INTRODUCTION

In this guide I’m going to go rather in depth into Jesters, so if you’re not into a lot of reading to improve yourself or you don’t care about being the best you can possibly make yourself; Go read one of the old jester guides that just give you a couple builds to follow with little or outdated reasoning. This guide is for yoyo and yoyo only. There is already a good guide for Bow Jesters on pipeline leveling (an aoe form) which will far out level someone swinging away with yoyo. However, if you want to kill things one on one and you want to maximize your potential and ability then this is the guide for you. I’m more than happy to answer any additional questions you may have along with Heosphoros (heosjester on forums) who is not only a very knowledgeable jester, but the person who helped me to write this guide. Even though I’m doing all the typing, heo has supplied a wealth of information and has also motivated me to make this guide after some very very helpful discussions on the forums (Officials). With that said, I’m going to get started on the guide, so sit back and enjoy the read.

THE HISTORY OF HOW WE GOT TO WHERE WE ARE

Way back in early version 6 the Acrobat class was relatively very new and undiscovered. Jesters were running around with yoyos using high dex builds to maximize their critical rate, rangers were running around using high stamina builds trying to tank aoe like other classes, and no one had really taken the time to analyze how a Jester or Ranger should be played. Seeing as this is a Jester guide and not a Ranger guide, that will be the end of my Ranger discussion.

The standard cookie cutter build that people were recommending to me when I created my jester in the middle of version 6 was xxSTR 40STA 92DEX. The reasoning was sound but very clunky and un-refined. The stamina was to prevent being one hit by a single mob or killed by a group of mobs (mostly a problem in the Dekane Mines where pulling 2-4 mobs isn’t uncommon; also around this time +8 sets were hard to find and rare to own), the high dex was to hit the speed break at 92 and to bolster ones block rate which would also help in the mines (at that time many Jesters were leveling with only haste and/or leveling solo so the speed breaks seemed important). But lets take a look and analyze the problems with this build; first we’ll tackle the 40STA: This is too much unless you’re going to be heavily into PVP, and although you might like seeing the extra hp in your bar, This is too much stamina and you don’t need this much to survive leveling even with only a +3-5 set. Next we’ll tackle the 92DEX and I’m going to spend a bit more time on it because DEX is the single most important stat for a Jester, and the cause of endless amounts of questions. 92DEX is both inefficient and a waste of stat points. 92 dex will get you to 99 dex with your historic yoyo and put you at 119 DEX when buffed with Cannon Ball. Neither 99 dex nor 119 dex gets us to anything useful as the speed break was at 92 and your next crit break isn’t until 100 or 120. The block rate gained from extra dex was also discovered pointless as Perfect Block made up the difference. Back in the earlier versions though, people were concerned with crit rate and speed, especially since it was kind of neat being able to critical on almost every hit while the other people around you almost never saw a critical.

Now we take a short skip forward to early-mid version 7 and a new build became the popular build for Jesters to try out, and this build was known as the power build. The power build boasted very high critical damage but suffered in one area which is what made it lose out to the newer builds that we use today; Using the standard power build a jester would have 83% critical which just wasn’t enough. That build used 43 dex and while 43-53 may not seem like a whole lot (increasing critical by only 4%) the difference is there and noticeable when compared to the Max Critical build that most use today. Fast forward to version 12 and believe it or not, there isn’t much that’s actually changed; We still value our attack speed and most of all, our critical hits.

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF JESTER THEORY

You’ve been hearing me throw out all these DEX values talking about builds, saying how some are efficient and others are wasteful. What is all that about though, I thought Jesters were all about their strength for damage. While this is true, Jesters are more about their critical than they are their strength since all the strength in the world won’t help a Jester that doesn’t have a good critical rate.

Because Jesters get 4% critical for every 10 dex (instead of the usual 1% for every 10), and because they get a self-buff called Critical Swing (+40% critical rate) Jesters have a good advantage over other classes when it comes to the critical rate department. Combine this with the natural critical damage bonuses Jesters get on their sets (cruiser and restra both add 40% critical damage) and their weapon (Historic yoyo adds 28% critical damage), and you can begin to see why having a good critical rate is very important.

We don’t however want to waste any stat points and we can’t ignore our strength because strength IS what adds to our damage. This is where smart stat distribution comes in, as well as planning your gear. Because critical is gained on multiples of 10, your dex stat should never end in anything except a 0 after all your gear and buffs have been taken into account (although it’s really ok if it ends in a 1 or 2 because you get an extra point of dex on some gear you upgrade).

Wait, didn’t you just say it shouldn’t end in anything other than a 0? So what gives with all the 3s at the end of your dex values in your build. This is because your Historic yoyo gives +7 dex naturally, and 7+3=10 which means that you’ll always hit a critical break. In the builds we’re going to examine below your target DEX values are going to be 100 or 80 after all buffs and equipment have been taken into account. The way to figure out how much dex you need to add from your stat points is to pick your build (most of you should probably be using 80) and then work your way down from the target value, subtracting any dex you gain from that value (doing whatever you can’t subtract you’re going to have to add from your stat points). I’ll give an example using a friend’s gear on the 80 dex build:

80(target)-15(base DEX)=65
65-7(Historic yoyo)=58
58-2(+8 Set)=56
56-20(Cannon Ball)=36
36-13(helm awaken)=23

So my friend had to add 23 dex from his base stat points to reach the desired critical rate. Now I’ll use my gear to give an example of the 100 dex end-game build:

100(target)-15(base DEX)=85
85-20(Cannon Ball)=65
65-7(Historic yoyo)=58
58-3(+10 set)=55
55-25(helm awaken)=30
30-31(Arek+18)=-1

So my final number is -1 and since we can’t take away stat points (unless you want to try to awaken something with -1 dex…lol) that means that I don’t need to add any stat points into dex to reach my target goal of 100 dex. This is the ideal and I would recommend that if you get to the point where you can reach your dex goal without adding any stat points into dex, that you restat to a full str build as you’ll be happy about the damage increase.

THE BUILDS AND ANALYSIS OF THEM

In this section I’m going to be comparing the only two builds you should be considering as a Jester; the 53DEX build and the 73DEX build. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE BUILDS ARE WHAT YOUR TARGET BASE STATS SHOULD BE WITHOUT ANY BUFFS, AND YOUR ACTUAL BUILD WILL VARY DEPENDING ON YOUR GEAR. With that little important note out of the way I’m going to give an explanation of how gear is going to affect your build, and why the numbers chosen are there. Then I’ll be moving on to compare both builds against each other and provide some theoretical scenarios and equations to illustrate my point.

For this guide when I say your build should be 15-25STA 50-53DEX I mean that when you open your character window (by pressing H) and take off all your equips that’s what your stats should say. What your DEX actually ends up at after buffs and gear will vary from the stat builds that I give you. The variation on the DEX stats (50-53 for example) is because what you add there is dependent on your set. A +0-+4 set will add 0 points to all stats (53DEX), a +5-+7 set will add 1 point to all stats (52DEX), a +8-+9 set will add 2 points to all stats (51DEX), and a +10 set will add 3 points to all stats (50DEX).

Now to get on with the builds…

MAX CRITICAL BUILD
xx STR
15-25 STA
70-73 DEX

The theory behind this build is that by maxing out Yoyo critical (96%) you will not miss many critical hits and by not missing many you will maximize your damage output from all of your str and attack gear. It has been mostly agreed on that this build is the best end-game Jester build (out performs the Max Damage build when gear improves) but requires a lot of money and investment to outperform a slightly cheaper and more efficient (without good funding) build. This build will only be more efficient than the max damage build when you can reach the target critical rate (96%, although many only get 95%, which is fine as well) and have an attack rate at or above 3500 at the same time.

MAX DAMAGE BUILD
xx STR
15-25 STA
50-53 DEX

The theory behind this build is that it’s a compromise on the old power build that gained popularity in version 7 (before awakenings) and the above Max Critical build. It seeks to take a high critical rate and benefit more than the Max Crit build by having a higher damage per second rating. The real trick is that this build is great until you gain a lot of attack rate, but once you get over the 3500 (personally I recommend waiting until 4000) mark you’ll want to consider searching for some DEX gear to augment all that strength. By the time you reach the 5000 attack mark you’ll be missing a lot of damage if you’re not using the Max Crit build above.

Now I’m going to pretty much cut & paste my forum posts which detail the differences between the two above builds. Please understand that I’m advocating the 53DEX build for ALL Jesters who do not think that they can reach the 4000 attack mark while keeping 95% critical rate. I’m going to have equations and explanations for each equation and for each point that I make.

BUILD COMPARISON

Here is a very simplified equation detailing the damage over time a yoyo would produce with a given amount of swings (in this case I chose 100):

I’ll use the same example as above except I’ll expand the numbers out to 100 swings (going on 100 sample size for a percentage is fairly accurate)

for 87% crit:
(87*8k)+(13*4k)=748k damage

for 95% crit:
(95*7.3)+(5*3.7)=712k damage

In this case the 87% critical build yielded 4.8% more damage output in 100 swings than the 95% crit build did. This is however, a very small and unrealistic sample so I’ll now expand that out to cover 1 hour (a typical grind for most people, and to take into account average gear the critical damage gap was lowered to only 500).

if we assume 2 swings per second (taking pushbacks into account, I think this is a fair estimate) over the course of one hour this would be the end result

87% crit [assuming 7200 swings]:
(7200*.87)*8k+(7200*.13)*4k=53,856,000 damage

95% crit [assuming 7200 swings]:
(7200*.95)*7.5k+(7200*.05)*3.8k=52,668,000 damage

then we take than difference and end up at 1,188,000 if we assume this is at kings [64,442hp] then let’s divide and come up with the kill difference:

1,188,000/64,442=18.44

18.44 mobs*.06% ea.=1.1% lost in that hour.

So, while it’s not a huge gap, there is a fairly noticeable gap when you span that out over the course of say, a 7 hour grind session. This is the reason that I highly recommend and advocate the 53 dex build instead of the 73 dex build when you’re not reaching the really high attack ratings.

The other thing to consider against these two builds is that the more critical damage you have, the sooner you can upgrade to the Max Crit build as the crit damage will compensate a bit for having a lower attack rating. With that said we need to understand that both critical and critical damage have glass ceilings (a point where they are no longer useful to increase and instead we should be increasing other stats). No matter how large you make the sample size in the above equations, the fact that you lose a significant amount of damage per critical compensates for the small increase in the frequency that you critical. That was the main point in giving you those equations; To illustrate the point that critical is only beneficial to a certain point and that point is relative to your gear but never exceeding 96% and never going below 87% (72% if you don’t have restra).

So what if you’re already using the Max Critical build and you’re not at a high enough attack, is it worth it to restat? No, not unless you’re an extreme perfectionist. You will eventually be able to upgrade your gear enough to bridge the gap, and it’s not a super large one to begin with (around 1.1%/hour grinding at mid/high 9x) although if you’re one of those people who likes to grind on AMPs and CS stuff (mostly during 2x events) then you will probably want to restat because after all CS stuff the gap will probably be closer to 3%/hour which, at least imo, is quite a noticeable gap.

YOUR GEAR AND HOW TO ACQUIRE YOUR STAT POINTS

So now we’ve seen the base builds but what exactly are the final DEX targets and how the hell do you get there? There’s a lot of ways to gain those stat points now so we have to sift through all the crap and figure out where the hell we get our DEX from, and how much we get from each thing.

MAX CRITICAL BUILD [Final Target]
100 DEX (This provides 40% critical with cruiser and 55% critical with restra, then add Critical Swing self-buff into it and you get your final crit goals of 80% pre-restra and 95% after)

MAX DAMAGE BUILD [Final Target]
80 DEX (This provides 32% critical with cruiser and 47% critical with restra, then add Critical Swing self-buff into it and you get your final crit goals of 72% pre-restra and 87% after)

First off, what kind of gear should you be using? I’m going to break this into two groups: pre-90 and post-90 (replace the 90 with 80 or 85 if you’re going to reduce all your gear).

PRE-90

Yoyo:
Historic yoyo: you should reduce this yoyo at 65 as you’re going to be using it for the rest of your grinding life in this game. It never gets out-dated and never gets out-damaged. Upgrade this to ultimate (and to ultimate+6/7 if you wish to meteo with it) or as high as you can afford to. If you can’t afford to reduct a Historic yoyo then your best bet is to just use a Guardian Yoyo until 75. It’s not recommended you upgrade the Guardian yoyo very much because 60-75 actually goes by very fast.

Set:

Cruiser/Hyper Set: There is no exception to this either, all the other sets suck…period. get this to +8 if you can although a +5 set should last you fairly well through the mines. If you know that you’re not going to be able to get higher than +5 on your set then I would recommend to you that you add around 30 stamina to your build to compensate for the loss of hp and block.

Jewelry:
Vigor/Arek: Usually you’ll want to keep both of these as Vigors, however if you can get a hold of an arek+15 I would recommend you aim to use one arek and one vigor as it will allow you to maximize your damage.
Demol: use these only. You have no use for plugs or speedos….ever (speedos maybe if you’re in high end pvp).

Pet:
Tiger: My main recommendation as it allows you the highest potential damage output of all the pets and it helps you annoy people with a higher HoP in the arena.
Rabbit: Decent alternative to the Tiger if you can only afford a medium stat pet (20-35 stats on the pet) as it will allow you to reach max critical with very little stat point investment into dex. The downside is that if you get a good tiger you’ll wish you had those stat points in base dex so that you could get higher damage.

Piercings:
Fire B: ONLY USE FIRE B PIERCINGS…EVER…NEVER EVER USE ELECTRIC B PIERCINGS IN YOUR YOYO. Honestly, I can’t stress enough how important it is for performance to avoid the temptation of gaining your critical from one of the "easiest" sources available. Only pierce your yoyo with fireB cards and look elsewhere to get your crit rate as I feel dexB cards a complete waste of potential. My reasoning is fairly straight forward and simple: elecB cards are used for only one purpose; raising your crit rate, which can be accomplished already through another stat which happens to be dex. While fireB cards actually perform 2 functions; first is that they add to your base attack (the str part) but that part is pretty negligible since you can gain str from base stats and many other ways. The second is % crit damage which for jesters might as well be % atk. The crit damage % makes all your future str investments and atk investments and upgrades more potent and worthwhile. It’s the same reason people opt for 28% atk instead of 16% atk despite the massive gap in price: because once you have it everything else you get is more worthwhile.

POST-90

Yoyo:
No change

Set:
Restra/Rasra Set: Again, there is no exception to this and there is no alternative to use, this is the only set that a jester should use once they reach level 90 until you reach the point where you want to go pure pvp (at which point you’ll want to grab yourself a jesis set)

Jewelry:
No change

Pet:
No change

Piercings:
No change

AWAKENINGS

The best way to get the kinds of awakenings you want is to buy clean pieces with good awakenings and then upgrade them yourself. Its slightly more expensive to make a +8 set than buy a +8 set, but if you can get the kinds of awakenings you want on your set it’ll benefit you more and you’ll be happier in the long run. Now I’ll go over my recommendations on what awakens to aim for when looking.

Helmet: I would recommend you aim for DEX but a good awakening in either STR or DEX is worth keeping or buying.

Suit: I would say Critical Damage or STR although Critical Damage is probably the highest priority for awakenings on the suit.

Gauntlet: Attack is your target and priority although a good attack speed or critical rate awakening is also worth keeping. If you’re buying though, buy an attack awakening.

Boots: Critical Damage is the only thing worth getting for Jesters on boots. Run speed is a cute gimmick to play with but largely pointless, get Critical Damage and Critical Damage only.

Yoyo: Same as suit, Critical Damage or STR are really the only two you’re going to want to bother with although if you’re using reversions on an already upgraded yoyo/suit any good awakening in STR, DEX, ADoCH, or STA would be worth keeping as it’ll increase the value of your equipment.

HOW TO TRANSITION WITHOUT A RESTAT

Alright so you’ve picked out your build, you know what kind of gear you’re going to be using, but, how can you make it from the 53DEX build all the way up to the 73DEX build without a restat and without adding dex to your base with stat points instead of putting those points in str. Because the build transition is more dependent on your gear than it is your level or current build, not restatting can be a bit tricky.

The simplest way that I’ve found this can be done is to simply follow the 53 dex build adding all the dex you need to your base build (this will usually be about 36 stat points if you have a +8 set, 35 if you have a +10, 37 if you have a +5 or 38 if you have a +3). I will also say you probably need to have a +8 set after 90 for this build to work properly, if you don’t have a +8 90 set, make that your priority. Once you’ve got your build set, work on upgrading your strength gear first (get at least one upgraded vigor, tiger, ect.) to bolster your attack rate. Then the transition comes; Drop one of your vigor rings (obviously the lower upgraded one) and focus on getting an arek+15. The 21 dex you gain from the arek ring will put you at 74 dex which as you might guess, will give you maxed critical rate.

BASIC GUIDE TO PVP STRATEGIES

I’ll cover some basic pvp tips here as well as some gear suggestions. You’ll notice I didn’t add a Jester/Ranger section and this is because it’s nothing but a DI fight. First one to hit is usually going to be the one to win the fight. If they can tank your HoP (or Vital & HoP) chances are you’re not going to win against them if you can’t tank theirs. Rangers should die to HoP, if they don’t then just xline until you stun or HoP cooldown is finished. Aside from the most pimped Rangers you’ll win. That’s really all there is to Jester/Ranger match ups, and that’s why I just didn’t spend much time on it. Anyway, here’s my pvp list and tips (note: most of this applies to arena, NOT SIEGE)

I’m going to quickly explain a couple different pvp builds although you should be able to pvp just fine using your normal leveling build, simply grab a unicorn or lion and pet trick for HoP damage (pet tricking is covered below).

A straight up pvp build (arena/DM not siege/1v1 siege) is going to vary from a siege build in that you will want to add dex and stamina. Basically it’ll look like a leveling build with a bit more stam to it; something like:

xx str
60-100 stam
50-80 dex

The reasoning is that in the arena and in DMs you will be utilizing your criticals as a primary source of damage dealing whereas in siege you almost never (if at all really) use melee attacks. You can’t sacrifice on hp though or you won’t really kill anyone at all. This build is not highly recommended unless you can afford to follow this build by using the stat distribution that the hardcore pvp build would follow.

If you want a hardcore pvp build (that you could take to siege) then it’s going to be only stam and str; something like:

xx str
80-200 stam
15 dex

First thing you’ll notice is the huge variable on the amount of stam to input. This is because it’s entirely dependent on what kind of str gear you’re going to be able to have. The more str gear you have the more stam you can put in your build. When building a jester for pvp it’s also very important to note that you ALWAYS want stam in your base build and str on your awakenings. This is because stam gained in awakenings does not factor into Grilled Eel Calculations. The second thing is that if you want to level with this build then you’re going to need some dex rings and/or a rabbit so that you have high enough crit. This can also function very well in arena and DMs, you’re just going to be much more skill spammy so get used to spamming those vital drinks to keep pace and timing in your skills.

My gear picks:

H.yoyo/B.yoyo (lgy is an option for pre-110 characters)-Choose H.yoyo if you want to be more crit reliant and b.yoyo if you want to be more skill spammy. That said, b.yoyo is almost always the superior option as it adds much needed hp and skill damage that the h.yoyo does not.

Restra/Jesis (at least +8)-Choose Restra if you think you’re going to be swinging for damage a lot, jesis if you plan to be picking fights with a lot of blades/BJ.

Jewels – These should always consist of vigors and demols as high +’d as you can afford. Having a stam ring on hand to tank opposing hops is an option as well.

Pet Choice – "pet tricking" is pretty important for jesters who want to be really hardcore about their pvp. Basically pet tricking consists of utilizing the unicorn for hp and quickly swapping to tiger to hop then immediately switch back to unicorn. If done correctly and fast enough the hop will have the str from the tiger but your hp will never drop below it’s max with the unicorn out (this is due to the server lag that keeps your max hp current for a second even if max hp drops, same principle as bp gear tricking to get higher asals)

Gear Recommendations:
I personally pvp in DM/Arena with Restra and B.yoyo (currently h.yoyo because I’m in full grinding mode /wrist). The reason for this is that in DM you won’t typically run into remantis and the number of bps is generally fewer and/or they’re usually suicide/full str builds, and you won’t run into holy scrolls (unless you really piss someone off lol).

Strategies:
Really tough to cover well because this changes depending on your gear, who you’re facing, what build they are, ect. The best advice I can give is fairly general:

Ring Master: lolRM if you can’t kill an RM…god help you. That said, if it’s an arena war and/or DM/team fight, aim for the RMs first as hc/hr is going to hurt your chances of winning.

Bill Poster: overall just a terrible match up although with good timing and a bit of luck it’s very easy to kill them. Generally bps and psys are the reason that I use restra instead of jesis for General pvp. Basically, the first time I hop out of DI and then counter (you have to move towards them a couple steps first so it takes excellent timing) follow that up with xline (if the counter didn’t stun) and hope for a stun. If you dont’ stun the bp and your hop can’t kill them you won’t be killing the bp. Just aim for the stun. After that initial encounter (if you fight them again) I lead with backstab from DI as it has the highest stun rate. Once they’re stunned you have 4 seconds to melee them for as much damage as possible (in 105 sets this might only be 1 or 2 crits that get through) and follow up with a hop. Sometimes I’ll swing 4 times, hop, then go into counter again and hope they try to asal me before I kill them. Fighting BPs is really a guessing game that takes excellent skill timing and a bit of luck. Winnable about 30-40% of the time if done properly.

Knight: heh, these guys are easy as cake to take out. vital+hop out of DI then melee during hop cooldown and follow up with another hop. If you find you need a bit of breathing space xline for a stun then melee+hop again. Stunning them allows your food and pills to leave the cooldown stage so you don’t get DPS’d to death waiting for cooldown.

Blade: If you have a jesis set on hand, this is where you’ll want to use it, if you don’t then it’s going to get a bit tricky. I tend to be "cheap" when it comes to fighting blades. What I do is vital+backstab+hop (and hope my block holds out for a couple swings from them) and if I didn’t get a stun then I run back until hop leave cooldown then hop+DI+hop out of DI. That takes care of most blades pvp built or not. Beware, they’ll start sneakering you non-stop if you keep this up though and they catch on to what you’re doing lol. If I do get a stun (and the blade is pvp build with high hp) then I use slow step (yes, slow step) twice run back and repeat the ending of the above strategy. If they’re not pvp built and you get a stun, just melee them a few times and then hop. In your favor to win this one, considerably more so if you have a good upgraded jesis set.

Elementor: Highly in your favor. hop+melee takes out 90% of elementors. For the ones that it doesn’t take out (very very very rare) DI and send another hop their way or backstep to try for a stun.

Psykeeper: Honestly, psys are a pretty bad match up for yoyo jesters in the higher levels. you’ll have to rely on hop+melee to take them out (try for a stun if you want but I’ve found that if you don’t stun on back step or the first 2 casts of xline you’re dead). Out of DI hop then immediately melee and hop asap. Fighting psys is all about how quick you are with your food timing and skill timing. If you try to hop too early the skill lag you get is going to kill you, if you hop too late you’ll die from bombs before hop damage is registered. Winnable but I’d say it’s a 50-50 shot at winning. If the psy is especially geared up I’d say they’re equivalent of a bp to a yj since you can’t stop/block the bombs at all. In the psys favor if they’re well equipped, in yours if they’re not. OH AND DON’T UNDERESTIMATE CRUCIO DAMAGE; I can’t really stress that enough. When you’re swinging for 4-5k crits crucio is going to reflect around 1k back on you which will add up quickly and cause your hp to fall into fatal area before your pill is ready.

Credits go to xdarkvisions.