Please be patient. I'll take suggestions into consideration for editing the guide, so feel free to post them.
I just want to make a BIG REFERENCE TOPIC for everything smith-related for everybody!!! This is because I've found people tend to ask TOO MANY QUESTIONS in my opinion when trying to figure out stuff about their smiths. ...Which means they don't know enough!
So I'm going to make a big reference thread that shows various builds, how to level them, and techniques and tactics for WoE.
- Subject to various additions!
- Soon to come: Situational Best Gear and Best Overall Gear
- Soon to come: Comprehensive Leveling Spots and Rating
PREFACE
The smith class ("smith" referring to both blacksmiths and mastersmiths) is not a cheap class to level. If you want to go the cheap route, like I did, expect to be limited in areas to level and exp to be rather slow. However, if you're willing to dish out the zeny, you can level extremely quickly with both mammonite and HSCR.
Smiths are generally a solo class, but can be helpful in many kinds of parties, both big and small. The main party skills you will be using are:
- Weapon perfection: Makes all types of weapons' damage modifier 100% on every size.
- Advanced Adrenaline Rush: Increases attack speed a fixed amount for every type of weapon except for bows and guns. This and regular Adrenaline Rush DO NOT STACK with Impressive Riff. If you have a 99 agi buffed bard/minstrel, his Impressive Riff WILL add more attack speed than your AR/AAR.
- Hammer Fall: Be careful when using this in mobs, because they might change target when unstunned. When passive monsters are stunned, they will become passive again after stun duration ends. Useful for when attacking single, powerful monsters who will stun or mobs of monsters that have a very long stun duration.
- Greed: Endless tower, anyone?
BUILDS
Agi, hybrid, crit, vit. These are the most common, and most effective leveling builds. Because of the equipment available to the smith class, we are able to obtain high attack speed with relatively no agi, and high damage output regardless of build. No matter which way you build your character, just remember that high str is the trademark of a smith!
WoE Vit (self-explanitory)
110 STR
50-70 DEX
80-100 VIT
With the right gears, this build is quite a tank in WoE. You don't have the HP modifier to compare to peco classes, so don't expect to survive as many GFists as they will, but you still can make yourself a formidable opponent. This build is also great for leveling in Thor.
Ice Dungeon Fleer (somewhat-outdated)
100-110 STR
~100 AGI
50 DEX
30 VIT
With the high str and agi, you can hit a decent amount of flee and solo in many places where the monsters hit hard. Linked ice pick with a priest in ID3 yields good melee experience. Rachel 1-3 is a place you can hunt easily for rares, and this build also excells at partying in Nameless 1 or 2. UPDATE: With Merchant Medals, the agi in this build is completely unnecessary unless you absolutely want high flee. You can drop your agi down to ~60 and still achieve great aspd.
HO ho (oldschool style)
110-120 STR
~30 AGI
50 DEX
70-90 VIT
~20 INT
When starting out, ignore all other stats (except for maybe 20 or so dex) and get str to 99 ASAP. That's really all you need to level in HOs. From there, you usually get high vit so you can bring damage down to almost negligible and need less and less pots. Most smiths will get around 30 agi for aspd purposes. However, you won't even need that with merchant medals. Int is based on preference for any build, but you can always toss extra points in there.
Volcano fun (remember to get your 100% fire resist!)
110-120+ STR
0-9 AGI
70-80 DEX
70-80 VIT
~20 INT
Smiths are some of the best thor solo classes just because you can hit 100% fire resist easily, and even with no fire resist gears, you'll hardly notice fire damage. When mammo/hscr-leveling in thor, if you're built solely for that, get 99 str off the bat, then once you hit around 60 total dex (with buffs) you should be able to start hitting them 100% of the time. Remember, you don't need as much dex as other classes, because weapon research gives +20 hit.
Critical Smith (aka the Heart Breaker)
100-110 STR
60-80 AGI
40-50 DEX
60-70 VIT
30-50 LUK
In my opinion, going critical build as a blacksmith has a great dilemna: do you sacrifice your merchant medals for crit accessories? Because skills cannot crit, it is ideal for crit builds to have the highest possible aspd. If it's worth it for you to get very high agi or luck in order to have a high attack speed critical build, go for it. However, once you hit mastersmith, you have a wonderful axe available to you called Heart Breaker. This axe gives you +5% aspd, a 20 base crit, and adds 1 more crit per upgrade level. At job 70 with a +7 HB, you'll have 30 base crit with 1 luck. With a priest to gloria, you can become a viable crit smith without needing a drop of luck. Of course, this is just insight, because I don't have personal experience with a critical smith.
Hello I am a Greedsmith
0 STR
50-100 AGI
0 DEX
50-100 VIT
99+ INT
DO NOT ever, EVER make a smith with this build UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO STRANGLE YOU. Greedsmiths are a disgrace to french aliens!...erm, smith classes! ANY DECENT build of smith can greed JUST AS EASILY. Smiths have too horrible of an SP pool to benefit much from high int. THE ONLY reason you should be getting anything over 30 int on a smith is for heal from light epsilon, and even then, 50 should be all you will ever need.
Why Maces are for Acolytes
1. Axes give 1 more aspd than maces.
2. Orcish Axes. So stop complaining, you 4s weapon naysayers.
WoE
(Most of this section is written from an offensive standpoint. If you'd rather play your Smith defensively... Go play a Priest.)
Skills you use in WoE:
Hammerfall.
I repeat, hammerfall.
If you're a Mastersmith, HSCR/Meltdown. And then hammerfall.
If you happen to be blessed with a link, don't forget to give AAR love to your party. Do it often because your link will be dispelled or kicked off you very quickly.
And don't forget to repair gear for your guild and allies!
Other things you can do:
"Forget" to break a recall, equip your status mace/1h axe, cart revo. Many fun.
If you hammerfall and they continuously don't stun, put on your ice pick, pop an earth converter, mammo/HSCR.
If you hammerfall and they do stun, put your usual HSCR/mammo weapon on and proceed to own them because they're stunned.
If you have high aspd, weapon/armor breakers, or meltdown, by all means, break swordie classes/scholar/HP/sinx's/other classes gear.
Classes you excel at beating the crap out of (unless they kick your trash first):
Most nontrans classes - They're pussies, and even with high defense don't have much HP. Show them the intricate stitching on your boots when you floor them.
HWiz - Have you ever seen a high vit HWiz? Even if they have OH Sunnies, they'll drop to HSCR. Watch out for quag, though. It sucks your SP by dispelling your skills more than slowing you down.
SinX - Provided they're not linked, not SBing you to pieces, they usually go down pretty fast with pick HSCR.
Champ - If you can successfully hide from GF (you'd be surprised how many I've been able to hide from) or their target was someone else, ram them before they can recover and it's an easy win.
Sniper - Annoying because they'll trap and range attack you, but if you catch up to them, they're dead meat.
Biochem - Even with high vit, you should have enough reduction gear to survive and outpot acid bomb. Show them who's boss and that REAL merchant classes have str.
Classes you should run like a ninny to avoid at all costs:
Scholar - Dispells you and takes your SP, then locks you so you can't move. NOT fun. Scholars turn smiths into chew toys.
Stalker - If you see a stalker, RUN FOR THE HILLS. They will full divest you, rendering you 100% entirely useless. When divested, you can't hammerfall, your fists will tickle the squishiest of wizards, you will be defenseless. If a stalker divests you, either relog immediately to re-gear, or find someone in need of a repair or supplies from your cart, THEN relog.
Classes you're at a stalemate with; break their-_- and move on (It could easily go one way or the other, but why waste your time?):
Gypsy - Slow grace is a-_-. It's like quagmire, but worse. Also, if you're not stunproof, Gypsies will fire your tactics back at you, aka stun, stun, and more stun. It's best to leave them to other classes, mainly because slow grace sucks so much ass.
Minstrel - Comes with less vit than gypsies, easier to stun and kill. Also doesn't slow grace, which is a-_-.
LK/Pally - These classes aren't especially deadly, but it's useless trying to go at them one-on-one. Your best bet is to break their-_-, then move on.
HP - Another "not really deadly" class, but they are quite annoying. However, to them, you are an annoyance as well, so you can use that against them. Either HSCR spam to break their safety wall continuously or try to break their armor. Last I checked, rods are unbreakable (except for I heard some newer ones can, indeed, be broken.)
Unfortunately, I've never had direct combat with any expanded classes on a smith. Chances are, though, that you can HSCR Ninja/GS, and pick HSCR TKM/SL because none of the expanded classes have much HP, even with high vit.
The Rush
Since you're not a squishy class, you get to rush in with all the other tanks. It's best to equip your unfrozen (duh.), maybe replace FB with a drooping cat, make sure you have CK equipped, rush in and try to stun the precast. Your first priority is to stun as many casting classes as you can, afterward you can break the weapons/armor of the melee classes. Be sure to watch out for scholars and HPs as they will dispell/agi down you. Just keep on casting cart boost, keep on hammerfalling. Once the majority of precasters are out, target specifics.
When you're running towards pre-emp, you can find stragglers and try to break their-_-, but it is almost more worth it to use a 2x silence 2x curse weapon and melee them a bit. You shouldn't be wasting your time on stragglers because most of the time you'll be needed for the rush to stun the precast. However, if it's a guild leader, annoy them and stop their recall.
The Precast
You should be getting used to this by now. What does a smith do? Hammerfall! Good, you're learning quickly. Sit right at the edge of CP and cast hammerfall INTO CP. (You can hammerfall 2 cells away from where you're standing, I believe.) If you can manage to stunlock ANY class in the CP, you have that much greater chance to killing them before they can retaliate in any way.
Smiths are also invaluable in precasts, because when someone's weapon or armor breaks while in the emp room, like hell they're going to relog to go get it repaired. Remember to keep plenty of ores on you to repair! As a reference:
Steel - Repairs armors
R. Ori - Repairs level 4 weapons
Iron and Iron Ore - Repairs everything else.
A lot of people will ask for repair, you'll repair it, then they'll complain that it didn't get repaired. Be sure while repairing to check if your weight goes down so you don't have to waste another cast (just tell them that it was repaired and to be more attentive.) If your weight stays the same, the repair didn't work. (Either because you didn't have the ore on you or because they were standing too far away.)
Smith-specific WoE gear
Aside from the given demihuman reduction gear, here are some useful Smith gear:
2x2x or 4x status mace/1h axe, used for cart revo and meleeing
+10 2xZBC Morning Star OR +7~+10 4xZBC Orcish Axe OR Mjolnir (if you're so lucky), HSCR
Battlegrounds Mace or Demihuman mace/1h axe, mammonite (still useful for MS if you're low on SP or stuck in quag/slow grace)
Sword/Mailbreaker, coupled with meltdown, breaks-_-. You're awesome.
Ice pick/combat knife, they're good for HSCRing high defense and raising your defense respectively. These become even more so deadly when you have smith link. Be kind, AAR for your melees as well.
Sight clip/hide clip, should also be a given, but if you don't have belts/BG accessories, these should be your only accessories. Even more important than alligator rosaries, which are for ninny classes. *pumps fist*
Just a note, during WoE, smiths have a VERY versatile range of weapons to use, depending on the situation. I like to put them in four categories: stat, mammo, hscr, dagger. Daggers are much more effective with AAR, and if you have a linker, please, stick to daggers unless you have a mjolnir, scholar stuck to your ass and doomslayer, or high-upgraded hurricane fury. Mammonite is situational, I'd keep around a BG mace for it, because you should have a BG mace ANYWAY, but if you can cart boost, please, HSCR.
I think that's about it. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, any corrections, feel free to correct me.
One last thing: Scholars and Stalkers rape your ass. If you see one, please, be a ninny.
Edited by Nyroeon, 27 July 2010 - 03:51 AM.
