Techer Guide/Thread 2.0

[Zipzo]

There's more variety in builds now. I wouldn't say "do what you want" as in, "do literally anything and it'll be super awesome", but there's a point where you can make a good argument for using different builds, there's no one single way to build the trees.

Right now, I would say Te/Br > Te/Hu >= Te/Fi (Te/Hu and Te/Fi are pretty close, but I think Te/Hu has a bit of an edge overall). Te/Br has the best tech damage, excellent melee damage, and superb subclass weapons (katana for Combat Finish and Asagiri dashing, bows for Banish Arrow combos, which are pretty much the best boss killer out of anything Techer can do, only Te/Hu Holding Current can challenge it). Te/Hu has the best wand melee (combining strikes and Wand Gear), also has excellent subclass weapons, and some nifty utility skills like Massive Hunter and Automate Halfline, but falls behind on tech damage. Te/Fi is balanced, but with its competition, leans more toward using techs, as it has the best uncharged tech damage and the best off-element tech damage (Te/Br has the best tech damage only when targeting elemental weaknesses). Te/Fi also has the worst subclass weapons out of the three, to a point where I don't recommend using them (but thankfully its wand and tech usage is very good so this isn't a huge loss).

I don't recommend Te/Bo because its skill tree is quite poor for a subclass. It offers little damage (Elemental Stance and Shifta Air Attack Bonus are basically it, and wands have zero mobility in the air so SAAB is awful) and poor utility skills (Critical Field adds barely any damage, PP restoring skills are bad because Techer's PP consumption is low enough that Techer's own PP skills easily manage its costs, and healing skills are dumb when Resta and Megiverse cover that perfectly), which leaves subclass weapons as Te/Bo's main advantage. DBs and JBs are most useful for doing damage, which Te/Hu, Te/Fi, and Te/Br all have better methods for, so the subclass weapons are of limited usefulness.

As I recall, you specifically liked Te/Hu for wand melee. Te/Hu is still unparalleled in wand melee capabilities, so that should suit you perfectly well. EP3 changed up Massive Hunter from an unreliable skill that only sometimes provided super armor to always having super armor at all times, on top of the 25% damage reduction. Combined with Deband Cut and Deband Toughness, you're basically invincible. Automate Halfline can also be used to make it unnecessary to heal even when deliberately facetanking attacks. The usefulness of this is that it creates attack opportunities that otherwise would be non-existent, which increases DPS and versatility considerably. Massive Hunter lasts for 45s with a 45s cooldown afterwards, so it's pretty abusable.

Wired lances and partisans are also great weapons to use for Te/Hu, but I dunno if you'd be willing to try them out or not.

Wow, that was really super helpful my friend. I know I can trust your advice since you're a type like myself, always seeking the "best of" even in a situation where we're playing not bleeding edge damage classes.

It would appear that my main passion the Te/Hu remains a competitive choice, so it would seem that I will probably stick with it, and face-tanking things yolo-style and just not giving a care sounds pretty hilarious and fun. Better start updating my rainbow set...

[HeyItsTHK]

What would be the best Wired Lance to use with Techer? Trident Crusher being all class makes the simple choice for partisan but WL I'm curious about (I don't wanna craft a Glass to be Techer equippable).

[Sandmind]

By taking a quick look at TE's usable wired lance on the pso2 swiki, I saw three results.
Ghost Hat
Crater Nails
Bio Radle

[LonelyGaruga]

Best Techer equippable wired lances are Glorious Wing. Pretty much the Trident Crusher equivalent.

[Jonexe]

Best Techer equippable wired lances are Glorious Wing. Pretty much the Trident Crusher equivalent.

How does that all work out before you can get those items/are farming for them. Just suck it up and use your wand?

Also, I'm guessing the power of the PAs (namely Holding Current) outweighs the low S-Atk from having a split/T-Atk mag and lower base S-Atk in general?

[LonelyGaruga]

Yeah, suck it up. It's somewhat like getting a rainbow palette for Force, or wired lances and partisans for Br/Hu or Bo/Hu. It isn't strictly necessary, your main class stuff is what you'll be using most of the time, but it does enhance your performance abilities a lot and widens your options, which is always a good thing.

Pretty much yeah. It's not a huge loss of ATK, just a few %. Depending on your race, you need anywhere between 83-164 T-ATK to be able to equip Ares Wand, which is about 3-6% weaker than a pure S-ATK mag. If you don't want Ares Wand, but do want Mangus Grin, then subtract 30 T-ATK from that. If you don't want either, then you don't need any T-ATK at all. Personally, I go pure S-ATK on Te/Hu since it boosts the damage of all the equippable weapons. The loss of Ares Wand and Mangus Grin is kinda bad, but using wired lances and partisans more mitigates that. Not having either wand also helps my case, haha.

Really though, Te/Hu basically plays like Hunter, just with wands instead of swords. Particularly with partisans, most of their PAs are useful even with wand access. Got Speed Rain, Slide End, and Assault Buster for mobbing and Vol Graptor combos for bosses. Wired lances cover massive stationary target damage with Holding Current, and Kaiser Rise fills WL Gear while acting as a fast, decently powerful projectile that is worth using over techs due to the much higher striking multiplier Te/Hu has compared to its tech multiplier. Some techs are still worth using as projectiles, but Kaiser Rise is usually the best option.

[Zipzo]

Question about units.

Crafted XQ (PP)

-PP craft: +30 PP, +12% shooting resistance. 1008/924/924 defenses.
-Set bonus: +90 to all ATK stats.
-Highest ATK bonus. High defenses. Highest shooting resistance.
-0 HP bonus. No striking resistance.
-Requires 500 R-DEF to equip. Requirement can be reduced or changed with crafting items.
-Recommended for offensive purposes. Best offensive set.
-Can be found from boss drops in XQs. Trade 50 tier 2 XQ spellstones for a 2s XQ unit.
-Motif of default outfits.

Crafted XQ (HP)
-HP craft: +300 HP, +12 striking resistance. 1008/924/924 defenses.
-Set bonus: Same as above.
-Alternative to PP craft. Prioritizes HP over PP.
-Best strike defense, best strike resistance, best HP bonus.
-No other resistances, 0 PP.
-Requires 500 S-DEF to equip.
-Recommended for bulkier builds. Highest ATK.

What is "Crafted XQ" mean? I have crafted armor before but as I was aware this takes away its resistances which seems less than optimal. I'm using Primula right now (lol old school). I'm a melee focused Techer/Hunter, so it would seem I'm bound to get the HP version of this. Anything standing in my way? Can I craft any set of armor that I'd like in to this? Basically I'm asking for a short explanation of the crafting endeavors involved here.

[KazukiQZ]

^XQ 11* unit set has the set bonus of 90 all Atk. That's it.
By using the Special Crafting Recipe (HP), you can make each of the unit give +100Hp. So, you get total bonus of +90 all Atk and +300HP from just the unit set..

Each Special HP Crafting give 4% Melee Resist, while the PP one (Which give +10PP on each unit btw) give 4% Ranged Resist.

[Jonexe]

So the past couple days as I get higher in level, I'm noticing my techs are becoming less and less useful as a source of damage. Granted, I'm no where near cap, and my Fi subclass isn't close to filled out... but it feels like my techs are unable to keep up with my wand gear damage.

For example, my Ragrants (10) ticks for about as hard as a single wand gear; but the wand gear is far better and easier to get more hits out with (no charging, no dodging messing up the charge, etc). Additionally, I'm finding that I mostly use techs (like, say, Gifoie) to put up status effects to get Chase working... and that's about it. Zondeel + Wand Gear is without a doubt the most effective way to mob even as TE/FI. It's to the point that I only really use my techs (and thus activate PP Slayer) on bosses when it's unsafe to be close to them; it's just not really that effective to do otherwise.

Is this common? It has me wondering if I'm doing something wrong. My FI is only 30, so obviously I don't have a ton of points thrown into it... so is it just the lack of damage modifiers that come with time? Could it be a lack of crafted techs? Or maybe I'm using the wrong ones in the wrong situations. Any insight?

[LonelyGaruga]

It's pretty normal. Stuff like Ragrants is devastating when crafted for charge time reduction, enough that you can reasonably substitute the second (weakest) hit in a melee combo with it for increased DPS (assuming maxed Light Masteries of course), but when it comes to mobbing, wands are, by far, the best thing you can use, in terms of damage, since their damage grows exponentially instead of linearly like everything else. Techs are for covering what that can't manage, like range, higher DPS options, status effects, or uncharged techs with Elysion.

So no, you're not doing anything wrong. It's not that your techs are weak (crafting does help, but that's not the issue either), wands are just really good mobbing weapons.