Optimization Guide

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Every soul is a good soul. But some are better than others at doing their job. This is an attempt at systematically classifying every combat soul, and contains some tips for proper optimization. Some general Do's and Don'ts for optimization:

  • DO take complementary secondary souls. For instance A 'squishy' (low HP, low defense) soul can benefit from a secondary soul that lets it use better armor, or offers some medicine proficiency to let you heal.
  • DON'T overlap proficiencies when you dual-soul. Since you get half the ability of the secondary soul at a given level, redundant proficiencies are wasted.

Aranian

Positives Negatives
General
  • AoEMod grants even single target skills additional targets
  • Flurry 3 and Speed 3 make this class one of the best (if not the best) at repeat attacks.
  • Air magic allows access to the guided mod, making repeat attacks more powerful
  • -damageimmunity base AND through the buff makes it very risky to use: every hit HURTS
  • .5 Moderate armor seems like a lot, but doesn't offer much protection
  • No aggro mitigation and lots of attacks means enemies want to target you
Secondaries
  • Hearth Magician: Earth+Water Magic and repeats
  • Avoid cover souls like the plague. You're squishy enough as is.
Equipment
  • Sabre, especially guided: good damage and further boosting repeats
Modifiers
  • GUIDED You have access to it, use it! Boost repeats for attacks and buffs
Chakra
  • +Air Magic (Zephyric Messenger torso especially) Allow for more powerful items with Guided
Dedications

Army Magician

Building souls for Army Magician is very simple: avoid high fire/air magic overlaps and focus on shoring up the extreme weaknesses of this DPS centric soul. Cover makes you take damage for allies--avoid it!

Strengths Weaknesses
General
  • High raw damage output
  • Excellent DoT damage
  • High Affinities
  • Potent AoE
  • Strong Skills
  • Poor HP
  • Poor access to armor
  • Low Defense
  • Low Accuracy
  • No medical affinity or heal abilities
Dual Souls
  • Ninja: hpbuffer passive
  • Medic souls: offers medical affinities and/or passives)
  • Dark Knight: Heavy armor and Vampiric passive
  • Summoner souls: Pets can tank damage
  • Windrunner: Allows use of Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided

Short Bow for attack and accuracy passive boost

  • Tank souls (e.g. Fighter & Crusader): Cause you to take damage for others
  • Other fire souls: Redundant affinities
Equipment
  • Flame of the Creator (Venomous/CI/Heaviest)

= 83 base damage over 4 rounds

  • Parrying blade (Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided/Large)

= Light weapon, provides 20 defense and 10 accuracy buff

xxxx
Chakras
Dedications
  • Sphinx: Offers Damagebuff + Technical
  • Phoenix: Offers Healing + free Revive
  • Elementalist: Gives you tank or healing pet
  • Elemental Dragon: Offers some resists
  • Siren: AoEguard causes party to take less damage
  • Cerebrus: Offers DoTattack + some resists
  • Kraken: AoEmod caps damage, neg. damagebuff hurts
  • Kirin: causes you to tank

Bard

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Berserker

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Cannoneer

Positives Negatives
General
  • One of the only souls to offer high Heavy Weapons + Marksmanship
  • Offers lots of innate Knockdown abilities
Secondaries
  • Hearth Magician - Offers Earth magic (so you can add Titanic to weapons for knockdown) and a bit of medical
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Champion of Light

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Crusader

Positives Negatives
General
  • Only soul that can max shields unmodified
  • Offers a small bit of innate medicine skill so you don't need to dual-soul just for healing
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Dark Knight

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Dark Magician

Positives Negatives
General
  • Only soul that can max Dark Magic
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Duelist

Positives Negatives
General
  • Great at fighting one or two enemies
  • Variety of combat skills make for a versatile base
  • High damage and high defenses stat
  • Capable of heavy damage bursts
  • Good proficiency selection
  • Combat soul with some non-combat proficiencies
  • No inherent AoE attacks
  • Defenses may be strong, but are very thin
  • Very easy to burst through energy reserves
  • Split focus means other souls are better at specializing
  • No innate healing capabilities
Secondaries
  • Souls that duplicate proficiency or with conflicting styles.
  • Crusader and Fighter rely on toughness and durability without complimenting Duelist's strengths like Samurai or Ninja
  • Scholar and Dark Magician have AoE debuffs, but Duelist does not have the base capabilities to fully use them
  • Windrunner, Rogue, and Shrouded Assassin all have positive benefits, but their heavy overlap limits their utility.
Equipment
  • Parying Dagger - Thanks to Avoidance 3, the defense bonus from this item is increased by 45% - easily providing 60 or so defense for the Duelist.
  • Swift Sword - Instant attack for high damage, although the bonus penetration from Duelist's combat skills doesn't add much.
  • Martial Training - Even without Flurry, the Martial Training is an excellent option for a duelist's 'main' attack.
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications
  • Pegasus - Helps shore up energy reserves
  • Spyguard - Thematically fun and provides a lot of bonuses to RP rolls
  • Kraken - Duelist -needs- good equipment, and Kraken's Technical boosts it. Also, AoE Swift Swords.

Ok:

  • Phoenix - Fiery Rebirth comes in handy
  • 3D Magister - Duelist gets many fast attacks, so can reliably proc the abilities every turn; the energy drain will hurt though.
  • Kirin - Damage shifted by cover uses the source's defense, and not yours. This will kill a duelist quickly
  • Gryphon - The Duelist's innate attack powers are weak; it relies heavily on equipment.

EarthShaker

Positives Negatives
General
  • Focus on Knockdowns to keep pushing your opponent back
Secondaries
Equipment
  • Zweihander: Heavy Weapon with knockdown possibility
  • Snare: Requires Traps and Locks charka or secondary, but provides Knockdown and can be modded to inflict damage
Modifiers
  • Adding Titanic to weapons gives them 100/3/1 knockdown
Chakra
Dedications

Fighter

The name 'fighter' is a bit of a misnomer, as this soul excels at providing defense and cover more than inflicting damage. Make sure to add damageresist to better soak up enemy damage.

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Golem Crafter

The Golem Crafter has two flavors: offensive and defensive. When you get the Golem Crafter soul, you will have to complete the 'A Golem Maker Introduction' webmission to gain access to the Basic Offensive and Defensive Golems.

At Level 30 GC, you can do the 'Advanced Golem Models' mission to gain an Advanced golem, but you can only choose ONE advanced model and will never be able to have the other type.

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
  • Machine Priest: Leadership plus 3 loadout-free summons at MP level 15 (i.e., GC level 30)
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Gunslinger

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Hearth Magician

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Journeyman

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Lightning Caller

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Machine Priest

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Mage Adept

Positives Negatives
General
  • Broad base of skills
  • Diverse combat skills enable more specialized builds than some more focused souls
  • Access to essentially all of the magic skills
  • Earth magic can help check low innate survivability
  • Despite the broad base of skills, they require some effort to maximize.
  • More specialized souls are better for the execution of most standard builds
  • Having a broad spread of combat skills means that utilizing all of them effectively is near impossible.
  • Most magic suffers from incurably long charge times.
Secondaries
  • Most souls that give survivability are a good bet due to Mage adept's poor access to armor. Calcified flesh only goes so far.
  • Ninja: HPbuffer passive and dodge tools are very handy, but may cause some energy issues.
  • Hearth Magician: Efficient regen passive, haste debuff and energybreak AoE. A very handy soul if you have some energy issues, but it's a very passive soul - it may not actually DO anything for you in some situations.
  • Standard Bearer: Arguably a poor choice for non-support roles. Standard bearer offers Mark of the windslicing pinion and Standard of the Coursing river to alleviate cooldown and energy issues along with Mark of the Mighty Augur to significantly boost single-target damage and Standard of the Iron Fortress to boost your survivability (And that of your pets, should you be running them). The passive is arguably the most lackluster, though it does grant more statusboost. Also offers a respectable heavy armor stat.
  • Souls with magic are usually not going to offer as much as they would to other setups.
  • Souls with cover are a bad idea, as with any other squishy soul.
Equipment
  • Fire/Water elementals: These benefit the most from mage adept's inherent statusboost; fire offers more offensive power while water elementals have a heal. It's up to the user's discretion to select which to use.

Mods: Titanic and/or Pure, Flammable, Venomous, Creator inspired.

  • Calcified Flesh: The best single-target HPbuffer effect in the game. This is more useful if your build is squishy. Since HPbuffers do heal on expiration, it's actually not a problem to ignore the duration stat when modding them.

Mods: Enhanced line, Resistive line, pure, titanic

  • Flame of the Creator: The eternally relevant DoT effect.

Mods: Heavy line, Venomous, Creator inspired.

Modifiers
  • Access to Pure, Guided and Titanic is fantastic news.
  • Resistive-line mods are, as always, insane on ally items.
Chakra
  • Proficiency boosting chakra are often in order more than ability-granting chakra.
  • Notable exceptions include Dark Arcane Arms: The vampiric can be extremely valuable.
  • Chromatic Blast from the Gem Eater Torso is an immense dice-effect, on average doing 31.5 damage - much of which is in 'rare' types.
Dedications
  • 3-Dimensional Magister

= Best for builds running support and elementals, though the energy cost is heavy it can proc off of elementals.

  • Phoenix

= Let's be honest, this ded is nuts on anything with a HP bar.

  • Elementalist

= Cover or healing minion. If you already have an elemental, Fire -> go with healing, Water -> go with cover is a safe bet. 'Free' minions are insane.

  • Kirin

= You do not want to cover for everyone. That will get you killed.

Monk

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Ninja

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Pirate

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Priest

"Priest is a heavy buffing class." "It's a durability/support class." "It can do some tanking if you need it to." would pair it with hearth magician herself.

Positives Negatives
General
  • Buff/Support class
  • Lacks any innate magic profs
Secondaries
  • High-Magic soul (e.g. Winter Witch, Army Mage, ) lets you equip and mod an elemental
  • Machine Priest offers no-loadout pets.
Equipment
  • Elementals
  • Mercenaries also benefit from your Leadership
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Rogue

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Samurai

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Scholar

A buff/debuff class, good at supporting and strengthening summons and party members.

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Shrouded Assassin

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Standard Bearer

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Street Fighter

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Trauma Mage

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Treasure Hunter

Positives Negatives
General
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Windrunner

Windrunner is a very specialized class. As a light weapons class, it never runs into cooldown issues. As of such, avoid picking classes that have many active skills to deal damage as they will not fit into a strong light weapons rotation. It has a niche role providing defense debuffs with guided longbow and hand crossbow that no other class can provide.

Positives Negatives
General
  • Decent damage dealer
  • Light Weapons (No energy problems or cooldown issues)
  • High Athletics (No energy issues)
  • Strong at Repeats (2 attack, high accuracy, has 2 flurry. Has access to Guided)
  • Fast cooldowns
  • Below average base damage potential (127%)
  • Poor access to armor
  • Low defenses
  • Has no natural healing mechanism
  • Weak soul powers
Secondaries
  • Light weapons classes (Large overlap in proficiencies)
  • Cover souls (Crusader, Fighter)
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications

Optimal:

  • Sphinx (Damagebuff + Technical on the Answer)
  • Phoenix (Healing + free Revive)
  • Elementalist (Tank pet or Healing pet)
  • Kraken (Free AoE proc chance + technical)
  • 3d Magister (Can sustain heavy energy cost on toggle)
  • Spyguard (Very potent repeat attack actually worth using)

Ok:

  • Elemental Dragon (Some resists)
  • Siren (AoEguard in party to take less damage)
  • Cerebrus (some resists)
  • Kirin (Cover)
  • Basilisk (2 weak actives)
  • Pegasus (You won't use the extra energy)
  • Two-Tailed Kitsune (Useless outside RP!)
  • Gryphon (Neither of the skills are very useful, decent stealth skill provides decent escape chance)

Winter Witch

DoT-heavy and debuffing soul

Positives Negatives
General
  • Very squishy: minimal light armor support and no medicine profs.
Secondaries
Equipment
Modifiers
Chakra
Dedications
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