbing (3) – 30% chance to decrease opponent’s attack speed by 30% for 7 seconds

This is one of the reasons why lancer is such a good lockdowner against damage dealing classes. Put this effect on a target and it won’t be able to combo properly. This works through block, a must have.

*Shield Bash: Glyph of the Resounding (4) – Increases effect duration by 25% 

Shield bash is one of your combo opener. Without this glyph many of your combos might not be available. Right now the stuns are very, very short compared to what they used to be. Using this is always a must.

*Shield Bash: Glyph of Energy (3) – Decreases cooldown by 25%

As stated above, Shield bash is your opener and less cooldown is a very good thing so you can do more combos in less time.

Shield Bash: Glyph of Blaze (4) – Speeds casting by 25% for Onslaught, the next skill in the chain

Even though Onslaught is a very crappy damaging spell the usage of Onslaught becomes viable as an utility spell, hence why the spell is in the utility section. Onslaught moves you forward while taking reduced damage. With this glyph this spell becomes very fast and with a decent amount of attack speed, is almost equal to your Charge lunge making it a good escape ability. This glyph isn’t viable in all of TERA pvp content since this is just a decent escape tool.

*Challenging Shout: Glyph of haste (3) – Increases cast speed by 50%(?)

Now back to the resolve talk. If you run with this and hit multiple targets with it your resolve will instantly go to its max. Resolve cost in the current patch/gameplay is extremely high compared to the vm3 patch where the damage was super low. You will need resolve. This glyph might not be that viable as an orange glyph at the moment but will probably be after the lancer resolve nerf coming next patch (End of July 2015). Same goes for “Reinforced Stand Fast glyph (500 more max resolve)”

Charging Lunge: Glyph of Energy (4) – Decreases cooldown by 20%

The reason this is green is because this is your only movement spell that is not affected by your slow debuff(s). Some may argue this should’ve been orange since the movement of a lancer is drastically different from race to race. However, as I’m trying to be objective, I will say that many other lancers would consider this orange. Keep that in mind.

Charging Lunge: Glyph of Fleetfoot (5) – Speeds movement by 10 for 7 seconds while in combat

As stated above, a lancer’s movement is different from race to race so using this could be viable. With both this glyph and the one above you will have almost always have 10 more movement speed if you use Charge lunge on cooldown, however this glyph has a high cost of 5 points.

Retaliate: Glyph of Energy (4) – Decreases cooldown by 20%

Reduces the cooldown by 3 seconds can be viable in cases when you are against classes with many knockdowns. A lancer shouldn’t need this glyph because you need the points for damage and/or utility.

*Guardian Shout: Glyph of Energy (5) – Decreases cooldown by 35%

I could see some cases where this glyph is good, mass pvp being one of the cases. This spell protects your allies by giving a huge amount of endurance, lowering its cooldown wouldn’t be a bad thing. This glyph has a high cost though and this is one of the reasons it’s orange. The others being, as a lancer, you already have pledge and on top of that, a lot of defense. You would want more damage and more tools to CC and lockdown your targets.

*Leash: Glyph of Energy (4) – Decreases cooldown by 20%

Leash can be a good opener for some of your combos. It is range, it moves a target to up to 18m(?) and stuns for a short duration. A good tool for many things such as to get someone out of position, catch someone off guard or open a combo.

Leash: Glyph of wat (4) – Increases range by 3 meters

Good glyph for mindgames. Most players assume your leash range is 18m, which makes the 18m range a safe distance from a lancer. With this you could catch players off guard.

*Leash: Glyph of Numbing (4) – Decreases opponent’s attack speed by 40% for 4 seconds

This glyph is very viable, 40% attack speed is huge and 4 seconds is enough for you to make something happen. This glyph also goes through block, even if the leash doesn’t stun the target. However considering CC glyphs and damage glyphs, I chose to put this orange. I know many would put this green because it really is an awesome glyph.

Master Leash: Glyph of Persistence (3) – 30% chance to eliminate cooldown

This could be a viable choice considering Master Leash has a very long cooldown. However the chance to reset is fairly low and you must have the buff given from Leash to use this spell. The point cost is low, though I can see this viable in mass pvp where you can leash for your team.

Debilitate: Glyph of Lingering (6) – Increases effect duration by 100%

This glyph is included purely for 1vs1 options. Debilitate effect can be cleansed and already has a long duration. 36 seconds with the glyph will not matter if the target gets cleansed after X seconds. The point cost is also huge. 

Wallop: Glyph of Power (5) – Increases skill damage by 25%

25% more damage to your highest single number hitting spell, can’t be bad.

*Lockdown Blow: Glyph of Slowing (4) – Decreases opponent’s movement speed by an additional 30%

After some long testing and what not (6 months testing…..???), I decided I have to stop being as ignorant as I am sometimes and put this orange. It is a 60% slow total for 7 seconds and it also stacks with other slows. Another strong slow as a lockdowner is not too bad. However there are occasions where you will need other glyphs since the gameplay changed since 60 cap gameplay. Remember that an unglyphed lockdown blow + Combo Attack adds 80% slow already.

Lockdown Blow: Glyph of Power (4) – Increases skill damage by 20%

Your third hardest hitting ability gets 20% more damage, isn’t a bad thing. This spell is hard to hit from behind though which makes this glyph often a sacrifice for utility glyphs. Aswell as the base damage isn’t as high as Spring attack and Wallop the 20% given is also smaller.

Menacing Wave: Glyph of Lingering (3) – Increases effect duration by 50%

Attack speed slow is incredibly good in this game. The duration of Menacing wave is pretty low and the spell has a long cooldown. Increasing the effect duration can be a decent pickup in some cases.

Iron Will: Glyph of Warding (5) – Increases damage absorption by 25%

As mentioned earlier and here and there, lancers are already tanky and can take a beating. You want to use your points for damage and utility glyphs. This could be a good glyph if you plan on running solo pvp without a healer or just want to become a bit tankier.

Iron Will: Glyph of Lingering (4) – Increases effect duration by 50%

Kinda the same as above. This glyph is a little better than the above in my opinion, since if you stack a little of CDR (cooldown reduction) this spell will have almost no downtime if the shield is not broken.

Second Wind: Glyph of Energy (6) – Decreases cooldown by 25%

Same reason as on the other parts. This could be a somewhat okay glyph if you want to experiment with your resolve and/or are building your lancer for HP recovery (Heal over time build).

Second Wind: Glyph of Heartening (4) – Restores 20% more resolve

I included this for the simple fact as above as well as if you are lacking resolve. However, your lack of resolve can be fixed with the other resolve glyphs explained above this; stand fast and shout glyphs.

Pledge of Protection: Glyph of Energy (3) – Decrease cooldown by 20%

Pledge shines almost everywhere. 12 seconds reduced on a 1 minute cooldown is significant and the spell is one of many reasons you are a good asset to any group. I wanted to put this green but after a little debate I decided orange, since sometimes you sacrifice this glyph for other things and you might not even need this in every scenario.

Pledge of Protection: Glyph of Restoration (5) – Increases amount of caster’s HP recovery by 20% for 20 seconds

20% more received heals is pretty huge but using pledge just to increase your received heals isn’t why you should pledge. The cost is high and the duration is actually decent. Personally I did never test this glyph. QQ

Adrenaline Rush: Glyph of the Swift (3) – Increases attack speed by an additional 10%

Attack speed on lancers are in most cases very good. With this glyph you get a total boost of 30% attack speed which is very high. The duration of 20 seconds is decent. Adrenaline Rush without this glyph is already incredibly strong because of the CDR it gives to some of your spells as well as you often sacrifice this glyph for other utilities depending on what kind of pvp you are doing. Which is why this is orange.

*Rallying Cry: Lingering Rallying Cry (4) – Increases effect duration by 30%

*Rallying Cry: Energetic Rallying Cry (3) – Decreases cooldown by 20%

*Giga Leash: Glyph of Lingering (4) – Increases effect duration by 50%

Giga leash is the joker of lancers. It’s “The” spell that can turn the tides of any battle in this game. This spell is well-known as the main source of “Cheese Comp”. Lancer without this would lose a lot of its power. Without this glyph, the Giga leash stun duration is roughly 1 second. Using this glyph gives time to actually do something with the CC given by Giga leash.

Giga Leash: Glyph of Energy (4) – Decreases cooldown by 20%

As mentioned above. This spell is almost always on cooldown because you will need this in any pvp content you participate in.

Gears

I personally believe that gears is not that big of a factor in this game. Don’t get me wrong, difference in gears can change a game, but the difference in skills makes up a lot more than the difference in gears. I will not go into detail of the different pvp gears and how to obtain them. Information about recommended stat rolls and why they are viable will be included.

Brooch and belt are not included.

Weapon rolls:

• Do 6% more damage when you attack. – Higher damage overall also means higher crit damage. Always viable.
• Attack speed increases by 4.5% – Viable.
• Increase crit damage by +0.3 – Crit damage modifiers are good on classes that hit many times but not that hard and because you hit many times you have more chances to crit. Always viable.
• Increases your crit rate by 14 – Optional in most cases.
• Decreases cooldown by 7.2% – You can use more skills in less time. This roll can unlock more combos. This stat with the energetic etchings, can bring up quite a debate.

Chest rolls: 

• Raise max HP by 8% – Always viable
• Reduces damage by 6% – Always viable
• You take 6.9% less damage from frontal attacks
• You take 6.9% less damage from attacks while knocked down 
• Increase Spring Attack damage by 15% – Spring Attack is your main damaging skill. Always viable.
• Restore 1.2% of your HP each 5 second – Is a must if you choose to go for the HP recovery build as lancer. If you are doing so I recommend getting all the “heal over time” stats there are since they stack.

Gloves rolls: all three stats are always viable and also the best choice for pvp.

• Attack speed increases by 2.25%
• Increases your crit rate by 9
• Power increases by 5

Boots rolls:

• Movement speed increases by 6%. – You are the lockdowner so you need to stick onto someone. If your target has this roll and you don’t, then guess what. Always viable.
• Decrease duration of slow effects by 24% – Because slows are one of the most common CCs in this game, this stat roll is viable. However this effect does not reduce the attack speed slow duration.
• Increase endurance by 4  – The endurance factor on lancers works at a very high number, meaning you still get a lot of defense with a high endurance factor. Other classes don’t stack endurance like lancers do because their base endurance is high. Lancers have a low base endurance.
• Restores 0.6% of your HP every 5 seconds – Heal over time stat, only recommended if you are going for the HoT build.

Earrings rolls: 

• Decrease duration of stun effects by 10% – Stun is a very strong CC and this reduces the duration of the stun, even though stuns are RNG the duration is shortened overall. Always viable.
• Raises max hp by 4.5% – Usually viable.
• Heals an additional HP by 3.2% when receiving HP recovering effect
• Restores 0.48% of your HP every 5 seconds – Heal over time stat, only recommended if you are going for the HoT build.

Rings rolls: Both stats are always viable. If you were to choose I would choose crit damage. In this case however, you can have both stats which makes these 2 stats the only viable stat roll choice on rings.

• Increase crit damage by +0.04
• Increase your crit rate by 4 

Necklace rolls:

• Increase crit damage by +0.04 –  Both stats are almost equally viable but crit damage is a better stat in pvp and also as a lancer. Almost always viable.
• Increases crit rate by 4 

Innerwear rolls: If 1 power equals 2 crit rate then it wouldn’t matter which you would choose. But that isn’t the case. The difference between pumped 3 etching and carving 3 etching isn’t 1 power = 2 crit rate. Which leaves the crit rate innerwear slightly superior. However this logic doesn’t always work and besides, power is slightly better since crit resist is lower in pvp. 

*NOTE In the current patch or the so called current “meta” people get a lot of crit resist items and etchings. Means what I stated in the above isn’t reliable. I will not go into the debate whether crit rate or power is greater. Personally I have and would choose the crit rate innerwear.*

• Increase your crit rate by 12 
• Increase your power by 6

Etching

This list will only include the permanent etching level 3 and why they are a good choice. There are some etchings not listed which I believe are not viable enough to mention.

*NOTE: This section will be covered more later*

“You probably never want to go power over carving or energetic in any circumstance for PvP” – Tsumori

Weapon etchings (Offensive etching)

Carving – Increases crit rate by 18

Energetic – Increases attack speed by 4% and decreases cooldown by 2.5%

Pumped – Increases power by 10

Glove etchings (Offensive etching)

Carving – Increases crit rate by 18

Energetic – increases attackspeed by 4% and decreases cooldown by 2.5%

Pumped – Increases power by 10

“You could build your own etching build but be sure to keep in mind that your main source of damage will come from your critical hits, and your critical hits increases depending on your crystals. Pumped will give you way more overall damage, but Crit is the reason why you would deal damage. Energetic is there for an overall different kind of gameplay.” – Ahura 

Chest etchings (Defensive etching)

Grounded – Increases endurance by 8

Unyielding – Increases crit resist by 20 

Boots etchings (Defensive etching)

Grounded – Increases endurance by 8

Unyielding: – Increases crit resist by 20

“Both etchings are viable. It really depends on you because endurance gives you way more defense, thus it makes you a lot tankier and you will be able to be called as an “Independent Class” because your healer can trust you to be a “free-spirit-do-what-you-want”. Unyielding adds you a great amount of crit resist, which means that there will be a lesser amount of chance that your enemy will hit you with crits, thus this is viable because critical is the main source of damage burst.” – Ahura

Crystals *Not updated*

Weapon Crystals

Main (Must have):

Fine Savage Crux – Increases your critical damage by 1.20 from behind

Fine Forceful Crux – Increases your power by 19 for 10 seconds when crit from behind

Fine Salivating Crux – Immediately regains 81 MP when attacking a player

Secondary (As fourth crux):

Fine Carving Crux – Increases critical chance by 3%: Very useful as forth crux if you are against enemies with high crit resist. Like mystics or opponents you know went for crit resist etchings. This crux gives you 3% crit chance regardless of your crit rate and their crit resist.

Fine Cruel Crux – Increases your crit modifier by 0.44 on a successful knockdown for 7s: Useful against melee opponents. This is a good crux overall because 0.44 crit modifier is a very high number.

Fine Swift Crux – Increases your combat movement speed by 15: Good against kiting classes and healers. This doesn’t add any damage and is very situational. Personally I’m a big fan of this crux.

Very Situational:

Fine Virluent Crux – Critical attacks will inflict a Poison VI effect against knocked down targets

Fine Brutal Crux – Inflicts 9.3% more damage on a knocked-down target

Armor Crystals

Main (Must have):

Fine Relentless Crux – Increase maximum HP by 4,808: Equip at least two of these. Max HP is good in pvp.

Secondary:

Fine Grieving Crux – Instantly regains 106 MP when attacked by a player: Part of your mana source, a must have in contents where “Charms” won’t be available.

Fine Resolute Crux – Decrease damage received by 9.5% when your HP is below 50%: This crux is very good at the moment due to everyone having a very high max HP. I haven’t tested this to oblivion though, which means I can be wrong when I say max HP matters. I have heard from people around me that this crux only affects your base max hp. 

Fine Warding Crux – 50% chance to provide Shield VI when knocked down

Fine Vigorous Crux – Regenerates 321 HP every 5 seconds. Good for solo plays.

Very Situational:

Fine Fleetfoot Crux – Increases your movement speed by 30 while out of combat

Accessory Crystals

Main (Best option):

Fine Griefing Zyrk – Increases pvp damage by 4

*NOTE: I have not gone over the mathematical factors that matters in the “power” or ”pvp damage” section. Because I simply do not know much about it.*

Secondary:

Fine Powerful Zyrk – Increases power by 2. Secondary replacement for the option above. This is viable in battlegrounds such as Corsair Stronghold, Kumasylum and Fraywind Canyon if you want to increase your damage, not only against other players, but to NPCs such as Gates, Tanks, Turrets, Nagas, Teraliths and Kumas.

Fine Swift Zyrk – Increases your attack speed by 0.8%. If you want to try another kind of build, go ahead. 

Fine Indomitable Zyrk – Decreases pvp damage received by 5. Good crystal if you want to be tankier in pvp. 

Fine Carving Zyrk – Increases critical by 2. This was a decent crystal but it is not recommended at the moment because 2 crit rate is a very small amount in today’s gear progression. You may want to have 16 pvp damage more than having 8 crit rate.

Race

Having a specific race doesn’t guarantee you a better player, obviously. You can be as good as other people no matter what your race is. But some of the races do have an advantage over others, making battles seem unfair. 

I will list the two better races and what their advantages are and I will list the two worse races and their disadvantages. 

For short I would personally put it this way. 5 being the best and 1 being the worst:

Elin-5 Popori-1

HighelfM-4 HighelfF-3

CastanicM-3 CastanicF-3

HumanM-3 HumanF-3

AmanM-2 AmanF-3

Baraka-2

Elin: Elins are cute and have an extremely long range with certain spells than other classes. Their Combo Attacks and Shield Barrage hit farther and moves them forward. One downside is that Shield Barrage first hit might not always hit in super close range, 2m-3m. Another thing to keep in mind here is that the smaller your character is the more vision you have on the enemy you are targeting. If the enemy you are sitting on casts something you can see what very clearly. Compared to other races.

High Elf Male: This race is fancy and has a very fast Shield Barrage, though doesn’t move them that much compared to Elins (can be debated further). I also think this race has a faster Shield Bash. Compared to Elins, Shield Barrage first hit does most likely hit in very close range, 2m-3m. As mentioned above, if your character is “too big” or something in that matter you might struggle with knowing if you are doing back crits or knowing what the enemy is casting when you are on top of him, blocking your own sight because how fat you are. Though this doesn’t concern high elfs as much as an Aman with a big head + bunny hat…

Popori: The Popori may be cute and fluffy but isn’t a good race as lancer for pvp. Combo attack and Shield barrage has very small range compared to other classes. They also don’t move much when performing these spells. 

Baraka: Barakas may be castles… But have almost the same effects on Combo attack and Shield barrage as Poporis have. Though their first hit of Combo Attack is very instant and almost doesn’t have an animation. 

(Crowd control knowledge, spells, glyphs, gear, etchings, crystals and race)

1. Control your lancer 

Animation cancel

This is one of the main reasons why lancers are good lockdowners. Animation cancel lets you have more free time, it cancels unnecessary animation of your spells. You need to do this in order to do most of your combos and moves properly. Doing this will make the duration you are animation locked much shorter. Animation canceling will also reduce the chance of you being CCed because you can block anything at almost any time.

Some of your spell combos will break if you were to animation cancel them, such as second Shield Barrage -> Spring Attack. Doing that will result in a normal slow-cast Spring Attack. Animation canceling other spell combos will give the same effect, not activating the “Activates faster…..” described in the spell section. To list a few more examples: Charge lunge -> Wallop, Debilitate -> Wallop, Shield Bash -> Spring Attack.

Tap your Stand Fast skill when you want the animation to end. Almost all lancer spells can be animation canceled in the very end of the ability, some spells can be animation canceled midcast. Here below you can see the difference between when you animation cancel Spring attack  and when you don’t in the spell combo, Shield barrage -> Shield barrage -> Spring attack.

This is just an example of one of many animation cancels a lancer needs to do properly.

[Without Cancel] [With Cancel]

I felt the need to include the Charge lunge animation cancel as well. When you apply it to Charge lunge, your lancer stops where it is, breaking the charge.

[Without Cancel] [With Cancel]

As mentioned, animation canceling needs to be used all the time in order to lessen your animation lock. I choose to not make a gif out of every possible animation cancel because that would make too many gifs. 

The following animation cancel is one of your most important to learn and understand (Topic can be debated as elins can take advantage of this more than other races), first hit of Combo attack animation cancel. 

This animation cancel is also crucial to learn and understand in order to do things explained in the “Lancer mechanisms” section. The gifs below show the animation of the spell as well as demonstrating the distance you move when you use the spell, as an elin. Notice the animation lock you suffer at the end of the spell without animation cancel.

[Without Cancel] [With Cancel]

Tap blocks & resolve talk

You can block without losing resolve, tap block. Doing this is very hard but should be in the back of your head when you animation cancelling your spells. Try it out by tapping your block as fast as you can (press block only once). This “mechanism” is used in the “Bskip” which is explained further down. Bskip is technically the only mechanism where you need to be decent at this. Now don’t get me wrong, bskip can be done with a normal block. Other mechanisms are just a lot better and gives you a huge advantage if you apply tap blocking to them.

I will try to give an explanation of what happens and why, if I am wrong somewhere please correct me since I am not a game designer nor a network engineer or what it’s called: 

When you block normally, two elements of information are sent to the server which is “block” and “resolve cost”. The block element registers on the client side much faster than the resolve cost. Which leads to when you tap block, the only information registered and sent to the server is the “block” element because the tap makes the resolve cost element not register. 

Isn’t this broken and a glitch? Well lancers overall are broken, but the discussion whether this is a glitch or not, can be taken somewhere else. I’m stating facts here. There were a few fixes to this “glitch” as I can gladly refer to it as, such as the infinite mana pool which can be seen here in a video not made by me. The mana roll that gives mana on spell usage used to give mana on blocks. The video and a few other reasons is why that’s no longer the case. Another case where the tap blocks can be abused is with the help of a macro is the same as in the video but with another purpose. You see since block doesn’t have a cooldown you can spam it as much as you want. Lets make a macro that blocks every 0.001 second. How many blocks do you think the server has to handle in one second? Yeah, doing that will result in everyone on the server (Not server like “MT” but the players that are close to you and need to load your information) freeze lag or even disconnect.

Turn rate & ping talk

First off, TERA is a really, really ping dependant game. Spiking to 150ms from 30ms by half a second can determine whether you live or die. The queue system in TERA is also very weird designed and I can’t get a grasp of how it really works. Here is an example of how a high ping archer queues his spell compared to a low ping archer doing the exact same.

Ping will affect everything, including your animation canceling. Animation canceling some things may even be unnecessary because the end animation of said spell is the same as your ping. Like animation canceling Leash, Lockdown blow or Wallop.

Turn rate? Ping > Turn rate in terms of what actually makes the biggest difference in gameplay. The importance of turn rate is almost non existent in TERA, however there are a few occasions where they do matter, and in these moments it can save your life. Most noticeable is when backsteps and/or rolls are used.

Lancer mechanisms

Skating / Pokeshield

This term is used for the “Combo Attack animation cancel” done repeatedly until satisfied. Elins benefit the most from Skating since their Combo attack moves them further compared to other races.

There are different kind of Skating:

Mechanism one: This is the least used of the Skating mechanisms there are. You only use this mechanism as a movement tool. This is mainly used combined with other spells/tools. Where the animation cancel is used before the hits of Combo attack are initiated. Which means this will not trigger any damage nor slowing effects. Best used when you want a fast position change, or kind of like a quick dash in any direction. This is also combined with alot of things as well as when you want to block things explained in the Block mechanism section.

Mechanism two: Most commonly used. You use this mechanism as a gap closing, slowing, mana and damaging tool. This is the type of Skating you normally would see people doing. It’s mainly used if you are close to your target, both want to stick onto it by moving yourself faster as well as slowing your target.

(Both mechanisms demonstrated below. In these gifs the “wasd” buttons aren’t used.)

[Skate mechanism one] [Skate mechanism two]

There are downsides for both of these kinds of skating. One type of Skating may be more viable than the other in different scenarios. Mechanism one has more advantage in quick mobility and in animation lock, but doesn’t apply any debuffs nor damage. The quick dash or quick position change caused by this is also useful. Mechanism two generates slow debuff statuses on the target as well as moves you faster and further overall, but has a slower animation lock as well as a slower initial position movement. Can be slower in some cases. Both of these types of Skating are situational and depends on how well the player executes it.

How to Skate/Pokeshield: I will assume you have Combo Attack on your left mouse button and Stand Fast/block on your right mouse button while explaining this. This mechanism is very easy once you get the hang of it.

1. Check your ping – Around 50ms = Very doable.  Around 75ms = still doable but can fail here and there. Around 100ms = most likely to fail the most Skatings. Above 150ms = almost not doable at all. You performing CASkipping is a higher chance than you performing Skating. So basically having over 100ms will be a really frustrating experience while doing this.
2. Press left mouse button then at the end of the Combo Attack animation, press right mouse button. Don’t hold any of the buttons pressed. The tempo you press/tap these two buttons depends on what kind of attack speed you have as well as your ping. Practice this while standing still will show how far you move by the spell itself. Once you are familiar with your character’s animation and attack speed this will become easier.
3. Now you should apply your Skating in combat by duelling people or simply asking someone to be a dummy for you. While doing this in combat you should always move by using “wasd”. It’s good to practice while standing still though. Practice until you can Skate as fast as their combat speed or even faster. *NOTE: The last sentence will mainly be aimed towards the Elin race*
4. This part is where you should be familiar with Skating itself and you should now be able to use different Skate mechanisms. Practice this by blocking at different times at the end of Combo Attack and get used to where/when the attack starts doing damage and when it doesn’t as well as applying it in combat. 
5. See more information about this in the “CASkip” section / explanation.

Bskip

The term we would like to use are also known as “Shield Barrage Skipping” or “Barrage Cancelling”. This mechanism is a super fast double hit and will make the two hits of Shield Barrage look like one or look like you only performed the second hit of Shield Barrage. This mechanism works with warriors’ Rising Fury and the new berserker tank spell as well. Some combos requires you to know Bskip. See youtube link.

How to Bskip: There will be a second explanation of this down below by Ahura. Here is my explanation. This mechanism involves two spells – Shield Barrage and Stand Fast.

1. Check your ping, once again. At this point you might understand the statement I put in the “Cons” list. “Playable with bad ping, but requires a good ping to play at top levels”, is sadly true. Around 50ms = fluent and fast Bskip. Around 75ms = somewhat fluent but a little slower. Around 100ms = pretty slow Bskip but at least faster than normal Shield Barrage. Above 150ms = the Bskip will look very slow and almost the same speed or maybe even slower than your normal Shield Barrage, thus there is no reason to Bskip.
2. The physical part / the clicking / comboing with mouse and keyboard, is Shield Barrage -> Stand Fast / block -> Shield Barrage. This is the order of the buttons you need to press.
3. This is the tricky part. Keep in mind that the ping you have while practicing this will affect everything. The timing you press block after Shield Barrage #1 matters and the timing you press Shield Barrage #2 after block matters in relative to each other. When your ping is around 50ms, the delay you press block after Shield Barrage #1 is very small, near below one second or even almost at the same time. Same goes for the delay on Shield Barrage #2 after block. They are all relative to each other. It has the reverse effect when your ping is high (Above 100ms).
4. While practicing this, you should only tap your block. If you hold it in too long or you don’t tap it fast enough, the Shield Barrage will be completely interrupted. Watch your character as you are doing this, get used to when your character’s animation is where and what it’s doing. 
5. When you have succeeded a few times you should look over #3 and #4 again. “What’s my ping?”, “Am I delaying things correctly?” and “Am I tapping block fast enough?” are the questions you need to ask yourself over and over again in order to better improve your success rate of performing Bskips.

“You press the Shield Barrage and Block at the same time, except the Shield Barrage comes first before you block but the delay should be very minimal. That would trigger a Shield Barrage into Block (First Shield Barrage will be invisible but will hit and stagger the enemy) while the second Shield Barrage will be available to activate, allowing you to use Shield Barrage twice without a delay for a faster way to deal damage.” – Ahura 

CASkip

Stands for “Combo Attack Skipping”, “CASkipping” or “AAskiping”. I added a term for this kind of mechanism because it would be annoying if everytime I refer to this, I would have to explain it. This is basically using your Combo Attack, however this mechanism allows you to skip the first Combo Attack and start using the second Combo Attack. It will look like your first hit of Combo Attack is the second hit of Combo Attack. Some combos explained in the “Combos” section requires you to know CASkip. Good CASkipping will only look like the second hit of Combo Attack as well as it almost won’t move you forward. Decent CASkipping however, is and looks like a combination of Skate mechanism one and CASkip. This will also move you forward a further distance than “Good” CASkipping.

This mechanism also works for warriors and berserkers.

(Gif below is a good / half decentish CASkip. Notice the second CASkip is a pretty good one.)

(The gif below is a combination of Skating mechanism one and CASkipping in combat)

How to CASkip: I will assume you have Combo Attack on your left mouse button and Stand Fast / block on your right mouse button while explaining this. This mechanism involves two spells – Combo Attack and Stand Fast. The way / explanation to perform this can vary. Here I will explain my way of executing this. Another way will be explained down below by “Ahura”. 

1. Check your ping, once again yes this is very important since ping affects this and all of the mechanisms mentioned above. Around 50ms = Really good CASkip, though harder to execute. Around 75ms = Still good / decent CASkip, easy to execute. Around 100ms = Decent CASkip. The CASkip will be somewhat slower, easier to execute. Above 150ms = Still decent / okay CASkip and very easy to execute.
2. Hold left mouse button -> double tap block very fast before the first hits of Combo Attack are initiated -> Keep holding left mouse button until the hit(s) of the second Combo Attack are done.
3. Practice out of combat by doing the #2 repeatedly until you understand the timing of your button mashing and its connection to your ping.
4. Take your practice into combat by having someone be a dummy for you. Now you can really see when your second Combo Attack is initiated in CASkip aswell as the slows and staggers the second Combo Attack brings to the table.
5. Now you should have discovered by yourself if it is easy or hard for you to perform and from here adapt your timing in this mechanism accordingly. Aswell as you should have noticed if you need to double tap or single tap block. Double tapping is a lot “safer”
6. A little repetition of #1, Low ping will result in fast and fluent CASkip, however is hard to execute. High ping will result in somewhat slower CASkips but is much easier to do. At this stage you should also have discovered how Skating and CASkipping are linked together. Hence why your Skating with high ping will most likely become CASkip.
7. Once you get here you should have understood that you have to adapt your play style to your current ping. By doing this you will also become a lot better at Lancer overall.

“There are two ways to perform this action:

Assuming that your Combo Attack is on your left mouse button, and your Stand Fast/Block is on your right mouse button, you can perform this move easily if you practice it enough.

Just like in Shield Barrage, you tap both left mouse button and right mouse button almost at the same time, except the left mouse should be a head by a very minimal delay before you click the right mouse button.This will trigger a very very fast way of Skating, except, you did it fast and your second Combo Attack will trigger afterwards instead of the first Combo Attack.” – Ahura

Block mechanisms

There are different kind of block mechanisms.

Block mechanism one is well-known because of the Kelsaik Nest dungeon whereas you need to block for someone else. This can be used in pvp and is a very viable asset of anti-cc and defense. To block for someone else in pvp you actually do not need to be in front of him/her. As long as you also block the attack and is in range you will block it for your teammate, if he/she is to be hit (see gif #2).

(The slayer in the gif below might have missed his heart thrust, as it is hard to see. This is a good illustration of how this kind of block works though.)

(In the gif below, the enemy lancer blocks a wallop KD for his priest)

Block mechanism two is used to block archer traps. This is useful for yourself by being able to remove the trap and not getting stunned, however when the trap is removed it is also triggered which means your allies in range of said trap will be affected. This mechanism can be a combination of Skate mechanism one and Stand Fast / Block and takes practice to learn, since if your position is wrong when you try to do this, you will end up eating the trap. Notice that when blocking traps, you turn your block towards the center of it not to the caster.

How to block archer traps:

1. By this stage you should’ve figured out that you need to know your ping before performing most moves. Now I assume you know your ping and how to adapt to it.
2. Find an archer dummy. Have him drop all kinds of melee traps.
3. You should have your shield over or a little right over the edge on the trap when you start blocking. If done right, you won’t get stunned/slowed. Take notice that it’s harder to see if you succeeded if you practice with the red/orange damage melee trap. 
4. If your position is too close to the center when you block, you will take the CC effect / you will eat the trap. If your position is too far away from the trap or not close enough to the edge, you will take the CC effect / you will eat the trap when you stop blocking.
5. Combine the Skate mechanism one and block or walk up to the trap and block. In my opinion it’s easier to walk up to it. When your shield / position reaches the edge, block.
6. This takes practice. Do it over and over again. You can also practice this on range traps, but the position on where you start blocking differs a little to the melee traps.
7. You really have to walk up “with confidence”. If you take a step by step the position where you are will be a bit “messy” and it will end up being a lot harder.
8. Which you may have noticed by now, it still says “Block successful” when failing to block a trap. But that’s not the case since if you take the CC effect from the trap, you failed.

(Gif is melee stun trap blocking by walking up to it. Tried to show the position you need to have in order to success.)

Thank you, Dawls and Rinako for helping.

Block mechanism three is used to block sorcerer traps. This is very useful while targeting a sorc. You take away his option by camping traps not only by having your Leash spell but the fact that you can ignore his trap. This mechanism can be a combination of Skate mechanism one and Stand Fast / Block. You can also simply walk up to the trap and block, however that is harder to do. As mentioned above, when blocking traps you turn your block towards the center of it, not to the caster. 

How to block sorcerer traps: There are more ways to block sorcerer traps but this is the one I will include in the block section. 

1. I will not do a long one here since this is easier than blocking archer traps. As stated above in archer trap block mechanism section, adapt to your ping.
2. Combine Skate mechanism one and block.
3. Press block whenever you reach the very edge of the trap.
4. Practice by having a dummy as usual.
5. This is a much easier movement than in the archer trap mechanism, because you can’t be “too close” to the center.

(Gif below shows what it looks like when you succeed.)

Charge lunge

The spell Charge lunge can be used very accurately and precise. It can be a tool for many things. It’s a very important spell to be familiar with and to be using wise. Charge lunge is not affected by slow debuffs, compared to all your other movement spells.

Charge lunge mechanism one: 

There is an “inbuilt aim mechanism” in this spell. Which means if you aim at someone when you use this spell, it will somewhat charge and follow its target until impact or interrupted. I will give you an example by words – If you aim and charge at someone and said person starts using a spell which moves them in a direction, your charge will change direction towards this person.

This is important to understand because if you didn’t aim at the person the moment you used Charge lunge and then expects the charge to readjust its angle, the possibility of you being mispositioned is high.

(Gif demonstrates the above when a sorc uses glacial retreat after I charged him.)

Charge lunge mechanism two: can be used to charge after a jaunting target instantly. By using the mechanism explained above you can charge after an enemy using jaunt and the charge will “aim” for you. This means it doesn’t matter if you don’t know your target’s new position after he jaunted, your charge will adjust its direction. This can only be used if you are almost on or right in front of your opponent. You also have to use Charge lunge right after he uses jaunt, which makes this a hard tool to apply in combat. You will have to know exactly when your target is going to jaunt.

This will be demonstrated in this video.

*DOES NOT WORK/FIXED WITH GUNNER PATCH* Charge lunge mechanism three: Is used to disarm/trigger/remove range archer traps. This is a very easy tool to apply in combat. If you see a range archer trap you can simply just use Charge lunge to pass over it without getting CCed. Keep in mind that you have to charge over it. If an archer is camping the trap and you charge to him, you will most likely eat the trap. Charge lunge isn’t a “charge” if it hits its target. Disarming a range trap won’t trigger CC effects to your allies (not enough tested). 

(Gif below removal of range stun trap in combat.)

Leash

Leash overall is a very useful tool everywhere you go. It can be used as a tool to open your combos, play defensive by interrupting enemy combos 18 meters away, make enemies CCed, get enemies in a bad position, leash targets into your teammate spells… Leash is just a powerful spell. I won’t divide the Leash spell into mechanisms because there are way too many ways to use this spell. Leash can be used as the Charge lunge mechanism two though. I will show some gifs that can give you an idea of how leash can be used. 

It’s worth mentioning that if you Leash someone into a KD spell, it will make them desync. Could be if you leash someone into a KD trap or the leashed target gets KDed while being leashed.

“(Desync is when your opponent got kded/leashed and afterwards not being able to get hit. This is a common thing in TERA and can occur on a KD randomly. Desync can even be forced by jumping around and using the “profile” button.)” – Rinako

What is desync?

It does work to leash someone on backstep, same function as Charge lunge mechanism two. However to make that happen, you have to cast leash when your target uses backstep and the leash has to hit when your target isn’t in iframe. So, if your target has enough attack speed or if you lack attack speed, this can occur.

Demonstration of Leash used as Charge lunge mechanism two in this video.(Same video):

(Gif below shows when leash is used on Glacial retreat. Same function as in “Leash on jaunt”. By the way, using Lockdown Blow’s hitbox as shown below can give you some more options.)

*WTB GIFS HERE ;_;*

Backstep

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Combos *UNFINISHED*

In here you will need knowledge about the stagger cooldown.

Pick a dummy for you and practice the stagger cooldown by using your Shield Barrage -> Delay -> Shield Barrage until you are familiar with when enemies can be staggered after you just staggered them. This takes time and you will need this knowledge in every part of your lancer life. Many combos listed down below will also require an attack speed of around +21 or higher. This also depends on so much but I stated this because without any “+” attack speed, you probably can’t do as many as you can do with around +21.

This section will explain and discuss combos including “applying staggerers right after stuns end”. You need to know and understand the stun duration in this game. It can be practiced by doing Shield Bash -> Delay until stun ends -> any stagger ability. The timing will be different every stun due to the stun duration being RNG.

As the above it will also include “applying staggers right after the KD effects end”. This can also be practiced by using a dummy. But tell your dummy to not use retaliate so you can practice the timing. Use Wallop -> delay -> any stagger. As soon as your dummy/target gets up, you should apply a stagger effect.

Staggers, Stun duration and KD timing will, as explained above, be in almost all of these combos. Make sure to know the stagger timing especially, since this is the most important part in this section. Doing the Shield Barrage staggers properly will already make you a really strong lancer in pvp.

The must learn/most common combos will be listed here. A more detailed list of combos is down below. You will have to understand the animation locks / canceling, spell combos and movements while practicing these combos and tools. Make sure to learn these combos first before taking a look at any of the ones below:

Shield Barrage -> Shield Barrage -> Wallop: Really strong short combo that ends in a KD. 

Shield Barrage -> Shield Barrage -> Bash: A really good way to initiate a bash, often from behind.

Bash -> Spring Attack -> Debilitate -> Wallop -> Lockdown Blow: Most common and the “easiest” combo there is. Deals decent amount of damage.

(Shield Barrage x2 -> Wallop)

(Shield Barrage x2 -> Shield Bash -> Spring Attack -> Debilitate -> Wallop -> Lockdown Blow)

Was lagging horribly when recording both these gifs so the stagger timing might be very fucking bad.

*NOTE: Shield Barrages movements! Move to the back of your opponent while you are waiting for the stagger cooldown in between your Shield Barrages, giving you 

back crits.*

Basic starter tools/combos (Note: x2 are optional)

Block -> Shield Counter: Used to stagger after a successful block.

Shield Counter -> Wallop: Used only if you manage to stagger with your Shield Counter.

Shield Counter -> Shield Barrage (x2): Only used if your Shield Counter staggers and you want to prolong the staggers.

Shield Counter -> Shield Bash: Use only if your counter staggers. Decent, but in my opinion a bad way to open up a Shield Bash combo, since it often won’t be from behind.

Skate -> Shield Barrage (x2): Mobility into stagger.

Skate -> CASkip: A slick and fluent combination of mobility into stagger and slow.

Skate -> first Combo Attack -> second Combo Attack: Almost identical as above but abit slower.

Skate -> Lockdown Blow: Gap closer into instant stacked slow debuffs combo.

CASkip -> Shield Barrage (x2): x3 stagger combo.

CASkip -> Shield Bash: Stagger into stun.

CASkip -> Giga Leash: Stagger into mass-stun.

CASkip -> Leash / Master Leash: Stagger into leash (stun/attack speed slow debuff).

CASkip -> Lockdown Blow: Stagger into a stacked slow debuffs.

CASkip -> Debilitate: Stagger into healing debuff.

Shield Barrage (x2) -> Block -> Shield Bash: Stagger into stun.

Shield Barrage (x2) -> Block -> Debilitate: Stagger into healing debuff.

Shield Barrage (x2) -> Block -> Leash: Stagger into leash (stun/attack speed slow debuff).

Shield Barrage (x2) -> Block -> Giga Leash: Stagger into mass-stun.

Shield Barrage (x2) -> Block -> Lockdown Blow: Stagger into a slow debuff. Hard to hit.

Shield Barrage -> Shield Barrage -> Wallop: Stagger into knockdown.

Shield Barrage -> Shield Barrage -> Spring Attack: Stagger into damage + chance to attack speed slow.

Shield Bash -> Spring Attack: Stun into damage + chance to proc attack speed slow.

Spring Attack -> Wallop: Used as an ending to combos. Damage into KD.

Debilitate -> Wallop: Healing debuff into knockdown. Also used as an ending.

Wallop -> Menacing Wave: Useful follow up after a KD if you want to CC by slowing attack speed.

Wallop -> Lockdown Blow: Good tool to keep your target slowed for a little longer after he gets up.

Wallop -> Spring attack: Decent with a high attack speed if you want to deal damage or need to proc attack speed slow on target.

Wallop -> Leash / Giga leash: Stun on retaliate. Needs abit of practice and is unexpected. It doesn’t waste your target’s retaliate though.

Charge Lunge -> Block -> Shield Barrage: Instant mobility into stagger.

Charge Lunge -> Block -> Lockdown Blow: Good to slow a target from far away.

Charge Lunge -> Wallop: Useful to catch a far away target into knockdown. 

Lockdown Blow -> Block -> Shield Barrage x2 / Bskip -> Spring Attack: Good “Kaia Shield” breaker combo without the use of Shield Bash. Situational.

Leash -> Master Leash: Stun into more stun. Good if you are waiting for cooldowns, good to prolong a longer stun for your team member to deal damage.

Leash / Master Leash -> Shield Bash: Can be a good opener. Be careful with stun duration here. ¼ of your Leash stuns won’t last long enough to use Shield Bash as a follow up.

Leash / Master Leash -> Lockdown Blow: Stun into slow to control your target easier or to waste its escapes.

Leash -> CASkip: Stun into a timed stagger. Can be good to use if you have cooldown on other staggers or just don’t want to waste them.

Leash / Master Leash -> Shield Barrage: Stun into a timed stagger, good way to start a combo or to just control someone. Harder to perform than the one above, since 1st Barrage hits only once.

Leash / Master Leash -> Giga leash: The basic way to get a controlled and aimed Giga Leash off, very predictable though.

Giga Leash -> Shield Bash: The most basic and common way to follow up a Giga Leash.

Giga Leash -> Bskip -> Shield Bash: Is a way to delay your Shield Bash, in case you are afraid your Shield Bash will be cleansed instantly afterwards. Also a way to prolong the CC.

Giga Leash -> Bskip -> Wallop: Good to use if you have Shield Bash cooldown.

Giga Leash -> Debilitate -> Wallop: Same as above. This does put a healing debuff though.

Longer Combos built by the basic starter tools/combos

Shield Bash -> Spring Attack -> Debilitate -> Wallop: Most common and generic combo. Puts a healing debuff on your target.

Shield Bash -> Bskip -> Spring Attack -> Wallop: Can deal more damage than other Shield Bash combos. Is harder to perform due to Bskip and stun duration. The damage depends on how many Spring Attack ticks you can get off with the stun duration.

(Gif below. If this was a good combo choice in this situation can be discussed. This gif is only to demonstrate the combo)

CASkip -> Bskip -> Wallop:

More advanced combos:

(Animation cancel, lancer mechanisms, combos)

1. Lancer in duel *UNFINISHED*

I won’t and can’t go into depth in this section because I can’t tell you doing this or that will always work against certain classes because well, it’s a mindgame in the end since it’s pvp. I won’t use many gifs in this section. I will go over a few things to keep in mind of as well as “things to look out for”.

The importance of being “good” in 1vs1 scenarios is really high when playing lancer. In the current meta people do focus lancers in both arena and fraywind. That means if you suck in 1vs1, you will probably also have a hard time pvping overall. I don’t believe in the “Giga leash and win” because that was 2013 meta. Now people are way more experienced and being good in duels and even 2v1 scenarios will net you insane strenght.

Lancer

In a lancer vs lancer setup you don’t need a lot of mechanism knowledge to win. However there are some mechanisms and spells you need to do very much and execute properly in order to win. 

One of these things is taking stagger control. You will need to be the one to stagger, not be staggered. You need to be the one who blocks staggers. Because yes, lancer vs lancer is pretty much only about who “out staggers” the other. This means knowing the stagger timing is crucial. As mentioned above, when you know your stagger timing on your Shield Barrages you are already a strong lancer.

Things to look out for

Shield Barrage is your main stagger ability that can lead to almost anything. In this setup you want to be the one to hit the stagger of course, which comes down to when, where and how you use it. You need to know how far your Shield Barrage hits. You need to know what angle and when you block to successfully block it. Melee classes will try to go around your block, lancers no exception. Learn how to block Shield barrage and countering Shield Barrage becomes so much easier. Shield barrage is something that is very, very hard to explain. You need to practice over and over again. If I would try explaining Shield Barrage it would make 1 page on its own, maybe I will give my perspective of if but not for now.

CASkip can be very unpredictable when it does happen. But then again, you are also a lancer and you should know that whatever you wish upon your enemy, he wishes upon you… So to speak. If you happen to successfully hit a CASkip, you are in control already. Many lancers do use CAskip backwards, meaning they use Skate mechanism one (Quick dash) backwards and then CA. So it goes Dash backwards -> CA. This move is a really good counter to Shield Barrages. Same goes for CAskipping to the side. Keep your eyes open when they skate like that.

Leash can be used anytime the enemy lancer is free, which you need to watch out for. Not just to block the stun but the potential attack speed slow that comes with it. Many lancers usually use leash when you are 10-15m away from each other. Avoiding a leash can also be done by walking unpredictable and/or take sharp turns, taking advantage of the fact that you need to aim leash. Take in consideration that using leash or giga leash on retaliate is common. If you successfully blocked a leash, you can counter leash him since he is in an animation lock.

Giga Leash is very instant and is useful to prolong stuns/combos or interrupt enemies when you don’t have a lot of time to cast anything. This spell is really hard to block, but easier to avoid by walking unpredictable.

Charge lunge can be used as an escape tool when you are slowed, it can be used as a tool to not let the enemy breath and it can be used as an angle changer. When you are attack speed slowed, low on resolve or need a certain spell off CD is usually when you would want to use it as an escape tool in a lancer vs lancer duel. As an offensive tool you would want to use it if the enemy lancer uses it as a defensive tool. Switching angle with Charge lunge can be done by tapping it and animation cancel it instantly after. This gives you a really quick position change/dash.

Spring Attack will most likely be the follow up after Shield Barrage staggers if your Shield Bash and Wallop is on cooldown. It is also used when you know the enemy can’t escape during the attack to well, deal damage. Spring Attack comes with a glyph that reduces attack speed by 30% for 7 seconds which is huge. If you get this debuff on you, you suffer a lot more animation lock and your attacks are also much slower. When you have this debuff on you the best options would be to 

1. Get some space by using Charge lunge and/or backstep.
2. Block attacks since block isn’t affected much by attack speed. 
3. Counter stagger and then get some space. 
4. Use Adrenaline Rush if you have it up to even up your attack speed loss.

The actions above should probably also be done if you were to get the Leash attack speed slow debuff on you. This Leash attack speed slow debuff only lasts for 4 seconds though.

Rallying Cry gives you room to breath from staggers. However you are still not immune to stuns. If your enemy casts this you can still stun him with bash or leashes. Leashing him isn’t recommended though because of how short the stun is at the moment which can backfire on you if your leash stun is really short. You can either use rallying cry yourself if you have it up or kite like a bitch.

Iron Will is a shield which absorbs around xxxxx damage. If you see your enemy using this you should wait it out if you can, otherwise you should just ignore it. If you wait it out, 10 seconds (15 if glyphed), you will deal damage to him instead of Iron Will, however waiting it out can be hard because when he uses it, he probably wants to fight and the duration is fairly long. If you want to wait it out make him play passive by trying to “out stagger” him. This isn’t a big “look out for” since this is just something to keep in mind. It’s also worth mentioning, using Iron Will and Second Wind will also cause a small animation lock leaving you vulnerable. Which leads to when your enemy is recovering there is a big chance he will use either of these two spells giving you the advantage.

Lockdown Blow isn’t as powerful against lancers as against other classes. The thing to look out for here though is when you use it, you suffer a decent long animation lock which can be punished very easy. If you use this, the enemy can easy Leash/stagger/Shield Bash you. Using Lockdown Blow after Wallop in lancer vs lancer is probably the best option. Same goes for if he uses this you can punish him by using Leash or Barrages. Lockdown blow also has a fast position change which can be used to reangle or readjust.

Warrior *not updated*

In my opinion warriors are the hardest to fight as a lancer. As a lancer you need decent amount of mechanism control as well as the other knowledge we have already talked about which I assume you know. Warriors are strong against lancers because you can’t block warrior Combo Attack staggers. By saying warriors are hardest for lancer is not the same as saying lancers are bad vs warrior, it’s just harder in comparison to other classes. 

A warrior has two ways to deal “safe” damage, which are Cascade and Counter. Eating either of those spells will guarantee that you will take a lot of damage. Staggers are often an opener to combos, as you may have noticed by now. So warriors want to stagger you into either of these spells. Keep in mind Cascade can be used on stunned targets, which means warriors can open up into a Cascade combo with different tools.

In this setup, your damage comes from your Wallop and mostly your Bash combos. Warrior vs lancer is pretty much who gets these keys spells in the most, which leads to if you get staggered more than the warrior, you will eat more combos than him. So once again, it’s all about the staggers. Below I will explain how I fight warriors in Assault Stance, since personally I can’t beat a Defense Stance warrior.

Most common scenario

As you approach each other you will have to keep in mind he can use Backstab at any moment in the 10m radius. He most likely won’t because he wants open up the Backstab combo with a stagger since if he fails the backstab, nothing good will happen for him. As you gets closer into Barrage range keep in mind that his Combative Strike has a further range than Barrage. Barrage hits wider range though.

You are now in Combative Strike range and Barrage range and you will wait for his action. Because yes if you were to miss your Barrage you will get punished for it. His action at this moment will most likely be Combative Strike or Roll on top of you. Why he rolls on top of you is because he wants to stagger you. You can’t block his Combo Attack stagger when he is on top of you which leaves you with a few options. Counter him when he lands or backstep and play defensively.

You will also figure out soon enough that you don’t always have to avoid his stagger if he already wasted his key stuns. Then he can’t deal that much damage, he just wants to stagger you to control you and reduce your chance of hitting a combo.

It’s a lot of waiting for his mistake so you can punish it. If he does the same then you have to make sure he takes your CCs first. Once one of your stagger hits you will have to hit either Wallop or Bash from behind. Using spring attack after Barrage against warriors will most likely only be 2-3 hits of Spring Attack and if you aren’t careful they can counter you if you don’t animation cancel in time.

Things to look out for

There are tons of things you should look out for but I won’t mention all of them.

Evasive roll into Combo Attack is the most aggressive and effective way to guarantee the warrior a stagger unless you Backstep or counter him in some way. By counter him I mean if you use Bash or Shield Barrage before his Combo Attack hits you. This is a lot harder to do than Backstepping out of it because his Combo Attack is fast and you will have to know exactly when he has landed. If you Backstep it and he does it again, you have no choice than to counter it with staggers or stuns.

Combative Strike is his secondary stagger. This spell hits further than your Barrage, hence why it’s harder to initiate the stagger since his has further range. This is where CASkips are effective. If you feel like he will open up with Combative Strike instead of the roll into Combo Attack, you can time a CASkip so your stagger hits before his stagger. Be careful with it since CASkip only hits in front of you.

Backstab is the most common tool to open up a Cascade from behind and is also the safest damage in game. This spell has 11m – 9m range depending on how you are turned. If you are turned to him the range is 9m and if you are turned away from him it’s 11m. Backstab is instant but can be blocked. This means every second his Backstab is up you are vulnerable if he is free. There isn’t any way to prevent him from casting it other than constantly having him CCed.

Counter is a very strong tool of warriors. Once they take damage they get a buff for 5 seconds which allows them to use Counter. Keep in mind if he gets the buff and you hit him again, the buff timer for him won’t refresh. Counter has enough duration for him to deal decent amount of damage. If you don’t give him this Counter buff he can’t use it, means if you eat a stagger when he doesn’t have the buff. His other option to deal safe damage is Backstab. So if he has Backstab on cooldown and you never gave him a Counter buff when he staggers you, he most likely will use another spell after the stagger which could be Knockdowns or Shout. Shout is another way to open up a Cascade combo. It’s a range 10m radius AoE stun. It isn’t as safe damage since opening with Shout doesn’t guarantee him that he will hit in the back.

Slayer *UNFINISHED*

Are easier to face than warriors because they can’t hit through block as effective as warriors can. Slayers hit high but a fewer times, compared to warriors you can’t take as many hits against slayers. Stagger immunity is also something that makes it harder to target and control the slayer compared to non-stagger immune classes. Slayers play with knockdowns combos and stuns. They also have Tenacity which is a stun resist buff for 5 seconds, which you will have to keep track of. All in all slayers aren’t a class you can go head on with since their anti CC abilities will force you to give them a short break.

Slayers have many ways to start a fight.

Things to look out for

Combo Attacks through block can happen against slayers. If you are very close to each other and he does Combo Attack, it’s most likely it will hit through your block. It is a lot harder for slayers to come close to you though because they are very vulnerable there as well. One way slayers can open up a Combo Attack through block is by using headlong rush towards you and then stagger you. Since Headlong rush gives them a 100% attack speed boost to their next attack the Combo Attack is hard to avoid if you aren’t prepared when you see him charge.

Fury Strike is a medium medium range/wide stagger.

Eviscerate/Jaw Breaker, the slayer’s newest spell with the 65 update. This spell is really fast and has a range of 10m (Minimal race dependant) staggers or knockdowns, depending on how the spell is used. Jaw Breaker is a link spell, when used after another spell, knockdowns. If it’s used first/on its own, it staggers.

Backhand strike is a 360 degree melee stun.

Berserker Ahura’s POV

Berserkers are somewhat hard to deal with as a lancer if the berserker knows what s/he is doing. They have the strongest CC, which is knockdown, that is mostly available in a short amount of cooldown. Their staggers are also strong and zerkers, in my opinion, is also the best peeler in-game because of knockdowns, fear, and staggers. Their stagger immunity is what gives them a great chance of fighting lancers and warriors. (jitsua halp me add stuff im bad at explaining) halp me ffs

Things to look out for

Combo Attacks of a zerker can hit through your block at some weird angle. And like in lancer versus lancer guide, zerkers would most likely counter your shield barrage.

Mocking Shout is what makes a lancer useless. This skill has 30s cooldown and gives them immunity on knockdowns, staggers, and slow for 12s. Berserkers are weak if they are really slow, hence they have mocking shout and dash to counter their weakness. “Just stun or run like a faggot if they do this shit.” – LazyJitsua2014

Fiery Rage makes the berserker really squishy. It decreases the berserker’s endurance by 40%. This is a good time to deal a huge amount of damage as soon as possible.

Tenacity makes them immune to stuns for 5s and also gives them mana. Mostly this will be used if the zerker predicts they are going to get stunned. Since it’s a mindgame, there really is no telling when the zerker will use this to protect himself from leash since a berserker can block leashes as well.

Evasive Smash is the berserker’s strongest damage output overall. It is also their only iframe. They would normally rely on evasive smash if they have mocking shout because evasive smash is easy to stagger. If they don’t have mocking shout, after the iframe, you can stagger it to delay the 5s release availability of the evasive smash and cancel their fully charged burst.

Archer Ahura’s POV
Archers are the easiest shittiest to fight in 1v1 because they do not have tenacity *yet* which makes them an easy leash target. They also have a total of 3 staggers so if they wasted it, you know what you can do against them already. They also have 1 iframe, and a breakaway bolt that is not really an iframe, does not slow you (if unglyphed ofcourse). And like the mechanics on top against blocking traps, it gives the advantage on the lancer in this match.

Things to look out for

Final Salvo/Rapid Fire/Radiant Arrow (second charge) is what you have to watch out for because this is mostly their opening for a close quarter which can be combo’d to a rain of arrows cheese asdjhkfasf combo if they executed it smoothly.

Restraining Arrow/Web Arrow makes kiting easier for archers. Just block it, it doesn’t really deal damage to be saved for resolve.

Wasting your resolve by blocking fully charged skills can be your downfall as well. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice your HP to save more resolve because without resolve, you can’t use backstep or block (skating too). So instead, you can use onslaught to not get knocked-down and receive 50% less damage instead of just blocking it.

Sorcerer (Jitsua will cover this) no i wont wtf. just do it omg stfu and do it

Reaper (fok reapers there’s really no pattern of what they’re going to do) Na man just fuck reapers yo, they are no human. nigr theyre elins. lol no they are inhjuman faggitive shitheads. k ill main reaper now need someone to make reaper guide lel. NA just fcuk everything revolging this cancerous shit class.

Priest (Jitsua will cover this)

Mystic (Jitsua will covert his) fyck off

(Lancer, warrior, slayer, zerker, archer, sorcerer, gunner, reaper, priest, mystic)

1.  Lancer in Champions’ Skyring – Arena 3v3 *UNFINISHED*

I plan to go over compositions and positioning in arena. I can’t and won’t go over every aspect within 3vs3 arena. Instead I will go over the different classes / compositions you as a lancer can play and how to execute these. Of course all these thoughts are from my own perspective and gameplay. I have played lancer and priest in separate seasons and reached maximum around 1600 rating as priest and around 1700 rating as lancer. These seasons weren’t the most active in my region but I believe I have enough experience to talk about it on a decent level. I will try to include some of my own gameplay videos as well.

Discussions will probably be made here since every lancer doesn’t play like me, obviously. I will welcome your thoughts and guidance if you feel like you can explain this better or overall, is a better player than me and would like to clear things up. Since I don’t want people to get a view on lancers from one perspective, it would be kind if more lancers out there who has more experience than me could help out here in order to help everyone improve.

Compositions

I choose to go over the playstyle with each healer class, lancer + <Healer Class>. After explaining one composition I will explain how the gameplay will change when you change healer class. Every composition will also have to be played differently depending on what composition you are up against. I will only talk about your own team composition and how to play it.

Lancer  warrior priest

This combo was “back then” a very strong combo. Don’t get me wrong, it is a strong combo at the moment too but in comparison it has been stronger. Warriors are a healer-pressuring machine and you are a mad dog. Both of you are independent dps classes with alot of stagger abilities and stuns. Neither of these classes have a real high burst as other dps classes do. They deal a lot of damage “over time” or should I say, they have a lot of stable damage. But what makes this strong is that both you and the warrior can shutdown classes good. Warriors shines on healers though since they have more safe damage than lancers do as well as easier healing debuffs.

Doing this composition can be done in two ways, preferably.

One way is to put warrior on healer and lancer on any dps and then switch when you see a good opportunity. This might sounds “easy” but its very hard to execute since switching in tera is a hard thing. I know lancers who had asked around if XXX reason is a good opportunity to switch. TERA is a very situational game and it all comes down to this particular moment. So lets say your warrior has their healer on 40% after his Cascade combo and you choose to switch. I would say that is a decent time to switch but it differs from game to game. 

The other way to play this composition is to double up on the enemy healer. This might sound stupid because it can put the game into a “healer-race”. This way of playing all comes down to your warrior and Energy Stars. Energy stars gives 43 power and 13 attack speed for 25 seconds (ES glyphs included) which will grant your warrior a lot more damage. It will of course also give you more damage but since warrior damage is more safe damage, a warrior on ES is more dangerous. If your team has ES the pressure will be on your side and the enemy team has to play defensive. You need the pressure on your side the whole game for you to be able to win this way. Lancer and warrior don’t have that much burst damage compared to other comps.

With mystic

I won’t repeat myself so pretty much same as above except that you need more teamwork. Mystic and priest have different tools for the same goal. In this comp it’s important to know that you will trade ES for a fair amount of CC which can pay off depending on your teamwork. It is also harder to focus/kill a mystic than a priest as some classes.

One of my own gameplays with this composition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QYagN7DVZQ

Lancer PoV. The gameplay is pretty terrible though.

Lancer  zerker priest

This can be a hard comp to pull of properly because at the moment zerkers can be both independent and dependant damage dealers (DD). An independant DD sets up things for the dependant DD in order to do more burst damage. An example is the lancers’ Giga leash plus an aoe attack from archers and sorcs. Lancers are independent DDs but in some cases like this case here, they can also be dependant. Which is why this comp can be hard to pull of, however this comp is very rewarding and is sometimes even considered overpowered. This is one of my most favorite comps but I haven’t gotten to play it alot. I will only go over the way I played this comp, if anyone wants to cover this in more details, please pm me.

Me and my zerker teammate played me as the dependant DD and him as independent. The reason is because his play style revolves around knockdown chains and almost no Evasive Smash whatsoever. We had me switching to enemy healer whenever the healer comes too close and him switching to help me if there was a good opportunity. Basically I let him combo any of them and I was there to peel (Play defensively, help a teammate get free cast time) and assist with my knockdown. My biggest “duty” was to switch to healer whenever there was a good moment to, staggering or stunning the priest. This works because zerker right now has an insane amount of damage if played properly, as well as a very strong CC. There were also moments where my zerker teammate switched to the enemy healer because there was a good moment to do so, then I depend on him by either assist in damage and KD or help him deal his damage by peeling him off. 

With mystic

What I would say about this comp is that you trade your defensive abilities of the priest for a good amount of CCs abilities. As a mystic you can do much more things when your teammate zerker KDs for you compared to what a priest can do with a KD. I can’t say much more than the above about this composition, feel free to fill this in.

My own gameplays with this composition:

Zerker PoV. Not my gameplay. I’m the lancer though.

Priest PoV. Not the best play from my side.

Lancer slayer priest

Lancer sorc priest

My own gameplays with this composition: 

Lancer PoV

Lancer archer priest

(Compositions, positioning)

1. Final Words

Links used and a few additional ones I think are good to check out:

• Mechanism demonstrations after the duels. Skate, Charge lunge on jaunt and Leash on jaunt. 
• Infinite mana exploit/glitch shown by a lancer from NA, 2013.

• Reddit’s explanation of what desync is. 
• A closer look into CASkip.

• Force Strategy Gaming is talking about why MMO combat sucks. It involves a lot of technical issues such as ping issues, queue systems, desyncs and more. This is a video about MMO, not focused on TERA. Benchmark for the discussion around TERA in the same video.
• TeraToday is a community based website and forum. Contains tons of information and is useful overall. For example the glyph calculator used in this guide is taken from TeraToday.

2015-08-02 I will not finish this guide because I lost interest in the TERA community. Me being lazy and doing other stuff are also to blame. Of course if someone would ask me to or help me to finish it etc. I would probably consider it. However as I  already said I quitted playing lancer when vm4 patch hit. If I would feel like writing a book again I would do that about the Priest class. 

2016-05-22 *In progress* Right now I am playing priest in pvp and keeping my lancer as a pve ghileglade character because I quit lancer. Lancer was very tiring to me aswell as it was seriously “too hard” for me in the long run. Even though I do see myself as a “what is considered” good lancer, I enjoy priest more. The pvp I did with the 65 patch on lancer was horrible, many things in the duel section needs update and whatnot, or I might not even be able to give an accurate enough picture of “how to 1v1”. Same goes for the arena section. What stays the same though is the combo section which to my realization was so much fucking work I left it for… Later. The mindset of the lancer class is still there, but I can’t make the decisions neither keeping my mechanical level up as I “used to” half a year ago. So right now I’m just trying to fix an old project and yeah, I might make a priest guide since friends ask me for advice. Then again this community sucks and what I ever got from writing this is more flame than support. Good thing I don’t give a fuck about that, I give a fuck about people wanting to play this fucking game. 

If you want to contact me, information is down below:

TERA EU KILLIAN:

IGN: Yadori – Priest

TERA NA MOUNT TYRANNAS:

IGN: Toffie – Sorc

(My words and opinions (again), Summary, links and description to things worth mentioning, kind of a log.)

Timescape(Yana’s Rift) Guide

=============================

Change log: 

July 4 – Beta release to few people.

July 5 – Initial release date.

July 6 – Tips, suggestions, Q&A, etc from Yosha and Whippy.

           – Q&A at the bottom for those interested.

July 7 – Replaced old image for Yana’s map with Yosha’s (better represented)

           – Adding confirmed mechanics and quote.

           – Working on GIF-free guide due to popular demand.

           – Added a supplementary video for tile rotation.

           – Added the missing leash attack pattern on Yana.

July 8 – Major changes regarding HM mechanics. Thanks to narium and Whippy.

July 10- Due to the guide being designed for the first rendition of Timescape and not the post-buff one ,which is the version NA is on, there are inconsistencies present, so we started work on a revamped version of this guide to address all of the inconsistencies and add clarity to some of the mechanics.

July 15- Revamped version temporarily postponed. 

NOTICE:

Due to popular demand, I’ve made a GIF-free version. It still contains some pics though.

Please check out the TeraToday posts and Reddit posts for extra info that may not be up here! It might help since I simply can’t quote every single thing into this guide.

I’m sure the Tile rotation methods for Yana/Valona is quite confusing, so I will try to revamp it later;; — We’ve put up the vid for this but if it doesn’t help, then I have to make a better/shorter version. All of these texts might be too hard to understand at once.

Again — People have been giving feedback regarding confusion and difficulty. I’m sure it’s hard at first, but you just have to get used to the mechanics. I’ve ran it twice and I had great time with the party clearing it. (one took ~55 min, the other took ~40 min oh well.) It’s a fun dungeon, really.

As for some stuff, such as not being able to stun spheres, I’m not 100% sure if this is glitch that is now fixed in KTERA and EME went ahead and applied fix for it. I’m saying this because Yana is getting post-fix buffs instead of pre-fix. 

(KTERA: Before Feb. 12th patch, Yana’s buffs were 5% attack and defense. 

                 After Feb. 12th patch, Yana’s buffs were increased to 10% attack and 25% defense)

============================================

Introduction

============================================

Just to make everything clear first, I’m not the original author of this guide (so the pics and gifs are not mine either, but it’s from the KTERA inven forum post.). I’m simply translating a Korean guide for those who are interested in getting ahead with Timescape(Valona’s Rift).

I’ve also got some feedback where people said this guide is already intimidating, but the dungeon itself is much easier than Sky Cruiser Endeavor where it had so many wipe mechanics (or possible ways to wipe) compared to TimeScape. Both dungeons require teamwork and coordination but Sky Cruiser was literally a burning hell compared to Timescape (according to majority of KTERA community). To note a comparison, SCHM was cleared in a week while Timescape HM was cleared within 1 hour of release. It could be the gears, but I’m not too sure since there were no info about that. 

 According to KTERA forums (inven):

For further info about gear, refer to the chart from this site.

The original guide is found here:  (Warning: Korean)

Also, you may use this video: (Normal Mode on Reaper PoV)

I’ve found this video excellent since most of the mechanics shown in the guide are covered in that video alone.

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Alternate Video that was suggested by Whippy @TeraToday forums

I really like this video for multiple reasons (Korean conversation so it’s kinda noisy)

1. For the 3 spheres, it gives you an idea of the amount of DMG to heal if you hit the ball with the shield (0:38). Also, the video is going slow mo in the beginning, so you can see all the AoE attacks performed on the players (1:10). Thus confirming that there doesn’t seem to be any stun/sleep or DoT applied, simply a flat damage of 50k (gunner had 112k HP then 62k).

2. For Hemera, we can see a triple electric ball (non consecutive but like a cone- 3:30), a consecutive ball (4:22), back tail – single attack (similar to manaya – 4:26) as well as Eremes -> failed aoe iframe (5:00 – 60k dmg), debuff applied on all party (5:00 also) and dps stunned (5:06 gunner), stunned + fire cone (13:06).

3. Tempus : Lancer cycle tanking to avoid breath aoe (20:45), power of lighting (21:47 – 35k hit for circle, 45k hit for proc + curse–> seem to drain MP (23:35) but NOT HP).

4. Yana : Party taking the damage to switch middle crack (29:24 and 32:43), clearly shows that the cubes are moving at multiple times in the video, green  glowing wall in the back (31:15), purple wall but green cube glowing -> colors of cube means nothing (32:30), leash (35:20).

(I will go over and fix things based on the stuff pointed out above soon.)

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There can be a lot of loss in translation, as well as mistakes since we were working on this guide based on Korean guide, forum posts(inven), and videos. Sadly, Korean guide seemed to assume you’ve ran this dungeon already so it did not provide detailed information such as debuffs and buffs– which took us quite a while to notice while we were working on this guide.

While reading you will see some Korean text after a quote in parenthesis “like this” (이렇게) . This is because the quotation is only a translation from Korean in parenthesis. It may be different in NA and it will be fixed when we confirm the official English version.

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3 Sphere Room

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The first room in the dungeon is a circular room with 3 spheres. The spheres are laid out in a triangular pattern in the room. To proceed, you need to break all of them.  

Observe the picture below carefully.

Notice that the sphere on the right does not have a shield. 

One of the three spheres will not have a shield on,  it seems obvious that you would want to attack that one first. However, once it reach a certain amount of HP, mobs will be summoned. Take precaution as these mobs can do a significant amount of damage; however, they are very easy to stun and knockdown. It is highly suggested that you prioritize clearing minions first before proceeding to attack the sphere.

If you attack the one with shield, it will reflect 10,000 flat damage each hit. In return though, mobs will not summon. You may utilize this to use heavy hitting abilities(thunderstrike/arcane barrage/radiant arrow, etc) on these protected spheres as the healer continually heals the members hitting the ball.  

Once you begin to attack the sphere, it will inflict curse on party. It’s either ring explosion, circle explosion, stun/sleep on party, or Damage over Time. It seems to be random.

For the Ring or Circle explosion, you have to avoid the orange area. It takes one member in the party as center so watch out! Circle explosion is a bit different since the person who have it will have to move away from the party and iframe to avoid damage. For i-frame timing, you have to count the number of blinks of the circle/ring indicator. It will blink 4 times and BOOM on 5th, so iframe when there should be 5th blink. It doesn’t hurt too much, but if mobs are being a problem, it’ll be annoying.

Stun/Sleep ticks off 5 seconds (you can see it as debuff) so you need to be cleansed before it reaches 0. DoT can be cleansed.

Sometimes these “curses” from spheres can appear more than once, so take precaution.

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In hard mode, it’s clear that the spheres have more HP, and the mobs hurt a lot more. Only thing I can’t really confirm is whether the sphere’s curses occur at a faster rate.

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After you break all three, you will follow a path that eventually leads to something like this:

It’s hard to see—or not really visible at all—but from this point of view, there are 4 spheres: one on each corner located top, left, right, and bottom. You can look at the mini-map if that is easier for you: SE (top), NE (left), SW (right), NW (bottom).

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First Boss: Hemera

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In KTERA it is also known as White Dragon.  

Observe the GIF below:

You should have noticed blue shield around it. The shield will reflect 10,000 flat damage every hit just like the spheres earlier. As I stated above, there are also 4 spheres in each corner. These are crucial objects needed to clear this boss—DO NOT DESTROY THEM. As you can see, there is quite a bit of distance between the sphere and the dragon to make sure DPS with some ranged abilities won’t hit it..

You must pull the boss toward one of these spheres first to wear off the protective shield that the boss has. So why are there 4 spheres? This seems easy enough like dealing with pylons and Perimos. These sphere have 2 effects: firstly it wears off the shield on the boss, but also puts traps on player(s). You will see these traps below. The sphere have a limited amount of hp and pulling the boss to the spheres will drain the sphere’s hp. If the hp bar falls too low, the sphere will explode and create a white puddle that deals ~10,000(?) damage per tick, however you can move the boss to a different sphere and the hp bar will regenerate over time. The white puddles will disappear when spheres are fully recovered.

Quote from Whippy:

How to tell when the ball skill is coming? The ball will spin on itself before triggering the ability.

TANKS: Best advice is to move to new sphere when you see its HP is lower than ~35%. It just exploded at ~25% on my recent run.

======== Left (NE) Sphere: Ring ========

The GIF shows two different attack patterns that are independent. The explosion is triggered by the spheres while the dragon attacks with tail swipe (see below). This “coincidence’ is quite common for this boss so be careful. When the boss’s shield is worn off by this one, there will be a ring shaped explosion. On the person with highest aggro as a center, there will be an orange ring pattern blinking 4 times and explode. I’m not sure if there is a set amount of time before another explosion, but it occurs periodically as long as you are near that sphere. Tanks and close-range DPS may be safe, but ranged DPS and Healers must take precaution. Healers should avoid it as soon as possible but ranged DPS could focus on dealing more damage and dodge. To dodge this, you can count the number of blinks 4 times and iframe when there should be the 5th blink. Otherwise, you can just play safe and walk out beforehand; it is up to you to decide whether you will risk and deal as much damage as you can or play safe.  

======== Right (SW) Sphere: Circle ========

When the boss’s shield is worn off by this one, there will be a circular explosion. Similar to ring , this one also takes the person with most aggro as center and will explode on the place of 5th blink. Conversely, this one has arrows telling you to get out and the person with the aggro doesn’t have a safe spot to stand on—you have to iframe (not sure if it can be blocked though, but in videos so far, tanks tend to just receive damage).   

======== The Remaining Two Spheres ========

I’ve ran 2 times and literally acted like a scrub walking around derping. 

On my runs, I had to following info, but some feedbacks said otherwise, some saying random… 

Top ?(SE?) Sleep/Stun: This is a 5 second debuff that will tick down, if it is not cleansed in time any player who still has the debuff will be slept/stunned. Again, cleanse BEFORE the 5 second debuff ticks off. The party member will not be cleansed out while being stunned or slept. 

Bottom ?(NW?) Damage over Time: A percentage based debuff that will afflict the entire party, healer should try to cleanse this as soon as possible.

Do not confuse these explosion from the boss’s actual attacks; these explosions are inflicted upon the person with the highest aggro BY THE SPHERES (the sleep/stun and DoT affect all party members).  

The spheres are critical to the clearing of the first boss, so make sure to keep them alive.

Now, we look at the dragon’s attack patterns:

======== Tail swipe ========

The dragon will swipe its tail twice. Upon successful impact, this will inflict 30,000~40,000 damage.

======== Electric Ball ========

The dragon’s mouth will charge up and shoot a ball toward a random target. This seems to target a random player that is farther away from the dragon so ranged DPS and Healers must be careful. The GIF only shows single shot pattern, but there is also 3 shots at once. You will see a secondary aggro ring underneath you if he aims at you (purple circle).

======== Dive ========

The dragon will fly up and stomp. This one doesn’t inflict a significant amount of damage, but it’s better if you can avoid it.

======== Breath ========

 “We will meet again” 

The dragon shouts “We will meet again” and tries to fly. Stun him as soon as possible as the GIF shows. If you fail to stun him then he will attack with 3 shots in a line that leaves an AoE on the ground.

======== Vacuum ========

When the dragon reach below 50% HP, it will flap its wings, sucks up air and release a strong wave of wind. Again, the GIF also shows ring explosion, it is purely coincidental– both patterns are independent from another. This is an important attack that you must be aware of. This attack will push you outside while inflicting 70,000 flat damage— which may not kill you in full HP, but if it mixes with the circle or ring explosion as shown above in GIF, it has a high chance of killing you.

A ideal run will put the dragon’s HP down to around 50% on the first sphere. However, if the boss’s HP is more than 60-70% by the time the first sphere is about to be destroyed, the chances of clearing decrease significantly.    

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HARD MODE SPECIFIC

Good reference video

Hemera will be easy to defeat in Hard Mode but of course, majority of attacks hit harder. 

It’s not Hard Mode if it’s that easy. After beating the boss you will have to face a second dragon.

Eremes

It’s also known as the Black Dragon. It has similar patterns to Hemera but the text “The dragon orb will explode soon (?)” will appear and spheres will explode in 5 seconds, leaving lava puddles on the ground that causes DoT (damage not clear yet). 

Quote from Whippy: 

“Note that they(spheres) don’t explode at the same time, there’s a little delay.”

The “We will meet again” pattern cannot be stunned to prevent the dragon from flying up as it seems the dragon has close to 90% stun resistance.

When the dragon lands after shooting fire, avoid the place where it will be landing as it can one-shot you and can deal a significant amount of damage even through a block. (Not sure if VM5 set can withstand it. I’ve only seen a berserker tank attempt to block it with Schisma Axe and Wroth armor, it took ~50k damage and ~70k on crit.)

Quote from Whippy:

“ The 2 moments when you have to cleanse is when he says “The dragon orb begins to cloud your mind” and after EVERY ” We will meet again” “

Healers on this boss will be under a lot of stress due to the spheres doing all the patterns when the spheres explode. You will also see “The dragon orb begins to cloud your mind”. 

There are also cases where Eremes walks away and gain buff similar to Nimistrix. The text “The orb protects and empowers the Dark World Dragon”. Unfortunately I don’t know what kind of buff it gets.

Quote from AboveArcadia @ Tera Reddit:

“if you plague the 4 second buff it will prevent him from getting the 30 second buff.”

Do note that there are cases of skills being cancelled when cleansed from some of the debuffs, not completely sure if this is a glitch. (according to videos we’ve watched)

To deal with the spheres exploding you can either sleep or stun one of the spheres, this will cause the sphere on the opposite side to not explode– allowing your party to have more space. (I’m getting feedback on this is NOT working. I’ll try to confirm this ASAP by surfing on KTERA fanbase/forums… I wish I had access to contact Korean people…) 

Alternatively, you can tank the boss in the center of the room between two lava puddles and try to avoid getting hit by the explosion AoE.

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After defeating the dragon, go to the platform and speak with the dragon to go to the next area, remember to enjoy the view!

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Trash Mobs

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In here you will see a text saying “Timelost souls are needed.”

These mobs are only big in size but will not hurt. 

The tank can gather them up and go to the far right corner (look at the minimap)

so that the DPS can clear them up.   

When the bar reaches to 100 as shown in the GIF, interact with the pillar to clear out the rest of the mobs and move onto the next area. The pathway will automatically spawn stones as you move across, and then you will need to climb a vine to reach the second boss.

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In hard mode, these mobs have more hp and deal more damage.

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Second Boss: Tempus

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This boss should familiar to you as many of the attacks that the boss uses are normal Tempus attacks.

There are various ways to tank the boss for this part, which include: wall tanking, circle tanking, and entrance tanking.

Wall tanking and circle tanking are relatively well known methods, but entrance tanking is a little different.

Entrance tanking is a method where the tank takes the boss near the entrance of the room in order to gain a larger field of view. Some tanks may be familiar with this in past dungeons. An example is in Bathysmal Rise when you fight Fulminar– when you wall tank where the elevator platform is, you can see a wider view instead of being zoomed in, staring at Fulmiar’s legs and crotch.

Anyways, there is an additional mechanic you must be aware of…

======== Balls and Lines ========

On the GIF above you should see a lot of things going on. The battle will not start like that, but it eventually will get to this point. As you can see there are several balls and lines appearing everywhere. It is hard to see but the Kumas statue on the right shines brightly and shoots a line of electricity as soon as a ball hits the statue (you can’t see it because the ball is behind the statue). The time for the line to appear and for the attack to hit is 1.25 seconds after the orange warning line comes up. 

If you get hit by that line or Breath attack from Tempus a ball will be generated. The ball itself will not inflict damage but it will cause the Kumas statues to light up and shoot a line. These balls will fly toward the wall and will start to circle around along the wall. It will eventually activate the statue on the way. 

In other words, balls activate Kumas statues while taking damage from lines or breath will generate balls. This is an endless loop. If this goes out of control, it will cause the party to wipe as the attacks will become unavoidable.

To make it worse, each one of the electric lines inflict 15,000 damage. It may not seem a lot, but when there are several attacks occurring at the same time, chances of dying increase rapidly.

The best thing to do is to iframe as much as you can or attempt to reposition to a safer area, which isn’t very hard until a large number of attacks start going off.

The balls are breakable and can help to make the situation safer, however this can end up taking too much time and if you are producing more balls than breaking, it wouldn’t help at all. The best solution is to burn Tempus while avoiding the lines as much as you can.

======== Jump ========

Tempus will jump and will launch anyone who doesn’t iframe the impact into the air when it lands, as seen like the slayer in the GIF above. It is very important to iframe this because while mid air you can still take damage from the electric lines.

======== Breath ========

Tempus will use a breath attack which hits for 25,000 damage(as seen by the gunner on the right) and leaves a large AoE on the ground, then spawns a ball of lightning which will float around.

TANKS: Don’t block this attack. It will generate balls, and you don’t want to do that. 

Lancer: Shield Barrage or backstep to the side to get away from the electric puddle. 

Warrior: Evasive Roll away from the puddle.

Berserker: Evasive Roll.

======================

Note: Gunner lived because of the passive shield.

======================

The puddle that is left behind will inflict damage and give a debuff similar to Fulminar’s. The Debuff circle will inflict damage to party members within the circle’s range, however the debuff can be cleansed.

======== Shockwave ========

“Fools! I am the storm incarnate”

The Tempus will say something similar to “Fools! I am the storm incarnate”. It will then jump after a delay which causes a shockwave when it lands and deal a fixed 35,000 flat damage. Getting hit also seems to apply a debuff.

After defeating Tempus, you will see a path that will lead to an energy ball. It is a teleporter to take you to next stage. Talk to it and watch yourself ascend to the sky.

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HARD MODE SPECIFIC

Good reference video

On top of blue balls, there are also red ones:

Quote from Whippy: 

“It is possible for a warrior to block the breath without taking any damage. Thus, the need to roll away is not needed. However, sometimes the boss pushes the tank back and if there is AOE behind, it might be an issue. The tank is usually trap in a huge box of aoe all around so a priest pull might be needed.

We noticed that the Boss spawns 2 types of balls

Blue balls : When you get hit by an attack

Red balls : When you get hit by lighting

You can DPS the blue balls to destroy them but you can’t destroy the red balls.

With 3 red balls and 2 blue balls it already got out of control so i suggest being really careful. With the boss breath puddle everywhere and the lighting to dodge, it’s really too much work

you can stun the statue to prevent lighting, simply throw a stun right before the balls hits the statue..however the ball will keep going”

The breath attack will deal around 50,000 damage and take off 10% of your hp per tick if you stand in the debuff. Do not try to do the Entrance Tanking technique as the tank will die. (refer to Whippy’s quote above.) Even wall tanking is quite risky since it is practically the same thing as entrance tanking. 

The lines that shoot out from the kumas statues cannot be iframed and deal 30,000 each– so avoid it beforehand.

On the “Fools! I am the storm incarnate” pattern, it cannot be iframed and will cause lightning bolts to land onto the surrounding (debuff drains your MP overtime).

The tank should aggro the boss and the dps should try to get in as much damage as possible before the boss stands up in order to get free damage in. Tanking in a fixed location, such as wall tanking, can lead to a wipe from the breath attack.

Lancer: Use shield bash to the side in order to move out. If you can’t, use backstep first.

Warrior: Evasive roll to the side.

*no sure what Berserker tank do but they should be using Evasive roll too. Lancer might be able to use backstep > shield barrage too.

Due to the  “Fools! I am the storm incarnate”.  pattern not being iframeable, the healer should:

Priest: have everyone gather so the priest can cleanse then heal.

Mystic: summon thrall of life so you can get cleansed yourself, and focus on cleansing and healing the tank first. The DPS should try to get to a mote or wait on a cleanse,

When the lightning pattern ends the lines will start shooting around the room so avoid them as best as possible.

If there are too many balls, the DPS should turn their focus to clearing them out.

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Final Boss: Yana

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There are no mob room to deal with before Yana, but this boss has several mechanics to be aware of..

========Juggle ========

In the GIF above, the Lancer charges at Yana and it starts to juggle its dice. This can be distinguished as Yana twirls before he starts the attack. This can kill you very quickly so DPS should stay back and wait until it finishes before starting to attack. This pattern isn’t exclusive to the first encounter so watch out for this later on.

If you have observed the GIF above, you will also see there’s a crack behind Yana on the left side. As soon as the tank approach Yana, the glyphed rings on the floor begin to rotate. The cracks must be aligned to avoid a wipe mechanic.

To match these cracks, you need to find a shining wall and align the crack toward it. There are 3 walls: Devil, Goddess, and Sun— each one will shine in purple, green, and red respectively. There are also cubes floating around in the map. They just seem to glow and rotate around the map but I’m not sure why they are there.

Throughout the whole dungeon, you will be matching these cracks up, you have a total of 3 attempts or else Yana will perform a wipe mechanic. Everyone in the party will receive a buff when the crack is aligned in time, but if the party fails to do so, Yana will receive 10% Attack and 25% Defense buff on each failure. On 3rd failure, it is a guaranteed wipe.

(KTERA: Before Feb. 12th patch, Yana’s buffs were 5% attack and defense. 

                 After Feb. 12th patch, Yana’s buffs were increased to 10% attack and 25% defense)

For the Party buffs: 

Sun: Recover 3% HP per 5sec 

Devil: Recover 100% MP every 15 sec

Goddess: Increase Defense by 5% 

For the strategy, your party will have to align the glyph rings toward the glowing walls every time. Because this require teamwork, it is not as easy as it sounds.

Before the patch occurred in KTERA, there was an alternative method by aligning the crack to one of the walls and not move them around. This way, Yana will receive 2 buffs but will not proceed to wipe. It may be more difficult with the buff patch.

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CRACKS STRATEGY

Video explaining the tile rotation mechanic (TSNM) 

OR

If you want to see Lancer POV of the vid above

Consider the map below: (from Yosha’s tumblr)

Yosha’s image explains how to do the tile rotations better than mine in simpler way~!

If you still want to read mine…

On the map there are 3 blue capsules as shown in GIF below:

These blue balls contain gears. Breaking one of these will rotate the outermost tile (Labeled 3 on the reference map) clockwise in the order of Devil > Goddess > Sun. Breaking the other 2 will move it clockwise again, but you should only need to move it once or twice. It is also good to note that breaking the shield on the gears will not place you into combat status.

 “ Open your mind to all in time and space” (Mid-tile rotation mech)

For the middle tile, Yana will shout  “ Open your mind to all in time and space” , then proceed with a ring shaped explosion.

When 2 or more people in the party are hit, the central tile (labeled as 2) will rotate counter-clockwise, in the order of Goddess > Devil > Sun. ( There are some people who say that the direction of the turn is random, however counter-clockwise seems to be more common).

Please note that you need a minimum of 2 people to tank the hit, if only 1 person does they will die immediately (140k damage). With 2 people tanking the damage taken is 70k, with 3 is roughly ~45k. It’s important that you tank the shot only if you have enough hp; otherwise, the damage could kill you/drop your hp enough that another mechanic can kill you.

It is also important to note that the Warrior Shadow, Mystic Thralls, and the Gunner turret all act as bodies to tank the hit even though they are not players. This means that these classes can rotate the tiles 1 time by themselves. (Sorcerer’s Warp Barrier works too; Reaper’s Retribution not confirmed) 

Quoted from Yosha: 

“using that Recall skill on Gunner also works where Gunner takes 0 damage and the 2nd ring will rotate. “ 

For the innermost tile you may notice in the GIF that there is a bar, once it reaches 100, someone will need to interact (default is F) with the area underneath the boss to rotate the inner tile (labeled as 1). At the end of the GIF, you can see that all the cracks in the tiles are aligned into one.  You can see the gauge fill up as the party literally zerg on Yana and gets drained when the inner tile is rotated.

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Quoted from Yosha:

“In case it needs to be noted, in order to fill up that extra gauge that goes from 0 – 100, you need to damage the boss since it doesn’t just regen by itself. “

This video shows Guner solo Normal Mode

“Yeah this video will definitely confirm both things I just mentioned. I like to solo/duo last boss on NM for fun as well. “ GIF from the vid that shows Gunner using Recall:

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Yana also has a mechanic which will mix up the tiles after 10 minutes into the fight, so when he says “Who are you to touch my statue?”, you must stun him as to prevent him from mixing the tiles up. It takes a while to do so you don’t have to panic and use all your stuns preemptively.

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Other Tile Rotation Methods

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These are not viable anymore and this section will be removed at a later date. 

======== Leash ========

“Come closer, little mote”

Yana will choose one person in the party (not necessarily the one with highest aggro) and pull him/her. This isn’t technically “bad” for tanks, but if priests, ranged DPS, or someone who is weak in the party gets leashed, he/she can die from one the mechanics that may follow… So try to iframe/avoid as best as you can if you cannot withstand the attacks below, including the Juggle attack mentioned earlier. 

======== Swipe and Black hole ========

The swipe should be familiar if you’ve done Sky Cruiser, since it is similar to one of Darkans attacks. Thankfully, the attack won’t apply the same burn debuff as Darkan, however it is still good to learn to iframe it.

If you look on the right, there’s a slayer with a red circle that leaves a black hole. When you step on these, you will be sent to one of the gears. You will want to drop this near Yana, but not too close because it may cause other members to get sucked in.  

======== Bomb and Juggle ========

“Come, my beautiful children!” (summons little mobs)

If you look at the GIF you can see there are little mobs that run around the room, they will

target a person with highest aggro and follow them around. Once they get within about 7m of the targeted person, they will stop in place and self destruct after a short period of time. Warriors can use Binding Sword to gather them up.

The juggle can be seen when the boss spins the dice around him, the tell for this is when he spins his body around while rising slightly, the dice will spin rapidly around the boss. This deals a lot of damage if you get hit, so try to dodge it or block.

======== Fire Breath ========

The boss will randomly target a player and breathe a long line of fire. This attack is blockable and the boss will stop moving and struggles to open its chest so you have time to iframe out of it. It is important to know that getting hit will stagger the entire duration, and getting hit by all of it hurts a lot.

======== Cage(wipe pattern) ========

“Who is so bold as to enter my realm” (Summons Cage)

 “Let’s roll this dice to decide your fate, shall we? (Locks Cage )

“My power has been gathering in this realm” (One-shot attack in Cage)

The boss will spin around and say “Who is so bold as to enter my realm”. It is preferable to get out of it as soon as possible.

The next line he says is “Let’s roll this dice to decide your fate, shall we?” If you are still inside the cage when he says this you will be stuck inside. The tank and close ranged DPS may end up stuck inside but you can escape using the black holes mentioned earlier.

The reason to place the black hole within the inner tile is to allow anyone who is stuck inside to escape. After escaping via blackhole, you are immobilized for a bit.

If you are confident in being able to get out in time, you can deal damage until the boss says “My power has been gathering in this realm” and then escape through a black hole. If there is a priest in your party they can pull you out using divine intervention (TSNM only).

Sometimes the boss will perform this mechanic even when there are no black holes on the ground, so you will need to escape as soon as possible if this occurs.

Here is a GIF of the mechanic being performed, avoid standing too close to the edge of the cage as you can still be hit by it if you are around the yellow line. After the wipe mechanic the boss will leash someone if no one is close enough to the him.

======== Clap ========

The boss claps his hands together and sucks in everyone to the center, this attack doesn’t do too much damage, but may place you in a bad position. This attack can be iframed.

======== Dice Smash ========

In the latter part of the GIF you can see that Yana takes the dice and slams it together in front of him and then behind him. Sometimes Yana will not slam the dice behind him after he does the initial hit so keep an eye out. The attack can be blocked and iframed on both parts.

======== Dice Toss ========

In the second part of the GIF you can see Yana take his dice and “toss” it at a the person with the highest aggro, this attack hits 3 times and can be blocked and iframed.

======== Tile Swap ========

“Who are you to touch my statue?”

This mechanic will swap the tiles around if you do not stun the boss in time. The boss will say “Who are you to touch my statue?” and attempt to move them. After he says this use stuns to interrupt him. There is a small amount of time before he moves the tiles so you don’t need to panic if you miss one stun.

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HARD MODE SPECIFIC

Good reference video

Yana in hard has the same attacks as normal mode with some slight differences and a few more skills.

The tile alignment is extremely important as the buffs that Yana will receive can make the fight very hard.

Depending on which mural was glowing Yana will receive one of three buffs.

1. Sun: Yana will get a barrier and the screen will flash periodically, similar to the mirror of light from balder’s temple. This might not seem like a big deal but it can cause you to miss seeing a attack.

Quote from narium @ Tera Reddit

“Yana getting the sun buff is pretty bad too, since that barrier takes a while to break and can prevent you from rotating the inner ring… Apparently dealing damage to Yana’s shield does not count. So if you need to rotate twice you’re pretty much screwed because the shield has some stupid amount of hp…Your screen only flashes once when Yana gets the sun buff. ”

1. Goddess: Yana attacks 30% faster and has 100% increased defense.
2. Devil: This one you do not want to have Yana to have. The entire party receives a debuff which will cause instant death every 10 seconds if it is not cleansed and deals damage every thirty seconds. If this occurs it is recommended to reset if the healer can’t handle it.

The buffs you receive from properly aligning the tiles are the same as normal mode.

For the Party buffs: 

Sun: Recover 3% HP per 5sec 

Devil: Recover 100% MP every 15 sec

Goddess: Increase Defense by 5% 

Breaking all 3 gears to rotate the outer tile will give Yana a buff which grants 20% increased attack and defense, while debuffing the party. This buff can be removed with Plague of Exhaustion or Regression. The healer should cleanse as soon as possible in the party does receive debuffs.

Quote from Whippy:

“The spawn time on the bubble (sphere) is quite slow and sometimes, the 2 walls will make it so you have to break all 3 bubbles (ex: you break 2 for the first wall, and then only 1 bubble is left for the next so you have to break it). When that happens, it is important to notify your healer because when you break the last sphere, a debuff is proc on every player (you must cleanse) and the boss is buffed (you must use regression). This is really important because the debuff killed us a lot and we never knew which attack triggered it.”

Yana has a new attack which is a 3 part explosion attack. Yana will first raise his hands into the air and slam them palm down onto the ground. The explosion start from the center and moves outward to the middle and the outer ring.

The Cage now will silence when leaving it, this can be a problem as Yana may attempt to move the tiles and if everyone is outside and silenced then they cannot stun him. Also, you will NOT be able to use Divine Intervention to pull someone out. It is suggested for the dps to stay in as long as possible before leaving through a black hole. Again, you will also be immobilized for a while after escaping through black hole.

Quote from Whippy:

“The cage is a huge issue in HM. As said in the guide, if you leave too early you can’t do anything for a good 30 seconds, being silenced and not cleansable. The best for BOTH HEALERS and DPS is to stay inside the cage as long as possible. Your DPS needs heals and leaving the cage will make them vulnerable to death. Also, you can be in the cage but dodge the juggle by standing on the side. A lot of times, he does the crack switch mechanic so you need to stun him. BUT ALSO! If you need to take the middle crack and you are outside, you won’t be able to heal yourself and he might pull you right after the cage, causing you to die. You can switch the mid tile while INSIDE the cage by standing on the very tip of it. It’s also a problem when you want to SKIP taking it, but you are silenced thus you can’t i-frame and then you fail to walk in time..making you take 350k damage and die…. ONLY one person can take 1 black hole at a time..This means if 3 players stay inside and leave at the last second, only 1 will go outside safely” 

The mobs which explode increase in number and deal a larger amount of damage, it is suggested that if a warrior in the party to Binding Sword them.

The mid explosion which is required to move the middle tile will inflict 280k damage if you take the hit alone. A minimum of 3 people is required to rotate the tile without dying.

There are multiple ways to get around this, but they are class specific;

1. Sorcerer: Use Warp Barrier to take the hit and rotate alone.
2. Gunner: Use Sentry Tower to take the hit. Also can use Recall 

                            Quoted from Yosha: 

                             “using that Recall skill on Gunner also works where Gunner takes 0 damage  

      and the 2nd ring will rotate. “ 

1. Mystic: Summon thrall.
2. Warrior: Summon a Shadow
3. (Maybe) Reaper: Use Retribution(This will only mitigate the damage, it will not turn the tile if you are alone).

—————————————————————————————————————————-

The dungeon may seem easy but it can be difficult the first few times due to the fatigue.

============================================

Afterwords

============================================

HUGE thanks to Yosha for noting and pointing stuff out!

HUGE thanks to Whippy for finding errors, providing suggestions and HM fix, spending 8+ hours to help out! \o/ 

Special thanks to AboveArcadia and narium for feedback and error fix!

Although majority of these are confirmed through watching KTERA streams, youtube videos, and other pieces of information lying around like inven forum, this guide is not perfect. I will appreciate feedbacks! I know there are a lot of words to read, but that’s because we’re trying to explain what to do based on what we observed. If this is too much reading, I will try to make a shorter version that briefly explain the attack patterns and simple mechanics. 

Please, if you find any typos or wrong info, PM me, Loriri as feedback. I will gladly go over it and fix it. You may also PM questions too! You can also PM Tooru.Akira as well. You can also contact us in-game when we are online (Tempest Reach server).

You can also reach me, Loriri, in-game on Tempest Reach server. If I’m not on, you can always send a letter too.

Also thank you for some people who found me on twitch and followed! O.o 

It was a surprise but it is highly appreciated. Especially big thanks to Bobthemoneythedbr!

Fun fact: 

Tempus: some of you might remember if you’ve played TERA long time ago when you started with the “First Expedition” story (the old prologue) where you are level 20 and you have to find Elleon after a ship wreckage. After finding Ellon and some of the missing expedition members, you fight a Black Kumas– which looks exactly like Tempus. Yeah, not only it seems like it’s just different type of Kumas, it’s actually recycled. Then you fight Karascha and your screen just turns black and fades off to continue to “Second Expedition”.

Q&A

HEMERA

Guide : These are crucial objects needed to clear this boss—DO NOT DESTROY THEM

Question : It would be clever to explain if you can hurt the balls with AoE attacks. Is that why you need to keep a distance between the balls and the dragon?

I’m making sure that no one goes ahead and try to break these spheres. I’ve seen a ton of forum post complaining/flaming people for doing this. It’s because people who are not aware or experienced will literally charge at the balls because they think they’re the same with the 3 sphere room.

Guide : firstly it wears off the shield on the boss, but also puts traps on player(s)

Question : Could you please explain what traps you are talking about? It is not explained in the guide.

The traps are the circle, ring, sleep/stun, and DoT effect that occurs during the boss fight. I called it trap because I wasn’t sure if TERA NA will call it “curse” like KTERA do. (this part you probably have read in Eremes part.)

Guide : When the boss’s shield is worn off by this one, there will be a ring shaped explosion.

Question : Are you saying everytime the ball ticks to remove the shield there is an explosion? How much time does the shield removal lasts?

As long as you are near that sphere which caused Hemera’s shield wear off. Shield removal lasts as long as the sphere can survive–which is why you should never attempt to hit the spheres at all.

Question : When fighting Emeres, if you stand near a certain ball, does that ball gives more chance of proccing it’s special ability? (AKA if the boss is near Ball X, is there a chance that the special skill of Ball X happens more)

As far as I’m aware, no. I’ve watched many videos and streams to confirmed this but it doesn’t seem to be the case. I was also thinking that it had to do with a member of party’s position, but it’s really hard to confirm when everyone is scattered in that limited area. I can’t say for sure but it just doesn’t seem random entirely, but to be on the safer side (to avoid further stress/confusion) I want to leave it as “random”.

Question: I tried to stun one of the sphere and that did not work. Any more specific details over this? When do you have to stun (i did it right before they explode and tried after also), what skill can you use, etc.

For this one, I’ve seen mystic use a skill that throws a ball (? not boomerang heal ball thing) and stun the sphere while the sphere was rotating. I’m not sure how it was done but I’m sure it was when there were no lava on the floor (and then spheres explode creating lava puddles). The timing on this according to KTERA (i tried to scrape info a while ago), it seems like it’s when lava clears and few seconds before lava explode. To make a note on this, they seem to stun either Ring or Circle explosion spheres, but not the other two. It seems like there’s a reason similar to the question you had.

TEMPUS

Question : I am confused as you say if you get hit by any attack from Tempus you will trigger balls, but in the reaper video he often gets hit and no balls are triggered. Also, does the balls bounce? In the video of warrior at 25:35 –> the tank gets hit ONCE and then there is about 5 lightings 

I confirmed that the balls are generated by the breath and it will generate if someone gets it by it. It wasn’t any attack after all.

The balls don’t bounce. As soon as the ball reaches the wall, it starts to spin around along the wall, touching the statue along the way to activate them.

Guide : The lines that shoot out from the kumas statues cannot be iframed and deal 30,000 each.

Question : Meaning you can only dodge them by walking away?

Yea, I’m not clear but 90% sure I’ve seen people just walk away or use mobility skills before the line thingy is fired off (while it’s glowing red).

YANA

Question : When exactly is the wipe mechanic happening? This is unclear. How much time do you have to align the cracks?

Is there only 1 shining wall at a time or multiple. Do you choose which wall to align or you have no choice?

Wipe occurs when your party fails to align the cracks 3 times. It seems like you have less than 10 mins, but I’m not 100% sure. all vids had different time mark. For the murals, only 1 shines, which indicates where you should align the cracks.

Guide : Before the patch occurred in KTERA, there was an alternative method by aligning the crack to one of the walls and not move them around. This way, Yana will receive 2 buffs but will not proceed to wipe. It may be more difficult with the buff patch.

Question : I do not understand how not moving the cracks prevent the wipe. Is the boss only moving the tiles 3 times?

You have 3 chances to align cracks correctly toward a shining mural. Each mural is basically a buff, if you fail, Yana gets buff. Conversely, if you succeed, your party gains buff–which I don’t know what buff it is.

So if you just align the cracks toward Devil and not move it, as well as preventing Yana from shuffling tiles by stunning him, then you should get 1 buff while Yana receives 2. You succeeded 1 out of 3 tries so this saves you from wipe.

Guide : but you should only need to move it once.

Question : why? let’s say its at Devil and i want it at Sun..don’t i need to go through goddess? this is not clear to me.

I meant to say once or twice;; breaking all three means you’re back to square one on that tile basically;;; that’s my mistake.

Guide : When 2 or more people in the party are hit, the central tile (labeled as 2) will rotate counter-clockwise

Question : if it does turn random, can we get another turn before the wipe?

I’m not sure because some KTERA community swears it sometimes rotate clockwise. So I think it might be a glitch where someone gets hit twice on that explosion somehow, rotating the middle tile twice so it seems like it had rotated clockwise. I need to confirm that after running the dungeon.

Guide : When you step on these, you will be sent to one of the gears

Question : does the positionning of the black hole correspond to the gear to which you are sent?

The positioning doesn’t matter at all unless you can some how tell blackhole #1, #2, #3. I’ve seen a black hole drop on one of the gear and someone was sent on top of that black hole near the gear and sent to different gear. It can be either RNG or actually assigned but I’m 100% sure it’s not position related.

Guide : Depending on which mural was glowing Yana will receive one of three buffs.

Question : this is if you fail to allign the cracks right?

Yeah, if you fail, Yana get buff based on that mural. In normal mode, they’re all just some x% attack and x% defense (because idk if they are apply prepatch or post patch of the buff). but in Hard mode, you have to refer to what I’ve indicated for each.

As for the pictures,;;; I literally had no time to do that, and it’s exactly what I wanted to do. Breaking the gears are not related to any of the murals though.

and yes, sometimes you do have to rotate the tiles twice, meaning, it doesn’t just apply to mid-tile– it can happen for outer, or inner. It’s actually common in the videos I’ve watched.

Guide : Video showing the tile mechanic.

Question: why is Tooru.Akira such a scrub at making videos?

Great question, it’s cuz i’m trash :p

-Tooru.Akira

He simply forgot how video making works.

– Loriri

About the Author:

Above all I am min-max gamer. What this means is my satisfaction in gaming all boils down learning how to get the best results with the lowest amount of effort. I strive to play at a level that is within the top 1% of all players. My obsessive desire to be the best requires that I study as much about what I’m doing as I can. When I feel I’ve exhausted every resource I carefully analyze each action and weigh the time spent using said action against the amount of possible damage. I also check each skill, mechanic, and spell function thoroughly to make sure they not only do what they say they do but to see if I can find some hidden or unintended effect(s). I take every claim that is made by players and test them multiple times to ensure that it is true. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for over a decade now so I’ve seen my fair share of just about everything and can usually find mistakes and intricacies quickly. I don’t bandwagon and I don’t believe in biased, class favoritism. I’m only interested in finding the truth and reaching objective conclusions so that I can take what I’m doing to its absolute potential. I understand that there may be resentment for what I have to say, but I should make it clear that I am not biased in any way – I follow the facts, and in this guide I present them.

Defining and Explaining the TERA Archer

The Strengths and Weaknesses

Let’s get into what Archer is, where its strengths and weaknesses lie, and why I feel the way I do about the class both positively and negatively. Archer’s primary weakness is that it does not excel at anything. It is not durable, mobile, easy to play, possess a safe play style, a strong DPS standing (whether single target or AoE), and most importantly, it is not accepted by the community. Archer doesn’t have anything to call its own. It is an objectively inferior class when compared to other DPS classes. It started off essentially as a pure PvP class, where it dominated. However, it failed miserably in every category for PvE. They have been improved in PvE over time, though their strength in PvP diminished along with it.

Archer requires you to take full advantage of the entire kit to perform adequate DPS in comparison to other classes. It requires more practice and knowledge than almost every single class in the game in PvE, but yields the lowest reward. Since there are no chained skills, there is no skill queue – meaning you need extremely low ping to execute your full kit at an acceptable pace.

Archer is strictly for players who are truly passionate about the class and have no interest in playing anything else. If you have even a microbe of an interest in another class, I suggest you pursue that class instead. This class has a minimal sense of fairness and it may never change. The damage will be improved over time, but there is no suggestion that Archer will ever give back how much you put into it.

The Primary Archer Kit, Skill Analysis, and Breakdown

Archer’s core comes down to the following skills: Rain of Arrows (RoA), Radiant Arrow, Penetrating Arrow, Explosive Trap, and Breakaway Bolt. The damage from these skills likely amount to about 60% of your overall DPS. There are many other skills that are used often but I’m going to start with these, because getting them right is essential before moving on.

Rain of Arrows is a high-powered ground AoE. The base damage on this skill is 8,142, and when glyphed, exceeds 10,000 base damage. The skill has a fairly long cast time, and it requires that you are looking at the mob upon impact to inflict back hits. RoA isn’t nearly as good as it may initially appear. Is the damage high? Yes, but the amount of time it takes for all of the damage to roll out is incredibly long. If you stack attack speed it does speed up the cast animation but it doesn’t speed up the frequency in which the hits from RoA impact within the ground AoE. However, what makes RoA a skill that isn’t that great, is that it requires you to be looking directly at the back of the mob until the skill has finished impacting the target. It doesn’t matter what direction you aim it or how centered a mob is within the circle telegraph on the ground. The only thing that matters is that the target is somewhere within the circle and that you are directly facing the back at the time of each of the seven hits. It is imperative that you use this skill as often as possible, but it is also necessary to understand when it is better to wait a moment or quickly reposition so that your RoA is able to be hit from the back.

Radiant Arrow and Penetrating Arrow often fall victim to a common culprit: Overcharge. Overcharging happens after you have used one of these two skills and have charged past the third charge. The damage gained by nearly doubling the amount of time spent is a mere 36%. Archer has enough skills in its kit to make overcharging a DPS loss every time. The only time you should ever overcharge on an Archer is when you are repositioning, as this technically allows you deal damage as you are moving around in combat.

Explosive Trap is another core skill but there is very little say about it other than it should be used as often as possible. It’s a high powered ranged trap on a 15s cooldown that adds over 16k damage (base) per minute for less than 5 seconds in animations. One key note here is that if this skill is used while a boss is moving, there is a risk that you will miss the primary hit of this attack and only the secondary hit will deal damage. This damage is less than that of a regular arrow. Until traps have been fixed in the Arc Engineer patch to inflict one hit upon impact you must use discretion to reduce your chances of whiffing this skill. (Perimos in Sky Cruiser is the master trap whiffer.)

Breakaway Bolt is the last core skill that we need to go over. This skill is important because it has 3 functions. It’s a gap closer to improve mobility, it is a skill that deals damage, and when properly glyphed, it increases the base damage on penetrating arrow by 25% for 10 seconds. It’s important that you understand the appropriate time to use it, because it can either improve your damage output, or hurt it and worse, get you killed.

Stunning Trap is another skill that I would consider as part of the core if it was a skill used to deal damage, but regardless it is an important Archer mechanic all the same. When glyphed, this skill increases Penetrating Arrow charge speed by 30%. You don’t need to actually put the trap down. The skill can be used and cancelled with movement before it goes on cooldown. I find this to be far superior to using the arrow volley glyph of blazing or the final salvo glyph of blazing as it requires minimal animation and can be used at any point in a skill rotation. The stun trap cancel is a crucial part of playing Archer. 

With all of the important things skills of the way, let’s go over all of the filler skills. We have Close 

Quarters, Incendiary Trap, Restraint Arrow, Rapid Fire, and the standard Arrows. To understand the importance and power of each skill we must take into account how much damage each skill does while also examining the amount of time each action takes. There are a fair number of skills that I haven’t yet mentioned because they’re not up to par with the rest of the Archer kit.

Since Rapid Fire is the elephant in the room we’ll start with it. Rapid Fire is critically affected by what your ping (latency) is. You can check your ping by hovering your cursor over the in-game clock. Your ping greatly affects the frequency at which you can use skills requiring multiple inputs (it also affects every action you perform but we’ll get to that later.) Rapid Fire is a skill that requires seven inputs to execute. This means that if you have 200 ping you’re injecting a minimum of 1.4 seconds into the skill. If the skill takes 1.5 seconds in pure animation frames you’re almost doubling the amount of time spent. This can be the difference between a skill being useful or worthless. I wouldn’t recommend using this skill with a ping higher than 40. Given that there are such few situations where this skill is even useful, your best bet is likely to ignore this skill currently. Until this skill has been buffed to receive the +120 crit rate passive as well as the glyph for +50% damage, this skill won’t be useful in nearly any situation. It’s best to just avoid using it entirely unless you have <10 ping. **cough** (Nobody has ping like that on NA/EU) **cough**

Restraint Arrow is a skill that I’ve never seen anyone use as a filler. The animation is slightly longer than an Arrow but deals almost 2.7x as much damage (according to the true base damage.) This skill has an excellent animation time for the damage it deals. This doesn’t mean you should use it if you have Radiant Arrow, Explosive Trap, or some other high powered skill available, but it is a solid skill to throw in when your core skills are on cooldown.

Next we have Close Quarters. Ping does have an effect on this skill, as it requires multiple inputs – just like Rapid Fire. It’s a skill that requires you to be within melee range but adds solid sustain to your DPS. It’s often used in conjunction with Incendiary Trap and or Breakaway Bolt as these are all melee skills. When glyphed, the damage base exceeds 2,500 and is on a moderate cooldown. The cooldown is currently 15 seconds before using a melee nostrum but this will be reduced to 10 seconds in the coming Archer update (there’s a link to a video of me going over all of these changes at the bottom of this guide.)

#oldschoolfacts: This skill used to be on a 7 second cooldown before nostrum and the damage glyph increased damage by 100% as opposed to the current 60% increase.

Our next filler skill is Incendiary Trap. This is a melee range skill with a 2,475 base damage. The cast time is the similar to its ranged counterpart. As I said before, it’s often used in conjunction with other melee range skills – but don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to use this skill if other, more important skills, are available. It takes time after the trap has been used for it to activate and deal damage. Don’t waste time and MP if you think the mob is going to move out of the hit-box.

#oldschoolfacts: This skill used to be bugged and it would multiply the number of hits based upon how many targets were hit. If it hit 3 targets it would deal 3x damage to all targets. This also worked in PvP!

Lastly, for this section, we’ll close with the Arrow. Arrows are decent damage for the amount of time they take to shoot. For example, if I’m at 10m and I don’t have any ranged skills available, and Radiant Arrow is going to come off cooldown in a second or two, I’ll likely shoot some arrows while holding the key down for Radiant Arrow. This ensures that as soon as the skill is ready it will begin charging but I’m still dealing damage until that time. If all of my ranged skills are on cooldown for 3 seconds or longer, I’ll likely use Backstep and or Breakaway Bolt to reposition depending on what the boss is doing and where I’m currently located. While I don’t recommend you to spam Arrows all day, I do believe it’s better than walking around doing nothing while waiting on cooldowns to come up.

Rotations or Priority System?

Sorcerer is the only class is TERA that has a true rotation because the entire class revolves around the use of its skill Burst of Celerity. The concept is to put as many high powered skills within the duration as possible and while they do have down time Sorcerer for the most part has a straight and narrow rotation they follow. All other DPS classes don’t have rotations that they actively use. Each class possesses an opening rotation where you use all of your buffs and hardest hitting skills/combos in the beginning but once everything has been used all classes switch to a priority system. A priority system is where you take each individual action and you say Skill A is stronger than Skill B so I’m going to use Skill A first. This is done with every action that the class possesses. This allows you to properly judge in combat which skill to use next and provides a legitimate understanding of the weight that each skill has.

By understanding the DPS of an action (base damage of a skill divided by it’s animation time) we can begin to put each skill in line to understand which skills are truly stronger.

Here is a table showing the DPS of each action:

This table tells you what the DPS of each action is by taking the true base damage and dividing by the animation time.

Why are some skills not worth using?

From what we’ve seen from the DPS of each skill we can get an accurate picture of what skills of better than others. We’ve observed that Poison Arrow, Thunderbolt, and Web Arrow fail to deal sufficient damage to justify use over other skills or even regular arrows.

Poison Arrow’s poor damage, long animation time, and non-existent poison scaling is what throws it under the bus. There isn’t a single situation in this game where Poison Arrow has a use.

Web Arrow doesn’t have sufficient base damage to be used like Restraint Arrow otherwise this skill could be another decent filler skill. The slow isn’t helpful anywhere in the current content and the DPS of the skill isn’t even stronger than an arrow so it’s not worth the time.

Thunderbolt is a skill that takes a significant amount of time currently to use, the cooldown is too high so the glyphs are a waste of points, and the damage is weak. This skill will be significantly buffed in the future to the point where it will be good but currently it’s only a skill worth using for AoE damage.

Arrow Volley would be the last skill I would throw on here simply because it requires three inputs making ping a major factor here. It requires low ping to use in a timely manner and the damage is rather low. It’s a lower damage base than Breakaway Bolt on top of the fact that it can’t be used instantly.

Mastering the Glyph System

How the glyph system actually works

The Glyph System in TERA is nothing more than an open talent tree. With talent trees, it’s much harder to get builds wrong because each talent leads down the tree to something stronger until it eventually reaches a conclusion at the bottom of the tree. In TERA, we have a similar system, but without the gates imposed by previous talents, or choices. If you’ve ever played an arcade fighting game or even something like Ninja Gaiden, you might have realized that there are only a handful of combos that are actually good but there’s a near endless list of attack skills. In games developers like to create the illusion of choice to convey the idea that you as a player have some choice or variety in how to play. To some degree, I suppose you could say they achieve that goal, but I fail to see a legitimate reason to use inferior damaging techniques when there’s likely a way to not only hit harder but faster at the same time. Developers rarely create a multitude of options where all options are equal. The glyph system is no stranger to this. Anyone who has actually read the glyphs for their class has likely realized how useless most of them are. I’ve created a .gif to show how many choices are left when all of the troll glyphs have been removed. This doesn’t mean that everything left is good but we’ll get into that shortly. My primary goal here is to shy away from all of the non-choices. I’m going to break it down into what glyphs are staple and why you shouldn’t ever remove them. I will also explain how to more accurately gauge the damage gain of a glyph.

Viable Glyph Options

In TERA you are allotted 55 points at max level to spend on glyphs. Each glyph requires a certain amount of points and each glyph has a specific function. Not all glyphs are created equal. One skill may have a +25% damage glyph for 5 points and another skill may have a +25% damage glyph for 2 points. Your goal should be to maximize DPS and mobility (if necessary) through picking glyphs for skills that deal substantial amounts of damage as well as have low cooldowns. Since you’re only given 55 points to spend I wouldn’t recommend wasting a single point. Some of the glyphs can have a significant impact on your gameplay and damage output. After removing all of the non-choices we’re left with 26 options. Of the 26 choices remaining we have 7 which don’t have any application in the current PvE content or they’re inferior choices likely because the skill itself isn’t worth using. I’m going to briefly go into which seven glyphs I’m referring to and why they aren’t worth using.

1)  Thunderbolt Damage is our first suspect on this list. The first reason this glyph is useless is because using Thunderbolt is a DPS loss. Not only does the animation take too long but the damage is rather poor. The glyph grants +20% base damage which is 964 (4820*0.2) every time the skill is used. The cooldown on Thunderbolt is 50 seconds however, so the gain is very poor. For 5 glyph points you can gain more damage with other glyphs. Close Quarters damage is vastly superior to this glyph and even the +25% Incendiary Trap damage glyph is a significant improvement.

2)  Thunderbolt Speed is our next target. As I’ve already mentioned before this skill isn’t worth the time spent and even when it’s glyphed for speed it decreases the cast animation by 30%. Even if you were to glyph this skill and use it you would want to waste your Backstep to animation cancel the recoil animation until the patch comes where Thunderbolt can be canceled with Final Salvo.

3)  Enfeebling Ensnaring Trap is the next glyph and I’ve actually seen a fair number of people use this glyph. It decreases the target’s endurance by 3.5% for 5 seconds. This skill is originally on a 15 seconds cooldown so the uptime of this debuff as well as the effect inflicted isn’t substantial enough to warrant use of this glyph. The skill itself does very little damage so you are going out of your way to use the skill just to get the debuff if you have it glyphed. I’m aware that 3.5% isn’t just 3.5% more damage due to endurance debuffs scaling but it doesn’t change the fact that the uptime of this debuff is rather poor so the overall gain isn’t worth it even if you’re in a party with a warrior, lancer, and priest to maintain all three core endurance debuffs at all times.

4)  Ensnaring Trap cooldown is a glyph that would only be used in conjunction with the previously mentioned Ensnaring Trap glyph. Since this skill is useless by itself there’s no meaning to glyph it so that it can be used more frequently. If the Ensnaring Trap is ever modified to have increased duration up to 10 seconds or more and if the effect is raised from 3.5% to 8% or something along those lines then these two glyphs could actually be useful.

5)  Slow Trap duration is an excellent glyph in functionality. The problem lies in the fact that nothing can be slowed nor would it need to be with the current content. The slow trap itself is a significant movement speed slow so glyphing for increased duration could be good if the content ever existed where it had a use but this glyph currently has no place in any PvE build at any time.

6)  Stun Trap duration is another glyph that has decent functionality. We again run into the issue of not having a place for stun trap to be a useful skill. The only instance I can think of where this would be useful is to further stun the priest mob in Sky Cruiser hard mode’s first room.

7)  Glyph of Blazing on Poison Arrow is the our last glyph. This glyph decreases the charge speed of Radiant Arrow after using Poison Arrow. The primary issue with this glyph is that Poison Arrow is not a skill worth using. Using this glyph turns Poison Arrow into a gimmick of sorts to gain a boost for Radiant Arrow. The second issue is that Radiant Arrow is already a rather quick skill to charge up. So having to go out of your way to use not only 5 glyph points but also a skill that deals worse damage than shooting regular arrows for an insignificant bonus is a large waste of glyph points. If Poison Arrow is ever changed to deal a fair amount of damage and perhaps if the glyph cost is reduced this glyph could one day be good.

My personal builds and train of thought

Here are the glyphs that are the backbone of Archer:

While I feel some glyphs can be changed around I feel that these glyphs are absolutely crucial and should never be turned off in PvE. Explosive Trap damage is an excellent glyph but since it currently misses often in certain encounters I don’t feel that it’s crucial. When this bug is fixed in the future I would add that glyph to the list as well. When fighting Perimos it’s not uncommon for me to unglyph Explosive Trap damage (along with Restraint Arrow CD) and take Close Quarter’s damage with Breakaway Bolt cooldown reduction.

This is my standard glyph build.

I’m always trying to maximize my gains with my glyph build and I’m really looking forward to the rework in the Arc Engineer patch. It will allow for more glyphs and moreover glyphs which are really good. When the point reductions come out I will definitely be picking up Close Quarter’s damage and Rapid Fire damage. It’s important to always take into consideration what you’re gaining from a glyph, how often you receive the bonus (or use the skill), and what your other options would be if you didn’t choose it. Just because one glyph is good doesn’t mean there isn’t something better so use your best judgment.

Itemization

Any time you have a game where the player is given a list of options, there’s always going to be the problem of ambiguity regarding what choices are good. This leads to many cognitive errors such as bandwagoning, and misinformation. The math behind MMORPGs is never simple, but neither is it impossible to figure out. It’s intriguing why much of TERA’s formulas and concepts hadn’t been figured out within the first six months of release, unlike other MMORPGs. Some of it has to do with the lack of true parsing software to accurately gauge certain things, and some of it with the community, but luckily the damage in TERA is static so it’s not all that difficult to figure out either way. I could explain all the technicalities and the math behind the game, but I have a better solution. I wanted to simplify the process by incorporating a damage calculator in Excel, and I’ve done just that with a spreadsheet a close friend of mine built. We’ve tried to make it easy and intuitive – just input your stats and you can begin comparing builds. Regardless of whether or not you’re interested in looking at the spreadsheet, though, I will briefly go over what the optimal stats you should aim for and basically everything that has to do with itemization in general.

What stats on armor and weapons are favorable?

We’ll start with the armor first. It doesn’t have to be said, but dying significantly reduces your DPS, and in high pressure fights, just being alive is important. Sadly, there really aren’t any options on your pieces of armor, aside from the chest piece. The rolls on boots and gloves are the best and there’s no reason to not use them. On boots you should always roll Movement Speed, Endurance+4, and MP regen. The other choices are meaningless because they don’t provide any real gain whatsoever. The movement speed and endurance is required but if you’re being cheap you can skip the MP regen because it’s only 5 MP per second. For gloves you need to roll Attack Speed, Crit Rate, and Power. There aren’t even other options so it’s fairly difficult to get this one wrong. I wouldn’t recommend going cheap on gloves but if you do have to skip a third stat I recommend that you skip the power as Archer has more innate power than any other class in the game. The chest piece doesn’t have many options outside of the skill line. You should always roll flat damage reduction, Max HP, and Enraged Monsters. Given that you are killed in one hit by an enraged boss in Sky Cruiser Hard Mode I would value the Enraged Monsters stat line as the least important during progression. However, if you are running with a Warrior as a tank, without access to Infuriate, you should probably roll the Reduce Damage from Frontal Attacks stat instead of Enraged Monsters. The Max HP is also important as Archer has the lowest HP base in the game. Eating double lasers at Perimos without having at least 100,000 HP can be a bit sketchy.

Here is the list of options that you can choose between on chest:

Here is the list of options that you can choose between on chest that are actually useful

Note: If Archer needs Breakaway Bolt cooldown reduction on chest to maintain a high enough back time on a boss, then it’s time to play another class because you’ve been royally screwed by the developers.

Rain of Arrows damage is always a very intuitive choice. “Rain of Arrows does the most damage, so I should go with that right?” No, not exactly. There are a number of reasons why going with Rain of Arrows damage is a bad idea. Firstly, the damage bonus is additive (like all chest bonuses) which means that you’re gaining 814 (8,142*0.1) base damage. Alone, it’s a 10% increase, but you’re going to have it glyphed – so you will only be going from 10,177 to 10,991 base damage – so it’s only an 8% increase. The second reason is that Rain of Arrows takes a very long time to use. When I say it takes a long time to use, I mean the time it takes to cast the skill as well as the 7 damage ticks over 3 seconds. No matter how fast you cast Rain of Arrows, the damage will always take a little over 3 seconds to finish. My third reason is one of the biggest reasons of all. When you use Rain of Arrows you must be looking at the back of the target upon impact to inflict back hits. You cannot cast Rain of Arrows and have your character look somewhere else. You cannot look forward-left or forward-right and you certainly cannot be looking at a 90 degree angle to the boss. The skill, despite its high base damage, is very gimmicky. So the next time you’re considering using Rain of Arrows damage, you need to consider that you’re only gaining 814.2 base damage on a skill that may only land a couple of back hits (if the mob turns around), which also has a cooldown that’s 18.8 seconds after it’s glyphed for cooldown reduction.

Rain of Arrows cooldown is another option, but this isn’t much better for all the reasons mentioned above. The only difference is that if you do use Rain of Arrows exactly off cooldown, this is technically a 10% damage increase as it is an additive cooldown reduction of 2.5 seconds, allowing you to use the skill more often. This is not a better choice and you shouldn’t use it.

Penetrating Arrow damage is another option I’ve seen players use. This was often used in PvP, and while I don’t doubt it being somewhat useful there, it’s by no means a great option in PvE. When you think of Penetrating Arrow, you have to consider that you use a +25% damage glyph as well as a +25% damage powerlink glyph (at least you should be using it for all of your Penetrating Arrows.) This is NOT 4,109*(1.5)*(1.1). As I’ve said before all chest bonuses are additive. You’re just going from 6,163 (4,109*1.5) base damage to 6,574 (4,109*1.6) base damage, which is merely a 6.7% increase. You are gaining 411 base damage per penetrating arrow and you could technically use three penetrating arrows in between each Rain of Arrows (if used on cooldown). So, even considering that it’s only an additive bonus in addition to the +50% you’re already gaining this is still a superior option to Rain of Arrows damage or cooldown reduction.

Radiant Arrow is our last real option and yes, it is what I use. Radiant Arrow is a slightly higher cooldown than Penetrating Arrow (10 seconds opposed to 6). Radiant Arrow doesn’t have any bonuses aside from its triple crit rate glyph, so the 10% damage is actually 10% more damage. Currently, you gain 510 base damage by using this on Radiant Arrow, but when Radiant Arrow is buffed again it will be a 588 base damage gain (Radiant arrow is being raised from 5,101 to 5,885). It should also be noted that Penetrating Arrow will be nerfed in the same patch that Radiant Arrow is buffed so it will slightly diminish the gain you would get over using Penetrating instead of Radiant Arrow.

What are the optimal crystals?

Armor crystals in TERA are rarely gotten wrong. Unfortunately, it’s not the same case with weapon and accessory crystals. If I haven’t listed a crystal here, there’s a good chance that you should be using anything but that crystal.

In your chest piece, you should be running 4 Hardy Niveots. Relentless Niveots are nearly useless because they were scaled horribly. At the level 60 cap, DPS classes only had about 40,000 HP so putting on a crystal (Relentless Crux) was actually a lot of health because you we’re gaining 4,808 per crystal. That doesn’t mean they were better than damage reduction, but at least back at the time, it almost made sense. Now, we all have over 100,000 health and the Niveot only gives 5,434 HP. That is a questionable design decision. The only time I use anything other than a Hardy Niveot is when I’m using a single Relentless Niveot for Perimos. This actually isn’t even necessary; I just feel more comfortable with my team using it for a little extra health for HP-specific mechanics. It’s probably worth mentioning that I’m missing a Max HP +4.5% on one of my earrings. If you’re using a Slaying Niveot you can swap out one Hardy Niveot for a Resolute Niveot, but it’s not much of a difference. Also, if you’re against permanently enraged bosses, you can use Poised Niveots for a marginal increase in damage reduction.

Weapon Crystals are often misunderstood because of the ambiguity behind how they work, or how the game’s damage formulas work. I’ll start with the Fine Focused Niveot because it’s relevant to this content’s special condition. A Fine Focused Niveot only works when the monster is enraged. So when you’re doing Sky Cruiser, and you’re fighting the 2nd and 3rd boss, you really shouldn’t be using a Fine Focused Niveot unless you have a lancer tank and he’s using Infuriate at the start of the fight. These bosses do not Enrage until they are sub 30% and sub 25% health, respectively. For example, against Perimos, it’s wise to swap a crystal out for a Fine Focused Niveot after the boss has been pushed into the final phase (by lowering his HP under 30%.) Do not use a Fine Focused crystal unless you’re going to be fighting a monster that is going to be enraged. Bosses have historically had a variety of enrage conditions. The patch before Fate of Arun, bosses were enraged after around 900,000 damage was done to them, and would last for approximately 72 seconds. After which, dealing around 900,000 damage would enrage them again. They were effectively permanently enraged. However, the current content is a world away from that, and since the previous mindset lingers, you will see a lot of misplaced emphasis on enrage stats.

The next two crystals you should be using are the Fine Savage and Fine Bitter Niveots. Both of these function exactly the same way in PvE, although Fine Bitter Niveots do not work in PvP (they work against monsters only) . They increase the damage multiplier when you score a critical hit from the back of a mob. There are no other crystals that come close to increasing your damage as much as these two do, so if you aren’t using them now, you should.

The last crystal slot is the one that is most contentious. The 4th crystal slot always goes to one of the Pounding, Carving, Forceful, or Slaying crystals. Slaying provides the highest damage increase out of the four, but it imposes the condition that you must be below 50% HP. It requires exceptional skill levels, as well as favorable dungeon conditions to be able to use this fully. The second option out of the four is the Pounding crystal. I know there are a lot of players who use Forceful but the Forceful crystal is another crystal, like the Relentless crystal, that did not scale well. It is a flat 20 power for a short duration after landing a critical hit from the back. The Forceful Crux that we used at level 60 was 19 power just to give you an idea of how pitiful the scaling was from level 60 to level 65. Towards the end of the MCHM era players stopped using Forceful because we had accumulated so much power that the damage increase was lower than using a Mutinous/Hunters Crux even if you maintained 100% uptime on the Forceful buff. This is because the more power you have, the less you’re gaining with each point of power. It is, like many things in this game, an additive bonus. Pounding crystals are also additive increases but in almost all situations it is superior to Forceful. For classes other than Archer it is recommended to use Pounding, Savage, Bitter, and Forceful when bosses aren’t going to be enraged. Archer doesn’t apply here because they have an insanely high power base on top of a +30 power buff that they always maintain. In Archer’s case it’s better to use 2 Pounding than 1 Pounding and 1 Forceful like other classes.

Vyrsks

Vyrsks are fairly simple, and I haven’t seen more than a few people using the incorrect Vyrsks. There are only two Vyrsks to consider for a DPS class. One gives +3 Power, and the other gives +6 Crit Rate. There are attack speed Vyrsks, but these are useless for DPS. In just about every scenario, gaining 2 crit per point of power is going to be superior, so use the Carving (Crit Rate) Vyrsks.

Choosing Etches, Innerwear, and a Brooch

Innerwear, Brooch, and etches are often times gotten wrong or not valued highly enough by DPS classes. This is a fairly large DPS increase so it’s crucial that you are properly geared.

For Innerwear +12 Crit rate is far superior to +6 power (on any DPS class not just Archer) because we have another situation where we’re gaining 2 crit rate per point of power.

DPS class etchings are a similar trade-offs. The only option is to sacrifice 18 crit rate for 10 power (Energetic etches aren’t viable on Archer in PvE.) The crit rate is just superior because of the mathematics behind it.

The Empowered Brooch vs the Quickcarve Brooch is the same as well. Empowered Brooch gives 3 power and Quickcarve Brooch gives 6 crit rate. As far as the actives go , I’m not sure why so many players seem to discredit the carving brooch. It is a +50 Crit rate and +12% attack speed bonus vs just +40 power. Yes, the ratio of crit rate to power is lower (it’s actually rather poor) but it wouldn’t be wise to neglect the fact that you receive an attack speed steroid in addition to your crit bonus.

Timeless Misconceptions

I would like to go over a number of misconceptions that the community seems to have concluded about Archer, and why their DPS is suffering because of it.

1) Archer is a ranged Berserker. This class is not designed to spend excessive amounts of time overcharging Radiant Arrow and Penetrating Arrow like a Berserker does with Thunder Strike and Cyclone. This class has a massive kit of skills that can be executed in quick succession that would outweigh the amount of time spent overcharging 1 charge shot to gain a marginal damage boost.

2) Archers should go with full damage weapons like Keen and Intense while ignoring Attack Speed. I am completely aware of all of the math behind the game and where Keen/Intense stand in terms of raw damage but you cannot accurately gauge what is more valuable in an actual encounter without taking into consideration the time of each animation and number of actions performed. Given that Archer is built to be a non-stop machine that unloads as many actions as fast as possible you will need the attack speed to get through the whole kit. Some of the animations on Archer are fairly long and the last thing you want to do is get caught up in some animation that could lead to you putting out less DPS or lead to timeout on the floor.

3) Poison Arrow is good because __________. Even if you’re using the Glyph of Blaze for Radiant Arrow charge speed poison arrow is still a very bad skill. The animation is significantly longer than other skills, the damage over time (DoT) is a sad joke due to its lack of gear-scaling, and the amount of glyph points that you would even need to use this glyph is not worth it. Radiant Arrow’s charge speed is sufficient as is. The faster we get away from the idea that Archer is supposed to be charging up skills 90% of the time the better.

4) Arrow Volley is good because ____________. We have a similar situation. This skill’s damage compared to how long it takes to use it just isn’t worth it. This skill has three inputs so using it with high ping is not only sketchy it’s a waste of time. It’s not only an animation lock but if you get staggered when the arrow is flying through the air it will not do any damage because the animation has technically not finished. To give you a comparison Arrow Volley is 1,766 damage base. Flaming Barrage on a sorcerer is 3,595 damage base. They function entirely the same yet after all these years (and a major Arrow Volley buff in the past) it is still a skill that is not worth using. Now like I was saying before, we have a similar situation with the Glyph of Blaze on Arrow Volley. It increases Penetrating Arrow speed by 40% but given the things mentioned before it’s not worth the effort especially when there is a superior choice available.

5) Final Salvo Glyph of Blaze is good because ___________. If you were using Arrow Volley’s glyph of blaze for penetrating arrow then you were likely considering using the Final Salvo Glyph of Blazing just now. This is actually not a great idea either. The reason being that when you use this glyph is requires that you use Radiant Arrow 6 seconds (that’s how long the Glyph of Blazing lasts) before each penetrating arrow. This greatly reduces your options while DPSing. With the reduced Breakaway Bolt cooldown you should not be using Penetrating Arrow without the Breakaway Bolt powerlink glyph. If you’re trying to get your Penetrating Arrow powerlink from Breakaway Bolt and then you’re trying to pick up the speed from Final Salvo then you’re greatly limited on what you can do to have both of these active. This glyph isn’t terrible but it limits your capabilities of what you can and can’t do at any given time. If you have ping over 200 you may be pigeonholed into using this option to gain Penetrating Arrow speed. It’s just another price you have to pay for having high latency.

6) Using Rain of Arrows (RoA) from the back of the mob are considered back hits. So wrong it makes my head hurt. Rain of Arrows is not dependent upon where it is shot from. It is dependent on A) whether the mob is actually being hit and B) where you are facing at the time of impact. I find myself occasionally using Rain of Arrows from the front and using Backstep and or Breakaway Bolt to quickly reposition to back of the mob. This allows me to still inflict back hits on some of the hits. You cannot use Rain of Arrows and have your character face left, right, or turn around unless your plan is to not inflict back hits on your skill that has the most raw damage.

7) Archer is a ranged class. As ironic as this is, it’s not even remotely true. In case you’ve never been told (or realized it yourself) that when you are beyond 12m your damage is diminished on most of your skills. The distance brackets are 0m-12m(100%), 12m-16m(85%), and 16m-23m(70%). The following skills are all affected with range penalties: Arrow, Rapid Fire, Final Salvo, Penetrating Arrow, Radiant Arrow, Poison Arrow, Restraint Arrow, and Web Arrow. These ranged penalties have long since been removed in KTERA and they will be coming to NA/EU soon but this will not change the play style of the class. Incendiary Trap, Close Quarters, and Breakaway Bolt all require that you be in melee range to land the attacks.

8) Using Arrows and Rapid Fire are useless. This is probably the most difficult thing to go over because this is heavily ping based. While Archer does require very low ping to stay in the realm of viable DPS, shooting regular Arrows and Rapid Fire and by far the most ping reliant source of damage in the game. It’s not as simple as saying “I have 100 ms ping, that means I have 0.1s delay when I use skills.” Each skill is affected by ping in a different way. Most people who play TERA don’t understand how high ping ruins the TERA Online experience. Players of NA and EU will never experience gameplay at <10 ping. Rapid Fire is the most ping reliant skill in the game because your connection has to ping in between each shot of Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire takes me approximately twice as long at 40-70 ping as it does for someone with less than 10. If Rapid Fire functioned like Traverse Cut where the game did all of the hits for you then Rapid Fire would be awesome. While this doesn’t mean that it’s a useless skill or necessarily a bad one, using Rapid Fire with 40 ping or higher is going to be a DPS loss in comparison to just about anything (unless you’re using it for AoE damage.) With my 40-60 ping I can shoot about 3 regular arrows (3 x 454) each second. If I had ping similar to KTERA, JTERA, or Taiwan TERA, I would be able to shoot 4 arrows per second or come very close. With the same attack speed I would be able to execute around 20% more actions (not just regular arrows) in the same amount of time if I only had lower ping. Since ping affects all of my actions as well as the rate at which I can use these two actions, I don’t spend an abundance of time using these skills. However, I do use them in certain situations.

Speed vs Big Number Syndrome

Tera Online is a unique experience in how it presents your damage output. Needless to say it’s a bit flashy. Any time you have six to eight digit numbers popping up in the middle of your screen, especially in quick succession, you’re going to have an epidemic of Big Number Syndrome. In games it can be easy for us as players to become blind-sighted by our damage output. In other games (or MMORPGs rather) Big Number Syndrome is usually associated with topping damage parses while ignoring mechanics. In TERA it’s much worse because players make gear choices, glyph choices, and skill choices based upon these mega critical hits that they experience. Players have minimal priority on speed and almost all priority on how big their numbers can get. Frequency more often than not can be more important than dishing out bigger numbers especially in TERA as DPS is opportunistic.

Overcharging

I stated earlier that overcharging is a waste of time but now I’d like to explain why. Overcharging is when you have charged past the third charge on skills that require channeling. When you begin taking damage you have started overcharging. What overcharging does is provide a damage boost per tick of HP that it consumes. There are four ticks that you can overcharge. Each tick grants a base damage proportionate to the skill used. For penetrating arrow you gain approximately 465 base damage per tick of overcharge. This is slightly higher than the base damage of a regular arrow. The problem is that you can shoot two arrows per tick of overcharge so imagine if you had actual skills off cooldown that you could be using instead of regular arrows. Radiant Arrow is a bit different, due to it having a +80 crit glyph as well as a higher base damage. Furthermore, both of these will be increased in the coming future. The crit glyph will increase to +120 along with a base damage increase. Using mathematical formulas, we can calculate the true base damage gained by overcharging.

There is also a damage bonus (or penalty) based upon what health % the mob is at. We refer to this mechanic as Bloodlust. This is a multiplicative damage increase. It’s not limited to charge skills (Fireblast and Thunderbolt come to mind) but has primarily been applied to them since the beginning of the game. Bloodlust brackets are separated into 100%, 99.99-90.00%, 89.99-80.00%, 79.99-70.00%, so forth and so until 9.99-0%. Here is a table showing the base damage of both the bloodlust as well as the overcharging tiers.

As you can see Penetrating Arrow and Radiant Arrow don’t even deal full damage until the target mob has reached less than 40% HP. Being able to understanding how much damage is gained by overcharging and how Bloodlust is affecting the skills we can get a more accurate read on how to prioritize our skills.

On this table we can see the DPS of each skill. By taking into account the animation time for each skill (by recording a video and counting the frames, not going by the in-game tooltips) we can take the damage we’ve recorded and weigh it against the animation to get a precise understanding of powerful each skill is.

Why is attack speed important?

Attack speed is often neglected by players. Whether it’s because they’re only interested in seeing the highest possible number they can hit or whether it’s players who are aware of the math but have no intuition when it comes to actually gameplay, there are players everywhere neglecting attack speed and it completely alters your ability to play a class a certain way.

If your attack speed is so poor that you’re only getting 4 attacks off in 10 seconds I think it’s time to reevaluate what you’re actually doing. Even if you have a decent amount of attack speed it’s still good to have more. Why? Because even if you said 4.5% attack speed means I get 4.5% more damage then you would be neglecting the fact that not every action you do is a skill that does damage. Faster iframes means less time spent in unnecessary animations that deal damage. What I find is that the damage dealt in this game is all short term amounts of burst. Being able to get through as many attacks as possible before the mob has turned around (or before you have to dodge/block.) When a mob is turning around there is a short time frame where it is still technically facing the other damage. You may or may not have noticed some mega critical hit to the face of a mob because it hasn’t finished rotating completely. Having high attack speed would allow you to clutch a skills in at the last second before it has turned around. This means you’re not only getting to use those skills more frequently but it likely means you’re spending less time performing weaker actions. It’s a simple concept but the more time you spend doing the actions the deal the most damage the less time spent on more trivial skills. By having higher attack speed you spend less time stuck in animation locks and you have your priorities shifted. You now have time to use skills when you otherwise didn’t.

It’s not just about going fast or being safer. It’s about having more time to use skills at appropriate times, using more skills overall, and having more time to calculate what to do next.

Closing Thoughts

Why I Chose Archer

I’ve often been asked why I play Archer especially given that I give it so little credit for what it can do in comparison to other classes. I think what I enjoy about it is that it feels more unique than all of the other DPS classes. Archer is a mix of Berserker playstyle with warrior’s speed but also something unlike other classes. Most of Archer’s skills are on 10-15 second cooldown or higher making it feel a bit like a burst DPS but it has sustain similar to a warrior. There’s no particular reason why I play Archer. I just enjoy the class. It may be that I have read one too many Green Arrow comics or maybe I just like classes that use bows. I can’t say for certain. But what I can say is that I likely won’t ever enjoy another class in TERA as much as Archer.

Changes I Would Like to See

There’s a vast number of ways that Archer could have been balanced for DPS. While I don’t believe it 

will ever be a class that’s fine tuned I do believe it will be where it needs to be for it to be competent nevertheless. With that being said there are some small changes that I would appreciate.

The first change is reducing the number of arrows being shot to gain the penetrating arrow speed buff. This was changed about one and a half years ago in KTERA and even translated into JTERA and Taiwan TERA. It’s was reduced from 10 arrows to 8 arrows and this was never brought to NA or EU for reasons unknown. So this actually isn’t even a change I came up with. It’s simply something that was never implemented.

My second change would be an addition to Backstep. When the level cap was raised from 60 to 65 Slayer received the ability to stack up 2 rolls. This allows them consecutive roll twice. Also, Reaper has always had Shadow Step stack up to 2 in addition to the Retribution skill. I see no reason why Archer wouldn’t be allowed to have a second iframe especially given that slayer already had 2 iframes before they gave it a second evasive roll. If it’s too much to ask for another Backstep then I’d really like to see a chain skill (or just an active buff for 3 seconds) that increases the speed of Breakaway Bolt after Backstep. This would further improve mobility and wouldn’t have any significant impact on the class balance.

The last change I would like to see are crowd control (CC) skills working on bosses in dungeons. I don’t mean allowing every class to use them either. If Archer had the ability to significantly slow bosses or stun them at times when party members find themselves in positions they can’t survive. If this happened Archer would finally have something to call its own instead of just being another DPS class among the many. If Archer couldn’t have superior single target or AoE they could have given it some form of utility (that increases overall DPS through some other means) that no other class has. Even having a skill that inflicted a debuff in which the boss’s damage was reduced by a sizable amount so that during progression tanks could survive enraged bosses more easily would be a welcome change but this would be an irrelevant change now given that the new content and been beat to death.

The Conclusion

I can’t blame the community for giving Archer such a bad rap. The class may never be viewed in the same light as other classes on NA or EU. When problems go unchecked for years they usually stay problems forever at least to some degree. To be honest with you I wouldn’t even take an archer with me to a dungeon. I know it takes someone who has genuine passion about it to do adequate DPS. I’d rather take my chances with any run of the mill spacebar-hero slayer or Thunder Strike-master berserker than have to bet on someone being some MLG level archer. When archer receives its major buff in the Arc Engineer patch I may consider changing my position but I can’t accurately gauge how strong archer will be at that time compared to now. I imagine it will be around a 20% damage increase overall and if that’s the case then uninformed players who aren’t even reaching the class’s potential now won’t perform much better. I hope you’ve learned a few things and I do wish you the best of results. Initially I didn’t plan on making such an elaborate guide but one thing lead to another and here we are. If you feel I’ve misrepresented the class in any way challenge me in the comments section on Reddit and I’d be more than happy to have any discussion concerning issues you may have.

Control + F is your best friend here!

Common Questions

Is Tera the game for me? 

Different people have different preferences, and different games have different appeals. There are many MMOs out there but one thing which differentiates Tera from the rest is the unique combat system. I would encourage you to give the game a try before passing judgement! 

What is endgame like?

Every patch brings about a new dungeons, new gear and new accessories. You will have to run these dungeons in order to get your gear, or materials to craft your Best-in-Slot (BiS). Endgame is a gear grind where you run a select few dungeons many many times in order to get what you need.

Is Tera P2W?

No. The Tera Store mainly consists of cosmetics and a few consumables which you can easily get in game, as well as account services which provide you with convenience. There is nothing in the store which can grant you an edge against other players.

However, you can trade your EMP (Tera’s premium currency) for in game gold and items, and this can help you along with your progress. It is P2SpeedUp in essence. Sure, you can buy gear with EMP but if you’re bad at the game, you’ll still be bad even if you manage to buy BiS. 

There is nothing P2W about Tera. Skill is the only thing that gives you an edge over the other players, and you only pay for convenience.

Why are people so mean? 

Every game has its fair share of jerks and Tera is no different. Don’t worry though because the vast majority of the people in game are actually nice! 

Can I solo the game?

You could solo your way through the leveling process, but once you reach the endgame, it would be best to find a few friends to run dungeons with. It would be impossible to solo the hard mode dungeons given the mechanics so if you want to progress in game, make some friends!

What is trading in Tera like?

We have a Trade Broker (TB) in Tera where you can list your items up for sale. TBs are not game-wide and they only show items from the server you are in. If you want a TB with a plethora of items, I would recommend starting out on one of the larger servers. More players will usually mean more listings on the TB!

What roles are there in the game?

We have the standard trinity of MMOs: DPS, Tanks and Healers.

What class should I play?

I don’t know. This is a matter of trial and error and you have to experiment with the different classes in order to find the one which fits you. Play around with each class for a while before deciding if it’s the one for you. If you don’t like the class, you can always delete it and make a different one!

How many character slots do I get?

You start off with 2 character slots on each server. That means that you will have two slots in Tempest Reach, two slots in Mount Tyrannas, two slots in Highwatch etc. If you want to get more slots, you can always buy them from the Tera Store, or get them in game from other players.

Why are the Elin presets so ugly? 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why can’t I make a Reaper?

You need to have another character which is level 40 in order to make a Reaper. Go level a class to level 40, then go back to the character selection screen! You should be able to make a Reaper now.

Which server do I choose?

If you have friends, then choose the server where your friends are playing. If not, then I would really recommend starting out on one of the more populated servers.

PvP/PvE: Mount Tyrannas

In a PvP server, open world combat is enabled. This means that anyone in the open world can just walk up to you and hit you. This can be circumvented by switching channels in game. However if you don’t like the hassle, then don’t start out on a PvP server. MT also has an active PvE scene too.

PvE: Tempest Reach/Celestial Hills

In a PvE server, there is no open world combat. If you want to hit anyone, you would need to invite that person to a duel! The only time you would need to switch channels would be to get to a less populated map where you can do your dailies.

RP: Celestial Hills

For all your roleplaying needs! If you like to immerse yourself in the lore and gameworld and progress at your own pace, consider trying Celestial Hills.

Mystics or Priests?

Mystics offer better offensive debuffs and buffs for your party with Contagion, Volley of Curses (glyphed), Thrall of Protection (glyphed) and Aura of the Merciless. They recently got a buff and their lock on heal is no longer a heal over time; instead it heals for the full amount. They have AoE heals like Boomerang Pulse and a Healing Totem. 

Priests offer better defensive capabilities with well rounded buffs. Kaia’s Shield grants a massive shield which can help in sticky situations, Triple Nemesis debuffs the boss, and you also get power, endurance, health regen and move speed buffs. Priests also have a larger library of healing skills to choose from, allowing them to “carry” parties who constantly take damage. 

As mentioned earlier, not every class suits everyone. Why not play both Mystics and Priests and find the better fit for yourself? Healers will always be in demand and no matter which route you choose, the primary role will still be the same. 

How much gold do I need?

There is no such thing as too much gold. The more you have the better! 

How do you make gold?

Gold in Tera comes from many different sources. You get gold as drops from dungeons, quest rewards, Vanguard Dailies but the most comes from selling items on the Trade Broker. 

If you are just starting out, don’t expect to make lots of gold as you will have to spend resources enchanting your Level 65 gear. Once you have your equipment sorted out, you can start selling Feedstock or Masterwork Alkahest if you do not need them

What is the best class?

The best class is the class which you can play to the best of your ability. However, there exist some classes which can dish out a lot of damage and you just have to be decent – not great – to do so. Play any of the new classes and you’ll see what I mean. This does not mean that the new classes are easy to play though; they still require a good player for them to really shine. 

How do I join a guild?

You can join a guild by looking up its name with the guild finder. Click on “Apply” and wait!

Leveling from 1-65

There are a total of 65 levels in Tera. If you like the lore, you can level via quests. If you just want to power your way through, then you can always grind Big Ass Monsters (BAMs) while queuing for dungeons. This guide on Teratoday is a great levelling guide which will help see you through!

Gear while leveling

Do not worry about your gear from levels 1-64. Use the gear you pick up from monsters and dungeons, they are more than enough to help you through. Tera also has Avatar Weapons which gives you a nice damage boost and speeds up your levelling process. This guide on Teratoday has all you need to know about  Avatar Weapons.

Always use your Avatar Weapons, they are stronger than the weapon drops you obtain from monsters and dungeons. You will get a new Avatar Weapon every few levels.

Feedstock

You can obtain Feedstock while you are leveling from dungeons and monster drops. 

Alkahests

You can obtain alkahests from dungeon and monster drops. You can also obtain Alkahests by purchasing them from in game merchants.

Enchanting

To enchant your gear, you will need Alkahest and Feedstock. Here is a short clip on how to enchant your gear. Do note that you will need to have Alkahest and Feedstock! 

Queueing for Dungeons

You will need to click on the “House Icon” on your main menu. Clicking on it will bring up the interface which shows you the dungeons you can queue for. Here is a short clip on how to queue for dungeons. 

Getting Around

If you have Elite, then all you need to do is right click your Village Atlas and choose a point on the map where you want to go. However if you have just started out, chances are you do not have Elite, so the next best method of getting around would be through Teleportals and Flight Managers. Here is a short clip on getting around via Teleportals and here is one on getting around via Flight Managers. These can be found in towns all around Tera.

Expanding Inventory Space

You can expand your inventory space by talking to any Bank NPCs in game. Each expansion will cost you some gold. Here is a short clip on how to expand your inventory space. Note the “Expand Inventory” button which pops out on the dialogue when I interact with the NPC. I can’t expand my inventory anymore so that’s why an error message pops up!

You can also expand your inventory space by one row by completing the quest “Inventory Trick”. The quest is obtained earlier on in the chain of story quests.

You can also expand your inventory space by one row just by levelling to 50.

You can also expand your inventory space by one row by reaching 300 skill in ALL GATHERING SKILLS.

You can also expand your inventory space by completing the level 55 quest “Bolstering the Homefront”. It requires you to gather materials from various resource nodes. If you don’t like gathering, you can purchase the materials off the TB.

Thanks to Enlightenedbri and Texendis for pointing out the quest “Bolstering the Homefront”!

Expanding Bank Slots

You start off with one tab of bank space. This can be expanded to up to 4 tabs. Bank expansions can be bought from the Tera Store or from other players in game.

Learning Skills & Glyphs

You learn skills from the skill menu and each upgrade requires some amount of gold. You can access the skill menu by pressing the default “K” key. In Tera, we have Glyphs which can help improve an effect of your skills. Clicking on the Glyph you want will enable it, and clicking on it once again will disable it. Each Glyph will cost a different amount of Glyph Points, and you can’t use anymore Glyphs until you get more Glyph Points. Glyph Points are obtained simply from leveling up! Here is a short clip on upgrading your skills, as well as enabling/disabling Glyphs.

Crafting and Gathering

We have a total of four professions in Tera, namely Alchemy, Armor Crafting, Weapon Crafting and Etching. 

Alchemy lets you craft useful consumables like potions and scrolls. Armor Crafting enables you to craft armor pieces for all classes. Weapon Crafting enables you to craft weapons for all classes. Etching enables you to craft either temporary or permanent etches which can be applied to your equipment to give you a stat boost.

This guide from Enmasse gives you the very basics and this guide from Gameforge gives a better overview of the system.

Choosing a Profession

I think that Alchemy and Etching are the only professions currently worth investing in. 

With Alchemy, you can craft useful items like mana potions and TB the excess you don’t need. 

With Etching, you can craft useful scrolls which can be used on your equipment to give you a stat boost. Etching is a lot like playing the lottery because every time you craft an Etch, you could either get a temporary or permanent one. It is heavily reliant on RNG and if you fail too many times, you can always cry on my shoulder. 

Artisan Additives

Artisan Additives are consumables which you use while crafting to increase your chances of critting by 15%. These can be bought on the Tera Store or from other players in game. 

Gathering

Littered throughout the world of Tera are resource nodes. There are three main types, namely ores, essences and plants. These resources provide you with materials for crafting. Gathering also grants you special buffs (see Gameforge guide above). This guide here on the Tera Wiki is useful for players wanting to increase their gathering skill.

Production Points (PP)

You have 4000 PP, and these points regenerate over time. Crafting and gathering will use up points. If you run out of PP, you can either wait for them to regenerate or use Crafter’s Cures which can be bought from an NPC in Velika.

If you are an Elite, you can also use the Elite Crafter’s Cure obtained from your Elite Consumable Box.

Resetting Your Profession

If you would like to change your profession after you completed your artisan test, you can always buy Revival Fruits. These can be bought from NPCs, such as from this guy in Lumbertown.

Gearing at Level 65

Congratulations! You’ve reached 65, time to experience the endgame! You would have obtained an Idoneal set by completing the questline from this NPC in Highwatch (correct me if I’m wrong, I haven’t leveled any characters recently and can’t remember). 

Your gear progression in this patch would look something like Dreadnaught > Slaughter > Starfall /Imperator.

This gear progression guide here on Essentialmana is up to date for this patch.

Low Tier Gear

Dreadnaught is the low tier gear for the current patch. Dreadnaught can be obtained by doing the dungeons Channelworks (CW) and Kalivan’s Challenge (KC).

Dreadnaught can also be obtained by COMPLETING THE ISLAND OF DAWN QUEST LINE which starts from Seir in Highwatch. The quest line will grant you a Dreadnaught set, and I recommend enchanting the set to +12 before progressing onwards.

Mid Tier Gear

The mid tier gear for the current patch is Slaughter. Slaughter can be obtained by doing the dungeon Demokron Factory Normal Mode (DF/DFNM).  

Conflate

There is set called Conflate which is a little better than Slaughter. It is used for PVP but can be rerolled for PVE purposes if you so wish. The materials can be obtained from the PVP shops.

Imperator /Best-in-slot (BiS) /Visionmaker 7 (VM7)

The BiS in this patch is Imperator. This set DOES NOT DROP from any dungeons; it has to be CRAFTED. You obtain the necessary materials from dungeons. This guide from Essentialmana gives a detailed overview on the materials needed and how to go about obtaining them.

Starfall (VM6), an Alternative to VM7

If you do not wish to get VM7 but still want equipment which is better than Slaughter /can be awakened for wings, then Starfall (VM6) is your best bet. It recently received a buff and it is still viable. Plus, the materials are a lot easier to get! This guide on Essentialmana has all the details you need to know about Starfall.

Master Glyphs

Upon reaching Level 65, you might have noticed that some of your glyphs are locked. These are Master Glyphs, and can only be obtained from dungeons like Sabex Armory (SA) and Macellarius Catacombs (MC). Completing these dungeons will drop glyph boxes for your class. These glyph boxes drop random glyphs, so it is all RNG whether you get the glyph you want.

However if you can’t seem to get lucky, you can always exchange your Vanguard (VG) Points for glyph tokens, which can be used to obtain the specific glyph you want.

Rare Master Glyphs

In addition to Master Glyphs, you also have Rare Master Glyphs. These can be obtained from RNG boxes which are exchanged from Tyrantsblood Tokens (obtained from dungeons).

If you are never lucky, you can always get the specific glyph you want by turning in your Shadetop Tokens (obtained from completing Island of Dawn dailies)!

DPS, Tank and Crit Healing Accessories 

This Patch only brought a Crit Factor and a Power set. These sets can be separated into two tiers, tier one and tier two, with tier two being the better one. 

Tier two jewellery can be obtained by completing the dungeons Shadow Sanguinary Hard (SSHM), Shadow Sanguinary Normal Mode (SSNM), Demokron Factory Hard (DFHM), Wonderholme (WH), The Abcess Hard (ABHM) and the necklace from Forsaken Island (FI).

Tier one jewellery can be obtained by completing Timescape (TS/TSNM) and Kalivan’s Dreadnaught Hard (KDHM).

The new accessories can also be obtained by turning in 300 Shadetop Tokens or 40 Tyrantsblood Tokens.

PVP Accessory Set

This patch also brought along a new set of PVP jewellery. These are not unique, so you can equip them with the current BiS PVE jewellery to obtain the maximum effect. This set is crafted and the materials can be bought from the PVP shops. If you do not wish to PVP, you can buy the materials from the TB. This document here has all the information about the new jewellery sets.

Healing Accessories

Healers do not have any healing jewellery this patch, so we will have to rely on the healing set from the previous patch (Pinnace and Argosy), as well as Hyderad Settings which are the BiS rings for healers.

You can obtain last patch’s jewellery by completing The Abcess Normal Mode (ABNM), or by turning in your Desolarus Tokens (obtained from the previous patch).

Hyderad Settings are obtained from the Reputation Merchant in Bastion. You will need to be Revered in order to purchase them. You will need to do all the yellow quests in Bastion in order for the dailies (green quests) to show up. One way to make this easier is to turn on quest markers on your minimap in “Options”.

Here is a guide on Essentialmana on how to obtain your Hyderad Settings.

The ideal setup for a healer to increase your healing would include a Pinnace Earring, Argosy Earring, Pinnace Necklace and Hyderad Settings x2.

Rerolling Your Jewelry

You can reroll your jewelry with Semi-Enigmatic Scrolls (SES). SES can be obtained from BAMs, Enchanting Bonanza Boxes (PVP Shop), or bought from other players in game. Be prepared to use a lot of SES to obtain the rolls you want! 

Innerwear

Innerwear is obtained from loot boxes which you can purchase from the Tera Store. If you don’t feel lucky, you can always purchase the innerwear directly from other players in game. 

You get a free green innerwear by completing the questline in Highwatch (see above). 

You can also obtain innerwear by turning in Goldfinger Tokens (obtained from Ghillieglade) and I highly recommend getting at least a blue innerwear if you are unable to afford a gold one.

Masterworking Your Gear

After obtaining your gear, it is essential that you masterwork and enchant them to +12. You will need to continuously use Enigmatic Scrolls and Identification Scrolls on your equipment until it Masterworks. I would recommend Master Enigmatic /Blessed Enigmatic Scrolls and Intricate Identification Scrolls as they have a higher chance of Masterworking your item. This guide on Teratoday gives a detailed explanation on the process.

Rerolling Your Gear Lines with Spellbinds

You usually reroll your lines after you have masterworked your item. The type of gear line you want will depend on the class you play. It is close to impossible to obtain perfect rolls, so I would recommend using Spellbinds to lock the line you want before rerolling. Here is a short clip on how to do so. For equipment like your gloves and boots, it is possible to keep rerolling without spellbinds until you get the rolls you want. However if you are unlucky, you can always opt to use Spellbinds.

Awakening

Congratulations on obtaining your BiS! After you have rerolled and +12’ed your equipment, it is time to Awaken it! This site tells you the amount of materials you need, and as you can see, it isn’t cheap at all. Awakened Enchanting is RNG reliant and you could spend all you have and not have anything to show for it. If you failed multiple times in a row, maybe it is time to take a short break before trying again! 

Useful Resource on Awakening, Enchanting, Masterworking and Rerolling

This guide here on Essentialmana has most of what you need to know about the process. It has pictures to guide you through if it is your first time.

Crystals

Crystals are useful tools which boost your damage and provides you with a plethora of useful effects depending on the one you use. There are many Crystals in Tera, but the ones listed below are the ones most commonly used for PvE. 

It is vital to use the correct Crystals which are suitable for your class and level. When you reach Level 65, you are expected to have the proper crystals if you want to be accepted into LFG runs. If you cannot afford Fine Niveots, then you are advised to use Fine Cruxes until you have enough resources to obtain your Niveots. 

Fine Niveots can be obtained in game from fusing, VG Merchants, crystal boxes and bought from other players.

DO NOT USE THE NIVEOTS YOU CAN PURCHASE FROM CRYSTAL MERCHANTS IN GAME. FINE CRUXES HAVE BETTER EFFECTS. Compare the effects between a Fine Crux and a Normal Niveot below.

Complete Crystalbind (CCB)

When you die, there is a chance that one of your Crystals will break. To circumvent this, you can use Crystalbinds which help to protect you Crystals when you die. I strongly recommend using Complete Crystalbinds (CCBs) as they provide you with 12 hours of protection. The time on CCBs DO NOT DECAY when you are OFFLINE. 

Fusing

If you have a few unwanted Crystals, you can TB /NPC them for some gold, or you could fuse them together to obtain a Crystal with a new effect. You can fuse 3 random /similar Crystals of similar colour to obtain a new Crystal. This is GUARANTEED to give you a Crystal of a random effect in return as shown here. 

If you have Niveot Structures (obtained from Crystal Boxes and can be bought from players), you could fuse 3 random /similar Cruxes of similar colour for a CHANCE of obtaining a random Niveot Crystal. This is RNG dependent and you could fail multiple times in a row as shown here.

Dyad Crystals

Dyad Crystals are improved versions of your Fine Niveots. They come with an improved effect, as well as a random secondary effect. Dyad Crystals are special as they BIND TO THE EQUIPMENT IT IS USED ON, and they DO NOT BREAK upon death.

If you have Dyad Niveot Structures (obtained from Crystal Boxes, Killing Spree shop and dungeon drops), then you can fuse 3 random /similar Fine Niveots along with the Dyad Niveot Structure to obtain a Dyad Crystal of random effect. This process GUARANTEES you a random Dyad Crystal, but the effect you get is RNG dependent. You might not get the Dyad you want on your first try. You can see the process here.

If you have Dyads which you do not want, you can fuse 3 Dyads of similar colour to obtain a random Dyad Crystal. This process is shown here

Smart Dyad Structures

DPS Weapon Crystals

You are your party’s main damage source, and your crystals play a very big role in how much damage you do. 

DPS classes in Tera hit the bosses from the back /side, and the amount of time you get to do so is called backtime. You want to hit the bosses from the back because that is where you are safest, and also where your weapon rolls (do x% more damage when you attack from behind) and crystal effects come in to give you a damage boost.

The important and commonly used crystals are Bitter /Spiteful, Savage, Pounding, Forceful, Focused and Carving. You can only use 4 crystals on your weapon at any one time, and what you use depends on your party setup and your needs. 

The standard Crystals you want are Bitter /Spiteful (depends on whether you are ranged or melee), Savage, Focused and a choice of either Forceful /Pounding /Carving. 

Use Carving only when you feel that you need that extra Crit Chance. Could also be used on Classes with low Crit Factors.

There is ongoing debate about Pounding vs Forceful. If you want to min-max your damage, then I’ll point you to Bernkastel’s min-max guide (scroll down to the “Crystal” section) where he does some Math to justify when one is better than the other. You can also use the search function in the subreddit to look for similar discussions.

DPS Accessory Crystals

Equip these crystals according to your needs. I usually use Keen Crystals x4 when I am with a Priest and Powerful Crystals x4 when I am with a Mystic.

Tank Weapon Crystals

Tanks are the shields of your party and your job is to draw the attention of the boss (aggro) to provide your DPS with ample backtime, as well as providing useful buffs and debuffs. 

With the rework of the aggro system and introduction of the Wrathful Crystal, tanks can now dish out some mean DPS! Brawlers, and even Lancers can hit up to /over 1m/s.

Ideal tanking Crystals can either be Wrathful, Focused, Carving, Pounding or Wrathful, Focused, Pounding x2.

You will rarely lose aggro if you have proper rolls on your equipment and can play your class reasonably well. However if you find yourself having trouble holding aggro, then you should swap out a Carving /Pounding for a Threatening. Sure, you might lose out on some DPS but remember, your main role is supposed to be holding the boss’s attention so that the rest of your party can clear the dungeon safely and smoothly. 

Tank Accessory Crystals 

Equip these crystals according to your needs. I usually use Keen Crystals x4 when I am with a Priest and Powerful Crystals x4 when I am with a Mystic.

Healer Weapon Crystals 

Healers focus on staying alive while keeping their party topped up with mana and health. They also provide a range of useful buffs and debuffs.

You can opt for either Swift, Brilliant x3  or Swift, Carving, Brilliant x2. I personally go for the second option as I rarely run out of mana with Infused Charms, along with my skills like Corruption Ring /Mana Charge.

Healer Accessory Crystals

I’ve always used Succoring as it provides me with the best boost in my heals. 

Grounding will provide you with a neat endurance increase, but as a healer you would want to avoid getting hit as much as possible.

I am not sure about Keen as I have never used them on my healer, but if you are going for a Crit Heal build, these might be worth considering.

Armor Crystals

All classes equip the standard Hardy 4x. The damage reduction it gives you far surpasses the HP increase you get from Relentless Crystals. 

Useful Resource on Dyads

This guide found on Essentialmana has more details and includes all the secondary effects which can be obtained on Dyad Crystals.

Elite

A standard player in Tera will only have access to 1 dungeon entry per day, and if they want to do more than one, they will need to use instance reset scrolls (can be purchased from other players). Listing and removing items on the TB will also require them to use some gold, and they are limited to listing on 1 page (correct me if I’m wrong).

A player with Elite will have access to 2 dungeon entries per day, and they DO NOT REQUIRE GOLD TO LIST OR REMOVE ITEMS on the TB. Elite also comes with an Elite bar which includes a free mount (for the duration of your Elite Status), a Travel Journal, a Village Atlas, Elite Gift and Consumable boxes, Velik’s scroll, Gold Boost and free consumables which have unlimited use. There are plenty of other perks so I’ll refer you to Enmasse’s page for the details.

So, is Elite worth it? You bet it is! The Village Atlas and Travel Journal, 5 pages of TB listings, double entries and daily gift boxes, and unlimited consumables make it a worthwhile investment. You can either purchase Elite from the Tera Store with EMP, subscribe for a monthly fee, or purchase it from other players in game. 

But is Elite mandatory to play the game? Nope. Elite offers you convenience and perks and you can play the game fine without it. I have a friend who plays Tera without Elite just fine! 

Basic Consumables

When you run the endgame dungeons, you are expected to use Charms, Crit /Attack Speed Scrolls and Nostrums. These consumables boost your DPS and helps make the fight go a lot smoother. 

Charms

These are your very basic consumables. For DPS and Tank classes, you will benefit the most from Power, Infusing and Enduring Charms. Burn these in a campfire and they will activate once you enter combat. For healers, you will benefit from a Keen Charm instead. The effect ends when you die /the timer runs out so you will need to reuse them. Charms can be bought from the Specialty Store in game or from the TB (check the TB first because the prices on the TB are often cheaper than the ones offered by the NPC).

Crit Power /Attack Speed Scrolls & Nostrums

Crit Power Scrolls will increase your Crit Power and offers a significant boost in your DPS. It is essential for the DPS and Tanks to use them whenever you run a dungeon. Crit Power Scrolls can be crafted or purchased from NPCs /players. 

Attack Speed Scrolls benefit healers more and every healer should use them as they increase the animation speed of your skills. These should be used whenever you run a dungeon. Attack Speed Scrolls can be crafted or purchased from NPCs /players.

Nostrums reduces the cooldown of your offensive skills and you should use them as the cooldown can help you pump out more skills. This should be used by ALL CLASSES. Nostrums can be crafted or purchased from NPCs /players.

Noctenium Infusion

Noctenium improves the effects of your skills. This can range from increasing a skill damage, to increasing your healing output. Each skill cast will use up 1 noctenium. These are not mandatory and should be used when you want to see big, green /yellow numbers and increase your damage. Noctenium can be obtained in game from Alliance, Noctenium Infusion Boxes or purchased from other players. 

Bravery /Canephora Potions

These potions help increase your damage. Use them when you want to maximise your damage, or just when you feel like it. Do note that the effects DO NOT STACK.

Credits: http://teradatabase.net/us/item/167001/ & http://teradatabase.net/us/item/150542/ 

Vanguard Dailies

Vanguard Dailies are tasks which grant you points. Tasks include clearing dungeons, gathering, or killing BAMs on the Island of Dawn (IoD). Completing IoD BAM Dailies also reward you with tokens which can be turned in for materials, glyphs and the new accessories.

Bringing Up the Interface

When you press the “H” (default) key, you will bring up your Vanguard (VG) interface. This interface shows you a list of things you can do and completing each of these will award you a set amount of points. 

Points

These points can be turned in for various goodies, like Crystals and Masterwork Alkahest (MWA) boxes. There are a set number of badges you can do each day, and I encourage you to complete all of them as the VG points are really useful. Vanguard Points are also one of your main sources of MWA.

Optimization /Improving Frame Rate

Tera isn’t optimized at all. I often get FPS in the low 30s, and it is not unheard of to have high end gaming machines having trouble with frame rates too. We can only pray and hope that BHS will optimise the game for us, but until then, you will have to tweak some game files in order to improve your frame rate. 

Bernkastel’s Tera Optimisation Guide is my go to and I always refer friends and guild members who have FPS issues to it. Give it a try and your game might just improve!

Achievements

You want that fancy laurel? Well time to work for it! Achievement grades are determined by how many achievements you complete, with Bronze being the lowest laurel and Champion being the highest laurel.

You earn achievement points by completing various tasks and you can view the tasks and your grade by pressing the “V” key (default). Note that achievements under “SPECIAL” DO NOT COUNT towards your grade.

I recommend clearing the achievements in Progression, Tours of Duty, Dungeons (some), Extracurricular Activities and Encounters and Exploration (rare mobs and some World Bosses). In the current patch, it is possible to obtain a Champion laurel WITHOUT camping for World Bosses.

This guide by Warmi shows you all of the locations for the rare mobs and this video guide gives you all the locations of all world bosses. These monsters have very long spawn times, so the best times to get them are after server resets. Or you could join a World Bam group in your server, more people means more opportunities! 

Along the way, you might find yourself missing an item for a quest (Tours of Duty). If you do not have an item needed to complete a quest, you can always write to Support nicely and the staff will assist you.

There is also a quest called “Oshar’s Biggest Secret”, and you will need to reach a certain reputation in Bastion in order to unlock it. Just do all the yellow quests in Bastion and you’ll eventually complete it!

You might also come across annoying achievements which require you to hit a boss x times, or knockdown a boss in a dungeon. 

Make sure to equip a low level weapon, and unequipping all your gear which might give you a DPS boost before attempting to hit a boss x times /knockdown. For Reapers, you can use bombs and throw them from the back of the monster (30s cooldown) if you do not wish to 1 HKO and reset the dungeon. Oh, Strength Charms and Impact Crystals will also help you with knockdowns! 

Dungeon Guides & Useful Sites

Here are some dungeon guides for the current patch. Yosha’s Shadow Sanguinary Guide, Demokron’s Factory Guide on Essentialmana, Wonderholme Guides Part I and Part II. 

Essentialmana has a treasure trove of information and their guides are written by knowledgeable players. Class guides, dungeons guides, achievement guides, you name it! 

Yosha’s Site has all the information about upcoming class changes and includes a detailed Sorcerer Class Guide, along with other useful information.

The Tera Subreddit has plenty of discussions, if you do not find your question here, head over to the site and use the search function. Chances are a question which is similar to yours has already been answered! 

Closing Note

I hope that this document will help answer some common questions, as well as help both new and old players in the community. If I have missed out any information /useful site or resource, please let me know and I’ll rectify it! Have fun and enjoy the game!

Virus, Forsynthia, Zoo, Omanko, Vouch, Peq, Hew, Hiq, Luq, Bakemono, Luria.Fibers

youtube.com/idioticfreek | reddit.com/u/megatonfist

REPLENISH VALUE CALCULATOR – PLEASE FILL IN D54-60 AT BOTTOM FOR BEST RESULTS

2/7 edit: calculator is complete

Replenish Calculator and Base Damage Table

INTRODUCTION

I started playing tera around the time it went f2p back in march of 2013 and hit 60 on my first character on AV around May that year. I mained warrior at the time, both tanking and dpsing as needed, and moved on to leveling other classes since the game got stale.Following warrior, I leveled berserker, priest, lancer, reaper, mystic, archer,  slayer, sorcerer, gunner, and brawler to 60 > 65 in that order. Needless to say, I have enough experience in this game playing across all roles/classes and have cleared all major content since the release of Tera. 

I picked up gunner on its release here in NA and immediately saw how blatantly broken this class was. For those of you tuning in to tera just now and have not experienced gameplay before, arcane barrage used to do nearly twice the damage and generate double the willpower before the nerfs. Because of how strong AB used to be, running double cdr lines and energetic etches was a viable build at the time as rotations focused on getting as many AB’s out as possible. However after numerous nerfs to the skill, the traditional build focusing on % damage lines and crit/power is now more common.

CTRL + F GUIDE FOR THE LAZY

• A1 – SUGGESTED GEAR LINES/CRYSTALS
• A2 – NICHE SKILLS EXPLAINED
• A3 – DEBATABLE POINTS OF CONVERSATION
• A4 – Glyphs: 2-5 Update
• A5 – POWER VS CRIT
• A6 – ATTACK SPEED ROLL AND WHY IT’S BAD
• A7 – UTILIZING MANA MISSILES EFFECTIVELY
• A8 – UTILIZING TIME BOMB EFFECTIVELY
• A9 – BLAST CANCELLING/WEAVING: 2-5-16 UPDATE
• B1 – BALDER’S VENGEANCE VS BF 1500 WP USAGE
• B2 – TIMEBOMB, HB SUM, AND AB PROJECTILES
• B3 – OPTIMIZING YOUR ROTATION
• B4 – Questions mid rotation that I ask myself
• B5 – NOTABLE TIPS/TRICKS
• B6 – My gear
• B7 – WTS PING
• B8 – 5WP BF CHEST LINE
• B9 – Calculating Replenishment’s DPS value
• C1 – BREAKING BF:Calculating TB/HBsum/ABprojectiles with…
• C2 – Conclusions and TL;DR
• C3 – Closing words

A1 – SUGGESTED GEAR LINES/CRYSTALS

Weapon

enraged + enraged/flat dmg/rear dmg/cdr* 

Chest

15% cd on rolling reload + flat dmg/enraged dmg/frontal dmg/max hp or increased healing effects*

*extra line is only available to visionmaker gear (i.e. lucid/starfall for our current patch)

Gloves

atk speed, power, crit

Boots

movement speed, endurance, hp or mp regen

Crystals

focused/spiteful/savage/ + one of either pounding, forceful, carving, or slaying 

(more info following)

4x hardy

A2 – NICHE SKILLS EXPLAINED

Arcane Barrage – AB

launches a slow moving projectile upon first cast, and detonates on 2nd cast. detonate the projectile when positioned behind a monster for rear crit damage. will 100% rear crit at approximately +130 bonus crit. following the detonation, if your HB is summoned, will shoot 5 projectiles at the targeted detonation location. 20 wp on first hit, 200 wp on second hit

Scattershot – SS

shoots 5 bullets in a conical spread forward and will provide a 4.5meter recoil, 2.5meter when glyphed for recoil reduction. 20wp gained per bullet hit, up to 100. this is your go to skill for moving behind bosses with a small enough character model

Burst Fire – BF

windup your gun and fire a stream of bullets with increasing damage and crit rate up to a cap using willpower. the damage on this skill will go up to 4x 6x the base moving up in increments of 100%  per shot (4th 6th shot of consecutive BF will be the maximum dmg output)

Point Blank – PB

this is a two part skill requiring two key inputs, swing your gun forward to move a short distance and then fire a blank shot moving you back a further distance. rotating your screen 180 degrees after the first hit will allow you traverse the most distance

Rocket Jump 

propel yourself forward with your gun;  can be used mid rolling reload to traverse a slightly greater distance(~2m more)

Rolling Reload

your main iframe; resets scattershot upon use

Command: Recall

leashes you up to 40 meters to your HB-bot allowing you to absorb all incoming damage for ~2 seconds. you will still be prone to debuffs such as slows/stuns/DoTs. can be used when knocked down. also can be used to cancel all animations.

Mana Missiles

charge your gun to fire long range missiles. maximum charge will release 5 shots, any other duration of a charge or tap will release only 2 shots. each shot has a fixed base damage and does not change based on the charge level. aim this at the base of a mob for better accuracy as the missiles follow a sinusoidal path and have a tendency to spread out pass monster hit boxes. this skill extends 30 35 meters making this the longest ranging skill in the game.

Balder’s Vengeance

requires 1500 wp to use. fires a long range shot that will guarantee a crit, can be animation cancelled using recall

A3 – DEBATABLE POINTS OF CONVERSATION

Please note, I don’t have any reliable math to prove my points but here are my reasons as to why I choose one over the other.

Additional weapon line of 14 crit vs 7.2% cdr

7.2% cdr will apply to ALL of your skills as a gunner

This means that not only are you able to use your hardest hitting skills more often (bombardment/AB), you will be able to build willpower much quicker (replenishment/other general skills). Reduced cooldowns on skills such as rocket jump, rolling reload, point blank, and recall will help with flexibility/survivability/mobility which translates to more back crits; more back crits means more dps. 

Pounding vs Forceful vs Carving vs Slaying

POUNDING

use this when you will be running a dungeon with a priest/mystic

FORCEFUL

use this when you are solo playing without energy stars/titanic wrath or when your total power is under ~244 after buffs/consumables

CARVING

after numerous tests on BAMS and dungeons i found that carving increases the crit rate on burst fire by ~10-15% 

use this if you are running a power centric build or are lacking in crit accessories as a FRESH 65

SLAYING

use this for high score runs where you will be playing under 50% hp

Chest Lines – Arcane Barrage vs Replenishment vs -5wp on BF

“15% reduced cd on rolling reload” is actually a typo and affects replenishment instead of roll. With master glyphs and the chest line, replenishment’s cooldown will go down to less than 4 seconds from 8.

Now why do I choose replenishment over AB dmg?

1. You can build wp faster with more replenishments 
2. You have a good filler skill if you experience a boss turning mid BF
3. 7% AB damage will only provide you 5.83% overall more damage on AB (1.27/1.2=1.05833) because of the 20% dmg glyph. This nets us about a 1.4575% increase in total damage as AB amounts to approximately 25% of your total dps

• 7% AB damage is viable so it all comes down to your playstyle
• Currently testing -5wp on BF as of 4/1. Will update in the future on how strong it is.

A4 – Glyphs: 2-5 Update

This is your core build, please allocate points around what kind of fight you are going to expect.

I listed the following glyphs in order of effectiveness/contribution to total dps.

GLYPHS TO CONSIDER

• 25% scatter shot damage and 20% powerlinked scatter on roll
• 20% blast damage
• cooldown on rocket jump (mobility)
• cooldown on point blank (mobility)
• cooldown on recall (survivability/iframe)
• scattershot recoil (great for stationary fights)
• damage on Balder’s Vengeance (for highscore/short runs)
• longshot burst fire (for bosses that move beyond what you can realistically reach)
• hp regen on burst fire (for solo play/unreliable healers)
• 30% atk speed during AB (only for advanced players who understand its utility) 

A5 – POWER VS CRIT

About +133 crit is the sweetspot for AB to 100% back crit and for TB/HBsum to 100% crit mid BF. Because of this, +130 bonus crit is the minimum crit gunners should be running. The question here is should you stack more power or more crit after +130? 

Why you shouldn’t stack power

powerMod = (1 + power / 100)

This means that every single additional point of power increases your overall damage by a gradually decreasing amount. For example: 

11/10 = 1.10  : 10% increase. 

12/11=1.0909 : 9.09% increase

13/12=1.0833 : 8.3% increase

Although these numbers seem very large, once you go up to the few hundred power range the % increase per point of power becomes very very small. 

Why you shouldn’t stack crit

If we assume we can 100% crit on our BV/AB/TB/HBsum with +130 crit factor, this means that approximately 40% of our total damage is going to be unaffected by stacking more crit. 

That being said, Mana Missiles, Bombardment, and Burstfire all scale differently than standard skills with crit. Both Mana Missiles and Bombardment have 3x/2x crit glyphs respectively. Just from playing around with these two skills glyphed/unglyphed, I usually see MM and Bombardment critting anywhere from 2-2.5x more and 1.5-2x more when glyphed. So any additional crit you stack will benefit these two immensely. 

I have no idea exactly how burst fire crit works but following shot # 5 (which is where the damage ramp is at its max) I see BF critting for upwards of 90-100% at +173 crit and only ~70% at +130. So take what you can from this and make your own decision.

TL;DR

Gunners scale like shit with both crit and power. Take your pick.

A6 – ATTACK SPEED ROLL AND WHY IT’S BAD

Only the following skills benefit from additional attack speed:

-bombardment cast time

-scattershot

-arcbomb

-mana missiles charge speed

-burst fire wind up animation

-point blank

-rocket jump

A gunner’s main rotation revolves around BV, AB, Replenish, TB, HbSum, BF(held), and HbProjectiles all of which total to over 70% of your dps and are unaffected by AS. 

Rolling for attack speed on your weapon is a waste of a line and should only be considered as a bonus supplementary stat from lamb bulgogi, energy stars/titanic wrath, and bravery potion.

A7 – UTILIZING MANA MISSILES EFFECTIVELY

Mana missiles is odd in that it doesn’t allow the skill to be used until your character is out of its current skill animation.

This holds true for nearly all of gunner’s skills except the following:

Burst Fire (let go of BF key before you start to hold MM)

Command:Recall

Rocket Jump

Many gunner’s will tell you about how MM should be used after these skills because they “speed up” the charge time but this is not totally true. What is actually happening is that these skills don’t put you in an ending animation lock and allow you to almost instantly start the charge. Although you benefit most from MM by utilizing it following above 3 skills, using it solely as a filler in place of scattershot is also okay as it effectively does more damage than SS.

Video Reference

A8 – UTILIZING TIME BOMB EFFECTIVELY

Timebomb WILL NOT always back crit even after aiming at a boss directly. You want the edge of the TB to just touch the edge of the boss’s base model. Sometimes I find that if timebomb detonates under the boss when mid animation of an attack or turn, it will register as a back hit, but no guarantees.

Video for reference, most of my timebombs were directed poorly, but you’ll see some of them placed properly.

A9 – BLAST CANCELLING/WEAVING: 2-5-16 UPDATE

One of the more challenging topics that many people talk about on gunner, blast canceling does one of several things for you.

1. It allows you to break animations following the end of certain skills to allow for continued free movement 

2. It will proc your 15% attack speed glyph. 

3. It restores 100mp on hit

4. It does kawaii dps.

REASONING BEHIND BLAST CANCELLING CONTINUED

1. Breaking animations on skills is crucial to gunners because two of their main filler skills, scattershot and mana missiles, have significant recoils. Utilizing blast after said skills will allow you to continue walking forward to stay at melee range of the boss. But why should I be at melee range? Your most important skill (AB) goes on cooldown after it is detonated. This means you should be trying to detonate this skill as soon as possible to maximize its usage (that being said, you also want AB to make contact with the boss first so the HB projectiles that follow up will also hit). So if you don’t blast after SS or MM, you’ll slowly be distancing yourself from the boss. This will put you in a situation where you will not be able to instantly detonate AB. In addition to this, HBsummon, one of your other main tools that will be utilized before starting to BF needs to be used at melee range to hit. You’ll also have a much easier time maneuvering around bosses by simply rolling through them.

*I should note here that in a scattershot/MM > ab rotation or any time you’re trying to close gaps, instead of blasting prior to the AB. you can blast mid AB flight to continue forward movement. Other options include using SS or Arcbomb mid AB but these cast times are a little longer than blast and won’t give you free movement, so you’ll have to use your judgement as to what filler is best given the distance needed to be traveled by your AB.

1. The 15% attack speed glyph has a 10% proc chance and lasts for 10 seconds. On average, this means that 1 blast will effectively provide you with 15% attack speed for 1 second. This is most useful when blasting PRIOR to SS as this is your main filler skill and is affected by more attack speed.

1. Gunner’s natural MP replenishment is very VERY little. If you supplement this with replenishing off cooldown and your priest/mystic periodically regenerating your mana, it will still be insufficient to sustain your mana pool. If you are having MP issues on gunner, not utilizing blast is probably the number one reason as to why you’re going OOM. Just as a side note, I’m able to run dungeons without the need for infused charms whatsoever.

1. kawaii dps ~ keep reading below

I went ahead and did a number of tests to determine how long weaving 1 blast takes between skills. What I found was it takes 0.15 seconds at my ping of 35 using Sony Vegas for 1 blast.

To put that into perspective as to what this means for our rotations, when blast is glyphed for damage (920.39), blast can do

1 / 0.15 x 920.39 = 6135 dps.

This means that if I could spam blast at 0.15 second intervals, it would have a dps of 6135.

But because no one can do this realistically, what you and every other gunner out there should be doing is utilizing blast weaving. This will net you that 6135 dps over the course of a boss fight as this is the value you should be keeping in mind as you use this skill.

Just for reference, scattershot’s base damage is 3107 and its cast time is 1 second at +30 AS (+17 is standard for gunners and +13 means playing with either bravery potion and energy stars or the AS glyph proc itself).

Scattershot’s DPS is 3107/1=3107

This means utilizing blast is almost TWICE as effective as using scattershots in rotations.

(for proper calculations with WP factored in go here.)

Strictly speaking, nearly every skill can be used to animation cancel but only blast, tb, and ab give you free character movement following the cancel.

Situations I would not recommend blast cancelling would be when you can cancel the current animation of your skill with something with better dps (replenish, ab, tb, hb).

Blasting will generally lead to a DPS GAIN when used PRIOR to any fillers that can cancel animations.

B1 – BALDER’S VENGEANCE VS BF 1500 WP USAGE

BV tooltip has a base damage of 15173

BV’s actual base damage is 16235.87

Cast time of bv is 2.4333 if cancelled with recall

Cast time of bv rolling at the end of animation is 4.7 seconds (useless info)

Balder’s Vengeance yields 16235.87 x 8 / 2.4333 = 53376.073 dps

Cast time of full BF +15% AS from glyph is 4.8 seconds

Full BF has a base damage of 20385. If we assume the first 3 hits will not crit and the other 22 will, that’s an 88% crit chance. With an 8x crit mod this gives us:

19480 x 8 + 856 =156696/4.8=32645 dps

BV>1500BF if you recall cancel

Even if you utilize  AB/TB/HB before the BF, balder’s will provide you more dps and should be used off CD. Math reasoning is posted in the comments of this thread.

B2 – TIMEBOMB, HB SUM, AND AB PROJECTILES 

Important note: the 5 projectiles following AB have a total base dmg of ~5120; this is HUGE that’s what she said

If you are mid Burst Fire, any and all skills that hit will also benefit from BF’s bonus crit chance. For these supplementary skills to 100% crit from the REAR, you will need approximately +133 bonus crit. What this means is that before you start to BF, you should be looking to do one of 5 things.

1.  Arcane Barrage > TB> AB(detonate) > BF (use this when you have about ~170 wp so your BF can last long enough for all 5 projectiles to crit)
2.  TB > HB Summon > BF (use this if you’re at melee range, requires ~180 wp)
3.  TB (~180wp) > BF 
4.  AB (~350wp) > BF
5.  HB Sum (~300wp) > BF

B3 – OPTIMIZING YOUR ROTATION

I will continue to update this section if I’m able to further improve rotations.

If you’ve made it to this point, congratulations. I should hope that I don’t need to point out what a gunner’s rotation is. You’re going to either strictly be using your willpower or building it.

Ideal opening rotation with BV:

Bombard > AB > Rep > BV(recall) > tb > stack wp

Ideal opening rotation without BV:

Bombard > AB > TB > AB (detonate) > BF > MM > SS > stack wp 

If you’re trying to generate willpower from zero:

(TB)>AB>SS>REP>(RollSS)>MM>ARC

If you use tb at 0 wp, by the time you are near stacked with wp, it should be available for use before BFing. Avoid using TB for wp generation if not at 0-100 wp as you will most likely overcap WP by the time TB becomes available.

The Conservative Gunner

First I’d like to say that your primary goal is to AB>TB>AB before every BF and to maintain a BF for as long as possible. 

This playstyle involves spacing out ab/hb usage to maximize sustained dps. Using HB off cooldown before BF is not advised because there is a 50% chance that on your next BF parse AB does NOT reset on your final replenishment. In the event this occurs, this is when you would use HB>TB before BF (hence why I mentioned spacing out skill usage).  Should this occur, what will end up happening is that your AB will come off CD mid BF following the HB>TB. When it becomes available, you should stop BFing, AB, then continue BF. Follow your rotation normally afterwards.

This rotation follows the above mentioned priority line for stacking your wp. When you are almost done stacking your wp, on your FINAL replenishment, should both SS and AB reset and you have room to stack the wp, use SS first then AB>TB>AB>BF to 0.

Should your final replenishment NOT reset your AB and your HB is ON CD, it is NOT recommended to overstack wp to wait for your AB to come off CD. At this point you will have no option but to TB>BF without AB/HB. 

The Lucky Recall Gunner

This rotation puts a heavy emphasis on using recall off cd for replenish resets. While this is great for DPS you put you and your party in jeopardy if you are unable to recall to iframe something important. If you are trying to maximize your dps however, this is what you should follow.

From 0 wp:

(TB)>AB>Rep+recall>(AB)>SS>Rep> continue wp stacking normally.

Do keep in mind, you will not need to use roll>SS as frequently since you will easily stack WP should you manage to pull off two AB resets in a row. 

Other things to note:

• Use MM as filler if both AB/SS do not reset following an AB and you are unable to roll>SS.

• MM after your BF unless AB is up or if the value of replenish exceeds MM. Refer to row 92 on excel sheet for post BF MM values.

This is probably my best example of an optimized rotation.

B4 – Questions mid rotation that I ask myself

Should I stop to timebomb or Hbsum mid BF then restart BF? 

Should I stop to AB mid BF?

Should I use both AB and SS before I replenish?

When is it better to single tap MM vs full charge?

CHECK BOTTOM OF GUIDE FOR MY ANALYSIS/ANSWERS

B5 – NOTABLE TIPS/TRICKS

Double point blank stagger (pvp use more prevalent)

Video Reference

requires a fair amount of attack speed and good ping to do consistently (~+23AS/35ping)

Double replenish/triple AB

use recall the moment you replenish to prevent replenish from going on cooldown

Gif Reference

Hitting a target with rocket jump DOES NOT put you into combat.

Blast will sometimes bug and fire 2 shots instantly instead of 1, though I don’t know why this occurs.

B6 – My gear

My current gear

B7 – WTS PING

Gunner may be one the more difficult classes to play with high ping as you will not be able to weave blast/cancel as effectively and burst fire will be choppy as it needs to send individual packets to servers very quickly. You’ll need to spam alternate keys to BF with high ping or macro it for it be effective. So many of the topics highlighted above will be of very little use to you. 

However, if you still want to play Gunner and have upwards of over 200 ping, your best bet would be to focus on a power build with an emphasis on AB over anything as that is the single most faceroll skill in this game. So if you can’t do what I present to you in my videos, blame whoever designed this game to be so ping dependant. 

I have 35 ping.

B8 – 5WP BF CHEST LINE

30407.625=standard BF dps

at +17 AS +15%

cast time is 4.8 (25 shots)

cast time is 4.933(27 shots) (idk why the difference in cast times are very short)

27 consecutive hits = 24.5 full dmg hits

24.5 x 906 = 22197 base dmg

22197 x 8 x .88 +22197 x .12=158930.52

158930.52/4.9333=32215.8636

32215.8636/30407.625=5.946% increase in number of BF’s, chestline vs no chest line

assuming BF is 30% of your total DPS

5.946%*.3 = 1.7838% increase in total damage

(Above % value doesn’t factor in cast time of additional BFs correctly so it may be wrong. 3/30 edit currently testing this chest line in DS2)

B9 – Calculating Replenishment’s DPS value

Before you continue below and check the spreadsheet linked, please understand that the value of replenishment at any given point has 7+ factors:

1. the remaining cooldown of AB (you wouldn’t replenish when AB will come up in 1 second right?)
2. filler skills you have available (ideal filler rotation would be MM>SS>rollSS (repeat roll)
3. willpower generated (AB/replenish/filler skills all generate WP)
4. BF duration (because you most likely won’t be using BF from 1500-0 every single time, the DPS value gained from generating wp from AB/REP and filler skills varies based on how long you plan to BF for)
5. your crit rate (as your crit rate goes down, value of AB goes up but value of BF and fillers go down)
6. glyphs. because we all have personal preferences
7. attack speed (this changes the value of your fillers/BFwind up as they are affected by AS)

The following table assumes:

1. +17 AS +15% AS from blast glyph proc (or bravery potion + energy stars), 
2. start of animation to start of horizontal movement after blast cancelling said skill for cast time reference points
3. 8x crit mod

Scattershot tool tip is insanely wrong.

BF windup calculated by Sony Vegas ~ 0.9 seconds 

Cast time of BF from start of windup to finish = 4.8 seconds

0.192 = avg cast time for 1 BF shot  (4.8/25)

0.0032 = avg cast time of ONE WP worth of BF (0.156/60)

2-3 edit: Looking for the table of values that used to be here? 

Please refer to excel spreadsheet below that is almost complete

REPLENISH VALUE CALCULATOR and GUNNER SKILL VALUES

PLEASE FILL IN CELLS D67-71 FOR MORE ACCURATE REPRESENTATIONS

Replenish Calculator and Base Damage Table

C1 – BREAKING BF:Calculating TB/HBsum/ABprojectiles with BF 

First I’d like to point out that this next section is to determine if it’s ever beneficial to break BF for other skills and what skills are best to use before you start BF. Please skip to TL;DR if you don’t want to look at my calculations as they are now outdated, but still somewhat relevant.

The average dps value of BF is 32653.75 assuming 1500>0 wp use.

The dps value of BF maintaining just the 6th+shot is 37750.

Here are the possible combinations I’ve thought about using to break out of BF

TB>BF

total cast time 

.2666 + .9 + 5x.156=1.9466 seconds

total damage

damage value of TB with 100% crit + mini hit on contact = 33370.401

sum of first 5 shots of BF is 151 + 302 + 453 + 604 + 755 = 2265 

apply 88% crit chance with 8x crit factor

(2265*.88*8+2265*.12)=16217.4

33370.401 + 16217.4 =49581.801

49581.801/1.9466=25474.05 dps

HB>BF

total cast time

0.3 + .9 + 5x.156=1.98 seconds

total dmg

34328.128 + 16217.4 = 50545.528

50545.528/1.98=25528.276

TB>HB>BF

total cast time

.6333 + .9 + 5x.156= 2.3133

total dmg

67699.001+16217.4=83916.4

83916.4/2.7813=30171.646

i’m going to scale down crit rate on BF here for more realistic values

dmg value of first 10 hits of BF = 6795; let’s look at 75% crit rate

6795 x (.75*8 + .25)=42468.75

AB>BF including projectile backcrits

total cast time

1.1+.9+10 x .156=3.56 seconds

total dmg

44216+42468.75+(5122*8)=127660

127660/3.56=35859.55

AB>TB>AB (detonation)>BF 

total cast time

1.1+.3+.9+10 x .156=3.86

total dmg

44216+33370.401+42468.75+(5122*8)=161031.151

161031.151/3.86=41717.94

#1 COMBO

TL;DR

The only situations you want to break mid BF is if AB comes off CD and you have at least 350wp. If you do break for the AB you MUST BF for ~10 hits (600 wp) for it to be damage effective. If you have TB available for use as well when you are going to break for AB, use it between the cast/detonation animations. 

This is probably my best example of an optimized rotation.

C2 – Conclusions and TL;DR

3/21 edit – improved dungeon rotation (ab>tb focus)

Here are some conclusions that I’ve come to: (subject to change)

1. You should look to either HBsum, TB,  AB, TB>HBsum, or AB>TB>AB (detonate) before you BF, the latter yielding most dps.

1. When should you ever break mid BF? Only for AB (+tb if available) when you can reliably BF for at least 10 hits.

1. It is NOT recommended to replenish midBF for AB resets; and you really shouldn’t replenish if your WP is going to overcap 1500.

1. Should I scattershot before replenishment? Absolutely yes. The only situations I would not SS before replenish is if you know you will overstack your wp should you finish with ab>tb>ab OR after your FIRST replenish>recall cancel.

1. Using MM as a filler generally does MORE dps than SS, HOWEVER this is not the case when you will be utilizing BF’s bonus crit to apply to other skills and you plan on BFing for long durations. In addition, because replenish/ab/ss are your primary filler tools, you will want to avoid using MM mid rotation unless both ss and ab did not reset following a replenish. The hidden value in WP is its ability to get our other skills to crit. So generating willpower quicker with SS will become the better filler. Also, use MM after BF so you don’t screw yourself over with the cast time.

1. Should I TB>BF off CD? No. Stack your WP as high as you can without over filling before you TB>BF. 

1. Also another thing I should bring up is single tapping MM vs full charge. Single tap technically does more raw damage, especially when you don’t have much AS, but a full charge MM will allow you to reliably do good filler dps while giving your other skills time to come back off CD. So I leave it up to your judgment mid rotations on what you should be doing. 

1. PLEASE read blast cancelling section as there’s a lot to say about this skill.

1. If you’re looking to optimize your DPS rotation, please refer to section B3.

• Post BF calculations: BF>MM>AB or BF>AB?

(MM before you AB as your filler rotation doesn’t matter when stacking wp.)

• Arcbomb; When Am I Not Shit?

(I’m always shit. Please use this skill absolutely last for dps.)

C3 – Closing words

Everything presented here in this guide is my own opinion. Take what you can and apply it to how you play as I may not be correct. 

youtube.com/idioticfreek

reddit.com/u/megatonfist

PM me on reddit or youtube for any questions, comments, concerns

If you’d like to run a dungeon with me to compare DPS/rotations, organize the run, let me know when, and we’ll sync IMS queue. I’m always looking for people to prove me wrong or show me better rotations.

casualmeter4dayz

shoutout to taps/nya of AV for best sorc NA

better than yosha :^)

lateral and bernkastel are math gods.

thanks to texendis for being the only one to properly critique me and find errors in my guide 

http://www.essentialmana.com/gunner-pve-guide/  for the official guide.

Table of Contents

1. Who am I?
2. Crystals
3. Gear
4. Skills and Glyphs

• Blast
• Bombardment
• Scattershot
• Point Blank
• Burst Fire
• Time Bomb
• Arcane Barrage
• Mana Missile
• Arc Bomb
• Rocket Jump
• Balder’s Vengeance
• Replenishment
• HB-7
• ST-4
• Rolling Reload
• Command: Recall

1. Rotations:

• Priority list
• Triple Arcane Barrage rotation:
• Main DPS rotations:
• Mobility rotations:

1. Tips and tricks

• Positioning
• Willpower management

1. FAQ

If you’ve read the guide and are interested in watching gameplay videos to improve, here is my personal youtube channel, check it out for recordings of my Gunner dungeon runs. It is important to analyze rotation and positioning when learning how to play any class, and it will be a great resource for those of you who want to play to the best of your ability!

Chicken.Salad’s Gunner Guide

Who am I?

Hello, I am Chicken.Salad, and I am currently a Gunner main in the top Mount Tyrannas PvE guild, Amaterasu. I have been involved in many top-tier score runs in the past, and currently have Shandra Manaya on farm, with over 100 clears. This is my guide on how to play Gunner to its greatest potential based on my past experiences in these many runs. Gunner is an easy class to grasp, but difficult to master. Playing it perfectly is hard. Feel free to parcel post me in-game if you have questions to anything not addressed in the guide. 

Formatted by Sign. Edited by Garzy.

Crystals

Score Run: Slaying, Focused, Savage, Spiteful

Backcrit: Pounding/Carving*, Focused, Savage, Spiteful

*Run Carving with a Priest

Run 4x POWER Vyrsks with a Mystic. Run 4x KEEN Vyrsks with a Priest.

Gear

Weapon:

Top line roll: Increases damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters.

Explanation for top lines:

There are 4 options for your top line roll: 

• Increases damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged 
• Decreases skill cooldowns by 7.2% 
• Increases attack speed by 9% 
• Increases crit factor by 18. 

The enraged roll is the best choice between all the options because it gives the most damage output mathematically. Skill cooldown is not a bad choice, however, it is inferior to enraged roll since its damage increase is technically lower, since your rotation would be completely different and suboptimal with it. Attack speed is to be avoided since AB and BF do not benefit from it. Crit factor roll is bad on all classes since its total damage increase is inferior to an enraged roll or skill cooldown roll.

Bottom line rolls: 

• Increases damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters
• Increases damage by 6.9% when attacking from behind
• Increases damage by 6%
• Decreases skill cooldown by 7.2%

Explanation for bottom lines:

All of the classes in this game will roll the basic damage increase on the bottom lines of their weapon since they are vastly superior to the other rolls. Some might say that crit power is a viable fourth roll since Arcane Barrage has a 100% crit chance, but it is not the optimal roll. Assuming you are using full red dyads and a crit power VI scroll, your crit power should be at 8.10. By adding 0.3 crit power to that total amount, you are only increasing your crit damage by 3.7%. Also, you only crit about 50-60% of the time, so the effectiveness of this roll is two times less effective. Crit factor roll is still not a viable fourth roll, since you are able to obtain crit factor easily from other sources such as accessories as opposed to skill cooldown reduction which is only available as a roll or as an etching (Energetic etching). In other words, cooldown reduction is the best fourth roll since its utility outweighs every other fourth roll as it allows you to use more skills in a fight which in return gives you more Willpower generation.

Chest:

Top line roll: Increases damage of Arcane Barrage by 7% or Decreases cooldown of Replenishment by 15%

Explanation for top line roll:

Originally, AB dmg roll was actually superior to Replenish CD, however, after the recent nerf to AB (DS2 patch), this roll has lost some of it’s value. As of right now, Burst Fire’s damage is actually much higher than Arcane Barrage, so we want to focus on building as much Willpower as possible. It is however much harder to adopt a Replenishment roll playstyle. Players with low ping should try to roll for Replenishment CD, as it allows them to orient their playstyle to maximize Willpower gain for Burst Fire (BF’s attack speed animation is heavily dependant on ping). Players with high ping should opt more for the AB damage roll as it allows them to still deal decent damage by focusing less on Burst Fire.

Etchings:

Pumped III weapon and gloves or a combination of Keen III* and Pumped III.

Explanation on etchings:

Double CDR etchings aren’t bad, but the setup is not optimal for PvE. If you were PvPing, CDR would be better than double pumped or double keen etchings. The utility of CDR etchings is to do your rotations faster since the CDR etchings have cooldown reduction stats and attack speed stats (which synergizes well with each other). If you have too much CDR but not enough attack speed, you will find that a lot of your skills are up before you even finish your rotation. The problem with gunner is that they don’t benefit from attack speed, so CDR etchings basically only gives you cooldown reduction but no attack speed. The best gunner rotation for optimal DPS does not require cooldown reduction. Also, the main reason people build CDR on gunner is to use Arcane Barrage more often. The problem with that is it doesn’t actually boost your damage, because gunners don’t rely 100% on Arcane Barrage, so a lot of times, I have AB up but I don’t cast it because I’m using Burst Fire. If you were to go full CDR, that means you would also need to roll 15% less cooldown on Replenishment on your chest roll. Pumped or keen etchings are the way to go, since it gives you more damage in both Burst Fire/Arcane Barrage which, as stated previously, contribute about 60% of your dps (30% for AB and 30% for Burst Fire). 

* Note: Depending on the amount of crit you have, One Keen III might be necessary if you are running with a power innerwear.

Half Power Half Crit Build vs. Full Crit Build:

Koreans* will tell you that crit is better than power because you get increased expected damage, which outpaces flat increases in damage on average. What they are saying is true for other classes, but not necessarily for gunners. The problem in Ktera is that DPS meters are not allowed, so they cannot accurately determine every class’s DPS and skill breakdowns unlike in NA Tera where the DPS meter is allowed. According to multiple tests, with 180 total crit rate, Time Bomb has a 100% crit rate (if done correctly), Arcane Barrage has a 100% crit rate, and Burst Fire has a 80% crit rate. Arcane Barrage is roughly 30% of your damage, Burst Fire is roughly 30% of your damage, and Time Bomb is roughly 10% of your damage. Therefore, we can assume that Arcane Barrage, Burst Fire, and Time Bomb count as 70% of your damage on average, and the other 30% is the DPS contributed by the rest of your skills. In short, try to aim for 180 total crit rate (47+133) and then from there on build as much power as you want. 

After further testing in the new DS2 patch, I have concluded that a ¾ crit build is actually much better, but harder to play with. With the recent 10% nerf to Arcane Barrage, prioritizing Burst Fire has become even more important. Prioritizing Burst Fire over Arcane Barrage is actually a difficult thing to do, since you must manage your willpower accordingly. If you are lacking in Burst Fire hits, the extra crit added to your new build will essentially be useless as you do not benefit enough from it (since AB’s critical rate is already high). In conclusion, a ¾ crit build is actually superior if your skill level is high enough.

*: Crit might actually be better for gunners when they will get the Arcane Barrage nerfs.

Accessories:

* Note: Depending on the amount of crit you have, you might need to switch between a Cutter or a Galley necklace.

** Note: Ideal rolls for earrings are 4 endurance and 4% HP, I’m just poor.

Innerwear:

Fortified or Reinforced*.Increases Crit Factor by 12(16) or increases Power by 6(8).* Note: Depending on the amount of crit you have, you might need to switch between a fortified or a reinforced innerwear. 

Brooch:

Explanation for brooch:

Empowered Brooch is superior to Quickcarve* because gunners have high critical chance on most of their skills. Having Empowered will allow you to do more raw damage. Quickcarve Brooch will only affect the critical rate of Bombardment and Burst Fire and the attack speed bonus gained from it is also useless.

* Note: Having a gold Quickcarve Brooch (or a blue one if you are on welfare money like me) is a good idea for high score runs, since you can use two brooches in a fight. Have you Empowered Brooch as your default preset. Right before the fight, switch your brooch with the other one and activate your Quickcarve Brooch. Immediately after, switch back to your original preset and activate your second brooch later during the fight. Do not activate both brooches at the same time, your Empowered Brooch will simply overwrite the effect of your Quickcarve Brooch.

Skills and Glyphs

Here are my pages:

Score Run

Casual

If you want detailed explanations of what I think about each glyph and skill, read the following pages. Otherwise, you can just skip. Don’t recommend skipping though.

Glyph utility

Red – Not recommended

Green – Optional

Purple – Mandatory

Blast

Blast is your animation cancelling skill, it should be used in between each skills. Blast makes up around 5% of your total damage output.

(3 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 20%.

This glyph is decent, if you Blast cancel enough, your damage should be boosted marginally.

(2 points) Glyph of Affirmation: Gain 5 Willpower on each hit.

It’s… an okay glyph. In a 1 minute fight,you usually do around 30 Blasts, so you can expect to get around 60 Willpower from this glyph during this duration. 

After further testing, this glyph is actually very good in DS2 uppers, since most fights tend to last for a very long time (5-15 mins).

(4 points) Glyph of the Swift: 15% chance to increase Attack Speed by 15% for 10 seconds.

With the amount of Blasts you should be doing in a fight, the likelihood of activating this glyph is really high. 15% attack speed may not seem a lot, but it adds up in your DPS quickly the more you use your Blast. 

Bombardment

Bombardment is your ultimate burn skill, and it should do around 5-10% of your total damage. It should be used whenever you have it up, unless you are saving it for a coordinated burn with the rest of your party.  *Best used with Quickcarve or Empowered Brooch

(4 points) Glyph of Carving: Doubles the chance to crit.

Bombardment has a surprisingly low crit rate, so with the help of this glyph and a Quickcarve Brooch, you should be expecting more than 50% crit rate. 

(4 points) Glyph of the Swift: Increases casting speed by 25%.

A lot of people don’t take this glyph, but in reality it boosts your damage significantly, since attack speed equates to faster cast animation; you waste less time casting a slow ability which gives you more time to do the rest of your rotation. This glyph is especially important during high score runs where speed is crucial. 

Scattershot

Scattershot is your ultimate filler skill – it should solely be used as a FILLER skill. This skill should consist of 5% of your damage if used correctly. Scattershot has two uses: building up your Willpower and using it as a mobility skill. Scattershot shoots five pellets that each deal a different amount of damage. For example: The first pellet does 100k, the second and third will do 50k, and the fourth and fifth will do 25k. If you are trying to maximize your damage by prioritizing this skill over Arcane Barrage and Burst Fire, then you are doing it wrong. Assuming one of your pellets crits, it could be your first pellet which deals the most amount of damage or your last pellet which deals the least amount of damage. If it is the latter, then you are losing a huge amount of damage per second, so we do not prioritize Scattershot. The only way to get guaranteed high damage on all five pellets is to build full crit which is extremely poor in comparison to a half crit and half power build (read Gear section). In short, Scattershot has a really low natural crit rate and it’s damage is somewhat random. 

(3 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 25%.

Although this skill is used a lot in your rotation, it does minimal damage. A 25% damage boost would increase the damage of Scattershot to 6%. In PvP, it’s necessary to pick this glyph. You can take this glyph if you have extra points left.

(2 points) Glyph of Slick: Reduces recoil by 40%.

This glyph is very controversial; some absolutely hate it and some love it. It’s a personal preference at this point. This glyph allows you to cast Scattershot faster (basically making it an attack speed glyph). You can use the skill’s recoil to your advantage by using it as a mobility skill when you need to reach a boss’s back or you can use the recoil glyph to cast Scattershot faster. 

(1 point) Glyph of Brilliance: Reduces MP cost by 50.

You should not be running out of mana. 

Point Blank

Point Blank is a really unique and odd skill. It’s one of your main mobility and gap closer skills. This skill is especially useful when trying to get behind the boss when you are positioned right next to it. Point Blank has two parts in its usage: the first activation swings your character to the direction your camera is pointing at and the second activation pushes you back (read rotation section for more in-depth combos).

(3 points) Glyph of Influence: 20% chance to eliminate cooldown for Arc Bomb.

The likelihood of activating this glyph is almost nil, assuming you do 5 Point Blanks in a fight, you get one extra arc bomb… which is pretty bad. However, this glyph is somewhat useful for PvP and Vault scores. 

(2 points) Glyph of Restoration: Recovers 2% of total HP on each hit.

This glyph recovers a total of 4% total HP when you use the two parts of Point Blank. If you are relying on this glyph to stay alive, then you are doing something wrong. 

(3 points) Glyph of Energy: Decreases cooldown by 25%. 

Depending on how much you use Point Blank, this glyph might be really useful. This skill has a relatively long cooldown of 15 seconds and when you combine this glyph with a Battle Nostrum VI, it reduces this skill’s cooldown to 9 seconds.

(4 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 30%

Point Blank has a really low natural crit rate and a really low base damage. You should not rely on Point Blank to deal damage.

Burst Fire

Burst Fire is your main DPS skill, and it comprises 30% of your total damage. This skill is really ping dependant, if you have less than 120 ping, than you can hold down your Burst Fire button. Unfortunately, if you have a high ping, you need to create a macro which clicks for you (unless you want carpal tunnel syndrome) since you cannot hold down the button. Burst Fire acts as a crit amplifier (read main DPS rotation section) and should be prioritized over everything else (including Arcane Barrage). It is best used when above 60% Willpower. 

(4 points) Glyph of Restoration: Recovers 1% of total HP on each hit.

I have seen some gunners use this glyph. It’s not bad per say, but it is a huge waste of glyph points to rely on Burst Fire to stay healthy (it should be your healer’s job!). It is somewhat useful if you are trying to solo dungeons. 

(4 points) Glyph of Affirmation: Reduces Willpower cost by 10.

One of the most important glyphs for gunners, without this glyph, you can expect to do 21 Burst 

Fires with full Willpower, which is a low amount. Therefore, we use this glyph to increase our Burst Fire hits to a total of 25, which gives us more DPS. 

(2 points) Glyph of Longshot: Increases range by 5 meters.

With the addition of the new rare glyphs, you get a few extra glyph points. This glyph is really a personal preference. It ist particularly useful on the third boss of Kalivan’s Dreadnaught abd Shandra Manaya (Floor 22 of Dreadspire). 

Time Bomb

Contrary to popular belief, Time Bomb should not be used whenever you have it up (read main DPS rotation section). This skill is your rotation starter, it comprises of around 5-10% of your DPS and it gives a significant boost to your Willpower generation. It’s skill animation is ridiculously fast (almost as fast as Blast) which you should take advantage of. This skill is fun to use against a big group of mobs since you can gain an insane amount of Willpower in a short amount of time. You must position Time Bomb manually in order to get a backcrit, aim your skill on the ground (not directly on the boss), right behind the back of the boss.

(5 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 25%.

If you use Time Bomb correctly then this glyph will increase your total damage by a huge amount. 

(2 points) Glyph of Affirmation: Gain 15 Willpower on a successful hit.

This glyph is very misleading. A lot of people think that they only get an extra 15 Willpower when Time Bomb hits a target. In reality, Time Bomb will pulse 8 times, and each time it pulses, you generate 15 Willpower (120 WP in total). In short, you get 60 Willpower from Time Bomb itself and an extra 120 Willpower from this glyph which leads to a total of 180 Willpower or 3 extra Burst Fire hits.

Arcane Barrage

Arcane Barrage is one of your main damage skills and main Willpower generation skill. It comprises 20-30% of your damage and should be prioritized after Burst Fire. There are 2 parts to this skill: on the first activation, your gunner will shoot a giant energy pulse which deals a low amount of damage and has a low natural crit rate when it touches an entity, and on the second activation, the pulse explodes dealing a huge amount of damage with an extremely high chance to crit. Assuming you are in front of a boss, you can still get backtime by shooting your laser through it and then detonate it when Arcane Barrage reaches its back. 

Supposedly, when gunners were released in May of 2015, people were prioritizing Arcane Barrage over everything else since people were seeing over 4 million crits and ignored Burst Fire completely. This lead to many problems, as people were running out of mana constantly and always had full Willpower. Here is an example of why Arcane Barrage shouldn’t be prioritized and here is an example of how you should prioritize Burst Fire over Arcane Barrage. With the recent nerfs to Arcane Barrage, prioritizing Burst Fire is even more important than ever before. Another interesting mechanic of Arcane Barrage is electric bombs. Whenever you have HB-7 summoned, your robot will fire 5 projectiles at the detonation point of your AB. The positioning of your robot does not matter if you get backtime or not, it is the positioning of your character. If you are positioned behind the boss and your robot is shooting it’s electric bombs in front of the boss, your electric bombs will back crit. On the contrary, if you are positioned in front of the boss and your robot is positioned behind, your electric bombs will NOT back crit. Here is an example of how the electric bombs work.

(3 points) Glyph of Power: Increases your skill damage by 20%.

An increase of 20% to one of your hardest hitting skill is a really big boost in damage. You will definitely notice a huge difference in numbers when you apply this glyph in your build. 

(2 points) Glyph of Affirmation: Gain an additional 15 Willpower on each hit.

Combined with Replenishment, you can expect huge Willpower generation with this glyph. Although it may seem  small, 15 WP on each hit adds up a lot on the long run. You generate 15 Willpower when you Arcane Barrage touches the boss and another 15 when you detonate it, so you get a total of 30 extra Willpower on each Arcane Barrage which leads to a grand total of 250 Willpower from one Arcane Barrage. If you combine this glyph with triple Arcane Barrage (read rotation section) you will get 750 Willpower in less than 5 seconds.

(3 points) Glyph of the Swift: Increases Attack Speed by 30% until Arcane Barrage detonates.

This is an  important glyph in PvP, but it has minimal usage in PvE. When you use Arcane Barrage in PvE, you want to detonate it as fast as possible since you need to execute your rotation as fast as possible. In PvP, there are a lot of factors when fighting another player, so you rotation is extremely flexible which allows you to do whatever you want. Combine this glyph with Rocket Jump and you will find that your mobility is insane. In PvE, your rotation is always the same, so you cannot allow yourself to lose any time.

Mana Missile

Mana Missiles is your rotation finisher. You can use this ability in two ways: you can either instantly launch two Missiles or charge your skill for a few moments and then shoot five Missiles. Each Missile will generate 20 Willpower. There is a slight animation lock when you charge the skill. You can ignore this animation lock by chaining it from Rocket Jump, Recall, Burst Fire and Arc Bomb. (read Mana Missiles rotation section). You should not really prioritize too much on this skill for DPS, since it requires quite some time to charge unless you are building full CDR gunner which isn’t even optimal. (read gear section). Even with the triple carving glyph, Mana Missiles will still do white damage occasionally. This skill knocks down players in PvP. 

(4 points) Glyph of Carving: Triples the chance to crit.

Mana Missiles by itself has a very low natural crit rate, so with this glyph, you can increase the crit rate of Mana Missiles drastically. However, your Mana Missiles will still not crit sometimes unless you’re building full crit gunner which is not optimal (read Gear section). 

Arc Bomb

Arc Bomb is mostly a filler skill in PvE. It generates a little amount of Willpower. Arc Bomb will stun players and normal monsters (including BAMs), and the animation speed of Arc Bomb is very fast, so you can use this skill whenever you feel like it. Usually, Arc Bomb should be your lowest priority skill. Again, it has a very low crit chance unless you build full crit.

(4 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 25%.

Arc Bomb does very minimal damage even when it crits. A 25% damage increase on one of your lowest hitting skill isn’t worth the glyph points. Unless you can guarantee a critical hit with Arc Bomb, this glyph is useless. Usually, the only time this glyph is useful would be in Vault, where bosses have very low crit resist. 

(4 points) Glyph of Lingering: Increases stun duration by 50%.

In PvE, most bosses are resistant to stuns, so this glyph would be useless in these situations. In PvP and Vault, this glyph is very important in order to execute your rotation. Unless you’re trying to duo/solo schm, you shouldn’t have any use with this glyph. 

(2 points) Glyph of Brilliance: Reduces MP cost by 50.

No.

Rocket Jump

Rocket Jump is your ultimate mobility skill. You can chain it with Rolling Reload to travel a very far distance. Although having a lot of mobility is good, it can also be a slight disadvantage. You don’t want to end up like this guy here. It is not an iframe, so you cannot use this skill to avoid damage. You can however time Rocket Jump properly and dodge an upcoming attack. 

(3 points) Glyph of Energy: Decreases cooldown by 25%.

Combining this glyph with Battle Nostrum VI, your Rocket Jump will have a cooldown of 7 seconds. This is especially useful in this patch since most bosses tend to turn around a lot. You can use this skill to efficiently chase the boss’s back. 

(5 points) Glyph of Fleetfoot: Increases Movement Speed by 50% for 5 seconds.

This is a personal preference glyph, I use it in PvP but not in PvE. In PvP, having a lot of mobility is always good, but in PvE it’s really not necessary.

Balder’s Vengeance

Balder’s Vengeance is the second highest hitting skill in this game. It can easily deal more than 10 million damage in a normal run. BV basically has a 100% crit rate against everything. Also, when you use Balder’s, you don’t actually have to hit the back to backcrit. The moment you activate this skill and you are facing the boss’s back, your BV will automatically backcrit even if the monster turns around. 

A lot of people will disagree with me on this one, but I never use Balder’s Vengeance in normal runs since you need the 6 point glyph to efficiently use BV. I only use it in high score runs during the burn phases. The problem with this skill is that it has a very long animation time and you need Recall in order to effectively cancel the long animation which you should not do in normal runs, because Recall is mandatory in order to use triple arcane barrage. In high score slaying runs, you cannot allow yourself to use triple arcane barrage because your HB-7 will heal you above 50% hp (slaying crystal: increases crit power against monsters by X when below 50% HP). In short, I only use Balder’s Vengeance in high score runs, because I cannot use triple arcane barrage in those kind of runs. 

(4 points) Glyph of Energy: Decreases cooldown by 20%. 

Unless you are doing Dreadspire 2, you shouldn’t need to use this glyph. Combining this glyph with Battle Nostrum VI will put your BV on a 4 min cooldown. Most fights don’t last longer than 4 minutes, so you cannot use it twice in a fight. You are better off to use your 4 points into something else, unless you are planning on using Balder’s Vengeance multiple times in a dungeon without waiting for its cooldown (useful for Highscore runs).

(6 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 20%.

This is glyph is necessary if you are actively using Balder’s Vengeance or else there is absolutely no point in using BV. You are better off using your Willpower on Burst Fire rather than BV if you do not pick this glyph. 

Replenishment

Replenishment is an important part of your rotation. It gives 500 MP, 100 Willpower, and has a 50% chance to reset Arcane Barrage and a 50% chance to reset Scattershot. Normally, you should always use Replenishment when it is off cooldown. However, there are cases** where you need to delay your Replenishment, such as when Replenishment is off cooldown but Arcane Barrage still has around 2 seconds of cooldown. 

**: If you have Arcane Barrage chest roll instead of Replenishment roll.

(3 points) Glyph of Energy: Decreases cooldown by 30%.

This is a very important glyph in PvE and PvP. It gives you more uptime on your Arcane Barrage and it gives Willpower quicker. Battle nostrum VI will not reduce Replenishment’s cooldown, so it is even more important to use this glyph. This will allow your Replenishment to be on a 6 second cooldown. 

(4 points) Glyph of Affirmation: Gains additional 50 Willpower when the skill is used.

This glyph is very important in PvE, because it allows you to have more uptime on Burst Fire and when you combine this glyph with triple Arcane Barrage, you can do 2 Replenishments in a row which gives a grand total of 300 Willpower. In PvP, this glyph is not required since Willpower isn’t very important, as Burst Fire is used less since it has a very small hitbox.

HB-7

HB-7 is your robot follower. It shoots electric bombs at Arcane Barrage’s detonation point and will heal you for 4k HP per second when it isn’t shooting bombs. There are multiple skills which you can only use when HB-7 is summoned: Command: Recall, Command: Stay/Follow and Command: Self-Destruct. HB-7 will also deal a large amount of damage when initially summoned. You will be in an animation lock when you are casting the skill, however, you can cancel that animation lock with Burst Fire. Whenever you change instance, channel or log off, your robot will automatically disappear and you will need to re-summon it. This skill will knock down players and normal monsters (including BAMs) when it is summoned. 

(2 points) Glyph of Power: Increases skill damage by 100%.

Probably 90% of all the gunners will exclude this glyph from their build. This glyph is VITAL for your standard rotation. The glyph description might be somewhat misleading — many people believe that it increases the damage of electric bombs. In reality, it only increases the damage for when it is summoned, which is still a very good bonus.

ST-4

ST-4 is a useful tool. You can place it anywhere you want and it counts as a body. You can use it to take debuffs (third boss of KDNM/KDHM, Perimos blue laser, Desolarus curse, Hrathgol curse). You can stun opponents with Command: Self-Destruct. Apart from that, this skill doesn’t have that many uses. Its damage is awfully bad, each turret hits will deal 3k white damage and it’ll most likely die in one hit. You shouldn’t bother glyphing this skill.

Rolling Reload

Rolling Reload is your most important movement ability. It’s an i-frame and it’s also an animation canceller. If used in conjunction with Rocket Jump, it will allow you to travel a great distance. It also resets the cooldown of Scattershot. 

(3 points) Glyph of Energy: 50% chance to eliminate cooldown.

This is a great glyph, it gives you a chance to reset your i-frame which can be extremely helpful when there are multiple upcoming attacks that you must avoid or if the boss tends to turn around often (you can reset your roll multiple times).  Keep in mind that you shouldn’t rely on this glyph for your positioning, you should always assume that Rolling Reload will never reset. Think of this glyph as a luxury. Also, since you are resetting your Rolling Reload, you will also reset your Scattershot.

(3 points) Glyph of Powerlink: Increases skill damage of Scattershot by 20% for a few seconds.

This glyph is somewhat similar to Empowered Scattershot. As we do not prioritize Scattershot in our rotation, we should not have any use for this glyph unless it’s for PvP.

Command: Recall

Recall is your emergency i-frame (OH SHIT BUTTON). You should save this skill to dodge deadly attacks when you run out of movement skills unless you are able to play gunner at a high skill level, in which case, you should use Recall to triple Arcane Barrage. Recall is somewhat similar to Reaper’s Retribution skill as it allows you to interact with boss mechanics by negating damage which would otherwise kill you even if you try to i-frame it. Recall will simply make the damage taken equal to zero, so it’s like a “block”, which means you will still get the debuff.

(3 points) Glyph of Energy: Decreases cooldown by 20%.

This glyph is important for triple Arcane Barrage, it allows you to use it more often. It also allows you to i-frame more often (if you are not using triple AB).

Rotations: 

Priority list

• Bombardment
• Time Bomb → HB-7 → Burst Fire
• Time Bomb → Burst Fire
• Burst Fire
• Arcane Barrage and AB resets
• Replenishment
• Mana Missile
• Scattershot
• Arc Bomb

Triple Arcane Barrage rotation:

* Note: It would be very wise to place Recall right next to Replenishment in your keybindings.

Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → Recall → (cast Arcane Barrage again if reset) → Replenishment → (cast Arcane Barrage if reset)
Sample 1
Sample 2

This rotation is optional, but it gives a significant boost in DPS since it has the potential to deal an extra 2-3 million damage and generate a lot of Willpower. Basically, you want to use Recall right after Replenishment in order to avoid Replenish to go on cooldown. You want to Recall 0.25 seconds after you Replenish, otherwise it will go on CD. If you do it correctly, you first Replenishment shouldn’t give you mana and the second one will give you the 400 MP. If you get mana from the first one, that means Replenish will go on cooldown.  Since Replenishment has a 50% chance to reset Arcane Barrage, you may still not be able to get 3 Arcane Barrages with this rotation let alone 2 Arcane Barrages. However, you will still get the Willpower from the two Replenishments (300 guaranteed WP). The odds of getting 1 Arcane Barrage are 100%, the odds of getting 2 Arcane Barrages are 50% and the odds of getting 3 Arcane Barrages are 25%. If you do not reset any Arcane Barrage, you will generate 550 Willpower, if you reset Arcane Barrage once, you will generate 800 willpower and if you reset Arcane Barrage twice, you will generate 1050 willpower. Sometimes you can only use this rotation under certain circumstances. For example, on the second boss of FINM, you must time your Recall with the jump mechanic. Since you never know when he is going to do that mechanic, you cannot risk wasting your Recall before he does the jump. This principle can also be applied on the second boss of TSHM. In other words, you are maximizing your DPS despite being forced to use your Recall on insta-death mechanics. The purpose of this rotation is to sacrifice survivability for more damage, so you must plan ahead and react accordingly to the boss’s pattern without relying on Recall to avoid sustaining severe damage. You cannot use this rotation on Yana in TSHM/TSNM and High score runs (your HB-7 will heal you above 50% HP if you are using the Slaying crystal).

Main DPS rotations:

* Note: it is important to Blast (auto-attack) in between every single skill to effectively cancel out the animation lock of every skill since gunners do not have any chain skills like warriors or reapers. 

** Note: Rolling Reload also counts as an animation canceller, you should always try to time you i-frame so that after casting a skill, you immediately dodge an upcoming attack while cancelling the animation lock of your skill. This trick is basically killing two birds with one stone. 

1A

Brooch → Bombardment → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment →  (Arcane Barrage again if it resets) → Time Bomb → HB-7 Summon → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → Arc Bomb* (optional) → Scattershot → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if it resets) → Time Bomb → Burst Fire → Mana Missile

Sample

This combo can only be executed with full Willpower and will only work on stationary bosses like Kumas in TSHM or Desolarus in FINM. If the boss will turn around in less than 10 seconds when he is aggro’d (first boss of FINM), then you should only do the first half of this long combo (Brooch → Bombardment → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if reset) → Time Bomb → HB-7 Summon → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → ). It is the most effective DPS combo for gunners unless you are using triple Arcane Barrage. This rotation only works in non-Slaying runs. 

* Note: You are only required to cast this if you are missing a 7.2% CDR roll on your weapon.

1B

Brooch → Bombardment → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → Recall →  (Arcane Barrage again if it resets) → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if resets) → Time Bomb → HB-7 Summon → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → Arc bomb* (optional) → Scattershot → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if reset) → Time Bomb → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → 

This is the advanced combo of 1A that includes the usage of triple Arcane Barrage. This combo is the ultimate combo available for gunners. It lasts around 20 seconds. The chances of success are considerably low, however, when you are able to perfectly apply this rotation and reset every single of one your Arcane Barrages, you will most likely be able to deal 2 million damage per second with the BiS gear. When you successfully execute this rotation, your damage will be on par with the best reapers, slayers and brawlers. This rotation only works in non-Slaying runs.

1C

Brooch → Bombardment → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment →  (Arcane Barrage again if reset) → Balder’s Vengeance → Recall → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if reset) → Scattershot → Time Bomb → HB-7 Summon* (optional) → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → etc…

Sample

This combo is the modified version of 1A. If you are using Balder’s Vengeance in your rotation, then this is perfect against stationary bosses. If the boss is not immobile, you should only apply the first half of this combo (Brooch → Bombardment → Arcane Barrage → Replenishment → (Arcane Barrage again if it resets) → Balder’s Vengeance). You can modify this rotation to your own needs, but the idea stays the same: after Bombardment, generate as much Willpower as possible to use BV. This is the best combo for slaying high score runs.

1D

Time Bomb → HB7- Summon → Burst Fire → Mana Missile → Replenishment or AB (prioritize AB over replenishment) → AB (again if possible) or Replenishment (if you casted AB earlier) → Scattershot → Rolling Reload+Scattershot (if Replenishment is not up yet) → Replenishment → AB (if reset) → Time Bomb…

This rotation can only be done if you have Replenishment cooldown as your top chest line roll. Essentially, you are focusing on generating as much Willpower as possible to use Burst Fire as much as possible. This playstyle requires a high APM, it is significantly harder to play than rotation 1B as you must watch your Replenishment cooldown very carefully and use it off cooldown as much as possible. If played at the highest possible level (in terms of skill), this rotation will actually end up yielding more damage than rotation 1B. You can even try to use Recall → Replenishment if you feel confident enough.

1E

Time Bomb → HB7-Summon → Burst Fire → Mana Missile

Sample

This is your basic rotation. Combo 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D are all based off this basic rotation. You can and you should use this combo whenever possible. It is important to note that you can only use HB-7 Summon 50% when using this rotation since it has twice the cooldown of Time Bomb. In short, without HB-7, you would want to do: Time Bomb → Burst Fire → Mana Missile. One important thing to know is that Burst Fire acts as a crit rate amplifier the more you use it. Usually, when you Burst Fire with full willpower, you get 100% crit rate on your Burst Fire at around half of your willpower. You can take advantage of this by applying this mechanic to other skills that have a delay such as Time Bomb or HB Summon. As you may know, when you cast Time Bomb, there is a delay before the bomb explodes. Before the bomb explodes, you can build up your crit rate by using Burst Fire right after you cast it, so after around 3 seconds, you are at about 100% crit rate which allows you to crit on every single one of your Time Bombs. You can also do this with HB Summon. If your ping is somewhat high, then forget about the hb-summon part and simply use the following rotation: Time Bomb → Burst Fire → Mana Missile.

Mobility rotations:

* Note: Always spam Rolling Reload unless you are using rotation 2B or 2G.

2A

Point Blank → Blast → Point Blank 

Sample

This combo is only applicable if you have less than 30 ping, the timing needs to be perfect. It is best used for when you need to move a great distance in a short amount of time.

2B

Point Blank → Rolling Reload → Point Blank

Sample

This combo is an easier and safer version of combo 2A. It is almost the same and will also allow you to have insane mobility.

2C

Point Blank → rotate camera by 180 degrees → Point Blank

Sample

This combo is the basic Point Blank rotation. It is the only PB rotation that allows you to travel through a monster — use this if you are in front of a boss in order to get behind it.

2D

Rolling Reload → Rocket Jump

Sample

This combo is the basic movement rotation. It allows you to travel a huge distance of around 20m.

2E

Point Blank → rotate camera by 180 degrees → Point Blank → rotate camera by 180 degrees/hold “s” key → Rolling Reload → Rocket Jump

Sample

Advanced combo of 2C and 2D, this is the best movement combo, it allows you to travel an impressive distance of 40m.

2F

Point Blank → Blast → Point Blank → Rolling Reload → Rocket Jump

Sample

Advanced combo of 2A and 2D, it is almost the same thing as 2E but slightly faster. Again, if your ping is above 30, do not use this combo.

2G

Point Blank → Rolling Reload → Point Blank → (Rolling Reload again if reset) → Rocket Jump

Sample

Sample

This combo is only good if you reset your Rolling Reload. It moves you even further than combo 2E. The chance of success of this combo is 50%.

2H

Point Blank → Blast

Sample

This combo allows you to move a short distance in a very small amount of time. It is especially useful for donut mechanics (Darkan and first boss of FINM) and will allow you to have the most uptime in your dps. Essentially, you are cancelling the animation lock of the first activation of Point Blank with Blast since without doing so, you will be stuck in that animation for two seconds. When you are doing this combo, you cannot utilize the second activation of Point Blank.

Mana Missile rotations:

* Note: always try to chain your Mana Missile with one of these rotation to effectively cancel out the animation lock at the beginning of the skill’s activation in order to maximise DPS. A popular myth with Mana Missile is that you can chain Arcane Barrage with Mana Missile. This DOES NOT work, you should simply Blast to cancel Arcane Barrage’s animation lock.

3A 

Recall → Mana Missile

Sample

This combo is situational, it’s not even that good if you want to use triple Arcane Barrage since that combo requires Recall. If you do not wish to use triple Arcane Barrage, then this combo is the most effective one. This combo should only be used when you need to i-frame unblockable damage (lines at Kumas boss in TSHM or the jump mechanic at the second boss of FINM).

3B

Rocket Jump → Mana Missile

Sample

This combo is especially good when you are repositioning with Rocket Jump (refer to mobility rotations), it is one of the most effective ways to use Mana Missile.

3C

Burst Fire → Mana Missile

Sample

If you still have Mana Missile up, then this is the second best combo to use after 3B. Normally, after Burst Fire, your Arcane Barrage should be down and you can effectively wait for your cooldowns by finishing your rotation with a Mana Missile instead of just spamming scattershot or blast.

Tips and tricks

Positioning

The hardest part of mastering gunner is positioning and it is crucial to do so. You don’t want to spend time trying to chase the boss’s back, as you will lose valuable DPS time. The only way to improve on that aspect is to practice, analyze your play and read the boss’s patterns. You want to memorize every attack pattern of a boss fight and react accordingly to it. You have to read the boss and try to go behind his back even before he makes his move.  Your movement skills all have a different purpose. Rolling Reload is supposed to be your primary way of chasing the boss’s back when in close proximity to it. Point Blank can be used in three different ways: to get closer to the boss, or to chase its back when Rolling Reload is on cooldown, or when you need to save Rolling Reload to i-frame an attack. Rocket Jump should be used to chase the boss when it walks around the room or in the worst case scenario when Point Blank and Rolling Reload are on cooldown. Scattershot can be used on certain bosses (depending on their size) to reach its back when you are right next to it or to get a better position without having to walk. Try to keep walking to a minimum and use Scattershot to move around as much as possible. Using this skill can be useful when the boss tends to turn around often, like on the first or second boss of FINM. Sometimes, you have to tank a few hits from the boss to keep Burst Firing in order to not lose the crit and damage bonus from consecutive Burst Fires. In that scenario, you should always have health potions prepared. The whole idea is to always back crit Burst Fires as much as possible. The difference between a good gunner and a bad gunner is the amount of Burst Fires hits in a fight. Using Scattershot and Mana Missile to dodge donut mechanics is preferable as it allows you to have maximum uptime on damage. Sometimes, it is okay to SIDECRIT when you are in a bad position (most notably when you are facing Shandra Manaya) as chasing the back will actually decrease your DPS since you are taking too much time to move.

Willpower management

Your willpower is your lifeline, and managing it is extremely important. Having too much Willpower is a huge waste and not having enough is not good either. Always try to Replenish as often as possible and keep track of its cooldown. Scattershotting for Willpower isn’t bad either, just make sure you’re using it as a filler skill. Using triple Arcane Barrage is relatively important for Willpower generation, it has the potential to net an absurd amount of WP, and it will allow you to have a smooth rotation. Always try to Burst Fire when you have 50-60% Willpower.

FAQ

Q: Do you like chicken salad?

A: No, I hate salad.

Q: What’s your favorite type of chicken?

A: Fried chicken.

Q: How do I join Amaterasu?

A: You apply to our trainee guild Amatiramisu. After two years, if we deem you worthy, we’ll let you into our main guild. You also need to be able to make a proper tiramisu.

On a serious note, apply here.

Q: How do I calculate my Burst Fire crit rate?

A: Please refer to this calculator: http://mxth.github.io/bf/

Q: How do I make a macro for Burst Fire?

A: Please refer to this thread: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/gunner/topics/My-PvE-Gunner-guide-Knockout-patch

Q: How do you make your game run more smoothly?

A: I did a party UI fix and I also modified my s1engine;

Please refer to Bernkastel’s optimization guide here: 

Here is a download link for my S1Engine: http://www.mediafire.com/download/hbccvhh3hgv2kv4/S1Engine.ini

Q: How much ping do you have?

A: My ping is around 30-40.

1/16/16: Added additional discussion under section 7;) Final Notes regarding Powerlinks, my experience with Top line Enraged, and implications of Top line roll with talents.

2/1/16: Talent section voided. Servers outside of KR will not have the talent system.

I initially created this document to answer some F.A.Q on my YouTube Channel. However, as I kept writing, it slowly turned into a guide. For those who do not know me and for credibility sake, I am a Reaper named Redstrike from Mount Tyrannas (NA) and I am one of the main DPS in the highest ever score runs for SCHM (without any P2W buffs or Special event buffs)

Our score achievements before Knockout Patch:

Perimos and Darkan

Our score achievement after Knockout Patch:

Perimos and Darkan (Original videos here: Choons from Mount Tyrannas)

CHECK OUT THE GUIDE AT:

ESSENTIAL MANA

1/6/15 HIGHEST REAPER PERIMOS DPS 2.53M/S (13805 SCORE) CLICK ON ME

Actually image link can be found HERE

2/5/16 I hit the magic number again with Enrage top + Energetic III etching

Sections:

1;) Crystals

2;) Accesories

3;) Brooch

4;) Weapon Rolls

5;) Glyphs

6;) Rotation

7;) Final Notes

8;) Misc.

1;) What are your crystals?

Standard (From top to bottom: Enrage, Pounding, Bitter, Savage) //  High Score (Pound -> Slay)

2;) What jewelries do you use?

With Mystic party (3 Corvette + 2 Galleon) // With Priest party (3 Corvette + 2 Edgetock)

Raw stats: Raw stats:

***(Belt is 4 Crit/6 Crit // Rings are all 4 Crit/4 Power // Quickcarve is 4 Crit / 6 Crit //

Necklace is 4 Power // Inner is 16 Crit // 

Weapon and Glove are both Keen III Etching (+18 Crit))***

3;) What brooch do you use?

I use BOTH Quickcarve and Empowered. 

If you can afford only one, then get a Superior Quickcarve and a Simple Empowered

3b;) Which brooch do I pop first?

Use Empowered in the beginning of a fight, then Quickcarve during Shadow Reaping

3c;) Why Quickcarve?

Quickcarve has better synergy with Shadow Reaping. Your goal during Shadow Reaping is to use as many skills as possible and crit as many skills as possible.

4a;) What are your weapon rolls?

Top line roll: 9% ATK Speed

Bottom rolls: 7.2% CDR

          6% Damage

          6.9% Back Damage

          9.3% Enrage Monster Damage

***If you have Schisma/Dreadnaught, I suggest you roll Top line: Enrage or ASP //   Bottom line: CDR (This is a must), Flat or Back, and Enrage.***

4b;) Is CDR Top line good for Reapers?

NEVER roll CDR topline on Reaper weapon. Here are the two reasons why you don’t roll CDR:

1;) Shadow Reaping is a crucial part of a Reaper’s DPS. CDR does absolutely NOTHING for Reapers during Shadow Reaping. Even with 9% Top line ATK Speed and ALL of the consumables popped including Lein’s Dark Root Beer (+20% ASP for 10 Seconds), you will never run into CD issues on your skills.

2;) With the new Glyphs during the Knockout Patch, you have essentially infinite rotation (with a single CDR roll at the bottom of your weapon which is crucial by the way. It’s a standard roll for all classes minus Berserkers). If you run out of CD on your main skills, Shadow Lash should ALWAYS be up which is a long enough buffer for your main skills to come off CD. Having Top line CDR actually hurts your DPS further because you won’t have enough ATK Speed to take advantage of the extra 7.2% CDR.

4c;) ATK Speed vs Enrage (Top line roll)

I think generally, ATK Speed is better than Enrage. Here are a couple reasons why:

1;) In the new dungeons, Kalivan’s Dreadnaught, Forsaken Island, and the upcoming Dreadspire 2, bosses are not permanently enraged. What this means is that you won’t benefit from top line Enrage roll 100% of the time. 

2;) As mentioned in section 4b;), the new Glyphs for Reapers gave them infinite rotation. You will not get penalized for burning through your main skills faster because Shadow Lash will always be off CD (Of course, you need to have good management of your skills in order to have infinite rotation). 

3;) In many situations, ATK Speed can help you finish casting a hard hitting skill like Sundering Strike, Grimstrike, Whipsaw, or Shadow Burst before a boss turns. This is especially relevant in the Knockout Patch as certain bosses turn as a part of their skill set (e.g. 1st and 2nd boss FI and even 2nd boss KD) or throw out a lot of secondary aggro (2nd boss SCHM, Perimos). In short, ATK Speed is better for bosses that require a lot of repositioning (3rd boss SCHM, Darkan) and for bosses in the upcoming Dreadspire 2.

4;) ATK Speed allows you to get more skills off. What I’ve found after a couple months of closely playing with Greenstrike from MT (Or as many of you might know him as the Reaper that solo’d Darkan and also probably the first Reaper than ever used Slaying in Score Runs) is that the damage disparity between you and a better reaper is how many more skills you are able to execute in a fight. Of course that is put simply because there are some aspects that come with “hitting more skills in a fight” (positioning for back time and skill management). What I’m getting at is that in a fully enraged boss, the damage loss from rolling ATK Speed top line vs Enrage top line will be made up from executing more skills. It’s important to remember that this is even more crucial in Shadow Reaping because that extra 9% will allow you to at least get 1 more Shadow Reaping rotation off compared to Enrage.

5a;) What are your glyphs?

Reaper Glyphs on Essential Mana

These glyphs are for all PVE purposes. You can use this for normal runs and high score runs

5b;) Why Blazing Double Shear and not Cable Step CD?

There are two reasons:

1;) Blazing Double Shear will give Double Shear a 20% boost in DPS. Generally, you will be able to utilize this glyph effectively in a run. This glyph is also crucial during the Slaying Shadow Reaping Combo (Spiral -> Grim -> Shear -> Sunder). 

2;) Cable Step does not increase the attack speed of Shadow Lash. It only increases the initial cast time of Shadow Lash. In fact, casting Shadow Lash by itself might be as fast or even faster than Cable Step -> Shadow Lash depending on how far you travel with Cable Step. Watch below: (Or alternatively a side by side video)

Cable into Shadow Lash

Solo cast Shadow Lash

*** People might argue that you can use Cable Step -> Shadow Lash for gap closer, but after running all of the dungeons, this scenario never really happens. Smite exist for this purpose; to gap close if for some reason everything is on CD. Smite -> Shadow Lash is actually not a bad thing to do.***

5c;) Why Shadow Lash CD and not Smite CD or Retribution or even Shadow Step for your last 5 points?

Here are a couple reasons why:

1;) Shadow Lash is actually not that bad of a DPS skill for a filler. If you ask me it is a REALLY good DPS skill for a filler. It does roughly 250k+ crit per hit with +15 VM5/VM6 in a party set up with just nostrums + crit scroll and around 400k+ crit with full consumables with VM6. 

2;) Since Pendulum and Whipsaw CD have been lowered by 10%, it has become rare to use Smite as a filler. More often than not, a higher priority skill will be up before you have a chance to use Smite as a filler. More than ever Smite has become solely a utility skill for mobility. Shadow Lash has a longer buffer for CDs and does significantly more DPS than Smite, therefore glyphing Smite CD is by far a worse choice.

3;) In all of the dungeons that we have currently, it is unnecessary to glyph Retribution or Shadow Step CD for more survivability. With good skill management, you should be able to evade comfortably with an unglyph’d Retribution and Shadow Step (this is coming from a player who has done over hundreds and hundreds of resets on score runs with < 50% HP due to Slaying Crystal and where positioning is everything) . Although I cannot say for certain if Retribution CD or Shadow Step CD is necessary for the upcoming Dreadspire 2 as I do not have experience in Upper Dreadspire. If somebody can chime in on this I would appreciate it. ***Remember that Shrouded Escape is an iFrame!!! Use it for emergency situations!***

6a;) What is your rotation?

After reading many Reaper guides out there, this topic is what really grinds my gears. The reason why there are rarely any good Reapers out there is because right from the get go, these new Reapers read these guides that contain a lot of misinformation about what their rotation should be and continue to create bad habits. Every guide out there they spit out this following rotation:

Spiral -> Shear -> Grim -> Sunder -> Spiral -> Pend -> Whip -> Shear -> Grim -> Cable -> Shadow Burst

WRONG. If you play Reaper BASED off of this rotation, you are not maximizing your DPS output.

So what should your rotation be? The answer to that is:

It depends… In fact it’s actually pretty complicated to give a concrete answer because the rotation you use depends on what the boss is going to do. This is the reason why people often claim that Reapers have a high skill ceiling. However, I can give a few guidelines for those who want to improve their Reaper play.

6b;) Skill Priorities

Before giving a guideline on rotations, we have to talk about skill priorities so that the guideline makes sense. Here is the skill priority:

(Pend -> Whipsaw) > Grimstrike (and Grimstrike Resets) > Sundering Strike > Double Shear > (Cable -> Shadow B) > Shadow Lash > Death Spiral

Pendulum -> Whipsaw has to be the highest priority because it is the fastest application of one of your highest hitting skills due to its crit rate. Before the Knockout Patch, Grimstrike would have been lower in the priority list but ever since the Triple Crit Rate buff to Grimstrke, it is much more important to prioritize this skill. As a result, (Cable -> Shadow B) has also been pushed down on the priority list, however its use is a little bit more complex and will be discussed farther down in this section. I’ve been closely watching my breakdown with a DPS meter and in almost all my runs, Grimstrike has been the top damage dealt. Some may ask, “If Grimstrike resets and Sunder is off CD, is it better to spam Grimstrike or use Sundering Strike?”. I’ve always done the latter but after playing with one of my buddy, Sachino from MT who prioritizes Grimstrike out of all his skills, I think it is better to do the former even if Sundering Strike is up due to the buff that Grimstrike got. So yeah… Spam those resets.

6c;) Rotation Guidelines

With the priority list stated, it should be obvious why this rotation:

Spiral -> Shear -> Grim -> Sunder -> Spiral -> Pend -> Whip -> Shear -> Grim -> Cable -> Shadow Burst

is suboptimal. The wind up for your hardest hitting skill in this rotation is 3 skills long containing 2 low priority skills. So why don’t we just open up with Pend -> Whipsaw?! As stated above it is the fastest application of one of your highest hitting skill so it makes much more sense to open up with this combo. With that said, let’s create the guideline for your rotations.

Your rotation should always open up with one these two sets of skills:

1. = Pend -> Whip // (b) = Cable Step -> Shadow Burst

Although (b) is lower on our priority list, it’s important to remember that Shadow Burst has a very high base damage and if it crits, it is one of the fastest application of a high damage skill. The reason why it’s low on the priority list is the fact that its crit rate is absolute crap due to the lack of any crit glyphs. Before completely elaborating on the (b) start, let’s begin discussing the (a) start

When should you open up with (a)?

Generally, you want to open up with (a) if you know the boss is not going to turn around in less than 5 seconds. For example, if you open up with (a) and the boss turns around, then you’re screwed because if you decide to do any other spells, you’re going to be front critting. If you decide to chase the back, then you’re in danger because you expended 2 stacks of Shadow Step (you have to use 2 because of Pendulum -> Whipsaw displacement). 

So if you have enough back time, you will use this rotation:

(a.) -> Shear (only if you have enough time to hit a back crit Sunder) -> Grimstrike –

-> Sunder -> Cable -> Shadow Burst -> [Filler]

Here is an example of this case: Sample a.1 Sample a.2

After this initial rotation, you have to create your next few moves based off of the priority list.

When should you open up with (b)?

You want to open up with (b) if:

1;) The boss is going to turn around due to the boss’s natural attack pattern or an impending secondary aggro. Example of this case: Sample b.1 Sample b.2 ((a) start would have been acceptable on Sample b.2). I do not have a clip of this but (b) start would be good for 2nd Boss FI (Forsaken Island) and 1st boss TS (Timescape)

2;) Special cases in which you need to save pendulum strike to DPS while repositioning. Example of this case: Sample b.3 

3;) Special cases in which bosses have a special mechanic that gives buffer to Shadow Burst. (Specifically Darkan and Yana due to Super Armor from Donuts after a certain percent). Example of this case Sample b.4 and Sample b.3 posted above.

4.) If you need to gap close in the beginning of the fight. Many applications for a (b) start where bosses are far away. For example, Kuma in 2nd boss TS, 1st and 2nd boss FI, and all the bosses in KD.

So if you open up with (b), you will follow this rotation:

(b.) -> Spiral -> Shear -> Grim -> Sunder -> Spiral -> Pend -> Whip -> [Filler]

To further elaborate on why this start is great for bosses that do early turns, if in fact you open up with (b) and you only got to Double Shear before the boss turns, then you still have 1 more stack of Death Spiral to re-initiate your rotation that leads to Sunder. Even if you do not have time to do Spiral -> Shear, then you have the option to Pend -> Whip after you have repositioned to the back. (b) opener is really good because of its flexibility. You can use this opener on (a) opener specific cases.

How about stationary bosses like 3rd boss FI?

In this case you are free to open up with either (a) or (b). If you choose a (b) start, your rotation will look something like this:

(b.) -> Pend -> Whip -> Shear / Spiral -> Spiral / Shear -> Grim -> Sunder -> Spiral -> Shear -> Shadow Lash -> Then continue according to priority list.

The difference between an (a) start and (b) start on stationary bosses are how early you are forced to use Shadow Lash (which is not a big deal). 

The only acceptable time to use this famous rotation:

Spiral -> Shear -> Grim -> Sunder -> Spiral -> Pend -> Whip -> Shear -> Grim -> Cable -> Shadow Burst is for Ghost Phase in SCHM or during mobs in any of the dungeons.

***Edit: I take back this statement: “The only acceptable time to use this famous rotation…” because it is untrue. I realized right after I finished writing the guide that you do infact have to resort to a rotation SIMILAR to this in cases where everything else is on CD. DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND HOWEVER. As I stated in the beginning of the section, your rotations should NOT be based off of this rotation because it is not optimal. Your rotation should be based off of the tier list. Do not forget that you should never open up with this rotation as well (as I have argued on this opener already in this section).***

6d;) Shadow Reaping Rotation

Non-Slaying: Pend -> Whip -> Grim -> Sunder -> REPEAT

***Do not cancel Whipsaw to cast Grim -> Sunder Faster***

Slaying: (Shear -> Sunder (Opener)) -> Spiral -> Grim -> Shear -> Sunder -> Spiral -> REPEAT

If you have “Lein’s Dark Root Beer” (Gives 20% ASP for 10 sec) follow this rotation for the duration of the consumable:

Slaying: (Shear -> Sunder (Opener)) -> Spiral -> Grim -> Shear -> Grim ->  Sunder -> Spiral -> REPEAT

7;) Final Notes

Although low on the priority list, Death Spiral has an important role on your rotation. It serves two purposes: To re-initiate combos and to cancel animations. Make sure you always have a skill that can cancel Shadow Burst and Sundering Strike Animation Lock. Cancelling the animation lock on these skills will give you a much more fluid rotation. 

Shouldn’t I use Death Spiral to Powerlink Grimstrike?

As stated above, it is much more important that Death Spiral is used to serve for re-initiation for combos and to cancel animations. The only time I would suggest using Death Spiral for power links is when your Shadow Burst is on CD.

Powerlinks

I have gotten a couple of questions over the past couple weeks regarding powerlinks. Some people seem to have misunderstood some of my statements and assumed that I am not using my powerlinks to empower Grimstrike. That is not the case.

The reason why I did not touch upon Powerlinks too much (mainly Spiral and Shear) is because Powerlinks are naturally integrated within rotations. Due to the way skills are naturally chained, you’re always going to have a Powerlink active for Grimstrike. Not to mention the duration of the Powerlinks are quite lengthy. There are more important things to worry about and that is what I tried to emphasize on my guide: positioning and skill management. You’re not going to out-DPS another Reaper by pulling off more double Powerlinks on Grimstrike. You’re going to out-DPS another Reaper by getting more skills off which is based on how you position and how you manage your skills.

Decision Making

I also want to reiterate that although a priority list exists, there are some cases where you might have to use a different rotation depending on what the boss is doing. Here is an example:

Sample x.1

At this point of the video, I have both Smite -> …. -> Sunder combo but I also have 

Pendulum -> Whip up. Pend -> Whip has a higher priority, however Darkan sometimes has secondary aggros that changes the direction of his back. So instead, I used Smite -> … -> Sunder and saved my Pend -> Whip when I know I can back crit safely with the Whipsaw combo. (It is possible to have done a 180 degree turn to Pend -> Whipsaw at beginning of Sample x.1 but that would have been a riskier play. I could have totally missed the Whipsaw if I failed the execution).

This case is going to happen often. If you have a rotation into Sunder up and also Whipsaw but the boss might turn, it is sometimes smarter to use the a Spiral -> … -> Sunder combo. The reason why is similiar to the reasoning for the (b) start. Again, the reason why is because you can interrupt in between the Spiral -> … -> Sunder combo due to the ability to reinitiate into Sunder with a second stack of Death Spiral. Here is another example of this decision making:

Sample x.2

I had the choice to end Shadow Lash with Double Shear, then Shadow Step -> Pend -> Whipsaw. But doing so would have created a farther distance between me and Perimos with a chance of my Grimstrike missing because the boss had charged forward. Instead, I did

Spiral -> Shear -> Shadow Step behind the boss. And as you can see, I was able to reinitiate the combo into Sunder that gave me better distance between me and the back of the boss.

Pendulum Strike’s displacement is something to constantly consider in these situations.

Top line roll: Enrage vs Attack Speed continued

So… About two weeks ago I created another fully geared Reaper and moved it to Tempest Reach to test out Top line Enrage on a +15 Lucid Reaper Weapon and… My points still stand. The biggest issue I had was getting skills of before the bosses turn. The thing is, you cannot really compare Enrage vs ASP with another player. The only way you can test Enrage vs ASP is against yourself. I managed to output more skills with Enrage against even the best Reaper in TR. 

Again, for all intents and purposes, ASP has more advantage than Enraged. In fully Enraged boss, I would say they are even.

Top line roll after Talents 2/1/16 UPDATE: NO TALENT SYSTEM OUTSIDE OF KR

Please keep in mind that the arguments I’m going to make are based purely on speculations. The list of Reaper talents that I am going to be referring to are listed HERE. The main things that I’m going to referring to are the ASP talents on certain skills. So the skills that are going to have an ASP talents are:

Whipsaw

Sundering Strike

Shadow Lash

Shadow Burst

Shadow Burst (via chance to proc from Cable Step)

The ASP talents on these specific skills are actually REALLY good because they are on skills that have a considerably long animations. In my opinion, the Reaper talents are going to be a really good buff to reapers. So what are the implications of these talents on your Top line roll?

1. Top line: CDR. The argument from the Weapon Section roll still stands. You still do not get any benefit from rolling CDR Top line during Shadow Reaping. Outside of Shadow Reaping, I’m 100% sure there will be no CD issues WITHOUT CDR Top line so this weapon roll is still inferior compared to the other two rolls (ASP and Enrage).
2. Top line: Enrage. It is possible that the go-to top line roll with talents might be Enraged. The argument here is that the ASP talents will make up for the ASP that was missing (not exactly missing but ASP that was needed to give smoother gameplay and better back time with an Enrage top line).
3. Top line: Attack Speed. The biggest concern with ASP top line with talents is that you might be burning through your cool downs too fast which means there might be cases where you might have to resort to auto attacks. If there are no CD issues with talents, then I would say ASP would still be the better choice. Otherwise Enrage is the roll to go. Once we get the talents, I will update the Weapon Roll section.

VM6 Starfall +13 to +15 6% Damage Bonus

Just a quick note that the value of 9.3% Top line Enrage on VM6 is diminished further due to the 6% Damage Bonus from +13 to +15. So definitely roll ASP before the talents come if you have a VM6 +15 Weapon

If you really want to improve, watch and learn. I have my own YouTube Channel where you can watch which rotations I do in certain situations. SCHM is probably the best place to practice positioning. However, I understand that the first phase can make players walk away from the dungeon. 1st and 2nd boss in FI are also great for practicing positioning. Although a little bit out dated, I would suggest checking out Kyang’s, A.K.A Greenstrike / Kiirofuji of MT Youtube Channel or his past broadcasts on Twitch for more valuable visual aids. I learned most of what I know about Reapers from him.

8;) Misc

8a;) How to Double Brooch

I’ve been getting a few questions lately and this has came up multiple times. First, you have to go to your Options -> Shortcuts and scroll all the way down until you find “Outfit 1” and “Outfit 2”:

Bind Outfit 1 and Outfit 2 to a key. In my setup, it is Alt +1 for Outfit 1 and Alt+2 is Outfit 2. What Outfit 1 and Outfit 2 refers to is your first 2 out of the 5 Profiles that you have for your character which can be found by pressing “P”:

<- This is Profile 1 / Outfit 1 (Quickcarve)

<- This is Profile 2 / Outfit 2 (Empowered)

Once you’ve set this up, you have to wear your Empowered brooch on one profile, and your Quickcarve on the other. 

Before the fight starts, make sure you are in the profile that has your Empowered. In my case, Empowered is in Outfit 2:

Be in Outfit 2 -> Use Empowered Brooch -> Alt+1 (Or whatever key you set Outfit 1) -> Start the fight.

Once you’ve started the fight, you will be in the Outfit with your Quickcarve Brooch. All you need to do now is to use Quickcarve when you use your Shadow Reaping. 

Remember that you don’t need superior brooches pull this off. If you cannot afford a superior brooch, you can still use the simple ones. It does not hurt to do this. Free stats!

8;b)

If you have any thoughts regarding my guide, you can drop me a parcel in game. Server is MT and IGN is Redstrike or send me a PM via reddit –  VOTWarrior.

If you think my guide is dumb and think I do not know what I am talking about, hit me up in game. We can do DPS test and see if my conception of Reapers is shit. 

If you do not have best in slot gear, it doesn’t matter. As long as you have a complete set of Tier 7+ Gear and a completed accessory set we should be able to compare skill breakdown. What matters is the skill breakdown. If somebody out there is actually playing Reaper at a higher level, I would love to learn from them.

Cheers

Castanic Male Berserker, Human Female Slayer, Castanic Female Warrior, Elin Priest, Human Female Brawler, Aman Male Lancer, and Popori Mystic

Sadly no elves, baraka, femani and male human portrayed. Maybe on next one. 

Awakening Skill list

PLEASE READ: This is currently a work in progress. I will have to gather each information by playing through the game or searching up on inven posts. 

There are still several info missing as I do not have time to check all at once in short amount of time.

It looks like there are some more changes, especially chains and some skill’s stats. I’ll look into those later and update this. Some of them are on this doc, but I’ll have to reorganize them.

Special Thanks: 

non-KR : Sam202s, Seyuna, Pez, Riai, Yosha, Theorycraft community, some random people whose name i’ve forgotten, and a ton of people who’ve been asking some stuff to look into.

**cough**I stole some Yosha’s stuff**cough** 

KR (한섭):Story(VANILLE), Djmoongi (검탱),  Galgori (갈고리b), and several other Inven users 그리고 다른 여러 인벤 유저분들이 정보 정리 및 올려주신거 감사 드립니다. 

—  Loriri ( 로리리 )

Disclaimer: These names and info WILL CHANGE.

For testing request for skills, chains, (test server is down) 

checking up info/changes, etc, contact me on Discord (direct message me instead of tagging).

TERAOnline Discord: https://discord.gg/gAxf68W 

Contact: Idi0ticGenius ( Loriri )

An official post listing some changes for these awakening skill based on feedback is up and translated. 

Click here. 

=================================

Lancer

New Skills

Righteous Leap

Cast time 1.4 seconds

MP cost 100

Cooldown 20 seconds

Skill Damage 11,996

[Effect]

Fly up in the sky by leaping forward, then land a heavy impact to the ground. Inflict damage on enemies within 8m around the landing area, decreasing Attack Speed and Movement Speed by 15% as they are knocked airborne. 

[Chainable Skills]

Increase cast speed and receive frontal block effect when chained from [Charging Lunge] [Wallop]. Also, this skill will not go through monsters. 

[How to use]

Use this skill while facing the desired direction. This is effective when used against enemies that have surrounded an ally to protect them.

Can be block cancelled. Chaining this skil after lunge or wallop will not go through players as well. :thinking: bug?

Divine Aegis

Cast time Instant

MP cost 400

Cooldown 6 Minutes

[Effect]

Block any incoming damage to all party members including the caster within 20m for 10 seconds, and apply Divine Aegis effect which increases combat movement speed. For short time, caster becomes invincible when casting this skill.

[How to use]

Use this skill even everyone is in danger. 

※Skills with more than 5 minute cooldown cannot be used in Battlegrounds.

Cannot be block cancelled. Cannot be cancelled by backstep.

Bulwark

Cast time Instant

MP cost 100

RE cost 100

Cooldown 1 Minute

Skill Damage 2,301

[Effect]

Summon a barrier that can reflect melee damage and push back enemies to protect party members and self. When the barrier cannot withstand the incoming damage, it will break after absorbing all damage. 

When the barrier breaks while it tries to block an attack that cannot be blocked, the cooldown will increase by 3 times. 

When the barrier breaks while it tries to block an attack that cannot be iframed, the cooldown will increase by 10 times. 

[Chainable skill]

This skill can be casted while using [Standfast]

[How to use]

Use this skill to protect party members and self from harm. The barrier will stay up as long as the skill button is being pressed, and forward or backward movement is possible.

Can be block cancelled. Receiving CC’s from behind (stagger, stun, KD) will result in skill being cancelled and become said CC.

Unsure but using this skill on KD target will not “juggle” stagger the KD target. 

Walking Fortress

Enables Movement during Standfast

Walking while holding standfast is enabled, and decreased stamina consumption while blocking by 20%. 

Spiked Shield

Reflect damage on perfect block

Damage is reflected on perfect block. Also, perfect block against monsters applies Spiked Shield effect stacks which increases shield counter skill damage, replenishes 5% MP and reduce cooldown on Shield Counter by 0.5 seconds.

Reflect damage is based on Skill damage of Standfast II and Bulwark I. 

Standfast II : 460

Bulwark : 2,301

Perfect Block makes no sense: 

Lancers can kill things without resorting to violence(sorta): https://clips.twitch.tv/ThoughtfulGiantMeerkatLeeroyJenkins 

Unyielding Resolve

Unyielding Resolve

Increase chance to resist against knockdown / stagger by 20%, and apply immunity to them while casting challenging shout. Aside from special attacks, attacks from monsters will no longer push you back.   

Changed or Removed skills

Resolve

Regenerate 135 RE even during block regardless of combat status: you can press and hold block forever now. ( This could be a bug with Standfast II )

Standfast costs 40 RE instead of 50 RE (See Walking Fortress Passive)

Standfast 

Has 460 Skill damage.

Can now walk around while blocking with Walking Fortress Passive

Receiving CC’s from behind (stagger, stun, KD) will result in skill being cancelled and become said CC.

Onslaught 

Cast time Instant

MP cost 500

Cooldown 11 seconds

Skill Damage 5,715 (+1,714.64)

[Effect]

Charge forward with shield and lance facing forward. While casting, this skill will have frontal block and gain additional aggro when this skill hits target.

[Chainable skills]

Increase casting speed when chained from [Combo Attack], [Shield Barrage], [Shield Bash]. 

[How to use]

Use this still while facing the enemy.

With the Frontal Block effect (but damage reduction seemed to be removed), you get blue glow instead of yellow.

Lockdown Blow

[Chainable Skills]

Increase Casting Speed when chained from [Shield Barrage], and [Debilitate].

[Chains]

Lockdown Blow -> Wallop X or Spring Attack XI

Wallop

[Superior Glyph] Carving Wallop – Doubles Crit Chance.

Yes it does crit more after using this glyph, but it’s still RNG regardless– just less painful.

Casting Wallop will make your character glow blue instead of yellow 

Guardian Shout

Energetic Guardian Shout is removed, reducing its base cooldown to 2 minutes

Effect changed slightly, where instead of making a large ring, it looks like as if air is rushing out from your character.

Challenging Shout

Shout range becomes 15m. You can see the difference below.

Using this skill applies 3 second debuff on affected targets.

Stigma of Provocation

A stigma indicating a target for Chained Leash skill. This cannot be cleansed and it will be removed once there is a reaction. (reaction meaning Chained Leash combo that goes with this)

Caster receives 3 second buff

Chained Leash Chain

Chained Leash can be used as chain skill while this effect lasts.

Chained Leash

Cast time Instant

MP cost 50 350

Cooldown 1 minute 10 seconds

Skill Damage 101 180

[Effect]

Stun a target 15m ahead by throwing a leash which will spread apart to leash 5 more targets around 15m of the primary target. The leashed targets will be pulled to primary target’s location.

[Chainable Skill]

When this skill is used immediately after [Challenging Shout], all targets caught by the shout within 15m will be pulled toward the caster. 

[How to use]

This skill is used to pull multiple targets to single location.

EDIT: You also don’t have to aim at a target after using challenging shout.

It does this pose when it’s chained from Challenging Shout. Notice I have no target on cursor, and leash spreads from where you stand.

Menacing Wave

• Removed – effect added to Righteous Leap

New Chain/Combo Flow Chart

This is based on what I’ve analyzed so far. 

[ This chart DOES NOT represent your rotations. ]

Follow the path going downwards, left or right, but never upwards.

Combo Attack -> Spring Attack chain only works on 3rd cast on Combo Attack

Shield Barrage -> Wallop chain only works on 2nd cast on Shield Barrage

You can cast Standfast to Bulwark or Bulwark to Standfast, but Standfast to Bulwark seemed to have less animation.(? Have to test again) 

Confirmed Standfast and Bulwark DOES NOT chain in any way. (could be high ping tho)

I made this chart for fun; but it’s not fun for other class which i have no clue how to play.

=================================

Warrior 

New Skills

Spiral Slash

Cast time Instant

MP cost 95 95

Cooldown 8 seconds

Skill Damage 2,820 2,820

Max Edge 2

[Effect] – Stack Generation Skill

Deliver a spinning slash forward to attack enemies within area.

It can be used again within few seconds.

[Chainable Skill]

While [Assault Stance IV] is active, increase chance to crit for next chained attack by 15%.

While [Defensive Stance II] is active, this skill receives frontal block effect and greatly increase aggro generation. 

This skill will cancel all other skills.

[How to use]

Use this skill while facing the target.

This skill can be used once again within 8 seconds before it goes on cooldown. 

Left: Assault Stance 

Right: Defensive Stance

In Assault Stance, you gain a 4 second buff (seems like there’s 2 second delay for this buff to pop up). 

Elegant Chaining – Chain into next attack gracefully, increasing its Crit Chance by 15%.

One thing about this though, it doesn’t seem to affect Storm Crash’s first cast. Could be just my poor luck, but then It’s consumed on second cast. Hmmm…

In Defensive Stance, you glow orange like you did with Torrent of Blows.

Storm Crash

Cast time Instant

MP cost 205 85

Cooldown 24 seconds

Skill Damage 5,980 1,512

Max Edge 2

[Effect] – Edge Generation and Consumption Skill

1st Step (Edge Generation) – leap forward, then fly into the air to deliver a spinning attack.

2nd Step (Edge Consumption) – deliver a devastating blow on second cast. While casting this skill, reduce damage received by 50% and consume all edge when there are 3 or more stacks, then increase skill damage based on consumed edge stacks.  

[Chainable skills]

This skill will cancel all other skills.

[How to use]

When there are 3~8 edge stacks, use this skill while facing the target. 

First cast generates 2 edge at the end of its animation. If you cancel/skip it, you don’t generate those edge. 

Second cast will only consume 3 or more edge stacks up to 10. If you have 1 or 2 edge stack, it will not be consumed. 

Just an idea of how much damage it does relative to Scythe, here’s a chart made with Theorycrafting Group. Look at the first column within bolded box to see damage relative to Scythe.

If you don’t understand the chart above, the damage outcome from Storm Crash at 10 edge is equivalent to about 160% of Scythe at 10 edge.

Also doesn’t seem to have Bloodlust effect (more damage when target HP is lower)

Tempest Rush

Cast time Instant

MP cost 142 145

Cooldown 5 Minute

Skill Damage 22,530

[Effect]

1st Step (Enhancement Effect) – Enhance the [Storm Crest] passive by amplifying it for 15 seconds. However, unleashing the empowered aura by using this skill again will calm down.

2nd Step (Attack Skill) – Using this skill once again will slice up the enemy, then unleash a powerful Tempest Rush by spinning in high speed. Resistance to knockdown and stagger are greatly increased while casting this skill.

[Passive Enhancement]

While 1st Step (Enhancement Effect) is active, [Storm Crest] passive becomes [Storm Crest II]. 

When [Storm Crest II] is activated, an after image created by Storm Crest will appear, which inflicts additional 10% damage for 10 seconds. Also, on successful last hit for all skill, character will receive 2% additional skill damage, 0.5% additional attack speed and 0.5% cooldown reduction. This effect can be stacked. Cooldown reduction effect only applies on melee skills.

[Chainable Skill]

2nd Step (Attack Skill) will cancel all other skills.

[How to use]

After attacking enemies as much as possible while 1st Step (Enhancement Effect) is active, use this skill once again while facing the enemy before the timer runs out. 

Storm Crest II overwrites Storm Crest I regardless of stack count. 

Momentum (Passive)

Cooldown Reduction 

• On successful hits from [Blade Draw], reduce cooldown on [Scythe] by 0.5 seconds. 
• On successful hits from [Scythe], reduce cooldown on [Storm Crash] by 1 second
• On successful 2 hits from [Storm Crash], reduce cooldown on [Tempest Rush] by 3 seconds.

Storm Crest (Passive)

Accelerate

On successful last hit for all skill, character will receive 0.1% attack speed and 0.1% cooldown reduction. This effect can be stacked. Cooldown reduction effect only applies on melee skills. 

On 50 stacks, an after image created by Storm Crest will be summoned for 10 seconds to inflict 10% additional damage. Also 5% additional attack speed and 5% cooldown reduction effect will persist. Cooldown reduction effect only applies on melee skills. 

Storm Crest II – activates on [Tempest Rush] 

Create an after image with Storm Crest to inflict 10% additional damage for 10 seconds. Also, on successful last hit for all skill, character will receive 2% additional skill damage, 0.5% additional attack speed and 0.5% cooldown reduction. This effect can be stacked. Cooldown reduction effect only applies on melee skills, and when Storm Crest II will overwrite Storm Crest I effects. 

These buffs disappear when you are out of combat, so you can’t pre-stack and reset.

Storm Crest I buff lasts 45 seconds until 49 stacks, but at 50 stacks it’s 10 seconds.

Storm Crest II buff lasts 10 seconds upon activation through Tempest Rush’s first cast. This overwrites Storm Crest I regardless of stack count or duration. It is consumed when you cast Tempest Rush second time or timer runs out. 

Icon looks same for both buffs.

Max stack count from Storm Crest II is unknown because I’m garbage at warrior FeelsBadMan highest I got within 10 second was around 20 stacks.

Changed or Removed skills

Blade Draw

[Superior Glyph] Persistent Blade Draw – 60% chance to reset cooldown

Smoke Aggressor

• Removed – 

Command: Attack

• Removed – 

Command: Follow

• Removed – 

Pounce 

•  Removed – Effect added to Leaping Strike

Battle Cry

•  Removed – Replaced by Vortex Slash, but without stun. 

Torrent of Blows 

•  Removed 

Vortex Slash

 Changed 

– New icon, 

– can now be casted without needing Evasive Roll.

– on Defensive Stance, it greatly increases aggro generation, granting permanent aggro for 5 seconds. 

[Common Glyph] Hastened Vortex Slash – Increase Casting Speed by 30%

[Common Glyph] Threatening Vortex Slash – Generate 100% more aggro.

Range is 10m, just like Battle Cry.

BUG

Defensive Stance

When using Defensive Stance, you will not be able to use the following chains while holding Cross Parry:

Cross Parry -> Blade Draw

It doesn’t matter whether you are pressing chain key or manually. You just cannot cast them while holding Cross Parry. You can chain it when you let go of the Cross Parry though, and it does go off fast as long as you “chain” it quickly.

Shadow Flanker works fine regardless though.

THIS BUG IS ALSO ON INTIMIDATION BERSERKER AS WELL.

Scythe 

You can’t use evasive roll out of it to cancel post-animation. In fact, nothing cancels the animation of this skill. bug?

=================================

Slayer

New Skills

Rending Crash

Cast time 2 seconds

MP cost 180

Cooldown 15 seconds

Skill Damage 9,030

[Effect]

Deliver a heavy blow after leaping toward the target. Has high chance to knock down,

[Chainable Skill]

Increases casting speed when chained from [Overhand Strike], [Eviscerate], [Piercing Lunge], and [Measured Slice].

[How to use]

Use this skill while facing the target.

Piercing Lunge

Cast time Instant

MP cost 75 75

Cooldown 12 seconds

Skill Damage 1,758 1,758

[Effect]

Slice through the target. Then, all attacks against monsters will be back damage for 5 seconds. This skill can be used again before the effect disappears, but doing so will consume the effect. 

[Chainable skill]

Increase casting speed when chained from [Heart Thrust], [Whirlwind], [Knockdown Strike], [Overhand Strike], [Ultimate Overhand Strike], [Eviscerate], [Measured Slice], and [Rending Crash] 

[How to use]

Use this skill to take an advantageous position by quickly moving to such location. 

Colossus Blade

MP cost 70 70 140

Cooldown 5 Minute

Skill Damage 26,899

[Effect] – Charging Skill

Slice up surrounding enemies in wide range. Holding down this skill will empower skill damage. It can be charged up to 3 times and overcharging will consume some HP, but skill damage is increased each time.

[Chainable skills]

Increase Charging speed when chained after [Piercing Lunge] 

[How to use]

Use this skill while facing the target. Holding this skill down longer will increase skill damage. 

It says it charges faster after Piercing Lunge, but either I need to git gud or the difference is not that big. Or it can also be ping issue.

Overhand Strike : Focus

Enhance Overhand Strike

Increase skill damage of [Overhand Strike], [Ultimate Overhand Strike] by 20% when using [Overhand Strike], [Ultimate Overhand Strike] again within 3 seconds.

Expertise

Special Effect

Receive the following effect.

• When [Piercing Lunge] successfully hits target, decrease cooldown of [Rending Crash] by 1 second
• When [Rending Crash] successfully hits target, decrease cooldown of [Colossus Blade] by 5 seconds.

Frigid Heart

Enhance In Cold Blood I

On every successful hit during In Cold Blood, increase attack speed by 5%, and crit chance by 5%. This can stack up to 5 times.

Changed or Removed skills

Knocks things airborne and OHS has 100% crit against airborne target, MS has increased dmg on airborne

.

Overpower

Cast Time 1.4 seconds

MP cost 130

Cooldown 1 second

[Effect] – Toggle Skill

Gather up energy to enhance next [Heart Thrust], [Knockdown Strike], and [Rending Crash]. While this skill is active, an enhancement effect Overpower will be generated every 4 seconds, which will be consumed to enhance the next single attack, adding 33% additional damage. 

[How to use]

Activate before initiating combat, then use the skill whenever Overpower is generated. 

OP is now a toggle skill, generating 33% dmg buff every 4 second on certain attacks

Removed – [Uncommon Glyph] Powerlinked Overpower

Removed – [Uncommon Glyph] Keen Overpower

Removed – [Rare Glyph] Keen Overpower

Overhand Strike

[Superior Glyph] Persistent Overhand Strike – 70% chance to reset cooldown

Cast Time 1.6 seconds

MP cost 120

Cooldown 4 seconds

Skill Damage 2,754 (+275.39)

[Effect]

Deliver a devastating blow on target. 100% chance to crit against airborne enemies.

Eviscerate

Cast Time Instant

MP cost 190

Cooldown 9 seconds (-1.8 seconds)

Skill Damage 3,234 (+808.55)

[Effect]

Knock enemies airborne by delivering an uppercut with the greatsword, inflicting heavy damage.

Measured Slice 

Cast Time 1.8 seconds

MP cost 150

Cooldown 9 seconds 

Skill Damage 4,956 (+1,486.85)

[Effect]

Deliver a large swing forward after gathering energy to the greatsword. Skill damage increases by 30% against airborne monsters.

Knockdown Strike

[Rare Glyph] Keen Knockdown Strike – Doubles Crit Factor for 4 seconds.

Reports say its effect applies AFTER skill hits target

Only applies to monsters(?)

Whirlwind 

[Uncommon Glyph] Empowered Whirlwind – Increase Skill damage by 10% for 4 seconds

Reports say its effect applies AFTER skill hits target

Only applies to monsters(?)

=================================

Berserker

New Skills

Berserk

Cast time 2.6 seconds

HP cost 640

Cooldown 5 minutes

Skill Damage 16,321

[Effect]

This skill enables all Berserk skills. 

Consume HP and become Berserk filled with rage for 24 seconds.

During this state, no skilled except Berserk related skills can be used and all damage becomes back  damage. While the effect lasts, all knockdowns and staggers are resisted, and will not die even if HP drops below 1. 

After Berserk ends, all accumulated damage will be received at once.

[How to use]

Use this skill to activate it.

When you use this skill, your skill bar will be empty, leaving out only 5 skills: 

Decimate (1)

Crimson Assault (2) 

Unbreakable (3)

Smash (Left Mouse button) 

Crush (Right Mouse Button)

Smash and Crush chains with each other and Decimate Chains to itself

Each skill except Unbreakable uses HP, so you will lose HP as you attack. If HP consumption or incoming damage exceeds the remaining HP, it will fall into negatives. This is what “all accumulated damage will be received at once” means. When Berserk ends, you will receive those accumulated negative HP as damage. To prevent death from negative damage, you use Unbreakable to receive up to your Max HP value. If your Max HP is 100,000 HP, you can have up to -99,999 HP and survive by using Unbreakable before Berserk runs out. This doesn’t mean Berserk makes you invincible– once you pass that limit (1 – Max HP), you will die. 

You can still receive heals during Berserk.

Decimate

Cast time Instant

HP cost 3,524

Skill Damage 2,862

[Effect] – Berserk Skill

Shred enemies with axes on both hands. Each swing will consume HP, and every hit will gradually increase its speed. 

[Chainable Skill]

Increase skill damage of [Crimson Assault] on every hit.

[How to use]

Use the skill while facing the target during [Berserk] state.

Smash

Cast time Instant

HP cost 1,762

Skill Damage 1,883

[Effect] – Berserk Skill

Swing left hand axe to attack enemy. Every swing will consume HP and every hit will gradually increase skill damage and speed.

[Chainable Skill]

Each hit will reduce cooldown of [Crimson Assault] by 1 second.

[How to use]

Use the skill while facing the target during [Berserk] state.

Crush

Cast time Instant

HP cost 1,762

Skill Damage 1,883

[Effect] – Berserk Skill

Swing right hand axe to attack enemy. Every swing will consume HP and every hit will gradually increase skill damage and speed.

[Chainable Skill]

Each hit will increase skill damage of [Decimate].

[How to use]

Use the skill while facing the target during [Berserk] state.

Crimson Assault

Cast time Instant

HP cost 7,048

Cooldown 10 seconds

Skill Damage 16,321

[Effect] – Berserk Skill

Consume HP and charge forward like a wild beast, recklessly swinging axes to shred enemies on the way. 

[Chainable Skill]

This skill will cancel all other skills.

[How to use]

Use the skill while facing the target during [Berserk] state.

Frenzied Advance

Increase Movement speed while charging

Increase movement speed while charging by 1.5 times.

Cyclone: Typhoon

Consecutive Cyclone Cooldown Reset

Chance to reset Cyclone cooldown on successful hit, which then could be casted again as if was already overcharged. Cyclone: Typhoon effect can stack up to 3 times and based on the stack count, skill damage and cooldown increases correspondingly. 

Video clip: https://clips.twitch.tv/AgitatedFriendlyDumplingsKappaPride 

Cyclone : Typhoon I / II / III

Increase Cyclone Skill Damage by 10% / 20% / 30%.

Using a low level weapon (because test subject kept dying while testing), damage test result:

Vengeance

Increase Damage when receiving damage

When receiving damage, increase skill damage and crit chance of next attack by 10%, and decrease cooldown of [Berserk] by 1 second. 

However, skill damage and crit chance increase effect is only affected by taking damage from monsters.

Fortitude

Cast time Instant

Cooldown 30 seconds

[Effect]

Stagger surrounding enemies within 8m with a shout and recover 9724 HP and 900 MP. 

Becomes immune to stagger or immobilization for 6 seconds after casting this skill. Also greatly increases resistance to weakening effects.

[How to use]

Use this skill after facing head-on with a target to create an opening for short time. 

Knockdown and Stun resist seems to be there. It makes sense since the skill looks like Mocking shout with Tenacity icon and adjusted effects. For reference, Tenacity had Stun resist while Mocking Shout had Stagger or KD resist. However, note that this buff only lasts 5 seconds– which in case for Mocking Shout effect (Stagger/KD resist), it’s a 3 second nerf as they were 8 second buff.  

In case of Unchained Anger during Intimidation, this would be a buff on that regard since it recovers same amount of HP but also replenish 900MP every 30 seconds instead of consuming 300MP every 60 second base cooldown.  

Changed or Removed skills

Animation Changes 

Follow the link here : Cyclone, Thunderstrike, Lethal Strike, Vampiric Blow, and Flatten