Ok, so you think you want to make a combat hawker. You like seeing the face of your enemy as you lay your final blow. You enjoy seeing the "miss miss miss" popping above your head as the enemy helplessly flails its arms or weapon(s) at you. You've come to the right class.
The Hawker is a very close cousin to the various thief classes of many other MMORPGs, relying on their dodge to keep them safe and laying precise attacks to damage their enemies, as thieves are too smart to simply pummel and club their foes into submkission like the gaudy warriors, knights, or soldiers. The Hawker is used in much the same way, only in ROSE, the hawker is missing out on any ability to steal from enemies.
If you didn't already know, a combat hawker is a hawker that uses what the NPCs call "battler weapons." These weapons include katars and dual wields. Both these weapons can have a slightly variable stat build in order to be a specialist in either. Katars typically attack faster than Duals, but deal less damage. Dual have much higher attack power, but attack slower and don't yield the high critical attack rate that the katars do.
Anyway, on to questions! And note: I do not specialize in dual wielding, so dual wield people, if I something wrong, feel free to PM me and I'll correct it.
ZOMG What different stats do I put in?!?!
Let's start by simply explaining what the different stats are.
Strength - STR is responsible for your max HP, carrying weight, plays a factor in defense, and STR is also obviously responsible for
physical damage of quite a few close range weapons
Dexterity - DEX is what gives your character
dodge, running speed, bow damage,
damage with some close range physical weapons, and damage with various long range weapons; DEX is a hawker's best friend
Intelligence - INT give you magic attack, magic defense, max MP, and umm... thats about it... hawkers don't really use this
Concentration - CON governs gun damage, HP/MP regeneration rate,
HIT rate, accounts for about half of launcher damage, raises success chance of craft ... and thats all i can remember; mildly important
Charm - CHA raises monster aggression towards you, raises rewards for different quests, and rumored to raise the maximum number of monsters or other summons you can manage, raises drop rate of quest items (rumored to raise drop rate over all); hawkers don't use much CHA
Sensibility - SEN raises your
critical rate, raises
skill damage, increases the quality of crafted items... all i know of; crit is VERY important for katars
As a hawker your main stat will be DEX so you can freaking dodge, and as a bonus you gain attack power from DEX, moreso if you are a katar user. Katar damage is based primarily on DEX. The ratios for melee hawker weapons are like this. Katars are 60% DEX and 40% STR, where Duals are 47ish% DEX and 53ish% STR. Dual weilders require a lot more strength in order to maximize damage potential, and when setting maximum damage as your goal, a dual weild hawker will begin to behave slightly like a soldier, not as much dodge but more STR based defense and max HP. Where katar users are more about dodge, as their weapons utilize DEX a lot more.
CON is not as important as hawkers get a very nice self-buff skill called "Hawker Spirit" which adds a nice chunk of HIT rate. This skill alone can allow you to almost completely avoid using any stat points on CON at all. At level 64 I have about 41 CON and with Hawker Spirit, I rarely miss yellow monsters. ***update*** At level 85+ I am still hitting yellows on key with still only 40 CON and level 8 Hawker Spirit. This skill is priceless!***
Sensibility is the source of critical power, which is a very important thing if you use katars. In order to make up for the relatively low attack power of katars, having a damn good crit rate will raise that damage quite a bit. I recommend keeping your SEN on an equal level with your STR as you progress. Keeping an even ratio of 1:2:1 (STR:DEX:SEN). ***theory update*** I think CRIT rate is actually your CRIT/2 or perhaps some other constant. With about 80-90 CRIT I crit a lil under 50% of the time. So I am assuming CRIT/2 = crit rate. This should mean 200 crit or 200 SEN should give you a constant crit stream, or damn near it, being a theoretical 100& crit rate.***
ZOMG WHAT SKILLS?!??!?!!?
Hawker has quite a few skills to choose from, not as many as the other classes, but enough to cause some confusion on where to spend your skill points.
Firstly, for those who are unaware, skills don't magically appear like they do in some other games. In ROSE you must buy the corresponding skill book to gain a skill. The Mayor of Junon and some soldier guy in the center of Zant sell them. When you buy one, you double click it in your inventory and it will consume the skill points to gain the level 1 of that skill and then you have it.
MASTERIES!!! I think in any class or job it is important to get your masteries first, max them out. This will give you enough bonus damage to get a head start in the monster hunting aspect. Combat Hawkers have two masteries to worry about. Both of them are listed as "combat mastery", which is confusing. Both do fairly different things though. You can read what each does by right clicking the image of the skill in your skill tree window. One of them will boost the attack power of katars and dual wielding weapons. The other boots the power a small amount aand increases attack speed 1 point per level. Each of these masteries will open up a new string of skills you can aquire. Masteries are
mandatory!
Rest Mastery No... waste of points. Restorative items like meat and jucie are so cheap anyway... i mean... It's just a waste in my opinion. I think it's a prerequisite for some Scout skill... but You're going to be a Raider...
Useless
Now you have a choise on attack skill. There is
Heavy Attack and Double Attack. Both have relatively the same damage and cost the same MP. Heavy attack does one strong attack while double attack does two attacks about half the strength of heavy attack. I chose Heavy Attack, but higher level hawkers and raiders are telling me that's a mistake as the Raider version of Heavy attack is incredibly weak compared to the Raider version of Double Attack, Triple Attack, which does one more attack, and more damage than the other. So, if you are looking ahead, Double Attack may be a wiser choise, but I do not yet know for sure.
Much needed, one of them. Both, optional. ***additional info*** I was told by some high level raider that double attack turning into triple attack is better for high SEN characters, as the SEN effect on skill damage applies to each attack in the combo resulting in higher total damage than heavy attack. A shame... I'm high sen hahahahaha, oh well skill reset please. Triple attack at level 9 and 10 has a chance of stunning your target. Heavy attackon the other hand is a fast casting skill which does not interfere with the higher attack speed of the katar. I honestly think this is to be thrown up to your judgement.
Gradually increase
Hawker spirit (self-buff, hit rate up) as you level up (every 5 or so levels). As a Hawker you have access to 8 levels of Hawker Spirit. You do not need all 8 levels so early on, so gradually increasing them gives you time and room to gradually increase your attack skills. I cannot stress the importance of this skill enough. Adding a bunch of CON will not save you skill points here. It will only cause you to loose dodge. Consider this a dodge mastery. Using this allows you to put hard earned stat points into more dex or strength than CON.
Mandatory.
SCAMPER... is purely optional. Scamper is a self buff which increases your movement speed. Eventually at level 50 you have access to Carts so using Scamper as a purpose to travel faster becomes moot. Though during battle, scamper gives you the ability to move from one enemy to the next faster, in turn leveling faster. Why not just use the cart? When you get into your cart, all buffs on you disappear and will have to be recasted when you get out, this is a waste of MP. Scamper is also useful in parties when your support muse or other member gets in a tight situation and needs help asap. The split second you saved running there with scamper as opposed to regular running could save a life. ****I will also mention, with use of scamper for most katar users who have high DEX, at higher levels your M-SPD will increase with your DEX and eventually you could ditch carts all together. With level 5 scamper and all my dex at level 86 I have nearly 1000 M-SPD, first engine cart is 1050 I think.
Optional.
SPIRAL KICK! (requires scamper level 5) Do a spinning kick which damages all surrounding opponents in a radius of 6 meters. I do not have this skill, because I do not believe in it's usefulness or value. It is a skill which its damage is based on your magic atack. Sound strange? it is... it makes no sense... cause you're kicking, but it is based on magic attack. You are a Hawker with no reason to have magic attack... so the damage from the skill is minimal and it costs a lot more MP than it's worth. I'd rather simply kill things off one by one. It's a rare occasion when I get mobbed anyway. I'd rather use a charm.
Crappy skill.
SPIRIT HEART!!! CHANGE OF HEART FOR SPIRIT HEART! At level 86 I have level 5 spirit heart and don't regret having it. Do not be fooled by the idea of it being "based on magic attack". Here's what happens when a skill is based on magic attack. It uses your "attack" to judge the damage it will do, and then the monster must have magic defense to block damage. So you do not need INT. THe add-on that this skill can cause an enemy to significantly lose attack speed is nice. A nice skill after all that does decent damage too.
should think about it
Screw Attack! Makes you spin around horizontally like a drill and pound your enemy. As a Hawker you have 5 levels available to you. This skill does high damage AND has the chance to lower the enemies defense, which is awesome. It costs as much as Spirit Heart and has much more impressive results. This is a great skill to start a fight with a yellow or orange monster, as turning it's defense down is a great way to start the battle in your favor. This skill is definately
mandatory.
Optional skills are skills I think are based on preference of the user. I know nothing of bows. I carry a spare bow for the purpose of hitting boss monsters first or to finish of an enemy running away in pvp. I don't have bow masteries, don't plan on getting them.
What about gear?
Here's a quickie on gears. You should be able to do fine on NPC bought gear until 30. At low levels you won't have enough dodge anyway, so no point getting pricey gear or being picky. But I will go ahead and give you some things to look at.
The primary gear of the combat hawker is
7/7 gears. WHen you see someone hollar 7/7 in chat, it means it is a piece of gear that has +7 strength and +7 DEX. That alone is practically +7 dodge and +6-10 attack. That's nice. Imagine having a full set of that gear. All that bonus dodge, mmm.... extra HP... extra attack....yeah. But this isn't the only gear combat hawkers love.
15/2, 15/3, 15/4 gears are also quite popular, especially amoung lower levels. You gaine 15 attack, flat, which is a nice chunk. And you gain 2,3 or 4 of some other stat. Find a 15/4dex gear, grab it, thats nice. But usually these gears do not add to any significant dodge or HP/defense bonus. It's just the attack power flat out, so lower levels use them to hit really hard really early to get those levels really quick. Bow hawkers would probably get more use out of these than combat though, as we need as mucch dodge as we can get. If a bow hawker is good enough, stuff is dead before it gets to them.
Those are the two main stat sets combat hawkers use. There are other less popular ones that I'm not going to get into right now. Otherwise, if you cannot afford these gears, as they easily run 300,000 zuly all the way to the millions, don't be afraid to be satisfied with a piece of gear with nice dodge or perhaps a small STR or DEX add on. You really shouldn't be worrying too much about how l33t your gear is until level 50 anyway. Up to 50, it should be smooth sailing.
Dodge on gear. A lerge large chunk of your dodge rate will come from the amount on your gear. It says in the item description how much dodge it has. I'll tell you now, in the eyes of a hawker, anything less than 15 at (0), you wouldn't even want to wipe your ass with. Oh, the (0)? What's that? On equipment, sometimes you see a (x) with soem number in it. This is the refinement level. This shows how many times it has been refined. Sometimes monsters drop gear that is already refined one or twice or even 3 times. Everytime something is refined it gains dodge, defense, durability, and other stats. Everytime something is refined though, it will require more items to refine it again. So if you see a piece of gear with (2) on it, but it only has 17 dodge... it's not that great, cause anyone can gain anywhere from 1 to 6 dodge per refine, based a lot on luck, and the quality of the refining items you use. So that 17 dodge was anywhere from 5 to 15 before it was refined, and as said, anything under 15 sucks. AGAIN, dont worry about all this till around 50, its not a huge deal until then. Anyway, theres the gear section
What the hell gems should I be considering?
The main Hawker jewels are
Garnet (DEX up), Daimond (ATK up), and Peridot (ATK-SPD up). I firmly believe katar hawkers should be working on maxing out attack speed, so peridots all the way. The more attacks you get in means more damage. Dual Wielders may not find much benefit from peridots as their attack speed is already fairly slow (compared to katar), so in my opinion a garnet would find a better home in Dual weapons.
***update***Diamonds are a no. I am now level 85, and I have never been happier than with my garnets. You get attack from them (not as much as diamond) but you get so much bonus dodge. I almost feel invinsible in B3 with 300 dodge right now. Scratch my mention on diamonds.
I also think that Peridots may even grow old for even katar hawkers by time they become 80+. So much benefit comes from garnets it's not even funny. At early levels, I think katars are best suited with peridots, as that is before your dodge is so critical, but when you start making higher level gems with artisans, go for garnets. I got a big fat garnet in a pair of duals right now and in my la reine ring and a less fat but still nice garnet in an earring. +38 DEX from garnets... thats a hell of a bonus. 220 DEX at level 85 right now, nice.******
You can affix jewels by dragging and dropping them on your socketed, equipped weapon or jewelry.
Who can I own in PVP???
Characters with low CON are usually easy take downs in pvp. This includes a good number of soldiers (some are smart enough to invest in CON). Most muses have low CON, trick is to do as much damage as fast as possible to them before they can whip up a nasty spell. Other Hawkers who seem to forget to cast Hawker Spirit, lol.
Who should I look out for in PVP?[b]
[b]Dealers. Most dealers have incredibly high CON, and considering their CON also governs their gun/cannon damage AND their craft success, most dealers will have more CON than you would like to face. They are also distanced attackers. If they catch you in the fairway and they don't like you, look out. If you are ever lucky enough to get close to a hostile dealer, you could take them out pretty quickly, unless they are cannon dealers, then they got enough STR to survive quite a few attacks. Artisans go down fast if you ever got close, but they will take you out just as fast. In pvp, I fear Dealers the most.
Which Union should I join?
Anyone, your job does not affect what union you can join. If you are interested in the mask of lie, join the religious union (I think they have it, not sure). Mask of Lie is a mask that gives 10 dodge, which is nice. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter.
Did I do my stats right? *displays stats*
Shut up, go away, think for yourself.
I just died to a Moldy. Your FAQ sucks.
Sorry? I did my best. I don't normally write these.
You said I could beat soldiers! One just killed me!
Some soldiers are smart enough to invest in CON or buy a high hit rate weapon. They also have many attack skills that rarely miss. I think you must havejust fought a well built soldier played by a smart person, or they got lucky, or you suck... one of those.
Which is better, Katars or Dual Weapons?
It is a matter of preference and how much STR you have in relation to DEX. I am not going to sit here and dictate what weapons people should use or should not use. Please think for yourself. Try them both out and see which one you like better. They both do almost the same damage over time, simply Duals provide stronger, but less often hits, and Katars give weaker more rapid hits. It's all preference.
Why do some people think applesauce is a good substitute for oil in their cooking?
Cause they are fat and Oprah said it would help them lose weight to eat things that taste like shit.
Schall... Lavier... Why do you play a female character when you are a guy?
If I pretend and act really sweet, silly 12 year old boys tend to give me things they find. Most of the time unappraised gear which I can appraise and see nice stats on. It actually happens. People are also nicer to girls. I get KSed less. I get yelled at for existing less. Downside, I get random people inviting me to be their friends or to be in their party.
How can George W. Bush's plans to reform Social Security by privatizing it into sotcks and bonds be effective in providing me and my children with a healthy and enjoyable retirement?
It can't. George Bush is an idiot. Ask any educated professional in the bonds buisness, unless he's being paid, he'll tell you the same. Placing Social Security in the hands of bonds, is like playing Blackjack for your medication, and the dealer has a face card.
I'm done here. Sticky if you want eraserhead.
Feel free to post arguments or corrections anyone.
This guide is now open for use with the following restrictions as of April 16, 2005. Anyone and everyone is free to reproduce this article so long as proper reference of simply the name "Schall" appears with the reproduction with www.roseguru.com being credited as original source. There is no more need to ask permission from me via PM or e-mail.
