Techer Guide/Thread 2.0

[Zephyrion]

Personally, I think TeHu is just the best nowadays. Automate and Massive Hunter are amazing boosts to survivability and viability, especially considering that wands are completely vulnerable to flinch and knockdown, which is becoming more and more common. There's the Massive Hunter ring, but it pales in comparison to Hunter's original skill. War Cry is of great use too for utility. In terms of damage, it has the best Wand Gear explosion damage, the best average wand strike damage, and the best Form slash damage, and its damage boosts are very consistent. TeHu also has Volg Raptor combos, but I don't think those are even useful anymore since Form melee attacks put out around the same DPS. The Form wand is just ridiculously good, and TeHu makes the best use of it. Zanverse+Form attacks are about equivalent in DPS to TeBr's Ragrants spam on darkers.

TeBr has nice techs, but Te/Hu's melee damage with the Form wand is close enough to the damage output TeBr gets with techs (not counting Rikauteri), and costs 0 PP and is just much easier to work with. TeBr's techs eat through PP like a bitch, and are much more annoying to work with. You always need to match elements, which is problematic since you can't afford all of Techer's mastery skills. You'll usually have light masteries and therefore have weaker tech damage on non-darkers, and a weaker Zanverse. TeBr's wand melee is generally much weaker, especially with the Form wand, and it has to use the inferior Massive Hunter ring.

TeFi is very interesting, but the stances as always are terribly inconsistent, which is a major issue. They really need to make those into passive skills. The other big problem for TeFi is that you have to choose between the Massive Hunter ring and the Attack Advance ring. You can't use both, even with 12 star units, since they're right rings.

I'm only half agreeing with all this

TE/HU is undoubtedly the best at what it does, that is pure melee and support, and all those survivability skills + massive Hunter do help, however the lack of tech damage is crippling,not so much because of raw numbers, but because you lose a whole lot of flexibility. You can't snipe with wind as well as TE/FI or TE/BR when enemies are far, or use Talis Zondeel > ragrants/gimegid as well as Light/Dark TE/FI or TE/BR. Also techs give you access to compounds, which give you nice bursts of damage and have a lot of utility with their high status rate
Also you can work with TE/BR and TE/FI's survivability : HP affixes, Step advance (Tech C parry ring if you have a rainbow/once those new units are released) give you more than enough mileage.. Their zanverse being weaker is ONLY if you go light, which is by no means a forced path, especially for TE/FI (both wind and Dark are often overlooked, but still very viable elements). You can still get several skill trees if you want to be efficient in more situations.

TE/BR's whole point is not rivalling in terms of pure damage with other TEs, he loses to melee TE/HU and casting TE/FI. the whole point of it is versatility. Can use katanas to move around, bows to mow down non-raid bosses a lot quicker,, wands for mobbing,Talises for far sniping. It also has snatch JA which is big for sustained casting and helps a lot with the "eating through PP like a bitch" The loss of mobbing damage on wand is often irrelevant in anything not Ult, since even in XH, a well-made pack of mobs goes down too quick for it to matter


Stances with FI sub more often than not hit right when casting, and even if you lose some of it in the mess that is zondeel when smacking, chase advance really makes up for it a LOT of the time. TE/FI not having access to Massive Hunter at all times just means that you gotta play around step when meleeing, and losing that damage from step is inconsequential in the face of stance + chase multipliers. Incidentally, this also makes it the best TE with form against mobs and mini-bosses, and when being able to whack with wise, while whacking bosses with brave is only a minor loss of damage.

At the end of the day you kinda explain it yourself in your post : Every TE has its own strengths : TE/HU doesn't shine so much at being "the best" as being the TE that is the easiest one to gear and play for a high return because it's straightforward and does what it does, pure melee, incredibly well and consistently. For having tried all 3, with all their own mechanics and gameplay, they yield very similar results at the end of the day, it really comes down to preference and each one of them being situationally better at x or y content.

[qoxolg]

I prefer TE/HU because I like the melee techer gameplay more then the hybrid stuff with TE/BR (and I played TE/BR for almost a year). I love the intense melee battles with bosses where I have to keep moving, dodging and looking for windows to get a few hits in. With the Form Scythe in combination with Massive Hunter/automate, TE/HU is finally doing some decent single target damage. It can't compete with the top single target damage classes, but it's also not super underpowered.

Yesterday I did my first attempt on XQ solo Heaven & Hell as a TE/HU. Stage 1 to 9 were surprisingly easy. Only problem I had was Dio Hunar, but maybe thats because haven't fought Dio that much, so I don't really know it's attack patterns very well. PD clone was quite easy with massive hunter. So yeah, TE/HU seems pretty viable now. Not the best at everything, but it sure is the best pure melee techer, which is what I am going for.

I am also looking forward to the air dash ring. I always air dash to close small gaps, so I hope with the ring I can close larger gaps to get into melee range quicker.

[Batty]

i liked the idea of a melee/tech hybrid gameplay, maybe because i like techs but i dont like the "all" techs gameplay of forces, but also love compound techs x3 i was going for te/br but if te/fi can do as well then i might as well just use fi sub (anything to not buy rikauteri)

i also like the idea of using in the future the san dinian costume alongside the C.A.D weapon camo. Hiding the camo on the quite large costume bracers will give the appearance of a dragon using techs and his own claws to fight

[Kazzi]

Personally, I think TeHu is just the best nowadays. Automate and Massive Hunter are amazing boosts to survivability and viability, especially considering that wands are completely vulnerable to flinch and knockdown, which is becoming more and more common. There's the Massive Hunter ring, but it pales in comparison to Hunter's original skill. War Cry is of great use too for utility. In terms of damage, it has the best Wand Gear explosion damage, the best average wand strike damage, and the best Form slash damage, and its damage boosts are very consistent. TeHu also has Volg Raptor combos, but I don't think those are even useful anymore since Form melee attacks put out around the same DPS. The Form wand is just ridiculously good, and TeHu makes the best use of it. Zanverse+Form attacks are about equivalent in DPS to TeBr's Ragrants spam on darkers.

TeBr has nice techs, but Te/Hu's melee damage with the Form wand is close enough to the damage output TeBr gets with techs (not counting Rikauteri), and costs 0 PP and is just much easier to work with. TeBr's techs eat through PP like a bitch, and are much more annoying to work with. You always need to match elements, which is problematic since you can't afford all of Techer's mastery skills. You'll usually have light masteries and therefore have weaker tech damage on non-darkers, and a weaker Zanverse. TeBr's wand melee is generally much weaker, especially with the Form wand, and it has to use the inferior Massive Hunter ring.

TeFi is very interesting, but the stances as always are terribly inconsistent, which is a major issue. They really need to make those into passive skills. The other big problem for TeFi is that you have to choose between the Massive Hunter ring and the Attack Advance ring. You can't use both, even with 12 star units, since they're right rings.

Actually you're slightly wrong there. Te/Fi and Te/Br have consistently higher wand explosion damage, Te/Br having Weak Stance which boosts the damage of the explosion (Fury stance does not affect the explosion it only boost s-atk and r-atk, while the explosion is calculated from t-atk) while Te/Fi takes advantage of the stance dance + chase advance. Only Fury Combo up boosts t-atk and it's pretty poor at it. Where Te/Hu shines is it's survival skills, but it definitely can't beat either of those subs for explosion damage unfortunately, it just doesn't have the raw base stats or t-atk support to make the explosions stronger than Fi or Br. Te/Hu makes the solo XQ a cakewalk though and it works pretty well with the form wand.

[Saagonsa]

Actually you're slightly wrong there. Te/Fi and Te/Br have consistently higher wand explosion damage, Te/Br having Weak Stance which boosts the damage of the explosion (Fury stance does not affect the explosion it only boost s-atk and r-atk, while the explosion is calculated from t-atk) while Te/Fi takes advantage of the stance dance + chase advance. Only Fury Combo up boosts t-atk and it's pretty poor at it. Where Te/Hu shines is it's survival skills, but it definitely can't beat either of those subs for explosion damage unfortunately, it just doesn't have the raw base stats or t-atk support to make the explosions stronger than Fi or Br. Te/Hu makes the solo XQ a cakewalk though and it works pretty well with the form wand.

The wand explosion does actually work with fury stance, since it's a striking attack that uses t-atk.

[nguuuquaaa]

Actually you're slightly wrong there. Te/Fi and Te/Br have consistently higher wand explosion damage, Te/Br having Weak Stance which boosts the damage of the explosion (Fury stance does not affect the explosion it only boost s-atk and r-atk, while the explosion is calculated from t-atk) while Te/Fi takes advantage of the stance dance + chase advance. Only Fury Combo up boosts t-atk and it's pretty poor at it. Where Te/Hu shines is it's survival skills, but it definitely can't beat either of those subs for explosion damage unfortunately, it just doesn't have the raw base stats or t-atk support to make the explosions stronger than Fi or Br. Te/Hu makes the solo XQ a cakewalk though and it works pretty well with the form wand.

How long have you played this game? Usually newbies cannot differentiate striking vs S-Atk, ranged vs R-Atk and technique vs T-Atk.

Fury Stance branch boost striking and ranged damage, and since tech explosion is T-Atk-based striking attribute, it does get boosted by Fury branch (except Fury Combo for god-know-why reason).

[Batty]

afaik correct me if im wrong, stricking damage is damage done with melee strikes and stacks up on s-atk, range damage is damage done with guns and stacks on r-atk, and technique damage is damage done by techs (dah) and stacks with t-atk. the exeptions are bouncer JBs wich does stricking damage but stacks on t-atk unless using switch strike, and summoner pets that do tech damage and stacks on t-atk but like bouncer it has the switch skills that change the x-atk stat used to calculate damage

having this is mind fury stance rises stricking damage, wich includes wand explosions, no matter that they stack on t-atk since they still are stricking damage (melee). however what it "doesnt" rise is tech damage, wich is why te/hu is useless as a melee/tech hybrid techer

[soraine]

Thanks for the response. More questions:
Does wand element change synergize with whacking te/hu? The wand element changes proc the inherent elemental weakness of the enemy as well as the element weak hit 20% from the skill tree?
Are the wand explosions based on the wand element? What about the form wand waves?

[nguuuquaaa]

afaik correct me if im wrong, stricking damage is damage done with melee strikes and stacks up on s-atk, range damage is damage done with guns and stacks on r-atk, and technique damage is damage done by techs (dah) and stacks with t-atk. the exeptions are bouncer JBs wich does stricking damage but stacks on t-atk unless using switch strike, and summoner pets that do tech damage and stacks on t-atk but like bouncer it has the switch skills that change the x-atk stat used to calculate damage

having this is mind fury stance rises stricking damage, wich includes wand explosions, no matter that they stack on t-atk since they still are stricking damage (melee). however what it "doesnt" rise is tech damage, wich is why te/hu is useless as a melee/tech hybrid techer

There are more exceptions than you think. Kamikaze Arrow, Slash Rave, Dead Approach...
Also pets deal pet damage, a different type of damage from striking, ranged and tech.

[Anduril]

Thanks for the response. More questions:
Does wand element change synergize with whacking te/hu? The wand element changes proc the inherent elemental weakness of the enemy as well as the element weak hit 20% from the skill tree?
Are the wand explosions based on the wand element? What about the form wand waves?

Any damage caused directly by a Wand (ie. the hit, explosion, or Form's wave) will have the elemental attribute of the wand, so as long as the element matches the weakness of the enemy, it will proc both Elemental Weak Hit and the normal elemental weakness multiplier. L/Wand E Change causes the wand to completely change it's element with a charged Tech, thus allowing you to proc the right element against the right enemy (ie. You have a Light Wand, come across a Rockbear, you charge Rafoie, now you Wand is treated as Fire).