What skills/build are you guys using, and how is it working out?

[Roekai]

I use Sword/Unarmed, but I'm thinking of switching to AH/Bard.

I mostly use a sustain build (all of my lowest power costing moves rather than my most damaging ones, coupled with some power regen mods) that focuses on DOTs (hacking blade and debilitating blow in particular have six 84 damage DOT mods between the two, a few other skills like headbutt have 1 or 2) and rage control (from Bodyslam to Infurating Blow, more than half my attacks reduce rage). I also use Sigil Scripting to help keep myself alive over the course of some of the longer battles, as well as Willpower Gel and various food products.

One thing that I would like to be able to do but can't is AoE. I also have no way to stun, so ghosts and the like are really annoying to face.

Power Level: Can easily solo Wolf Caves, can solo Striga Steward, can't solo Manticores, have a lot of trouble with Beetles in Labs.

[kazeandi]

I am AH/Bard.

AH is basically cosmetic. You run around with a huge pet that hits for virtually nothing.
Might be worth leveling though, in case it'll get a buff at some point.

Bard, however, is great fun and, with the right mods, the AOE works great :)

[cr00cy]

I use wolf +unarmed. This build has burst - up to 5k aoe stun with barrage, or near 10k+1,8 trauma with mamba strike, lots of susatinable dmg boosts, sustain, and tankiness with unarmed shield mods. Works great for quick fights (i can kill most normal mobs with skulk+barrage+bite), and even better in long ones (since i cna stack up shields form unarmed).

As for cons:
- most of dmg is crushing, followed by trauma, so mobs tha ressist thsi 2 can be problem,
- shields form unarmed work only on physical dmg. Tough there is option to pick nature/poision/acid and physic/darkness dmg reduction.
- very mod heavy - on most slots there is more good mods that you can fit on gear, so you have to make choices.

[Khaylara]

Staff+fire and unarmed+mentalism, I find them to be the most suitable at the moment for me. I used to run UA+necromancy but necromancy seems super bad for dungeons and the pets nerf hit it too hard.

[Dragone]

I used to be hammer/ druid but I changed to ice/fire magic, drastic improve in damage output plus nice to have option to go AoE or single with the spells.

[Roekai]

what are the upsides, Dragone, in your opinion, to Hammer/Druid (if any) compared to Ice/Fire?

edit: do you guys agree with Kaze? Does AH suck?

[kazeandi]

"it sucks" is not what i mean. Playing with pet is fun, if frustrating. The damage isn't there and, up until 40, pets die faster than you can heal.

Aggro is now in a half-fixed state. Pets don't have AOE and don't cycle through the mobs, so the slightest heal pulls aggro of everything but the pet's focus off it.

And, yeah... damage.

I play it for the fun factor only. If I wanted a strong class, I'd be Archer/Sword like most others.

[cr00cy]

I have to agree - its not that Ah is bad... its just that about everythign else is better. Plus its bugged a bit.

[Dragone]

Druid is a good healer in both AoE and single, in support has good debuffs but are most single target, epic cosmic strike, cool down on it long imo.
Hammer: this was a big let down compare to other skills, hammer cool downs compare to damage output dont correspond then u look at the mods compared to other skill, meh.
Maybe this 2 skills don't compliment each other well.

[Asashoryu]

Started as Fire/AH and played through to skill level 65/60. Bluntly speaking, AH was near useless as currently implemented (pathetic comparative damage, broken skills not triggering the pet's special abilities, poor pet control, an inability to hold aggro in many if not most situations, a lack of durability for level appropriate fights... not to mention being a general nuisance in grouping). I saw the problems with AH early on, but kept with it thinking that it might get better later on, or that the higher level pet might at least be useful for leveling another skill line in the future... I wish I would have changed skill trees sooner.

I'm now leveling Fire/Shield and have reached 69/50. Having been overwhelmingly dependent on Fire throughout playing Fire/AH initially, using Fire to rapidly level up Shield was nothing new and I've brought it up from L8 (4 bonus levels) since Friday night. The original impetus behind choosing Shield was that I wanted something with a stun ("Ghosts are dumb") as well as something with a run speed buff ("Mounts Needed ASAP"). By skill level 8 I already preferred the Shield skill bar to my L60 AH skill bar.

[cr00cy]

I tried Hammer/sjield a while back (mostly becasue i wnated to level up shield for speed boost) and was rather dissapointed too. Hammer dmage to power cost to cd seems a bit off. Maybe its becasue i didnt had right mods(i picked what i found nad crafted missing parts when needed), but hammer dmg for most part looked... well its not that bad, i woudl say good even, but considering downsides (hih PC, relativly high cd's, increased rage generation) it didnt seemed like good enough.

And shield was even more dissaponting. Too little surivability, only good things are armor restoration, and strong buffs for core/nice attacks dmg.

[Asashoryu]

Admittedly I haven't played Shield to end well enough to expertly comment, or even tried it paired with a skill other than Fire Magic, but it does seem more utility than DPS focused. I don't particularly mind that in some skills though, it has a useful purpose playing second fiddle to a more damage-focused skill like Fire Magic (or others, I'm sure). Barring Captain America, the shield is pretty much relegated to a support/defense item in combat anyway.

If the devs were so inclined to copy one WoW feature as it pertains to shields, however... shield throw would be nice. : )

[cr00cy]

I never expected shield to ahve good dmg. My problem is that only thign its really good at is restoring armor. Staff, Ice Magic, BC, even unarmed all have better dmg mitigation, while also offering dmg/group utility. Beside armor restoration, only rason to pick shield is for speed boosts, or eventualy bonuses to core/nice attacks - addmitivly they are actualy strong, but not sure it makes shield worth it.

As a side note - hmmer shield was only build where i actualyw a sable to make use of Rapid Recovery. Usign seismic slam to slow mobs down, and then pushign them back with FMYF was givign me just enough time to finish casting it.

[Roekai]

I think I may go Hammer/AH in light of this thread instead of Bard/AH. For whatever reason, I always choose the hardest path in life and games.

[Crissa]

I'd assume Animal Handling has the same output of Psychology, since they're both skills gotten at the same point.

[Nightz2k]

Right now, my main skills are Fire/Ice (72/70) and in Animal from, Lycan/Psych (71/76). I also have 6 others at 70+ so I have played and tried a lot, some for specific reasons, like Flying and/or Speed buffs. (BC, Archery, Sword, Druid, Staff & Rabbit)

Lycan/Psych is amazing single target damage and I haven't even augmented fully yet, while with Bite bonuses, it still does great with the AoE Bite mod. You Were Adopted is my biggest attack, so that is limited to single target. Aside from that, I do enjoy playing Lycan/Psych, fun build overall.

My latest is Fire/Ice, it's amazing. Again, not even augmented out yet, but I am working on it. It is already showing it's power, the AoE's alone is like being a one-man army (aside from GK/Labs). It can be power hungry and sometimes a bit kamikaze-like, but overall, it's a fun build IMO. Even the single target spells, you can Mez, Hold and with the right mod, there is even an AoE stun after 10 secs using Tundra Spikes. Ice Magic is nice, but you'll want something else paired with it that can offset the immune or resistant mobs to Cold, which is majority of the mobs in Kur/Gaz. Fire worked well for that.

Out of the others I've played, Archery/Sword were the first two I maxed out, great DPS, but power hungry if you want to go all damage anyway. Archery is high damage, and some have said it's even overpowered. Maybe it is, maybe not, but I can see how it can be. It's also very versatile with the Mangling Shots stun and the Snares Mez spell, then just blast away with the heavy shots, aimed shot and the elemental damage. (Poison/Acid/Fire Arrow) You pair Archery with Druid being the support, it's about unstoppable. Sword is nice, it's typically what it should be, pure damage and even rage control is the other option. Rage control is nice and all, but against certain mobs, a single rage setup didn't seem that effective, but then I haven't modded rage items either so maybe it does work well with a better setup. Archery is really fine on it's own, anything else paired with it is a bonus IMO. If you're soloing a place like Gaz Keep on your own, then yes, I will agree it's a bit overpowered.

Battle Chemistry is nice, good set of AoE's (that also DoT) along with the Golem pet that can buff and attack with you as well. You can program the Golem to do about anything you want it to, like straight support or attack or both. I more so use BC for the sprint buffs to go along with my speed set saved in a separate load-out. It's still good on it's own paired with like Archery for some crazy AoE fun.

Druid is a good support skill and it can deal some damage, especially with Cosmic Strike, but it's cooldown is too long to be efficient on it's own for overall damage. You'll want a decent damage build to go with Druid from my experience anyway. I typically use it for the Flying these days.

Staff is nice, can dish some damage, but seems more so on the defensive side, where-as you can pair it with a high damage build (ie: Archery, Ice or Fire depending) and just use the defensive buffs, like Defensive Stance (being just bout invincible for a bit aside from elemental damage) and blast away taking minimal to no damage at all. It varies on your damage and how fast you will kill the mobs obviously. Staff alone is sup-par, but like most builds, depends on the mods you're stacking too.

And lastly, Rabbit...it was a fun build, I played around with it with Ice Magic, cause...why not. ;) Don't expect Rabbit to do much for damage, as it even states in the description, but overall it's something fun to play around with when you want something new and different. The Ice Magic was obviously carrying most of the damage output.

These are just my opinions based on my own experience. As with any games, everyone plays their own ways and how you go about things. I like to try new things, so I'm always exploring new options, I am not set on one thing, maxing out and then moving on. I see that often that some have maxed out 2 skills, aug'd all the way and then quit playing, seems pointless to me, but again, to each his/her own. You play how you want, not how everyone else is playing. This IS Alpha after-all, you play to try new things see how things work and "test" what you can/want. =)

Sorry for the crazy amount of text, but I wanted to explain my own experiences thus far. Have much more to do yet...

[Asashoryu]

I'd assume Animal Handling has the same output of Psychology, since they're both skills gotten at the same point.
How so?

You get Charm Rat on the newbie island, but that's not part of the Animal Handling skill tree. You end up buying Animal Handling from Gisli the stable guy in Serbule after getting off the newbie island... so it's more similar to Fire Magic in that way. I *think* the only combat skills you get on anagogue are sword, unarmed and (potentially) psychology.

Or by 'same point' do you mean the early game in abstract? (pre-Elt, pre-Khur, etc.)

[Crissa]

Used to be you needed feed rat to start it, and that's on the starter island.

[Dragone]

You also get bow from starter's island.

[Tsugumori]

Very off-base assumption to compare animal handling to psych. Psych is one of the major cc skills, animal handling doesn't even compare right now as a lot of its kit isn't 100% functional. "Same output"....? What.... You can get mentalism in the same area you get fire magic, I wouldn't stack those two up against each other. We're talking output here right? Maybe you forgot about creature weaknesses. Different skills will deal more dmg to certain types of enemies. Anyway...

@OP - I run a number of diff. builds:
(For animals I tend to always mix in Mentalism as it's the skill I used to cap some of them.)

Lyco + Mentalism/Unarmed - Wolf has a strong kit and mentalism gives me healing and another bar of different damage. Unarmed is nice for cc but also as I have capped meditation the higher lvl combos are very handy and fun to mess around with.

Spider/Deer + Druid - I initially levelled both of these with mentalism but wanted to experiment with different types of skills, testing synergies and that. I like the poison stacking spider build but also the 'support-y deer with burst'.

Spider + Necro - Seemed a bit trolly to me initially but managing all the pets is "neat". Not my thing but I'll admit it was fun to play with for a time.

I mainly experiment with animal forms as in human form it tends to be easy mode, (Fire magic etc etc etc yawwwwn), not to mention various other difficulties that are presented in animal form but eh. Animals don't have a lot of skills they can use, besides their own skill bar they have access to Psychology, Mentalism, Animal Handling, Necromancy, Unarmed and in some cases Druid. (Some may say Battle Chem. but be real guys...)

I have been playing with Cow and Pig too, I like unarmed/ment on them much like wolf, if pig could run druid would be nice but what can ya do.

(As a side note, survival instincts is ---very--- helpful while lvling animal forms)

[cr00cy]

Some other builds i tried:

Druid/bc - initialy was weak, but when i got better gear it started to shine. nice surivability, with good AoE burst. Only downside is that skills have long cds, but you cna always use haste concotion to run off and wait for skills.

Shield/bc - after (a bit unexpected) succes that druid/bc was, i decided to "combatize" my traveling set up. It turned out rather well - i have just enough burst to kill most regular mobs(even in gazluk)in one rotation, and just enough sustain to surrive till cds when i dont. Not somethign i would use to farm end game content but enough to fight off few wolves when gathering wood, or farm said wolves for skins.

[kazeandi]

Psychology has heals, strong damage and a fear.
Animal Handling has a medium nuke (shrill command) and that's it.

You can get away with just shrill command and the one pet heal in-combat on your bar, since the other skills don't do much. Not because they're bad ... a certain percentage of a low base number is still low. Animal Handling pets have, even with fully modded for damage gear, an output comparable to any other skill, without gear for it.

You can't kill anything before it kills your pet or you with AH alone. If you stand by and don't do anything but nuke with shrill command as soon as it's up or the heal on cooldown, the mob would turn to you (before the last patch) and beat you to pulp. Now it just kills your pet before it turns to you.

I ran AH with Psychology, Lycantrophy, Sword, Fire Magic, Druid, Archery and Bard. I am now mainly Bard and have AH because I'm stupid.

I like pets, I like the idea of being a pet class. However ...
I can live with being the main source of damage with my pet as blocker, or being the support standing behind while my pet does the work, but honestly, the pet just runs alongside you, mauls the enemy while you do and doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things. You can send it in to attack first (sometimes, this requires several tries, which are also on cooldown, so you can have phases where you stand on the same point, clicking the skill 5 times until your pet finally runs up to the mob - test it in Wolf Caves or the Wintercourt camp, for example), in which case it will tank the mob for a while, until you inevitably pull aggro, unless you deliberately do pitiful damage.

With my char set to Archer, without Archery mods on gear, my damage is roughly equal to that of my pet - only that Archery has AOEs, which will pull aggro, since your pet has none.
When I ran with Druid, I ended up tanking all the time, unless I removed the mob's armor first, then let the pet wail on it while I stood there taking the hits for a while - and Druid only has 1 real nuke.
Right now, I can send my pet in, then start Song of Discord and the damage ticks from the song generate enough threat to draw the mob's attention and make me the tank (which is fine, because I put maximum effort into making Discord tanky, with armor/hp refresh and stun chance).

In a fight where I use the Bard to it's maximum damage potential, I tank. I end up with 80-90% of the damage done, and my Bard is 8 levels below my AH, with the next Discord up for grabs in 4 more levels, so that's that.

If you play Sword, which is one of the strongest skills, and plan to switch to Animal Handling, which is, hands down, the weakest damage skill in the game, you'll be in for a ride.

You could pair Bard with Psychology, Mentalism or Druid for moderate damage and great sustain. You could pair Druid with Fire or Ice for good balanced sustain/damage, or with Staff for supreme tankiness. Psychology works with everything. But Animal Handling, which I leveled to level other skills with, will stop working for anything in the lvl 40s, after you left the goblin dungeon and move on to Kur Tower/Yeti/Wolf Cave. You better bring the big guns there, or you won't survive, because your pet doesn't make any difference whatsoever in these places.

Beyond 50... even your guildies will tell you they'd rather you switched to something else, because the useless pet is detrimental - it may draw unwanted mobs without doing anything for the party in return.

Animal Handling needs more damage and the pets need proper AOE to work. All their attacks need higher damage (I'd say at least 25%) and some sort of AOE effect (for, say, 25% of the damage, so adds don't turn on you for so much as you drawing a breath).

While it's true that the general aggro bug of armor damage negating hp damage is fixed, hence the pet drawing full aggro for it's damage, the damage in question is so laughable ... seriously, try it out and give feedback here. Get the polar bear from Kur at 40 first, gear up for maximum power, because that's what I did ... and then go for it.

I hope the devs take this seriously, because I feel like I'm the only one complaining about this, but I'm also the only one actively playing this skill as main (again, because I'm stupid), so I'd not hold my breath.

[Asashoryu]

I hope the devs take this seriously, because I feel like I'm the only one complaining about this, but I'm also the only one actively playing this skill as main (again, because I'm stupid), so I'd not hold my breath.

You're not the only one complaining about it. AH is a broken, buggy, unbalanced mess that no new player should pursue because they'll likely leave PG with a woefully incorrect impression of the game. If they don't leave PG in frustration, at a minimum they'll have wasted their time playing in way which could have been much better enjoyed with literally any other combat skill.

You might well be the only one complaining about it that still uses it, however. I can't do much to remedy that other than suggest replacing it with something more useful for combat... like Interpretive Dancing.

[Crissa]

Very off-base assumption to compare animal handling to psych.
Why would it be off-base? AH has sic'em and aggro abilities and damage abilities and healing which one would think would at least be on par with the cc or healing or damage that you get out of Psych. They're both also first-village, first-tier skills.

[kazeandi]

Why would it be off-base? AH has sic'em and aggro abilities and damage abilities and healing which one would think would at least be on par with the cc or healing or damage that you get out of Psych. They're both also first-village, first-tier skills.

For them to be on par, they have to be much stronger.
The heal has a long CD that ensures you can't use it more than once in a fight, while the pet is only tanky if you go full ham on the mods at the cost of damage/utility.

All pet abilities suffer from the low base damage, some directly, like dmg mods, some as a result of lonh fights.

They're not on par by any stretch of imagination.

[Crissa]

For them to be on par, they have to be much stronger.
Ahh.

Well, that's fine, but I didn't say they were on par.

[Tsugumori]

Crissa


I'd assume Animal Handling has the same output of Psychology, since they're both skills gotten at the same point.

On par = same. (Or 'even' for knitpickers, thus the golf term.)

Also I did say about AH not being 100% functional. Even so they would be in different categories. Psych is a support skill, sure it has its damage but ratio wise it has more cc and heals in its kit. Animal Handling is a 'summoner' skill at its core. Its not yet at the point where the animal can be at the forefront but I imagine it will get there at some point.

TL;DR - AH and Psych do not have the same output mate xd

(As an after thought... Psych and AH aren't both "first village skills", psych is starter island, as is archery/sword/unarmed. AH is a bit, a good bit, after that. Around Fire Magic/Mentalism)

[kazeandi]

This is a video of me doing South Rahu, where the mobs are lvl 60. My bear is 63. I tried to show a 1:1 mob vs. bear, but had adds. However, that had the nice side effect of showing off how pets do in such fights ;)

Failed taunts, Clever Trick not doing anything, no damage by pet until I start Discord song etc.

My focus was in showing off the pet, not playing exceptionally carefully. I could have pulled mobs further out and tanked against walls to deal with the knockback, but that was not the goal here. What I wanted to show is the strength of the pet in an environment with almost even-level mobs.

Here we go ;)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osJfpSTV3-8

[kazeandi]

Okay, since there was Psychology mentioned as comparison, I thought, let's make another short one, where I switched out 63 AH for 42 Psychology.
Needless to say, it's not even fair game. 42 Psycho wins against 63 AH hands down.
Also, I didn't use the big Psy nuke and my gear was for Bard/AH (as you can see, didn't switch anything out, still the same Bozo The Clown outfit), so no boni or mod on anything, just the naked 42er skill.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnrloMZHCWw

PS:
One thing you can see pretty early on in these videos is how control of the playing field works. See how the mob knocks the pet up the ramp, into an add? Or how, in an earlier fight, a patrolling mob adds when we fight the mage? If I'd play without pet, I could just run further away or break line of sight to drag the mage to a safer spot, but once in combat, I can't move my bear anymore, at all. Pets don't react to any commands when they take damage, other than pets in, say, UO, WOW, DAoC and the like, where you're always in control and can reposition - which you can do as well in Gorgon, if you're without pets. When I played with Psychology, hopelessly weak against mobs 20 levels too high and with zero gear, I made up for that a bit by pressing my butt against the fence - as you can see, no knockbacks, no interrupted Discord (which plays a huge part in my sustain).

Pet play depends on control and reliability of the pets in their chose role (as tank or DD), but pets here don't have a role and there is no control, so they're a security risk and, to add insult to injury, they don't make up for it in any way.

Necromancy is another skill in a bad spot, but talking about that would mean opening a whole new can of worms.

[Crissa]

On par = same.
I didn't say they were the same. I said I'd assume they would be.

I'm exiting this conversation. You quoted me and then aggressively ignored the first full word. Again. Both 'would' from 'I'd' and 'assume' are conditional verbs, which are used to indicate a possible or imagined scenario, not a real action or historical data.

So you're arguing against a position that I never said did exist.


(As an after thought... Psych and AH aren't both "first village skills", psych is starter island, as is archery/sword/unarmed. AH is a bit, a good bit, after that. Around Fire Magic/Mentalism)Fire magic has a quest, but it's off the first zone past the tutorial. It's meant to be the first hard skill you encounter. AH with mouse cheese is in the tutorial.

...And I really fail to see how 'summoner' and 'support' are contradictory terms. Are you saying AH shouldn't be used for offtanking, aggro management, or include heals?

Lastly, head to head comparisons are usually bunk, as that's not what this game is supposed to be doing. Every skill is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages, and gear matters quite alot. So that's not really evidence. The aggro and damage outputs from running a similarly geared character are much better, though you do have to track power consumption.

[kazeandi]

...And I really fail to see how 'summoner' and 'support' are contradictory terms. Are you saying AH shouldn't be used for offtanking, aggro management, or include heals?

Lastly, head to head comparisons are usually bunk, as that's not what this game is supposed to be doing. Every skill is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages, and gear matters quite alot. So that's not really evidence. The aggro and damage outputs from running a similarly geared character are much better, though you do have to track power consumption.

First of all, Charm Rat is not Animal Handling, it's a preview without the skills for support of the pet.

Then for the role you mentioned: Of course pets could work as offtanks, if the mods for that would be better and they had skills for it (life leech, parry, absorbs like shield or staff, and better aggro generation/snap aggro mechanics) or damage (if their damage would be higher and they had abilities like armor penetration for, say, cats). You would then play AH with a support skill for normal grind or glass cannon style as DD, high risk for high reward. There is currently no reward tied to the risk.

Furthermore, you mention gear, but, as I showed above in my videos, naked Psychology level 42 outperforms optimized gear for Animal Handling level 63, and that's where you need to stop assuming and start actually playing a skill you post about on the forum.

[srand]

<clearing throat>

We know there are bugs with AH. We are working on them. And AH will almost certainly need some ability changes and other balance work after the bugs are sorted.

So let's drop this escalating argument for now and get back to the original topic of the thread, okay? Seeing how people sell other players on a skill - or warn them away from it - is really valuable for another peek at what is working and what is not.

Thanks!

[Crissa]

Sorry, srand, I don't even know what they think they're arguing with. 'would' and 'assume' aren't statements of fact or existence.

Clearly, if AH isn't living up to other support skills, then something is wrong.

[Aedorn]

It's not quite just AH, either, as all pets end up being almost detrimental after around level 50, especially when there's broken threat. Nothing more rage inducing than taking 5 minutes to make yourself a graveyard while being hardcore just to have your work destroyed 20 seconds into the first fight, or in some cases, seeing one of those pets just sit there doing nothing at all while the other does maybe 100 to 150 damage *total* fighting things with 20k HP+. So, pets in general just are not worth it right now post 50. Before that, they actually are pretty decent.

That being said, the only class I try to steer people away from is necromancy. The moment you throw pets out of necromancy, you're basically left with 2 spells with long cool downs and a fairly weak basic attack. Even if you were to fully mod said 2 spells, they look far better on paper than real scenarios allow. You'd have better luck killing things with a real-life butter knife stabbing at the screen screaming in Russian.

As for the rest of the skills, they are all pretty viable (including AH, but it's still weaker than the rest minus necromancy.) I settled with staff/ice as a 'primary'. With a set of gear for general tanking, a set for damage, and a set for soloing manticores. Could go one more set for AoE, but really no need these days. It's not as much damage in shorter fights as fire/archery/psych, but it will average out to be equivalent in slightly longer fights (say 30 seconds.) Overall, it's been a good time.

I'm really hoping priest becomes a thing that I can use with spider... because it sounds absurd.

[Tagamogi]

My favorite skill set so far has been knife/battle chemistry. I enjoy the battle chemistry aoe and feel that between the bc and knife healing abilities, I can survive very well when soloing. I also like that I have many different damage types available to me and even a semi-reliable stun from a knife mod proc for those pesky ghosts. ( That stun proc is possibly one of my favorite games to play since there is only a 33% chance of it going off. It usually cooperates, but when it doesn't go off a few times in a row, fighting ghosts gets very ... interesting. I'm pretty sure it's possible to have 2 items with this proc equipped at the same time to increase the chance, I just haven't gotten around to collecting them since I find gear maxing not all that interesting these days.)

If you are looking for a gimpy skill combo, I don't think this is it. Battle chemistry is outright scary in dense mob situations like Kur Tower where you can aoe-freeze and aoe-bomb a whole lot of zombies at once. Freezing mist is possibly my favorite spell in the game since it gives me time during combat to step back and think about what I'm doing.

People have complained about knife's damage output before, but to me it's a very nice balance of self-heals and damage. Knife also got some damage buffs semi-recently, so those complaints may no longer be applicable. When I remember, I use calligraphy to boost my slashing damage from knife.

Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, knife is a very nice skill if you like sustain builds. It doesn't seem to use a lot of power (not precisely sure since I get a fair amount of power from bc), and between blur's evasion, surge cut's heal and several nice mods like slice's armor heal and blur's delayed heal, you can stay alive for quite some time. In particular when coupled with bc's healing mist, healing injection and golem heal/power restore. ;)

[kazeandi]

srand
Actually, we are on topic. The OP wrote he'd think about playing AH and I've been trying to explain what's wrong with it, as well as provide data (in the form of my videos) to show I'm not exaggerating "to make my class op".

Animal Handling doesn't only need reworked skills on the user's end - or rather, the handler's skills are fine, except for Clever Trick, which doesn't work at all.

What needs work are the pets themselves. Pet roles and skills to support them, damage/aggro/avoidance/mitigation tuned for these roles. When bear (tank) and cat (damage) work, you can add more pets, like wolves (buffs), spiders (crowd control) or worms (debuffs).

I feel if I find the skill is weak enough to warrant posting about on the forum, I might as well produce data to work with and provide my angle on what's wrong how and why, and how to fix it.

I don't even mean this to be a "avoid AH" statement. The skill needs a lot of testing to be sure. Just in this special case, I feel like "don't even think about it" does the OP the best service, seeing what he expects to do with it in his original post.

[Tsugumori]

Srand, no one dares argue with crissa because they'll just try belittle you. :C

But I felt that because crissa was wrong, (I would say as usual but ah I'm feeling generous), I -politely- corrected them, addressing what they posted. I kept on point on to the thread but crissa should change their pic to a train crash, I mean they love derailing.

No one was arguing, their 'opinion' could be taken as fact by other players, thought commenting on its accuracy would at least help people reading through.

(They said they'd leave the conversation after imploding it which isn't right.. :/)

[Crissa]

But I felt that because crissa was wrong......Which is perfectly valid.

The problem is most of your argument was about something I didn't say. I'm sorry you find me distracting, I realize I can be verbose and bossy. I apologize. Your arguments were all valid and interesting and I read every one. I think srand meant we were starting to derail as I failed to explain my side.

[Khariel]

How so?

You get Charm Rat on the newbie island, but that's not part of the Animal Handling skill tree. You end up buying Animal Handling from Gisli the stable guy in Serbule after getting off the newbie island... so it's more similar to Fire Magic in that way. I *think* the only combat skills you get on anagogue are sword, unarmed and (potentially) psychology.

Or by 'same point' do you mean the early game in abstract? (pre-Elt, pre-Khur, etc.)

You also get archery if you find the box with the bow and arrows.

[kazeandi]

I think the chronological order of attainability isn't even relevant, seeing how Sword, Archery and Psychology are among the stronger skills right now. There was time for a lot of testing and fleshing these out, while other skills didn't change much since their implementation and have various problems.

[Andelas]

I have two main builds Archer/Psych and Pig/Psych both work very well at top level. I have played many different skills combinations up to current top level with max enchanted gear.
I strongly suggest that new players should not play any of the animal forms until they have a good grasp of the game, it severely limits the NPCs they can interact with and greatly impedes acquisition of skills, money and storage.

My view on the current skills follows:

Animal Handling
Currently broken; your pet at high level is well nigh useless or worse than useless as it can aggro stuff you do not want in a fight. Needs a major overhaul.

Archery
Probably the strongest DPS skill in the game, huge damage potential both single target and AOE, plus it's ranged! The down side is you will be making arrows continually and you have to carry several different arrow types in your inventory; not to much of an issue for higher levels but very expensive and somewhat limiting at lower levels. Monsters that reflect damage can be deadly for archers. I suggest adding more monsters in future that are resistant to impaling damage.

Bard
Good DPS, good buffs both for party and excellent single player buffs, some healing. Requires poetry appreciation to level. The biggest issues are that you have to stand still to generate tunes and the best buffs are very short term. I would suggest the removal of the stationary tune generation and an increase in duration of the best single target buffs.

Bat
A skill i have not played. From what I have observed it is reasonably balanced in DPS and it does give you flying without being a druid.

Battle Chemistry
A nice mix of control, damage and healing along with some of the best speed buffs in the game. Some of the best armour buffs in game. No changes needed.

Cow
The best tank build you can get along with the highest speed of any character. Cow can generate huge amounts of aggro and take a lot of damage at the same time as generating reasonable DPS.

Deer
An all rounder, good speed and reasonable DPS you will also be able to jump higher than any other character class. I would suggest a mild buff to damage.

Druid
Some excellent debuffs, a very good nuke and some good healing skills. It also allows you to turn in and out of deer and bird forms at will. Many people take druid solely for the ability to get bird forms and fly at level 50 which makes surveying in Kur much easier. No changes needed.

Fire
Good AOE ranged damage, slightly subpar DPS, over the top aggro generation, somewhat power hungry. Rather like the poor mans' archery and by comparison it loses in every way. It's playable but the damage needs to be buffed and the aggro generation reduced.

Hammer
Good DPS with very good stuns. No changes needed.

Ice
Average DPS and excellent crowd control along with some methods to mitigate damage taken. No changes needed.

Knife
Although i have this a top level i have never really used it. The damage output appears to be a bit low.

Lycanthropy
Excellent DPS, possibly overpowered in a pack, huge armour available through crafted metal armour, this advantage will be reduced when crafting of metal armour for other classes comes in. Note that for three days each month you must be a wolf and you cannot get out of this, if you like playing melee DPS this is not a great detriment.

Mentalism
Very good party buffs and good healing sub par DPS. No changes needed.

Necromancy
As broken as animal handling; basically your pets do not do enough damage and are taken out in one hit by higher level monsters if they manage to generate enough aggro to even be hit. Needs a major overhaul.

Pig
Excellent party buffs, excellent crowd control, very good healing, sub par DPS. Probably the best party support class in the game. No changes needed.

Psychology
Very good healing, an excellent nuke, some individual control (single mez and single fear). No changes needed.

Rabbit
I have not played this nor have i seen a fully kitted out end game build. Damage appears to be sub par, good speed and good pulling abilities but I cannot comment further.

Shield
Great stun and the best early game speed buff you can get but damage is low and other support skills are better. Needs a buff on it's armour regeneration skills to make it viable.

Spider
Another skill I have not really played, DPS appears to be good but i have not enough experience to comment further.

Staff
Excellent damage mitigation, a stun and average DPS. Often used by archers to counteract reflect monsters. No changes needed.

Sword
Excellent single target DPS. No changes needed.

Unarmed
Good DPS and good stuns, can be excellent if you are prepared to lose a chunk of your armour to double your DPS. No changes needed.

[kazeandi]

@OP

Since you decided to switch to Hammer+AH, please do report back how it went.
I've been desperately trying to make Citan aware of the abysmal damage the skill does and all the wacky little things that make it hard to play and every voice to support me in my quest is greatly appreciated ;)

Enthusiasm and Happiness are, as far as I can tell, entirely irrelevant, as they do nothing.
Get armor as high as possible, as there's a mod for chests that buffs the absorption, so armor > HP when gearing.
Ignore armor is important, but more so dmg% and dmg-number, because you can strip armor with player skills more easily.

[Roekai]

I didn't switch yet, wanted to get sword and unarmed to 75.

I'll probably start my AH/Hammer build today and will give feedback/updates as I level.

I already saved up a generic level 60 yellow hammer and have like 600 armor, but i think i may use level specific armor to get a better feel for how the class operates at low levels, and not be so OP

[kazeandi]

Enthusiasm and Happiness are, as far as I can tell, entirely irrelevant, as they do nothing.
Get armor as high as possible, as there's a mod for chests that buffs the absorption, so armor > HP when gearing.
Ignore armor is important, but more so dmg% and dmg-number, because you can strip armor with player skills more easily.

This here meant the pet :) Looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/ZXo606k.jpg

This one has HP, because I was fighting enemies who penetrate armor, like bears, and my lycan/ah build is all about damage (fails spectacularly at it as far as pet dmg goes, personal damage is all right, but it can't be helped right now - until Citan is finally convinced), but the best you can get is "of plated pets" on boots and offhand items.

Also, get "pet gets x% more XP" mods on helmet and mainhand, if possible. Dragging a pet 10 lvls below you around is painful.

If you got any questions regarding anything, feel free to ask, I'll help you out as good as I can. I play everything with AH.

[SassySusie]

I use Lycan/Pysch and Bat/Ment. Love them both but yes they are animals lol. Before I went to animal I used Archery/Sword, then Archery/druid, the Archery/pysch. Archery is a solid skill. I loved it except for the fletching. But if you want to be different do not choose archery... there are way too many on the game now and you would just be a common Archer then :P lol

[Wemedge]

I started the game using sword/psych back when and am still using it today. Damage is good, heals, mez, speed...covers just about everything for me, except stun. Thankfully I don't have to chop through too many ghosty mobs.

I do have all of the other combat skills maxed, and while some of them I found interesting (bard, unarmed, arch, hammer, etc.) none of them grabbed me to the point of forsaking my sword/psych. I do however use BC for travel and there's no way to avoid the monthly 3 day visit from aunt lobo. I may one day make myself a more unique combo, but as long as this one gets the job done, I doubt it will be any time soon.

[Ells0430]

On my main character I mostly use ment/bc. I know that doesn't make sense its basically two support skills but I enjoy it for some reason lol. I also have fire/ice and druid but I end up going back to ment/bc. The golem has some of the same issues as the other pets. I notice it gets stuck a lot. I have him set up to heal and provide power but a lot of the time he is just a strange little audience member watching the fight. When he is working correctly its a great benefit and I would like to try more attack skills with the golem eventually. I am excited to see where the pets go in the future. I normally always play pets given the chance but I couldn't stay with ah or necro for the reasons listed above.

My second character is lycan/psych I enjoy that build a lot also. I will get around to trying more of the skills as well. I enjoyed reading this thread a lot of good information on all of the skills :)

[Ptrk]

I've been sword/shield since I began, and am now 62/63.

Sword: Strong 1v1 dps with super handy rage reduction and limited aoe with mods. Additionally, the mods are varied and almost always useful, allowing for some welcome flexibility in play style. Sword is exactly what it aims to, and should, be.

Shield: Definitely not bad, but underwhelming, even as a support skill. At this point, I only use it for stunning and running, which are honestly its only strong suits even with mods. It would be nice if it had damage reduction skills, had better armor recovery, or had better support skills. In short, as it stands I could only recommend shield for a travel skill or a stun skill when facing ghosts.

[Matriarhat93]

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[Khaylara]

Druid, psychology and unarmed seem the most popular combos. I used it with druid mostly, it's a solid tank (imo boring but that's just my opinion, i didn't enjoy playing cow cause I'm not into playing tanks).

[Roekai]

i would say there is no best complimentary skill to cow, and if there is, it is likely to change, and then change again (seeing as we are in early development).

my advice would be to pick what you like from a role-playing or game-play perspective (if you want some healing and support, go druid - defense, go unarmed...etc), because if you go for the "most powerful" build you're just going to get pissed when it gets nerfed, and you are playing a build you dont necessarily like aethestically and now you lost your power too.