Scythe Evie Technical Guide

 Revision 7.5

Contact: dmcmash, magedout, or tankdps on East server

Changelog:  Revision 7: Expanded the staff section and revised the entire guide to make reference to staves. Revision 7.5: Added TOC, headings, and formatting. No content was added. - Jaxo 

=Forward=

This is an intermediate to advanced technical guide that covers specifics of Evie play in further detail than other existing scythe Evie guides. This guide is aimed at Lv 40+ Evies with at least 10k+ AP. Even if you think you know absolutely everything about Evie, you might learn something new! If you have any additions or corrections, please let me know politely, without adding your own wrong information or proselytizing about terrible strategies at the same time. I will not add strategies that I consider poor, inefficient, or unfair to your allies in a group setting. If a strategy isn't listed in this guide, it's probably because it's bad.

A technical definition: I define Evie's Life Drain, Wisp, Mark of Death, and Bloody Thread as special effect abilities. I refer to the first portion of these abilities as “special effect pulling”, where Evie pulls her hand back after a smash and she gains the effect buff. I refer to the second portion of these abilities as “special effect snapping”, where Evie snaps her fingers, the buff is consumed, and the effect occurs.

All animations consist of frames, which are separated into 3 types of frames. The frames where Evie is winding up or charging up to perform her attack are called the startup or execution frames. The frames where Evie is performing the attack and can hit the enemy are called the active frames. In the case of Evies normal attacks and smashes, the active frames include a hitbox that causes damage if it connects with the enemy's hitbox. The frames after Evie has finished her attack are called recovery frames. Almost all of Evie's recovery frames can be canceled out of, so you can blink or amber out of danger right after she's finished dealing damage or firing her staff projectile.

=Dodging, Blinking, Avoiding Enemy Attacks and Negating Damage=

Dodging
Evie's dodge, also known as a hop, is mainly used as a way to cancel the recovery frames of most of Evies actions, lead into blinks, and for use in stamina management. It can be used to dodge most small sized enemy attacks and projectiles, but it won't help too much against huge enemies with long range attacks. It costs no stamina to use and stamina is recovered while using it as long as your stamina is not at 0. You can repeatedly dodge while recovering stamina and moving slightly faster than walking speed. The only way to cancel out of a dodge is by blinking (with one exception detailed below). You can cancel dodge into blink at any time during the dodge animation, so you can space out your dodge button presses for a more accurate blink exactly when you want it instead of mashing the dodge button at the last second to avoid an attack. It's also possible to dodge then blink cancel in an entirely different direction if desired.

There is one exception to Evie being unable to cancel dodge into anything but blink. If Evie has 0 stamina and is in the "tired" animation frames with her shoulders slumped over, you can mash the dodge key to move at a noticeably faster pace - it will look like she's power gliding across the floor while slumped over. This occurs because Evie can dodge at no stamina cost, yet the game keeps trying to return her to the tired animation frames because her stamina is 0. The result is that the dodge is canceled back into the 0 stamina “tired” frames, but doesn't cancel it soon enough to prevent Evie from moving at a faster speed than usual. This is most useful when you're at 0 stamina after landing a smash or Bloody Thread on a target and need to get away fast, or if you get hit by an attack that drains your stamina to 0, or if you just Revived someone and need to get away while at 0 stamina. You can only use this trick while at 0 stamina. This is an important technique to master if you want to revive an ally and escape unharmed.

Blinking
Blink costs 40 stamina at rank F and 33 stamina at rank A. Blink has a special ability to pass through enemies, including their active hitboxes, making it technically invincible during the frames where she is completely invisible. It's difficult to time though since the invincibility is during the middle of the animation, not at the start of it. Blink can't pass through large objects and she's likely to get hit while trying to blink through a huge sized boss. Blink has the best movement speed of any evasion move - repeated blinks can out range almost any attack in the game even when traveling directly away from the enemy. Since you need to press dodge twice to activate blink, I suggest making a macro that presses dodge twice for you to get a blink as close as possible to the intended frame you wish to dodge at.

Some huge bosses such as Irukul or Titan require blinking away at a 90 or -90 degree angle since it's not possible to outrun those attacks unless you're already very far away. Sometimes the best strategy for dodging boss attacks is to run towards them then blink at a 45 or -45 degree angle – this especially helps when cornered by a huge boss like Irukul or Titan that is too fast and large to blink directly away from. Running towards a boss and blinking diagonally past them seems counter-intuitive, yet is key for getting out of some tight situations. Most boss attacks can be dodged by moving or strafing in a very tight circle – turn up your mouse sensitivity to take advantage of this. Yes, you should be playing with a mouse and keyboard for precision control of your character.

Remember that Blink has an expensive stamina cost and you don't need to use it at every opportunity. Evies can successfully dodge every attack by using their dodge or sprint cancel (see below under Avoiding Enemy Attacks). Using Blink too much will lower your DPS and run you out of stamina for when you really need to use it. Whether you're scythe or staff, get used to using dodge to cancel out of attacks while increasing your stamina efficiency.

Be careful trying to blink through boat 5 and above enemies, as most of them have full tracking on their attacks and will swing around 180 degrees in time to hit you. Instead try to blink just before the attack lands, after they stop tracking you. Blink is least useful against bosses with high tracking, long range, long active hitbox duration multiple hit attacks such as Black Hammer. In these cases, it's best to get some distance between yourself and the enemy after their attack before they choose their next target, much like a spear Lann or pre-revamp staff Evie. If they target you, you'll already have some distance on them to escape or dodge their attack. The best time to blink away from huge enemy attacks with high speed and long range such as Weeping Queen's leap, Polar Bear's Challenge bodyslam, and Black Hammer's attacks is to blink right as the attack is about to hit. These moves have too much speed and reach for you to blink directly away from them.

If your blink takes you to 0 stamina, your Evie will cancel out of the blink mid way into the tired animation frames. This is only possible when your blink consumes exactly the amount of stamina required to take you to 0. For example, if your blink costs 33 stamina and you blink at 33 stamina, you'll end up with a failed blink and a tired looking Evie.

Avoiding Enemy Attacks
Evie can successfully use sprint canceling as well as any other character to move faster than run speed. After running, your character will do a fast sliding dash as they come to a standstill, with their knees bent. You can repeatedly cause this sliding dash to occur by holding down shift (the run key) while pressing a directional movement key repeatedly. This consumes a lot of stamina but is often the only way that spear lanns and pre-revamp staff evies can dodge extremely fast attacks such as Irukul's rearing charge.

When dodging enemies that have fast tracking combined with long range charges or projectiles such as Flicker, Spark, Blood Prince, any boat 5 and up boss, etc, do not circle strafe them unless absolutely necessary. By circle strafing them you're causing them to track you, which means you aren't actually any farther from their attack. Instead, you're just potentially confusing your allies and possibly leading the bosses attack into them. Instead, run directly away from the boss and dodge at the time they stop tracking you and fire their projectile or charge at you, so that your allies can attack from behind or the side without worrying that you're going to lead an attack into them. Leading tracking attacks into your teammates by circle strafing is poor teamwork, doesn't help you dodge the attack any better, and hinders your allies ability to attack them from the sides or behind.

In boat 6, you'll come up against large groups of ranged trash mobs, specifically spearmen and artillery goblins. Always target these ranged enemies first, not the wannabe swordsmen or the big ugly ogres. Be aware of your surroundings and don't let an artillery in the corner snipe you. Always keep moving and perform lots of dodges in between attacking so that even if you don't notice an enemy in the corner firing at you, you'll still have a better chance of dodging its attack. Position yourself so that enemies are lined up behind one another in a straight line, so that they are more likely to accidentally friendly fire each other. Similarly, it helps to hide behind objects or solid cover – the worst place to be is surrounded by enemies. Lucky for you scythe Evie has an easy time dealing with trash thanks to her shields, bloody thread, wisps, and other helpful tools. Staff Evie has an even easier time with her ice attacks able to freeze whole fields of enemies.

Negating Damage
Evie's shields give her a significant mistake tolerance advantage over Lann and Fiona on most fights. As long as her shields are up, regardless of the shield value, she can absorb one hit of (almost?) any damage value, allowing her to painlessly absorb many blows that would one shot a Lann or Fiona. If an enemy crits your Evie, the extra crit damage counts as a second hit which will apply to your HP. With the recent Evie revamp, you can now train up to 10 magic shields, absorbing huge amounts of damage from anything except boat 5+ raid bosses. This places Evie in an unparalled ezmode state, allowing her to shrug off many blows that would cause a Lann or Fiona to die several times over. Very hard hitting enemies will still break the shield in one hit, though.

The downside to Evies shields is that she has relatively low armor and HP when her shields are down, meaning she will be one shot by most later bosses on hard mode, hero mode, and/or macha. Even the most well geared light/cloth armor Evies will have about 4000 DEF. You may strategically allow yourself to get hit once while in the special effect pulling animation frames or spell casting frames, since Evie cannot be knocked out of it, but this isn't recommended on any sort of raid boss that can one shot. If you want to play it safe, don't do anything risky unless your shields are up. Note that some attacks that appear to be one hit are actually multi-hit, such as the Weeping Queens burrow attacks or the gloomy kobold's axe swings. In those cases, your shield will not prevent you from being one shot even if the attack didn't crit. You could gear your Evie in heavy or plate armor, but the extra DEF is almost certainly not worth the loss in INT, and likely won't prevent her from being one shot as her HP is still fairly low. Finally, INT affects magic shield regeneration speed since the Evie revamp, so you're better off getting those shields back up ASAP than you are having 1000-15000 extra armor in plate or whatever.

Once you get hit by an enemy, you have a small half second or so grace period where you can't be hit by the same enemy again. Use this opportunity to get away.

Standing Endurance R9 is extremely useful as you can instantly roll out of danger most of the time if knocked down. Unlike a delayed roll, you can't choose the direction you want to roll in, so sometimes you'll want to avoid using the R9 roll as it will roll you towards the boss and into even further danger. This is true of the many annoying enemy attacks that knock you towards them even though their attack should have knocked you away. In those cases it's best to wait for a delayed roll so you can roll in a more desirable direction.

=Normals, Smashes, Special Effect Abilities=

Normals
Turn off “attack in the direction of the camera” in Advanced control options to have much more fine control over your Evie. By turning off the camera you can attack in place by alternating LR or WS with each attack. You can also attack directly behind you without having to do a 180 with the camera. Evie moves forward quite a bit while swinging her scythe so mastering her footwork is important for landing more smashes.

Swinging Evie's normals around is a graceful art that requires you to know where the enemy will be by the time you're ready to hit R and land your smash. For example, if you know Jagged Tooth or Wolf Tail is going to charge forward, you can predict where they will end up after their charge. Start swinging around that position and land your smash as they finish charging. Remember that your scythe has superior range and you can land many attacks from safety just as the enemy is finished or beginning to attack. Landing threads and doing constant DPS while narrowly avoiding boss hitboxes is what separates the good Evies from the ones that try to tickle the boss with Hell Quakes and/or rarely land threads.

Smashes
All of Evie's smashes aside from Raven Fork (R) hit twice. The first hit is the upswing dealing a small amount of physical damage, and the second hit is the downswing dealing a much larger amount of magic damage. Landing either of the two hits will let you perform a special effect pulling on the target. If even the slightest touch of your smash lands on your target, you'll be able to pull a special effect. However, be aware that there is a graphical glitch where it looks like you hit the enemy, but you actually didn't. This is most noticeable when barely grazing an enemy that is moving away from you.

The special effect pulling animation puts Evie in a crouched position, giving her a narrow enough hitbox to dodge a surprising number of enemy attacks. Experiment and find out just what she can duck under while pulling a special effect. You can pull a special effect at any time during a smashes recovery frames – it doesn't need to be instantly after the active hitbox frames.

Get very familiar with the timing, range and hitbox of Hell Quake (LLR) and Invisible Loom (LLLLR) which are your two most important smashes. Hell Quake has a deceptively long range, and Invisible Loom has a huge active hitbox. Try landing an Invisible Loom facing sideways from the boss and it will usually land while you stay out of danger. One of the greatest advantages of Mark of Death and Bloody Thread is that they can be snapped far away from the enemy. Land a Mark of Death or Bloody Thread, blink far away from the boss, then snap once safely out of danger. If there are trash mobs near a boss, land a thread on the trash and you'll probably catch the boss in it too. Soul Skewer (LLLR) is fairly useful if you can't quite manage a Bloody Thread on a boss.

Demon Splitter (LR) into Life Drain is mostly useful for healing yourself on trash if you're trying to conserve potions or unable to use potions or Erg Transformation. Even then, its range is very short and the heal is tiny, making it not even worth the risk of using it on dangerous trash. At some point in the future, Evie will be able to add a second AOE style smash to Demon Splitter. This might make it useful as a quick trash clearing tool. See the link below for a video demonstration.

http://heroes.nexon.com/Common/MoviePlayer.aspx?movID=40

At some point in the future, Evie will be able to perform an AOE smash attack after blinking. This will bring Blink closer to Lann's Slip Dash, combining defense with offense. This should open up a wide range of attack options that simply didn't exist before, since the best option after blinking is usually Hell Quake, which appears to take much longer to execute than the new blink move. This attack is named Blink Moonlight. See the above video link for a demonstration.

You don't have to mash LLLLR as fast as possible when trying to land a smash. You can add in significant delays while keeping the combo up in order to land a smash at precisely the right time. Keep LLLLing into thin air until there's an opportunity to land your smash and thread the target – connecting her normal attacks isn't nearly as important as connecting her smashes and threads. Landing smashes is much easier when the boss isn't targeting you, so break out the wisps, golems, Fiona friends, etc. to keep the heat off you. Most importantly, don't get greedy and don't forget Hell Quakes or Soul Skewers. Landing a bunch of Hell Quakes will do more damage at a safer range than landing one risky Invisible Loom that might you killed.

Learn not to press the special effect key instinctively. There are times where you'll miss the smash, or when you won't have time to pull a special effect without getting hit.

As much as you might not want gear to matter in this game, attack speed buffs are important for hero and gauntlet bosses that have greatly increased attack speed. You'll want to be faster to keep up with them and have more opportunities for landing smashes – that means a +6 or greater weapon and attack speed scroll enchants. That's not to say it's impossible with unenhanced weapons, but it will be a far greater challenge and take you longer to kill the boss as you won't have as many openings to land smashes.

Scythe Evie's most important stats are INT and AGI followed by STR and WIL. Your most important Scythe skills are Blink, Magic Critical Hit, Intelligence Mastery, Smash Mastery, Bloody Thread, Agility Mastery and Magic Mastery. Definitely max out Insane Reaper and Reverse Gravity when available. Your defensive abilities can be maxed afterwards. AGI probably adds to the magic damage portion of scythe Evie's smash crit rate, but I haven't seen any convincing proof. Stacking STR isn't particularly useful as you'll usually be whiffing your normal attacks in an attempt to land a smash from afar, and the physical portion of Evie's smash attacks is about 10-15% of the total damage.

Critical Hit is worth leveling up to rank 6. Critical Hit increases your physical crit chance by 22% of your base, which is about 2% increase in critical chance in lv 56+ gear. You'll be getting physical crits almost as much with the skill as without it, so if you were hoping to avoid physical crits knocking the enemy back, ranking or not ranking this skill will make little difference. The extra 2% crit and +50% damage bonus on crits will add to your overall DPS, on the other hand. If you land the physical portion of the smash and the mob gets knocked away from the 2nd hit of the smash you can still pull your special effect from that physical hit. Usually you can land both hits of an Invisible Loom even if the first hit crits on the target, due to its wide range and active hitbox time. Enemies being knocked back by crits is a non issue to good scythe Evies that know how to manage trash mobs. Do not believe the hysteria whipped up by inexperienced players about Critical Hit, as you'll be needlessly gimping your damage.

Special Effect Abilities
You can snap/activate your special effect in two ways - standing still or moving. When standing still you consume less stamina to snap, but you'll be unable to move or attack cancel out of it. You can still dodge or blink cancel out of it, though. Even when dodge canceling is factored into snapping while standing still, it still takes longer to complete than a moving special effect snapping. When snapping the special effect charge while moving, you can move freely and attack as well as dodge/blink cancel, and it takes less time than a standing snapping, but the stamina cost to snap is much greater. You'll want to employ the standing snapping when you need a decent amount of stamina in reserve for an emergency blink. Carefully consider whether to move or stand when snapping depending on the boss you're facing and your current stamina level.

Snapping has no effect on bosses when they are completely invisible, such as Blood Lord or Weeping Queen. Save your snap for when they come out of hiding.

You can dodge or blink cancel out of the recovery frames of any of Evie's normals, smashes, and special effect abilities. You may cancel out of the special effect frames as soon as you see the effect buff icon appear/disappear, and you may cancel out of her normals and smashes as soon as the active hitbox frames finish. If you time your special effect snapping properly, you can get in a normal attack at about the same time the effect occurs, after the buff icon has disappeared. This will increase your DPS but it costs a lot of stamina to keep attacking that frequently, so be careful. Since you recover stamina while dodging, you can maximize your stamina recovery by dodge canceling the special effect snapping recovery frames. You can further maximize stamina gain by snapping the special effect while standing still, then dodge canceling out of those recovery frames.

You can change Evie's directional position while pulling a special effect by pressing a directional key while Evie is in the first few frames of her special effect pulling animation. This is useful since by facing away from the enemy target you can reposition your hitbox to a more desirable position, usually by facing directly away from the boss. This takes some practice but it's worth it as it opens a number of new attack possibilities.

You can erase your current special effect without snapping it simply by performing an LLR on nothing in particular and drawing it. This is useful if you're trying to kill with spears or objects and you don't want to accidentally right click and set off a thread that might kill the target.

Video: Canceling of special effect snapping recovery frames with a normal attack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iHm3llAiW8

=Spells, Alchemy, and SP Skills=

Alchemy Box
With the Alchemy Box, Evies can bring all of their alchemy tools with them instead of just one or two. That means golems, mercury traps, mana pistol, etc. are all combined into one quickslot.

Golems and Wisps
Golems are mostly useful for their ability to keep a bosses attention while you land smashes unhindered. Golems have a health bar and despawn timer, neither of which are visible to you. If your golem runs out of health, it dies regardless of how much you health have left. There is a way around this, though – you can dismiss then resummon your golem at full health, although it will have to recollect its objects. This is useful against bosses that do a lot of damage to golems with frequent AOE attacks (Irukul, Klaus, Blood Lord). The golem has a despawn timer of ~5-6 minutes which cannot be reset, but can be paused by dismissing it after being summoned.

Evie can order her golem around on the move or during most actions, including dismissing or resummoning her golem. If you order your golem while in the middle of performing Reverse Gravity, you will cancel the Gravity, so don't issue an order unless you wish to cancel it.

You can make Evie look pretty silly by mashing F1 to issue golem commands while performing other actions like kicks or smashes. This has a practical effect – by spamming F1, you can make your golem attack much faster than normal. Unfortunately, the golems low damage and knockdown chance make this largely a waste of time.

You can summon your golem in a room before the boss (it will auto-dismiss when you exit the current room). You can then summon the golem during the boss intro cutscene by pressing F4 (Get Up!). This saves time as your golem will be ready as soon as you're able to control your Evie.

When playing in a group, golems can cause trouble for your allies. They can block their sight, movement, projectiles, etc. So be considerate and careful when using one. Strategies involving golems may hamper your allies to the point where it 's more efficient to not summon one. Of course when soloing a golem is almost always a good idea as a distraction.

Like the golem, Evie's wisp is primarily used to distract an enemy's attention. It's not quite as useful against bosses with tracking ranged attacks such as the Flickr or Spark, though. Since the wisp moves quickly and erratically, such bosses may attack in random directions instead of at a player who knows not to lead ranged attacks into their allies. Your wisp can catch and spread debuffs such as Klaus's infectious dark debuff, so do NOT use your wisp in those circumstances.

Eagle Talon Mine Trick
While holding down right click to charge the magic mine, you can perform almost any action then lay the magic mine when it's finished charging. For example, hold down right click while running, then press left click twice to get in two normal attacks before the mine has finished charging up. You can stop running, but you cannot stop holding down right click, otherwise you'll stop charging up the mine, so you can't use smash attacks with this trick. Magic Mines are surprisingly powerful, dealing a little more damage than a Hell Quake. Don't be afraid to lay a few mines once in a while, especially against highly mobile bosses. You can lay mines regardless of your status as long as you're still charging it by holding down right click.

Revive/Erg Transformation
Revive is a valuable skill as it helps preserve Phoenix Feathers, and is usable even under oaths that forbid the use of feathers. It can make the difference between a clear and a wipe on some bosses or oaths. Erg Transformation is useful on no potion oaths and grants a significant amount of health per object transformed. It's possible to pick up huge objects as if they were one handed objects by pressing grab while close to a large and small object near each other. I'm not exactly sure how that works, though.

Mercury Traps
Mercury traps are placed directly on the floor. They can't be placed on the run, unfortunately. Bosses don't pay attention to being stuck in mercury so they'll eagerly keep running towards a target they can't reach. Instruct your teammates to stay out of range of the boss if they are targeted while it's trapped in mercury. Mercury is most useful for pinning down bosses that move a lot such as Klaus and Imich, or trapping adds like Weeping Queen's spiders.

Mana Pistol
This is a small turret that fires at range, exactly the same one that Rocktune places on the ground occasionally. It's another tool for Evies to distract and disrupt the enemy without dealing much damage itself.

Insane Reaper and Attack Speed Buffs
Insane Reaper can be activated while on the move, which is far better than activating it while standing still. You can begin performing actions including attacking the instant you activate Insane Reaper while moving. If you start attacking, it will look like Evie is rotating her scythe overhead while both arms are still in the air from the Insane Reaper animation frames. This is similar to Lann snapping Fury Infusion while moving then immediately attacking afterward, making his arms look like they are pinned behind him while he attacks. Note that Insane Reapers attack speed buff stacks with attack speed scroll enchants somehow, but the exact formula is not yet known. Here is a suggestion by Chocolates on the Nexon forums:

“The base attack speed (of Scythe Evie at least) is the equivalent of 200 points. All attack speed increases are added to this to determine your final attack speed, and Insane Reaper multiplies this total by (for rank 6) 110% when activated, rounded down to the nearest whole number. The way I came to this conclusion is activating IR with different weapons equipped; With no other bonuses to attack speed, it adds 20 points. Timing my L4R combo with and without IR activated, it does in fact increase the speed of attacks by 10%. After that, I equipped a weapon with +9 attack speed (Prideful +7) and used IR again. It gave a total of 29 attack speed points, and the speed of my attacks was increased by ~15%. Finally, I equipped a weapon with +14 attack speed (Prideful Bloodlust +7), and IR gave a total of 35 points, bringing me to the conclusion that it must take into account other sources of attack speed and also that it either rounds down or simply doesn't show decimal points in the character screen. “

Reverse Gravity
Reverse Gravity has about a quarter second of startup time. Be very careful as she can be hit out of it and the SP wasted – wait for an opportune moment, much like Staff Evie has to wait for a Firebolt chance. Multiple Reverse Gravity attacks do stack in damage if two or more Evies use it at once, but you'll miss out on the boss levitation/stun, so it's better to chain them one after another for maximum effect. I usually have Evies type the letter g in party chat to let teammates know they're about to gravity, so everyone can gather around and maximize DPS while the boss is stunned. Reverse Gravity can only practically be canceled by issuing a golem command – use it if you need to save your Evies life and don't mind losing the SP. If you don't have a golem out, you're locked into the gravity animation, so be very careful when using it.

Evie can't pull a Bloody Thread while an enemy is in the air from Reverse Gravity, but she can pull any of her other specials. You can time your smash to land when the enemy has hit the ground if you want to pull a Bloody Thread.

=Transformations=

Since transform prevents your Evie from suffering hit stun, she can easily be killed by a boss attack combo that would have normally knocked her away to safety after the first hit. This is true of all characters, but especially Evie since she is generally one or two shot by high level bosses on Hard, Hero, or Macha mode. Be extra careful when in transformation mode!

I can't reliably replicate this trick, but it's possible to cancel out of the transformation animation frames if you hit the transformation button a few frames before, or possibly right at the moment that you get hit by an attack. This gives you more time to attack while under the 10 second invulnerability buff instead of going through the transformation animation. Despite looking like your character just got hit, they don't take any damage. It's recommended that Evies use the much more reliable Eagle Talon trick described below.

Evie can reliably use her Eagle Talon Mine trick to cancel out of her transformation animation frames. Simply activate her transformation while charging the mine (holding right click). She will begin the transformation animation frames then cancel into laying the mine, fully transformed. This gives you an extra couple seconds of action while transformed and under the 10 second invulnerability buff. You don't get the weak AOE attack that occurs at the end of the transformation animation, but that's not really worth it anyway.

It's easier to land threads and get away since you don't suffer hit delay on your smash attacks, and since you have infinite stamina you can blink and snap on the run as much as needed. You can also instantly recover from using Revive just by moving or dodging once your Evie goes into the “weakness” animation frames. Staff Evies can fire their normal attacks extremely far and use mana amber with impunity.

Once you learn Grasp/Steal, you can perform smash attacks into thin air and generate seeking orbs to do some damage from afar. Try spamming Raven Fork (R) while transformed to do some ranged damage.

As of the boat 6 launch, you can only put a total of 20 points into transformation skills. You don't need to place 5 points into Grasp to reach Divine Punishment/Firestorm or Petrification/Slow, just 1. You do need to invest points to reach the higher tiers, so no saving up points to skip the lower level stuff. Note that if your Evie is over 15-16k M.ATT transformed, she's already at the attack cap (which is 10000+enemy DEF). The highest DEF enemies as of boat 6 are about 6000. All you need is a +5 Ivory Scythe and Temptress set to hit the cap while transformed even with no points in ATK or Stats. Here's my currently suggested build:

1 Grasp/Steal

2,3,4,5,6 +2500 HP

7,8,9,10,11 +150% SP Gain

12,13,14,15,16 +2500 Stats

17,18,19 Divine Punishment/Firestorm (4 orbs per smash)

20 Petrification/Slow

Tier 1: 0 points invested

Grasp/Steal - You only need one point in this, as the base damage of each orb is so low that +25% of that base is going to be unnoticeable, especially for Evie who doesn't get useful spammable smash attacks like Fiona or Lann. You may make the argument that it's still a way to do more damage above the attack cap, but I'd say it's just not worth it. This is the easiest skill to justify not putting any points into, as the benefit is unnoticeable and there are far more effective skills to invest in. +HP - This is a great investment as HP is the hardest stat to build and provides a great insurance in case of mistakes, lag, or any other disturbance. One nice thing about +HP is that if you take damage while in transformation, when the transformation ends you'll probably still have full or near full HP, due to the extra HP buffer absorbing the enemy attack. +DEF/ATK - If you're a DK you'll want to skip ATK and place these points elsewhere, because you're almost certainly hitting the attack cap without putting points into this skill. For Paladins, +DEF is another useful way to mitigate death, although you may want to put those points into Divine Punishment or Stats instead. This is definitely the most debatable skill to place points into as Evie's DEF was never her strong point to begin with. Tier 2: 5 points invested

+SP gain - This is a large investment but it's worth it as you'll be able to use multiple gravity inversions just by attacking normally. This is perfect in large raids that love it when the big raid boss is floating helpless in mid-air. You don't want to miss out on putting points into this skill. Tier 3: 10 points invested

Divine Punishment/Firestorm – This skill allows you to fire multiple orbs which damage multiple targets, instead of just a single target. If you're a DK, your extra orbs will slow all the targets it hits, while if you're a Paladin, you will still only petrify one target out of the orbs fired. This is very useful on encounters with lots of adds such as Weeping Queen or Ingkells (boat 8 raid boss), or gauntlets with multiple bosses and super armored trash running around. Now you may argue that if everyone uses their trans at once to deal with adds, then extra Divine Punishment/Firestorm points are wasted, but I would counter that your strategy limits yourself to raids composed of all 8 people with their transformation available. What if you have to deal with adds on a 4 or 6 player map, or 1-2 peoples transformation isn't available? It seems foolish to go for an unnoticeable DPS increase instead of more flexibility, utility, and value to your team against multiple enemy targets. Still, I'm not exactly sure at what point the points invested in this skill becomes overkill. I would suggest at least one extra point in this skill, and possibly more depending on how group support oriented your want your Evie to be. Just keep in mind that points into things like ATK, DEF, and Stats are largely wasted once you reach the attack cap, which is already very easy to reach with end game boat 6-8 weapons. +Stats - This isn't going to help your Evie out much if she's at the attack cap already. If agi does in fact increase magic crit chance it would be useful to put points into, but otherwise you're just looking at a bunch of physical damage which is only a small amount of Evies total DPS. Each 500 in stats grants a transformed Evie 250 DEF, 1350 ATT, 1000 M.ATT, 8% phys crit chance, some phys crit dmg increase, and possibly some magic crit chance. Tier 4: 15 points invested

Petrification/Slow – One point is all you need here to gain the ability to petrify or slow a non-boss target. Definitely worth the point invested as it works on boss adds and mid-bosses.

On April 12, 2011, Nexon announced revamped transformations and 2nd stage transformations. Invested skill points will be reset for this revamp. In other words, your build isn't going to be set in stone, and you have at least one chance in the future to remake it in the future.

=Staff Evie Section=

Survivability
Mana Amber gives Evie a temporary damage shield while encased in a crystal. This crystal obeys the laws of 'Vindictus physics' and can be knocked around by boss attacks, so if you time or position yourself correctly you may get the boss to push your Evie someplace safe when she exits the crystal. While the crystal can absorb a huge amount of damage, it isn't invincible and can be shattered – raising the amber skill increases the damage absorbed.

You can cancel out of Mana Amber at any time although it will automatically end after 3 seconds even if you keep holding down space. There are recovery frames after ending mana amber where Evie stands back up and is vulnerable. You can cancel out of these frames about halfway through the animation, but you're still stuck with a small amount of time where she is unable to do anything else. There is a way to avoid the frames entirely if you Eagle Talon Magic Mine cancel out of the Mana Amber, but then you'll be stuck laying a mine instead.

Evie cannot instantly go into Mana Amber – no matter how fast you press dodge twice, you will need to wait until Evie reaches the height of her normal dodge first. This means you can't use Mana Amber like a slip dash at the moment an attack hits – you will need to anticipate the attack. If you wait until Evie is past the high point of her normal dodge, you won't be able to cancel into Mana Amber during the remaining dodge frames. This may be an issue for extremely fast boss attacks that you don't have a lot of time to avoid.

Flying Sparrow is an enhanced dodge hop with superior speed and range, introduced with boat 7. This move can be spammed like a normal dodge, although it consumes stamina. This is a good move to cancel out of her attack recovery frames with.

Concentration
Staff Evie casts magic with Concentration. Hold down right click to charge Concentration levels then press a directional key to cast a spell depending on what level of Concentration Evie is currently at. You can press the alt key to see your current spell cooldowns.

There is a trick to increase the charge speed between each level of concentration. Simply let go of right click then right click again quickly every time the concentration meter reaches the next level and you will skip the delay as the meter rises between each concentration level. This lets you cast spells much faster.

Attack speed affects the animation speed of Evie's spellcasting, but it doesn't increase her concentration charge rate (?).

You can begin charging concentration before a boss cutscene starts or before enemies are about to spawn and have a blind arrow fully charged and ready.

Staff Evie Spells
Mana Mine is similar to Magic Mine, but it is not the same thing. Mana Mines are weaker and have a shorter duration than Magic Mines. Staff and Scythe Evies can still cast Eagle Talon Magic Mines by running then holding right click, and all of your cancel tricks are still there.Healing Corona is best placed in a corner where people will be running to drink potions after being injured. I suggest you wait until rank 6 to start using it as it doesn't stack with multiple Evies. It's an excellent skill to use in long dungeons like the Roselian Labyrinth as it saves on potion usage, can be used every 180 seconds, and doesn't require standing around chugging potions.Firebolt is now a projectile attack that flies forward and explodes in an AOE. It travels somewhat slowly so it may be hard to hit a fast moving target with it. Firebolt has an 8 second cooldown.Ice Blast is a short range PBAOE that can freeze trash mobs. Fairly useful for dealing with trash, but since it's a close range move, you're putting yourself into danger by using it. It has a 5 second cooldown but you aren't likely to run into it often as there aren't many opportunities for a staff Evie to safely be in enemy melee range.</li>Ice Spear freezes a boss for a 5 seconds at first. A second ice spear will freeze the boss for about half a second. After the second freeze, the target can no longer be frozen for quite a long time, although Ice Spear will continue to deal damage. Eventually the target can be re-frozen, sometime between 5-10 minutes after the initial freeze. This attack can miss its target like Firebolt. Ice Spear has a 15 sec cooldown.</li>Some other important Ice Spear notes: While the target is frozen, players don't suffer hit delay when attacking it. This is good for any melee attacks that would normally suffer hit delay. If the target was frozen with an active hitbox, the hitbox remains active, so if it's in the middle of an attack you should be careful.</li>Blind Arrow still has significant range and damage, but now suffers from a cooldown of 30 seconds. You'll want to use this whenever its not on cooldown as it's perfect for sniping bosses from afar and does a ton of damage. Blind arrow can be dodge canceled out of anytime, although you lose any unfired orbs.</li></ul>

Tips
All of Staff Evie's attack recovery frames can be dodge canceled out of.</li>Magic arrow can be rapid fired by holding down left click. Be careful as you can't dodge while holding down left click in this manner.</li>Only Mana Mine, Firebolt, Ice Blast, and Ice Spear attacks count as smashes – Blind Arrow and Magic Arrow are not smash attacks. Staff evie has a difficult time aiming her smashes at targeted break offs like Titans ankle bracelet. The best method would be to point blank a firebolt or ice spear into the breakoff point.</li></ul>

=Staff Evie Transformation=

Staff Evie's transformation significantly improves her magic arrow range, allowing her to snipe from very far away. Infinite stamina allows her to spam her spells and mana amber with impunity.

General (not Evie specific)
You can cancel out of Phoenix Feather and Revive, but you can't cancel out of HP Potions. You can cancel out of repair by pressing space, but it's a 'slow' cancel that makes you go through the glove-pulling animation. Be sure you're far away from the boss or in a nice hiding spot.

I suggest unchecking everything in Advanced controls except "Display boss names". At the very least, turn off "Always auto-aim secondary weapons" to remove the "Accurate Aim" charge time when holding down the secondary weapon button to manually aim. This will help with getting break offs since manual control is superior. You can still 'auto-aim' by pressing the secondary key and fire key rapidly after another, which fires just as fast as auto aim would have.

Enemies will choose targets randomly in the absence of someone performing an aggro generating action such as using a secondary weapon, drinking a potion, repairing, sitting down, climbing a ladder, etc. Drinking potions or repairing in particular are aggro magnets and will almost certainly get the bosses attention. You can sneak in pots by drinking once the enemy has begun an attack against another target – they won't cancel out of an attack to chase you.

Like all characters, Evie can increase her movement speed by dodging or blinking off a ledge. Unfortunately, she isn't quite as good as Lann or Fiona at it, but you can still get some decent air time with it. It's a fun way to speed up dungeon runs.