Minstrel

Minstrel
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Information
Type:	Stealther
Profession:	The Academy
Races:	Briton Highlander Saracen
Class Stats
Primary:	Charisma
Secondary:	Dexterity
Tertiary:	Strength

Keepers of Song, the Minstrels of the realm of Albion provide many helpful services to their realm-mates. They are capable of many tasks, including crowd control, direct damage, increased run speeds, and much more. They find themselves in the position of being good at many things, but gods at nothing. Holding these valuable skills proves great worth in the fight against monsters and enemies in other realms.

The Minstrel's run speeds makes them and their group-mates very hard to catch in the frontier. As a defensive mechanism, groups will seek out Minstrels in hopes of having this ability to outrun the enemy and to travel to their destinations much quicker than most. That's just one of several reasons that groups would seek out a Minstrel.

Minstrels have many offensive and defensive abilities, though they rely heavily on their songs to stay alive. They must play instruments when performing musical pieces, unlike their Skald counterparts in Midgard. Minstrels derive from the rogue classes of Albion. They have many similarities to the Infiltrator class in that they have the ability to stealth and sneak around their enemies whenever they are in danger. Though they have these similarities, they are not nearly as strong as the Infiltrator when it comes to hiding.

Attributes

Starting Race Attributes
Available Races	Charisma Primary	Dexterity Secondary	Quickness Tertiary	Con	Str	Pie	Emp	Int
Highlander	60	50	50	70	70	60	60	60
Briton	60	60	60	60	60	60	60	60
Saracen	60	80	60	50	50	60	60	60

Recommended Race:

Although the impact of race selection has only a very marginal effect on your ability to perform as a Minstrel, the most common preferences are listed below. (For Minstrels in general, it's truly almost entirely a cosmetic choice only.)

• Highlander for Slash spec

• Briton for either Slash or Thrust

• Saracen for Thrust spec. (Also good choice for pure grouping Minstrels.)

Abilities

Armor: Cloth, Leather, Studded, Chain
Weaponry: Staves, Slashing, Thrusting
Shield: Small
Miscellaneous: Sprint, Evade I (1), Evade II (15), Tireless (15),
Miscellaneous:(based on stealth spec) Distraction (5), Danger Sense (8), Safe Fall I (10), Safe Fall II (20), Safe Fall III (30), Safe Fall IV (40), Safe Fall V (50), Climb Walls (25)

Specialization

Weapon Specializations

• Slash
• Thrust

Skills

• Stealth

Spells

• Instruments
  

Common specializations

Grouping Specializations

1. 50 Instruments, 44 Slash/Thrust (no Stealth and thus no Climb Walls)
2. 50 Instruments, 34 Slash/Thrust, 25 Stealth (for Climb Walls)

Solo Specializations

1. 50 Instruments, 29 Slash/Thrust, 33 Stealth (Most common Stealth spec)
2. 50 Instruments, 44 Slash/Thrust (Common spec for visible solo with pet)
3. 50 Instruments, 34 Slash/Thrust, 25 Stealth (For Climb walls mostly, but can Stealth reasonably well)

Tactics

PVE

Charm an OJ+ pet, buff it, and farm.  :)

RVR

Just a quick run-down of basic Minstrel tactics in RvR.

Groups:

• Primary role is Speed & Interrupts.
• Make frequent use of your flute mezz as a 1500 range interrupt while running around looking for the best targets to interrupt. (Support and Caster classes)
• Use your 4 instants for interrupts wisely.
• Keep speed running at all times for your own support classes.
• If your Sorc is mezzed or busy, demezz Sorc/others.
• Only pull your sword out to interrupt or occasionally to peel with snare style.
• Unless you're clearly winning a fight, your DDs are not for damage.
• If you have nothing else to do, Champion Level Disease can be a useful thing to cast on enemies.
• Use FZ wisely at key moments to disable a primary healer, or as a last ditch effort to peel someone of your own primary healer.

Solo w/pet:

• See PVE section. :)
• Stay alive
• If in danger, kite, kite, kite...

Solo Stealth w/o pet:

• A classic favorite "from Stealth" attack for a Stealth Minstrel is to start your mezz song on a player within ~1000 range, which takes a fixed 3s to cast. While it's still playing, and before it lands, lay your DDs down on your opponent. Then use champion debuffs to debuff your messed opponent (debuffs don't break mezz!), and break your mezz with champion disease and another set of insta DDs.
• A modification of the above classic is to cast disease first to prevent Health Mythirians from healing all/most of the damage of the initial set of DDs. On a prepared and aware opponent this carries the risk of maybe not being able to land your mezz, but in most cases it's pretty easy to land all of them from stealth.
• If your opponent purges your mezz, that leaves them open for the stun. If they don't purge, do NOT use your stun right away. Most often they're holding Purge for your stun, so if you stun right away then you allow your opponent to also purge the debuffs & disease on them! Make them fight debuffed for a bit, and then use your stun.
• These are all just suggestions of course, and as anything they carry trade-offs. Some people like to stun first in anticipation of a minute-long fight, so they can stun again after a minute is up. So you can also stun right off the bat and not use mezz, and if they purge stun you can use mezz at any time to stop the fight and heal/debuff/disease. Beware though, many people won't purge a Minstrel's stun when they're at/near full health. They know a petless Minstrel can't deliver much damage in the ~6-7s that stun generally lasts.
• If you're faced with a tough opponent whom is not purging your stun, you can try making them pay for it with a snare style and kiting them for another round of DDs. (Again works best if they have disease on them to prevent them from regenerating health.)

General Solo tactics:

• Minstrels usually focus on their survivability more then their melee prowess. We can often outlast our opponents due to our ability to control a fight with CC, as well as our fairly strong ability to soak up melee damage.

Realm Abilities

Useful Realm Abilities

• Ignore Pain
• Long Wind (Level 1 for all)
• Mastery of Focus (Level 1 at least)
• Mastery of Pain
• Wild Minion (Petstrel style)
• Wild Power (Level 1 at least)
• Purge
• Speed of Sound (Level 1 at least)

Neutral Realm Abilities

• Augmented Acuity
• Augmented Constitution
• Avoidance of Magic
• Ameliorating Melodies (For group play only)
• First Aid
• Mastery of Magery
• Toughness
• Mastery of Concentration (For group play mostly)
• The Empty Mind (Can be useful for solo play)

Useless Realm Abilities

• Augmented Dexterity (Very rarely specced by Minstrels.)
• Augmented Quickness (Unless you want to reach the 250 QUI cap)
• Augmented Strength (Mediocre for increasing melee damage for Slash specs.)
• Ethereal Bond
• Lifter
• Veil Recovery
• Mystic Crystal Lore
• Raging Power
• Second Wind

Realm Rank 5 Ability - Calming Notes

Insta-cast spell that mesmerizes all enemies within 750 radius for 20 seconds. (Reuse timer 5 minutes.) This recently upgraded ability has become a powerful tool in the Minstrels arsenal.

Master Level Paths

Warlord
Sojourner

Usable Artifacts

Weapons

• Crocodile's Tooth Dagger (Slash or Thrust)

• Battler (Slash)

• Golden Spear (Thrust)

• Malice's Axe (Slash)

• Traitor's Dagger (Slash or Thrust)

Shields

• Aten's Shield (Molvik Usable)
• Cyclop's Eye Shield

Armor

Chest

• Eirene's Hauberk (Melee Version)

• Guard of Valor (Melee Version)

Arms

• Arms of the Winds

• Foppish Sleeves

Head

• Crown of Zahur (Caster Version)

• The Winged Helm

Legs

• Alvaru's Leggings

• Wings Dive

Hands

• Maddening Scalars (Melee Version)

Feet

• Enyalio's Boots

Jewelry

Belts

• Belt of Oglidarsh

• Belt of the Sun

• Orion's Belt (Molvik Usable)

Bracers

• Band of Stars
• Ceremonial Bracers
• Night's Shroud Bracelet
• Snatcher

Cloaks

• Harpy's Feather Cloak
• Shade's of Mist

Gems

• Atlantis Tablet

• Dream Sphere

• Eerie Darkness Stone

• Flask

• Gem of Lost Memories (Molvik Usable)

Necklaces

• Goddess' Necklace
• Phoebus' Harp Necklace

Rings

• Crocodile's Tear Ring

• Ring of Dances

• Ring of Unyielding Will (Molvik Usable)

• Scorpion's Tail Ring

Other Useful Items

Weapons
Jewelry
Mythirian

• Health
• Blocking
• Evading
• Safe Fall