Lancer better after 1.18

After battling some tough RNM's (solo) and tasting the ground a few times I've got the hang of Lancer pretty well.

"Normal Attacks" with Cooldowns are key to keep attacking constantly.

As you should know by now animations can be cancelled half-way through in order to cast something else.

If you time everything correctly by using "Full Thrust", "Heavy Thrust" and "Pierce" you will hardly ever wait for your slow auto-attacks to go off. If anything, let one Auto-Attack get in and quickly activate a WS, Spell or "Normal Attack" after it.
"Invigorate2" and "Comrade in Arms2" should be active at all times if possible.

The strategy to constantly attack requires you to be a r50 class in order to equip the max abilities possible. Whenever "Full Thrust", "Comrade in Arms" and "Invigorate2" were cooling down and had a few seconds left to be available i started buffing my defense with "Obsess", "Defender", "Featherfoot" etc. Then activate all my TP gain abilities and lay on the smackdown with "Moonrise", "Twisting Vice", "Doomspike" with "Bloodbath" or "Ferocity2" > Raging Strike" > "Hawk's Eye" > "Chaos Thrust" when mob is below 20%.

The only time i auto-attack is when the battle starts and when everything is in cooldown. An attack per second is much better than waiting 3-4 seconds for an auto-attack.

Anyone else find Lancer to be much stronger after inclusion of "Auto-attack" and the removal of Stamina?

I enjoy it alot and I use pretty much the same tactics as you. There are plenty of abilities to use inbetween the auto attacks.

yup yup same tactics and timing as well.

Indeed, and while I am not constantly at 3k TP like before, I do find that I have enough TP to get done what needs to be done. Plus, with the removal of stamina, I have found that some cross-class abilities have become much more viable for both defensive use and offensive use. All in all, I am very pleased with how lancer came out in the patch, even with the TP "nerf."

yeap, with Speed Surge your auto attack is much faster.

ya i agree, I used to main pug but now with auto attack lancer is king :P

While I'm only a r25 lancer, I've noticed battles have become much easier/fun since 1.18 and gives me more motivation to keep leveling lancer

I'm pretty sure the auto-attack timer never resets and you'll keep hitting in the background even if the animation isn't visible because of your constant ability spam.

It resets after every Weapon Skill finishes. You can test and count the seconds.

kinda off topic, but not so much as this refers to 1.18a but has anyone noticed the differences in damage post-patch? I think it's quite substantial.

Yea i notice that the "long" animation from Chaos Thrust can be cancel if you cast another WS , (i dont know if magic also). i find that kinda cool .. but really who doesnt like to see Chaos Thrust :).

yea, one would assume that in a tp driven WS heavy system, lancer will pull ahead. shortest invigorate time, comrade in arms, and putting massive amounts of WS on your bar. this is pretty much the way all melee DD play now, but lancer is best at it, because it has the most tp boosting skills, on the shortest cooldowns.

For the best damage over time, you should be doing your best to weave abilities through autoattacks. If you know that you have to wait a second before using another WS, you should allow your autoattack to fire then immediately use the ability.

I'm all jelly over LNC.......and this thread.

Dragon Knight is gonna be sweet!!

Mmmmm.... Dragon Lancer....

Lancer has grown on me a lot, I can't even stomach soloing other classes anymore.

even if you dont have lancer as a main everyone should rank it up IMO. CiAII, InvII, Twisting vice, and Leg Sweep are some of the best abilities in the game regardless of what class you are on.

I find Lancer to be unstoppable.

Add Javelins to the mix and essentially you will always be attacking! Making Speed Surge completely worthless and Life Surge the best Surge!

1. I start off Pre-battle with Invigorate2, Still Precision and Life Surge
2. Javelin and Auto-Attack as i get close
3. Full Thrust into a quick Chaos Thrust, then cancel into Comrade in Arms2 into...
4. Any of the 4 Normal attacks which are:

Full Thrust > Pierce > Heavy Thrust > Javelin

5. Then when i get 3000tp i go into a fully buffed Doomspike2/Bloodbath
6. After this Invigorate2, Comrade in Arms2 and Full Thrust will be ready.



PS. When Javelins hit the timer for your auto-attack starts, as you close in your character will attack as soon as you get close.

i haven't seen anyone really mention Skull Sunder II or Heavy Trammel i think both are integral since they have smaller tp requirements, they come in handy when the mob has a sliver of health left, too much for a basic attack and you dont have enough tp for a 1k+ws. Skull also has a nice dot. i think it should be part of any lancer build.

Also Life Surge > Chaos Thrust great healing tool, forget basic attacks have LS on and keep spamming ws your health never goes down.

I certainly use Heavy Trammel, low cost decent damage and hits multiple targets.