Herald of Xotli Tips Guide

Age of Conan Herald of Xotli Tips Guide
by ShaolinDolemite post: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=57024


What kind of character is the Herald of Xotli (HoX)?
HoX is a hybrid "battlemage", and serves as an area-of-effect DPS class. The HoX has damned his soul to Xolti, granting him demonic powers and magic. A HoX will deal both physical and magical damage from melee range, preferring to use an enormous two-handed blade and firey breath than blasting enemies from afar.

This is not a class I would recommend for beginners, it has a limited number of tools to deal with most situations and PvP. If you're looking for AE damage with more survivability and versatility, the overwhelming consensus is to play a Tempest of Set. If you're a masochist, want a little extra damage, and if a fire-slinging, sword-wielding, crocs-wearing battlemage sounds fun to you, roll up a HoX.

Pros:
- Best targetted AE damage of any class.
- Very high damage overall.
- Desecrating Essence (demon form) allows HoX to get an extra edge for tough fights.

Cons:
- Virtually all abilities are melee range.
- Terrible CC abilities compared to other classes.
- Cloth armor restriction in conjunction with high dps and melee range makes for low survivability.
- Extremely poor itemization due to the uniqueness of a cloth heavy melee class with a 2h edged restriction.

What skills, spells, and feats do I get?
The official website does not have these features, but there are independently hosted Skill and Combo Lists and Feat Trees. They aren't 100% accurate or up to date, but these are the best we've found.

There's almost no good equipment for me!
This is very true. There are only two melee dps cloth classes - assassins and HoX. Unfortunately, almost all of this type of gear is aimed at assassins, and you'll find yourself selling loads of +dex, +dagger, and +offhand gear while wondering when you're ever going to find anything useful. Also, many of the large weapon upgrade quests with rare and epic rewards of all types seem to omit 2h edged as well.

In short, the game is very poorly itemized for HoX, and unless Funcom decides to fix this, we're out of luck. However, there are still some items of use. Please check out the item progression guide at http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=57024.

I just got my first feat point. What should I do with it?
Probably 95% of this board will tell you to max out Hellfire Breath (Possession) first thing. This will lower the spell's cast time to 0.3 seconds, making it tremendously more useful than it is without the feat. After that, it's your call. Possession will grant you more magical abilities, Avatar will generally augment your combos and demon form, and Mage will improve your defensive abilities.

What about the different trees? Which one should I play?
Possession is considered rather underpowered after the initial Hellfire Breath feat, which is a necessity for this class and should be maxed out immediately. The Rank 2 skills are rather ineffective, and while Rank 3 increases your damage in demon form, Rank 4 again offers little. There are mixed reports of Roots of Hell being broken, while Thundering Flames and Improved Word of Command currently do nothing. However, Rank 5 does offer Horrible Visage of Xotli, turning your transformation spell into an AE stun, which is considered a must for PvP.

Avatar starts out quite slow, but offers constant DPS upgrades by augmenting your combos. It also offers the Fire Lance combo as early as level 30, which does absurd amounts of damage and can one-shot most bosses at that level.

Mage starts with mana regen, which is generally useless until level 25, when you get Rank 2 in Hellfire Breath. Even then, it isn't really that necessary. After regen, it has magical damage and defensive upgrades, however, magical damage upgrades are minimally useful with our combo-based gameplay. As for the rest of the tree, people haven't quite decided if the increase in survivability is worth the investment.

Why does everyone keep talking about this Fire Lance feat?
Because it used to be a 3k damage combo available at level 40. Unfortunately, Funcom's "improvement" of this combo in a recent patch included a severe nerf to its actual damage.

At this point, it's a three-step combo which requires a feat point to use, providing moderate to high fire damage with a three minute cooldown. Previously it was a five-step combo which dealt extreme damage. This skill is still useful against heavy armor classes.

I don't think I spent my feats and skill points correctly. How do I respec?
Skill points are the easiest to reset. Just hold down alt and click on any skill. A pop up window will appear asking if you want to reset the skill for a certain amount of gold, which is determined by how many points you currently have in that skill. FYI, it starts getting pretty expensive once you're over 200 points in a skill.

Feats are reset at any of the mobs labeled {Trainer} in the towns. The first time is relatively inexpensive at 50 copper, but subsequent respecs are more expensive, with the second costing over 2 silver. Nobody knows at yet whether the cost will decrease over time.

What skills do I need, anyhow?
You can really go a lot of directions with this one. I would suggest Bandaging to minimize downtime, and at least one point in Casting Concentration. For some reason, having even a point in it seems to do the job of preventing spell interruption, for now. I can't see it staying this way forever.

Other useful skills include Run Speed (1% speed increase per 100 pts is what I've heard), and possibly Hiding for PvP. Perception might be useful for PvP as well - HoX tend to lose when they get jumped by a rogue. Climbing is a requirement for certain PvE quests, so it doesn't hurt to get. 80 is all that's needed for Tortage, and the highest I've seen is 180 for later quests.

Don't go wild with putting points into your two mana regen skills. HoX doesn't consume a whole lot of mana. Still, some points will come in handy after level 25.

I'm not into this melee stuff. Can I play HoX as a ranged nuker?
No. It's just not that kind of class, just about all of your damage is dealt within 6 meters of your opponents. Try playing a Demonologist, Lich, or Ranger.

I can't get through the early quests, even 2 pulls kill me. This class sucks. Help!
HoX are one of the more difficult classes to start with. Other mages classes make up for their extreme frailty in the early game by getting a powerful ranged nuke at level 1. Hellfire Breath is our equivalent, but it's melee range. HoX may be the toughest class up to level 10 or 15, but it gets much easier later.

I hear about our AE damage, but I can never seem to hit all of my targets. What am I doing wrong?
Go into your interface options, and turn off auto-facing towards your target. This feature sounds great, but you will usually need to aim right in the middle of a pack of 3-4 mobs.

Cool! I just cast Desecrating Essence and turned into a demon. How can I stay in demon form longer? It has a 2 minute cooldown!
You can't, at least not easily. The avatar line offers a spell and a couple other feats to augment your duration and cooldown on Desecrating Essence.

Desecrating Essence keeps bugging my character and making parts of him/her disappear! What's wrong with my computer?
Nothing, it's just a bug. It'll get fixed eventually.

Slam is broken. It used to knock down enemies, but doesn't do a thing anymore. Why?
Slam is meant only as a newbie "learning" skill. It is completely ineffective after level 10. Take this and Sweep off your hotkey bar!

As a mage class, we get spellweaving... right?
Nope. Developers made a decision that only classes without combos will get spellweaving.