Wizard C3 – Linker C2 – Runecaster – Featherfoot.
Hi all! Often, I see questions about some rarer classes that my build incorporates so in the end I decided to collect all info I managed to get while playing this build. Also, I’m only interested in PVE, so I have no idea how good or bad it is in PVP.
I’m not going to describe equipment here as it’s pretty much the same for most wizards, the only thing I want to emphasize is that being a Linker, do get that Ignition asap! The damage procs even from the Reflect Shield, and a sight of burning monsters spewing blood everywhere is priceless!
Since it’s mostly a solo build, its party usefulness is a bit limited, but you can still act as a decent Linker and will thus contribute to the party’s damage, especially if you explain the JP+HK combo trick to them.
Also, as it’s a linker, it shines on large groups and underperforms on single targets, especially on bosses.
Class choice:
Wizard C3:
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Magic Missile (MM) is and will be your main damage dealing spell even on level 280, the only problem with it is that you won’t get it before Circle 3 (that’s around lvl40). I got to level 40 using autoattack only, but that’s a kind of masochism, not welcomed by everyone, so if you have tokens, you can take Energy Bolt and/or Earthquake to level up faster and buy a skill reset potion later and redistribute your invested skillpoints. MM has 2 shots, each of which releases 3 missiles. Every missile is homing if you’re targeting a monster, and will bounce off to other monsters, damaging them, until there was a total of 5 bounces (in a single charge) or until there are no more targets left. Used alone, it’s not very powerful, but it deals A LOT more damage when you use it immediately after Linker’s JP+HK combo (see a comparison video below).
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Surespell (SS) is vital for Featherfoot’s Blood Sucking (BS), as BS can be interrupted easily and there you go, wait for another 40 seconds. However, bear in mind that AoE from bosses and basically any hit from monsters that knocks you down will interrupt your spells even with SS.
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Quick Cast (QC) is also important as it will give you a +50% boost in damage (both skills and autoattack) and therefore, in BS efficiency. Also, it makes using Runecaster’s skills not so painfully slow.
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Sleep is very good if you need to heal with BS without monsters struggling, but it doesn’t work on every monster, which is sad.
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Reflect Shield (RS) is so-so, it reduces some damage, but later becomes almost worthless against archer monsters (I’m talking about damage reduction of 100-150 hp, when archers hit you for 2000 with simple shots and for 6000-8000 damage with Spiral Arrow). In early game, it should help against knockback and simply helps you survive longer against a group of monsters or when you’re running across a map.
I never used any other Wizard skills as they become obsolete very quickly or are plain useless (Lethargy, Earthquake, Energy Bolt).
Linker C2:
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Joint Penalty (JP) links several monsters that are not too far away. Almost any monster in the game can be linked, so far I found only one that is resistant, Red Nuo, lvl277, and I’m almost sure it’s a bug. There are 3 attributes for JP that increase damage to linked monsters from poison, lightning and earth by 50% if maxed, so try and get yourself a Venom or any other weapons/hair accessories that deal any of these 3 types of damage.
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Hangman’s Knot (HK) drags linked monsters in a tight knot to one of them, including those who ran away quite far but have not broken the link yet, and immobilizes (most of) them for 2 (skill lvl5) or 3 (lvl10) seconds. Nothing feels so satisfying as dragging the scared monster back to its doomed buddies and roaring ‘Get over here!’ in Scorpion’s voice before you unleash your fury on it!
JP + HK combo is awesome. It increases your damage on the entire linked group considerably (see the video), or you can use Sleep on them to heal with BS later. Just make sure you max both HK attributes (not expensive, only 5 levels each) as it will give you a tremendous damage boost on groups within 2 seconds after HK.
Exampe:
- with the first group, only JP was used, 2 MM charges removed roughly half of HP; with the second, JP+HK was used, a single MM charge killed almost all of them
It is also important that you gather large groups, the more monsters, the greater the damage (just don’t get killed in the process, archers are our plague).
Why Linker C2 and not C1/C3?
Linker C1’s JP can link 5 enemies; Linker C2 can use JP to link 8 enemies, which is much better; Linker C3 only adds 2 more, 10 in total, and nothing else basically; another 1 second of HK on later levels doesn’t count as late game monsters sometimes start spreading even before it expires. No new damage spells, only a doubtful buff.
Actually, I’m only using JP and HK. Other Linker’s skills seem almost useless:
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Unbind - never had a chance to use it, never needed to break my links. Ever!
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Physical Link is just broken. Instead of dividing damage between party members, say, 1200/6 = 200 damage to each member theoretically, it delivers the same damage to all (1200, partially mitigated by armor/resistances) and damages gear. Therefore, early level linkers cast it, others start shouting at them or running away to break it.
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Spiritual Chain (SC) has very limited use. Theoretically, it should allow sharing buffs party-wide, which is a nice idea. In practice, only a few buffs can be shared, like QC, Running Shot or Cloaking, that occupy limited buff slots while being of no use to other classes (archers have no use for QC, mages have no use for Running Shot, etc.) or being already available for them. Also, only buffs are shared, but not their attributes, so with QC party members only receive improved casting time, but no damage increase. Moreover, SC is very easily broken – 1 AoE from a boss, 1 party member flies too far from the group, there you go, the SC is broken. Finally, SC looks absolutely identical to Physical Link so some players who don’t like looking at buff icons to check which exactly link it is, just run away deliberately to break it.
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Lifeline is the only new skill you get from Linker C3 (so being a Linker C2 I don’t have it), and it’s also quite useless –30 sec duration, 60 sec recast. Highest party members’ attributes are shared, like everyone suddenly gets 400 Str, 350 Con, 400 Int etc., but with that Con increase your HP does not refill automatically, so you have to heal anyway. Besides, how would a wizard benefit from getting 400 Str for 30 seconds? This buff works as long as the Spiritual Chain is up, which is broken easily.
Runecaster:
It’s more of a fun/filler class, but it is also one of a few classes that has only 1 circle, therefore it’s good to fill this one slot as most other classes really shine at Circle 3. The quest is rather boring though and includes a lot of waiting, too.
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Rune of Destruction - nice AoE damage and long recast - good for clearing large areas of weaker mobs or when you simply have nothing to do.
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Rune of Ice - buff for you and party members near you for +300% Cold Damage - only works for direct hit spells (e.g. Snow Rolling), and not for deployment spells (like Ice Cloud), active for 10-50 sec, long recast. Only good for you if you’re a Cryomancer or have a Cryo in your stable party. I took 2 levels in it but consider getting rid of it altogether.
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Rune of Giants - buff for you OR 1 party member - +20 move speed, x2 defence, x2 size, + your Max HP increases considerably (depends on your Con, read the description). The drawback is that the enlarged person cannot use any spells/skills other than Taunt (for swordmen) and autoattack (for anyone), therefore not really useful even for tanks. Also a fun spell, I’m using it for fast movement across maps. Long recast. As all buffs, doesn’t transfer to another map.
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Rune of Justice - damage spell, works like a laser shot in one of 8 directions (only 1 ray at a time). Meh damage, easy to miss, can hit multiple targets, deals several hits to all targets in the way. I took it because nothing else is useful for me. Long recast, ofc.
Bear in mind, this skill is VERY, EXTREMELY easy to miss. I targeted large packs of mobs directly beside me only to see myself fire a diagonal shot instead of a horizontal one, completely missing the mobs (the party tank couldn’t help laughing at my 5 seconds’ pompous casting that missed every time). In the end the only way of aiming I could use reliably was firing vertically, straight upwards. Otherwise it’s an almost guaranteed miss. Or I suck at aiming, which I probably do. -
Rune of Protection - reduces chance of debuffs on you and your party by up to 50%. Never used, heard that it’s only good for PVP in which I’m not interested at all.
Also, ALL spells have a 8 second cast duration (or 4 seconds duration if you took Wizard3’s QC) and can be interrupted easily, also by the time you finish casting your Rune of Destruction, that group of fat mobs might be long dead. Aaaaand you spend a rune (500 silver each) for every spell you cast successfully. Finally, because of the server lag, I have to wait for 5-6 seconds instead of 4 to cast reliably, as many times my casting ended with nothing (probably the server thinks I haven’t held the button long enough).
P.S. Runecaster’s mantle is magestic AF and even after becoming a Featherfoot, I kept it. It flows in the air so elegantly!
Featherfoot, finally!
The only class in the entire game that can make monsters lose literally litres of blood all over the floor!
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Blood Sucking (BS): I took it first and maxed it to benefit from this class immediately. Deals nice damage as long as you hold the key (until fully charged) to everything in front of you for a long time, but is easily interrupted, so make sure you either make the monsters Sleep or use SS in advance. The amount of HP you gain is 30% of the damage you deal (on skill lvl5), so use QC for +50% damage. The range is very short, I think it’s cast as a 90° cone directly in front of you.
With my lvl267 FF, BS lvl5 restores around 900-1000 hp per tick from 1 monster, so a group of 3 monsters in 2 seconds will potentially restore ~13500-15000 hp with SS and QC (if they don’t die early). The cast duration is quite long so you can easily deal around 75k-100k damage to a group of monsters and stay with 100% HP (and maybe 10-20% SP, which is restored quickly by resting by the fire, in a matter of 20-30 seconds, much faster than waiting for 20k HP to restore).
Proper BS requires some preparation (JP, SS, HK, Sleep, QC and finally – BS!) so from time to time I end up pressing the wrong key combination and dying or having to wait for the BS cooldown. However, if you don’t feel like, you can just use SS and QC in advance, but in this case monsters might get behind you and will become unreachable for the BS. -
Blood Bath: I also took level 5 for max damage. This is a melee-range stab, after which the monster starts bleeding, losing health while being paralyzed for a few seconds, and a pool of blood appears. You can heal while standing in this pool, but it’s not a reliable healing skill. The numbers in the skill description say it heals for 70 hp on level 5, I’m getting 83 hp each time, tanks get 90+ hp, so I guess it depends on the Con of your character. The overall amount of health is negligible compared to BS; say there are 16 ticks x 83 hp each = 1328 hp, which is nothing compared to my 21k HP, and you have to remain within that blood pool all this time. However, any other party members can use the pool so it’s a tiny benefit if you don’t have a healer in your party.
All linked monsters receive damage while Bleed is active, but only the monster you stabbed spills the blood. Goodbye, blood rivers, hello, lonely blood pool.
WARNING!
These 2 most important FF’s skills above (BS & BB) only work on certain types of monsters, namely Demons, Insects and Animals. As for Mutants and Plants, they have no blood so you cannot heal off them with BS (you can still deal damage while you have enough HP); BB won’t cause Bleed, so it will only damage the monster once. Same applies to PVP (I tested it on a player), maybe players are Mutants or Plants (at least some of us are) 
- Bone Pointing – you deploy a floating bone that shoots small projectiles at any monster approximately once a second, dealing some minor damage and applying the Curse debuff on them that in theory reduces their Magic Defence. No idea how much MDef is reduced, on a player it removed approximately 35 MDef out of his total 440+.
I tried this skill while farming Blue Elets (approx.90k hp monsters) and liked it, it looks good for solo gameplay where you fight against melee monsters:
√ the bone can draw aggro,
√ it can withstand a lot of damage without consequences,
√ it deals some damage and debuffs mobs, and the Curse debuff spreads to all linked mobs immediately,
√ it stays for almost a minute, and you don’t even have to do anything but to cast it and walk away, gathering other monsters.
Just bear in mind that it has rather long casting animation that you cannot interrupt unlike Reflect Shield.
- Ngadhundi – I took 1 level in it just because nothing else is useful at the moment. It has a very short range (melee), rather long swing time so can miss moving monsters easily, does not work on bosses and is actually broken. It sets a Decay debuff that starts reducing Max HP gradually for 13 seconds (the same debuff as Decay from Necromancer’s Dirty Pole).
UPD:
The skill description is very vague, so after somebody asked about prolonged duration of the debuff with skill upgrade, I made some calculations…
I stabbed a Lepusbunny, during 13 sec its hp went from 47800 to 23900, which is exactly 50%. So, after some extrapolation:
50% / 13 sec = 3.85% per second;
lvl 1 = 13 sec = 50,05 % hp removed
lvl 2 = 16 sec = 61,6 % hp removed
lvl 3 = 19 sec = 73,15 % hp removed
lvl 4 = 22 sec = 84,7 % hp removed
lvl 5 = 25 sec = 96,25 % hp removed
So I invested 5 points into Ngadhundi, and it works some wonders on high hp monsters that are not immune to it. In 25 seconds they have about 5-8k hp left, so in the end this skill can be used for killing melee-range monsters rather easily.
- Kurdaitcha – you start walking slowly for 6-10 seconds, never used it but it looks worthless (-15 movement speed, which is 1/2 of normal, will most probably get you killed on higher levels and basically all it does is curse for 6-10 seconds, which you can do with the Bone pointing that also deals damage; you can also take 3 attribute points in it to have a 3% (three per cent, Carl!!) chance of double damage on hit. Meh. I don’t think every 33rd hit x 2 is worth the risk of being killed while crawling slowly beside monsters. Anyway, it might still be useful to invest into this attribute (without taking the skill itself) as it’s also triggered by any curse source, like Bone Pointing.
The gameplay vs monsters is usually like this: gather a group, buff yourself, JP+HK, stab them with BB, shoot 1 MM, step aside, shoot the remaining MM charge, run around until cooldown. If you’re low on HP, you can fully replenish it even from a single monster at the price of your SP, which is fully recovered after 25-30 seconds of sitting by the fire. Back to fight!
Thanks for reading, feel free to add or ask questions. I’ll try and add a video of a typical fight a bit later.
UPD: Finally, a short video.
UPD2:
Found another good use for Bone Pointing as a temporary tank replacement.
Cast Bone Pointing, link monsters within its attack range, there you go - all linked monsters start attacking the bone and pay no attention to you as long as you don’t attack them.
