Tera Guide PvE Lancer Gear Crystals Skills and Glyphs
Tera Guide PvE Lancer Gear Crystals Skills and Glyphs.
The lancer is a heavily armored class which specializes in a lance with melee defensive capabilities.
The lancer wields a large shield alongside its lance, which it can use to fend off most attacks. After fending off an attack, the lancer can counterattack with shield and lance.
This guide is targeted towards lancers with at least a basic knowledge of the class, and those who may be looking for an extra push in the right direction.
Guide PvE Lancer – Lancer Mentality
- Lancers are very ping reliant. The class has a lot of input, meaning there are many times where you’d take ping tax, and zero supercancels. In addition to this, one of your main skills, Onslaught, tends to desync your character into unwanted places if your ping is too high.
- In my opinion, lancers are one of the more experience-based classes. For most players it may be difficult to pick up and perform optimally, as there are many small things that come with experience. Things like knowing exactly when to Wallop because you know the boss will attack, or knowing to use onslaught when it won’t be interrupted are things that come with becoming accustomed to the class.
- Lancers have very big mana issues, meaning I find myself spamming mana potions during every encounter. Having good healers can help alleviate the pain a lot, but it is still a problem that lancers face, so every lancer should always enter dungeons with this in mind.
- Your top priority is to position the boss correctly so that your DPS can hit the boss safely; the lancer is the tank of the party, after all.
- Because of the damage and aggro reworks, lancers should try to play as aggressively as possible, and squeeze in as many skills between boss attacks as we can manage. It’s not ideal to hold block for longer than a second in most scenarios, and if you find yourself holding your block for any longer than that, you likely are playing too defensively.
- As a tank, having good gear plays a huge role. In particular, having a VM chest for the additional damage reduction roll gives players a huge margin of error, and makes certain mechanics manageable which would otherwise kill you.
Guide PvE Lancer – Gear
Weapon
Top:
Increased damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters.
Increases Attack speed by 9%
Bottom:
Increased damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters.
Increases damage by 8.6% to the target with the most aggro towards you.
Increases damage by 6%
Decreases Skill Cooldowns by 7.2%
Attack Speed vs Enraged
To make Attack Speed worth it, you absolutely must have a flawless rotation. However, because a perfect rotation is possible using the Enraged roll, Attack speed is not optimal. I’d suggest the Attack Speed roll on entry gear like Slaughter or Guile if you do not have etchings.
Armor
Top:
Increases damage of Spring Attack by 15%. – Spring attack ends up at roughly 30-40% of our overall damage, significantly more impactful than any of the other bonuses given by armor rolls.
Bottom:
Decreases damage by 8.7% from the monster with the most aggro towards you.
Decreases damage taken by 6%.
Decreases damage taken from frontal attacks by 6.9%.
Decreases damage from enraged monsters by 10%.
Gloves
Increases Power by 5.
Increases Attack speed by 2.25%.
Increase Crit Factor by 9.
Boots
Increases Endurance by 4.
Increases Movement Speed by 6%.
Replenishes 2% of total MP every 5 seconds.
Guide PvE Lancer – Crystals
If your gear isn’t quite perfect yet, you may want to consider using a Carving instead of the second Pounding. However, when considering best-in-slot I’ve found that Pounding is more consistent.
In addition to standard front crit crystals, I urge every lancer to carry back crit crystals as well, because there are many encounters that you can safely back crit without causing too much of an inconvenience to your DPS players.
Weapon Dyad secondary – Try to get Poised or Relentlessly, but not having these isn’t the end of the world.
Armor Dyad secondary – Aim for one Glisteningly as this is a huge qol buff whenever we get to back crit. For the other three, try to get Brutally. The reason we want Brutally is because after many shield phases, bosses have moments where they’re “staggered.” While they’re staggered they’re considered to be in a knocked-down state.
A primary example of this is Shandra Manaya, and there are shield/stagger phases in the 30-man raid as well. Brilliantly and Swiftly are also viable.
Etchings
Energetic IV for Weapon and Gloves
Grounded IV for Armor and Boots
Keen IV vs Energetic IV
The current rule of thumb is that all lancers use Energetic etchings for all content. Energetics perform well in all encounters, active or inactive. However Keen etchings should outperform Energetics in ideal situations. They especially shine during inactive fights like Desolarus. There are a few reasons for this:
- During Inactive fights, you can expect lower usage of Shield counter and lower Hold the Line stacks. This makes our overall crit a lot lower.
- During Inactive fights, both cooldown reduction and attack speed become slightly less valuable as you cannot use Shield Counter as much. Higher Attack speed leads to more cooldown locking, which means we are forced to spend more time using Combo Attack, which deals very low DPS.
- During absolute ideal situations, you can expect bosses to die significantly faster. This leads to higher variance in your overall crit chance, and these can help you tip the balance in your favor.
It is possible that, moving forward, we may see more encounters where Keen is preferred. I believe that Keen etchings still need more ingame testing against different bosses, which is why I recommend Energetics.
Guide PvE Lancer – Skills/Glyphs
The lancer specializes in various lancer skills and highly depends on such in terms of combat in order to deal damage from close range and attempt to avoid getting hit by defending and stunning. Most Lancer skills can only be used while a lance is equipped.
Adrenaline Rush
Increases Attack Speed by 20% and increases damage to monsters by 5% for you and all party members within 40m for 1s. Your attacks draw more aggro. Decreases cooldown of your melee attack skills by 50%.
This is our main DPS Cooldown. Be ready to use mana potions with this one, as casting Guardian Shout and Adrenaline Rush costs a huge amount of mana, plus we’ll be spamming our skills as much as possible throughout its duration.
Swift Adrenaline Rush. – Increases Attack Speed by an additional 10% – Note that the attack speed given by this is applied BEFORE gear/other Attack Speed sources, and AFTER Adrenaline’s baseline has been applied. The glyph should be renamed “Increases attack speed by an additional 12%” for clarity. Nonetheless the effect applies to your entire party, so this is a very important glyph.
Backstep
Quickly back up without turning around.
Affirmative Backstep – Reduces RE cost by 100 – This glyph isn’t absolutely necessary, as there are very few encounters that require you to iframe twice in quick succession. However it is very useful if you are back critting, and also if you actively position the boss by using your iframe for mobility.
Chained Leash
Throw a chain around a target within 15m and pull up to 6 enemies within 15m together into a tight group. Chained Leash stuns the target.
Similar to Leash, this skill has very few uses, primarily in interrupting boss mechanics via a stun, but is still quite useful for grouping mobs in trash pulls.
Energetic Chained Leash
Lingering Chained Leash
Challenging Shout
Draw the attention of enemies within 10m and maintains it at maximum for 5 sec. Gains Unwavering for 20 seconds.
This skill was recently reworked to give the caster maximum aggro for a time, making this skill very useful for snatching back aggro from our DPS, or for the 30-man Aggro mechanics. This skill also gives us Unwavering, which isn’t necessarily useful for any encounters.
Grounded Challenging Shout – Increases Endurance by 21 upon successful hit – If you’re extremely undergeared, you may want to consider this glyph. Ideally you won’t be using Challenging Shout though.
Ardent Challenging Shout
Threatening Challenging Shout
Brilliant Challenging Shout
Hastened Challenging Shout – Because of the changes to Challenging Shout, casting this skill gives you maximum Aggro for a time, making this a very good glyph choice.
Charging Lunge
Charge a short distance and impale your target.
This is our main mobility skill, and should cover enough distance for any encounter currently in game. Keep in mind that it finishes with an attack, which, ideally, you would cancel before it lands a hit. Because of this attack, when you’re retreating from bosses, make sure to move a small distance away from the boss to prevent yourself from charging the skill back into the boss. This skill also chains into Wallop.
Empowered Charging Lunge
Fleetfooted Charging Lunge
Energetic Charging Lunge – Decreases cooldown by 20% – Personally, I never use this glyph. However it can be useful on certain fights that require a lot of movement.
Combo Attack
Strike one or more targets in front of you, and gain MP with each hit. Successive strikes do more damage, up to four hits, with the fourth hit dealing substantially more.
One of our fillers. This gives us back some mp, and also makes our shield barrages faster if used enough. Always use only the first attack.
Threatening Combo Attack
Spirited Combo Attack
Debilitate
Briefly weaken the Endurance of your foes by 4%. Effect stacks up to three times.
One of our fillers. One thing that makes an excellent lancer is being able to keep this debuff up 99% of the time, which is fairly easy using the Lingering glyph.
Impelling Debilitate
Lingering Debilitate – Increases effect duration by 100% – This glyph has never been necessary, and always has been fairly QoL. It’s very good in this patch due to mechanics like Imperator’s Target.
Guardian Shout
Creates an aura which increases Endurance by 91% and Power by 30% for you and group members within 40m. Lasts 45s. Effect ends if you are knocked down.
This is our second group party buff. It lasts a very long time so you can feel safe using it shortly before the burn. Be careful though, as being knocked down removes the buff from you and your party.
Brilliant Guardian Shout
Energetic Guardian Shout – Decreases cooldown by 35%
Infuriate
Enrages all monsters within 10m and increases your aggro to the maximum amount.
I consider this to be another party “buff.” With the changes to Enraged bosses, this skill can enable your party to burn down bosses quickly whenever your team finds it optimal to do so. More on this skill later in the guide.
Slowing Infuriate
Energetic Infuriate – Decreases cooldown by 20% – This is a glyph I’d strongly recommend, and one I use in every glyph page. However I do not think it is absolutely necessary.
Menacing Wave
Blast a wave that briefly decreases Movement Speed and Attack Speed of all targets within 7m by 15%.
Not gonna lie, I cannot recall any point in the past 3-4 months that I used this skill with any regularity, as it is a pvp skill.
Brilliant Menacing Wave
Lingering Menacing Wave
Onslaught
Rush your foe and lunge repeatedly. You take only half damage while using this skill, and are more resistant to knockdown and stagger. Activates faster if you first use Shield Bash.
One of our most important damaging skills. Onslaught is great for many things; you can use it to cover distance, deal damage, and “tank” certain boss mechanics. It does have a few drawbacks: the damage is very backloaded, so if for any reason you had to interrupt casting this, it’d be a significant damage loss.
Also, if you’re a high ping player (even those with low ping suffer from this on occasion) it’s very possible that you end up killing yourself by desyncing into one-shot mechanics (a common one being Pahoegar’s lasers, as I’ve fallen victim to this numerous times even with 40-50 ping), or desyncing through the boss.
This skill requires a lot of know-how to use it in situations where you won’t have to interrupt it.
Brilliant Onslaught – Reduces MP cost by 150. – Because of both the low point cost and Onslaught’s very high mana cost, this glyph isn’t a bad idea if you’re having issues with mana.
Empowered Onslaught – Increases skill damage by 30%.
Carving Onslaught – Doubles the chance to crit.
Retaliate
Leap to your feet while attacking your target. You can use this skill only when knocked down. You become briefly immune to knockdown, stagger, and stuns.
Empowered Retaliate
Energetic Retaliate
Second Wind
Recovers 50945 HP and 750 RE.
It heals us and gives us RE, basically an oh shit button. If the healing crits, you get 76k hp back.
Energetic Second Wind
Ardent Second Wind
Stand Fast
Block frontal attacks with your shield. Damage reduction depends on your equipment. Reduces damage as long as you hold down the skill button. Allies behind you also get damage reduction.
Our blocking skill, used to cancel the ending animations on many of our skills. Whenever we block an attack, we gain 1 stack of Hold the Line, which gives us 4 power, 6 crit factor, and increases our aggro by 4%. Maintaining Hold the Line is essential for getting high DPS as a lancer, as the resulting amount of free stats it gives you is enormous.
Keep in mind that for multi-hitting attacks, you’ll have to tap block to gain more stacks. I’ll have a video demonstrating this.
Reinforced Stand Fast – Increases maximum RE by 500. – This glyph, similar to the Backstep glyph, is very helpful in situations where you have to iframe multiple times in quick succession, however i find the glyph point cost to be a bit high to employ it in regular use.
Pumped Stand Fast – 30% chance to increase Power by 15% for 10 seconds upon a successful block. – This glyph gives you 6 power, and on most fights is up almost 100% of the time. However, during some inactive fights you may see significant downtime in this glyph, and maybe you’d like to invest the points elsewhere.
Powerlinked Stand Fast – Increases skill damage of Shield Counter by 25% for a few (10) seconds.
Influential Stand Fast
Guide PvE Lancer – Rotation/Skill Usage
Rotation is a tricky part, as I don’t see it as simple as Skill A > Skill B > Skill C. There are far too many variables in combat and you would do best to set up a hierarchy of skills, and set priorities to each of them.
You should be able to easily use all of your DPS skills off cooldown, and have remaining time to do other things (mechanics/combo attack/movement etc.) This is how your list should look like *OUTSIDE OF ADRENALINE RUSH*
- Debilitate – Maintain 3 stacks at all times, and use Debilitate off cd until you reach 3
- Block/Shield Counter
- Spring Attack
- Wallop = Onslaught
- Shield Barrage
- Lockdown Blow
- Combo Attack
- Debilitate
Blocking is very high priority as it enables Shield Counter and refreshes our Hold the Line stacks, which we aren’t guaranteed to maintain during certain fights.
In almost every situation, Shield Counter is the most ideal skill to use as you can chain it into Spring Attack. Doing this allows you to skip over weaker chains like Debilitate and Shield Barrage.
Wallop deals more DPS than Onslaught if it blocks something, and you’re able to Shield Counter afterwards. Otherwise, on average, Onslaught provides slightly higher DPS due to the crit glyph.
I never cast unchained Onslaught unless I’m using it for the damage reduction portion of the skill.
Example Rotation
Shield Barrage > Spring > Shield Bash > Onslaught > Shield Barrage > Spring > Wallop > Lockdown Blow > Shield Barrage > Spring > Debilitate > Combo Attack > Shield Barrage > Spring
Adrenaline Rush
While under the effects of Adrenaline Rush, our rotation is very different, as not all skills are affected the same way by the added Cooldown Reduction. Adrenaline Rush reduces the cooldown of Shield Barrage, Spring Attack, Shield Counter, Wallop, and Onslaught. In this scenario, your skill hierarchy would look like this:
- Debilitate (if you don’t have 3 stacks)
- Spring Attack = Shield Counter
- Wallop
- Shield Barrage
- Debilitate
We shouldn’t be using Onslaught in our Adrenaline Rush, because it’s very slow and leads to Spring Attack cooldown clipping.
Example ARush Rotation (0 debilitate stacks, against an inactive boss)
Debilitate > Spring > Shield Barrage > Spring > Wallop > Debilitate > Spring > Shield Barrage > Spring > Wallop > Debilitate > Spring
Proper use of Adrenaline Rush/Guardian Shout
As I mentioned before, Adrenaline Rush is not only a huge increase of damage for you, but also very significant for our party members.
Typically you use Adrenaline Rush in conjunction with Guardian Shout. In addition to this, you can have your mystic use Contagion as soon as they gain the Guardian Shout buff which is very easy to recognize as a mystic.
Make sure that the boss is Enraged, and also has enough time left on the enrage for the (hopefully) full duration of Adrenaline Rush.
If your healers enjoy trying hard and pushing limits, they may also use the Hurricane weapon with your Adrenaline Rush. Using Adrenaline Rush strategically is more important than just using Adrenaline Rush when you have 10 stacks of Hold the Line
Dungeons tips
As of right now, the hard mode dungeons are Shadow Sanguinary and Demokron Factory, hence these are the dungeons I will cover in this guide. I’m not going to point out every mechanic of every fight; I just want to demonstrate and explain the Lancer’s job in each encounter.