Venomancer Survival Tactics

This guide is about skills, tips, and tactics for venomancer survival.

Why You'll Get Killed
Since many venomancers choose to be pure magic build, they don't survive long when being ganged up on or hit for too long.

There are two reasons behind this:
 * 1) Low HP and physical defense like other magic types, such as wizard and cleric.
 * 2) Compared to wizards, venomancers have low damage, and therefore can't kill the mobs before they get too close.

Common death reasons:
 * 1) Pet death. If your pet dies you will be the next target of the mob which fought your pet.
 * 2) Multiple attackers. Getting ganged up on can happen in two ways:
 * 3) You take aggro from an unnoticed mob while already attacking another mob.  Watch your back and don't let it happen!
 * 4) Your pet takes aggro from more mobs and loses life faster.
 * Important fact: If you heal your pet when it's being attacked by multiple mobs and your pet does not have good argo on all the mobs the mobs that do not have enough ago from your pet will now go after you instead.

Survival Tricks
Now it's time to talk about the venomancers' survival tricks and how to tackle multiple attackers. Being attacked by multiple attackers sounds like the worst situation, but in fact pet death is the worst. If pet death happens, you either try to kill the mob before it kills you, spawn a backup pet or you run! If your are fighting more than one mob and your pet loses argo and the mob starts attacking you try to get the pet to attack the mobs attacking you while you try to avoid them. Your pet can also lose argo if you hit harder than your pet. You should have a pet skill that will regain argo to the pet instead of you and you should spam this skill to keep argo on the pet. You can also try standing behind the pet and shooting attacks through the pet. If you can attack ground mobs while flying or from a place where mobs can not reach you the mobs will keep focus on the pet but remember not all pets will stay if you are on some elevated positions or flying.

Levels 1-28
Tactics:

Some mobs will attack anything that comes near them or that attacks one of their nearby "friends", so you should learn how to lure one mob out of a crowd in cases like this. This will often prevent situations where you'd otherwise have to deal with multiple attackers. See Venomancer Luring for details.

Your pet is your lifeline. If your pet dies, your own HP will go down fast. Don't let your pet die!

In case your pet dies, jump in the water or up on something. If the mob does ranged attacks you need to get up higher in a tree or something, or deeper into the water. Flying away also works, if you can before the mob gets to you.

Skills:

Heal Pet - At level 3 make sure to get Pet Heal (human/fox mode), so you can keep your pet from dying.

Revive Pet - At level 3 also make sure to get Revive Pet (human/fox mode), so you can revive your pet if it dies.

Metabolic Boost - At level 26 make sure you get the Metabolic Boost (human mode), which will heal some of your HP.

Levels 29-35
Tactics:

Congratulations you have just got a much longer lifeline. Your pet is still your main lifeline, so keep it alive. If the mobs should break your pet lifeline, you can now use the "swap trick".

Skills:

Soul Transfusion - At level 29 make sure to get the skill Soul Transfusion (human/fox mode). Simply said, the skill swaps your HP and MP at the cost of up to one spark (consumes one whole spark if possible, otherwise consumes all remaining chi). So if you have 25% HP and 75% MP, this skill will give you 75% HP and 25% MP.

"Swap trick" example:

Here's a sample situation. Your pet gets attacked by two mobs, and it either can't survive two attackers at once or you can't get it to target the second one for some reason. The first rule is to keep your cool. The second rule is to heal your pet as late as possible, so the second mob comes after you as late as possible. Do all you can to help your pet kill the first mob attacking your pet. If you are about to die use Metabolic Boost to recover some HP, then if you get close to dying again use Soul Transfusion to swap your HP and MP to get even more HP. Use the swap second, since after that you will have little MP left. Once you have killed the mob attacking your pet, run to your pet while making your pet attack the mob attacking you. Your pet will take the aggro and you just saved your own life.

Levels 36-38
Tactics:

Okay same idea as level 29-35, but now you can use both HP and MP heal skills, to make your lifeline a bit longer. MP heal should be used before swapping them (if there's time), to get as much HP as possible, and HP heal after swapping, to fill up the HP you might be missing. This trick can be used in reverse in less dangerous locations to refill your MP instead, but keep in mind the 5 minute cooldown on the MP and HP heal skills and then decide whether having HP or MP is going to be more important to you.

Skills:

Nature's Grace - At level 36 you can get the skill Nature's Grace (human mode) this skill heals some of your MP, which is a great combination with Soul Transfusion.

Levels 39+
Tactics:

From now on your tactic for survival doesn't change much. With a little luck though, you can give yourself a few more seconds by stealing HP and MP from a mob.

Skills:

Leech - At level 39 you can get the skill called Leech (fox mode). This skill has a chance to steal HP from the mob it's used on. It normally has an 80% chance of success, so it's good, but not 100% reliable unless you get the sage version at level 92. Good for refilling HP, if you keep the situation under control.

Consume Spirit - At level 49 you can get the skill Consume Spirit (fox mode). This skill costs some (20% - 10%) of your HP and 3 seconds later you get some MP (225 - 500). Don't use this skill as a survival trick, but only to refill MP.