TE sub class decision help, and suggestions

[xEchidna]

Ok since TE happened to be possibly my fav class in pso2 I really want to make it work as a class and I'm starting to get sick of everyone telling me to stick to just stick with maiming FO "because it's better" or telling me that TE "is really only good for zondeel spam"

Zondeel spam has to be in my opinion the most boring way to play a Mage class in this game.
Ever since I played elsword back on the KR server before it came to the US I have always loved magic knights because I LOVE being able to switch from ranged magic, to front lines melee
So in every game I strive to pick a class similar OR make one

And in pso2 TE is the best achiever of this, since it has the ability to use techs as well as having access to wand gear.
However this is where the problem lies...
Since TE has almost no boosters for tech dmg
And for a while it had no physical dmg boosters

But coming on the 15th TE will get a buff to wand lovers
Which gives a considerable boost to wand gear (35% dmg)
And gives step and step attack
There's also no pp penalty anymore
As well as putting wand gear gauge at max for the full min of duration

But that still leaves the question of what to sub...

My best options seemed to be FO, BR, and FI.
FI pushes out lots of damage but it's too conditional and my pp recovery is not enough while fighting bosses. so I pushed that off the list...

BR is my next best option with average stance boating a 20% boost to wand gear's dmg and a 30% boost to tech and weak stance doing the same but 20% if I'm hitting a weak point.
Seems not to bad, but I suspect the pp problem I had with FI will still be an issue... But I have yet to try it.

Lastly we have FO Which is the option everyone tells me to go for I terms of the zondeel spam thing.
But I'm looking at it a bit differently... You see wand gear's explosion and shifta/denand are all based on my base t-atk
and with FO subbed and my mag equipped ied have 703 base t-atk but if I go for t-atk up large
then that's + another 120 t-atk putting me at 823 base
which... Is a lot but I know that base boosts don't do much to overall dmg, but I was going for the added boosts to shifta and deband which also are not % boosts but both combined would make shifta bring my base almost to 1k and that's ALOT base boost or not.

However that's all well and good but how we'll are my techs and wand gear dmg we'll that I have no idea...
My gear dmg is boosted by my overall T-atk so the question is at 1k base + my current wand's 1031 t-atk how much would my gear dmg be?
Then boost it by 35% for the new wand lovers buff

Also since I'm subbed FO there would be NO pp problem, and a 30% boost to ALL techs +20% more if I use the weak element.

I don't know what to pick...
FO sounds like a awesome option on paper but ied be highly upset if it doesn't pump as much dmg as it sounds like it would on paper

I know I asked for help on this ALOT in these forums but it always seems to get answered with the same "don't use TE unless you are gonna spam zondeel" or "main FO because TE" sucks.
So please some one not biased so the idea of even using TE please answer?...
Because I'm always going to main this class no matter what anyone says, but I need help picking a sub that can give me everything I need.

[UnLucky]

Te/Fo: High PP regen, High Tech damage (with Talis), Low Striking damage
Te/Fi: Low PP regen, High Tech damage (with correct facing), Medium Striking damage
Te/Br: Low PP regen, High Tech damage (with weakness), Medium Striking damage (in opposing Stance)
Te/Hu: Low PP regen, Low Tech damage, High Striking damage

Standard melee swings and the wand gear explosions count as Striking damage.

So Te/Fo to be a pure caster, pretty much a Fo/Te without a rod. You choose one elemental mastery from each tree, EWH, PP regen, and TB.

Te/Hu to Zondeel+melee. Techs are only to charge your gear gauge, not damage.

Te/Fi to do the same, but your damage is a little equalized. Your constant PP issues will need to be managed with Zondeel+melee. Hopefully the enemies will have a status effect when it's time to whack them, and you don't suffer the stance penalty too much.

Te/Br works the same way, except you would have to switch stances to have anything resembling viable physical damage. WS+EWH does not apply the full bonus on non-weakpoints, even if the element on your weapon matches the target's weakness. And if you didn't fully invest in the correct elemental mastery and use Weak Stance, your tech damage will be worse off than Te/Fo or Te/Fi.

[xEchidna]

Standard melee swings and the wand gear explosions count as Striking damage.

So Te/Fo to be a pure caster, pretty much a Fo/Te without a rod. You choose one elemental mastery from each tree, EWH, PP regen, and TB.


They count as striking dmg yes, but the wand gear dmg is based on your t-atk which FO subbed gives more then the other classes
And the standard swing will be boosted with both wand reactor (+500 s-atk)
And new wand lovers skill (+35% dmg)
The gear dmg will get that lovers boost also.

And your tech dmg would not only be high with a talis, just higher

[Arksenth]

FO might have more T-ATK, but it has no multipliers for Wand Gear like FI and HU do, so it's ultimately weaker both in the striking and the tech explosion portions. Which isn't to say that Wand Gear is completely useless for TE/FO - and I'd argue that it's become actually pretty useful of a tool in SH where the mob spawns can become large and overwhelming, and that FO now has Talis Tech Mastery to make up for the lost damage from not using Rods - but it's just more of a narrow niche for TE/FO than it is for TE/FI or TE/HU. You're not really using Wand Gear as a stand-alone as much as a PP-efficient and quick way to dispatch large mob spawns.

You're going to be using Zondeel (abet uncharged) no matter what subclass you choose for a wand-oriented build, because the key feature of Wand Gear is that the Wand Explosion AoEs multiply damage for each mob trapped within it. Plus it's one of the key tools a non-FO subclass TE is going to use to keep its PP up, since a single smack within a sufficient Zondeel should regenerate all PP.

For single-target damage like bosses, TE/HU does the best (TE/FI does fine if it's a sub-boss that can be afflicted with a status), but none of the Wand specialists will be very strong at bosses at all. Even with high multipliers, you're barely doing better than whacking a boss with a melee weapon with no PAs... which isn't much to speak of.

The Wand Lovers change isn't honestly going to change too much. It's a limited duration buff that requires constant, tedious re-casting, and even if you reserve it for bosses, the Step Attack is going to come without the bonus invincibility frames of other classes, plus no Guard or Autoguard frames like melee classes have to their disposal.

[Zorak000]

I stuck with Te/Fi myself. sure worrying about being in front/back can be a bit of a pain, but for the most part you can just leave Brave stance on 95% of the time anyway.

and Fi has few synergistic skills to a Te main; like both Chase Advance skills, and having a single point in Adrenalin alongside a single point of Techer's Extend Assist will give you 2 minutes of buffs for a single cast of each*

*only applies to yourself, you would need to cast them both twice if you are trying to buff everyone at a teleporter

[xEchidna]

FO might have more T-ATK, but it has no multipliers for Wand Gear like FI and HU do, so it's ultimately weaker both in the striking

No but the multipliers are on TE
With reactor I can add 500+ striking
And the wand lovers buff of 35%



The Wand Lovers change isn't honestly going to change too much. It's a limited duration buff that requires constant, tedious re-casting, and even if you reserve it for bosses, the Step Attack is going to come without the bonus invincibility frames of other classes, plus no Guard or Autoguard frames like melee classes have to their disposal.

Why would you use wand gear on bosses?
That's the problem I'm facing
With FI/HU I have no options on bosses

If I could rely on my melee for bosses then who cares about techs?

What I'm going for is to have options for both mobs and bosses.

What would determine to me if it's not much or not is, if some one could tell me how wand gear dmg is calculated but no one seems to know so...
I guess it never hurts to try

[Arksenth]

A melee-only multiplier of 35% that can't even be constant on, has to be continuously renewed with vulnerable fist pumps, and cripples your defensive options just doesn't really cut it in this game especially when you have stuff like 219% multipliers just for Just Attacking. Wand Lovers isn't going to make TE/FO a viable melee class - heck, not even TE/HU is honestly really a viable melee class.

Also, Techs aren't really made for bossing - not even for full Tech specialists. AT best even a specialized FO has up its sleeve is Namegid or Nafoie - and pretty much any other non-teching melee/ranged class in the game can output five to ten times the damage a FO can in the span of a single Namegid charge. I'm surprised to hear that you're having trouble with bosses as FI/HU - it's pretty much the third or fourth strongest option out there at this stage for bossing. It only gets worse with trying to take down a boss with Techs with a melee or hybrid TE, since you don't have full multipliers and will probably have PP issues. If you're struggling to take down bosses with FI/HU, you're going to absolutely hate TE, trust me.

I think you're confused on what a melee/hybrid TE is; it's not a viable class in the least, and more like a fun gimmick class with a one-trick pony and some synergy with other classes. I mean, if that's up your alley, by all means play it - and I do play TE/FI just for the fun of trying to juggle multiple gauges and stay up close. But it honestly sounds like you're looking for an actually viable class that can toggle between close and far range. If that's the case, I would recommend you try a generalist BR/HU build instead.

But if you're going to stick with it, Wand Gear is based off T-ATK but is multiplied by non-JA Striking Multipliers. It's never going to get really high in terms of damage at all though due to the fact that it can't be JAed and is pretty weak to start with, so most melee specialists try to boost their base Wand Damage instead. But that comes at the expense of tech damage - and again, it's really not much stronger than just swinging a sword around with no PAs, with none of the defensive/stepping options of Sword either.

[UnLucky]

What would determine to me if it's not much or not is, if some one could tell me how wand gear dmg is calculated but no one seems to know so...
I guess it never hurts to try
The explosion's damage formula is very similar to a regular melee attack. In that sense, your normal attack is basically your S-Atk and T-Atk stats combined.

However, the wand's normal attacks have built-in multipliers, just like the Sword. They can also be JA'd for extra damage (the Gear cannot get any JA bonus).

So for a single hit, the explosion will be weaker than the wand itself if your Atk stats are roughly the same.

Though as mentioned earlier, a separate explosion triggers per enemy struck- even in a single swing. Because of this, your damage actually goes up when attacking large groups all at once.

[qoxolg]

Why would you use wand gear on bosses?
That's the problem I'm facing
With FI/HU I have no options on bosses

If I could rely on my melee for bosses then who cares about techs?

What I'm going for is to have options for both mobs and bosses.

What would determine to me if it's not much or not is, if some one could tell me how wand gear dmg is calculated but no one seems to know so...
I guess it never hurts to try

Well, with Techer you simply can't get both.

If you focus on wand damage (TE/HU), you will do great at mobbing in SH (though it can get risky with enemies that have hyper armor during some of their attacks).

However, for bosses, you will need to rely on wand smacking as well, since your techs are simply subpar and you'll have some serious PP problems without FO. Thats were the whole problem starts, since the most damage you can do is maybe smacking the bosses weak point for maybe 6~7k damage per swing. In VH this wasn't much of a problem, but in SH many bosses don't give much room to deal wand smacks. Other classes can use PA's that have multipliers of 1000% or even higher to quickly deal high amounts of damage.

Basically as a melee focussed techer its a matter of patience to avoid the 1hko or 2hko attacks many bosses have, while dealing low damage in between the dodging. I usually lose my patience after like 5 minutes and die :wacko: I don't think the mere 35% extra damage will change that. I will probably die more because of all the fist pumping.


If you focus on techs by subbing FO, your wand smacking will suffer a lot, and you will be better of playing pure caster, and in that case you are better off playing FO/TE, FO/BR or FO/FI anyway, since you will at least do a lot better on bosses.


Anyway, FI/HU is pretty great on bosses. Fighter has some of the best quick damage PA's. if FI/HU gives you trouble, I would forget about techer. Don't get fooled by video's of over geared techers that fight VH bosses, that would die in seconds if it was any other class.