The Venomancer is a pet taming class that specializes in debuffs and control. Also known as a solo class, Venomancers have their own pet that works as their personal tank or damage dealer. Venomancers have the ability to turn themselves into foxes, which increases their physical defense, their accuracy and gives them access to a separate set of skills. They have a fair amount of control skills and a wide variety of debuff skills that include: lowering a target's physical or magical defense, stealing a target's chi, amplifying the damage a target receives, lowering a target's maximum HP, decreasing a target's accuracy, purging the target's positive buffs and many more.
Pros:
- Able to solo many bosses
- Deals both magical and physical damage
- Many debuff skills
- Increased physical defense and accuracy in Fox Form
- Versatile squad role in both PvE and PvP
- Variety of viable builds
- Fast movement speed
Cons:
- Low HP
- Expensive class to play if Legendary Pets are persued
- Weaker magic attack skills compared to other magic classes
- Weaker physical attack skills compared to other physical classes
- Can be time consuming to level Pets
- Gender restricted
Statistics
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1.^ In human form their skill damage is based on Magic; in Fox Form their skill damage is based on Strength.
Equipment
Weapons
Magical Damage Chart: Lower-Low-Medium-High-Higher
Wand:
Medium-Medium damage
Magic Sword:
Medium-High damage
Pataka:
Low-Higher damage
Glaive:
Medium-Higher damage
As with most other classes, choosing a weapon is mostly personal preference unless Rank 9 is a goal. Weapon choices can be brought down to the most effective weapon for the Venomancer’s build.
The Magic Sword is thought to be the best overall choice for Venomancers for its relatively high physical attack, which is useful for Fox Form attacks and Heavy Armor builds. Even without heavy use of Fox Form, Venomancers who opt for a Magic Sword have a good balance between low-end and high-end magic attack which makes it a good weapon for pet healing as well.
Venomancers who heavily rely on their pet to tank for them should choose the Wand as it has the smallest gap between low and high end magic damage, which promotes constant numbers and therefore an ideal weapon for pet healing.
Patakas and Glaives are recommended to those who rely on spike damage and want to achieve very high damage due to the very high high-end magic attack of the weapons.
Armor
Venomancers are most commonly outfitted in Arcane Armor and follow a high Magic build. This allows for using Fox Form skills for primarily debuffs or defense, and switching to Human Form to provide great Magic damage.
Heavy Armor is a somewhat “off-meta” build but still very viable due to the accuracy, and defense rewards of Fox Form. Those who prefer a more Fox Form, physical, or melee oriented play style will often choose Heavy Armor and stat heavily into Strength. This build lends the Venomancer a very support heavy role due to its debuffs, high defense and relatively low attack damage potential. This build is not necessarily recommended for beginners, however, due to the challenge of equipping both gear and a weapon that each requires a different stat.
Some Venomancers might choose to use Light Armor, usually when they share the gear with other characters. It is otherwise uncommon to see Light Armor Venomancers as the build requires high dexterity which is not a particularly useful attribute for the class in either form. That said, true "off-meta" builds do exist for dexterity based, Light Armor Venomancers, even including high attacks per second builds using claws, fists, or even bows.
Venomancers in PvE
Venomancers can be the cheapest class to play in PvE. This is due to the relatively low mana cost of their skills and their sustain skills to recover their hit points and mana. Furthermore, as a Venomancer’s pet will usually be taking the damage, armor repair costs will be low. Because of this, and despite their relatively high time investment for training pets, Venomancers are thought of as one of the best farming classes in Perfect World.
Venomancers at Lower Levels
Venomancers at lower levels have one of the easiest times progressing through Perfect World. Due to their personal pet tank they rarely have problems with completing quest content or dying. The few challenges as a Venomancer revolve around learning to control their damage output to allow their pet to maintain aggro on threatening mobs, and prioritizing the learning of their huge list of skills at lower levels when Spirit is low.
Solo PvE as a Venomancer
Venomancers can solo a large part of the game's content with their pets. Those who own the Baby Hercules or have invested heavily into pet Faction Base buffs and outfitted regular pets such as the Glacial Walker can also solo several at-level dungeons. Venomancers are therefore believed to be the perfect “solo” class as they are quite independent, even in situations where other classes would need outside help.
Group PvE as a Venomancer
Venomancers are also in high demand in squads due to their powerful debuffs and their unique purge skill. Since the power of debuff skills isn’t affected by gear, dungeon squads will rarely be choosy about a Venomancer's gear so long as the Venomancer is capable of staying alive. Though somewhat rare in today’s game, well geared Venomancers or their strong pets are also able to tank many dungeon bosses and assist their squad if a true tank like a Barbarian is not available.
Venomancer in PvP
Venomancers are a decent solo class in PvP, but they truly shine in group PvP where they can support their team. The basic PvP routine of a Venomancer is to purge enemy buffs, weaken them using debuff skills, use control skills to immobilize them when necessary and lastly assist the team with attack skills. In PvP, pets are used for stuns and other utilities but aren't meant to be relied upon since enemy players can kill pets easily.
Survivability
Venomancers have excellent survivability, especially when compared to other Arcane Armor classes. While they do not benefit from inherently strong physical defenses like a self-buffed Wizard, in Fox Form the Venomancer's physical defense is increased dramatically. Additionally, Venomancers have several class skills that increases their damage resistances such as Bramblehood, Blazing Barrier and Feral Concentration. Additionally, Venomancers also have three self heals and a variety of crowd control skills to aid them.
Positioning
Positioning of a Venomancer largely depends on what form the Venomancer is in. Being in Fox Form will require the Venomancer to position themselves at times to be in the front lines of battle or even in the middle of the enemy due to the melee range of most fox form skills. This is one of the reasons why Venomancers come so well equipped with various skills to help them to tank damage and self heal, along with having high movement speed. That said, the moment Venomancers switch to human form, they often have relatively low physical defenses are are best positioned as far back from melee threats as possible.
Support
Venomancers playing full support focus do well to on defense and survival and using their debuffs and control skills. These Venomancers will usually follow a high vitality build and sacrifice their damage in exchange for higher survival. They spend a lot of time in fox form purging enemy player buffs and cycling through their arsenal of debuff skills to weaken enemy players while the rest of the team delivers the kills. They will swap to human form to use their ranged control skills when needed and use their human form debuffs when fox form skills are on cooldown.
Damage Dealing
Venomancers, due to their incredibly valuable debuff skills, will never play a damage only role if playing to the Venomancer's full potential. More damage focused Venomancers therefore can also called hybrid support, as this build will generally try to balance survival, like a full support build, with an added dose of damage. These Venomancers generally follow a pure magic build, sacrificing some survival, however these Venomancers will still need to focus on purging enemy player buffs, cycling through their arsenal of fox form and human form control and debuff skills to weaken enemy players first before focusing on damage. This playstyle allows Venomancers to be more independent in PvP as they have better odds of killing players on their own.
Weaknesses
While they may have many survival skills, Venomancers, like other support classes such as Mystics and Clerics depend on their ability to heal themselves and cast defensive skills in order to stay alive. Because of this, Venomancers are extremely weak to being controlled through the use stun skills when in Human Form or without a damage reduction buff. Knowing this, many Venomancers focused on success in PvP often rely on Rank 9 Purify to survive through stun locking.
A Venomancer's bane, like the Cleric, is the paralyze status belonging to Blademasters and Duskblades. This status can not be purified and renders the Venomancer unable to kite, cast defensive buffs or self heal. With enough incoming damage during this effects duration, the Venomancer can find themselves in a dangerous situation. For this reason it is recommended to equip a genie with expel. As a last measure, a Venomancer can use this skill to render themselves immune to physical damage (the damage type which Blademasters and Duskblades use almost exclusively) during the duration of the paralyze.
Venomancers in Territory Wars and Dragon's Conquest
A Venomancer's role in Territory Wars isn't much different from typical PvP. They focus on purging enemy player buffs and using their variety of debuffs to weaken targets so their team can deliver kills. These wars are usually large scale PvP (80v80 and 60v60 respectively) and there is an increased need for crowd control, therefore skills like Parasitic Nova and Primal Malefic Crush become essential in helping the team immobilize/interrupt large groups of players. It's important to coordinate with the team so the Venomancer can use their area-of-effect attacks and debuffs in tandem with other classes' skills.
Venomancer as a Support
A Venomancer's true calling is as an offensive support in all group PvP. They provide extremely valuable debuffs to enemy targets such as purging enemies positive buffs (like increased physical resistance), lowering the target's HP, amplifying all damage the target receives and much, much more. Additionally, Venomancers have a large quantity of crowd control skills in the form of Parasitic Nova (which seals and freezes large groups of enemy players) and Maelific Crush which is a short duration crowd paralyze. These skills can often give your team openings for great AoE Combos.
Venomancer as a Damage Dealer
Though a Venomancer may be a support-focused role, that does not necessarily mean that they are slouch when it comes to dealing damage. Once targets are sufficiently purged of positive buffs and loaded up with debuffs the Venomancer can assist their squads by dealing damage. The Venomancer can hit great critical hits through the use of a high magic build and using a Pataka. That said it is never recommended to ignore support skills as a Venomancer as they, in the end, assist in doing more damage.
Priority Focus
A Venomancers priority focus is crowd control and assisting their squad in killing players by utilizing their purge and debuff skills. Priority targets are healer classes such as the Cleric and Mystic, followed by support and control classes like enemy Venomancers, Blademasters, and Stormbringers. All other classes follow. pending on the enemy squad formation, healer classes are likely to be positioned in the back line so other classes will need to be killed or immobilized first.
Targets to Avoid
Venomancers would do well to play extremely cautiously against classes with large amounts of crowd-control abilities and high physical damage.
Assassins can easily stun the Venomancer and deal high amounts of damage while they are helpless to move or act, especially if the Venomancer does not have a Rank 9 Purify Weapon. Additionally, the Assassin's tidal buff often prevents the Venomancer from debuffing the Assassin which is their main means of dealing damage high enough to kill, or alternatively stun long enough to escape. Another class to be very aware of is the Duskblade, who has endless single target crowd control and will easily be able to kill a Venomancer before the Duskblade runs out of locking skills. It is often best to avoid Duskblades entirely if you do not have the support of your team. Other targets to play cautiously against are high physical damage classes like Archers, Seekers, and some Barbarians who build with high Strength in mind. Wearing Arcane Armor gives Venomancers a relatively low physical defense which can spell disaster if the Venomancer receives a high amount of physical damage.
Though these classes can sometimes present a challenge to Venomancers, this does not mean that they cannot survive against or even kill these classes, rather that they should gauge the situation carefully and pay close attention to how much support they are receiving from their own team and how much damage they are taking when engaged.
Origins in Legend
Supposedly, the Venomancer is based off the Huli Jing (meaning "fox spirit") in Chinese mythology, where they usually appear as beautiful, young women. In Perfect World they come not just from foxes, but cats, rabbits, antelopes, and bats as well, though all transform into foxes regardless.
Gallery
- Venog5.jpg
Other Articles
Venomancer Basics
Skills
- Venomancer Skill List
- Venomancer Guide to Skills
- Venomancer Glyphs
- Venomancer Skill Books
- Spirit Fox Form Quest
Pets
- Ultimate Pet List
- General Pet Guide
- Legendary Pets
- Venomancer Pet Evolution
- Pet Skills
- Rare Pets
- Baby Pet Guide
- Category:Pets (for all pet-related pages)
Builds
Miscellaneous
- Useful Venomancer Links (Useful links about everything.)
- Venomancer Channels (Venomancer videos.)
- Venomancer Luring (How to pull a single monster out of a group.)
- Venomancer Tanking
- Venomancer Dungeons (What to do or not do in dungeons.)
- Venomancer Survival Tactics
| Classes | |
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| Human | |
| Untamed |
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| Winged Elf | |
| Tideborn | |
| Earthguard | |
| Nightshade | |