Techer Guide/Thread 2.0

[LonelyGaruga]

Weapon specializing is not an efficient way to play Techer or any other class in general. Playing a class efficiently means using all of the class' tools to their fullest extent. In Te/Hu's case, that means using wands, WLs, and partisans. Just because Te/Hu has weaker techs and WL/partisan usage compared to other class combinations doesn't mean it's inefficient to use these tools anyway, because they still serve important purposes to playing the class.

And any T-ATK investment for Te/Hu isn't really problematic considering Wand Gear will be your main mobbing tool, and mobbing is the biggest part of the game and Techer's biggest strength compared to other class combinations. The wand usage comes first, if you want to equip better wands, then by all means put some T-ATK on the mag. Complete nonissue. Pure ATK is just recommended because it's easier to do and people are more likely to have pure ATK mags than they are a mag with arbitrary investments to reach equipment goals.

[RubyVixen]

why isn't there any deband-based skills on any of the recommended skillsets?

Without Deband Toughness many bosses in sh or higher will one-shot you unless you have extremely optimal endgame gear.

I'd highly recommend deband toughness for those who aren't 75/75 and have optimal min/maxed equipment.

[LonelyGaruga]

Look, I know you mean well, but I didn't write a guide for beginners. Don't mistake even the most minor details about skills being put down, this is not a guide for beginners. It's a guide intended for high level play, with every bit of information I could put into it. As such, my recommendations for skills are based solely on how useful they are at that level of play. There have been so many posts that don't get this that it's starting to make me believe that I made a mistake even writing the guide in the first place. My audience is clearly not what I thought it was.

Anyway, Toughness is actually quite terrible unless you already have units that give lots of HP, whether through their individual bonuses or affixes. Even at 75/75 you only get like 130 HP from it for 10 SP at base value. And beginner/early game units like Hiei and Vardha provide huge amounts of HP and DEF, so it's a nonissue for leveling players. I could never recommend Toughness based on those facts, because that would be a waste of SP and a waste of a skill tree reset.

Unless you're Te/Hu, but I actually do recommend max Deband Cut/Toughness for Te/Hu.

[RubyVixen]

Look, I know you mean well, but I didn't write a guide for beginners. Don't mistake even the most minor details about skills being put down, this is not a guide for beginners. It's a guide intended for high level play, with every bit of information I could put into it. As such, my recommendations for skills are based solely on how useful they are at that level of play. There have been so many posts that don't get this that it's starting to make me believe that I made a mistake even writing the guide in the first place. My audience is clearly not what I thought it was.

Anyway, Toughness is actually quite terrible unless you already have units that give lots of HP, whether through their individual bonuses or affixes. Even at 75/75 you only get like 130 HP from it for 10 SP at base value. And beginner/early game units like Hiei and Vardha provide huge amounts of HP and DEF, so it's a nonissue for leveling players. I could never recommend Toughness based on those facts, because that would be a waste of SP and a waste of a skill tree reset.

Unless you're Te/Hu, but I actually do recommend max Deband Cut/Toughness for Te/Hu.

You have to understand the majority of your readerbase are not going to be tip top level players with a ton of disposable income. Most of your readerbase are going to either be newer level players or players like me who are intermediate in skill, but either do not have the money/patience to invest in twinked min/maxed gear, or do not play with a hardcore crowd of players.

I'm not necessarily a beginning level player - I've played since beta. The thing is, I play almost exclusively solo.

For reference, I'm currently a 68/55 Te/Br. With Hiei I have around 770 HP. Most SH and higher bosses will hit me for around 800~900 equipped with the Hiei set.

With Zeig armor I have 735 HP, and take marginally less damage, but without investment in to Deband I still get OHKOed.

Deband Toughness jumps my hp to the 900 range, which with Deband in effect is enough to survive all but the strongest of enemy attacks.

[qoxolg]

Look, I know you mean well, but I didn't write a guide for beginners. Don't mistake even the most minor details about skills being put down, this is not a guide for beginners. It's a guide intended for high level play, with every bit of information I could put into it. As such, my recommendations for skills are based solely on how useful they are at that level of play. There have been so many posts that don't get this that it's starting to make me believe that I made a mistake even writing the guide in the first place. My audience is clearly not what I thought it was.

I could have told you so from the start. I'd be happy if some more people would even casually play melee Techer, or even understand it's mechanics. Only a small portion of the player base actually optimizes builds and equipement to min-max damage. When I started the Original Techer guide with Arksenth, I got plenty of shit for introducing people to the concept of 'rainbow' equipment (I think halve of the people didn't even know what meant with 'rainbow' back then haha..)

To this day, only a handful of players actually runs a rainbow set and even fewer run with extra's for species latents. I've seen plenty of cases in Ultimate Lilipa on B15 that had a melee techer using only a light element wand on the fire weak enemies. The amount of Zondeels in Ultimate Lilipa is terribly low.


The amount of people that play high-level is even lower. I am not a high-level player, nor will I ever become one. The amount of high-level players in this game is quite low and the amount of high-level players here on PSO-W is probably just a handful. The amount of those that are interested in playing (melee) Techer, is even lower, so yeah, the average person that views this thread is probably not the audience you intended. This is where the intention of my original guide differed: I just wanted to get more people get familiar with melee Techer. Also back in the day, melee Techer was real bad unless you had a completely optimized build (I think it was before they buffed WL during EP2) and even then it was not the best and very bad in cases of bossing. It was a relative new mechanic me and Arksenth wanted to get out there.

Maybe some tips:
- Maybe change the topic title and put a disclaimer on top of the first post, that this guide is aimed for high-level play.
- If you wanna get more people into playing high-level, make some video's to show off this high-level gameplay and explain how it's pulled off. Show something interesting like solo'ing Ultimate bosses, how to effectively use Banish combo's during a 12/12 on a boosted Leone or any other boss where it actually matters to do tons of damage. A player who is interested in high-level play, shouldn't need advice on equipment or skill trees in the first place.

[RubyVixen]

The issue I have with the concept of "high level" is that it's extremely vague. There's no logical progression from low level, to mid/intermediate, to high.

I would love to see more in-depth video guides on HOW to play at a high level, especially for those of us who play almost exclusively solo. SHOW us how to play at a high level, and I don't mean just show us a video of players wrecking bosses. EXPLAIN the decision making. I watch these videos of people demolishing SH and XH bosses and I don't really understand what's happening. Especially not with anything Bow-Related.

[Perfect Chaos]

A player who is interested in high-level play, shouldn't need advice on equipment or skill trees in the first place.

To be fair, just because someone is interested in wanting to play at a high level, doesn't automatically make them knowledgeable on every aspect of high level play for every class. So those information on this thread is still useful for such people. He just needs a disclaimer or something so people don't go in expecting a beginner's TE guide.

[LonelyGaruga]

For reference, I'm currently a 68/55 Te/Br. With Hiei I have around 770 HP. Most SH and higher bosses will hit me for around 800~900 equipped with the Hiei set.

With Zeig armor I have 735 HP, and take marginally less damage, but without investment in to Deband I still get OHKOed.

What are you getting hit by? Unless you're talking about attacks that are supposed to be one-shots, like Dragon Ex's Over End, those are exaggerated numbers. What you describe is like twice as much as the typical player using something like Vardha (or Zieg) would take. Generally speaking, the only attacks that hit for high, problematic numbers are easy to dodge, so it's your own fault for getting hit by them. Just to make sure, did you grind your units?

Also, gearing doesn't require huge amounts of disposable income or anything like that. Outside of skill trees, you could gear yourself quite well without spending a penny on AC, actually.

VH+: Spam Big Vardha until full set of Vardha units. Can fight Magatsu for Pristine Small Hammer, but SH+ is preferable
SH+: Participate in GGG parties until full set of Saiki

And you're pretty much set for anything after grinding and affixing everything.

I would love to see more in-depth video guides on HOW to play at a high level, especially for those of us who play almost exclusively solo. SHOW us how to play at a high level, and I don't mean just show us a video of players wrecking bosses. EXPLAIN the decision making. I watch these videos of people demolishing SH and XH bosses and I don't really understand what's happening. Especially not with anything Bow-Related.

This is a really valid point, and not one I had really put a lot of thought into. I just assumed that people would be able to figure this stuff out for themselves, and that is a serious miscalculation on my part. I'm currently leveling classes right now, and I never thought of my gameplay as anything worth posting in the first place, but I suspect that it would be quite helpful to a lot of people that read the guide if I did upload gameplay. Thanks for bringing this to light.

In the meantime, I could post other player's videos and summarize everything that players do on them, but that would mostly apply to stuff like TAs because those are like the only things people upload that are worth watching. Until level 80 SHAQ boss fights become a popular thing to upload, at least. Would that work out all right?

EDIT: OK yeah, I think I'll put another disclaimer about the guide not being aimed at beginners then, thanks for the input from everyone!

[gaogaostegosaurus]

So speaking of beginners...

I've been to a few Magatsu's and prepared two Pristines at 50 element, but unless I'm missing something dramatic about how to get things to +10 I don't think I have the capital to get the "budget" option to a usable state. (I'm being ADHD and messing around on other classes as well, so that's being a drain on resources as well.)

Am I correct to assume that I'd get a lot more bang for the ... meseta by just getting a crafted rainbow set for the elements I seem to need most often before upgrading to 10*s? It almost seems like I could get a full rainbow set of crafted 7*-9*s for the price of one Pristine, and while I guess I can't get the money back for crafted weapons I figured meseta will be a far lesser concern once I reach the point where the next upgrade is a 10*.

Also, assuming the above is true, is there a wand that would be pretty good to use for a while? I've been making do with a light element Ex6 with no potential for now, but since I use Te/Hu (because nothing else even close to being leveled up haha) I'm pretty much in Fury Stance all the time and that 9* Fury Stance +4/5/6% rod seems pretty good.

[Saffran]

Gaogao > The thing is, Pristine is really THE best wand option there is. You get them for cheap at Magatsu (I think I get about 8 of them each EQ) and you only need to unlock the potential once (lv3 is only 2% better than lv1).
It's a 10 stars so grinding "only" costs 8200 per attempt. You can use grinding risk -1 items that you get in the FUN scratch to reduce the risk when you reach +7 and just "bruteforce" to +10, really.
It has 1090 Satk at +10 without any affix, that's actually better than any other wand within reasonnable reach.

Also, you seem to misunderstand the term "rainbow set" (or I do). It means a weapon of each element. You don't have "a rainbow set for an element", you have "a rainbow set of a certain weapon". In the case at hand, you need one Pristine hammer in every element to make "a rainbow set of Pristine Hammer". (Unless I am the one mistaken here).

I am also leveling all classes, and I've been getting so many 11 stars and 12 stars lately that I started ditching them at the recycle shop. And with the pristine hammer being so powerful and so readily available, I can cube any wand I get without looking twice. For now.