Ministrel Guide

Introduction
Taught new songs by the gods themselves, Minstrels are now a powerful class. They are able to enchant the enemy with different music and deal large amounts of damage with Melody Strike before the effect wears out. Minstrel and Gypsy job can also give half their stats to a supported character enabling the supported fighter to increase their damage. This job is known as Clown in other localizations.

Table of contents
-Stats
-Skills
-Strategies
-Equipment
-Battlemode

Stats

QUOTE

Strength: 20
Vitality: 65~80
Intelligence: 65~70
Dexterity: 9* [rounded up to 150 total, with bless]

Strength is for carrying items around. Healing items, arrows, armor, etc.
Vitality is a must for clowns. Downside of high vitality, AD will drop you easily. Same for ice pick. Clowns have very low base HP, so you need these numbers of vitality if you want to get near 10k hp.
Intelligence is for poem and frost joker effectiveness. It's also nice for some sp, since songs will take quite a lot of your sp, same for frost joker and tarot.
Dexterity is for dealing damage and dropping cast time to zero. Your damage will be extremely low without dexterity.

This is a supportive yet offensive build, going a bit in between.
Because this build is in between supporting and attacking, having 150 total dex, your team will have more cast time reduction of Poem of Bragi, making their casts less interrupted [and that IS important, because Phen card doesn't work in WoE].

With this build, you'll be best off using two triple bloody boned violins [for swapping].
For those afraid to lose their weapon because it breaks, you could go for a triple hydra golem violin too.

You'll be useful for attacking, mainly with wind arrows, breaking the ice of your frozen targets with your AV.
This will do fair damage, even with the WoE reductions.
It's a nice build for assassinating WoE-important classes, such as professors, other clowns, high wizards and snipers.


Skills
This link contains a good WoE build for clowns. *click*

Why Apple of Edin only lv2?
It's a fairly useless skill for WoE, in my opinion.
The only class you'll really help with it, is paladins on a sacrifice build.

Musical lessons should always be lv10. It gives a good increment of damage with Arrow Vulcan, your main offensive skill.
Plus it increases the effectiveness of all your songs greatly.

Frost Joker is a very important skill. Vital for taking castles when attacking, it can make the difference between winning and losing.

Dissonance will be a bit useful if you know where an enemy is hiding, and you want to sight him.
Dissonance does approximately 10~70 damage, which isn't a lot, but it will uncloak your enemies.
Reequipping your violins quickly, spamming dissonance, is a good way to keep your enemies uncloaked, making it easy for your team to kill them.

Assassin Cross of Sunset is good for taking castles, just like Frost Joker.
It will give the Emp breaking assassins just that little boost of ASPD they need.

Magic Strings/Poem of Bragi is..yea, ALSO a good skill for taking castles.
All the wizards in your team, that are in range of the song, will be far more useful.
Their cast will be harder to interrupt for the enemy, because they're casting a lot faster than they would usually.
Phen card does not work in WoE, therefore the skill is very useful.

Wand of Hermode, on the other hand, isn't exactly useful for attacking.
Wand is a unique song. It can only be casted on a warp portal, and it can only be used in WoE castles.
This song will do a complete dispell on every friend and foe that enters the area.
The only status that's not dispelled is Berserk, though all the knight's buff, such as parrying, two hand quicken and more, will be canceled.
This skill is very useful for defending, giving your team the advantage by making your foes enter the area completely dispelled.

Loki's Veil/Classical Pluck is also a good skill for defending.
It's a duet skill, so be sure to only get this skill if you know you got a gypsy in your team.
Loki's Veil unables use of skills in the area of effect.
Very useful for preventing the enemy from easily killing the Gypsy/Clown that's doing Wand of Hermode.
Also functional for preventing the enemy from doing Magnetic Earth on the entrance, making them unaffected by all your wizard's AoE spells.

Tarot card is a good skill if you're lucky.
It can coma the enemy, making them completely helpless.
It can also do 6666 damage, very handy when you're fighting those hard-to-kill bastards.
This skill CAN save your castle.

Though remember that you shouldn't rely on luck to win a battle.


Strategies
When I tell you to go for professors, high wizards, clowns and snipers, I do really mean those classes.
Trying to kill other classes will probably fail.
The reason to go for mage and archer classes is because they've got fairly weak def, low hp and are all important for WoE.
Be sure to stick it to one, at most two AVs if he doesn't die, since you'll be more useful spamming frost jokes and doing poeming on your team.

A good way to play songs quickly, is canceling them quickly, being able to spam frost jokes, poem, cancel and spam frost jokes again.
The best thing to do this is simply equipping a copy of your main violin.
Because it equips a different weapon, the song automatically cancels.

The reason to carry two of the same violins around is being able to swap them quickly, without making mistakes.
I have two of the same violins so I never equip a +0 Violin[4] and then accidentally AVing with it.

Since clown is such a fragile class, you'll be best running around all the time, staying close to your team, hiding now and then and running to safety walls and pneuma's a lot.

O, and just a piece of advice.
Always use battlemode.


Equipment
For equips I'd go for the frigg's circlet/odin's blessing/valkyrie's shield combo, going for mass mdef.
With of course a marc in the odin's, preferably having two odin's; one with ED and one with marc.
This will grant you nice mdef [30+], 20% resistance vs. fire and water [valk shield] and therefore much less affected by storm gust and meteor storm.

I also prefer a ragamuffin manteau above raydric, since it'll be raining elements and magic.
For shoes I like vidar's boots. It's easy to get and high def and 9% max hp/sp increment.

For middle+lower headgear, you could go for slotted sunnies with marduk, or an opera masque for 2 def.
For upper I'd also carry a poopoo/beret/f. beret/angeling hat with me, aside the frigg's.
Magic isn't everything.

As a weapon, +10 triple bloody boned violin/+10 double bloody boned lute would be best for you.
Having two is good for swapping.
You could grab a third unbreakable violin, by inserting a golem card into it.

For accessories I'd carry around 2 nimble gloves and a smokie glove.
I'd equip 1 nimble and 1 smokie most of the time. Smokie will be your only savior if you got an asura champ incoming.

QUOTE (Equipment)

Upper headgear
Frigg's Circlet
Feathered Beret/Beret/Angeling Hat/PooPoo Hat
Middle and Lower headgear
Opera Masque [Middle+Lower]
Marduk Sunglasses[1]
Armor
Marc Odin's Blessing[1]
Evil Druid Odin's Blessing[1]
Shield
Thara Frog Valkyrie's Shield[1]
Weapon
+10 Hydra Hydra Hydra Skeleton Worker Violin[4]x2/+10 Hydra Hydra Skeleton Worker Lute[3]x2
+10 Hydra Hydra Skeleton Worker Golem Violin[4]
Shoes
Vidar's Boots
Garment
Ragamuffin Manteau
Raydric Muffler[1]
Innoxious Muffler[1]
Accessories
Zerom Glove[1]x2
Smokie Glove[1]

Battlemode
Now, a very important item.
Battlemode, you shouldn't go without it.
With battlemode you can have everything you need spread over your keyboard keys, rather than helplessly trying to F12 quick enough.
Thanks to battlemode you can equip approximately 5 different arrows, and swap them by the press of a button.
Very useful.

See someone surviving asura, but you can't freeze him properly because everyone's bashing him?
Equip immaterial arrows and AV the shit out of him.

Here's a couple of hints for using battlemode:
The first F12 bar is located from Z to > on your keyboard.
The second F12 bar is located from Q to O on your keyboard.
The third F12 bar is located from A to L on your keyboard.

To active battlemode simply type '/bm' in your chat window.
Once battlemode is actived, you'll have to press 'space' or 'enter' in order to be able to type messages, then press 'enter' [again] to send the message.
To turn battlemode off again, type '/bm'.

I personally favor putting buffs upper right on your keyboard, in the Y-O area.
Songs I put upper left, in the Q-T area, having two triple bloody violins with me, for more easy swapping when I press on my 'S' key.
Now, why would I swap two of the same weapons?
Because when you swap them, by simply pressing the S key, you cancel your song without doing Amp.

Put the important keys you need to access quickly [Hide for when there's someone onto you] in your most reachable area on the keyboard.
This is a case of personal favoring.
I like having those keys on the right of my keyboard, another person might favor left, or middle.

Battlemode won't be easy to practice at first, but once you've got the hang of it, it's a life saver.

Made by: Phen of ZNRO


For more guides and Tips and Tricks I hope you continue to visit Ragnarok Job Guides!