Awesome insight! Thank you so much for the break down.
I don’t mind grinding much, i have 2 other alts that i’m primarily going to be focusing on and this just a “for fun” character to role play with. Hence going hunter3 despite it having known issues.
I don’t have much else to say/ask (yet) other than…STAT DISTRIBUTION. I always feel like these can be a tricky mix between str and dex. I come from a ragnarok online background where dex was where archers got their power. This game…not so much. I guess the stronger you are, the farther you can pull your bow string eh?
Edit: I keep seeing circling pretty much always left at 5/15, any reason we don’t get this past 5 levels?
Valid points concerning efficiency of skill duration/cd. Also thank you for the youtube vid reference! watching the different stuff the content creator has on about hunters!
No problem, as for your question about circling 5/15, the answer is simple:
Right now monsters at most have 5 AoE Def, so circling 5 reduces that to 0, sinec 1 point in circling = -1 AoE Def.
If they ever plan on increasing monster’s AoE def further then we might need to reset, until then, the only reason for circling beyond 5 would be PvP, and it is a pretty awful reason.
Pardon all the noob questions but, aoe def is how resilient monsters are in a mob yes? Meaning my aoe damage is reduced by some equation involving aoe defense?
Edit: magic attacks aren’t affected by aoe defense are they?
Also, do you not do more damage if you get a mobs’ aoe defense in the negatives? Or can you not decrease it past 0?
mi first main character was a hunter 3 falconer 2 ( there was no falconer 3 yet) ad was hellish in that time there was not as much quest and dungeons like we have now, so grinding was a must… my guildmate hated me and make me feel worthless… . but i manage to level by MYSELF in maps that are even 15 levels more than myself, thanks to the safety net that is our pet coursing / retrieve and growling.
i remember that the falconer class change mission was a hell of a test. having to defeat a boss without being touched not once… with my abismal damage and since i can only hit with rushdog. it take me hours. ( 1hours 39 minutes to be exact) try to go there full buffed, the best weapon possible, sharpened!
the only i can add to all this excellent advice is that in preventive strike - maybe is worth buy the remove circling attribute ( is expensive) so the falcon only throw sonic blast at your targets and don’t get struck in circling when u move away
hunter is suposed to be a suport class that control enemys so in this dps based game sem lackluster. but here s some great fantasy when it come to a hunter /falconer that make us want to be that master of beast
( would be great if they create a “Beastmaster” secret class that require u be hunter/falconer to get into - rank 10 im looking to you!)
AoE Def does not decrease damage dealt by AoE skills, instead, it dictates how many monsters will be hit.
Your attack starts with… say 10 AoE atk ratio, if you hit 10 enemies with 1 AoE Def each, you’ll hit them all because each enemy hit will subtract 1 AoE atk ratio from your ATK.
If you hit 3 enemies with the following distribution: 5, 5, 1 AoE Def. You’ll only be able to hit the ones with 5, it prioritizes the ones with the highest amount of AoE Def, so by the time it reaches the one with 1 AoE def it no longer can do anything because 0 cannot beat 1.
There are certain magic skill that utilize the AoE mechanic, such as magic missile. But, magic skills in their majority just have a fixed amount of targets they can hit regardless of the AoE mechanic.
This is why circling exist, it was awesome during rank 7, it got even better in rank 8. In rank 8 we got the circling [expand] attribute, this attribute makes one physical hit expand to one other target, and thus one hit becomes 2.
It will always be one hit becomes 2, but since it also makes your AoE physical skills hit everything, it’s one hit that has hit 20 enemies, and those 20 hits have a chance to expand. So, it’s extra damage for any physical skill casted within circling.
edit
I’ll add this: Circling requires a minimum of 2 enemies to do anything, if you had only one enemy within circling, it would decrease its AoE def, but you would of had hit it anyway. It also cannot expand damage to the root target, so a minimum of 2 enemies is required.
Only sappers choose to cast circling with only one target around, since they can use a skill called “Detonate” which makes circling explode dealing damage to enemies. If you are not a sapper, please, avoid casting circling agaisnt a single enemy.
I’m currently building a Archer2>Hunter3>Appraiser>Cannoneer3 and I believe that it’s pretty viable.
Hunter helps providing a good amount of damage skills that can kill small mobs/stronger single monsters for low amounts of SP and has the best CC capabilities of all low-Ranked Archer Classes (you can disable monsters with Coursing,Retrieve and Growling, and Coursing boosts your crit chance and decreases the enemies defence; Rush Dog has a chance to stun enemies with its attribute).
Pointing also provides a good provoke ability and a nice decrease of the enemies accuracy and evasion (effectively boosting your hit&evasion rates; useful against boss monsters as you can’t use normal skills during Kneeling Shot/Bazooka).
I think Hunter is quite useful for Classes that can’t use normal attack skills as much due to their restriction to secondary weapons (e.g. Cannoneer, Bullet Marker).
For these Classes, the only real alternative is Sapper (or Quarrel Shooter, though it works less well without a shield). However, Sapper uses up several different items and also lacks CC utility.
All in all the things that make Hunter bad are the following:
Companion uses up a character slot
non-premium companions have less weapon&armor slots
lack of better AoE skills (Rush Dog only has a small AoE)
bad companion A.I. that still bugs out a lot
companion is too weak without constant feeding/high equipment reinforcement and not every stat can be upped at the trainer NPC
Btw, I had an Hunter>Falconer before, but I didn’t really like the many skills I had to use so I mostly wasted the full capabilities of the build; I especially disliked the idea to recast Pre-Emptive Strike every 60 seconds or the Falcon would inadvertently get stuck after the last use of a skill because, guess what, Falcon A.I. also sucks and bugs out with 100% certainty after using a skill manually, gg.
No idea what I’m gonna build into it after Rank 9, maybe I’ll go for Archer C3 or Falconer C1, although the premise of non-C3 Falconer is just Circling and nothing more pretty much
The problem of Hunter is that they don’t have any useful skill outside of Growling, and even then Growling area is so small that it need outside helping of a skills like Aiming.
Coursing and Retrieve are mediocre because in this game PVE when we need CC it’s against multiple monsters, don’t have any place where you want to disable a single enemy, and if it have, QS 1 with Stone Shot and even Full Draw do a way better job. Pointing is just as bad, it go after a single monster after another, taking a long time to agro a sizable amount of monsters
The pet A.I. is not only bad, it’s horrible, a lot of times you cast a skill and it go in cooldown without doing nothing.
And for classes with weapon restriction we have way better classes, like QS, Sapper and Wugushi for ranks 2,3 and 4 if needed. And Musket now can use more skills from Archer so that is a better option as well.
And Facloner don’t bug as much, and if it bugs, nothing like a Call or two don’t resolve, and at least the skill don’t go to cooldown without doing nothing.
What many also don’t know is that the attribute for pointing, “Fear”, reduces the damage of all enemies debuffed by it, as well as applies a brief 1-2 second stun on enemies. (The stun doesn’t work on bosses)
I think the Growling AoE is actually big enough for normal farming purposes,
and as mobs are just stupid it’s so very easy to lure them in a straight line into the AoE to get them disabled.
Also, as long as you don’t have Aiming, most normal skills don’t have a bigger AoE anyway to hit monsters disabled all over the place, so for once this helps with mob concentration to a certain degree.
Yes, Pointing isn’t that good for provoking enemies, but it is quite useful as the companion always reapplies the debuff on the enemy, making your evasion and accuracy more effective.
It is also one of the few skills I can use with Bazooka mode or Kneeling Shot that has a useful effect that doesn’t need to be refreshed/recast actively every few seconds, and honestly I don’t feel good for taking Quarrel Shooter skills up to do this for me, as Quarrel Shooter just doesn’t have any useful mass cc skills that disable many monsters at once like Growling does(Growling seems to be bugged/disabled on some maps,though, as I was unable to use it in Demon Prison District 2, but at that map Coursing/Retrieve were also disabled for all mobs except Harugal, so it might be a bug after all?)…
Wugushi is okish if you’re fine with the fact that he’s a Rank 4 Class, so you’d have to go QS C1 or Archer C3; It has the benefit of enabling you to use Hungry Velnia Monkey cards for eternal 30% damage boost, however, it also has the fatal flaw of being single target-fixated with most of his skills and he uses up items, so you have to manage resources and carry more stuff around with you (that’s not so bad but meh, I don’t really like managing all those extra stuffs).
His skills also can’t be used with Bazooka or Kneeling Shot and because the poison has a short duration, when you’re ready with Bazooka + Smoke Grenade, the poison will have already nearly worn off unless you’re a C3 Wugushi (Wugong Gu has 10 seconds duration at any level and Needle Blow has a maximum duration of 10 -12,5 seconds, depending on wether you’re a C2 or C3 Wugushi).
Last but not least, Sapper. I like the design of the Class, but it is pretty static, which defeats the purpose of pairing it with the static Cannoneer. His skills also have high CD times, so you basically have to trap all your traps first before going into Bazooka/Kneeling Shot (as once again, traps can’t be used from those stances).
The worst thing is that Sapper doesn’t features any useful CC skills, it’s a pure damage dealing Class, and its skills are point blank range,too, which is another thing you’d want to avoid on the ranged Cannoneer.
All in all, I want the damage to come from Cannoneer. I don’t want to transcend and overupgrade the Cannon and the Crossbow, so there is no way I’d go for Wugushi or Sapper that all rely on that to be of any use to my build.
Hunter doesn’t bring damage but utility, which is what Cannoneer needs most as it becomes a sitting duck during Bazooka/Kneeling Shot.
Hunter does face another issue.
Even if IMC said they remove “Elite” mobs and made those clover buffed elites (the ones which drop event medals right now), The old elite mobs are still immune to growling. The heck some are even immune to coursing and retrieve…
Also hunter3 is as you said is indeed good for cannon3 where you can just drop the pet and let it growl and go bazooka mode. Mobs gets CC’d and you keep hitting them. But the thing is its highly unreliable.
Still find a waste to use 3 ranks for only ONE skill if you will not maximize it. So yeah, I would never Hunter in a Cannon build, even Scout 1 gives better tools, Cloaking not only let’s you setup but gives 50% more damage, and the new skill área is huge, you can literally go to the corner of the room, setup Bazooka and clean the entire room in one shot.
Well, most of newbie qs3 you find roaming around only us running shot too.
Its not like hunter can have only 1 useful skill. Coursing is still +crit chance and rush dog with proper pet equipments hits like a truck.
@Valfor We all know that hunter is not the brightes choice, but, if someone chooses, let that someone take their own decisions. Sure, @ReportofAusterity talks like it’s a solution to many problems, but I read those as they trying to convince themselves.
I don’t want to see this thread become a bunch of counter points to hunter, because we all know hunter is not that great, not even close to decent most of the time. But, when someone goes out of their way to try it, and expect it to work, let them.
After all it won’t be you playing it, and in the end you’ll atleast get the “I told ya” satisfaction, if the time comes… It could turn out that they enjoy it so much that it becomes their main.
Which weapons should be the best for hunter’s companion?
The damage of hunter 3 is relatively overpowered even if for imc"s reasons 90% of the skills won’t work on boss.
With only 2840 attack on my penguin snacthing that is the strongest skill can crit 40 000+ with luck, even rush dog is decent 12 000x5 sometimes.
Eh, two handed stuff,
To be honest, anything that when you avg the min and max atk gives a substantial amount.
It’s added at the end of the formula I guess, so with 3K phys atk, it would add +1K damage. (as from 12k to 13k)
You deal that much damage because of your archer weapons anyway, and I REALLY WISH that rush dog stopped being a fake multihit, I really want to see that as a single great number, instead of that facade.
