After encountering a lot of strange gameplay in dungeons I decided to summarize a few, I hope so, helpful tips for a successful and fast dungeon.
Two things upfront, this isn’t by any means something that applies to every situation and those are suggestions that I experienced to be helpful. Although English is not my first language, so sorry about my bad grammar and hopefully it is still understandable.
Cleric
A cleric is always helpful and later on even necessary for a dungeon run, but it is always important to remember that some cleric classes are not exactly built to put out big heals.
For example, a player decides to choose to go C1-P3-… so this is actually a build with a decent heal, however a lot of players don’t realize it because there are just a small amount of heal tiles on the floor. It isn’t as affective as a C2 built but as long as all the melee builds stay together it is quite effective.
Tips for Clerics:
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Never ever put your heal tiles directly under other players, exception when another player is almost dead and he really needs an instant heal. Otherwise, every time a player receives a small amount of dmg he uses up a heal tile. When I play my Cleric I usually put the heal tiles behind the melee players. So they just have to take a step back to get a heal, ranged players can easily get to them and nobody is consuming tiles without the need to get one.
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Try to put out heals as soon as the cd is gone, it helps a lot if you just have 5 tiles to begin with.
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As a C1-P2-… build it is smart to always attack from a position where u are able to just throw your massheal out and get all of the melee players. Or if u are playing with a tank, use ur normal heal tiles for the none tank chars and position yourself so that u face the tank and use ur massheal to heal him if necessary.
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Talking about tanks, if u don’t have any massheal try to position one heal so that the tank just has to take a step to the right or the left to get to the tiles.
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Clerics are capable of giving a lot of buffs, especially in “search for party” groups it is difficult not to overbuff people. Just try to think about that not every buff is strictly necessary. Someone is giving out quicken and haste, don’t “steal” those buffs to give monstrance.
Just a small reminder, the buff limit for non token users is 6 (?), wizard and archer classes can have 7 buffs after rank 5, while swordsmen and cleric are receiving 9 buffs. (Not sure if those numbers are the right ones but I think so)
- Look at the buffs another cleric char can give, meaning, if another cleric char has a higher sacrament or blessing or…, don’t overwrite it.
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Don’t buff in a stupid way. Meaning, a wizard char does not need sacrament, exception would be a wizard who uses physical autoattacks and those are a realy rare breed. So if u have to choose between giving sacrament to a wizard or a swordsman, always choose the swordsman. An archer does not need stoneskin as bad as a swordsman may need it and all the other buffs that are giving defense increase.
What this means is, try to understand your skills before you use them. -
Don’t kill with your resurrection skill. So if u decide to resurrect put a safety zone doen or heal tiles under the person you want to resurrect if there are still monsters around and there is a risk for the other person to die again if you pick him up.
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Paladins can use their restoration skill to help wizards to regain their sp fast if they stay right beside them at a bonfire. Also use your barrier to corner and gather mobs if there is no tank. Push them against a wall or position the barrier in a way that players can stand inside the barrier and still hit the mobs. And please don’t stand in the middle of a pack of monsters and then use your barrier to scatter them again.
Tips for the rest of the party
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If there is a C1 Cleric in your group, try to play it safe, don’t take unnecessary dmg, try to “jump over” attacks etc.
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Melees should try to stay together, tanks are here the exception, so that you can all have the benefits of a massheal, or a sacrament etc.
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After you killed a pack of mobs, look at your buffs and if they are running out just wait a second before everyone is scattered, if you have smart cleric in your group he is going to use this moment to rebuff you.
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Never run over heal tiles when you don’t need them.
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Try to stay in the area around the dievderby statues, they are actually not a decorative feature, they do really help in a fight.
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Don’t run half a map away if your health is low. I know that some clerics don’t pay attention to the health of the group but if they do it is annoying to leave the rest of the party on their own to heal you. Back up a little bit and then wait for the Cleric to react. If u have a stupid Cleric, then run but if not stay
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Try to avoid standing in a safety zone as a ranged build, you just take hits out of the safety zone and you don’t need those. Let swordsmen or other melee builds stand in them, also they are unpredictable if u have a lot of monsters around so sometimes they are a deathtrap.
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This is not a general tip but just a suggestion. Don’t always lay the blame on the healer if you die. Most of the time it is not his fault but poor gameplay in the group and an annoyed Cleric is always tempted to just let you die.
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Remember that heal spells have a cooldown: 22s for the tiles and 30s for massheal.
Swordsmen
Most of the tips for swordsmen are included in the Cleric section when I mention “melee builds”. So I’m going to focus on the tanking aspects of the swordsmen tree.
Tips for the Swordsman:
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Always tank against a wall or even better if there is a corner. With this setup all the monsters are facing you and the other partymembers can attack from behind, this is really good with a rogue in the party. But it also helps because monst monsters attack just in front of them so the rest of the group is safe with this setup.
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Use swashbuckling when it is not in cooldown. It gives u a small indirect heal and you keep the aggro.
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Learn the dungeon layouts, it really helps during gameplay when you know where good positions are to tank. For example the Sia partymissions, in the golem room, the lower left and right corners are really good places to tank the golem. He usually get’s stuck in the clutter on the floor so he does not roll away and ground effects are not wasted. Same goes for the mole and poata in this mission tank them in the lower left or right corner, then both of them are stacked and the rest of the party avoids a lot of dmg and hand out even more.
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Use potions, I know that they cost silver but in the case you don’t have a healer they really are important, so buy the good stuff and use them. In a group setup without healer a good tank makes the difference between a fast run or a really annoyingly long run.
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Hybrid builds like S1-P1-H2… try to use your dps skills when you can. I play a S1-P1-H2-C2 aswell because I really was annoyed of the poor tanking and I wanted to try it out. So when I tank I always wait till my ignore pain is active and all the other buffs then I switch to spear and arde instead of spear and shield, use spear lunge, then stabbing and pierce, switch back to shield and tank again. Wait till ignore pain is ready again and do the same stuff.
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Because this is a really important point I’m going to mention it again, remember that heals have cds as well so try to avoid dmg and just blindly run into situations. Even as a melee build it is possible to avoid a lot of dmg in a bossfight by jumping over attacks.
Tips for the rest of the party
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When there is a swordie in your group who tanks don’t make his role more difficult by running up front, I look at you archers =). Let him get the aggro first and then start to attack it helps him a lot and yourself in the longrun.
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Wait till you put down ground effects, a good tank tries to position the mobs, mostly bosses, first. So you put down flameground or statues first the mobs will not stay in in them. This is really important for dievderbies, because you can avoid getting your owls thrown over the whole map by positioning them between the boss and the wall.
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A healer should always have a good eye on the health of the tank, I never put a safety zone down for them unless they really have low health and I don’t have heal ready. Try to buff them as a tank, so they can benefit more from aspersion and stoneskin then all the other classes.
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Paladins can actually try to help the tank out with barrier, with a little bit of trying it is possible to corner the mobs even better around the Peltasta while giving him the magic defense buff.
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Everyone can help out with bringing mobs back to the tank or not running away with them.
Archers
I know nothing about this class, never played one, so those tips are just about what I encountered during missions and dungeons. I can add suggestions from more experienced archers, if you want me to.
Tips for the Archer
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Most archer builds are dps builds so usually they get the aggro without a tank. So when you have the aggro of all the monsters or the boss, it is really helpful to run in small circles not doing the zickzack run trough the whole map. This is really important when playing with a pyro or a diev, when they put there stuff down try to kite the mobs trough those groundeffects not away from them.
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Communication always helps, you want to use kneeling shot, just ask a cleric to put the safety zone down for you instead of hogging it next to the boss, with the risk of killing yourself and the other partymembers.
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Don’t kite to far, try to avoid aggroing new monsters in dungeons while you are kiting.
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Stay out of the AoE range of bosses, I really don’t understand why a lot of archers are staying up close to bosses, maybe it has a reason and I would be happy to understand it. For me it just looks like a lack of skill, you have the opportunity to avoid this kind of dmg so why not use it.
Tips for the rest of the party
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Clerics should consider to put a heal down for the archers, I usually try to put one a little bit farer away so they can easily reach them. Most of the time I do it ever second heal.
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Try to give archer a safe place to do their dps, so don’t pull those monsters right to them.
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I think rogue has a skill that benefits from attacking from behind, so if there are those kind of synergies, try to make them possible.
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When it is possible try to avoid gathering the mobs around stuff that can also be targeted
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Buffs are really huge dmg boosts for a lot of archer classes, an archer always benefits more from haste and quicken then a priest or a peltasta.
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As Mooon mentioned that require to be closer to the target (?), so clerics should propably have an eye on them.
Wizards
Same as archers here for me, so this is going to be a short one too.
Tips for the Wizard:
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Don’t put ground effects down as soon as you see the boss, wait if a tank pulls those mobs into a corner.
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Remember that flame ground can be effected by reversie so be carefull with those kind of skill in higher levels. I think some of the mobs in the lvl90 dungeons are also capable of turning flameground.
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Try not to kill partymembers with icewall, I recently had a run with a Cryo who managed to corner some melees under the boss, not a fun experience.
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This is just a nice thing to know, when u link a lot mutant or deviltype monster together with a paladin in your party, it is possible to kill a lot of monsters in a short amount of time
Tips for the rest of the party:
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Use skills like icewall, it has a good synergy with doppelsoeldner, so some cryos also have psychic pressure, if they don’t just autoattack the wall.
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Try to keep the fireballs beneath the monsters, it can’t be avoided to kick them around but don’t do it on purpose.
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In dungeons try to have a heal ready if there is a snowrolling cryo or put down a safety protection zone.
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Wizards are really dependant on their sp so if they need to put down a bonfire just give them those 30s instead of rushing away.
Like I mentioned before, those tips are what I think about as helpful and they are limited to my experiences. So if anyone thinks they are bullshit or knows something else just mention it and I try to adjust the post.