Crane Hermit build tips

[Zvaere 0]

Going to start this off with some ideas on Crane Hermit. Considering that at the moment we have no real stat changes over this class, I'll provide you with my ideas on how to best utilize what this class has to offer. Keep in mind that I'm not really into the PvP scene and all this comes mostly from my experience in PvE in TW many many years ago. Also the fact that you will be able to reset your skills as many times as you want (as was pointed out by devs), so feel free to experiment, improve and so on.

Starting off, Crane Hermit is a class that mostly utilizes its own DOT (Damage Over Time). Attacks have low base attack stat and Crane use both physical and energy attacks but their power comes from setting up bunch of various stats conditions and stunning your enemy in one place till the DOT damage does its thing. Simply put, we shouldn't expect giant damage and dealing with mobs (or players for that matter) quickly - this class takes its time to set up tons of different attacks that provides a lot of damage over time.

In addition, Cranes had a few skills removed (for instance, an incredible stun called Lost in Time) back in the day but they might return later on, so the builds might differ in the future.

On to the builds we go: First one - to get to the level 30: https://universe.dborevelations.com/tools/skillcalculator/?class=Crane-Hermit&build=41004024001040001020033000000000000000000000000000000

Spoiler

Explanation:
This is the most basic and effective way to get your Spiritualist to level 30. Dealing lots of damage, decent debuffs (slowing (Speed Restraint) your enemies or putting them to sleep (Hypnosis) if occasion requires).
Spirit Ball and Rapid Shot will be your bread and butter and Kamehameha with 2 SP for that Knockdown effect. Destructo Disc for some decent attack damage and bleed if specific stronger mobs require it. No point in wasting SP on the left path attacking skills as those deal relatively low state damage (which means no buffs from e. or p. att.) and low DoT. Furthermore, Spiritual Damage Boost active buff and Increase Persistent Damage Time passive buff for that maximum e. att. stat to get you to lvl 30 as quickly as possible. In short, dealing tons of damage and finishing quests quickly.
The same kind of build can be used when leveling a Turtle Hermit too. Didn't waste time on Weaken Defense debuff as you wouldn't be able to utilize its full potential anyway.

Second one - the one you'll use till the very end: https://universe.dborevelations.com/tools/skillcalculator/?class=Crane-Hermit&build=01001004001000001000030330053256212113211110540100005

Spoiler

 

Explanation:
The real fun begins here. Not a single attack is going to be used from Spiritualist skill tree as they are completely overshadowed by Crane Hermit attacks.
We are still keeping Speed Restraint and Hypnosis debuffs as they will become a essential part of your skill rotation. Increased Persistent Damage passive buff for that extra DoT damage. And Kaioken of course (which is not necessary so you can use those 3 SP on anything else).

Now to the big boy stuff - maxed out all the passive buffs except the one that increases Dexterity for that additional Success Rate when landing status conditions, Focus for increased e.att., e. crit. rate and e. crit. % and additional hit rate and the main passive to maximise our DOTs potential. Then we have Constitution and Energy buff that increases the survivability and also a buff that increases the chance of resisting various status conditions ourselves. Then the buff for that extra defense rate and Put Out The Flames to recover your LP and RP.

On to the attacks - as I said, both p. and e. attacks here. Crane Cyclone (CC) and Mystical Crane Typhoon (MCT) maxed out. Both are AoE (Area of Effect) skills so great when dealing with lots of mobs. Searing Crane would be decent but the cast time is just far too long (same for Fiery Shout which is even worse as it deals state damage). Then we have Dodon Ray and Dodon Barrage - together with CC and MCT these will deal insane amounts of DoT damage. Fan Out - to reduce movement speed (together with Speed Restraint) if needs be and Tri Beam for some extra damage and knockdown effect. Finally, Master Fan Out for reduced movement speed AND additional knockdown effect. Finally, Thousand Slashes but about that later. 

When it comes to debuffs, we have Freeze which is great to keep your enemy in a single place while all the DOTs do the work. No point in putting more SP in it as you can't really do anything yourself because as soon as you move - Freeze ends. And finally, probably the most OP skill in this entire build - Graceful Backstab. This bad boy reduces your enemy's LP amount by 33%. Now here lies the trick, it won't just take a bunch of LP from enemy just like some kind of attacking skill. This debuff will reduce the MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF POSSIBLE LP of that mob. In lame man's terms, you will take out your opponent far quicker as it will have 2/3 the original LP it normally has (for a short time until the debuff wears out). 

Skill rotation: the idea is to come to the battle already buffed and/or using transformations. Everything else is rather simple: using Speed Restraint debuff and getting as far from the enemy as possible, then using all those main DOT skills to get as many status conditions as possible and finishing off with Thousand Slashes which deals all of the damage those DOTs would deal IN A SINGLE ATTACK (thus called DOT explosion damage). I've seen people in vanilla DBO that used to do even more that half a million of damage with Crane Hermit. Problem is, right now Thousand Slashes don't really work but we still can do tons of damage easily. The idea is to do everything the same way but instead of Thousand Slashes we use either Hypnosis to put the enemy to sleep or Freeze to keep it paralyzed. This way we won't receive damage while the enemies will slowly die due to DOTs. 

 

And that's about it for today. Feel free to add suggestions or your own ideas in here as I'm definitely not the expert. Furthermore, you can experiment as much as you want and try different builds while leveling up. 

Good luck and have fun with this interesting class.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Zvaere

[Marcaroni 1]

Hey, I love crane hermit as well so I'd like to add my views on the class, however I'm more experienced with pvp rather than pve.
Making a good crane build is tough because there are alot of skills that are useful and it's impossible to get them all in one build.

 

I'll go into debuffs first

Spoiler

• I'd first like to add that Weaken Defence is almost a must have in pve, as your selling point over turtle in party pve are your debuffs (although turtle has many more pve advantages). Being able to lower the enemies defence by 532 + another 2500+ phy def (from dondon barrage is a huge) help to any party with fighter or swordsman. 
• Obviously Graceful Backstab is a must have at least on level 1, but preferably maxed for pve for RP purposed
• Freeze is in my opinion a must in pve or pvp as it allows you to excel in what cranes are made for (stalling). You can simply use your DoTs, and then freeze while your DoTs do damage, while also allowing your party to do damage to the boss. This can also be useful in solo where you would like to stop the boss from hitting you, but slow is on cooldown. It should be noted that most UD and all CCBD bosses are immune to freeze.
• Put out the flames (your heal) should be maxed imo since at max rank it does a minimum 3k heal at lvl 70 and can be used with RP - decrease cooldown by 5 seconds.
• Sleep is debatable for a pve build as tons of bosses are immune, so many people don't use it, but for the bosses that it can be used on, starting off the fight with sleep + Dondon barrage is a great way to get some easy damage done.

Now on to skills.
Crane Hermits are unique in that their gear does not affect their DoT damage. They do the same bleed with a lvl 1 +0 glove, and a lvl 70 +15 glove, or a lvl 30 +0 fan and a lvl 70 +15 fan. Some people see this as broken since we do high damage with trash weapons, while some people see this as a disadvantage because no matter how much you upgrade your weapons, your DoT damage will remain the same. I am biased towards the class, but having played so many other classes, and noting how much relative effort cranes need to succeed PvP wise, I would say it pays off since we are squishy like all other humans, but dont have the burst they do. We rely on stalling (which requires a lot of accessories) and multiple sets (minimum 3). Having to upgrade all of those sets, and getting all the accessories, while also having to upgrade weapons would be too much comapred to say a fighter who can perform greatly with one highly upgrades dex set, dex accessories and a 1 set of highly upgraded weapons.

 This is because in order to get stronger damage-wise, cranes rely on accessories and passives instead of weapons. If you want to increase your DPS more than usual, you get CD earrings. But for PvP a crane usually gets stronger by having A LOT of accessories (anti-____, success rate, resistance, etc). atm my three banks are full of accessories and I still don't have enough. But this is a PvE build helper so I wont go much into that.

Note: skills in orange are physical while skills in blue are energy based. This means that eng crit % affects DoTs on a critical hit for the blue skills while phy crit % affects the orange DoT crits.

Spoiler

I should start by saying that if going for DoT damage, using RP - power up is a must as it increases your DoT by 300-1000+

In terms of bleeds, the only ones worth maxing out are Mystical Crane Typhoon (MCT), Dondon ray, and Dondon barrage.

The reason the first cyclone, Crane Cyclone,  is not maxed is because it is a lot weaker compared to Mystical Crane Typhoon (smaller AoE, lower damage and DoT) and the cooldown on MCT isn't that high so you can use it often. That's not to say that the first cyclone isn't good, its just that to save SP, it is usually not maxed. 

• Dondon ray is your highest damaging bleed with 0 second cast time, and the fastest firing animation making it a great choice to max. Extremely good against bosses.
• MCT has lower DoT damage than Dondon ray but its AoE is a lot easier to apply, making this my go to bleed due to the farming efficiency.
• I actually believe Searing crane is your highest DoT overall, and being a burn it is very useful, but I also never use it due to the cast time.
• Your Fiery Shout is often used more to gather mobs doe to its large AoE rather than for its damage since the damage and DoT is very low.
• Master Fan Out isn't a DoT, but it is a 45M knockdown that is so useful against mobs that can be knocked down, and its useful is perma-slowing a boss to keep him still (because of the decrease movement speed)

Now I would like to add that, for your average farming, MCT and either cyclone or solid burn (talked about soon) is usually enough for most mobs, but in dungeons like CCBD, some bosses are entirely immune to bleed, making MCT, Dondon ray, Dondon Barrage and Crane Cyclone entirely useless.

This is where your easy to apply, low cooldown burn comes in.

• Solid Burn is a 25m burn from the spiritualist tree, which takes an awful 8 SP to max. Now the burn isn't anything special, with the damage being less than almost all of your bleeds, and the range being less as well, meaning that in some cases, you have to get into dangerous range to use. However, the cooldown is relatively low, so that once you have enough RP, it can be used often.
• Thousand Slashes (TS) was one of the Crane Hermit's signature move in the original DBOs. This move used to do 70% of all the remaining DoT damage instantly. On DBOG they nerfed this to around 35%, making the skill useless and most cranes adapting to not using it. However, upon testing here, I found that in DBOUR, TS does 50% of the remaining dmg as explosion. What this means is that the remaining damage that would be done by your DoTs, would be calculated and 50% of that will be done instantly. However, it uses a maximum of 5 DoTs. I haven't test level 5 here, but level 1-4 has the same explosion % so leaving it level 1 is advisable, although you lose 50% of the damage so sometimes, its better to just leave the DoTs on to maximize damage.
• Tri-beam Cannon is a tricky one. Some cranes never use it, some use it at lvl 1 for the knockdown, and some use it at max for the damage (only with upgraded gloves). I personally don't use it, but it's there at level 1 incase i need to use with my knockdown.

Note that upgrading your fan can be useful as it increases your heal, and base damage done by fan skills.

Combos:

Spoiler

Below I will list some of my favourite crane combos. Some are PvP but can be used in PvE as well. Combos are assuming you have full RP charge

The farming combos can be:

Gather mobs > MCT > Heal (Put out the flames) > Solid Burn

Gather mobs > Dondon Barrage > Heal > MCT

Gather mobs > Tri-Beam (KD or power up) > MCT > Heal

Heal can be used either in the middle of the combo, or at the end.

 

A boss fighting combo against those that can be sleeped:

Sleep > Dondon Barrage > dash in > Graceful Backstab > dash out > Slow (with RP increase duration) > MCT > Fan out > Dondon Ray > Master fan out > improvise.

 

When trying to perma-slow a boss, you always use the RP effect "increase duration" as it helps with the diminishing returns (the more you use the same CC skill, the shorter each cast's duration will be). Using RP effect "decrease cooldown" will allow easier spamming of slow, but also decrease each slow effect much faster. Making the boss eventually slow immune.

 

Advanced Tips:

Spoiler

Sleep: when using sleep, on a player or a mob, there is a chance that your character may fire off an auto attack and cancel it, ruining your combo. In order to combat this:

Start casting sleep > mid-cast, you auto-target yourself (default key is ~) > tab target the play or mob when the cast is done.

This should also be done when casting Dondon Barrage and Double Gut Buster (abdominal) on a sleeping target.

 

When beginning a pvp match, I usually always start with freeze:

while frozen, you can carefully click on the target to check the distance between you and the target. This allows you to switch to appropriate gear and plan your next move. For example, in pvp, is i freeze a Martial Artist at 28+ meters away, I know the distance is a bit far for an instant quick attack, so i switch to full focus gear > dash out of freeze with mouse (currently does not work) and slow > fan out.

However, if the range is 24-25m or below, I know he can dash and cast quick attack on me instantly (their range is 23m) so I switch to upgraded con gear and use a con buff to hopefully survive their combo.

 

Using the poison (poison bleed) + paralyze (spirit wave) is usually faster than casting sleep, but it requires 25m range. However, currently all of the 5 skills at the end of the skill tree apply their effects at the end of the 1 second animation, making any combo involving this useless PvP wise.

 

Just to show you how complex a crane can be (justifying its skills), this is a flashy combo to be used on nameks and majins.

Needs 4 RP (can work with 3 for knockdowns only)

Sleep > Graceful Backstab > get to 35m range > slow > Kamehameha (KD) > dash in (25m range) > Poison Bleed > Master Fan out (KD) > dash out > Kamehameha (KD) > dash in > Solid Burn (RP preferable) > Paralyze or Confusion (you have both options) > Sleep.

Combos like these take lots of practice to get down and require timing to use the knockdowns just as they are getting up. However they are usually too flashy and risky to use. Against someone with 100% antibleed (which is the norm in pvp against a crane) this is a safe way to get your burn onto a target without getting CCed. 

 

This was kinda rushed, an very lengthy, but not organized, so sorry about that. If you have any crane questions you can PM me ingame @Marcaroni

 

and my personal pve build would be:

https://universe.dborevelations.com/tools/skillcalculator/?class=Crane-Hermit&build=01001004011001081000310300013256112111211330530100001 for average pve only

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Marcaroni