The purpose of this thread is to study and discuss the rayan faction. (Pre Asc for the most part). The guide is NOT supposed to be a build, but it is based off of my build and is supposed to help you better understand the class so that you can make your own awesome build that way YOU want. The skills I talk about later in the guide are skills that you may want to incorporate into your build. Or not. It’s all a matter of preference. Some skills arent included because I ran out of room and just left the skills in that seem to be best for PvP. Other skills are left out because they are more geared toward ascension.
My PvP Build
http://jd-forum.perfectworld.com/sho…d.php?t=352902

My PvE Build
http://jd-forum.perfectworld.com/sho…d.php?t=353771

I. Rayan Purpose
II. Rayan Skills
a. Tier 1
b. Tier 2
c. Tier 3
d. Tier 4
e. Tier 5
III. Rayan Tomes
a. Blade Tome
b. Shadow Tome
c. Dance Tome
IV. Rayan PvP Tips

Ok here goes.

I.Rayan Purpose. The main idea behind rayans, is to be disctract and confuse the enemy with their shadow clones which can be summoned to aid the caster. The clones are an exact replica of the caster. Name, Gear, even the alliance and clan tags are duplicated. This is supposed to throw off the enemy’s tracking abilities. If that’s not enough, rayans can cloak themselves and become completely invisible to anyone not in their party. This only has an effect on enemies within a certain level range of themself.

Rayans use dual scythes during combat and have the ability to chain their attacks together to gain combo points. Then, once combo points are gained, they can unleash a finishing attack which, depending on the number of combo points (max of 5), gives the attack extra damage or other effects.

II.Skills. Here is a guide on each of the tiers and my opinion, supported by facts. I will discuss which ones may be more or less useful in PvP. This guide will be more or less based on my PvP build which you can also view in this section of the forum.

a. Tier 1. The attack skills in this tier are for the most part, completely unnecessary as you will quickly be past tier 1 before long. Skills of interest are, Blood Blade, Ghost Pace, Shadow Dance-Shape, Blood Hand, Traceless, and Melted shadow.
-Blood Blade, when maxed sacrifices a percentage of the casters health to boost their attack by the same percent. (Max of 7%). This could be useful for PvP for an even greater bonus to damage on top of the already boosted skills.
-Ghost Pace is your standard speed buff. It can be used to escape from tight situations, or to chase down a kiter (runner).
-Shadow Dance-Shape is your first shadow clone. It is an exact replica of yourself and will help you attack your opponents. For the most part, it is used as a distraction as it cannot use skills and only has 50% of your attack power. However, it should be maxed if you want to increase the effectiveness of your Tier 5 shadow clone.
-Blood Hand is the first passive you want to max. It increases your damage which is good already, but also, every rank you put into it, can increast your crit damage by 3%.
-Traceless is more or less a PvE skill as it increases your evasion. This means you get hit by monsters less, so you take less damage. Thus saving HP potions. It is useless for PvP however.
-Melted Shadow is an interesting skill. It allows you to swap the health values of you and your clone. This is quite useful once the final clone is unlocked because the final clone has more health than you anyway. So when you’re being attacked and are running low on health, cast this skill and you will be 100% healed. (as long as your final clone has taken no damage so far) Its effectiveness isn’t as great with the other clones though.

b. Tier 2. As before, the attack skills here can be avoided, but if desired can be used for early on PvP. The most interesting part, is that if you are cloaked and use the tier 2 opening skill, it weakens the opponent. But it’s effectiveness is limited. Skills of interest are Spurt, Protect, Disperse, Invisibility, and Substitute. The other skills are somewhat redundant. (with the exception of Tremble which lowers the opponents resistances)
-Spurt is your charge skill from the other classes. Its effect however is what attracts attention. When maxed, it gives the caster a 9% increase to crit rate for 5 seconds. (duration can be increased with a tome)
-Protect is a passive skill that when you summon a shadow, it increases your max health by 26% (maxed) for as long as the shadow is alive.
-Disperse is your second passive that can effect your crit damage so I would suggest maxing it. It increases your evasion as well by 28 (maxed)
-Invisibility is your first ability that allows you to cloak or disappear. It cannot be used in combat, and your clone cannot cloak with you. When maxed, you suffer no reduction to speed, and it doesn’t works on opponents 5 levels or higher above your own level.
-Substitute is a skill that when you activate it, your summoned clone will take 50% of your damage for you (maxed) which can be a great skill to have to increase survivability.

c. Tier 3. Tier 3 is where you can start to add points to attacks if you wish and it will actually begin to offer decent damage. It’s boosting attack drains spirit from the opponent, and the finishing move deals damage = to 9% of your target’s spirit. It’s opening move removes the target’s positive effects (100% chance if used while cloaked). very nice. Other skills of interest are Blink move, Shadow Dance-Soul, Ultima Hand, Hide, and Shadow return. Ghost veil is more suited for ascended players.
-Blink Move instantly teleport you to directly behind your opponent and increases the damage of your next attack. This is very useful for punishing kiters and surprising enemies.
-Shadow Dance-Soul is your second shadow clone. This clone still deals 50% of your attack power, but it can use level 5 Rayan skills (unlike its tier 1 counterpart). All points added to this increase the effectiveness of the final clone.
-Ultima Hand offers a max of 4% increased crit rate which is nice. Also, it adds to your crit damage once it’s tomed. So MAX it.
-Hide is your second cloaking ability. From what i’ve heard, it can be used during combat which increases its usefulness quite a bit. Like invisibility, it doesn’t work on characters 5 levels or higher above your own.
-Shadow Return is a unique skill that allows you and your clone to swap positions, thus further confusing your opponent. Also, if you use this while your enemy is targeting you, it will cause him to target the clone.

d.Tier 4. For most classes, tier 4 is where the PvP begins. The attacks are nice and most of the skills are fairly useful. Crippling Presence isn’t quite as practical and useful as some other skills, and Nerve Pinch is more for ascended characters. But I will go over all of the rest.
-Teeth Raid is an opening skill. If used while invisible, it uses a 600+ strength stun for 3 seconds. Not many people can resist this.
-Dragon Cut is your boosting skill. It attacks for a fairly decent amount of damage, and adds to your combo points. What is unique about boosting skills, is that they have no Cooldown so they can be used repeatedly to quickly fill the combo points.
-Bloody Chop is your finishing skill. It attacks for very nice damage, as well as having increased damage from the combo points (tomed). In all of these 3 attacks, your Shadow ignores 45% of the target’s defense.
-Shadow Sacrifice sacrifices your shadow to remove 5 negative effects from yourself as well as increasing the damage of your next attack by 75% (maxed)…which is a lot. Very useful skill.
-Thousand Hands is your final passive that should be maxed. It increases your accuracy and your crit damage (tomed).
-Shadowmeld is another cloaking ability and like before, I’m pretty sure it can be used in combat. Same effects as before, doesn’t work on chars 5 or more levels higher than you.
-Empathy is a skill that has a 50% chance (maxed) to give negative effects to your shadow instead of yourself. Very useful.

e.Tier 5. Finally. You made it to tier 5. Obviously, all of the skills here will be useful in one way or another.
-Void is a powerful opening skill that silences your enemy for 3 seconds with a strength of 600+ if used while invisble.
-Flash Reel This Cloak lets you attack, and instantly recloak after hitting your enemy
-Shadow Dance-Ultima is your final clone. It’s health and attack power are 50% higher than yours (maxed), and its effectiveness is also increased with the levels of the previous 2 clones.
-Celestial Slay is your final finishing skill. It is a powerful AOE attack that hits up to 20 targets within 15 yards of the caster.

III.Rayan Tomes. This part of the guide will talk about the various tomes and what each general column effects.
a.Blade Tome. This tome overall, effects all your attack skills.
-The left column effects the Opening skills. The tomes add various effects to the opening skills or further increases the skills existing effects. The very bottom tome is interesting. It gives the Traceless effect to the Void skill and boosts the effect. so basically what is happening, is you can set this skill to your esper to go off every 6 seconds and have a permenant 80+ increase to your evasion.
-The center column effects your boosting skills basically in the same way as the left column effected the opening skills. The very bottom one increases the crit rate of all boosting skills by 3% (maxed)
-The right column obviously effects the finishing skills. The very bottom one makes it so you sacrifice a little health to boost the damage of the final AOE skill.

b.Shadow Tome. This tome focuses on your invisibility skills as well as most of the skills I did not talk about much in this guide. But anyways, here goes.
-The left column will tome your speed skill making it more likely to remove a negative effect as well as decreasing the cooldown. Prolongs the crit rate effect of spurt and lowers the CD. Reduces CD of blink move. Increases range of crippling presence. And when casting the speed skill, charge skill, or the blink move skill, offers a chance to activate your invisibility.
-The center column mainly focuses on all of your cloaking abilities, increasing move speed while cloaked, and reducing CD’s. The very bottom tome is interesting in that when using the final cloak, it increases skill damage while the cloak is active.
-The right column focuses on all the skills that I didn’t really talk about. It increases durations and adds effects to the skills Blood Poison, Tremble, Ghost Veil, and Nerve Pinch.

c.Dance Tome. This tome focuses on increased crit damage as well as boosts your clone’s attributes.
-The left column, in my opinion, are some of the most important tomes for a rayan. Period. It boosts all of your passives that you should have maxed, and the final tome gives 3% crit damage for each rank in all of those passives.
-The center column focuses on your clones, giving them increased attrubutes and the final tome increases the duration of the final clone.
-The right column focuses on lowering the CD’s of Melted shadow, Substitute, Shadow Return, and Empathy. It also gives those skills added bonuses such as increased defense, boosting resistances, or removing negative effects.

IV.Rayan PvP Tips.
+Plan your combos out on your skill bar. A good example of a combo is to cloak, then sneak up on an enemy (blink move is good), cast your opening skill (ill use the tier 4 one) this now has your enemy stunned for 3 seconds. Now use your boosting skill as fast as possible and charge your combo points. Once you have all 5, unleash your finishing blow. Hopefully, appearing out of nowhere and stunning your enemy has made them either panic or confused. they will try to retaliate but won’t be able to because they have been stunned. Their next instinct will to be to pot spam and try to stay alive. Hopefully by that point you have finished your boosting skills and you will be ready to finish them. Unleash your finishing move and they should be dead. If not, summon a clone so they get confused again (they were too busy potting to notice you summon a clone, now they don’t know which one you are), then go back and spam the boosting skill again and start over.

+Rayans, during PvP, are all about combo’s and building up strength as they continue to fight. Overall, their attacks do less damage than other classes. This is made up for my the status effects added to skills. Such as draining spirit (T3 boosting skill), or ignoring the enemy’s defense (T4 attacks). Your boosting skills are spammable, so don’t be shy, lay it on em. After building up combo points, unleash your finishing move. If tomed right, this should give a devastating blow, which if it crits, should be enough to take down almost anyone. So the point is, don’t be discouraged if your spamming skills dont do as much damage as you would hope.

+As a rayan, you for the most part have to select your targets carefully. Try to always be cloaked. Choose a target that doesn’t have too much in the way of defense, and ALWAYS make sure you use your opening skill while invisible. The t4 opening skill uses a stun. Sometimes you have to wait for the right moment. Wait till your allies attack the the enemy formation breaks and they are occupied. Then try to take the safest route to the enemy. (this means try to avoid classes that are using AoE’s because those can still hit you, even if they cannot see you) Then, once you attack the target, pour on the attacks till they die

+If attacking a target that is not in combat, try to cloak before approaching so that he/she is not expecting to be attacked.
+(COUNTERING) If you have an enemy selected and they cast their clone spell, you will LOSE your selected target, meaning you have to click on the target again
+When trying to find the real target, always look for the one that leads. The character will lead, the shadow will follow behind.
+When trying to find the real target already in combat, select the targets and right click on their pic. If you do not get a "duel" or "trade" option, that is the clone.

Credits go to Ingenuity.