Lineage II/Spellhowler

Spellhowler (SH) are offensive spellcasters (nukers) of the Dark Elves. They wear Robes and can use any weapon, even if they usually prefer those with high M.Atk.

This class specializes in wind and dark magic.

Key Skills

 * Hurricane: Fast reuse and lot of damage.
 * Surrender to Wind: A debuff that enhances attack power of wind attacks.
 * Death Spike: Powerful dark attack. Low mana consumption. Requires 1 Cursed Bone to cast.
 * Vampiric Claw: Powerful dark attack. Steals HP from target.
 * Corpse Life Drain: Steals HP from a corpse.
 * Body to Mind: Gain mana at a cost of own HP.
 * Curse Death Link: Attack spell. The less HP you have when cast, the more attack power it has.
 * Silence: Debuff that blocks target's ability to cast spells.

Equipment
In general, anything that gives the SH casting speed is usually a good idea. Casting speed means your chance of getting interrupted is much lower, and it’s a huge advantage in PvP. For tattoos, the common setup for a spellhowler is +4CON-5STR, +4WIT-4MEN, +4INT-4MEN. However, if you wish to add even more the already slow casting howler, you can swap the +4CON-5STR for a +1WIT-1MEN.


 * C-Grade: Demon Set (or Karmian Set) with Homunkulus' Sword SA Acumen.
 * B-Grade: Avadon Set with Sword of Valhalla SA Acumen.
 * A-Grade: Dark Crystal Set with Sword of Miracles SA Acumen.
 * S-Grade: Dark Crystal Set (or Major Arcana Set) with Arcana Mace SA Acumen.
 * S84-Grade: Vesper Set (or Vesper Noble) with Vesper Caster or Vesper Buster (on Acumen).

Magic

 * Hurricane: Good damage and recast time.
 * Death Spike: Good damage and recast time, low MP needed, but you must have cursed bones.
 * Vampiric Claw: Good damage, but lots of MP needed. Only use when low on HP.
 * Body To Mind: Fantastic skill for gaining mana. A good strategy is to Body To Mind until you have low HP, then use Vampiric Claw or Corpse Life Drain until you're full. Repeat until you have lots of MP. You can also use this strategy to lower your HP for Curse Death Link.
 * Shadow Flare: Overhit skill. Good to use when enemy is weak. Try not to use too much in case you don't have any SP when it comes to getting new skills.
 * Curse Death Link: Not as effective anymore with mobs UD'ing. Otherwise, the less HP you have, the more damage you do.

Adventuring
Nukers are loners, and the Spellhowler is even more so than elvish Spellsingers and human Sorcerers, because the latter at least have mass sleep spells.

Especially spellsingers can be found to almost go into melee with their spells quite often, because their fastest spells are almost uninterruptible. Spellhowlers however are slow casters, the best strategy for them is to run away until they have some distance, cast their spell, then continue running away. The Slow spell is a very important tool for the spellhowler, as are speed potions.

During soloplay, the spellhowler usually battles to use up his Manapool as slowly as possible. This can be done by casting the Body to Mind spell multiple times between the wind attacks, then combining them with the Vampiric Claw and Corpse Life Drain attack.

Dark magic is very strong, but some mobs are very resistant, and wind attacks tend to be cheaper, at least in the beginning. There is a nice combination of using Body To Mind spell that keeps Spellhowler's health at minimum and powerful Curce Death Link spell which deals great damage when caster is near death. Also, there are no dark mass attacks until top levels are reached.