Pandora Saga Hunter Guide

Pandora Saga Hunter Guide by cycas

I. What is a Hunter?

A hunter is a very versatile scout class in Pandora Saga, capable of doing specialized task based on your build. In my opinion, it is the job which required a lot of choices. A hunter can be shaped and moulded into few different builds, each is viable and efficient in its own way. The chief characteristic of a hunter, which puts it aside from other scout jobs is its ability to invest pretty decent amount of ability points into mount, in turn making it a cavalry archer.

II. Race Selection

Each race has different starting stats and a racial ability. Although I cant say it would make or break a character, I should say picking a race wisely would assist you in making a hunter. For new player, please note that you can only pick one out of three racial abilities. I would only list those racial abilities which I think would suit a hunter.

– Humans: Personally I dont recommend humans. Unless you really love that female human and would like to play as one, dont pick this too all rounder race. If you insist, I think only Adaptability would be good racial ability.
– Elves: Probably the best choice for hunter. Nature Harmony would reduce MP consumption, very useful as you cant sit down without dismounting from your horse. Eagle Eyes gives an extra range to your bow/crossbow. Steadfastness gives you a minor protection against charm skills, pretty handy against those mages. Also elven females are cute!
– Dwarves: Starting with highest STR and decent amount of DEX, suited for STR hunters. However, their racial abilities are not really geared towards scout based characters.
– Enkidu: You have two nice passives here. Strong Arm which increases damage for bow and crossbows or Stone Skin which adds some defense. Also it starts with nice STR. By the way, I always pity the horse on which an enkidu is mounted over.
– Myrines: Myrines has high base AGI. Couple that with suits their Sharpness passive (which gives nice bonus to dodge), you can build a nice AGI Myrine hunter. The other passive, Acute Senses, increases your critical hit chance by 5%, which is also good choice for hunter.
– Lapins: Lapins are the cute tiny lil ones which has a low starting str but their Magic Resistance passive is always tempting. They also have another passive, which increases your MP recovery rate.

III. Abilities

* Class Skills
– Invigorate (Scout Lv 12) – Self only movement increase buff. Useful in the beginning, useless after you have Accelerate.
– Hiding (Scout Lv 18) – You are invisible, but you cant move. Very very useful skill to make mobs lose target on you (handy during nation run) also to make enemies lose target on you during pvp.
– Hawkeye (Archer job change) – Passive to increase accuracy.
– Accelerate (Archer Lv 28) – This… Is… SPEED. When a player says ‘spd’, he wants you to cast this buff on him to increase his movement speed. The increase is higher than that of Invigorate, rendering it useless once you got this skill
– Rapid Fire (Archer Lv 35) – A buff to increase attack speed for your crossbow. Also enable you to move during shooting animation.
– Watchful Eyes (Hunter job change) – Makes you immobile in exchange of ability to see invisible units. Contrary to the description, it doesnt increase your damage or range. It is an active skill with toggle on/off. Will drain MP per tick during its duration.
– Horse Archer (Hunter job change) – The skill that differentiate hunters and snipers. It allows you to do charging attacks and using ur arrow skills when you are mounted.
– Arrow Fusillade (Hunter Lv 50) – Self buff to make you shoot two arrows instead of one arrows per normal attack, pretty similar to Rush from Dispatch tree.

* Ranged Skills
– Flaming Arrow (Ranged 8) – Dishing a high physical damage and some fire element damage. Also has the chance of burning the enemy.
– Cobra Arrow (Ranged 12) – Physical damage which is pretty similar to your normal attack with some poison damage on top of it. Also has the chance of poisoning the enemy.
– Arrow Rain (Ranged 26) – Only work on bows. AoE arrow barrage, hitting all enemies in the area one time. Replaced with Arrow Storm if you have it.
– Multi Shot (Ranged 41, Trapping 21) – Only work on crossbows. Shoot five arrows at once, making it is possible to hit a target 5x (yes, FIVE) if you are very near to them. Consumes five bolts.
– Charged Shot (Ranged 50, Dispatch 21) – Only work on bows. High physical damage which knockback your opponent and forced him to face you. Will knockback mobs, even Argus.
– Silence Arrow (Ranged 54) – Normal damage with add silence status to opponent. Use it on mages to keep them out of action for a moment
– Arrow Storm (Ranged 61) – Replaced Arrow Rain upon acquiring. Instead of hitting the enemies once, it would hit twice. It could hit thrice if you are a sniper with 72 proficiency.

* Alchemy Skills
– Poison Making (Alchemy 8) – Consume 1 Deadly Nightshade + 1 Container to make 1 Poison Bottle (dont double click this item, it would poison you)
– Toxify (Alchemy 12) – Consume 1 Poison Bottle to imbue your weapon with Poison aura
– Serum (Alchemy 26) – Consume 1 Antidote Herb + 1 Container to make 1 Antidote
– Potion Crafting (Alchemy 41) – Consume 1 Moonlight Herb + 1 Aquilegia + 1 Container to make 1 Mysterious Potion (not worth it, as it recovers only a little LP and MP)
– Befuddle (Alchemy 50) – Consume 1 Poison Bottle to give you an anti-saltio effect in your attacks (slow down cast speed of opponent)
– Toxic Aura (Alchemy 61) – Increase poison aura damage when Toxify is activated. Since this is the only confirmed way to increase Toxify damage, if you are an Alchemy Hunter, get this.
– Surveillance (Alchemy 71) – Enable you to see traps laid by enemy. Pretty handy but I personally believe the investment is too heavy.

* Evasion Skills
– Dash (Evasion 8) – Increases your movement speed to insane level for 2 seconds. Very useful to flee or chase, but be careful there is a slight rubberband effect at the end of duration.
– Quick Step (Evasion 16) – Self buff to increase dodge. Not useful for non-AGI based character but very very nice add for AGI builds
-Tangled Fingers (Evasion 21) – It is a debuff to lower opponent’s accuracy. If you have it and you are not mounted, you might want to use it. However, I dont recommend using this too much. Your MP is already limited and better spent off throwing arrow storms to your opponent.
– Reinforce (Evasion 26) – A nice passive skill which is very useful on pvp. Increases knockout, knockdown and freeze resistance.
– Avoidance (Evasion 41) – Another self buff to increase dodge by 100 until you are attacked by two physical attacks. But no, it doesnt mean that this buff would stay active till you are being hit by two attacks.
– Intuition (Evasion 50) – A passive skill which enable you to dodge magic. Not really that big, but it is pretty cool considering I dont see any other way to dodge a psyblade when you are slept for example.

IV. Builds

As I mentioned above, I feel that there are many viable builds to hunter. The most common ones are AGI Hunter and STR Hunter. I have listed below some of builds I know of. Please take note that stat and ability distribution I wrote are pretty much basic. There are some leftovers points to play around with of course. Do remember that when mounted (at 50 mount proficiency) hunters are functioning at 80% efficiency. However, the DEF value would be the DEF value of the horse.

* AGI Hunter
This build emphasize on survivability while maintaining killing capability by ramming the horse into opponent and scraping off their remaining LP with their superior atk speed. With its high dodge rate, it lowers the chance of getting dismounted by spears and getting pinned by fellow archers. The build is commonly as follows.

99 AGI
60 DEX
30 STR

50 Mounts
54 Ranged
21 Trapping

* STR Hunter
This build taking damaging more seriously. It is more tricky to play with since you have to avoid warlords, spear juggernauts, dragoons, etc to prevent yourself to be dismounted (and thus weaken your battle efficiency). However, your horse charge + multishot may take down a mage / non-battle priest in a flash.

99 STR
60 DEX

50 Mounts
54 Ranged
21 Trapping

* Alchemy Hunter
I have always mentioned so far that horses are the focal point of a hunter. Having said all that, I would say that a largely-infantry hunter is still feasible to play around with. Despite having lower damage than a sniper (hunters have max 70 ranged while snipers have 90), a hunter can deal significant impact, especially with alchemy skills. I still recommending 20 mounts so that you can summon your horse on pk map though. If you insist that you DONT want a horse, I’d recommend you to check the Sniper Guide, Auramaster build. It might suit you more.

99 STR/AGI
50 DEX

61 Ranged
61 Alchemy
20 Mounts

V. Weapon of Choice

To bow or not to bow? This is the question which I had to answer when the cap level was increased from 44 to 50. For ranged characters, there are two distinct weapons available in Pandora Saga realm, bows and crossbows. I hope the following section would offer some insights for newer players on hunters weapon of choice.

A bow generally has much higher damage than a crossbow, has greater range and also easily obtained compared to crossbow. The strongest non cs crossbow (War Crossbow, rare drop from Skull Shooters) pales in comparison to the strongest non cs bow (Guardian Bow A, upgraded Muldian weapon). Here comes the headache, hunters’ Lv 50 skill, Arrow Fusillade is essentially geared towards crossbow. Combining this buff and Rapid Fire buff would increase the damage per second heavily. Also, being mounted, hunters are capable to absorb some damages and thus capable of directly ramming into an enemy AND blasting skills from their shorter-ranged crossbows.

The choice is there and I remember having a headache deciding on which weapon to use. Here’s my take on this issue. If you can afford it, use both! I believe that the main weapon should still be a crossbow. Get a nice crossbow (preferably a cs one, I had a +6 war crossbow with dual resolute soul but the damage was tsk…), enhance and slot it. On top of that, get a decent (I consider Guardian Bow / Lunatic Bow as decent) and keep it in inventory. Hotkey the bow, stack of arrows, the crossbow and the stack of bolts to simplify the switching process.

In battles (PvP/PK/War), use your crossbow as usual (horse charge, multishot, whatever) with both crossbow buffs (Rapid Fire and Arrow Fusillade). Once you are dismounted from your horse (ie becoming very vulnerable), retreat to backline (this is when Dash and Hiding come in handy) and switch to your bow and start casting Arrow Rain/Storm. When your horse is ready to be summoned again, it is time to wreak some havoc in front line.

VI. DOs and DONTs

* DO:
– Save up a lot of money. You will need a lot of cash because you would need a good horse and its armors.
– Speed people up when you are not mounted (unless it is your personal policy to be an evil guy muahaha).
– Learn how to control your horse. The difference between good and imba hunters lies on how they control their horses (when to charge, how to dodge terrains, how not to get mob trains follow you etc). Also, being a mounted class, in PvE you are most likely to be tasked to lure mobs. Horse control, no matter which plays you are more geared towards, is a necessary player skill.
– Ask another sniper (if available) in your party to speed your party. Explain (if needed) that you cant sit down when mounted and snipers can sit down after casting spd to all the pt members.
– Cast Watchful Eyes when you see (or sense) a cloaker around and no one else in your party is capable of doing Soul Bright.
– Scout ahead for your party. You ARE the fastest guy in your party with your horse.
– Stock a lot of bolts. With Arrow Fusillade + Rapid Fire + Multi Shot, your bolts consumption rate is insanely high. Restock as many times as possible.

* DONT:
– Charge at obvious tanks/dismounter. They will dismount you, inflicting bleeding status in the process and thats it.
– Attempt to charge directly towards a party without some form of support (unless you are very VERY VEEEERRY confident you can take down that particular guy in one roll).
– AFK during exp parties. You can do profing by continuously casting Accelerate on yourself. Even if you have maxed everything, just be there and chat. It would show that you are appreciative towards the rest of the party.
– Give up when you are trapped by horse trap (the 4 walls). Just keep hitting the walls till you die. Most likely you will still die, but I’d rather die trying.
– Attempt to be sniper (picking enemies from afar, then finish off with one combo roll) because you are not one. A hunter role is more of a disruptor/off-dps in pk instead of pure dps.