I. Introduction
After talking to many people about optimizing this class I realized Taekwon Master is an ancient class that most have either last played like 10 years ago or have never played. In order to make use of everything Star Emperor has to offer one has to have a good understanding of how Taekwon Master skills works. So first we will review some of the Taekwon Master skills, then we'll go over the different paths you can take as a Star Emperor, then finally we can talk about optimizing Star Emperor.
II. Skills from Taekwon Master
Stellar Blessing: This skill works on Stellar days and against Stellar targets. This is not just 100% extra EXP that adds up to other categories like Battle Manual or Mental Sensing, the effect of this skill effectively doubles the exp gain. It even affects the amount party members gain from your kills.
Drawbacks: Pesky Stellar days and needing target to be large.
Stellar Wrath: This skill gives [BLv + Str + Dex + Luk]/3 % bonus damage to stellar, with my stat at Lv175, it is effectively giving me 182% bonus damage, which is almost tripled damage to Stellar targets. Note that this skill works dynamically with your stat and proccing things like Bear Power, Hawk Eye and Lucky Day will increase the effect dramatically.
Drawbacks: Target needs to be large, but there are Solar/Lunar Wrath available for other sizes albeit not as strong since they don't factor in Str
Now, notice these skills don't have the easiest condition to activating them. I might not have bothered with this class if I have to pick a day just to level but this is in fact not the truth because Taekwon Masters has an innate ability called Solar, Lunar and Stellar Miracle
Every instance of damage done by Taekwon Masters have a very slim chance (should be less than 0.01%) to proc Miracle. Miracle will last one hour once it's proc'd, player's screen will turn blue as if they have been soul bound. All enemies will be considered targets of Stellar Wrath. Stellar Blessing will work on all enemies as well. During Miracle, Heat and Protection will also be usable, but we don't care about those as much.
Under normal circumstances, procing Miracle may actually require a miracle but that's not what we're here for. So here's the miracle creator:
Talkie Box: Talkie Box from Hunter, stack a bunch and Magnum Break away (from Marine Sphere Card)
I was lazy and didn't put down many but stack a hundred or 2 and you should be able to proc it within a few minutes. If it takes longer than that don't blame it, it's rng.
Anyways, count me in if I can just proc an hour of actual 2× exp by just smacking some boxes for a few minutes.
Note: Miracle buff will disappear if you have moved to a map on a different server, one way to check if the maps are on the same server is by entering the map you want to travel to with Taekwon Kid skill 
Tumbling active. If it disappear then the maps are on different server. If it persists then they are on the same server and you are safe to proc miracle on the previous map. Other classes may have skills that work similarly eg. 
Magnificat from Priest.
Solar, Lunar and Stellar Union: This is our sneak peek to what happens when skills start critting. Union has been fine on a class that has mediocre offensive skills, but we are Star Emperors now, our skills does 2100% damage and imagine if it crits on top of Stellar Wrath. Yes, damage is bonkers, but don't forget we will need a Soul Linker in order to do this.
How much damage does it increase you ask?
Well this is the damage of Full Moon Kick with just an Encyclopedia [2] 
this is with Union active 
Due to non crit, there is some variance with previous damage, but it averages to about 1.4× which matches up to the formula
this is adding 2 The Paper Card on top of the previous setup 
which comes to about another 40% extra from previous damage.
and this is adding an extra +11 Arabian Manteau 
which is another extra 110% of damage.
and then this is with Lunar Wrath
The buff will enable critical damage to be factored in at full force and one thing to note that you don't even need to have any critical chance. It makes stacking damage so much easier as a melee class.
Note: this doesn't bypass DEF despite it saying so.
Drawbacks: During the effect every time you inflict damage to monsters it will take away 2% of your HP, and 8% if damage is inflicted on players. HP/SP regen is also disabled and any healing effect is reduced by 75%
All in all without utilizing these two very unique traits from Taekwon Master I'm confident to say that Star Emperor is just a pretty standard class, not strong nor weak, just enough to get by. That said if you are willing to have a 2nd and/or 3rd character, that is Hunter/Ranger and Soul Linker/Soul Reaper along with your Star Emperor, it will be one of the strongest class maybe even better than GX.
III. Time for actual Star Emperor stuff
Many wonders what build is the best, Solar? Lunar? or Stellar? To be quite honest that's not the first thing you should think about when making a Star Emperor. The first question to ask is: Will I be able to use Union?
Having access to Union:
This changes a few things because Union will really overload your damage with crit, and with Union's drawback on HP drain, reduced HP regen from skills and items, your focus should change from building damage to sustaining yourself. Generally speaking Lunar style with its cloaking effect, 2-hit combo for less HP drain would be the better choice. Solar is also decent but Blaze Kick will inflict 2 hit by itself and also losing out on the cloaking so it's not as safe as Lunar. Stellar on the other hand is just spamming potions, not a good time, but decent for DPS I suppose. Either way we'll touch on DPS later.
Not having access to Union:
If Union is not something accessible then you may actually need to look for damage, cheapest source of good damage would be gears that give bonus damage to the skills directly. Luckily we have received Noblesse, Imperial and Grace sets along with Star Emperor. However this does leave out Stellar builds in a tough spot.
The second question, Solar? Lunar? or Stellar?
In the first question we should be able to deduct that Stellar is not the best choice, in a general PvM leveling scenario, it's really not great. Solar currently has a much lower multiplier compared to Lunar as well as a smalle AoE. Although more spammable, Lunar just has an easier time overall.
Solar
The method of damage with Solar is 
Blaze Kick into 
Solar Explosion. The combo delay is AGI/DEX based, the value is 1300 - [4 × AGI + 2 × DEX] ms, after some testing we've found that the most consistent delay is at about 300~350ms, so having (4 × AGI + 2 × DEX) = 950~1000 is about ideal. Note that the combo smoothness is still subject to ASPD and ping, after you have found the right number of AGI/DEX for your preference the next thing you can work on is after cast delay as Solar Explosion does have 0.5 seconds of delay.
Lunar
New Moon Kick has a 1 second fixed time and 1 second cooldown, 
Full Moon Kick, the follow up also have the 1 second cooldown, there is no delay on either skills and Full Moon Kick can be followed up right after New Moon Kick as soon as your ASPD allows. New Moon Kick's cloaking effect is very helpful in helping player take less damage. The cloaking effect would take up to 7 hits before disappearing, if over-mobbed it is very possible that the effect wears off right away and will be unable to follow up with Full Moon Kick.
The first thing to do in increasing DPS of Lunar style is to get the fixed cast time on New Moon Kick lower. Once it is low enough, we will be able to mix in Solar combos in as well.
The combo goes as: Blaze Kick > New Moon Kick > Full Moon Kick > Solar Explosion
The reason we do this is because there is no way to reduce the cooldown on Lunar kicks, so instead we fit in other skills that are available during cooldown.
Note: we need AGI/DEX low enough to be able to fit in NMK > FMK combo.
Listing down some numbers,
NMK/FMK ASPD delays are both (200 - ASPD) / 50
FCT of NMK is (1 - FCT reduction)
So the final formula is as follow:
[4 × AGI + 2 × DEX] < 1300 - 1000 × {2 × (200-ASPD)/50 + (1 - FCT reduction)}
×1000 to convert seconds to ms
Basically if you're on 193 ASPD and 1 second or more FCT reduction, your [4 × AGI + 2 × DEX] can be up to 720
Optimizing this combo can result in
Blaze Kick 500% + 100%
New Moon Kick 1400%
Full Moon Kick 2100 × [bLevel / 100]% × 1.25(Luminance)
Solar Explosion 1900 × [bLevel / 100]%
At level 175 this is a total of 9918.75% per second.
Blaze Kick 500% + 100% Solar Explosion 1900 × [bLevel / 100]% × 1.25(Luminance)
Compared to Solar combo which is 4756.25% at varying speed, for them to be equal Solar combo will need to be used at every 0.48 seconds. Which means putting combo delay aside, the cast delay of Solar Explosion will pretty much need to be removed entirely.
This number will change as Solar Explosion multiplier will receive a huge raise in future update and much more feasible to outdamage Lunar combo.
Anyways here's the combo in action:
From left to right, it ranges from 0.8 FCT reduction to 0.94 and finally, no FCT.
Stellar
I personally don't think there is much to talk about Stellar. Instead of spamming skills like the other styles you will just be spamming potions under union instead. Most of the interesting things to know have all been written down in the Falling Stars wiki page by me, so allow me to be lazy.
Damage wise, it is 1100 × 2 × [bLevel / 100]% in addition to the 7 basic attack that should be pumping out each second, it should come to about 4550% per second. This can be increased further by having multiple targets marked and stack against each other so you can do more damage through its splash damage but I've never had a good time with clicking on the right target so...
Given that Union can be hard to use with Stellar, an alternative way to boost damage is by using a Temporal Boot with Bear Power, Hawk Eye or Lucky Day enchant. The added stat can be factored in Wrath to provide extra boost.
Stats
I'm going to skip out on the basics of each stat but point out the unique things that stats can contribute for exclusively to Star Emperor
Str - Contributes to additional damage with the help of Stellar Wrath.
Agi - Mainly affects Solar combo delays, having too high can also cause an issue if you are going for Lunar combos.
Vit - As a melee class Star Emperor can be a little squishy, either way with PDM this will contribute towards Dex which contributes towards SLS Wrath.
Int - Helps with SP but really only put points if you're using PDM and when 3 point of Str costs more than 18 points of Int
Dex - Contributes towards additional damage towards SLS Wrath, HIT is really not an issue if Union is applicable so just stop before each point start costing too much.
Luk - I would recommend getting 126 Luk for PDM Def bypass and Little Garden bonuses. The stat allocation contributes towards SLS Wrath as well. With Union enabled this may as well be the most important stat. If not then you will need to seek other sources of Def bypass and can allocate these expensive points elsewhere.
My stat at Lv. 175 is as follow as a Lunar Star Emperor, most are in multiples of 18 for the extra stat from PDM, the remaining I put into AGI because there was room to further speed up my combo.
The future goal when we receive Lv.185 and Lv.200 would be to to raise Str to the next threshold for Vassalage, more Int to get Str from PDM then some Dex for Wrath
Gears
Union or not I recommend Noblesse, Imperial and Grace sets very much. These gears give boost to the skill damage that we hardly have as a new class and provide plenty of other bonuses. The boots in particular also gives 0.5 FCT reduction and it is not tied to any stat as another option, Temporal Dex Boots will require 120 Dex. The set covers Armor, Garment, Boots and Right accessory slot (left of the equip interface).
Outside of the above slots that are covered I generally would recommend a PDM just because it takes care of Def bypass and return a lot of raw stat that feeds heavily into SLS Wrath.
Headgear wise if you don't want to use PDM for Def bypass you can choose
- Black Feather - Has a good amount of DEX as well as SP gain, I would definitely recommend this over the rest
- Work Cap
If Def bypass is not an issue, then usually the decision is on sustain vs. more damage
For more damage:
For more sustain:
For middle headgear it's pretty much what your budget allows, the best is definitely Little Garden with or without Union due to the stat allocation for PDM. Options include, but not limited to:
- Mob Scarf Set - Not as strong or flexible as Little Garden but definitely more affordable
- Imperial Set - Solid for Solar and Stellar but wouldn't recommend for Lunar due to concerns on combo delay being too short
- Seraphim Coronet - Wouldn't really recommend this since Int is not an important stat. I hope you're using PDM to get some Str from the stat allocation at least
For lower headgear it's really just follow your set requirement or use Vassalage Necklace for damage or Tengu Scroll/Blood Sucker/Openair Headset for sustain.
Now, if you want to seek better equipment and not use any of the welfare gears Noblesse, Imperial and Grace sets I would point out a few that stands out a lot such as
- Arabian Manteau - For Union
- Ring of Jupiter - Stat allocation just works
- Illusion Leg A or B - with FCT mod, specially for getting 0 FCT on NMK
- Temporal Boots + Temporal Ring - Lots of raw stat from Bear Power, Hawk Eye or Lucky Day from both combo and effect proc
One thing to note for Temporal Boots enchant, when not using Union, SLS Heat 
can be a good way to help maintaining the buff. when using Univon they will likely just kill you
but really not limited to the above and things like Dresses, EDA, HBP, FAW works just fine.
Weapon wise we don't have a huge amount of options.
- Book of the Sun God [4] - One of the earliest book we can use right after job changing to Star Emperor. While stats are great and it comes with 4 slots having Union enabled will actually trigger Meteor Storm causing a lot of delays preventing player to cast skills for some amount of time.
- Circuit Board-OS [2] - Accessible at level 130, generally speaking pretty good for all builds.
- Prisoner Diary [2] - Accessible at level 175, basically half of an Abyss Dress, really strong but need to get to level cap to use it.
- Book of Blazing Sun, Billows, Mother Earth, Gust of Wind [3] - These books aren't the strongest but as we don't have 4 slot books available everywhere these are your go to choice if you just want to slap some Goblin Cards for the pesky Turtles
Honorable mention: Eden Group Dictionary I - you can enchant this bad boy with 40% damage to brutes, making life easy in Dragon Nest and Turtles which should cover life from Lv.150~175
Note: currently Eden Group is bugged and will not distribute weapon to you if you have job changed to a Star Emperor so this will need to be made before changing job
IV. Conclusion
Again, if you're able to make use of everything Star Emperor has to offer this is definitely one of the strongest class. Without so, it could be very underwhelming because a lot of the gears aren't available for this class, and we definitely don't have OCP that directly affect this class yet.
Lastly I want to thank my weapon that's been with me all the way along the road 70-175, just you.
Edited by Clappys, 19 June 2022 - 12:29 PM.
