There is no perfect build, but I've come across some nice ones.
I tend to like melee. My "snake" build, specialized in farming Mountain and Grass snakes, had LUK 51 (for crit and poison resist), VIT 60 (for poison resist and HP regen from poisonings), STR and AGI 11, INT 1, and everything else in DEX (snakes have very high flee, so you need to hit them). DEX of 70+ is good, for example. I used the poison resist focusing skill for this build. This build also has the nice option to be a hybrid archer in a pinch, to thin out mobs, or take out some harder stuff before it can reach you.
My "lady skelaton" build, specialized in farming Lady Skelatons, has LUK 50 (crit resist), VIT 40 (some HP regen and dmg resist), DEX 50 (to hit them reliably), INT 1, and a mix of AGI and STR for the rest, with at least 50+ in each of those being good. I'm using the speed focusing skill with this build right now, but the raging focusing skill would also probably be good for it. You might need a bit more VIT added in, with raging, because it applies a malus to that stat, but I haven't tested that yet.
For both of these builds, I rely on the Warlord armors and the Setzer weapon. The Setzer is much faster a weapon than either the Bone Knife or the Rock Knife, and that speed helps significantly in keeping your damage / second in an acceptable range. Manaplus is a good client for testing this, as the default client does not include a weapon speed indication in F2 (to the best of my knowledge,) even though it is quite an important metric. I have not tested the Ice Gladius yet, as I do not yet own one.
Luck is important for any melee build, as it is the only thing that mitigates criticals. Criticals do full maximum damage, ignoring armor, vitality, agility, and flee. You could have the best armor, high vitality, and still be killed very quickly by the criticals of mid to high level monsters. I recommend having your luck set at +1 higher than the luck of the monsters you plan to fight.
Another very popular leveling build is the high DEX + AGI archer, with speed skill. You will do high, fast damage, and will hit reliably. But you will be made of paper; any miscalculation, an unlucky spawn, mobs piled at doors, or lag could kill you. I tried this build, and found it effective but limiting, and not to my tastes. It works best if you have a tanking (melee) character to support you, that can hold the mobs to them, while you shred one at a time.
Another popular build is the full INT mage build. This is usually only effective for high level characters, as you need 99 INT, Astral Soul 9, and a steady supply of iron ore and hard spikes (especially the iron), to be effective. Iron is expensive to buy and a pain to farm in large amounts. Time spent farming it, could be spent directly on leveling with a different build, instead. Still, this is a cool build, very high damage, great PvP, and great looking spell effects. The wiki is a great source for how to level magic, and I added some extra details from my own personal experience with it, here:
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... =4&t=16043
Good luck, have fun, and welcome back to the TMW. I'm also an old player, from back in 2007, but unfortunately my old character (with all his cool rares) got purged from inactivity, when I took a long vacation from the game. I'm glad to be back though, and I hope you will have a similar "glad to be back" experience too!
EDIT:
Although a pure DEX + AGI archer was too delicate for my tastes, I did have some fun with a hybrid of sorts, that could take a hit and wear heavy armor without becoming encumbered, instead of the usual Forest Armor + Cat Ears favored by pure DEX + AGI builds. For this, my "yeti" build, I went STR 25 (to carry Warlord armor, 5K arrows, and lots of steak or water), DEX 90 (decent archer damage), INT 1, LUK 35 (so Yeti would not critical on me), VIT 40 (I find this the minimum to get decent HP regen and food healing effectiveness), and the rest into AGI with anything over 30 being okay. Focus was set on Speed skill. This build can still do melee to conserve arrows, but it shines at killing stuff at range that I could not kill with a melee build at this level, for example: yeti, white and blue slimes, terranites. I found that the damage / sec was not as good as with my Lady Skeleton build, so this is not optimal for grinding XP, but is quite useful for doing quests, especially the Nivalis (snow lands) ones.
Speaking of Nivalis, I also got a chance to earn and test an Ice Gladius. It is the same speed as the Bone and Rock knives, leaving the Setzer in a high speed class of its own. I recommend the Setzer as the weapon of choice for any melee warriors, where damage / sec is a consideration. I would only recommend the Rock Knife for dedicated support tanks (VIT+LUK+DEX), whose primary function is not damage output, but just to hold the monsters away from the damage dealers. Or mage tanks too, I guess.
EDIT #2:
I got a chance to test the focus skill Raging at base level 75, once I got it to maximum level of 9. I did not like it, to be honest. It was okay at hitting high-flee mobs, like Skulls and Spectres, but did a lot less damage/sec and XP/sec than a Speed build. For any mob that was hard to hit, I found it more efficient, both in cost and time, to use the Yeti build of archer that I described above. Except skulls. But skulls drop worse than lady skeletons and my XP/sec killing them with this build was inferior to the XP/sec in killing lady skeletons with a speed melee build.
The problem with Raging are several. In my build of STR 70, VIT 60, LUK 71, DEX 19, AGI and INT 1, the defensive value of VIT was reduced by almost 1/3, down to 41. This made me very weak versus Yeti, Skelatons, and Spectres, and I found myself chugging down potions at a much greater cost than the occasional potion + many arrows would cost me in my Yeti archer build. So this build was more expensive and less defensive.
Also, even though the power of Raging builds through the strength attribute, it appears to be a multiplier, which means that it won't work without high values in luck and dexterity as well, in order to give it a reasonable critical rate from which to multiply. That's four stats that you need high so far. Strength, dexterity, luck for the critical rate, and vitality just to survive, especially with the 1/3 vitality malus applied by the skill. That leaves no room for agility, so this build hit very slowly, and missed quite a bit. Most dangerous monsters have high luck too, which subtracts from your chance to critical and thus hit them, as well.
In short, Raging produces a melee character that tanks comparatively poorly. Speed is just more flexible, in that it can be used for both archer and melee, and without malus. Speed gives builds with more damage/sec, XP/sec, and less upkeep cost than Raging. The few exceptions, where Raging shines, like versus Skulls, still give less damage/sec, less XP/sec, and less drops than a Speed build versus Lady Skeletons. Raging builds seems to be more expensive to upkeep, and weaker both defensively and offensively. The higher critical rate just is not balanced by the slower attacking, more misses, and weaker vitality, with the mobs currently in the game.
Recommendation:
If we had mobs in the game, say level 275 (sounds horrific, but it only means ultra high flee and hit rates actually) with a magical and physical defense of 90%, medium damage, and lowish luck and hitpoints, with good baseXP, jobXP, and drops, that would be the perfect monster for a Raging build to shine on.
Basically, Raging is a skill in search of a set of monsters for which it would shine, that do not currently exist in the game. Skulls come the closest; we need something like that, but with much higher physical and magical defense, fewer hitpoints, less luck, and better drops.
Note:
My observations apply to both solo and groups. In all cases that I can see, Speed builds will generally outperform Raging builds, except versus a couple very specific and not very crucial monsters. Maybe at a higher level, Jack-O will also come into play for Raging, but I wasn't really able to test that at level 75. I could barely survive Yeti damage, even with maximum armor and 60 vitality, and Jack-O hit even harder, so that might be an experiment for another time. In any case, even if Jack-O is the savior of Raging, we need more lower level stuff like it, to make Raging appealing earlier on, in my opinion.
EDIT #3 *** Archer -- round two --- ***
This build I started at level 77, to fight Yetis and Terranites. It doesn't get as nice an XP/min as my Lady Skeleton melee build, but it's good for killing powerful monsters to get needed items for quests. With the focus skill Speed at level 9, this build can stun-lock (hold with constant flinching) even a Yeti, most of the time.
STR 10 (to hold about 3300 arrows, water and apples, and iron potions, plus heavy armor), AGI 80 (hits really fast with speed skill maxed, can stun lock yetis, and with a switch to Setzer, makes for an adequate melee hybrid too), DEX 80 (really the minimum for decent bow damage and hitting high level monsters), VIT 40 (makes a huge difference on the efficiency of food heals, allows me to survive the occasional Yeti critical, allows me to farm near black scorpions and spiders), LUK 10+1 (allows me to farm red slimes near black scorpions and spiders, and to survive spiders massing me a bit as I fight Terranites), INT 1
For this build, I will continue adding agility as I level, and eventually more dexterity, too. Agility is a priority. I use heavy armor here, Warlock plate and helmet, for maximum survivability when things go not as planned.
For this build, compared to my previous archer / light tank / melee hybrid build, I kept the vitality as absolutely necessary for a fun survivable experience. I did less strength, so I can carry less and must use bank more. I did less luck too, which exposes me to criticals, but at range, these are thankfully rare, and a waste of points to prevent. It's all about risk management, not avoidance. I also dropped dexerity a bit in this build, compared to the old one. All of these sacrifices, and some points from leveling up, has allowed for the one major change in this build, a move in agility from 30 to 80. This makes an enormous difference in all of: avoiding being hit, stun-locking monsters at range, higher damage output due to much higher rate of attack both with range and in melee-hybrid mode. Overall, I like this build very much; it makes maximum use of the excellent speed focus skill. It is not optimal for XP/minute, but it can work a wide variety of higher end monsters for rare and quest drops, and fun adventuring, both solo and with friends.
EDIT #4
Well, I had the sadness of discovering that crit-lock is more of a bug than a feature. It's not so much a reliable product of super-high AGI (and DEX secondary) and more an artifact of your weapon speed just happening to coincide with the movement / attack speed of a given monster. Lady Skeletons and Yeti were stun-locked nicely at AGI 82, but the 80 DEX that remained in points made for a weak attack, especially with Yeti. I tried 90 DEX (with and without the +3 Forest Armor), and Skelatons could be stun-locked at the 74 AGI that remained (on a level 79 build), but not on the 77 AGI from adding Cat's Ears. I also tried a DEX 97+3 and AGI 65 (both with and without the +3 from Cat's Ears) and that Stun-Locked Skeletons fine too, with nice damage, but then I lost Stun-Lock on the Lady Skeletons and Yeti.
Overall, the most flexible build for this level range might be the 90 DEX + 74 AGI, with the addition or removal of Forest Armor and Cat's Ears possibly making (or breaking) Stun-Lock lock for these two groups of monsters. Seems you can Stun-Lock one type but not both, unless you swap builds or equips. Swapping equips is certainly cheaper, more flexible and convenient. Skeletons, Drunken Skeletons, Tipsy Skeletons, and Zombies seem to fall into the "less weapon speed needed to stun-lock", and Lady Skeletons, Drunken Lady Skeletons, and Yeti fall into the "more weapon speed needed to stun-lock". I haven't managed to test Terranites and Fallen yet, to see which group they are in. Credit goes to Frost, Nami, and Arye for their insight into these details.
