Lineage II/Spellhowler

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

This class specializes into wind and dark magic.

Key Skills
Main Skill - Hurricane - fast reuse and lot of damage.

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.

There are a lot of options for equipment of the Spellhowler, so I will just present the most popular. On c-grade one would want to combine the Karmian Robe Set with the Ghoul Staff, SA Mana Up, or a Homunculus Sword, SA Acumen, or the Sword of Whispering Death, SA Magic Power. If you really want to use the Demon Robe set instead, getting a +4 Con, -4 Str Symbol might be a good idea. On b-grade the Avadon or Zubei Robe is combined with the Staff of Evil Spirit (no good SA) or the Homunculus Sword with SA Acumen, good idea is Sword of Valhalla with SA Acumen. On a-grade the best combo is probably the Dark Crystal Robe with a Sword of Miracles SA Acumen or SA Magic Power with Nightmare Robe Set for raiding bosses.

The +4 Con, -4 Str Symbol is a must - SHs get absolutely nothing from strength, but are very low on hitpoints and load. Another popular Symbol would be +4 Wit, -4 Men. You can work some of the bad effects of that symbol by wearing, for example, the majestic robe (gives mana regeneration), using a weapon with Mana Up or Conversion (as +4 Wit gives more casting speed than an acumen weapon would give anyway), and getting better jewelry.

Adventuring
Nukers are loners, and the Spellhowler is even more so than elvish Spellsingers and human Sorcerers, because the later 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.

Fun Facts
Someone placed a detailed plan how to level a spellhowler up to level 20 here, this has been moved to the right place: Dark Mystic.