Sunday, August 14, 2011

Mechanic Guide - My Take

Ok, I've wanted to do this for some time now, a long post on mech! My opinions, my take on the skills and how i've added my skills etc... yeah yeah, the skill build part is probably the similar to many other guides out there, but i'm gonna tell you in more detail (than the other guides, hopefully) WHY i liked it that way.

This is my personal take on things, so use it as a GUIDE. You are free to go play the game as you please. Its YOUR story, YOUR game.

NOTE: my mech has yet to reach 4th job, so i don't have much to say about 4th job skills yet for now.

1st Job Skills Overview (for exact skill descriptions at each level of the skill, go to hidden-street thks):
 Mechanic Dash - This is not a 1st job skill, but a citizen skill that comes erm... free with every mech. Its like aran's combat step but you get it at max lvl for free.... (testing by some shows that this moves further, faster too o.o) i just want to mention it here since some ppl didnt scroll down in the citizens skills and missed this out... you can hotkey this skill just like aran's combat step so you dont have to keep double pressing the left or right key.


Prototype - Basically the mech's mount. You do EVERYTHING from the  mount from now on... well almost. you cant use the lie detector on the mount for example -.-'''. Love it or hate it, the mech mount will be with you forever. I wonder if they'll come up with cash shop mech mount covers... o.o This imba mount gives the stance effect and adds hp and WD. 400WD is enough for you to take a mere 1 damage from mobs for a long time... till 6X or more perhaps? That means you wont be using any hp pots for quite a while. Also, the stance effect 100% prevents you from getting knocked back by mobs. It has no effect in prevent you from getting power knocked back though... aka the skill that mobs send you flying off to mars.

Gatling Gun - Your basic, single target attack for a looong time. Hits 4 times, so that gives you a nice chance of crits appearing

Flame Launcher - Your 1st multi target mobbing skill... not very useful now, but later on it gets an upgrade in 2nd job to deal damage over time (DOT) which makes it useful in certain situations (more on that later)

 ME-07 Drillhands - Your epic movement skill + mob pushing skill. Epic because warriors only get rush in 4th job... but this is even more epic than rush since it moves you even further... and there's no 'cool down' time of about a second like rush. Epic. (as we all know, new jobs = even more pawnzor than old jobs, now that's BALANCE)

1st Job Skill Allocation
Here's my preferred build... i wouldnt worry much about 1st job though. you lvl so fast and get to max all the skills anyway. Skills are written in the order in which they should be added.

At lvl 10: 1 prototype, 1 drillhands, rest to gun - 1 drill rush for the epic longer distance moved. basically you use it as a movement skill.

lvl 10 gatling gun

1 flame launcher - you need lvl 10 gun to have points in flame launcher. i personally prefer gun to
flame launcher, and hardly used flame launcher for training so i didnt add that 1st. with my gun 1hko-ing everything, using flame just felt slower.

max gatling gun


max prototype - for more damage of cos. you can max flame earlier if you use it in training, but i didnt.


max flame launcher

max drillhands

2nd Job Skills Overview
Atomic Hammer - Your pawnzor mobbing skill. A bit slow in execution, but its high damage easily makes up for that. You'll be 1hko-ing mobs for quite a while with this... even if you have absolutely pathetic eq. This skill gets a bit of damage boost in 3rd job... While this skill is a bit slow to cast, its over powering damage and rather huge range makes up for it. Basically all you're gonna do for training is drill across the entire map/platform, hammer once if the mobs are still alive, turn back/go to next platform, repeat.

Mechanic Mastery - The usual mastery skill... nothing new/special.


Mechanic Rage - Wow! rage? like fighter's rage that add WA? WRONG! Oooo a new skill? WRONG. Look closer at that green '+' sign... yeah, its your usual weapon booster... with a new, fanciful (not!) name. I guess its to prevent confusion with rocket booster...

Heavy Weapon Mastery - This neat skill adds addition hits to gatling gun (plus increases the crit rate and damage per shot) and adds a Damage Over Time (DOT) effect to flame launcher. Its cool, no? The good thing about flame launcher pair with DOT is that you can use it to hit (and train on!) mobs that are say 10 levels above you (50% miss rate!). It hits the mobs many times, fast, so that takes care of the miss rate problem. Once the mobs get burnt, you can go on to the next mob(s) and start erm, flaming them. After a while go back to the previous bunch to kill them off since burnt mobs is the same as those inflicted with poison - it will only bring down the mob hp to 1, it cannot kill them off. This technique of course works better on fire weak mobs since they'll take more damage... Oh, if you meet jokers in MCPQ who summon super WD up protectors, use flame launcher, it'll still be able to burn the mobs.

Rocket Booster - While mech doesnt have the movement speed of wild hunters (especially when they are riding Jairas), they have nifty skills to make up for it (like we already had the dash and drillhands in citizen and 1st job). Rocket booster lets you fly vertically up to the next available platform. Its much faster than climbing ropes/ladders except for super short distances (the take off and landing does take some time), but it accelerates to a high speed and instead of climbing long stretches of rope, you fly there in an instant. It eats up a lot of mp though, particularly at low lvls. The mp cost is deducted at take off AND landing. Upon landing it deals a bit of damage to mobs. Not a wide area of effect though... but the damage was sufficient for me to 1hko mobs till 5X or 6X... i forgot... depends on your eq too of course.

Open Portal: GX-9 - No teleporting spots in the map you are training at? Than make one yourself! Set up a portal, than another somewhere else in the map, and now you can teleport between the two locations in a heartbeat. The portals cant be too far away, but the distance is quite good IMO. If you see only one of the portals working, or both portals are working till you walk beside one of them, that means they are placed too far apart. Portals work when they are in a certain range from where you are standing... So the fact that both portals are working when you stand in the middle of them both doesnt mean they are definitely near enough for the portals to be USABLE. You can only have 2 portals out at any one time. If there are two portals around already, summoning a 3rd on will cause the earliest portal summoned to be destroyed. At max level the portals last 3mins... the 3 mins apply to each portal. So if you summon portal A, wait 2mins, then summon portal B, portal A will still expire at the 3 minute mark. I.e. to 'refresh' the summon time of both portals, you have to go to both locations and summon a new portal. Kinda troublesome indeed, that's why I recommend you max this skill.

Perfect Armor: As the description suggests, this skill grants your mount with 2 abilities. The passive ability allows you to guard 30% of the damage taken, much like a thief's 4th job fake but w/o the F2 smiling (you will see the words 'Guard' appear in place of XX damage taken). The second ability, which is damage reflection, can be toggled on and off. At max level it reflect 5 times the damage taken back to the mob. While the damage reflect doesnt particularly increase your damage per second much per say, the passive 'guarding' ability is really something to kill for.

2nd Job Skill Allocation
At lvl 30: 1 rocket booster, 1 atomic hammer, 1 Heavy weapon mastery - heavy weapon mastery as mentioned earlier adds DOT to flame thrower, and increases the number of gatling gun hits from 4 to 6 - now that's a 50% increase in damage already!


1 perfect armor - just for fun, not really important. At this lvl pretty much all the normal mobs will hit you for 1 damage only.


Max atomic hammer - why hammer 1st and not mastery? because this will actually increase your average damage output. Furthermore, hammer is sooo pawnzor that its minimum damage will still allow you to 1hko mobs (not talking abt mcpq rombots of cos) after adding a few sp in the skill.

6 mechanic rage - for faster attacking speed, especially since hammer is a little slow

Max mastery - for more stable damage


Max heavy weapon mastery - for increased gatling gun and flame launcher damage, useful if you do some pq that requires you to down bosses... like herb town pq or ghost ship pq.

max portal - for some extra bit of mobility


lvl 13 rocket  booster - reduce the mp cost and increase damage dealt

max perfect armor - the 30% guard is GOOOD!

Max mech rage - well you can max this or armor last, its your choice...

If you are not in the habit of 'self-creating' teleport spots in the map (like me), than go ahead and leave portal to be maxed last. Why i leave rocket at 13 instead of say mech rage or portals (at 3) is because the main purpose of rocket is as a teleportation skill. While at lower levels it can still 1hko mobs, by the time you hit 3rd job, the mobs have too thick a hp for rocket to 1hko them anymore. In 4th job it'll barely be doing a scratch on the mobs... on the other hand, booster would be irritating to cast often. Mech already has enough robots to summon, so the less frequent you have to care about casting skills and summoning more robots, the better. At least its something that will help all they way to lvl 200, whereas rocket will merely save you a bit of mp (pot costs are greatly reduced now!). Portals are really helpful for training, though troublesome when you have to keep re-summoning them, hence the longer they last, the better.


3rd Job Skill Overview
 Punch Launcher - a strong mobbing attack that hits 6 at max level. Unlike hammer, this skill starts out with only hitting 4 mobs. You fire a metal fist from your mech which travels in a straight line - unlike hammer, you cant hit the mobs behind you. this skill does more damage at max level than hammer (metal fist mastery included), has a large horizontal range (but to the front of you only) and is also faster to cast. however, the 'travel in a straight line' part is what makes me favor hammering over punching the mobs...

Metal Fist Mastery - increases the damage of hammer and drillhands.... nothing special.
 Satellite - Basically a summon that can be toggled on and off. Yes, toggled on/off meaning that once you on it, they will never disappear until you turn off manually, die, or log off from the game. Even if you dismount and re-mount, the satellites will remain. At max lvl you have a cool 3 satellite following you around. Deals around 5-6k damage at 8X or so for me.The satellites only hit 1 mob (yes, all 3 satellites will hit the same mob even it is an overkill), and they will only target mobs that you have damaged. The range of the satellites is not very large though, you have to come within normal attack range of the mob else satellites wont work.

Mech: Siege Mode - The super powerful skill that makes ur mech go on a rampage. All you hits are crits, you hit super fast... its like gatling gun + heavy weapon mastery gone crazy. How crazy is it? My mech could almost kill frankenstien in 5 secs at 9X (leaving maybe 5-10% hp?) in MLTC, barring no incidents like darkness or skill lock (oh, ALL you attacks will miss if you get skill locked while in siege mode, darn!). There are trade offs though, you cannot move in siege mode, it takes a while for the mech to enter and exit the mode, it lasts for only 5 secs, and at max level has a cd time of 15 secs. So while this is a super powerful move in bossing situations, i find it useless in training (at least till LHC is out, where all the mobs there are mini bosses). You run out of mobs to kill before the 5 secs is up and remain immobile... hammering two or three times would be faster than the 5 seconds you remain stuck to the ground...

Rock n' Shock - The mob zapping skill! While this skill does neat damage, it lasts for a really short time of 30secs and having to keep putting those zappers in place gets really irritating. sighz, that's the thing about mechs, they have so many robots that you have to waste time placing... still, it does high damage, and while zapping it also stuns the mob... meaning they are dead the moment they wonder into/spawn in your trap (unless rock n shock timer runs out that is). You  MUST place 3 zappers before it will start working, the 30 sec timer and CD timer starts from the moment the last one is placed and starts working. The zappers will always form an electric line between the other two zappers, forming a triangle... yes, even if you put all three on flat ground... its just that the electric shocks overlap and you cant see them. By far, the most effective way to place the zappers is just to follow the terrain of the platform/ground and place them in a straight line... dont bother with fanciful triangles and stuff... you wont catch many mobs with that. Pick the longest platform or platform with the most spawn, and set up the traps and you are free to work on the other platforms for 30 seconds. The range of the zappers is quite good, if you have a long map like dreamy ghosts, you can almost zap the whole map... after placing the zappers all you have to do is to use the teleport spots to move between the two ends of the map, and use drillhands to push the mobs the spawn at the sides into your trap. The max distance between each zapper is roughly 1 drill and 1 dash + 1 or 2 steps. Or something like 3 dash... the fastest way is just to place zapper, drill, dash, place zapper, drill, dash, and place zapper. After the each drill you dash once, passing by all the mobs you just drilled over, and leaving them in your electrifying trap.

Healing Robot H-LX - This skill lets you summon a robot that heals you.... however you will only be healed when you are bending down... thus limiting its use greatly. Since you are short of two SP to max all your 3rd job skills, i'd recommend not maxing this one. How often will you waste time waiting for the robot to heal you in training? the only time i can think of when this skill can be of use is in mltc where you cant use your own pots... pot lock situations in bossing? i think you'll be too busy with other stuff to bother abt this? either way 2% hp is not that much, especially since you will rarely use this skill.

Acceleration Bot EX-7 - Yet another robot summon that doesnt last for very long.... 80 seconds at max level isnt very long imo... but at least this skill is much more useful than the healing bot. Why is making mobs move faster useful you say? its just like how players always ask for speed protector to be summoned in mcpq room 3/4 (unless you are a sin of cos... in which case you shd try rooms 5/6 instead)... mobs moving faster = easier for you to mob them = faster exp. As simple as that. Basically the mobs moves within range of your hammer/punch/mosquito zapper faster so you can kill more mobs in the same period of time. The skill also decreases the mob defense by a bit, but the real value of the skill is still in increasing the mob speed.

Roll of the Dice - Same gambling game as the adventurer pirates... 1 = bad luck, 2 = %def, 3 = %hp increase, 4 = % crit, 5 = %damage, 6 = % exp.While the skill has a pretty animation and you can get good buff, its totally random so... and yeah, the CD is a bit long too... i'd say this is a fun-but-too-really-useful skill. The occasional damage or exp buff is definitely nice, but its not like something you can rely on... if you get what i mean. Because of that, I'm not keen on adding this skill early on. Plus, I hate having to constantly watch out of the cool downs to see when i can use the skill again... mechs have more than enough summons to deal with IMO.

3rd Job Skill Allocation
Hmm... 3rd job skill allocation is a bit of a challenge to assign... the main ambiguity lies with punch launcher. I personally do not use that skill often, and prefer to use hammer since it can hit mobs BEHIND me as well... so i've left out punch till the very end (well almost).

Punch VS Hammer
While punch has a longer horizontal range than hammer, it has smaller vertical range. This means that jump attacks may allow hammer to hit two lanes of mobs, while it cant be done with punch... this makes hammer more flexible in terms of training locations. So far I've yet to come across a training location where punch is a decisive winner over hammer. While hammer + metal fist mastery gives a higher damage per hit compared to punch, hammer has a disadvantage of sending mobs flying, causing them to NOT get hit sometimes when you hammer immediately after that, lowering its DPS somewhat.

While the damage from hammer need metal fist mastery to be increased, it is essential to remember that punch starts out as a relatively weak skill too, and only hits 4 mobs still a much later stage. In considering the above, I would recommend adding punch towards the end of 3rd job, which was exactly what i did in game (before all these considerations came to mind...)

Ok, so the actual skill allocation:
At level 70: 1 mosquito zapper (opps i mean rock n shock), 1 satelite, 1 rocket punch - 1 Satellite for a cool robot summon and a bit of extra damage. Although the cool down of mosquito zapper is kinda long at the beginning (and is so troublesome to use), it deal really neat damage and kills the mobs very fast. It can cover a large portion of the map too.

Level 71: 1 siege mode, 1 rock and shock, 1 metal fist mastery - siege mode for fun, and in case you go any kinds of bossing (even mltc), it lets you deal super high damage for 5 seconds. I picked rock and shock 1st for its high mobbing capabilities, allowing you to train faster even though setting it up every 30 seconds is tiresome. 1 metal fist mastery as it increases your hammer damage by a neat 12%.

Max rock and shock - for shorter cool down

Max metal fist mastery - for higher damage with hammer, to increase you mobbing capabilities and thus training speed

Max satellite - for increased passive damage

Max siege mode - i went mltc for the black belt, and siege mode is really helpful there. if you  go bossing (like hob goblin pq) a lot, than you might wish to add this before satelite

Max acceleration bot - to speed up the mobs and hence your training.

Max roll of dice - for the random buffs... if you are lucky you can get the damage or exp boost buff...

Max punch - an alternative attack to use

18 healing bot

You can add punch before dice if you wish... but for me i barely used punch in training at all, so it was quite useless to me. We start off with rock n shock for the mobbing capabilities for faster training, than add meta fist mastery once again, for training... after that we move on to satellite for some extra damage. If you do not go mltc or any bossing of any sort, you may wish to add acceleration bot before siege mode for training purposes.

4th Job Skill Overview
Ok... i decided to just publish this 1st, else it would nvr get published at the rate i'm going... however i wont have anything much to say about the skills and all since i'm not yet 4th job. haiz.

Extreme Mech - A super powered up prototype skill... not only does it increases your HP/MP and WA... it also increases you mastery to a 70% at max level. Definitely a great DPS boost.
Mech: Missle Tank - Changes your mech into a missle tank that eats loads of MP, but gives a really cool damage boost.
Laser Blast - the pawnzor attack with super huge range, hits up to 6 mobs... this will become your main training/mobbing skill from now on...
Satellite Safety - Increase the damage dealt by satellites by a bit, and has an extra job to absorb part of the damage taken should the damage exceed a certain % of your HP (after which, the satellites disappear and a CD timer starts, yes, there is a CD so its not a skill like archilles or power guard that you can count on to NOT die). At max level, the CD is 10 secs and the satellites will absorb 80% of the damage (and disappear) should the damage you take be more than 30% of your HP. Mechs don't have too high a HP... so i'm wondering if this skill will make it irritating as you end have having to keep re-cast satellite in bossing situations. Sure it reduces the damage taken, but there's a cooldown time to watch out for... which means yet ANOTHER thing to do sighz. Just when you were thinking for wonderful it is for satellites to be a toggle on/off skill which you don't have to keep refreshing (as in the case of buffs of mech's notoriously short-lived summons)...

Giant Robot SG-88 - this skill lets you hit up to 15 mobs at once, with a CD time of 30 secs just like mages' ultimate... (well this is mechs' ultimate afterall) from my very limited observation of this skill (when someone else passed my map and used it...) the horizontal range of this skill is really pathetic... totally cannot be compared with mages' ultimate... (well the mp cost is much lesser after all...)

Bots 'n tots - a cute skill with a cute name... bravo! another passive mob kill skill... this skill lets you make a robot factory which will summon yet more robots that self destruct when mobs are detected. Definitely a fun skill to use IMO. Damage wise... i'm not too sure... spawns 1 bot every 3 secs... not bad for taking care of small platforms IMO... since it takes some time for mobs to spawn anyway. On the down side... this factory lasts really short... sighz... another thing added to the list of robots you have to vomit out very often...

Amplifier Robot AF-11 - A party skill at last! ok... we had the healing bot but that one is rather... useless IMO. This one is good tho, it increase damage by 20% at max whee! There's a period of 10 secs when the summon is in CD at max level though... and yeah... this adds another robot to the long list of other robots you have to keep on summoning. This of yourself as a mother robot whose sole job is to constantly create robot summons... and boy, summoning robots sure take a long time (and the die real quick). I'm really at a loss as to how to assign my keys... my keyboard is already running out of space for my skills... at 3rd job -.-''' The fact that i'm using mac (so no page up, page down, home, end etc) makes it even worst... -.-'''

Robot mastery - increase the self destruct damage and more importantly, summon time of all your robots. 50% duration increase at max level is pretty helpful... even though summons like the mosquito zapper will only have an extra 15 secs summon time, its still better than nothing. At least you don't have to keep re-summoning your door or the acceleration bot since those two skills will get a see a greater increase in summon duration.

Mech: Siege Mode -  It’s theme siege mode as in 3rd job... why do you get it again in 4th? my guess is that with two of this skill, you now can spam siege mode twice as often. Why on earth did nexon give the same skill twice i really don't know. At least give us a slightly buffed up version or something??? Can't they be a little more creative? >< NOTE: i'm really clueless as to what this skill is about... sorry about that yeah.

Maple Warrior - your regular, useful but boring maple warrior.

Hero's Will - Known as awakening previously... the same old skill that every job gets at 4th job... this skill gets you out of seduce... hence its only useful at bosses that cast seduce like czak, ht, cht, pink bean... or probably at lyka (used to be called raika).

4th Job Skill Allocation
Well i must say that i'm really clueless about skill allocation. Most guides i've seen don't have nice 4th job skill allocation guides either. For me, i really have to try out the skills before i can decide (since i don't know much about the skills right now)... so i'll just give you what i  feel about the skills at the moment. I'll try and remember to update this when i reach 4th job. if my mech ever reaches 4th job that is.

At the beginning i'd recommend adding 1 of each of the interesting skills just for the sake of trying them out. Also, mech skills have a lot of 1 point wonders...

ok, so with my current understanding of the skills, here's what i recommend:
lvl 120: 1 Missle tank, 1 laser blast, 1 extreme mech - laser blast is a super powerful mobbing skill, and will no doubt be your new training skill, so we add 1 into missle tank to unlock laser blast. 1 extreme mech for the mastery boost, tho you can also chose to add 1 bots 'n tots or giant robot instead (in which case you add 1 into extreme mech instead at lvl 121).

lvl 121: 1 bots 'n tots, 1 giant robot, 1 satellite safety - 1 bot n tots and 1 giant robot is just for fun... to break the monotony of training. While both skills are fun, they wont exactly help in training/bossing much, so i'd leave it to later to max. 1 satellite safety could come in handy at bosses like papulatus (which you should be killing daily at your level).

lvl 122: 1 siege mode, 2 extreme mech - 1 siege mode just so you can deal more damage in bossing. Next we max extreme mech for the mastery and WA boost

Max Extreme Mech - the mastery and WA boost would be really handy.

Max laser blast - Who doesn’t want higher damage in training? Since you will be spamming this skill in training, we max it early.

Max missle tank - We max this skill next to decrease the MP cost... maxing this skill will also increase your damage output...

Max robot mastery - the increase the super pathetic lifespan of your robots so you waste less time re-summoning them

Max satellite safety

After that, its pretty much your choice... you can max maple warrior any time after missle tank is maxed... depending on whether you constantly train in parties or solo and on the  availability of the MW20/30 books... You can max bot 'n tots or giant 1st, its entirely your choice now... as with siege mode... add hero's will whenever the need arises (like when you plan to go bossing)...

That's all there is to my mechanic guide... for now. Till next time!

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