Conjuror AA Guide

This guide was created by Xalmat of the EQ2 Conjuror Forums. All credit for this guide goes to him. To see the original posting of this guide click here.

Conjuror AA (Achievement) threads pop up all the time. This is my attempt at reducing the number of them a good amount.

Due to space constraints, this guide is specifically for the KoS and EoF trees. Please see the TSO guide for TSO AA information.

First things first, here's what the trees look like, with a somewhat typical DPS spec to give you an idea how points are distributed in general.

If you don't know what each one does, mouse-over them in the Achievement window and it will tell you. If you're a low level Conjuror, many of the abilities listed are NOT available until very high level. For example, Blazing Presence is not attainable until level 50, Plane Shift not until 65, and Stoneskin until level 40.

Nomenclature, Foreword, FAQ, and so on

You will see a lot of terms that you may be unfamiliar with in this post. My advice is learn them. I'll try to explain them in this section.

Very, very first thing that needs to be said. Achievements = AA, and AA = Achievements. You will see both tossed around. They mean the same thing. Where does "AA" come from then? Old EQ1 term for Alternate Advancement, which is essentially a very similar thing they had in EQ1. Don't dwell on it, just live with it.

DPS is shorthand for Damage Per Second. A more practical term for DPS is damage. The more damage, the faster things die. And as a Conjuror, your number one job is to deal damage. It's that simple.

While each of the achievements in the Summoner tree have individual names, it is much, much faster to describe them by abbreviation. For example, the above build posted would be best described as STR 4-4-4-8 WIS 4-4-4-8 INT 6-4-4-8-2. Each tree gets its name from the very first ability in the tree, which grants a specific stat and sets the theme for the rest of the tree: Strength for the far left, Intelligence for the far right.

The Conjuror tree is not so simple to abbreviate, but you can also refer to the tree based on its overall category: Conjurations on the far left, Evocations on the far right.

Each tree is limited to 50 points from experience levels 1-69, and 70 points from 70+. You can start acquiring them at level 10. If you start at level 10, and work your butt off at getting achievements, you can easily have 100 by the time you are level 70, and close to the max of 140 by level 80.

Yes, Possess Minion is required in order to access the Summoner tree. Don't complain, just get it and move on.

Regarding Pet AAs: The way these abilities work is they enhance the actual pet summoning spell, not the pet. For example, Enhance Earth Pet will add to your earth pet spell "Grants your pet X% damage absorption". Which means, if you have your Earth pet out, and then you purchase Enhance Earth Pet, you will need to resummon your pet for the effect to take hold.

Get an AA Mirror!

As soon as you quite possibly can, get an AA mirror. Go out of your way to save up the money to buy the components you need and hire a crafter that will do the combine for you. This will let you switch between two AA builds on the fly in your house, and is well worth the coin, and time, to get one.

The item itself is called Mirror of Reflected Achievements. It is a house item that goes (where else?) in your house. You need a few things for one:

1. A reflective smoldering shard. These drop in Kunark "contested" dungeons off of just about anything (Chardok, Karnor's Castle, Sebilis). They also drop in The Shadow Odyssey group instances. They're fairly uncommon. You can also find them on the broker, prices will vary by server, time of day, phase of the moon, and whether you have pleased the loot gods or not.

2. A level 75 or higher crafter with the recipe. Any crafter class can make this. However, the crafter himself will need an extremely high amount of city faction in order to purchase the recipe, and very few of them do. When you finally find one, be prepared to pay a very large fee for the crafter.

The mirror itself is LORE and NO-TRADE, so you can only have one in your house at a time. You can also only get this made via the commission window; ask the crafter how the commission window works if you aren't sure, or read Denmother's guide.

Once you get the mirror, you put it in your house (has to be your character's house, not another house, even if it's an alt of yours). Right click the mirror, and select Save Profile. Give it a name. Any name will do, but name it something so you know what it is when you go to respec again. Then just purchase an AA respec, and respend your AAs on your new profile.

Voila, you now have two AA profiles. Congratulations!

To switch between them, you right click the mirror again and select "Load XXX Profile" (with XXX being your profile name). It will ask you to save the profile you currently have, then swap profiles. Be warned, it will strip you of all buffs.

Again, I can't stress this enough. Get an AA mirror as quickly as possible. It is well worth the money.

Soloing Builds

Sample Layouts:

Summoner Tree for Soloing
Conjuror Tree for Soloing

There are three ways to solo as a Conjuror: Tank Pet (the bread and butter style), Scout Pet (kill fast and take no prisoners), Mage Pet (Root/Nuke or Kite).

I'm gonna recommend the Tank Pet method, because it's the safest pet to solo with. However, feel free to build your own solo build using any of the pets, it's difficult to go wrong when soloing.

Ultimately, for the Tank Pet method, you will focus on the tank pet the most, and focus on abilities that keep it alive, and aggro on the pet and off you. Order you grab these abilities in doesn't matter too much, so play around. Go ahead and skip things that you can't use yet due to level.

Note that a strong solo build that focuses on keeping the pet alive, and holding aggro, is a great build for tank-pet oriented groups too!

Enhance: Earth Pet 5
STA 4-4-8-8
WIS 4-4-8-8
Enhance: Pet Heal 5
Enhance: Stoneskin 3
Cure Elemental
Blazing Avatar 2
Elemental Unity 5
Unabate - Requires 20 points in Evocations, so spread how you like. (Highly recommend Enhance: Effigy 5)

Those are the essentials.

Enhance Earth Pet increases the pet's ability to take damage. Or to be precise, reduces the incoming damage the tank pet receives. Less damage = pet lives longer.

STA2 is Shockwave, it is essentially a knockdown that you tell your tank pet to use. Great for getting aggro, but be careful. It WILL hit things that are near the pet that you aren't fighting.

STA3 is Perceptor's Command, it's essentially a rescue that you tell any pet to use. At rank 8 it's 100% chance to move up a hate position, and if it's just you and your pet, it means your pet gets aggro...unless it resists, which isn't often.

STA4 increases the tank pet's HPs by a metric buttload. Get it, you'll love it.

WIS3 increases the pet's Defense stat. More defense = gets hit less = lives longer.

WIS4 increases the pet's Offensive stats. Higher offense = hits more = more aggro = mobs die faster.

Enhance Stoneskin triggers a stoneskin on your pet whenever you cast Stoneskin on yourself. Not only is it a great emergency save for you, but now it's a great emergency save for your pet too!

Cure Elemental is just nice to have. Plus it opens up Blazing Presence and Elemental Vestment, which are both required once you're high enough to use both abilities.

Unabate reduces the resistability of all of your spells, and all of your pet's combat arts and spells. Lower resistability for your pet = more damage/aggro = mobs die faster. However be careful as lower resistability from your spells = more damage/aggro = you pull aggro easier. And in order to get Unabate, you need to put points into Evocations, which means you do more damage = more aggro, but more damage = mobs die faster. Double edged sword, but well worth it.

Other things to consider, depending on how many extra achievement points you have lying around, include filling out the Foundations tree and getting Stoneskins (if you can spare the points). And if you really have points to spend, consider getting Enhance Plane Shift for those extra tough solo situations.

Just don't buy Enhance Winds of Velious. Ever.

Group/DPS Builds

Sample Layouts:

Summoner Scout Build
Summoner Mage/Mythical Build
Conjuror Full DPS Build
Conjuror DPS + Pet Survival Build
Recommended Mythical Pet Build

Depending on what your aims are, you have three choices for DPS builds: Scout Pet, Mage Pet, and Mythical Pet. Mage pet is the most powerful, especially at very high levels, but extremely dangerous at low levels; most tanks at low levels aren't geared to handle the very high aggro a Mage pet generates. Or for that matter the very high aggro you will generate in a DPS build.

On raids, your only viable choice is the Mage or Mythical pet. Don't even consider using the scout pet, it's a waste of time.

That said, here are your starting options. Unlike soloing, for a DPS build you can go wrong.

Here are your options:
STR 4-4-4-8 (Everybody)
WIS 4-4-4-8 (Post level-70 only)
AGI 4-4-4-8 (Scout Pet)
INT 4-6-4-8-2 or 6-4-4-8-2 (Mage Pet)
Practically full Evocations up to Unabate, plus more Evocations
Abjurations (or Foundations) up to Blazing Avatar 2, Elemental Unity 5
Bubble is optional, but very nice to have, unless you have the Mythical pet
Enhance Plane Shift 5 if you have the Mythical Pet

STR4 increases your critical spell damage rate. More crits = more damage from you. Absolutely vital you get this. Do be warned, you will have aggro problems at low levels if your tanks aren't geared well. Higher levels tanks catch up, and so you'll have less aggro problems.

WIS4 increases your pet's spell and offensive skills, meaning more hits = more damage. With Unabate, you shouldn't have resist problems anyway except with super orange/red mobs, raid mobs, and so on. So this is for 70+ only.

WIS5 is nice to have if you have the points to spare.

AGI4 increases your scout pet's damage. Vital if you're a scout pet user. Everything else in the AGI tree is user preference.

AGI5, Reanimate will let you instantly resummon your scout pet on death. This really isn't a needed AA if you have Dimensional Storage though.

INT4 increases your mage pet's damage output, by way of spell haste. Vital if you're a mage pet user.

INT5 decreases the pet's mana consumption, which means it can cast for very long periods of time without running out of power. How you get INT5 is up to you, but you will need to put enough points into the INT tree to unlock it.

Unabate is absolutely required, for the same reasons for the solo build. Less resists = more damage. And on the way to Unabate, you're filling out the Evocations tree, which means even more damage! Huzzah.

Blazing Avatar 2 and Elemental Unity 5 are required for high damage output. Neither of those are available until 50, and 58, respectively.

Bubble is practically (though not necessarily) required if you raid, unless you have the mythical pet. It's also very, very nice for groups too, since a lot of heroic mobs have very annoying AEs that often kill your pets. Keep in mind that Bubble will not protect your pet from AoE auto-attack so caution is still needed. It works best with the mage pet, but is a viable ability for all pets nonetheless. You'll need to put points into Abjurations to unlock it, so I recommend Enhance Geoticism and Enhance Shards (though other combinations work well too).

By the time you get to this point, you're probably at 50 AAs, and unless you are level 70 or higher you're out of AAs to spend. But that's OK, since you have the essentials anyway.

Beyond 50 AAs, how you go down the trees is up to you. And really it boils down to whether you have the Mythical pet or not.

For the non-mythical'd Conjuror, there's a lot of utility in Enhance Stoneskin and Stoneskins (the final Foundations ability), as well as Cure Elemental. Enhance Master's Intervention and Vehement Skin help keep your pet alive, and are very nice to have for non-mythical'd conjurors.
The Conjurations abilities are mostly useless for the points you need to spend, so I won't recommend them unless you have the Mythical pet. If you do have the mythical pet, you want Enhance Summoning 5, Enhance Fire Pet 5, and Enhance Plane Shift 5. Don't waste points down the Foundations line except for 3 in the pet heal and cure elemental (and only as a prerequisite for Enhance Blazing Avatar and Elemental Unity)

I absolutely will not recommend Hydromancer. You're a damage dealer, not a healer. If you want to roll a damage dealing healer, roll a priest and spec for battlepriest or something (Fury and Warden are both excellent examples of this), you'll get much more bang for your buck.

In the past, it was necessary to use a tank pet for survivability reasons on raids. Nowadays, there are almost no mobs that you need to spec for the tank pet in order to use a pet at all. Necros may spec for the tank pet, because their pet save/survivability options are much less than ours when it comes to their mage pet, and because of other reasons. You're not a necro though, you're a Conjuror, so don't spec your AAs like one.

A word about the WIS tree. It should be the absolute last line you fill out (especially considering the TSO tree). When planning your AAs out, consider saving the WIS tree for very last, as there are more important AAs to get in the TSO tree than the WIS tree.

PvP

I'm not a PvPer, so I can't offer any advice. However if any PvPers would like to chime in, please feel free, and I'll see to it that it gets added to this section.

About the TSO Tree

Because of character limits, I can't discuss the TSO tree on this thread. Please go here instead.

Order to buy AAs

I also discuss that here.