Allods Online Forum

Hi guys! I go by a few names. Preposterous, Dropthebass, that freakin’ summy who’s always running away… Anyways, I’m in the League guild WarSong (Tensess), and I’m in love with the Summoner class. My original character was a paladin named Preposterous, but this patch I’ve fallen head over heals in love with the Summoner, and I now play that as my main (that’s Dropthebass). Anyways, on with the guide!

By the way, this guide is MASSIVE!!! You can read the whole thing if you want, but each different section will be under a different heading, so you can just skip to the exact bit you’re after. The sections are:


1. About Me
- Sections of this guide
- How I Play


2. Basics of the Summoner Class
- Races/Racial Abilities
- Pets
- The Blood Bank
- DoT Spells

3. The New Patch
- The New Stat System


4. Talents and Ruby descriptions
- Talents
- Rubies
- Acid Bolt Ruby Grid
- Putrefy Ruby Grid
- Vampirism Ruby Grid


5. How to make your own build
- PvE Acid DPS
- PvE Full Healer
- General Mass PvP Build


6. My builds (for the lazy among you)
- My PvE AoE Acid DPS Build
- My PvE Single-Target Acid/Vamp DPS Build with HoD
- My PvE Full Healer Build
- My PvP Full Healer Build
- My Mass PvP (WH/DF) Build
- My 1v1 vs Melee PvP Build



I love playing the summoner because it’s so incredibly versatile. One moment you could be top DPS in your party. The next you could be the healer. Fast forward a half hour and you could be in Witches Hollow or Deserted Farm and tearing it up! (until that pesky bastard on their cannon starts shooting at you. And even then, you can ghostly cover for a few seconds, which is usually enough to get outta there. But I digress ) Although, I’ll be honest, I didn’t pick the summoner class because I knew all that in advance. I first played the Summoner because I’m incredibly lazy, and the summoner suits me perfectly. DoTs (damage over time spells) and your pet does all the work! Plus I’ve always liked magic users in games, and the fact that the Summoner is kind of like a mage, but with a slightly darker background, I think is awesome. Death magic, blood-sucking spells, pets to hit stuff for you… What’s not to love!?

Basics of the Summoner Class


Races/Racial Abilities


Our wonderful class comes in 3 different varieties. For League summoners, you are pretty much stuck with an Elf Demonologist. For summoners on the Empire side, you can choose between a Xadaganian Defiler or an Arisen Savant. Each race has a different racial ability, which is useful in different situations:

For the League, we have:

Elf Demonologist



Elves have Demonic Curse, which applies a weak DoT effect on the target, and heals you and your pet for a small amount. I find this is most effective at lower levels. Once you hit about level 30, this racial ability outlives it’s usefulness for me.


And for the Empire, we have:

Arisen Savant



Arisen have Dark Touch, which is an instant full heal for your pet. This for me is really useful in PvP, as a last-second life saver for your pet. Especially in a lurker-based build, the lurker is super squish and people like to kill it. This ability can help it to stay alive a little longer.

Xadaganian Defiler



Xadaganians have the Art of Reanimation ability, which buffs your pet’s Vigor, and decreases the CD of your pet’s abilities. For me, this is the most useful racial ability. It has a noticeable increase in DPS in a DPS build, and allows you to generate blood faster, which is a life saver in PvP and as a healer.

It is worth noting that there is a certain special item available from the Boutique that allows you access to all of the racial abilities available to other races. For example, I’m an Elf, but I love using Dark Touch and Art of Reanimation.


Pets

The Summoner is a fairly unique class for three reasons. Reason the first: Pets. The Summoner has 3 different pets to choose between, and they’re all awesome at something different.

Hellion:



This will be the first pet most budding Summoners will have, and it’ll be your faithful companion while you level up. He’s your own personal tank, he’ll keep the mobs away from you so you can wail on them from a distance, he does nice damage on the mobs, and he’ll disarm them and knock them down for you. He’s the pet of choice for levelling up, and he’s also quite useful in 1v1 PVP against a melee class, mostly because he can disarm your opponents and leave them defenceless for you to take advantage of.

Fiend/Cadaver:



This little acid-spewing terror will be your pet of choice for an acid-based DPS build. He hits hard, and you can choose between single target and a little more damage, or AoE (area of effect - multi-target) damage, which has a slightly longer cooldown between attacks, but hits all enemies in a certain area. The Cadaver is an upgraded version of the Fiend.

Lurker:



Lucky last, the lurker is a floating spectre that doesn’t hit very hard. BUT the lurker will silence enemies for you (make it impossible for them to cast spells for a few seconds) and generate 2 blood drops with each attack. It also has the added advantage of going invisible after 10 seconds out of combat, which is awesome in PvP. This is the pet of choice for a Full Healer build, and for a classic vamp PVP build, mostly because all your heals bar 1 require drops of blood to use. And speaking of drops of blood, we move on to the second unique thing about the Summoner…


The Blood Bank

Many of our spells require a resource called drops of blood to cast, with different spells requiring different amounts of blood to cast. The blood bank can be the biggest headache for a new summoner to manage, especially in PvP or while healing. Even a maxed out blood bank, with all the rubies to expand it as much as possible can disappear in 2 seconds flat if you need to throw a lot of heals at someone. You can generate drops of blood a few different ways. You can:

• Use the Lurker pet, which will generate 2 drops of blood for your blood bank each time it attacks.
  
• Use the Vampirism/Life Tap spell, which generates 4-5 blood drops with each use, depending on the rubies you’ve taken.
  
• The Dark Pact spell, which passively generates some blood out of combat, and grants 5 drops of blood in exchange for 50/30/15% of your total health bar. Be careful though, because if you have 49% health and you use rank 1 of this spell, you will die and be laughed at.
  
• Cast Wandering Fever on an enemy, which has up to a 25% chance at r3 to generate an additional drop of blood every few seconds.
  
• Take the Blood Tap rubies, which generates 1/2/3 blood drops each time you kill an enemy, as well as regenerating 5/10/15% of your mana. It’s not much use in long boss fights, but it’s a life saver in an astral run, for instance. And finally, the last unique aspect of the Summoner class…

DoT spells

Strictly speaking, these are not unique to the summoner class. Just about every class has a DoT of their own. A healer’s Cleansing Flame, or a paladin’s Condemnation, for example. What is unique to the summoner is that DoTs make up a huge amount of the damage we can inflict on an enemy. Or, with a big group of enemies, we can throw our DoTs on all of them and inflict a huge amount of damage on all of them. Also, a cool thing about the way that dots work is that they don’t recalculate their damage for each individual tick, they just use what your stats were when you first casted them. So, if you buff yourself up before you cast your DoTs at the beginning of a fight (trinket, potions, reinc skills etc), they’ll hit like a speeding truck for the rest of the fight, so long as you keep renewing them. So, given the choice between casting a big hit or renewing a DoT that’s about to fade, always renew the DoT.

The New Patch


The last patch brought a huge amount of changes to the game as a whole. I’m going to avoid the big one for now, the stat system, and talk about that later, in more detail. But our class got a few small, class-specific changes that I’ll talk about here.

• The Withering Touch rubies no longer procs Putrefy or Decomposition. However, the chances of Neurotoxin proccing Decomposition were changed to 33/66/100%.
  
• Donor Virus now increases Bloodlust by 5/10/15
  
• Urgent Protection now prevents a single dispel from entirely removing all stacks of Blood Aegis, in addition to its old effect. It now only allows 7/5/3 stacks to be removed.
  
• Last Service now works correctly.
  
• Poisoned Blood now increases critical strike chance by 7/14/21%
  
• The icon for Ghostly Cover has been changed.
  
• Frightful Presence now reduces incoming critical strike damage by 5/10/15%
  
• The Calculating Mind rubies now increases Proficiency
  
• Endless Blood now increases the critical strike chance by 3/6/9%
  
• Cold Blood now increases Determination by 3/6/9%
• The icon for Ghostly Cover has changed slightly
  

The New Stat System


Ok, the big one. The new stat system. With patch 5.0, the single biggest change to the gameplay of Allods Online was the total redesign of the stat system. Gone are the old stats of strength, intelligence, conviction and everything else. In their place, there are 12 new stats, almost universal across all classes. The only exception to this rule is the Faith stat, which remains unchanged from previous patches. There are two types of stats in the new system: Primary stats and secondary stats. Primary stats are on all pieces of gear and glyphs, and are a very straightforward and linear modifier of one of two things. The Two primary stats are:

• Vigor: This stat is a modifier of your attack power. How much damage and healing your spells inflict are as a direct result of your Vigor.
  
• Stamina: This stat is a modifier of your health points. The more stamina you have, the more health you have.
  

Secondary stats behave slightly differently to Primary stats. Whereas Primary stats are all linear, and modify very basic elements of combat, Secondary stats can be more difficult to grasp, and do different things. It is up to you to properly balance your secondary stats, according to your personal playstyle. For those having trouble with the new stats however, I will include a rough guide as to what your stats should be for each build that I show you. The secondary stats and their functions are as follows:

• Proficiency: Similar to Vigor, this stat is a basic and linear modifier of your attack power.
  
• Vitality: Similar to Stamina, this stat is a basic and linear modifier of your health points.
  
• Determination: Under your character portrait and your health bar, there is a determination indicator. When you take damage in combat, you build up determination based on the damage you take, and may be anywhere between 0 (not taking damage at all) to 100 (you’re the tank). The Determination stat uses this number and applies a modifier to your damage based on it. The higher your determination, i.e. the more consistently you are taking damage, the more damage you will deal. At higher levels of determination (constantly at 50-100), this stat is more effective than Proficiency at increasing your damage.
  
• Willpower: Works similarly to Willpower in the old system, in that it is basically a resistor to crowd control spells. For every second you remain under a cc, you build up a resistance, and when that resistance reaches 100, you gain immunity to control effects for a short period of time. The higher your willpower is, the faster you will reach 100 resistance, and the longer you will be immune to ccs.
  
• Brutality: Another modifier of your damage. However, brutality is most effective when your target’s health is low. The lower their health, the more damage you do. This is particularly effective against bosses who enrage at low health. Examples of this are bosses like the Great Dragon in the Dead City, and Nihil in Tep’s Pyramid. This also works with healing, with your heals being more effective at lower levels.
  
• Bloodlust: This stat is amazing. <3 Heals you for a small amount for every point of damage you inflict, or heals you do. Heals you for more the higher this stat is. Right now this stat doesn't do heaps, but as the gear levels go up, it will begin to have a bigger effect. It's especially useful when doing solo farming in places like the Wild Shore.
  
• Anger: This stat works similarly to Rage in the old stat system. It applies would complexity. The way would complexity is applied has changed, however. It is no longer applied with each individual hit, and cured when the target is healed to full. It is now applied over time spent in combat, taking damage, and it much more difficult to heal through. The higher your anger, the faster would complexity is applied.
  
• Tenacity: The antidote to anger. Tenacity slows the onset of wound complexity, with higher levels of tenacity making would complexity take much longer to apply.
  
• Luck: Luck works the same as it did in the old stat system: It gives you a chance to inflict a critical hit on your target, which doubles your damage or heals. What has changed is that your luck value will be much much lower than it used to be. No gear carries luck. The only way to increase it is with rubies, potions, allocating stat points to it, or through relics.
  
• Faith: This stat has not changed at all since the last patch. It is a modifier of your mana points, and as such is only used by casters. It is only carried by weapons, with 2 handed weapons having higher faith values than 1 handed weapons.

Talents and Ruby Descriptions

Talents

I’m going to skip the talents that summon pets, because I’ve already gone through all the pets and I told you I was lazy. XD

• Acid Bolt: Your basic bread and butter attack in a dps build. Spam this while your DoTs are ticking away on your target.
• / Putrefy/Decomposition: Your biggest and best DoT. Keep this active at all times on your target(s) in a dps build.
• / Vampirism/Life Tap: This spell got nerfed a few patches ago. It used to be our primary way of getting blood. Then they extended the cooldown to up to 30 seconds, and totally changed the way this spell is used. It’s now a nice extra damage boost in a pvp build, and a few extra drops of blood, but it’s not the essential can’t-leave-home-without-it spell it used to be.
• / Blood Injection/Blood Shot: Your powerful instant heal in a FH build. Keep it precast because it’s got a longish cast time. Costs 1 blood drop.
• Blood Aegis: Our armour. We’re cloth wearers, so we’re super squishy. But a full 10 stacks of Blood Aegis can boost our armour to even more than plate armour. Each time we get hit it takes away a stack though, so make sure you recast it before it runs out! Costs 3 blood drops.
• Fear: Our awesome and iconic cc (crowd control) spell, it’s cooldown can be reduced to 21 seconds with rubies. It’s great for getting those pesky mobs off of you when you really need it, plus it’s good for getting rid of the enemy healer in PVP.
• Dark Pact: Passively generates some blood out of combat, and gives you 5 blood drops in exchange for some of your health.
• Plague of Mending: Our AoE HoT (heal over time), it spreads to nearby party members like an infectious plague of loooooove. Seriously though, this spell is awesome in a tight spot where everyone is taking damage. Costs 3 blood drops.
• Dark Renewal: Our bread and butter HoT spell, restores a small amount of health every 2 seconds. Good to keep on people who keep taking small amounts of damage, or to keep on the tank as just that little bit extra in a full healer build.
• Volatile Infection: Our only AoE damage spell. But it is AMAZING. It works similarly to Plague of Mending. You cast it on one enemy, and it spreads to all the nearby enemies. Once it’s cast, it has an 8 second countdown before it explodes and deals damage to the target it was cast on, and up to 3 targets nearby. So, if you cast it on a group of 4 enemies, and it all explodes on them at the same time, each mob will take the x amount of damage from it’s own spell, plus 3x from the other mobs around him, dealing 4x the amount of damage.
• Reanimation: Your single target “oh crap” healing spell. No cast time, no cooldown, and heals based on the amount of blood it consumes, the more the better. Consumes up to 3 drops of blood.
• Wandering Fever: Applies a 1m 30s spell on an enemy, that has a 15/20/25% chance to giving the summoner a drop of blood every 2 seconds. At the end of the timer it explodes, dealing a hefty chunk of damage to the target. Consumes a lot of mana though, and can only be cast on 1 enemy. I find it best to save this for bosses.
• Aura of Astral Power: Our party buff. It applies a buff to the party you’re in that increases magic damage by 5/10/15%, but decreases your healing by 50%. It’s a must have in a dps build, but don’t try it in a healing build unless you like a challenge.
• Rise From the Dead: Our second life. When we’re killed, we rise again as an unkillable zombie with incredible powers! Not really. But it bubbles us for 6 seconds, stuns us for 3 seconds at rank 3, and has a cooldown of 5 minutes at r3. A must have in any build. I told you how squishy we are, right?

And our dragon tear spells:

• Immunodeficiency: Immediately clears all remaining DoTs on your target, and deals the remaining damage in one big hit, including the final damage from Wandering fevor, although not the DoT it gets from rubies. It’s also fantastic for a quick stun, as it inflicts the final stun from the Neurotoxin ruby, which I’ll talk more about in the ruby section. Higher ranks and better dragon tears decrease the cooldown.
• Dark Vigor: Buffs your pet for a few seconds and grants them an extra ability. It gives your hellion a stun ability, gives your lurker a small AoE heal, and makes your cadaver apply a buff to its target that increases acid damage done to the target for the next 3 attacks. Higher ranks decrease the cooldown, and better dragon tears increase the duration of the effect.

Rubies

Acid Bolt Ruby Grid

• Blood Tap: Regenerates 1/2/3 blood drops and 5/10/15% of your total mana with every kill you get. Useful in an AoE astral dps build, not so much in anything else as you won’t be getting enough kills to make it worthwhile.
• Desecration: Reduces the mana cost of Wandering Fevor, PoM (Plague of Mending), VI (Volatile Infection) and Reanimation by 10/20/30%. Useful in most builds.
• Summoning Mastery: Passively boosts healing done to your pet my 10/20/30% and allows instant summoning of your pet with a 30m/2m/20s cooldown. I’ve had some debate about this ruby, which I’ll explain in the section about the builds.
• Accelerated Metabolism: Turns WF (Wandering Fevor) into a DoT. It’s not super high damage, but every little bit helps in a dps build.
• Concentrated Acid: Increases acid damage done by you and your minion by 5/10/15%. In a dps build, if you don’t take this ruby, you obviously didn’t read this guide.
• Last Rites: Stuns and enemy who kills your pet and inflicts a small DoT on them. Not really useful IMO. There’s better things you can spend your rubies on.
• Shadowy Reach: Increases the range of Acid Bolt, Vampirism/Life Tap, Blood Injection/Shot and Corrosive Acid and, more importantly, turns your Unstable Antidote skill into a Purify skill as a FH.
• Corrosive Acid: A good dps booster in a boss fight. Applies 20 stacks of a buff to the target, and each subsequent acid attack removes 1 stack and inflicts some damage. The attacks don’t have to be yours however; if there are 2 or 3 dps summoners in a group or a raid, the buff will be gone very quickly, and your dps will jump very quickly for a short period of time.
• Darkweaver: Reduces cooldown of Vamp/Life Tap by 15/20/45% each time you cast acid bolt. Useful in the single-target boss dps build I’ll show you later.
• Massacre: Reduces cast time and mana cost of acid bolt. No brainer, take for an acid dps build.
• Acid Poison: Each time you cast acid bolt on a target, applies one stack of an effect to the target increasing acid damage by 2% each stack, up to six stacks. Ideally, in a small group, you should spread your usage of acid bolt around to all the mobs so they all take more damage from your dots. But I’m lazy, I usually just focus one mob and apply 6 stacks, then move to the next mob if I can be bothered.
• Burning Acid: Increases the critical strike chance of Acid Bolt, Corrosive Acid, and your Fiend/Cadaver by 6/12/18%. Just take it in a dps build, you know the drill.
• Calculating Mind: Increases Proficiency by 3/6/9%. The tooltip says perception instead of proficiency, but that’s just left over from last patch. Take these rubies in all of your builds.

Putrefy Ruby Grid

• Neurotoxin: Applies a dot to the target that each tick applies another stack of the effect, and once the dot reaches 8 stacks it explodes and stuns the target. AWESOME for acid builds. Combined with the next ruby it’s my favourite spell, in every build, including my FH build.
• Withering Touch: Gives Neurotoxin a 33/66/100% chance to apply the Putrefy/Decomposition DoT with each tick. These rubies mean I can cast Neuro on every mob, and move on to the next one without having to worry about casting another spell as well. In most builds, I don’t even have Decomposition on my hotbar, because Neuro will always apply Decomp to the target, and it will never run out.
• Necropotency: Every time Putrefy or Decomp ticks on a target, gives a 16/32/50% chance to apply a stack of an effect on you that reduces the cast time of Acid Bolt, Vampirism/Life Tap, Blood Injection/Shot or Dark Renewal by 20% per stack. It stacks up to 5 stacks, which means the spells are cast instantly. It is also a must in any build.
• Blood Circulation: Increases healing of Blood Injection/Shot and Reanimation by up to 12%. It’s a must in a heal build.
• Plaguebringer: Increases healing of Dark Renewal by 10/20/30%. Awesome in a heal build.
• Poisoned Blood: Increases the critical strike chance of Neuro and Pturefy/Decomp by 7/14/21%, which is slightly different from the ingame tooltip for this ruby. Awesome in a dps build.
• Panic Monger: Decreases the cooldown of Fear, and increases the range. It’s very useful in a PvP build, but not so much in other builds.
• Virulence: Increases the duration of Putrefy/Decomp, PoM, and Dark Renewal by 10/20/30%. I’m still not sure about this ruby. It’s useful as a manasaver in a FH build, or in a PvP build where you might not be able to reapply DoTs as often. But in a dps build, Decomp will be being constantly renewed by Neuro, so it’s not really worth it in my opinion.
• Empowered Infections: Increases the damage/healing done by all of your DoTs/HoTs by 5/10/15%. You have no choice, take these rubies in every build you make. No ifs, ands or buts.
• Debilitating Plague: Our long-term cc. Uses up all of our blood but takes one target out of the fight for a long period of time. Useful in dps builds, in harder astral sectors where there may be one mob that’s giving you a hard time.
• Delayed Healing: Causes Blood Injection/Shot to trigger a small HoT on the target for 5 seconds after it is cast. It’s a little bit useful, and every little bit helps, but don’t take it unless you have extra rubies, there’s other stuff that’s much more important.
• Frightful Presence: Reduces the CD (cooldown) of Rise From the Dead by 5/10/15%. The ruby description also says it increases endurance by 10/20/30%. What it actually does is reduce critical strike damage by 5/10/15%.
• Toxic Weakness: Neurotoxin and Putrefy/Decomp ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to apply an effect that increases the damage of your next Howl of Death, Vampirism/Life Tap by 50%. The ingame description says VI and Vamp/Life Tap, however this is wrong. Which is depressing cos that would be awesome. Allods devs, I hope you’re listening to this.
• Advanced Genetics: Decreases the CD duration of PoM by 10/20/30%. If you ever intend to be healing in your build, you need this. Frankly, it is a ridiculously OP HoT with these rubies. (Devs, you don’t have to read that bit )

Vampirism Ruby Grid

• Dark Gift: Increases your Stamina and Faith by 3/6/9% and your pet’s stamina by 5/10/15%. Nice for any build if you have the extra rubies, but don’t compromise other stuff to get them.
• Cold Blood: Increases your Determination by 3/6/9%. Says Wisdom though. This ruby is only really useful in a PvP build. In a PvE build and a heal build, you’re too squishy to be being hit a lot, so determination doesn’t really matter that much. In PvP, you’re gonna get focused hard, so a little extra is never a bad thing.
• Summon Soul: Our resurrection spell. A must have in a FH build, can probably live without it in other builds.
• Reservoir of Blood: Each ruby increases the size of your blood bank by 2 drops. Absolutely vital as a full healer, kind of important in PvP, not at all useful in PvE dps.
• Healing Shield: Each time you receive a blood drop, it have a 33/66/100% chance to restore a stack of your blood aegis. Combined with Urgent protection, and your shield should never go completely down. Mostly used for PvP, you won’t need it as much for PvE.
• Dark Leech: Reduces the cast time and mana cost of Vamp/Life Tap by 11/22/33%. Most useful in PvP.
• Howl of Death: This is our one big spell that doesn’t rely on all of our dots being on the target to explode. Does a big chunk of damage, slows the target, and does 50% extra damage if toxic weakness is on the target. Amazing for PvP, less useful in PvE dps as it costs 6 drops of blood.
• Call of the Grave: Increases the effect of HoD (Howl of Death) by 4/8/12% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4/6 seconds. Again, mostly useful in a PvP build.
• Eternal Hunger: Applies a small HoT to any ally standing near a VI explosion. In my experience, not super useful, as it doesn’t heal for a lot and in a FH build you’re not using VI as much as it doesn’t proc Putrefy/Decomp anymore. Maybe for PvP, but there are better things to spend your rubies on.
• Insidious Touch: Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 3/6/9%. A must for a FH build, possibly useful for PvP depending on your playstyle.
• Blood Flow: Increases the chance for Vamp/Life Tap to generate an extra drop of blood by 33/66/100%, and increases the chance for WF by 3/6/9%. Again, useful in PvP, not really in any other build.
• Endless Blood: Increases the critical strike chance of Vamp/Life Tap, HoD, Blood Injection/Shot and Reanimation by 3/6/9%. A must for a FH build or for PvP.
• Endless Thirst: Increases the damage of your VI and Vamp/Life Tap by 4/8/12%. A must for PvP, useful to take in a PvE dps build but there is no convenient path to take to take them without wasting a ruby on an empty space.
• Reanimator: Gaining or using blood drops reduces the CD of Vamp/Life Tap by .3/.6/.9 seconds. However, this ruby also completely disables acid spells like Acid Bolt, so definitely do not take these rubies in an acid dps build. It’s useful for PvP though.
• Urgent Protection: This ruby is a lifesaver. Prevents stacks of Blood Aegis from being removed more than once every .3/.6/.9 seconds. Also prevents enemies from being able to completely dispel it in one hit, each attempt to dispel Aegis instead removes 7/5/3 stacks of the total effect.

How to make your own build

Ok, here’s the good stuff. This is about the builds. I will talk you through several different kinds of builds, all for different purposes and for different situations. I’ll show you how to build a summoner for different purposes, and I’ll show you what I think are good skeleton builds for an PvE Acid DPS build, a Full Healer PvE build, and a general mass PvP build. These builds will have unused talent points and rubies, for you to spend wherever you most see fit. I’ll include a basic guide showing you the rotations that I personally would use. And finally, for all you lazy people out there, I’ll include complete copies of my own builds to borrow. But I believe that it is far better to build your own builds for the way you play. Nobody’s better at being you than you! XD


PvE Acid DPS

This build is largely about doing as much damage as you possibly can, without spending too many talent points or rubies on survivability. We do have a tank, remember? For multiple targets, the most widely accepted way to do this is the pure acid build. Acid DoTs, acid pet, acid bolt, acid damage rubies, with a hefty dose of VI, which I firmly believe is one of the best AoE attacks in the game. You should always have VI precast in any DPS build, and this one is no exception.

Here is a skeleton PvE Acid DPS build:




How to use:

Multiple targets:

• Have your pet set to AoE, and set its behaviour to aggressive, or be prepared to manually have it attack a new mob each time the mob it’s on dies.
• Cast VI on a mob in the middle of the group, so it spreads to all of them.
• Cast Neurotoxin on every mob. The Withering Touch rubies will proc Decomposition on all of the mobs, and it’s one less thing to cast, so it will take half the time to get all of the mobs
• Pick a mob that will be alive for the longest, and cast Wandering Fever on him
• Pick a target that does the most damage, and cast Acid Bolt over and over again.
• Cast Corrosive Acid on the mob and have your pet focus on him.
• Renew Neurotoxin on all of the mobs when it fades.
• Recast VI when all of the stacks disappear.
• If a single mob starts to attack you, fear it away.
• If a group starts to attack you, run away using ghostly cover.
• Repeat until all of the mobs are dead.
  

Single target:

• Have your pet set to single target, and set it to attack the mob. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on aggressive for single target.
• Cast Wandering Fever, Neurotoxin and Decomposition on the mob, in that order.
• Cast Corrosive Acid on the mob.
• Spam Acid Bolt on the mob as fast as you can.
• Renew Neurotoxin when it fades, and Wandering Fever if the fight lasts that long.
• Continue to cast Acid Bolt, renew DoTs and Corrosive Acid when it comes off CD.
• Win.

With this build you should balance your stats as follows: your Proficiency and Brutality should be roughly equal, and your Bloodlust should be about a third of this value. The other stats aren’t super important for us in this build.

PvE Full Healer

With this build, you can cast heals as good as any healer, and keep your party alive. This is the role I personally enjoy playing the most. To know that I am keeping my party alive, and that I’m the reason we stay alive all the way to the end of the allod, is a beautiful feeling for me. But in order to do that, you need to know how to use this build.

Here is a skeleton PvE Full Healer Build:



How to use:

In this build, you have 4 main heals.

• Dark Renewal
• Blood Shot
• Plague of Mending
• Reanimation
  

And these 4 heals have different purposes. I’ve explained what all of the spells do in the Talents section of this guide, so I won’t rehash that here. What I will do is explain how to use these heals.

• Dark Renewal: This is your main HoT, and with the right rubies it can heal for quite a bit. You’ll want to keep this cast on the tank at all times, and any other target who seems to take a bit of damage. If possible, you’ll even want to have this cast on the tank before the fight starts.
• Blood Shot: This will be your main big heal. You should keep it precast at all times, to the point where, if you’ve already used it in a fight and you’re not needing to cast any heals at that exact second, you should deselect your target and precast this spell again, ready for its next use. Save this heal for when time is short, and you need to breathe a lot of life back into a member of your party.
• Plague of Mending: This is our only real AoE heal. It has a long cooldown; even with the Advanced Genetics rubies it's still 28 seconds on every target it touches. Each tick of the HoT heals for quite a lot though, and so it can be effective on a single target that’s taking a lot of damage. Be careful when using it this way however. It is always better to use Blood Shot and Reanimation on a single target before you use PoM.
• Reanimation: As stated in the talent section of this guide, this is our single target “oh crap” heal. With no cast time and no cooldown, this heal is a godsend when you need heals and you need them now. It’s healing rate varies with the amount of blood it consumes, however, and as such it is best to use Blood Shot first, as Blood Shot is more consistent with the amount of health it restores. It also consumes more blood than Blood Shot, up to three drops.

Also, it is wise to keep your lurker on aggressive during a fight, to jump from enemy to enemy gathering blood for you while you focus on healing. Also, you’ll want to cast Wandering Fever on the mob you think will be alive the longest, just for a bit of passive blood regeneration.

With these 4 heals, you can keep any party alive through the worst boss fights. But, before you go running off to solo heal parties looking for legendary refractors, or the hardest astral sectors, be warned that healing is hard. I strongly recommend that you practice your healing on easier fights before you jump into the harder stuff. Healing is much more instinct-based than dps, and you can’t rely on a rotation. Take some time and learn how to heal as a summoner. Feel free to send me a mail, or a whisper in game or on the forums if you have any questions.

With this build, you should have a little more Brutality than Proficiency, so your heals are more effective when your party is at lower health and need them the most. Again, some Bloodlust is useful, but not too much.

General mass PvP Build

In my experience, a PvP build is what summoners disagree most on. There are a dozen different kinds of PvP build, and they are all good for different situations and playstyles. But, this is a build competition, so I’m gonna give you a PvP build that I like to use for mass PvP situations, like Witches Hollow and Deserted Farm. It’s a vamp build with lots of heals, which are incredibly useful in PvP because you will get focused down hard.

Here is a skeleton Vamp-based PvP build:




How to use:

One of the great strengths of this build is that, for the most part, you can keep moving as much as possible. As a summoner, you are incredibly squishy, and like I said, you will be focused because of your CC abilities, AoE dps and heals. You need to keep moving, and never let them get close to you, especially classes like warriors and physical paladins who can cut you down quicker than anything. Fear and Ghostly Cover are your friends here. Fear away any warrior who gets too close, and ghostly cover the **** out of there and behind something where they won’t have line of sight. Don’t feel bad for running away: like I said, we’re incredibly squishy. We’re not meant to be on the front lines, and if we get caught in the middle of a fight, we are in serious trouble.

Rotations are hard to come up with for PvP, so instead I’ll just give you a few basic guidelines.

• Keep running around the edges - never ever run into the middle of a battle unless both your Martyr’s Salvation skill and Ghostly Cover are off cooldown.
• Always have VI precast, to fire off into a group, or a warrior who’s running around who will spread it to everyone.
• Micromanage your lurker. Pick the individual targets you want it to be attacking. Because it has a silence effect as well as drawing blood, you want that target to be a caster class as often as you can. I find healers and mages make the best targets. Be ready to heal him and put him on passive if he starts taking lots of damage, to get him out of the fray.
• Keep yourself healed. Always have DR ticking away on yourself, even if you’re not taking damage right then and there. At any moment someone could charge you and chain-cc you, and that little bit of healing could keep you alive long enough to get off a fear, or a ghostly cover, or a bigger heal.
• Cast Howl of Death when you have blood for it.
• Cast Life Tap whenever it’s off cooldown and your blood bank is not full. This spell is best to cast after using Howl of death so as to not waste any potential blood drops.
  

For this build, sacrifice a little Proficiency for Determination. You’re gonna be taking more hits than in PvE, so that little bit of Determination will start to increase your damage more than the Proficiency did. Be careful though, too high and you won’t do enough damage. Remember, we can’t take too many hits. Vitality and Bloodlust are both incredibly important in PvP, and Bloodlust especially will only get more important as our gear levels go up.

My builds (for the lazy among you)

And, for all you lazy people out there, these are the exact builds I use, as well as a brief explanation on how I use them and why I took certain rubies that may be up for debate. Keep in mind though that these are my builds, and they’re not gonna perfectly fit everyone’s playstyle. You’ll do much better with a build you make, either from scratch or using one of the skeleton builds posted above. I also have a few extra rubies and talent points, from scrolls, Greatness, and World Mystery quests like completing Tep’s Pyramid.

My PvE AoE Acid DPS Build:




This is my standard astral DPS build at the moment. It’s awesome for multi-target pulls, although the DPS can be a little lacking on single target bosses compared to the next build I’m going to show you. The rotations for this build are basically the same as the skeleton build I showed you above, except for a single target, I include Dark Vigor, The Xadaganian racial ability Art of Reanimation, and I manually pop my trinket (legendary wizard’s trinket), in that order, before I cast Corrosive Acid, to get as much DPS as I possibly can.

My PvE Single-Target Acid/Vamp DPS Build with HoD:




This build is rubbish in an AoE situation because it doesn’t have VI. What it does do well is DPS on single targets. This is the DPS build I use in raids like Dead City, Tep’s Pyramid, and in Eclipse when I start going on those raids.

Basic rotations are:

• Have pet attack on single-target
  
• Cast WF
  
• Cast Neurotoxin
  
• Cast Life Tap
  
• Cast HoD
  
• Cast Dark Vigor
  
• Cast Art of Reanimation (if you don’t have this, just skip it)
  
• Pop Trinket
  
• Cast Corrosive Acid
  
• Spam Acid Bolt
  
• Recast HoD when there’s enough blood
  
• Recast Life Tap when it’s off CD

And this should get you through most single-target bosses.

My PvE Full Healer Build:




I use this build in exactly the way I described with the skeleton build. The only thing I have here that I didn’t have there is Debilitating Plague. It seems like a weird choice, and you have to be careful when you use it because it eats up all of your blood, but it can be a life saver if you use it at the right time. For example, in certain astral allods, you will get a debuff called the Martyr debuff. This means that, for every group of mobs, one will be the “martyr”. When this martyr dies, all of the other mobs do more damage, and it gets harder to heal that stupid tank who keeps running off, or that squishy mage who gets 2hit. Some parties don’t even notice the martyr debuff and will kill him anyways, so I just Debilitating Plague him at the beginning of combat. It makes him not attack, and he becomes immune to all damage so he can’t be killed until the effect fades, thus saving the lives of my party. I also include Neurotoxin in this build, as, with Withering Touch, it will proc Putrefy, and Putrefy will build up stacks of Necropotency. Necropotency is a godsend as a healer, because it can make Dark Renewal and Blood Shot instant cast with 5 stacks.

My PvP Full Healer Build:







This is a little unorthodox. Most of the time, healers are the FHs in PvP. They’re more sturdy than us, and survive a little better. They wear plate, have the bubble, all that jazz. However, with the recent trend of all healers wanting to be Melee or Caster Healers, I thought it would be good to have this as a backup. It’s the same basic shell as the PvE FH build, but with more survivability. Be warned though: with this build you will be the first target of any enemy who notices you’re not just healing yourself. Be prepared to run if they start coming for you.

My Mass PvP (WH/DF) Build:




This build is again very similar to the skeleton build I showed you above, and has the same core gameplay. DoT, heal, HoD, Life Tap, run etc. The only real new thing is the inclusion of Debilitating Plague. It’s effects are diminished in PvP, as it cuts the duration of the CC down by 85% on anyone who has their patron’s blessing activated. However, it can still affect the target for 6 seconds. 6 seconds can be plenty of time for a well co-ordinated group to kill the warrior or the mage, if you take their healer out of the equation. It also helps with capturing points in WH. If there’s one less enemy around, there’s one less person to interrupt you.

My 1v1 vs Melee PvP Build:



I made this build because of how much trouble a good Warrior, or phys based Paladin can give a summoner in a traditional Vamp-Lurker PvP build. This build is only good for 1v1s, so I only ever use it in the arena, or in JC if i can be bothered to respec to it. It relies much less on HoD for damage than the last build. Without a lurker, your main method of getting blood is using Life Tap, so you should save all of that blood for heals unless Life Tap is off cooldown and your blood bank is full. Then and only then should you use HoD. The core of this build is just DoT, heal and run, and hope to wear them down. Fear them whenever it’s off cooldown, and if you can, use Ghostly Cover when they’re mid-charge. They waste a charge because it can’t connect with you. Either that, or because they’re right on top of you and you need to get away.

Thanks for reading guys!



And so that brings us to the end of this mammoth guide. I hope you found something you found useful or interesting in here that you can use. Again, if you have any questions to ask, feel totally free to whisper me ingame, or send me a message on the forums. Thanks again guys.