any How to guides out there ?

[SS]Gamblor

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 1, 2004
Messages
1,293
how in the hell do u play a Ani ?

i made one a few days ago and i just can't get the hang of it ....

any1 got a good gide to help me ?
 

Sarumancer

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
May 15, 2004
Messages
122
How you play your animist is entirely dependant on Spec.

One thing to remember, each and every mushroom you drop will transfer 50% of its aggro to the caster, if you have a shroom field up, you will have more total aggro than any given shroom, mobs WILL come straight for your hide.

Shroom fields rarely work if youre solo, if you have a buffbot/powerbot you can do it to some extent, just be aware of the sheer aggro you will have.

Ensure you have your GT key set up (commonly F5) and that you can raise and lower the heightmap easily. Unlike Bow users and other casters, who gain extra range with height differences, animists are "punished" and have their casting range, allegedly 1000 units, cut down by height differences.

Arb is Bombers for ranged damage
Creep is broken
Verdant is for support and utilising your shrooms

Resist Vents cast only resist spells, they draw NO aggro by themselves, so you can cast the vent near an aggro mob (or cluster) and theyll all rush to attack it. This means you can either, saunter past jauntily, waving to the mobs (getting where you want to go), say perhaps the sentry room in corus so you can get down to the pit, or you can use this to pull mobs closer to your main shroom, or if youre feeling lucky, can use your aoe bomber or pbaoe bomber (off of the resist shroom). Bear in mind, the aoe bomber has travel time so it can be tricky to drop a large cluster smoothly (the target tends to die before they arrive, have to be quick to swap targets), and pbaoe bombing (creep line) will make the mobs hit the shroom harder and the resist shrooms dont have particularly large hp.

Common spells.

Lifetap- stops at level 45, nuff said.
Wisp Bomber - ranged attack, supposed to have a debuff component, doesnt work, never has, mythic say working as intended *sigh*
Tangler - this is your basic FnF (fire and forget) rooting shroom
Heart - This is your basic FnF dd shroom
Debuff - Insta con/str debuff on a 5sec re-use time, unsure on interrupt
Heal bomber - bomber with travel time that heals your pet
HoT bomber - bomber with travel time that puts a low HoT effect on your pet and anyone in a area around it (by low I mean like a value of 6)
Tangling bomber - bomber with travel time, single target root (baseline), can get an aoe version with 12 in creep.

Common Specs.

50 Arb
14 Creep
7 Verd

This is the "RvR" damage output spec, focusing on bombers for damage, as you can stack several bombers up during their travel time the rearloading of damage can be horrifying. If timed right you can concievably hit someone for over 1200hp of damage (bomber bomber debuff before they hit then lifetap as they hit).

48 Verd
24 Arb
6 creep

This is my current spec (I moved to it from the above), I found I was relying more on shrooms and lifetap than bombers in rvr (too slow to cast, too long a travel time and too much power wasted). Since you can throw the pbaoe bomber off anything you cast/control (shroom wise), you can put some nasty ambushes down, and if youre quick, combo punch your bombers (cast wisp on target, click wisp and drop the pbaoe on it as it travels). The 24 arb is there to stop variance on lifetap and give me access to some other ranged tricks. That much verd also gives me the best abs buffs and blade turn, very handy in the right situation.


With the new frontiers changes, bombers which already have stupid pathing issues get worse. Theyll get stuck inside (and outside) of keeps and be unable to get to targets. Arb gets crippled in that respect, youll end up relying on your lifetap and shrooms anyway. With verdant I can drop pbaoes off -any- shroom I have, be it an abs buff shroom, my main pet, a tangler, a resist shroom, doesnt matter, I can hit them with a pbaoe bomber and their next "action" will cast it. (HINT - this means harmless shrooms arent always harmless).

For Xping purposes.

For Arboreal.

Main pets effect is a "Lunge & spit" movement with a red mist appearing above the target

Set up your main pet within 1k range of the mobs you want to pull, put the damage shield on it and sit down to med up to full power.

Command your pet to pull, it dds, mob comes in and hits shroom (takes damage on shield), aggro engaged. Watch pets health and mobs health, when the mobs down to about 80% health you can throw your arb bombers at it. Note that the wisp says it debuffs, it doesnt, not even in rvr, its also the lowest bomber (all specs have access to), use your spirit of whatever bomber and drop the mob, or, use lifetap. Rinse, repeat.

Verdant

Main pets effect is a blue ripple effect around the shroom (looks like cleric drive evil, the original version), lunge & spit, then what looks to be an proc going off, dde explosion and blue inverse light.

Verd, is slightly trickier, its the "support" spec. You have the blade turn bomber, the abs buff bomber, the abs buff shroom and the pbaoe bomber. Your main pet is a "tank" shroom which does a little damage and taunts the mob onto it. You can then either hit it with the pbaoe bomber, which the shroom casts on its next action, or engage it much like arb. To help the shroom along, I cast the shroom, the damage shield, the abs buff (9% abs on 10 minute cycle) and a blade turn on it, rest up, then have the pet pull. Then either pbaoe bomber, or lifetap or wisp (or wisp wisp debuff lt lt). Verdant is more suited to killing multiple mobs at once (the pbaoe bomber), than arb is, but it can be a trick to find a spawn with fast popping mobs in a decent cluster.

I used to go up to the cliffs of moher and farm cliff dwellers, not huge xp but theres so many of them popping so quick you can maintain a high pull rate. However Id put a big line of fnfs down and the pull could get pretty hairy when solo (you learn to run a lot as an animist). With Verd, I can farm for quite some time using pbaoe bomber (and healing the main shroom). Because the PET is casting the spell, its generating all the aggro onto itself, unlike aoe bombers in arb where all the aggro comes right back on you.

Now for why I said ensure your vertical gt controls are set, its possible with practice to put mushrooms in annoying places. For example on top of rooftops (useful on camlan I imagine), on top of keep walls by climb points, in through keep arrow slits, on top of the DF steps. Bascially if you think in three dimensions, you can flush stealthers out of hidey holes, harass people, cut off escape routes and general make a pest of yourself.

If youre on pryd/Hib, do feel free to chat to the animist population, Jabberwocky, Aroac, Peat, Awarkle, Kinny, myself, Gatt, Frubly, most of us are happy enough to give you an idea. Please do NOT just /send NICK "How do I spec to be uber", that just makes us cranky. Animist is a very tricky class to play properly, all kinds of bugs, issues and problems plague it, few make it to level 50 and few of those keep at it after rvring for a while.
 

[SS]Gamblor

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 1, 2004
Messages
1,293
Sarumancer said:
How you play your animist is entirely dependant on Spec.


thanks d00d , it has cleared up my questions a bit , i'll prob giving playing my n00b again at the weekend =)
:m00: :m00:
 

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