When I first started playing this game I looked at the roles and how people were playing them. I was pretty much certain that the nuker character was not for me. I have more of a warriors mentality and I stand in there and tank the mobs until they die. They die, not me. I play by the rules
We've all seen how nukers grind. They shoot once and then run around in crazy little circles, trying to not get hit. Fortunately nukers do A LOT OF DAMAGE, so they can kill mobs in 3 or 4 shots. It seems fair to me that they have to run around a little bit if they can kill things so fast.
A nuker character is probably not the best character to start with in this game. In order to grind them well you'll need to have the best equipment you can get, defense clothes and refined bracers in particular. Those are the bracers I'm using at the moment. You will also need to know where the mobs are that you can grind. A nuker needs slow moving mobs that don't gang up, and there aren't many of those in game. Some mobs get particularly aggravated when you nuke them (bears hate nukers...), and you'll need some place to run to in order to meditate. Casting nukes uses a lot of Vital Energy and you'll need to keep some in reserve in case you need to run from your mobs. You always need someplace to run to.
The fastest way to make a nuker is to start with a warrior. You can change roles up to RL12 and that is what I did with my old farmer/collector character RandiDance. If it's not your first character and you have a pile of good equipment you can get to RL12 in about a week of good grinding. You work your way up to RL12 with 100% and it's time to Chi Breath, then just stop. You go back to your clan map and change roles, then do the Chi Breathing trick. Like magic, you'll have an FD1 nuker and you'll need a lot of manuals to do the training.
Yes, you will have to do an awful lot of training. My training habits for my nuker were exactly the same as what I did for my hybrid character. Most of the skills have a level cap, so I trained all of them up to their level cap, and then I went out to play the game. Once I gained another level, I went back to training. It's boring as hell, but it works. If you do that training you'll have a character that is damned easy to play. Let me show you my buff bar.
1. Advanced Lightfoot
2. Advanced Meditation
3. Advanced Steps
4. Basic Bandit Protection (50 points of defense)
5. Nuker Defense Buff (390 points of defense)
6. Wisdom Buff (+31 Wisdom)
7. Chi Shield (resists 765 points of physical damage)
8. VE Shield (Absorbs 1800 damage, but costs 2x Vital Energy)
9. Nuker Reflection Buff (returns 80% of damage, but only for 15 seconds)
10. Yang Shield (Absorbs 1650 Yang damage, great for PvP)
The only skill that is really hard to train is the VE shield, but it saves your life so it's worth to train. I have C11 on that skill now and I'm not going to to train it any farther. I use it all the time, so eventually it will level up.
As for my build, I started with the ideas that XiaoLongNu posted in a very old post. Some players will suggest that you only need enough Essence for your weapon, but he suggested one attribute point per level, and that is what I did. More points in essence gives you more vital energy (longer grinding time), and also increases your Chi Kung damage. The rest of your attribute points will be thrown at Wisdom in order to increase your Chi Kung Attack Rating. I added some points to Constitution and Strength because the warrior in me just cannot stand to look at a character with only 1200 hit points. The extra strength increased my defense number and now fully buffed I have about 3300 hit points and 2200 defense. My inner warrior is satisfied with that.
I just reached Golden Blossoms 5 with my nuker and I have finally maxed my Wisdom attribute. For now I'll continue to add essence, and I'll have to make a few decisions about my build when I get to EC6 levels, when the maximum for attributes is raised to 300 points.
Do you have a nuker? How did you manage your build?
- SpearDriver