Pet Focus Orbs

OK so the time has come to tackle pet focus orbs, we will begin by understanding how to select the correct orbs for your pets,

Focus orbs are divided into three categories.

Red
Yellow
Blue

We start by identifying each focus's primary stat:

From the yellow table above we can identify that ACUITY is related to CRIT CHC when dealing with yellow orbs, so for this guide we will select an undead claymore as it's maximum stat for acuity is higher than the other stat's.
This Mark's it as this orbs PRIMARY STAT,

Higher level focus's may contain 2 Primary stats.

after capturing a ton of undead claymore souls we can begin the smelting process.
What to look for:

1. Talents - Each orb can have up to 3 talents, Stats highlighted as a talent grow more as you improve the focus, so smelting until you gain a talent on the chosen stat, CRIT in this case if your first goal.

2. Meld's - Each focus can be melded with up to 15 times, this process is used to improve your base orb (above) stat's.
The goal to get as close to perfect with all 4 stats and have meld's left to improve upon it's growth rate.

3. Set a target - by the half way point in your meld's you should be looking at these stats as a minimum, if your just not having the luck getting the meld's delete and start fresh the next day, it is a wasteful process but without allowing a cut off point, you'll waste ether, time and money polishing a turd.

4. Don't rush it - this process is limited by smelt exhaustion, just because u can only smelt a few more orbs today, doesn't mean you have to use up all your meld's.
The best focus's take weeks to find the right melds for so be patient.



Addressing the skills and composition will be added tomorrow after exhaustion resets.

Gearing in Detail

Recent discussions have asked for a more detailed look at the gearing system in WOI, my obscure set up has raised many questions.
Because of the amount of detail in this section I may have to return over several days and tweak this depending on feedback regarding it's formatting and clarity

All gear types have 4 primary area's of focus to help you choose which is a perfect part for your play style,
the 4 blue stats are the most important when deciding which part is for you.
the blue stats can feature rare special attributes such as increased crit/lucky strike rate and massive amounts of damage to specific monster types depending on the part so understanding the limits of each part is important,
I will use the helm as my example of the differences from each set,

Gold Stat will always be
Physical Defense

White stats will always feature:
Physical Defense
Magic Defense

Yellow stats Will always feature:

Dex

Spirit

Mag Def

Max HP

Evasion

Blue stats can* feature:
Damage Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Damage reduction Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Increased % to (white/yellow/gems)
Crit block
Elemental attack
Elemental Resistance/Penetration
Physical/Magic attack bonus.

Where this confuses most players is choosing the best blue stats is a very individual choice, it may seam obvious that a set of.........
+13% white stat
Crit block 2%
Phy/Mag attack + 100
fire attack + 100
would be the most awesome helm ever dropped, but in reality these stats only really benefit a Pure DPS class, a champion for example is most likely already at the damage reduction limit so stacking more defense may not always be the best option, instead sticking with a yellow bonus would increase his HP/Mag Def which is much more important.
Sticking with the champion class, your not a DPS toon so
elemental resistances would be much more beneficial than the bonus attack stats also.


The most common way I've advised our members is that each class has 1 or 2 primary pieces of gear, those are essential to find the highest part with +% to white,

Quick list:
Champion: Pauldrons
Hera tic: Belt
Enchantress: Belt
Slayer: boots
Duelist: Chest/Greaves
Magus: Belt
Berzerker: Chest/Greaves


After sourcing your main white pieces, chose your least beneficial part, this will become your gem stack.
DPS character pick Gloves usually so they can embed powerful attack gems (only gloves and weapons can have offensive gems embedded) most other classes prefer Helm or Greaves.
For everything else we normally advise Yellow Bonus

My Hybrid set of gear does not reflect it's potential in terms of "Power" but I gave up worrying about what my power says when my golden set had me at 152k HP/1700 Def (6200 power) and my Soul Gear has me at 121k/1600 HP (7300 power) when a boss is hitting for 52k damage which set would u rather be wearing,....

Examples of unusual choices

It seams insanity that anyone would spend the money on a weapon featuring yellow stats by choice, especially with a legendary price tag, but consider the blue stats for a moment...
It's for a champion, adding 13% to both the champions primary stat (VIT) and main weakness (Mag Def) is much more important than 77 extra points of damage.

These Greaves were chosen for 2 reasons, the rare lucky strike attribute and also the Gem bonus.
Each character should have 1 gear piece with this stat, 
DPS toons tend to make this Gloves so any attack gems used can be increase as this is the only main gear part offensive gems can be socket-ed into.
I chose Greaves because I have an abundance of both the white stat and yellow stats already, 
This allows me to focus my most powerful defensive/Resistance gems here and gain an additional 8% for pre-polish.

Gear Improvement

Each piece of equipment can be improved in 7 ways:
Fortifying
Infusion
Awaken
Insignias
Talismans
Gem Slots
Star words

I'll try to break down each step.

Fortifying gear.
The materials to forty gear can be obtained in several ways, from hunting cheif mobs for shards to combine in to the crystal to buying packs of them from the Cash shop,
How ever you get them it easy makes the difference between an average character and a decent character,
in addition to improving single parts, the average of your entire set up can bring you in an addition bonus once the average reaches +4.
Done at johnny in Atlantis

Infusing gear.
During general play you will pick up random parts for other classes that are either not worth selling or you have no interest in, these parts can be deconstructed into a currency called Ether, Ether can then be used to improve the base stats of individual equipped piece of gear,
the interface is in the bottom of your inventory under "Deconstruct" with a secondary tab in the pop up box for infusing.

Awakening the soul of your gear,
During the instance you will pick up dusts of awakening,
Each piece of gear can be improved 5 times using Dust's and gain an additional stat specific to the part.
Done at Johnny in Atlantis

Adding insignia's
Soul insignia charms can be obtained from the platinum noble daily reward boxes or purchased from many vendors in town, the insignia will add an additional blue stat to the bottom of each piece of gear.
This can be done at johnny in Atlantis

Adding Talisman's
As part of the Territory battle, factions who own lands are given leadership crystal's, these are the currency used to buy talismans.
Talismans add an additional purple stat to your equipment, ranging from stun time reduction to additional elemental attacks,

Gem slots
All gear comes with 1 open gem slot, fortifying the gear will help unlock additional slots,
At +4 you have 2 slot,
+7 gives 3 slots
+10 is 4 slots
and the coveted +13 brings 5 slots.

Star words
For gear above level 60 you can add star words to them,
each part has several different words that can be added so it comes down to choice, the most basic word for each part can be purchased from dyana in Atlantis,
Once a star word is added it has to be activated,
To activate each word there is a set combo of dusts listed.
To add these dusts, slots have to be opened,
there is a short quest that teaches you about this but many people just skip the text then ignore this option, loosing out on thousands of extra HP and other fun bonuses.

The dusts them selves have to be purchase from Arm's Crafting players, or made yourself.

Gear Basics

WOI has 5 types of gear, each with it's own special atributes,
Golden Gear - Obtainable in instances, this is the only gear set to include a damage bonus/reduction to specific monster types making it invaluable for PvE.
Soul Gear - Dropped from the PvP area's mobs and bosses,
SG focuses on elemental damage making it the PvP set.
Holy - Obtainable from oracle wars these include a Set bonus the more parts you are able to equip, only the 4 accessory slots have holy gear available at this time.
Legendary - Obtainable from bosses and the chaos arrived event, very similar to soul gear, legendary parts have 1 additional blue stat often with a random chance to activate.
Deity gear - Obtainable in Chaos arrived and certain instances, this is the rarest of equipment, Deity parts bring a set bonus for every 2 parts equipped.

My Chosen Set up:
Currently only 4 parts of Soul/Legend gear can have the rare blue stat - Lucky Strike +2%.
Weapon/Paudrons/Chest/Greaves,
So when available I equip those, the usually carry the premium price tag but I feel its worth the cost.

For helm/Gloves/Belt/Boots
I have gone with 2 sets of Golden Gear to swap out depending on the situation,
Demon for most Bosses/Instance and Undead for Clan events and Aura farming.

Because of how detailed each of the gear improvement stages are I'll break them down individually.