Any scientific article begins with a justification of why these studies are conducted at all.
This article is notes on the way to study the Biolo job and is intended to preserve and transfer the experience gained and accumulated by playing that class and talking to MuhRO's Merchants community.
This article bears my name, but this title is akin to the Guinness Book of Records, which, generally speaking, is not about Guinness at all. The author expects that this work will be supplemented by active members of the community, each of whom will be able to subscribe to the part developed by them (if desire so).
Therefore, if you have any interesting or curious information that you would like to share with the community, or with newcomers, helping them on their difficult path, feel free to supplement this article with your blocks.
Just please follow the rules of intelligence, and the rules approved on this wiki, and also avoid disrespect and vandalism. No one needs it.
About Biolo
Genetic
Biolo
There is a widespread misconception in the community that playing a Merchant Class requires a lot of capital investment, and that this is an expensive process that is not suitable for beginners.
I will say right away, all this is not true. This class is great for new players and for people who like to earn and save zeny.
Advantages
Disadvantages
A lot of utility abilities
Built-in economics skills and the ability to vend stores
A lot of different playable builds to choose from
Great DPS potential
A natural predisposition for a solo gameplay
Has its own tasks and useful abilities when playing a party gameplay
Fastest movement speed
Great at farming things
Useful companion (Homunculus)
A lot of crafting skills
No magic builds (at all)
Not best survivability (negotiable)
Could be complicated at first sight
Choosing build
First of all, I will give a summary table that shows the current builds for each Job.
However, please note that builds of the third Job listed here are intended not only for leveling as Genetic.
Please keep in mind that playing with the skills of the third Job at fourth Job is possible, but it has its own features:
Most likely, the upper damage threshold that you can develop will be lower than the one that you could develop using the skills of the fourth profession
Most likely, the cost of a full-fledged development of such a build will be at least no less, and most likely comparable to the cost of developing a build of the fourth Job
At the moment, it is unknown whether these builds will be developed and supported in the future or not
Playing build of the third Job has features for which they are worth choosing. Usually these are narrowly defined builds for certain purposes
Use and choose this build only if you are absolutely sure that you need it and you will benefit from it. Well, or choose them just for fun and new adventures.
Job \ Role
Physical Ranged
Special Physical Ranged
Physical Melee
3rd Job Genetic
Spore Explosion
Cart Cannon Ignores Flee, Def & Res
Cart Tornado
4th Job Biolo
Acidified Zone Water Acidified Zone Ground Acidified Zone Wind Acidified Zone Fire
Mayhemic Thorns Can do critical damage
Explosive Powder
Details about builds
The builds listed here are listed in decreasing order of their relevance. This means that the higher the build in the list, the more useful and popular it is, and the lower, the more questionable its choice is (although it may be justified).
Build
Damage Type
Comments
Acidified Zone Water Acidified Zone Ground Acidified Zone Wind Acidified Zone Fire
Physical Ranged
Known for it's spamability, this build has the highest potential damage per second, but is tied to four main elements. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage in various situations. We will consider this a feature of the build. This build grows perfectly from POW , and the fact that there are as many as four skills, and their cooldowns are separate, allows you to use them in a chain, which eventually gives a mind-blowing final rate of fire. However, keep in mind that you will need to craft a lot of bottles to attack. Also note that build has rather modest 7x7 AoE and shortest range of using, which is only 8 cells away from caster.
Mayhemic Thorns
Critical Physical Ranged
This build is a typical representative of long-range critical builds, without being distinguished by anything special. You get decent damage, a normal rate of fire (0.7 seconds cooldown, neglible global cooldown), a typical firing range (9 cells), a good AoE (9x9, gold standard), the ability to deal critical damage that never misses. However, there may be problems with accumulating a critical rating (Cri ), because some MvPs and higher level enemies may have rather high critical shield, which lowers your chance of doing critical hits.
Cart Cannon
Special Physical Ranged
This build is primarily known for its convenience. When builded correctly, it has the highest rate of fire, decent damage, and a very high range of use (11 cells, which is great with wing-DD tactics), okay-ish AoE (7x7), wide selection of Cannon balls with any required element, which could be switched quite fast, also please note in-built ability of ignoring enemy Flee (you never miss) and Def & Res (you do not need quite expensive shadow gear pieces to do most damage from that part of calculations). Using turbo casting feature, you can just move the mouse around the screen and watch while everything under the cursor dies and you feel yourself like a god, who can kill with his sight. If you have never tried this, I highly recommend it, because it's truly unique experience. Just please note building that could be quite complicated and really expensive if maxing out DPS (probably you will need 2x [MVP] Kiel Card (4403) for that). If not maxing out, it could be effectively used for farming a lot of locations and instances (and it could be cheap, but still complicated: you need to balance a lot of timings stats like VCT, ACD, ASPD). Also note you need almost perfect ping to max out spamability of that build. If your ping is high, you will lose a lot of your fire rate and DPS as well.
Explosive Powder
Physical Melee
This build is a very modest representative of melee builds. It has mediocre cooldown (0.7 sec), mediocre damage, mediocre AoE (7x7 around yourself). However, if you have equipment for melee characters or you want to assemble it, this build will be able to do a decent job and even show some decent results, but do not expect any miracles. Current meta hates melee, you should consider that.
Spore Explosion
Physical Ranged
This is a very highly specialized build that will not cause much damage, but it has a huge attack range (11 cells) and the largest available attack area (11x11 AoE). You can literally destroy half of the screen with one click, and it also looks extremely impressive (like carpet bombing, you defenitely should see that). It can be used for fun or for convenient farming of not very difficult locations, because the max achievable damage per use of this build is comparable to a Cart Cannon, but at the same time Spore Explosion is used much less often (under all the kind of stuff - 2 times per second as best). Also keep in mind that you will not be able to use the strongest body armor in the game (like Depth or Nebula Stuff), because you will be tied to one specific armor (Snow Flower one). But if you want to blow up everything you see in CTB, then this may be a worthy and funny choice.
Cart Tornado
Physical Melee
You should not seriously consider choosing this build. It's so miserable that it should be performing in a circus of freaks. Here it is given rather as a museum exhibit, however, the developers for some reason laid the opportunity to raise the damage output of this build. But please don't. Only option is if you're going to do it for the sake of memes...
Mayhemic Thorns
Stat Build Example
Stats
Traits
STR
90 ~ 120
POW
100
AGI
1 ~ 100
STA
0 / 17 / 0
VIT
92+
WIS
0 / 18 / 35
INT
90 ~ 120
SPL
0
DEX
110 ~ 130
CON
35 / 0 / 0
LUK
1 ~ 125
CRT
100
Stats
Comment
STR
STR is important, because it scales weapon ATK and affects your damage output.
AGI
AGI is mainly used to get ASPD (you do not need much, like 2 hits per second, which is 175 ASPD). However, faster ASPD is, faster casting animation is, it helps to spam faster, so more is better. Second usage of AGI is for some statuses resistance.
VIT
VIT is for HP. It should be 92 at least to have stun immunity. The more HP you have, the better, but do not sacrifice too much here.
INT
INT is important offensive stat. It scales your SP pool (you will need it to spam a lot of skills), also it boosts your variable casting time.
DEX
DEX is used for accelerating variable cast time and for some card combos. Also it helps with ASPD a bit.
LUK
LUK scales your Critical Rate (chance of dealing critical damage). You will probably have a lot of Cri from equipment, so LUK stat is not first priority. You should note that some equipment and cards are scaled by LUK, so, if you have them, you should get more LUK. LUK helps to resist some statuses too.
Traits
Comment
POW
POW is your main source of damage output, so it should be maxed out no matter what.
CRT
CRT boosts C.Rate (that stat boosts your final critical damage modifier). For now CRT is main source of C.Rate, because C.Rate equipment modifiers are kinda rare and quite modest.
CON
CON should be used to max out damage output, because it gives P.Atk. But since P.Atk is not hard to get, while C.Rate is hard to get, you should not dump too much trait points here. There is also option to use those points for defensive traits instead of CON.
WIS
WIS gives MRes (final reduction of incoming magic damage). Since enemies' magic hits really hard, that trait becomes truly important. You can invest here instead of CON, if you need more survivability.
STA
STA gives Res (final reduction of incoming physical damage). You can invest here to boost your resistance to physical damage, if you need it. But STA trait is not very important, so it should be balanced with WIS or ignored.
Skill Build Example
This is an example of a skill build template. You can safely modify it at your discretion. I will also note that only the most important skills are listed in the builds and there are free points that you can distribute as you see fit.
Merchant Skill Build Example
I keep my Item Appraisal to use it in fields and instances, tho you can use that point at Vending.
Creator Skill Build Example
Genetic Skill Build Example
Sword Training skill could be useful in early game, when you do not have a lot of Cri and you need more Hit. Of course it only works with swords. Full Throttle skill could be used as emergency panic button to fully restore all your pools. Personally I don't like it because it has side effects.
Biolo Skill Build Example
The Whole Protection skill can be ignored if you do not participate in any party gameplay activities.
You can distribute those 4 points to:
Acidified Zone Fire and/or Acidified Zone Water to get lv 4 and use them to restore your AP fast
Bionic Mastery because why not
Creeper if you use it a lot to spend less resources
With great respect, I express my gratitude to the administrators of this wonderful project: Muh, Icecold and all of their team and stuff, the community of merchants, as well as Espresso, whos support is incomparable, Schier, whos wisdom is great, Spike, who made my first introduction to a job, Маюша Вреднюша, who inspired me to make my first biolo, and a guy who keeps buying all the acid bottles from paradise market a moment when they appears (I hope you sleep well at nights).
Spore Explosion
Cart Cannon 
Cart Tornado
Acidified Zone Water 
Acidified Zone Ground 
Acidified Zone Wind 
Acidified Zone Fire
Mayhemic Thorns 
Explosive Powder
Item Appraisal to use it in fields and instances, tho you can use that point at 
Vending.
Sword Training skill could be useful in early game, when you do not have a lot of Cri and you need more Hit. Of course it only works with swords. 
Full Throttle skill could be used as emergency panic button to fully restore all your pools. Personally I don't like it because it has side effects.
The Whole Protection skill can be ignored if you do not participate in any party gameplay activities. 
Bionic Mastery because why not
Creeper if you use it a lot to spend less resources