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Guide to making 3rd job builds

3rd Builds Guide, version 0.0.4. Requests for lots of critisisms, this is a guide that must hold every perspective.

: Added Puppet arguments

: Added Fire Shot arguments

: More on Fire Shot.

: Added Hawk/Eagle



Woot, I'm moving onto "Version 0.1.0". First Complete guide. For the most part, the base facts are here, but I'm going to go over this a couple of more times. Also, a change in layout is planned for the future.



This will remain as I know... a collection of facts on the debateable skills.



Note on bias: no matter how hard I try to unbias this guide, there will be bias. So for some tips: Be sure to see the reverse to every situation. Ex: A 80% chance of working is almost guarenteed, but a 20% chance of failure must be avoided. With many such viewpoints on each skill, you'll need to think between the facts, and come up with your own perspective.



Builds for Rangers right now are diverse, and for the most part... experimental. But, there are a few well known "must get" skills. These are the following:



Strafe (max at lvl 30) <--- MUST MAX!!!

Ice Shot (max at lvl 30) <--- don't go higher than 21, don't go lower than 21



And thats it. Every other skill has been critisized, and may possibly be rejected from the "Cookie Cutter" build.



All popular stopping points (good and bad) for the rest of the skills are as follows:

Thrust (lvl 0, 5, 10)

Mortal Blow (lvl 5, lvl 11, lvl 20)

Puppet (lvl 9, 12, 15, 18, 20)

Fire Shot (lvl 1, lvl 11, lvl 28, lvl 30)

Arrow Rain (lvl 1, lvl 28, lvl 30)

Hawk/Eagle (lvl 16, 21, 29, 30)



Aside from thrust, you can see that for all skills, the generall reccomendation is "MAX IT!". First off: yes, all our skills are that good. Everyone wants you to max each skill (with exception of ice shot, lvl 21 maxes freeze effect however, so more or less, lvl 21 is maxxed :-) ).



But, we don't have enough 3rd job points for all skills. Thus, we must sacrifice these some of these awesome skills. Most builds max as much as possible, and then nurf 1 or 2 (Inferno-less goes max everything but inferno. My personal build maxes everything but nurfs Mortal Blow), although there are some popular builds that go some of everything (The most popular Sniper Build is 21 Ice, 21+ eagle, 18+ puppet, and the rest into thrust)



Here holds the arguments for all the skills:



Strafe: There has been no critisism and thus no defense for Strafe. The concensus is to max this skill.



Ice Shot: The concensus forever has been 21, no more, no less. Lvl 21 gives 3 seconds of freeze. Ice Shot has horrible damage (it never criticals) but is very useful. Thus, get max timer (lvl 21), and no more.



Now starts the debate.





Thrust



The argument for 0 thrust is that it is trivial to get 140 speed with equips, so thrust is not necessary. (Pets give 10-12 speed, Lvl 70, 80, 90 and 100 bows give 10 to 11 speed. Lvl 80+ xbows give 10 speed. 10% Shoes for jump give speed and dex, Speed cape gives +10 speed. 10%s dex on overalls give speed). With less thrust, you get stronger attacks (higher lvl fire shot, rain, more efficient hawks and puppet, etc. etc.)



The argument for 5 thrust is that a few speed sacrifices on the equips side will give you stronger weapons and equips. (Remove bone helm for high lvl hats. Scroll with 60%s on shoes and overalls for better dex than 10%s. Mass scroll cheap weapons (marine arunds) for higher attack, instead of scrolling the speed bows.) If you get lucky here, you can have 123% jump and 140% speeed.



The argument for 10 thrust is that more speed sacrifices on equips side gives you jump and more attack. (scroll pet for jump instead of speed. Get jump cape instead of speed cape. Get jump bow instead of speed bows) You can easily get 123% jump and 140% speed.



The concensus is to never go above 10 thrust, though some archers have done it.





Mortal Blow

Argument for 5 MB: You only need 5 MB to unlock Rain/Erruption. With 5 MB, you can max everything except thrust. You get 5 SP points into thrust (maybe 6 if you take 29 instead of 30 SP on eagle/hawk. More on that later). This gives MB a 40% chance of activating, and on average, you'll Bow Whack 1.5 times before a MB comes out.



Argument for 11 MB: MB is a good skill, but other attacks are generally better. Why use MB when you can Rain? But, you don't want to put points into thrust, so you put them all into MB instead of thrust. 52% chance of MB activating is "enough", and max other skills gives an overall better build. Additionall, 11 MB vs 20 MB isn't too big a difference (70% activation is still somewhat unreliable), so gaining 9 more SP points is a bargain. On average, you'll MB 1.08 times before a Bow whack comes out, arguably, not that much worse than lvl 20 MB in terms of "Whacks in a row".



Argument for 20 MB: MB is a great skill, of which it must be maxxed. With 10% chance of instant kill, and 250% (290% on avg with critical) damage and for free, this is a welcome change from the general bow-whack. The greatest advantage of lvl 20 MB is that bow-whacking unstuns the enemy, which would have been stunned because of hawk. 70% chance is the best you can get with MB. On Average, you'll MB 2.33 times before a Bow Whack comes out.





Puppet



Puppet is a unique skill, and necessary in every bowman build. For this reason, the concensus is that you must get puppet to at least level 9. All monsters can be "puppetized", even bosses. Bosses, who stand against stun, ice, and even instant kill from Mortal Blow... fall to puppet.



Argument for lvl 9 puppet:

With 30 seconds of timer, lvl 9 puppet on a ledge will serve you all you need to destroy even large mobs of Vikings. With that said, keep lvl 9 puppet, and you have 142 points (enough to max all skills except thrust, and get 2 into thrust)



Argument for lvl 12 puppet:

40 seconds of timer. Lvl 9 puppet dies too easily to mobs. It only need 2-3 unlucky hits from a Viking to perish. With 2400 hp, lvl 12 puppet is better suited for actually placing the puppet inside a mob, instead of on a ledge. You can almost max all skills with the 139 points avaliable, except thrust, and you'll have to take 4 points off some skill (maybe 2 from Fire Shot and 2 from Rain. See lvl 28 Fire Shot and Rain for details). It should be noted here that Vikings do 100 to 700 damage on puppet, so you can see just how strong puppet's defense is.



Argument for 15 puppet.

50 seconds of puppet. 3600 hp. The medium between 18 and 12.



Argument for 18 puppet

You get your full 60 seconds for putting on a ledge against bosses. With hp at 5000, you will not have to worry on any mobs in Ludi at least on taking down puppet. Additionally, you can easily see that lvl 18 puppet has more than 2x the hp of lvl 9 puppet. This means that puppet gains more HP the higher lvl it gets. Its as if puppet has an "improving max HP skill" :-p



Argument for 20 puppet.

5000 HP may be enough for today, but is it enough for the future? Given how unique puppet is, it is unlikely that we'll get a 4th job skill to replace it. A full 6000 HP may be the best bet for the future. Additionally, as said at lvl 18 puppet, lvl 20 puppet is even more SP efficient than lvl 18. +1000 HP in 2 sp points beats out lvl 18 puppet (which gained 800 hp in its last 2 sp points).





Fire Shot



Note on fire shot: This skill is especially hard to stay unbiased as it has never been tested. Its damage formula is still somewhat unknown. The only fact that is known is that more than likely, the elemental modifier is multiplicative, which implies that lvl 30 Fire Shot has 375% damage with critical. (The other option, that elemental modifier is addative like critical, would mean Fire Shot only has 300% damage)



Argument for lvl 1 Fire Shot:

With lvl 1 Fire Shot, you can max everything. You will go with Bomb instead of Fire Shot. Supporters of lvl 1 Fire Shot tend to say that (max) Fire Shot is weaker than Bomb at Vikings, because Vikings are strong to fire, but it has never been proven. No one knows how elemental strength works yet.



Additionally; you won't be using Fire Shot on many monsters, Vikings is all you need forever. And Aqua monsters aren't weak to fire. Finally, Rain is stronger than Fire Shot on normal enemies, so it would be faster to rain instead of Fire Shot on normal (and fire-strong) enemies.



Argument for lvl 11 Fire Shot:

You want lvl 1 Fire Shot, but realize that 10 thrust is all you need. So you get 11 instead of 1.



Argument for lvl 30 Fire Shot:

Looking at the list of Fire Weak monsters on hidden-street, you can see that you will be doing loads of damage on loads of enemies (more than Rain would do). Fire Shot is also a very different skill from Arrow Rain/Erruption; Rain is an area of effect attack, that has lots of vertical range. Fire Shot is an "explosion" attack, like Bomb, so the effect happens where the target is. This gives Fire Shot a huge horizontal range.



Supporters of max Fire Shot claim that Fire Shot is stronger than Bomb at Vikings, even though Vikings are fire-strong. Thus, Fire Shot is always better than Bomb. Of course, this directly contradicts the fire-shot less group's claim, and lack of testing makes this argument m00t.



Argument for lvl 28 Fire Shot: Look at the damages Fire Shot does. By the time you get to lvl 29 and 30, you only gain 1% damage. This is just about worthless, and you can save 2 SP points for other skills, like Hawk, or Puppet.





Arrow Rain/Erruption



Argument for lvl 1: Get to max all other skills... I'm not too sure if there is any actual argument against Rain however.



Argument for lvl 28: With the last 2 SP points of Rain (lvl 29 and 30), you only gain 1% damage. Again, very worthless in terms of damage, while 2 SP points might be useful somewhere else. By now, the range of Rain is maxed out, which is the important part.



Argument for lvl 30: You need all 30 points of Rain. It is the 2nd most used skill (with Strafe as #1). Because it is an AoE attack, it has no minimum range, and thus is very useful. Additionally, its amazing range and power is all the reason you should squeeze this skill to the max power.





Hawk/Eagle



Hawk and Eagle are two skills where a bird hovers over your head and then consistantly stuns the enemy. With the "reccomended minimum" at lvl 16, you can rely on hawk/eagles stun somewhat, as 90% stun rate is amazing.



The primary reason for these stopping points is because at each of the levels, hawk's % increase changes. First, you get a wopping +3% increase per level. Then, you get +2% increase. At lvl 16, you get +1% increase, And at lvl 21 onward, you get +.5% increase per SP point.



While showing you raw %s is arguably "straight facts", it ends up to slightly bias the 16 SP point argument more than the 29 SP point argument. If you think about it, +1% is *much* better if it goes from 99% to 100% (from "almost perfect" to perfect), than if you go from 0% to 1% (from perfectly bad, to almost perfectly bad). Arguably, going from 99% to 100% is better than going from 0% to 5%. This forms the basis of the 29/30 SP point argument, so pay attention there for more info.



Finally: Just because I'm a supporter of lvl 29 hawk doesn't mean I can't come up with *excellent* arguments for lvl 16. Those who agreed with me before, read up on 16 SP points before you make your complete decision for lvl 29 hawk :-p.



And those who aren't looking at 29 SP points, please do read this argument.



Now, for the arguments:



Argument for 16: Same old, same old :-p. With less SP points than all other stopping points, smaller hawk means more into other skills. With 16 hawk, you can max all main skills, and get 7 thrust (if you want 10 thrust, move some points around :-p Get 18 puppet, and you'll get 9 thrust right there.). 90% stun rate here. Before making a decision on what exactly "stun rate" means, please read the part on 29 SP points.



One interesting factoid of Hawk is simple: Hawk is most useful at the low levels. Imagine a hawk that hits 100% of the time, a "Perfect" hawk to simplify the argument. Even at lvl 70, this perfect hawk will enable you to fight a viking, 1 on 1. Thus, this 100% hawk is very useful at low levels.



What about at the high levels? Lets say you are so high level, that you OHKO Vikings. In this situation, you'll kill Vikings before Hawk can even touch them. Eventually, Hawk will become useless.



So obviously, the usefulness of hawk decreases the higher level you are. A slight counterpoint to this argument is that if enough people get high enough leveled, then Wizet will release another spot. Simply put: Look at JMS: the best spots they have are Aqua Road and Ludi. I doubt things will get much better than they are already.



Now as this isn't a perfect analoggy to Maple Story. We probably will never get good enough to OHKO a Viking or Shark. The point remains however: Each time you get more powerful, hawk gets less useful.



A somewhat counterargument to say how bad lvl 16 hawk is, it only gets 9 stuns in a row on average (90% chance of stun). Lvl 21 gets 19 stuns in a row on average, and 29+ gets 99 stuns on average.



Argument for 21: This next stopping point has 95% stun rate. At this point, you can still max out all main skills, and get 2 thrust. This is just about the "cookie cutter thrustless" build. Max everything, and 2 thrust 21 hawk. Technically speaking, you have more than 2x the "stuns in a row" compared to lvl 16. So in that standpoint, 5 SP points more than doubles the effectiveness of hawk. Additionally, longer timer means you spend less on Summoning Stones, and you don't have to go to Ossyria over and over again to restock. (Guy with lvl 55 cape quest sells them for 5k IIRC)



Argument for 29: This almost last stopping point has 99% stun rate. While +4% seems not worth the 8 SP points, remember, +1% at 0 is worthless, while +1% to 100% is worth the perfection. Ask any internet business if 99% is enough for them, and they will respond "no", as they want 99.99% reliability, at least. Unfortunatly, the best we could do with hawk is 99%, but thats still a heck of a lot better than 98%.



As said before, lvl 29 hawk gives you 99 stuns in a row on average. You'll typically stun almost 100 enemies before hawk messes up, and boy, when hawk messes up, you die :-p (not really, but probably will get blasted by Gatekeeper or Thanatos, or the Viking that Hawk just pissed off behind you).



Additional bonuses to lvl 29 hawk is that hawk's hits/time increases, that is, hawk gets faster the higher level it is. The summoning stones become cheaper as Hawk gets a longer timer compared to 16 and 21, and damage also increases from Hawk.



Argument for lvl 30 hawk: You don't like Mortal Blow, so leave MB at 5, 30 hawk, and 5 thrust.

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