Predator (class)
| Classification | |
|---|---|
| Alignment | Neutral |
| Starting City | (none) |
| Tutor | Sigurd v76795 |
| Basics | |
| Attacks | phys - bal - dex |
| Armor | leather |
| Weapons | sitara |
| Skillsets | |
| Knifeplay | |
| Predation | |
| Beastmastery | |
This is a page about the mechanics of Predator. If you are looking for origin, history, roleplay, or any other lore-related topic, see: 
[Predator (lore)].
Overview
Predators are savage warriors of the frozen wilds, a special brand of arctic phantom drawn to this world from another. From knives carved of the bones of the fallen to the dominated wild beasts who rise to their call, the tools of the Predator exemplify their fierce dedication to self-reliance. Though a Predator's knifeplay focuses primarily on destroying a victim's limbs, they also have access to a very capable affliction based offense through flung darts and venoms. Predators are excellent hunters, especially if they've slain others recently (AB APEX), dishing out significant damage with a particular emphasis on critical hits due to their three-or-four-hit combos.
A new Predator is advised to use the normal statpack, though they may change to something else later. Everyone receives one free reincarnation upon leaving novicehood (level 31), and if that is used up, another one upon reaching Tekal (level 99). It is common for people to keep an early statpack until reaching level 100.
Skills
Knifeplay is the mainstay of a Predator's arsenal, featuring a range of attacks from the signature sitara knife, as well as introducing the concept of stances (AB STANCES). Most knifeplay attacks will move the Predator from one stance to another, with each stance having a different effect. This is the foundation of the hallmark complexity of Predator combat.
Predation consists of an array of defensive and utility abilities, as well as the skills necessary to craft, envenom, and throw darts in pursuit of an affliction based offense.
Beastmastery allows the Predator to command the loyalty of an iconic direwolf, as well as one other beast at the same time - an orgyuk (bear-type creature), orel (a bird), or spider. While the direwolf can help with hunting (AB FLANK) and has several utility features, the other beasts are purely for combat against other adventurers.
Defences
- Knifeplay Ambidexterity: Passive. Allows the Predator to swap their sitara to their other hand (if it's empty) when one arm is crippled.
- Knifeplay Spacing: Reduces physical damage and increases chance to dodge.
- Knifeplay Teardown: Passive. Prevents a victim from parrying if they are fallen with at least one broken leg.
- Knifeplay Trueparry: Allows the Predator to parry all limbs at the same time, but they can't attack or move while doing so.
- Knifeplay Tidalslash: Use ABSORPTION to begin absorbing the magic from magically-sourced attacks, to be used later in a powerful tidalslash attack.
- Knifeplay Bladesurge: Gives a defence that, once triggered through loss of health, allows the Predator to benefit from all stances for a short time.
- Predation Hide: Removes you from room description and WHO HERE, enabling pommelwhip and hostage.
- Predation Whitesight: Allows you to see during a blizzard.
- Predation Regeneration: Adds periodic health regen, at the cost of a slight periodic mana drain.
- Predation Mask: Causes you to appear as 'a masked man/woman' instead of your name in room descriptions, WHO HERE, and actions like emotes (but not attacks).
- Predation Swifteye: Passive. Increases the speed of dartshot and twinshot under certain conditions.
- Predation Windwalk: Prevents certain notifications when you enter/leave an area, like mindnet. Does not cause you to move from room to room silently.
- Predation Preserval: Increases fire, cold, and electric resistance by a whopping 20%.
- Predation Aversion: Allows you to ignore aegii and glyphs.
- Predation Defang: Adds a chance for your successful parries to upset balance.
- Predation Culmination: Improves your chance to dodge/divert when using DODGE ALL or DIVERT ALL.
- Predation Apex: Passive. A little complicated, but important - see AB APEX.
- Beastmastery Placate: Passive. Once you defeat an alpha beast in the specified area, this provides some significant bonuses to beastcall.
Maintaining your defenses is an important part of staying alive in Aetolia! You should be using these in conjunction with your generic, non-class-specific, defences.
Firstaid Defences: blindness, deafness, fangbarrier, insomnia, levitation, waterbreathing (as needed), instawake, arcane, speed, vigor (while hunting)
- Firstaid can also maintain a handful of combat-only defenses: density, rebounding, harmony
Other Defences: tattoos, allsight and waterwalking enchantments, nightsight, deathsight, thirdeye, clarity, and dodge or divert, as well as any ylem mist orbs
Equipment
Weaponry: a bone sitara, carved via bonecarving, and possibly a shield (though this reduces damage output, due to ambidexterity)
Armor: a suit of leather armor, 10/10 protection or better
Enchantments:
- a jewelry item with a waterwalking enchantment (unless you have a zephyr artifact)
- a jewelry item with an allsight enchantment (replaces mindseye tattoo)
- a jewelry item with a purity enchantment
- a jewelry item with all four of magic, fire, cold, and electric resistance enchantments
- a fist sigil attached to each wielded item
- a handful of eye sigils and a weaponbelt, for combat against others
- consider an item with firelash in case of ranged combat, as daggerthrow may not be enough
Recommended Tattoos:
- Boar
- Moss
- Moon (to cover regeneration)
- Shield
- Tree
- Cloak
Additional Tattoos for Hunting: Consider a starburst, mountain, or book tattoo while hunting.
Additional Tattoos for Combat: Consider a starburst, crystal, or flame tattoo to help in combat against others.
Other Equipment: Predators use wood, iron, and cloth commodities to craft darts and threadtraps, and will need a stock of venoms and assortment of venom rags to fight other adventurers, but not to hunt denizens.
Hunting
New Predators will begin by using a single sitara attack at a time, generally alternating between lateral and vertical in order to swap between Ein-Fasit and Vae-Sant stance. Understanding what attack to use from which stance is critical to stringing together an effective offense as a Predator - there is a chart of stance flow in AB STANCES.
Upon learning series and twin, Predators can begin to string together combos of two (or three, using Laesan stance) hits at a time, and triplet allows for another hit still. Generally, Predators have the option of continuing to alternate lateral and vertical, or to alternate with a crescentcut combo (used from Rizet stance, for best results). Arranging your combos to end in Ein-Fasit stance reduces incoming physical damage between hits, but is difficult to pair with Laesan's extra hit.
Predators only need their sitara for hunting, and all sitaras have the same damage, speed, and penetration ratings. You may wield a shield in order to mitigate physical damage, but having a free hand makes all attacks (except crescentcut) more effective due to ambidexterity.
Core Offense
The simplest form of lethal offense for a Predator is to use twinshot with venoms to apply afflictions to a target, eventually either overwhelming their ability to cure or shutting it down entirely with a venom lock. This should be done from Vae-Sant stance as it reduces the balance cost of throwing darts, and the swifteye ability offers some additional options for increasing speed. An affliction offense will usually culminate in either cirisosis or voyria. It can be augmented by the use of bloodscourge and several Beastmastery abilities, particularly an orel's swoop or a spider's intoxicate and acid. Beast abilities can be coupled with fleshbane to apply a venom. One important note is that darts do respect magical shields (and rebounding auras, unless the Predator's apex level is high enough). This means even an affliction offense must make room for sitara combos when needing to raze. All combos used should end in Vae-Sant, to continue throwing darts as fast as possible.
Predators also have access to a limb trauma based offense through Knifeplay, building up to death by crescentcut. This is much more complicated to set up and understand, though certainly no less effective than an affliction offense. The root of the complexity stems from the interaction between stances and attacks. Building a sitara combo is not as simple as choosing which abilities to use - one must also consider the stance each ability will place them in, the benefits of that stance, and the potential hit to balance cost from using an ability in the wrong stance. A Predator's limb offense will typically focus on breaking at least one leg and getting the victim prone. This allows teardown to kick in, preventing the target from protecting themselves. From there, it is only a matter of time before enough limbs are broken to empower a finishing combo. Applying limb trauma can be augmented by use of fleshbane to slow down curing it, and either an orel's swoop (which can't use epteth or epseth to cripple, but can do things like vardrax and monkshood to slow down rebounding) or an orgyuk's mawcrush, which does not itself cause trauma but will force the target to parry their torso instead of other limbs. Note that the orgyuk's pummel ability is quite slow and does not deal enough trauma to make up for the lengthy equilibrium cost in most cases. There may be niche uses for it in 'burst' trauma to suddenly break a nearly-healthy limb, but this is an advanced concept.
Group Combat
Due to their versatility, Predators are a great asset in a group fight, able to support either a limb or an affliction based offense and also very capable of simply doing a shockingly large amount of raw damage, and especially burst damage, through the use of Knifeplay attacks.
In addition to the typical offensive techniques, Predators bring trip and especially pindown to the field. A well-timed pindown can turn the tide of a battle, both preventing an enemy's escape and keeping them from attacking while they writhe free. Though cirisosis is a powerful tool in single combat, it is rarely used in a group setting due to the delay between application and actual death; many other classes have a quicker means to that end. Instead, look for opportunities to unleash empowered crescentcut combos to swiftly dispatch the enemy team.
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